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| Image (c) Nalanda Tambe |
On December 16, 2012,
a 23-year-old girl in New Delhi was gang-raped and brutally attacked on board a
bus. A friend who accompanied her was treated with horrific violence as well.
Within hours of reports that showed up on India’s media outlets, the fury among
the masses rose. And soon, there were cries of solidarity for the girl herself,
and angry cries denouncing the brutal men who raped and harmed her, and the
security sector in the country for allowing this to happen.
The media,
interestingly, had quite a role to play. While it could have been a tremendous
powerhouse of educative value, it seemed to have missed the opportunity –
although it did reform itself.
Nalanda Tambe, a
journalist and activist for gender issues, was moved by the entire episode. Her
intrigue at the media’s approach to the case took her deeper into the dynamics
of media and gender issues in the context of gender based violence. The end
result is a book, titled Mediatized Realities of Crime Against Women: Case of Delhi Gang Rape. Against a backdrop of event-centric and sensationalised reactions
as opposed to well thought out responses, Nalanda’s book is an eye opener for
the world of communication and new age media in reporting, addressing and
dealing with Gender based Violence.
Excerpts of her interview with The Red
Elephant Foundation follow:
I
have a Masters’ degree in Media – and I have been curious about the portrayal
of gender in the media, particularly women. I have observed the rather
stereotypical way of portraying gender and women. Having been born and brought
up in Vadodra, in Gujarat, I grew up in what is considered a rather safe city
for women – the crime rate is quite minimal. I wanted to study about gender
from a media perspective. I see how women are portrayed in the media, in films
and in mainstream literature – for instance, you wouldn’t find too many heroine
centric films in Bollywood. The lone exception to that was Kahaani, among a
handful of others that I can name off the top of my head. I always wanted to
see why women were being portrayed as objects, and what the mentality or
rationale underlying it was all about.
The
objectification of women in films, songs and literature is actually a form of
violence against women. Women’s bodies are packaged and tossed across the
screen to the audiences for mass consumption, and in some ways, I find that it
is a way to cover up the obvious lack of qualitative content in a film. The use
of women in these so-called “item numbers” in films is really just an absolute
sham – a violation of the quintessence of the dignity of women. If you look at
advertisements, you will see a similar phenomenon – adding to which is the fact
that a lot of advertisements portray women as the ones taking care of their
families. Is it too much to ask to portray men in the same light? A quick
survey of reality will tell you pretty much the truth on this front – there are
many, many men who take care of their families.
These
are the very things that reflect the undercurrents that motivate ours, and by
extension, the media’s responses to gender based violence. There is a clear
Supreme Court directive that mandates non-disclosure of the name of the
survivor or victim of rape. To that effect, I have always wondered what
business anyone has to give a survivor or victim an alternative name. What was
achieved in using the monikers of Nirbhaya and Amanat? We live in a patriarchal
society, and these kinds of things feed into the patriarchy. Rapes have
happened since then – and the coverage has been dreadfully limited. No one
spoke of the Mumbai incident involving a photo journalist. No one spoke of the
Kolkata incident. Recently, the Rohtak incident was ignored too. What gives,
really? Is it that the brutality deserves to be addressed and taken to task
only if it happens in Delhi? In the Rohtak incident, the girl had a mental
illness and was found killed after a brutal gang-rape – the things that were
recovered from inside her, the kind of violence she was put through – I cannot
even begin to tell you about the brutality. I believe that we need to change –
and this change can come if and only if every case is reported.
There
are two main things that came up in the Delhi incident, as being the core
elements that created a furore – that there was tremendous brutality involved
in the case, , and that the incident happened in Delhi. Reporting sexual
violence and rape comes with many challenges. The media in India is heavily
event-centric. Brutality gets attention only if it is in the nation’s capital –
the media doesn’t talk about it as much as it should in any other city aside of
Delhi. On social media, people seem to demand coverage. Recently, a campaign
was made against the inertia of the media on the Rohtak incident – asking the
pertinent question of why only incidents in Delhi were covered. The media has a
long way to go in helping make changes in the mindset of people. Through my
research, though, I discovered that there is a tremendous difference between
the English dailies and the vernacular press – given that the latter and their
portrayal of such stories needs a lot of improvement. On occasion, I have seen
some vernacular papers actually having all but named the victim – disclosing
her work, her qualifications, her location and her father’s name – this isn’t
any less than disclosing her identity, because all of these elements, even if
not as spot on as the name, create room for the identification of the victim.
Another
major drawback in the way the media functions in these cases is the attention
it gives to the past or the lifestyle choices of a victim. Saying things to the
effect of that don’t matter to anyone – a girl is being raped on a moving bus,
now what have you to show for it? What action have you taken for her? How can
we be sure that our lives are safe? These are the things I want to know. It is
important for the media to balance its reports in a manner that it gives these
crimes the right attention so as to make the masses vigilant. During the recent
Haryana rape incident, the media in the country was too busy worrying about
Kejriwal and KiranBedi – which is certainly no less importance, but the case
should have been given importance, too.
The
media has a very important role as an educator. It has to help shape public
opinion in a logical, sensible and progressive manner. The presence of so much
content that is inappropriate for children in media and cinema is alarming –
today’s parents don’t have time for their children, and the ease of access to
technology tends to allow children to watch things that are inappropriate for
them. In consequence, many children wind up imitating what they see – imbibing
the wrong things and projecting them as conduct. Parents need to be vigilant
and cognisant of what their children are up to. Before telling your daughter to
come home early, or before preventing her from doing something, take a moment
to find out where your son is and what he is doing. Bringing up children with
equality as the foremost goal and target is very important.
It is
very important to empower our women – to recriminalize a victim is wrong, and
the current sensationalist media’s approach does just that. There needs to be
tremendous emphasis on delivering information. The media can choose to portray
information in any way that it wants – but it has to report on only fact, fact
and FACT alone. The
media did play an educative role during the Delhi gang-rape incident.
Therefore, we need the media to function in this kind of a role in every case
of violence against women. It may not make a difference if such cases are merely
reported - but it certainly does when such cases influence positive changes in
society.
To buy a copy of Nalanda's book, click here
