Subhash
Gatade
“They took so much away from us that they ended up
taking away our fear”
— Message scrawled on a placard in a women’s
march in Spain
’How does Justice feel?’
A difficult query to answer but perhaps
Bilkis Bano would be the best person to respond to it.
Yes the same Bilkis - survivor of a
mass rape and the only witness to horrific massacre of her 14 relatives - when
the state she lived witnessed a carnage when officially one thousand innocents
perished in the communal pogrom and many thousands were displaced from their
homes and were condemned to live as internal refugees.
One can
still recollect her words when the highest courts of the country finally
cancelled the remission of sentences to her perpetrators who had been convicted
for this heinous crime. [1].
She frankly narrated her feelings
before a reporter.
’It feels like a stone the size of a
mountain has been lifted from my chest, and I can breathe again. This is what
justice feels like.”
A leading national daily had even
published her photograph on the occasion where she was seen smiling looking at
her daughter.
Rarely one had felt so happy watching a
photograph which showed a mother looking at her daughter.
At another level the smile looked
deceptive too.
It was hiding the travails and
tribulations of all these years; the long struggle for justice she waged with
her husband Yakub, an unequal battle where she had to change houses one after
the other to save herself from any repercussions from the rapists and their
supporters for not giving up the fight for justice and truth.
It also
skillfully covered up the shock she received when the state government - with
due consent from the home ministry - decided to release these gang rapists and
murderers, prematurely - without even bothering to inform Bilkis or her husband
Yakoob- on fraudulent grounds. [2]
Ravish
Kumar, the fiery anchor and journalist had discussed in detail the long years
of the struggle she had to undergo and the shock of life which she received
when the government decided about remission of the sentences of her rapists and
murderers [3]
The decision of the Supreme Court
clearly demonstrated how the state government was complicit with the
perpetrators of the heinous crime and had taken the home minister or his
associates in confidence.
In any other more civilised country /
or in an ambience where repentance over one’s negative acts was still
considered an important gesture, such an exposure would have prompted
dismissals or resignations owing moral responsibility for this partisan role.
Nothing similar was witnessed here. Forget the Chief Minister or the home
minister at the Centre - not a single officer - who was involved in taking the
decision or its implementation, received marching orders for this complicity.
For all those people who have watched
the state closely it was a foregone conclusion.
It is common knowledge when a sitting
Prime Minister prodding the Custodian of law and order in a public meeting
then, over his handling of this carnage had not created even a ripple. His talk
of observing Raj Dharma was brushed aside.
Or how the highest courts had even
commented about the situation existing then when ’modern-day Neros looked
elsewhere when innocent children and helpless women were burning..’
Bilkis’s perpetrators are now again
behind bars, one just hopes that her smile would not loose its shine very soon.
Times are such that it is not difficult
to predict anything as there is a strong realisation within that since around a
decade such smiles have become rarer and rarer.
If imagining such a scenario looks
difficult for you at the moment, try to bring before your minds eye faces of
celebrated women wrestlers - Sakhsi Malick, Vinay Phogat and others, who had
electrified the country once when they broke new grounds in an arena which is
forbidden for women, who inspired a generation of girls and young women to
enter this male-dominated field and create a separate space for themselves.
It is
now history that Sakshi Malick declared her retirement from this game with
teary eyes [4] or Vinay Phogat has
returned her award or Bajrang Punia - another celebrated male wrestler -
similarly returned his award in solidarity with their struggle to fight sexual
harassment within the establishment.
They realised after a long and arduous
struggle that it is easy to beat your opponent on a mat in wrestling but it is
extremely difficult - nay impossible - if you have to fight against higher ups
among the powers that be. Their quest for justice received support from
different sections of society, even section of the media as well.
Despite their best efforts the struggle
could not reach its fruition.
What is further disturbing to know is
that instances galore how in the last around a decade, girls and women who have
faced sexual assaults or have been brutalised by politically and socially
influential people have consistently received a raw deal.
Gone are the days of Nirbhaya (2012)
which had led to a mass movement in the country which was joined by all
sections of society, there has been a sea change in the situation. Those were
the days when the nation had rose up in defence of the victim, prompting even
the highest courts to intervene and enunciate measures for reform and revision
of anti-rape laws.
May it be the case from Unnao, UP when
a ruling party MLA ( since suspended ) had come under scanner for his alleged
role in the rape of a teenaged girl in 2017 or how the dalit girl from Hathras
– who faced gang rape at the hands of her neighbours – was cremated in her own
village in the dead of the night without even allowing her parents and others
to attend the cremation.
Another
self-styled godman - once very close to the ruling establishment - received
life imprisonment in rape case last year [5] who was already serving
life sentence for raping a minor girl in 2013 [6]. Thanks to the persistence of
survivors against heavy odds who faced obstacles at every level.
The
frequent parole to the Chief of Dera Saccha Souda, Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, who
is serving a 20-year jail term for raping two women disciples, and the
justification provided by the ruling party in the state -has already received
widespread condemnation. [7].
It is particularly noticeable that when
the victim(s) of such assault(s) is a woman/ girl from the minority community
then the viciousness sees a quantum leap.
For
example, as already mentioned how rapists of Bilkis Bano who had even murdered
fourteen of her relatives ( 2002) were given remission in their sentences by
the ruling dispensation and how these rapists / murderers received a hero’s
welcome after their release and were even felicitated. (https://scroll.in/article/1030686/in-godhra-bilkis-bano-convicts-felicitated-by-rss-member-soon-after-their-release) and it took around a year and half for the
highest courts to order that this remission was illegal and the convicts be
sent back to jail.
One can
similarly recall the rape and murder of an eight year old Bakkarwal girl Asifa
in Jammu. [8] and the national outrage
which followed it.
In this particular case this nomadic
minor girl from the Bakkarwal community was kidnapped on January 10, 2018 and
allegedly raped in captivity in a small village temple in Kathua district after
being kept sedated for four days. The motive behind this brutal gang rape and
murder was clear from day one, the dominant people wanted to terrorist the
Bakkarwals so that they leave that area.
Apart from one Sanji Ram, who was
caretaker of the temple, two special police officers and three others were
convicted for criminal conspiracy, murder, kidnapping, gangrape, destruction of
evidence, drugging the victim etc. The special police officers came in from
severe criticism of the courts because they were in the forefront of destroying
the evidence.
What
had particularly shocked common people across the country that despite enough
proof about the sexual assault on the minor girl and the conspiracy behind it,
two of BJP’s own ministers led protest marches carrying Tricolour / Tiranga and
demanding release of the accused [9] It was a period when PDP
had formed a coalition government with BJP and these two ministers of the
saffron party namely Chowdhury Lal Singh and Chander Prakash Ganga, had
participated in the rally organised by the Hindu Ekta Manch in support of the
accused arrested by the state crime branch. [10]
India, which loves to project itself as
the most tolerant countries on the face of the earth, perhaps presents a
contradictory picture.Its outward tolerance or inclusivity does not explain the
puzzling question that what makes such impunity towards sexual violence and
murders possible among Hindutva Supremacists. It perhaps emanates from the
unequal relations between the sexes where the woman is placed at the secondary
status.
Like
Nazis, who expected women to stay at home, look after the family and produce
children in order to secure the future of the Aryan race , [11] from the days of its first
Supremo Dr Hedgewar, RSS has always looked at women in hierarchial terms. The
second Supremo Golwalkar has even written in his book ‘Bunch of Thoughts’ that ‘women
are predominantly mothers who should rear their children.‘ [12]
Fact is that like all other such
formations which are pivoted around mixing of giving primacy to particular religion
and politics – women’s autonomy, her individuality, her assertion and her
opposition to patriarchy and gender oppression are a no go area in the ambit of
Hindutva Brigade.
Whether the impunity towards rape in
Hindutva fraternity has its roots in how its premier ideologues believed in the
politics of revenge in general or how they have justified rape and sexual
violence against the ‘others.’ Savarkar, the ‘pioneer ideologue of Hindutva ‘
has elaborated upon it in his ‘‘magnum opus’ Bhartiya Itihasatil Saha Soneri
Paane (‘Six Golden Epochs in Indian History)’
This much discussed book discusses
Savarkar’s thesis of the ‘collective guilt of Muslims’ and even lays down the
thesis that Muslims need to be punished not only what they themselves have done
but what their coreligionists had done.
The
most reprehensible but also the least known part of Savarkar’s life is the way
he criticised Shivaji for his chivalry towards the daughter in law of Nawab of
Kalyan who was captured and brought before him by his army. He calls this act
perverted virtue. [13]. The legend goes that when one
of his enthusiastic assistants presented before him the daughter in law of
Nawab expecting to get some special favour, Shivaji not only reprimanded him
for such an act but also punished him and sent back the women to her place with
full honour. [14]
Savarkar condemns this act by Shivaji
and says that Shivaji was wrong as this cultured and human treatment could not
evoke in those fanatics the same feelings about Hindu women.
For a layperson now it is easy to
comprehend that his condemnation of Chhatrapati Shivaji, a great icon of
Hindu-Muslim unity inadvertently or so provides a theoretical justification for
brutalisation of women when fighting the ‘enemies’.
The long struggle of Bilkis Bano in
search of justice will continue to inspire girls, women of all ages and times.
A long drawn struggle in which she and
husband Yakub were quite alone - barring support from stray groups or well
meaning individuals, where the overall ambience was that she abandons the
struggle.
While she was alone her rapists enjoyed
mass support so much so that the state government as well as central government
connived to release her perpetrators on fabricated grounds
Her isolation and her long struggle
could be easily contrasted with scenes of jubilation on the streets of Madrid,
when women of Spain were flashing signs of Viva . Coincidentally it was the
same period when her perpetrators were given ’Hero’s Welcome’ and were even
declared ’Sanskari’ ( virtuous) by a ruling party MLA.
Here the rapists and murderers of
Bilkis Bano were being felicitated whereas streets of Madrid were celebrating
successful culmination of six years of Spanishu womens’s joint struggle to
render justice to sexual assault victims / survivors.
It was a moment of reaffirmation that
how huge rallies in Madrid and other major cities across the country and the
growing mass support they received from across the society ultimately had
forced the Parliament to address the deep rooted misogyny in its statue books
and pass a sexual consent law which clearly said consent cannot be assumed by
default or silence.
It had all started after a rape of a 18 year old woman who faced sexual assault
by a group of five men (2106) during a bull fighting festival in Pamplona -
where the perpetrators were given less punishment of nine years - claiming that
she had consented to the act.
Looking
from afar it may look unbelievable when one learns that this problematic
verdict so much incensed and angered the women there that immediately after the
verdict, hundreds of thousands of women flooded plazas in dozens of Spanish
cities to protest against the ruling, calling for Spain’s sexual assault laws
to be rewritten. [15]
What stirred the women of Spain further was the way this reduction in the
sentence of these rapists was welcomed on the ‘men’s only’ whatsapp groups or
by statements issued by many right-wingers. This led to further resistance from
them, which ultimately tilted balance in their favour.
Thanks
to the consistent struggle by women from Spain the five rapists from Spain will
have to spend time behind bars for a total of fifteen years.
Thanks
to the Women’s movement, which organised itself innovatively to keep its focus
on the issue, which also included the first feminist strike on International
Women’s Day - which received support from trade unions as well (2018) when more
than 5 million workers took part in this first action of its kind. The focus of
this unique feminist strike was to highlight sexual discrimination, domestic
violence and the wage gap. [16]
The “wolf pack” case, as the
brutalisation of the 18-year-old women was called, was also a wake-up moment
for the rest of the society which was forced to reflect on its inherent biases
and the fetishisation of violence against women, right from increasing violence
in ‘intimate relations’ - killing of women by their partners or ex-partners to
the wage differentials between them.
It was an irony of sorts that when the
Spanish people were deeply introspecting on these sensitive issues and when the
Spanish Parliament was debating revision of the sexual consent law, which can
further act as a deterrent to sexual predators of various kinds there, more
than seven thousand kilometres away from Madrid, the executive in a province in
the Western Part of the country which loves to call itself the ‘mother of all
democracies’ was exactly walking in the opposite direction. It was giving the
final shape to reduction in sentences of 13 convicts who were found to be
involved in crimes against humanity, crimes about which any civilised society
will always remain ashamed
No sane person in her / his wildest
dreams would have imagined that such criminals who even evaded arrests for many
years and who tried to threaten and intimidate the survivor and her close
relatives after failing to buy her silence, would even be given reduction in
their sentences but perhaps the Prime Minister’s home state, his local
chieftains wanted to send a message to their base of a different kind.
Lest we forget there was an interesting
commonality between the two cases.
The victim/survivor in both the cases never once decided to give up.
Bilkis Bano - the sole survivor in the case - who received all support from her
husband Yakoob, refused to stop her fight for justice, despite threats to her
life and similarly the 18-year-old woman from Spain never once decided to
abandon the struggle for justice and dignity.
Both persisted against heavy odds,
against patriarchal notions of society, sectarian mindsets of people.
No doubt, the contrast between the two
cases was equally clear rather sharp.
Here were five rapists from Pamplona, Italy who assaulted a young woman during
a bullfighting festival, stole her phone and bragged about their macho act on
their WhatsApp groups, who ultimately found to their dismay that the quantum of
punishment which they had been awarded earlier would be increased ; rapists who
were now a disgraced lot, even in the eyes of the people as well, who will have
to repent their acts rather alone behind bars
And here seven thousand kilometres from Madrid were these eleven rapists from
Gujarat, finding themselves that the life imprisonment awarded to them by the
court being remitted and they being allowed to walk free and being accorded a
Hero’s Welcome and being felicitated in a city hall.
For the convicts it mattered little
that their remission was taking place under controversial circumstances and
clearly violating many legal principles, where it was clear that without the
central government’s green signal this release would not have been possible..
Many conscientious voices were raised
then to cancel their release, even the highest courts of the country were also
approached but like the punishment meted out to them after more than six years
of struggle, cancellation of remission of their sentences would also prove to
be a long struggle.
What the faculty and, staff members of
the prestigious IIM Bangalore in an appeal to the Supreme Court had then
underlined needs recounting, which emphasised how this act by the Gujarat
government “emboldens” perpetrators of such heinous crimes and “extinguishes”
the hopes of millions of Indians on the judicial system
Perhaps the last part of their letter
which posed a moral query needs to be emphasised more and more wherein they ask
what kind of a nation we are turning into if Bilkis Bano is left to defend
herself while her violators are given a hero’s welcome.
What kind of a Nation are we turning
into?
What kind of a society have we become?
Whereas United struggle by the Spanish
women and other people sympathetic to their cause forced the government to bow
before their demands, there was no sense of mass revulsion in India - the
‘biggest democracy in the world population wise - about the remission of
sentences to them, forget any mass struggle.
A society which once came out in their
thousands in the Jyoti Singh Case ( popularly known as the Nirbhaya case), for
the cause of justice suddenly going silent when one Bilkis Bano’s perpetrators
are set free to wide applause and garlanding and felicitation.
Should we say that our anger is
increasingly getting compartmentalised, it erupts only for ‘people of us’ kind
What is noteworthy that the
’jubilation’ one witnessed then on the streets of Surat, when Bilkis’s rapists
were released, this absence of revulsion needs unpacking.
It would rather not suffice to
attribute it to despicable, anti human world views of the pioneers of Hindutva
Supremacism, who had provided theoretical justification for brutalisation of
women when fighting the ‘enemies’ but acceptance of such views among the
broader populace.
Should
it be said that it is just a manifestation of the moral relativism of a people,
for whom a violence is no violence if it is for a ’good cause’. ’Vaidiki hinsa hinsa na Bhavti’ ( Vedic Violence is
no violence) is a very popular dictum.
Dr
Ambedkar had tried to underline or understand this behaviour of an individual
in a caste riddden society [17] and critically analysed
Hindu Social Order and had explained how individuals are not a basic unit in
the Hindu social order because it is based on Varna or class or how it is based
on graded hierarchy where punishment for the same offence are based on the principle
of graded inequality, for example Chapter 8, Verse 379, he says “Ignominous
tonsure is ordained, instead of capital punishment, for a Brahmin adulterer
where the punishment of other classes may extend to loss of life.”(-do-)
Before we conclude, we need to accept
that the absence of revulsion over such inhuman acts in Indian society or
neighbours themselves turning into perpetrators during outburst of communal
frenzy is not uncommon. Listen to the testimonies of survivors of communal
conflicts and they would narrate such incidents after incidents.
Celebrating rapists, sanitising their
crimes or adding an aura to such despicable behaviour is no exception. Since
around a decade when lynching of innocents - especially belonging to the
sections of social and religious minorities - allegedly for killing a cow or
just for bearing that identity, is increasingly being normalised, such images
have also become common when the perpetrators of this crime have been welcomed
by ruling establishment people. Perhaps one has not forgotten how one Shambhu
Raigar, who killed an innocent muslim brutally and recorded the whole act in
video, was glorified by people.
It is still a puzzle to fully
comprehend this bloodlust among a section of people.it. While a ruling party MLA
called these rapists ’Sanskari Brahmins’ and did come under intense criticism
from opposition but people around us or ruling over us are no different.
Perhaps a mental exercise would make
clear what one wants to say.
Whether readers of these lines would
ever welcome in their respective homes convicts of gang rapes and brutal
killings of innocents, or perpetrators involved in lynching - who were set free
by courts on controversial grounds - and would like to be photographed with
them or even felicitate them.
If the answer to this query is yes,
then I request you not to proceed further.
Hannah
Arendt, who had written on the holocaust tells us that the crimes against
humanity which one witnessed then - where 6 million Jews and Hippies etc were
sent to gas chambers - were not committed by psychopaths and sadists but by
‘normal, sane and ordinary human beings’ who performed their tasks in a
bureaucratic diligence. She also adds that ‘evil becomes banal when it acquires
an unthinking and systematic character, or when ordinary people participate in
it, build distance from it and justify it, in countless ways. There are no
moral conundrums or revulsions. Evil does not even look like evil, it becomes
faceless.’ [18]
In fact, her book ‘Eichmann in
Jerusalem’ focuses on this issue. It covers the trial of a Nazi era officer
Adolf Eichmann, who was literally kidnapped from Argentina by Israel’s secret
agents and was taken to Jerusalem where a trial took place. Her ideas about
what she calls ‘banality of evil’ took shape in this book itself.
(As of now we will not go into the
criticism of the book, which raises questions over the ‘kidnapping of Eichmann’
or raises doubts about Eichmann’s portrayal by Hannah.)
If we are able to discover some
ordinariness in the garlanding of gang rapists and murderers and if for us
felicitation of such scums in society is normal, then remember you are not much
far away from becoming Eichman.
[1] https://thewire.in/law/bilkis-bano-supreme-court-gujarat-not-competent-remission
[2] https://thewire.in/government/bilkis-bano-remission-bjp-mlas-murli-mulchandani
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmgdWy8G5YY&pp=ygUVcmF2aXNoIGt1bWFyIG9mZmljaWFs
[4] https://m.economictimes.com/news/sports/from-hardship-in-haryana-to-breaking-records-in-rio-wrestling-icon-sakshi-malik-has-come-a-long-way/articleshow/106201320.cms
[5] https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/gujarat-court-awards-life-imprisonment-to-godman-asaram-bapu-imposes-fine-of-50000-for-repeated-rape-and-sexual-exploitation/article66453821.ece
[6] https://www.cnbctv18.com/india/who-is-asaram-bapu--the-rape-murder-and-other-cases-against-him-15813781.htm
[7] https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/chandigarh/dera-sacha-sauda-chief-gurmeet-ram-rahim-singh-to-come-out-of-prison-50-days-9117286/; https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/frequent-parole-to-gurmeet-ram-rahim-may-create-law-and-order-problems-punjab-govt/article66579592.ece ; https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/haryana/haryana-govt-justifies-parole-for-sacha-sauda-chief-gurmeet-ram-rahim-says-not-hardcore-prisoner-484216
[8] https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/kathua-rape-murder-case-mastermind-sanji-ram-five-others-convicted-by-special-court-1545855-2019-06-10
[9] https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/kathua-rape-murder-case-mastermind-sanji-ram-five-others-convicted-by-special-court-1545855-2019-06-10
[10] https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/kathua-rape-murder-case-mastermind-sanji-ram-five-others-convicted-by-special-court-1545855-2019-06-10_
[11] https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/z2932p3/revision/5
[12] https://scroll.in/article/821360/eighty-years-on-the-rss-womens-wing-has-not-moved-beyond-seeing-the-woman-as-mother
[13] Bhartiya
Itihasatil Saha Soneri Paane, Chapter 4 and 5, P. 147-74
[14] Six Glorious
Epochs of Indian History, P. 461, Delhi, Rajdhani Granthagar, 1971
[15] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/23/wolf-pack-case-spain-feminism-far-right-vox
[16] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/08/spanish-women-give-up-work-for-a-day-in-first-feminist-strike
[17] https://www.roundtableindia.co.in/ambedkars-landmark-essay-on-the-essential-principles-and-unique-features-of-the-hindu-social-order/
[18] https://www.thehindu.com/features/magazine/the-banality-of-evil/article5818580.ece
Image Courtesy- https://www.cpiml.net
