“Yeh daagh daagh ujaalaa, yeh shab gazidaa seher
Woh intezaar tha jiska, yeh woh seher to nahin
Yeh woh seher to nahin, jis ki aarzoo lekar
Chaley thay yaar ke mil jaye gi kahin na kahin…
Abhi garaani-e-shab mein kami nahin aayi
Najaat-e-deedaa-o-dil ki ghadi nahin aayi
Chale chalo ki woh manzil abhi nahin aayi.“
( “This stained light, this night-bitten dawn;
This is not that long-awaited day break;
This is not the dawn in whose longing,
We set out believing we would find, somewhere…
Night’s heaviness is unlessened;
The hour of the heart and spirit’s deliverance has not yet arrived;
Let us go on, that goal has not yet arrived.”)
—By Faiz Ahmed Faiz, 15th August 1947.
Every country has its moments of reckoning, a historical tipping point. In our sub-continent, several moments of reckoning keep knocking on our doors and historical tipping points tip over as we sit glued to our TV sets or computer or phone screens, oblivious to the calamity around us. The image where a man is holding a sign that says, “Apocalypse happened while I was on Facebook” is a no longer funny because it seems pretty much the reality of India right now. We are facing yet another moment of reckoning, and it’s about women’s safety.
In a deeply misogynistic sub-continent, where sex education is prohibited, women’s bodies are tightly regulated and controlled, even as self-proclaimed god-men roam around naked, or rape women in the guise of religion or tradition.
In South Asia, it is alarming the way majoritarian communities treat our minorities and the marginalized, especially, the wars against minorities that are waged on the bodies of children and women belonging to these disenfranchised communities.
The rampant use of rape and sexual violence during riots or wars have proved that it is a political tool, devoid of sexual desires or lust—it is solely about the desire for power. Through the sexual violence that dominant communities exercise (the power to shame a survivor and her community) by dominating over them through the warped logic that the honour of the community can be taken away by penetrating a vagina. This is the widely accepted logic of a twisted and the perverse society that places ‘honour’ on the body and sexuality of woman-identified persons.
The violent history of the sub-continent and its evolution through bloodshed and human misery has normalised these particular tools. India and neighbouring Pakistan (which also included Bangladesh till 1971), were born through an extremely gory and violent phase in 1947. According to UNHCR, the Partition remains the largest mass migration of people in human history, during which millions lost their lives. The violence, particularly, the sexual violence against children and women was horrific and widespread. What was more disturbing was that there were so many who got away with this—perhaps people we knew and loved were a part of these hate-crimes. There were so many of them that there were not enough courts to try them or prison cells to jail them in India or in Pakistan, and they got away as the chaos of 1947 erased their criminal pasts. Thereby, firmly establishing a system that normalized violence and a society that believed in the legitimacy of sexual violence.
We are the grandchildren of the bloody Partition on 1947 and have inherited the violent system and the politics of hate that seems to be raging across the sub-continent. In 2018, nothing has changed except for worsened conditions for minorities and the marginalized, targeting children and women who belong to these groups. Now hearing or reading about gang-rapes has become a matter of daily news in India, and news headlines, such as, “sexual crimes against children has increased 34% in one year”, or “India’s rape problem” are so common that it doesn’t elicit many reactions from our numbed masses. However, let’s not be mistaken about this moment in history—our tipping point in history is here once again.
Between 1947 and now, many instances of mass violence and gang-rapes targeting specific minorities and marginalized communities have taken place.
In international conflict zones, such as Kashmir and the states of the North East, the Indian state has used the draconian law AFSPA and made rape a State-sanctioned tool to dominate over rebelling masses.
Kunan Poshpora, is an example of how the state and armed forces enjoy the excessive power that they can abuse with impunity.
In mainland India, 1984, there was another moment of reckoning—the year witnessed a series of violent events that led to the horrific and brutal state suppression of the Khalistan movement and its aftermath, including, the assassination of Indira Gandhi, followed by attacks against Sikhs to avenge her death and the majoritarian sentiments. I was just born when the 1984 events took place but as we grew up and heard about them, we couldn’t fathom how a State punishes a whole community for the crime of a few individuals. It took us a while and we learnt our lessons of the politics of hate, a politics that breeds such irrationality that doesn’t even spare children.
In 1992 when the Babri Masjid was demolished, it happened again. The centrist party running the country stood watching like a passive bystander, revelling in the majoritarian sentiments of “Mandir wahi banayenge (We shall build the temple there)”. Even as a child, I was horrified watching the scenes of the Kar Sevaks (right-wing militants/terrorists) climbing up the Babar-era mosque and breaking it down, many of them using their fists. But my country refused to wake up from its slumber and once again, the state had normalized and sanctioned majoritarian violence.
The aftermath of the Babri Masjid demolitions has been long drawn—it is the slowly simmering embers of communal rage. As history is testimony, the communal rage only works for dominant groups and/or groups that are larger in number. India is no exception, and the majoritarian driven Hindutva groups have grown stronger. They not only threaten and destroy the minority and marginalized communities with their simmering communal rage, but they are also bringing havoc upon the country. Several full-fledged outbursts of this communal rage take place every day across the country but the major ones that shook us were the Bombay riots and then later in 2002, the Gujarat riots. The Bombay riots were extremely frightening as they demonstrated how violence lurks within ordinary people and circumstances, waiting for that one trigger moment to jump out and unleash death and destruction. However, Gujarat riots of 2002 under the Bharatiya Janta Party then led by the current Prime Minister took the level of violence even further. The number of Muslims killed and the sexual violence unleashed on Muslim women and children, where even pregnant women were not spared, was unprecedented. The unchecked violence unleashed in the Gujarat riots normalized violence to yet another terrifying level. In 2013, Muzzafarnagar was another example when the state turns a blind eye (like it does during every riot) and lets Hindutva mobs use sexual violence to terrify, humiliate, and dominate a community.
India is dotted with instances of mass sexual violence mostly perpetrated by Hindu majoritarian terrorist mobs, supported by a culture of apathy, religious fanaticism, extreme patriarchy, and casual misogyny. Since the news of the Kathua case reached us, people shared right-wing propaganda and fake news of other rape cases perpetrated on Hindu women by Muslim men, keeping in line with the right-wing strategy of ‘whataboutery’. This act of sharing fake news is not only grave as it can lead to fueling communal tensions and rioting, it is actually sick. In some perverted sense of logic, it tries to justify a real incident of brutal rape and murder of a child to scare away her disenfranchised nomadic Muslim community, by sharing about another brutal rape and murder of a woman that never happened. Therefore, by the track record of systemic and normalized violence by state and private actors in India, what happened in Kathua or in all the other places was not an aberration at all. They were waiting to happen and fitted in perfectly with the larger scheme of things—the narrative of a Hindu nation propagated by the ruling party and supported by a large number of the population.
The only problem with this widespread acceptance and unleashing of violence, particularly, against children and women, is that it will not spare any one. The experience of some form of violence is universal to all irrespective of caste, class, religion, region. Any feeling of comfort and safety is just that, a feeling that is entirely false and can be violated at any moment.
The first time I faced sexual harassment I was in Class VI and on my way back from my tutor or perhaps the year before when I went to pick up my sister from Sealdah station. In any case, I was merely a child and wore salwar kameez in both instances; should that provoke lust in anyone? The next time that I remember prominently was when I was returning to Kolkata in a Rajdhani train, and a man tried to molest me at night when I was trying to fall asleep. I will never forget the trouble I took to report the case to the railway police; most importantly I will never forget their response, “Ache ghar ki ladkiya aise report nahi likhwate hai (Girls from good families do not report such cases).” I still travel alone but avoid the side bunks of trains because that is how debilitating the experience is to a person.
Another prominent memory of harassment was when I moved back to Delhi and was staying in Malviya Nagar. I was followed by a car on my way to watch a night show at one of the movie halls in Saket. On reporting the crime, the police repeated the cliché, “Why were you out that late?” Needless to say, no action was taken ever.
Connect these experiences with our everyday lives, where wife and women jokes are the norm, and violence is something that women in the sub-continent learn to live with. Young girls are taught at an early age to walk with their hands over their chest to protect their often non-existent breasts. This misogyny combined with the Hindutva majoritarian hate-politics is a breeding ground for sexual violence waiting to happen. Therefore, in the light of our historical evolution, the systems that normalize violence and the social structures that sanction it, even the most frightening occurrences are not unexpected at all. Even if a little girl is abducted, gang-raped, sedated, and murdered, to send a message to her marginalized nomadic community.
Predictably, the strategy to distract the Indian masses from these issues is the fail-proof strategy of a Hindutva rampage, and flaring up communal politics has worked. Hindutva is the ideology that legitimizes majoritarian domination and fuels hate crimes. Sexual violence is only one aspect of the universe of hate-crimes that exist, including, arson, beef-lynchings, and other forms of violence that have increased under the current regime. The ideology promotes divisiveness and doesn’t spare anyone. It identifies the ‘other’, the non-Hindus, as The Enemy, but the definition is not limited and may include non-conformists, dissenters, and rebels within the Hindu community. Therefore, if we do not accept and toe their line, we are all The Enemy.
But despite the threats we cannot and must not toe the line of Hindutva because as the young speaker at the 15th April protests said that, “Hum agar abhi in sab cheezon ko nahi rokenge to shayad democracy, freedom, pyar, dosti aur equality jaise shabd sirf copy-kitabon mein hi padne ke liye rah jayenge (If we still don’t stop these things then maybe words such as, democracy, freedom, love, friendship and equality, will remain only in the books).”
As contentious as the Thomson Reuters report is in making the statement that India is the worst country for women, it has to be read alongside other reports on rising violence in India. The rising attacks against minorities, attacks on press freedom, and, generally, the concern that Indian democracy is at stake, is happening in the current climate of growing Hindu Fundamentalism. Violence in India has come to a full-circle today. The rampant culture of misogyny where mother and sister slurs are popular across regions, in combination with the animosity towards anyone who is different from the majority is fueling the widespread violence. Be it a non-heterosexual person, a non-gender confirming person, Dalits, minorities, particularly, Muslims (because of what they did 2000 years ago, apparently), a ‘beef-eater’, an independent person/woman, and anyone who is considered to be the ‘other, who are critical of policies and ask questions, are under scrutiny and attack. The animosity fuelled by the majoritarian politics has made us apathetic to hate-crimes, including, flogging, mob-lynching and children being gang-raped and murdered. Mob-lynching has surpassed cricket as our national sport now. It is now normalized to see videos of mob-lynching being circulated where children join in to beat people who are old enough to be their grandfathers. Yet these videos of rape and murder-lynching’s go viral as if satiating the bloodlust in the rest of us who join in the mindless violence virtually. And all of this is justified in the name of religion, culture and nation.
Finally, in these dark times, we need to remind ourselves of the broader links between Kathua and Unnao and all the others hate-crimes—they connected to the larger narrative of the Nation State and a homogeneous society in making.
Remember our history and that these incidents are the by-products of a bloody and botched evolution of the sub-continent that torments us till today. Remember that these incidents have been taking place for so long that they don’t shock us anymore. But remember that now is a final wake-up call to take action in whatever ways we can to stop this hate-mongering narrative of nation and society, and start working on another one where ideas of love, freedom and equality are not confined to books, finding that promised land that our freedom fighters lived and died for.