Delhi has been in the news lately.
Unfortunately, for the most part, the news is pretty
terrible. In mid-December, a woman saw a movie at the mall in Saket, the
theater about 15 minutes walking distance from my house. She got out of the
movie around 9PM, and took an auto with her male friend to a bus stop nearby.
When she got on the bus, the guy was beaten with iron bars and she was raped so
brutally that she died a week or two later. What was most scary about this
crime to me was not that it took place so close to where I live or the unspeakable
violence that transpired. What scared me the most was that nothing she did that
night was something I would not do in my most rational state. She was in a nice
area, not late at night, with a male friend, taking (privately operated) public
transportation. I think the reality of what happened is that it was
so violent, so arbitrary, so not instigated, that it could have happened in any
major city, really. But the reaction here in India was, from my perspective,
uniquely Indian.
People took to the streets after the attack to demand
justice for the woman who was attacked. According to the New York Times blog India
Ink: Notes on the World's Largest Democracy, "A woman who was raped on a bus by several men on
Sunday found an unlikely supporter: everyone." Yes, the crowds outside of
the presidential palace and India Gate in December were swollen with protesters
holding signs that said "Hoping 2013 brings safety to Indian women,"
and "Save women, save India." But the most overwhelming message that
I observed in the aftermath of the rape was the demand for the death penalty
for the perpetrators. To think demanding death as an immediate response to such
a violent occurrence would be the ultimate form of justice is sick to me. The
pervasive male chauvinist culture in India, disempowering women,
stripping them of agency and choices in their own lives, is profoundly
disturbing in and of itself. So to hear about such violence against a woman
being responded to more fiercely with violence than with discussion and resolve
to change is even more unsettling. To make matters worse, much of the peaceful
protests became riots when police charged the crowd with lathis, long sticks that
have come to characterize the Indian police uniform. For weeks after the
incident, I read about various protests throughout the country, such as the
march in Bangalore in which men donned skirts to "show solidarity"
with women. I'm sorry if I'm being callous, but is that really what this situation
calls for? Is that really the most effective way to voice your support for
initiatives battling violence against women or is it just a way to bring
attention to yourself? The media here has been so busy pointing fingers,
demonizing the assailants, quoting celebrities and plebes alike who lament the
sorry state of women's safety, demanding punishments from castration to death,
while doing little to raise meaningful awareness about what actually
contributes to this violence.
First of all, it is my understanding that not only is rape
not uncommon in India, but that marital rape is largely unrecognized, as women
are often understood as "belonging" to their husbands. Modern
families still pay dowry, a sum of money given to the groom's family upon
marriage which is decided during a formal negotiation between families when the
marriage is being arranged. The level of victim blaming that happens is
something I might not have believed if I did not witness it with my own
eyes--everything from "she should have known better," and "she
was asking for it,"to "those boys wouldn't do that," "it's
not what you think," and "it wouldn't happen to a decent
woman."Not to mention the insane apathy and even antipathy displayed towards
women by police who are called in the wake of sexual crimes. In many cases,
police have physically or sexually abused the woman again when she seeks their
help. To say that sexual violence is not taken seriously by police is a huge
understatement. I read an account written on a blog by a woman who described
her experience in which a man tried to assault her and then followed her. She
went to the police station because she was afraid for her life. After hearing
her story, a policeman came out to talk to the assailant. Moments later she saw
that they were having a laugh together and appeared to be chatting casually.
The cop came back to her and said that she should stop making a big deal
out of something that wasn't.
A few times, as I walked from my school to the metro,
students from schools other than my own but along the same street have
catcalled me. These are boys aged 10-17 or so, who very well could be my
students and just happen not to be. Each time this has happened, I have turned
on them, demanding an apology, telling them I am a teacher and would they speak
to their teachers that way and not ever to speak to any woman like that ever
again. Why, you may ask, did I find it necessary to exact retribution from
these kids, when they are just kids saying the same thing I get from many
others on a daily basis? These boys take in the values they see exemplified all
around them. They are merely imitating how they see other men, role models
even, treating women. To interrupt the mindset that they can say what they want
to any woman they want with impunity is essential to combating the
objectification of women in this city and country. In fact, I often stand up
for myself in this way with grown men also. Yet this practice of vigilance and
responding to ignorance and offensive behavior is exhausting, and often leaves
me and my roommates feeling drained. It's sad and annoying to not be able to
smile at people for fear that they will get the wrong message and act on it. It
hurts to be so guarded all the time, to be constantly aware and always to doubt
the kindness of strangers, because even when I have thought people were being
genuine, I have often been wrong.
The women I work with are machines. They rise at five in the
morning to make breakfast and lunch, from scratch for themselves, their kids,
husbands, and in-laws, often including their husband's siblings. They work all
day, many, if not most, commuting over an hour to get to school in Central
Delhi. They work all day, at an institution in which the leadership is composed
almost entirely of men (although this does seem to be an anomaly at Navyug
Schools--mine is the only one that I know of with a male principal). Then they
go home, where they cook dinner from scratch for their entire extended families
before presumably falling into bed like rocks. These are women who all have
Master's degrees in education, working in reputable schools with years of
experience behind them. This is the middle class of India--or really of Delhi,
I should say--and their daily routines reflect those of housewives in the 1950s,
but with an obligation to have a career as well. Please do not read this and
think "Aw, those poor women, they are so oppressed." That is not at
all my intention in writing this. But living in India and working with these
strong and devoted women gives new meaning to the saying, "Women hold up
half the sky."
I have been doing a lot of thinking lately on the future of
women here, their current and possible roles within the home and workplace, and
I see an intimate connection between these roles and the level of violence that
continues to be perpetrated in Delhi. Women are not treated as precious lives.
They are often approached by men with a sense of entitlement, as if they only
exist to serve the needs of others. When will it be time for women in India?
The following are excerpts from some of the articles I've
gotten the most out of in the wake of the rape in Delhi:
The popular catchphrase for our world is “new” India. And
for decades, the media has colluded to convince us that this is the India that
more real, the India that matters, where it’s all happening, and where we’re
headed. The other India is but a relic of
the past, separated by time and distance. “Medieval” is our
favourite descriptor of choice each time we speak of this India and its
citizens, who safely exist elsewhere: in remote villages ruled by khap
panchayats, in “bad areas” of our sprawling city, in states like Haryana and
Punjab where swaggering, macho men rule the roost.
…
And we acknowledge the fragility of this bubble — albeit
unwittingly — when we blame women for getting raped: for being out after dark,
wearing skirts or tight jeans, drinking in a bar, wandering into the wrong part
of town. For all our claims of progress, what we’re really saying is that the
other India — the medieval one — is everywhere, and can strike at any moment.
That the bubble is a mirage and so is the comforting hypothesis of ”two
Indias”. The very phrase is misleading, suggesting a separation, a reassuring
distance and insulation of one from the other.
…
And that brings me to the only bit of good news: It ain’t
never gonna happen. Indian women have come a long way, baby, and they have no
intention of retracing their steps. Be it call centre workers, sales clerks,
mid-level managers, or high-ranking executives, they know that their new-found
freedom can be hazardous to their life. We women have merely decided that we’re
not going to let that little fact hold us back. And there’s nothing a Mamata or Chautala can do about that.
In a society that has traditionally defined a person through
her relationships rather than her individuality, a woman is certainly a person
when she is a mother, a daughter, a sister or a wife. Any woman who does not
fit into these mental categories is a female, a 'stree', who, in the notorious
public pronouncement of a former president of India, Zail Singh, 'bhog ki cheez
hai' (is an object of enjoyment). Stripped of relational categories and just as
an individual, a woman is not a person but an object, a body for male
enjoyment.
...
Not perceived as persons, these women are automatically,
without the intervention of thought or reflection, consigned to the ambivalent,
despised category of the stree who is potentially a bhog ki cheez. The mental
constructions i am speaking of are deep-seated, often less than conscious, and
are inculcated in early childhood by the family that is tasked with conveying
the ideology of gender and gender relations. As a famous child psychologist
once remarked, "An infant is born without a history but soon, the family
will give it theirs."
…
The western concept of a woman being a person in her own
right, an individual, with unalienable individual rights, is part of a
modernity that is making inroads into India — and clashing with traditional
ideas of when a woman may be deemed a person. But what is being more easily
embraced, since it does not clash with the traditional markings of the male
imagination, is a pernicious western idea stealthily accompanying the notion of
a woman's individuality. This is of the individual body being pre-eminently an
arena of enjoyment.
After the rape, Mohan Rao Bhagwat, the head of the Hindu
nationalist group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, said: “Such crimes hardly take
place in ‘Bharat,’ but occur frequently in ‘India.’ ” Bharat, the Hindi
word for India, is, in this view, a rustic idyll where virtuous women keep
their bodies covered, and thereby are safe and protected.
…
Of course, Mr. Bhagwat was swiftly ridiculed. Using the
hashtag #Bharat, many posted tongue-in-cheek online comments. One wrote on
Facebook: “Don’t live in India. Migrate to Bharat instead.” They noted the
persistence of child marriages, domestic violence and sexual assault in what
urban Indians still call “the hinterlands.”
…
Rural women have taken the lead in contemporary battles too.
Consider the Pink Gang, or Gulabi Gang,
based in Bundelkhand, a remote area of central India that is often written off
as “lawless” and “bandit plagued.” Founded by Sampat Devi Pal, who was married
off around the age of 13, had her first child at 15 and is essentially
illiterate, the Pink Gang —
an all-women’s vigilante organization estimated to have around 20,000 members,
named after their pink saris and batons — gained fame for beating up men who
had abused their wives. The gang has fought corrupt politicians and crooked
police officers as well. It also runs vocational centers that empower women.
…
If rape happens in “Bharat” as well as “India,” then the
solution will come only from the mobilization of the women of both
“nations.”
The Verma
Committee Report most fundamentally alters the public discourse
on crimes against women by placing these crimes within the framework of the
Indian Constitution and treating these offences as nothing less than an
egregious violation of the right to live with dignity of all women. What is
particularly moving and inspiring about the Report is that it does so by
placing the autonomy and indeed the sexual autonomy of women at the very centre
of its discourse.
It also offers us a rethinking of what is meant by the
offence of rape. In the Committee’s thinking rape is a form of sexual assault
like any other crime against the human body in the IPC. According to the
Committee it is ‘the duty of the state as well as civil society to deconstruct
the paradigm of shame-honour in connection with a rape victim.’
…
According to the Committee, it is very important that Indian
society and the state move away from thinking of rape as a crime against honour
and instead look at it as a serious violation of bodily integrity. In language
which is seen perhaps for the first time in an official report, the Committee
quotes a rape survivor. ‘Rape is horrible. But it is not horrible for all
the reasons that have been drilled into the heads of Indian women………I reject
the notion that my virtue is located in my vagina, just as I reject the notion
that men’s brains are in their genitals’.
The discussion on rape is located in an understanding of
women as full and equal citizens and it is intrinsic to the argument of
the Report that it is only by guaranteeing women full and equal rights that
sexual violence can even be tackled.
Rape is seen as a crime of dishonour in most traditions
because what is stolen, robbed or vandalised is not a woman’s dignity or bodily
integrity, but the honour of the man who purportedly owns her sex. Indian law
still cannot get its head around the concept of marital rape. How can a husband
rape his wife? How can he rob himself of his own property? A woman who asserts
her sexuality, or is seen to be asserting her sexuality, independently, outside
of marriage, is essentially seen as fair game in a patriarchal culture,
because, being no man’s property (and refusing to be property), she can be made
to become any man’s property.
…
Until recently, the canon of Bollywood faithfully followed
the rules of rape. The core of a film’s narrative lay in a tightly scripted
romance that was fated to end in marriage: since only a married woman can be a
sexed woman, by virtue of being a man’s sexual property, only a married woman
can have sex. For decades, this tautology framed the entire sexual politics of
Bollywood, more or less completely (with very few exceptions). Since marriage
was the conclusion and not the substance of a film’s narrative, representation
of the sexual act between the male and female protagonists was out of the
question. It had to occur happily ever after the story ended. This did not mean
an absence of erotic titillation. In fact, the less chance there was of actual
sex, the more there could be of extended titillation—which is basically what
the classic Bollywood song and dance number is all about. Alternatively, when
sex had to be shown, it could only be as rape. Since no virtuous woman would
have sex outside of (or before) marriage, if the heroine, or any positive
female character in a film, had to be seen having sex, it could only be shown
as occurring against her volition. That is why the cinema of the 1970s and
1980s is so dependent on the token rape scene. A film had to have sex, because
that is what people wanted to see, but it could only have sex as rape, because
the heroine, being as yet unmarried, could not have any other kind of sex.
…
Jugni is the woman who Honey Singh can’t yo-yo. Jugni is the
woman who will slap Asaram Bapu and laugh at Mohan Bhagwat. Jugni is the woman
who will demand the resignation of the police commissioner and tweet from her
detention inside a police station. Jugni is the woman who can take tear gas and
climb a lamp post and jump a barricade. Jugni is the woman who can dent Abhijit
Mukherjee and paint the town red. Jugni doesn’t need Mamata or Sushma or Sonia
or Sheila to weep for her and she doesn’t weep for them. Jugni is angry and
Jugni is alive.
The past few weeks I have seen hundreds of young women in
Delhi, Abhisarikas, wandering in the darkness, walking in the daytime,
speaking, asking questions, singing, dancing, grieving, thinking. They are
walking with their friends and comrades, with their lovers and sisters,
reclaiming the city, inch by inch, for that nameless woman in whose memory they
keep vigil and who is now the source of their radiance. Each one of them is a
Jugni, like she was, and like a conflagration of fireflies they are taking back
the night.
