The whole country is
justifiably worked up over the brutal rape of a Delhi medical student in a bus.
As one would expect, the reactions vary a great deal. But two common
characteristics stand out. First, all the reactions are intense, vehement, and
barring the political class, from the bottom of the heart. Or in one word,
Sincere! The other is that, none of them even remotely tries to understand the
root cause of the problem. In this the political class is no exception. In an
‘Ideal World’ that is their actual job. But the less said about that, the
better!
That is not to say that
the anger is unjustified as being out of all proportion, or the demand for
Death Penalty for rapists is Unpractical/Excessive or, demanding Castration is
ridiculous. But does anybody pause to think? Will this really solve the problem
of sexual harassment of all sorts up to & including rape? In other words, are we saying that the main
or only reason sexual crimes against women are not only continuing unabated, but
are in fact, increasing is that, there is not enough deterrent punishment?
Over the years, we have perfected
this sort of confusion almost to an art form! We, as a society are happy to put
a quick whitewash over whatever is troubling us at the moment, satisfy our
moral indignation without ‘wasting’ too much of our time and effort, feel good
about having done something to ‘eradicate the evil’, then forget the whole
thing and get on with our life. History has shown us repeatedly that no
deep-seated evil in society responds to such quick-fix.
Let us take the example of
Dowry Deaths. Do you remember a similar uproar over dowry deaths in the 80s?
What did we do? Passed the Anti-Dowry legislation with stringent, draconian,
anti-democratic provisions against all males and their families! I don’t have
to enumerate all the provisions of that piece of legislation. Ask yourself honestly;
has incidence of demanding & giving dowry and more importantly
intra-marital violence against women decreased since then? The unequivocal
answer is NO, IT HAS NOT!
A detailed discussion of
ill effects of that law may be a topic of a separate article but I do know from
personal, first-hand knowledge that at least 3 marriages amongst my
acquaintances, broke down because, at the first sign of the slightest trouble
between the newly-weds, the boy’s family promptly chose divorce for the simple,
(and to me at least, a most convincing) argument – ‘What if she attempts
suicide or something? Or accuses us of cruelty?’ All decent, god fearing people
with not a whiff of dowry anywhere amongst the whole lot!
So what has that
legislation achieved?
Or take the question of
female foeticide. What have we done collectively at the social, legislative,
and judicial levels to first understand and then combat this very real and heinous
crime? Except of course, thoroughly discrediting Ultrasonography and labeling all doctors who conduct sonography as Child
Murderers?
This is not to condone
USG-Assisted or any other Sex Determination procedures conducted for the sole purpose
of systematically getting rid of female fetuses, or defend the doctors who have
run butcher shops under the guise of ‘abortion clinics’. But, in a resource
starved country like India with almost zero public health infrastructure and where
even private health services are hard to come by; USG, more commonly known as,
Sonography, has been a boon to millions of patients and doctors alike, particularly
in remote rural areas. It is safe, cheap, fast, easy to do and, in reasonably
competent hands, remarkably accurate. For over a quarter of a century, it has
helped save literally hundreds of thousands of lives. But because, among other
things, it can also detect the sex of the foetus; we, in our collective wisdom
(Media, Society, The Executive, & The Judiciary together) have branded it
and the doctors who use it as the sole cause of female foeticide & the
skewed sex ratios in the population.
It wasn’t the little
sonography machine (or the doctors) who went around planting the idea in Indian
society that a male off-spring is the ultimate and only objective of marital
coupling, or that without a male progeny your Naam/Vansha/Khandan/Kaum will be
decimated. And you will not find Moksa/Jannat or whatever as per your religion
without a male child performing your last rites. But in our search for a quick
and easy way to soothe our moral indignation over female foeticide, we have
today made owning a sonography machine and doing a sonography examination a
dangerous activity comparable to or even worse than, murder or terrorism! It
may sound overly dramatic, but it is a fact that in today’s India, it is logistically easier and legally less risky to
run an illegal “Dance Bar” than a Legal Sonography Clinic!
And, the million dollar
question still remains, ‘Has this helped reduce the incidence of female
foeticide and correct the sex ratio?’ And the answer again is a resounding NO.
I can quote examples from
any number of fields, of legislations that entirely miss the point or executive
actions that have achieved results that have been opposite of what was desired
or which are ridiculous. But more about that some other time.
The reason
for choosing these particular examples is that, to my mind at least, Dowry,
Female Foeticide, Eve-Teasing, Honour Killings, and Rape all breed from the
same subterranean cesspool in our collective social conscience, viz our
attitude towards women.
If you are
honest with yourself you will recognize that even the most educated, civilized,
cultured, and progressive liberals among us still harbor in the deepest
recesses of our subconscious the medieval attitude that females are a weaker
sex. Weaker Physically, Weaker Mentally, Weaker in the sense that they cannot
be relied upon to make the right decisions about ‘what is good for them’. That,
females need to be protected, most of all from themselves! That, females after
all are ‘an object’ of desire and pleasure! That, females whether as daughters,
sisters, wives, daughters-in-law, or mothers, are the ultimate form of ‘Property’.
Call it irony or tragedy but this attitude is equally deeply ingrained in the psyche
of Indian female also!
To those
of you who are muttering to yourself ‘Not ME’, I ask, ‘When was the last time
you made morning tea for your wife? Or offered to make the bed after a hard
day? Why should a working wife be ‘naturally’ expected to be responsible for
running the household singlehandedly, why don’t we find it odd that after coming
home together (whether from the movies, eating out, shopping or a hard day of
social calls) the husband gets to put his feet up in front of the TV and the
wife is expected to fetch and serve a glass of cold water?
Well one
might ask ‘What has that got to do with anything?’
But, what
to you may seem a harmless little idiosyncrasy, gets magnified a hundred and a thousand
fold, and results in rape in those who are less fortunate than you in terms of
decency, culture, upbringing, education and civic sense.
As long as we continue to discriminate among
our own children simply on the basis of their sex,
As long as we tell our 5 year old
daughter that she should give up her toy (or any legitimate right) to her
brother who demands it; not out of brotherly love but simply because she is a
girl and he is a boy,
As long as we lay down different rules
for ours sons and daughters in childhood, adolescence, teen-age, or adulthood,
As long as we continue to believe and
say that they are ‘Dusare Ki Amanat’ & ‘Paraya Dhan’,
As long as we expect our daughters to
‘learn to adjust, learn to sacrifice’ because they are girls and have to one
day go to ‘Paraya Ghar!’
We cannot hope to provide safe streets
or dignified work environment or respectful marriages for our daughters!
And No Legislations, No Laws, No Candle
Marches, No Panel Discussions on TV, and
no amount of hysterical chest thumping is going to change this reality!
