In the last fortnight, we unlearned submission. On December
16, a 23 year old girl, just on the brink of leading a socio-economically
independent life was raped in a moving bus at 9.30 at night.
We saw protests, we saw outraged masses. It is the first time
in the history of this nation, when people were out on the streets on the issue
of gender. For more than two weeks in a row. And it continues. Figures have
been thrown at us: every 20 minutes a woman is raped in India, every third
victim is a child, according to the National Crime Records Bureau.
At one of these protest sites, the car parking contractor
informed me that they have slashed the parking charges from 30 bucks to 10
bucks in solidarity with the girl and her family. This may be dismissed as a ‘simplistic’
contribution by those who have been accusing these protests of being ‘middle
class’. But we need to hit the core, to understand the wider repercussions of
the Parking contractor’s this simple act.
In a country where 30 percent of sexual abusers are family
members and almost every woman can recollect at least one incident of abuse
within the ‘safe domains’ of a family in her lifetime, sexual abuse is often a
tightly guarded secret. Its a ghost. Middle class patriarchal domestic spaces
do not even allow discussing or reporting it, to uphold their regressive
moralistic notions of sanitised spaces. Where girls, as soon as they hit
puberty are told, ‘from now on you must stay away from boys’. Where television
channels are switched if they broadcast a rape report. In such a gender
claustrophobic society, a stranger is ready to discuss ‘rape’ on his own
initiative with me, on the road, is an achievement in itself. These protests
are struggling to get rid of the baggage associated with the word ‘rape’. It
was this moment that made me hopeful that these protests are in a way rupturing
the idea of gendered spaces in the country. The same gendered spaces which are
seen as male bastions and the women who perforate them are taught a lesson.
That night, the bus too was a gendered space. The girl
entered it with a male friend. Her choice to be out with that particular man in
the male fiefdom was an ‘offence’. Her male friend’s objection to the lewd
remark passed by the six culprits was a breach of the male dominion. Her
attempts to bite them, three of them, while they were assaulting her, was an
assault on the male fiefdom. And thats why the the brutality that followed:
inserting a rod in her vagina and pulling out her ‘rope-like’ intestines, like
any other rape, was not an act of sexual gratification, but purely an act of
male assertion. The patriarchal society we live in feels threatened when
traditionally male occupied spaces are explored by women. It does not know how
to deal with it. The act of throwing the girl and her companion naked on the
road was a declaration that those who attempt to turn male territories into
equal spaces will be meted out a similar treatment.
The day the girl passed away, I was waiting for my turn
outside a public toilet, which are few in this country at Janpath in Delhi. Two
men were vociferously engaged in a discussion, swearing on the private parts of
their mothers and sisters in alternate sentences. One of the men lifted his
head, saw me and said ‘sorry’. In a city like Delhi, swearing on the private
parts of women is a common slang. It is
almost the third word of each sentence. Even ‘gender-sensitive’ men and
‘liberated’ women use it, sometimes to abuse and sometimes to fit comfortably
in the male spaces. In such a scenario, this apology was a first. This
superficial acknowledgement of the misogyny associated with the that particular
slang is a ramification of bringing gender debates from intellectual,
theorised, NGO-ised spaces to the public arena.
There are plethora of accusations and problems with these
protests. Extreme Leftists have rejected them as another middle class stunt,
like the Anna movement, questioning why is the nation not similarly outraged
when several Dalit, Kashmiri, Northeastern women are raped almost everyday. It
is indeed true, that the passive cocoon the middle class lives in is difficult
to break. However, this particular gangrape smashed it. Thus, this historic
moment can then not be wasted in recounting the apathy of the middle class or
alienating oneself from the outrage. It is the time to engage and give the
struggle a direction.
Housewives, students, the old, the common, were out on the
roads protesting against the rape of a working class girl. Some wanted the
culprits to be hanged, some wanted chemical castration. During a silent march
from Mandi House to Jantar Mantar to mourn the death of the girl on December
30, a passionate housewife, Puja, started sloganeering to demand death penalty
for the accused. She believed that death sentence will prove to be a deterrent.
Activists and intellectuals saw this moment to engage and argue her out of the
simplistic understanding. At how this approach is not oriented to reform the
society but to punish. She was made to see the larger picture. This is the
effort required to be made by activists and intelligentsia to sensitise, to
include.
Also, to repeat certain facts which unfortunately are seen
as a rhetoric: According to 2011 census,
over one million unborn girls are killed every year. The socio-economic reasons
behind this are well known. Patriarchy’s role definition of women does not
allow them to be seen as breadwinners, successors,equals. And that is why prejudices against them
percolates down to their food plates. According to UNICEF, in India, 90 percent
of adolescent girls are malnourished as inadequate resources of families are
divided preferentially among men. Where even middle class, ‘well to do’ girls
are often ‘allowed’ to be economically independent only through professions
like ‘teaching and medicine’ which are more ‘feminine’ or ‘maternal’ in nature.
Where they have to barter their economic independence by leaving the choice of
their life partners with their parents. It is in this light, her father’s
decision, who is a porter at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi,
to sell off his land for the education of his daughter, even when he has two
younger sons to take care of, is not just exemplary but also extremely
significant.
When the middle class thronged the roads protesting against
this rape, they got a first hand taste of the police atrocities. Unlike the
Anna movement, here they were ready to face police batons, water cannons, tear
gas, which was till now for them only a
romantic image of a revolution. They lived the reality of stone pelting in
Kashmir and the autocracy of the Armed Forces Special Power Acts in the
Northeast. It may be surface sensitisation, but it was also a moment to expose the sex terrorism of the state. To
discuss custodial rapes, about the rapes of adivasi women like Laxmi Orang, who
have been waiting for justice for the last five years or that of Manorama who
was raped and killed eight years back by the army. And it is in this light then
the middle class may understand the grotesqueness of Central Home Minister,
Sushil Kumar Shinde’s statement when he says, “ Tomorrow, if 100 adivasis are
killed in Chhattisgarh or Gadchiroli, can the government go there?” It is this participation, even at a cursory
level, that is potent enough to initiate the scrutiny of political
representatives and their prejudices. It is then the statement of former Uttar
Pradesh Congress President, Rita Bahuguna, herself a woman, who said, “Mayawati
too should be raped and then given Rs 1 crore as compensation” or the statement
of West Bengal CPM MLA Anisur Rehman, who said, “ How much will Mamta Banerjee
charge if she gets raped.?” reflect the existing political leadership’s
indoctrinated misogyny and the tendency to trivialise rape.
It also, for the first time, we heard words like ‘patriarchy’
being discussed on the streets and in the mainstream media. In juxtaposition,
the machismo of certain men was manifested in the forms of protests, where
young boys displayed stunts on moving bikes with ‘hang the rapists, save our
sisters’ placards. They were again hijacking the spaces that were being used by
women to assert their rights. It is then, young girls displayed placards in
opposition saying, ‘I don’t need to be someone’s daughter or sister to move
freely on the street.’ This at least created a space to ask uncomfortable
questions. To discuss how patriarchy not just patronises women but also forces
them to conform to traditional, ‘dutiful’ roles of a daughter, mother, wife and
sister.
A girl held a placard with, ‘I will use the same rod to smash
your head,’written it. Naive and violent it may be but it announces that
women’s vagina’s are penetrated with things other than penis too, which is
otherwise conveniently ignored by the sanitised middle class. And that is also
rape, which our judicial system does not recognise as in the case of Soni Sori,
the tribal woman whose vagina was inserted with stones, thus hinting at a need
to change the rape law, to understand rape better.
For a woman who has made the journey from a stereotypical,
upper caste patriarchal, middle class, small city person to a person who is
still struggling to fight it on a daily basis, to do away with all stereotypes
and acknowledge one’s privileges to engage with the working class, I understand
the importance of unlearning. In creating an independent life, in awakening
one’s own critical consciousness.
It is this unlearning that was instigated by these protests
amongst the middle class. The unlearning that teaches to refute, question,
assert and empathise. The Indian feminist movement is hidden under these
protests.
