WORMWOOD AND GALL
IT’S EASY TO FEEL OUTRAGE OVER THIS BRUTAL CRIME. WHAT WE MUST FOCUS ON IS REAL CHANGE, REAL JUSTICE AND REAL COMPASSION, INSTEAD OF THE EMPTY SATISFACTIONS OF ORGIASTIC CRUELTY
It’s depressingly familiar. She sounds like she was a lovely person—a scooter-riding veterinarian, just what I wanted to be when I was a little girl. Now she is dead; raped and killed, her burnt body left under a culvert off National Highway 44.
The Union defence minister clutches his chest on national TV. Lots of moustachioed experts shout over each other in the Lok Sabha. Jaya Bachchan says, “I think these kind of people should be brought out in public and lynched properly.” Huh? As opposed to lynched improperly? Whom does all this bloodthirsty rhetoric serve? I’ll tell you whom it doesn’t serve: rape survivors, who have had our fill of violence. It does, however, serve rapists very well.
A good friend of mine, as soon as he heard that I had been raped and saw that I was injured, said, “I’m going to find them and kill them!” I know he meant well, but the thought of more male violence just made my head hurt even more. The girls in my class, however, just took me out for a dosa and listened to me. They listened and believed. That was what I needed more than macho posturing.
Should we be outraged at this terrible crime, a young woman lost? Yes. Should our hearts break wondering what she was thinking about as she rode on her scooter for the last time, what plans she had, whether she was hungry or excited or looking forward to calling someone, with no idea that it was all about to come to a terrible full stop? Yes. Should we focus on the men who took her life and hold them accountable? Yes. But should we be out there screaming and yelling about cutting off this person’s balls or that person’s head? No.
Just to be clear, I’m no pacifist. I’m all for individual justice. If someone hurts your loved one and you wish to cause some retaliatory pain, be my guest. I might trust you, but I do not trust the government. Plus, it’s just plain stupid: give them the power today, and how do you know they won’t use it against you tomorrow?
It’s easy and satisfying to feel outraged. And we must feel outraged. We must march, we must push for better laws, we must call out injustice. But let’s not allow outrage to blind us to the awful truth: rapists are not the Monsters Out There, convenient non-humans to be lynched and castrated and hung. Rapists, I’m sorry to say, are our friends and relatives and colleagues. And we, all of us of every gender, are all part of rape culture: the culture that we all help maintain every day, every single time we serve our boys first, every time we call the Hyderabad victim a “lady doctor” as if that’s different from a “normal” doctor, every time we say or do any little thing that grants men permission to violate somebody else’s body. And let’s face it, we can’t lynch, castrate or hang everyone who’s responsible for rape culture. There would be nobody left.
I hope the Hyderabad murderers get a fair trial and severe punishments. And I hope we don’t all stoop to their level and meet brutality with brutality.
The Bible, always handy with suffering and shame, says, ‘Remember my affliction and my wanderings, the wormwood and the gall.’ Let us remember the veterinarian’s suffering, and focus on real change, real justice and real compassion, instead of the empty satisfactions of orgiastic cruelty.
In Parliament, they are still shouting. I hope they take a break to do some actual work. I hope they go home and talk to their children about respect. I hope they, and the rest of us, use some of our outrage to focus on the lethal tools we have generously handed rapists: a criminal justice system that is a misogynist, classist, casteist joke. The persistent belief that it’s fine to violate women. The comforting myth that both rapists and rape victims are Not Like Us. ■
Let’s face it, we can’t lynch, castrate or hang everyone who’s responsible for rape culture. There’d be nobody left
the toll plaza. Even after she returned, or during the horrific events afterwards, or while the men were moving around with her body, not one police team seems to have noticed anything untoward. Meanwhile, protests continued unabated in Hyderabad. Adding fuel to the fire was home minister and deputy chief minister M. Mahmood Ali’s insensitive comment that the victim should have dialled 100 and raised an alarm instead of calling her sister. In a knee-jerk reaction, Sajjanar has placed a sub-inspector of the Shamshabad rural station and two head constables of the RGIA station under suspension for the delay in registering FIRs.
All the accused in the Disha case are from the arid Makthal area of Narayanpet district bordering Raichur district in Karnataka, and in their 20s. While Arif is from Jaklair, Naveen, Shiva and Chennakesavulu are from Gudigandla. While Naveen, Shiva and Chennakesavulu are widely known as troublemakers in their village, Arif, who has been working as a truck driver for the past two years without a valid licence, was considered a calm person who never got involved in any quarrels or disputes. Chennakesavulu would go regularly to the state-run Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences, Hyderabad, for dialysis.
The national outrage over the Hyderabad incident echoes the public response after the Nirbhaya episode of 2012, suggesting widespread concern about such crimes against women, particularly in the cities. The National
Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), which released its 2017 data this October, says a total of 359,849 cases of crimes against women were reported, a 6 per cent rise over the previous year. Of these, assault on women with ‘intent to outrage her modesty’ comprised 21.7 per cent and rape 7 per cent. The criminal justice delivery system is still not equipped to cope with this. The NCRB data indicates that in 86 per cent rape cases, the police file charge-sheets but trial courts are able to dispose of only 13 per cent of the pending cases, with the conviction rate as low as 32 per cent. In child rape cases, the conviction rate is 34.2 per cent and pendency 82.1 per cent.
Public reaction, whether on social media or in the utterances of politicians and celebrities, has been marked by demands for violent retribution. Many feel that capital punishment for the guilty is a justifiable response. Telangana chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao has promised an exclusive fast-track court to bring the offenders to book. In Parliament, members cutting across party lines not only demanded the hanging of the accused but also argued for the death penalty as the “only punishment” for a rape offence. “There cannot be a more inhuman crime than this. The entire country has been shamed by this incident. The government is ready to amend the Indian Penal Code and the Criminal Procedure Code to ensure faster justice in cases of rape and murder,” said the MoS for home affairs G.
Kishan Reddy. Lawyers, though, argue that summary death penalties without appeal—as many have been demanding in such cases—are not possible or desirable in a democracy like India.
Even as it sears the collective conscience of the nation, the post-Nirbhaya lessons about making public spaces safer for women, particularly at night, are yet to be learnt. Travelling alone in a cab or returning home late continues to be a challenge for women in Indian cities.
The Centre’s Safe City project, intended to strengthen the safety and security of women in public places, is yet to take off, at least in Hyderabad. It was among the eight cities—Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru, Ahmedabad and Lucknow being the others—included in the project, which has proposed several measures, including installing surveillance cameras in buses, isolated places, mobile forensic laboratories for onsite visits and enhancing the capabilities of the Dial 100 facility. If building and maintaining public safety infrastructure for our metros remains a challenge, it pales in comparison to the task of overcoming the culture of predatory masculinity that threatens the lives and safety of women across the country. ■
Public reaction, be it on social media or by politicians, is marked by demands for violent retribution