Do you know who Aruna
Shanbaug is?
For those of you who
do, do you remember her? When did you remember her? Just now, when you read her
name? Or do you think of her each day and let your blood boil because nothing
was done to avert a repetition of what happened to her?
For those of you who
don’t know or remember her, she was a junior nurse at the King Edward Memorial Hospital in Parel,
Mumbai. In 1973, she was sexually assaulted by a ward boy. Since then, she has
remained in a vegetative state. The ward boy who assaulted her was Sohanlal
Bhartha Walmiki. He was caught and convicted, and served two concurrent
seven-year sentences for assault and robbery. But he was not hauled up for rape
or sexual molestation, nor for the “unnatural sexual offence” that the Indian
Penal Code explains as sodomy, which could have got him a ten-year sentence by
itself.
Years later, many girls face the same predicament that she did - rape, sexual violence and traumatic injury that leaves them at death's doorstep. Each "case" has a face, a name, an identity. Each "case" is a woman, a girl. Just for today she is in the news. Just for today, the country puts up status messages
on Facebook and Tweets its support for her. Just for today, the country wants castration
or death as a penalty for a rapist. Just for today we will walk the streets and hold up
posters. Just for today, we will write op-ed pieces and indulging in shouting matches on
the country’s news channels. Just for today, we will unabashedly promise our undying
support to fight for this cause.
But Tomorrow?
We will forget. We
will move on. She becomes a statistic, a memory, someone who goes into law
books and the annals of newsprint archives.
Stop right there.
WE CANNOT AFFORD TO
LET THAT HAPPEN.
If we want change, we need to be resilient in our demand for
change.
For starters, it does
not make sense to keep pursuing miscalculated demands from the legislature if
we don’t change the prevailing social attitude. Sexual violence is not only about
legalese, or fighting a case in a court. A robust security sector reform or
creating more laws or policies are not enough to solve anything. What we need
to do is to understand the ethos that surrounds such behaviour, the reason that
these things happen with alarming regularity. And when we understand that, we
need to put that knowledge to use to change the way our society thinks, enough
to avoid the occurrence of such incidents. Every time there is an incident, it
is a grim reminder not of the lack of laws, but of the lack of education. Why
is it that there are so many Indian men commit rape routinely? We talk of the
empowerment of women being pervasive. We use statistics of the number of women
in workplaces and of women who are financially independent. We applaud women in
politics and admire women who demand their rights. And yet, she is still
vulnerable to attack, still vulnerable to stigma, still vulnerable to being
dominated. Women are progressively empowering themselves, doubtless, but this
empowered status is becoming difficult to digest, for many a male counterpart,
it appears.
In a country that
still looks at a girl child as an aberration when born, in a country that still
deems women sex symbols fit best to dance to raunchy songs, there is a thriving
hotbed of privilege among men. The continued perception of women as being
unwanted, except for sexual connotations and sexual favours is a continued
thumb pressing down against any room for change. If a woman continues to
display her vulnerability, she is welcome, she is acceptable. The moment she
asserts herself, throws an open challenge to the ‘accepted stereotypes’, she
sends a subliminal slap to the ego of the male. And that immediately pulls the
wind out of the sails of the man who in his perception ‘rightfully should’ be
superior: a sense of emasculation, a sense of defeat, a sense of losing power.
The idea of castration
or a death penalty or torturous punishment may seem a neat vent for anger. But
it will not help a thing. If it would, why are rapists continuing to mushroom
when Dhananjay Chatterjee was executed by hanging? If it hasn’t been
established already, Law remains a paper tiger without implementation. And for
that implementation, the first precondition is inducement of education.
This ‘education’ is
the creation of an understanding that an empowered woman is not a threat, but a
boon. An empowered woman is the fount of an empowered family, and the empowered
family is the fount of an empowered nation. This ‘education’ is the inculcation
of an understanding that empowering a woman is not a bad thing, but that the
heinous treatment of women is a bad thing.
It doesn’t take a
rocket scientist to see that we’re all speaking out, we’re all protesting, and
we’re all fighting against the culture of impunity that allows crimes like this
to thrive. But we’re still not there yet. Why? Because we’re scattered in our
efforts. We hold the same views, we fight with passion, but we hold back from
standing steadfast in our fight. Whether due to fear or just a sense of
disillusionment with the idea of action and its lack of results is not
something I’m capable of deciphering. We have so much anger. Why can’t we stop
making this anger momentary, but turn it into something that leaves a lasting
positive impact?
Which takes me back to
what I asked you at first.
Will you remember Aruna
Shanbaug? Will you remember Hanufa Khatoon, the Bangladeshi woman who was
gang-raped by employees of the Railways? Will you remember Bhanwari Devi who in
1992, was raped in Rajasthan for attempting to prevent a child marriage? Will
you remember every one of those children in Nithari, who were sexually
assaulted and abused, and then killed brutally? Will you remember Hetal, who
was raped and murdered by Dhananjay Chatterjee? Will you remember this
23-year-old girl who lies in a coma today? Will you remember the photojournalist in Mumbai who was gang-raped last week?
You know the truth. We know the truth. And all truth is actionable.
Will you remember them,
and take action for them?