Somehow, the issue refuses to go away. The trial itself will take its own course; even in such a well-publicised case, the law must take its course if we are to get justice. But the larger rebellion which the episode has set off is continuing to expose the fissures within modern Indian society. And yet, this is the most healthy development because, for once, we can see how deep the malaise is.
The doyens who believe they guard Hindu orthodoxy and the honour of Bharat have been perhaps the most transparent in exposing what patriarchy really thinks. Asaram Bapu is a certified holy man and his picturing of what happens in a rape situation is obscene in its ignorance. A woman only has to call her assailants brothers and they will immediately treat her as a sister and if not, it is her fault. Most rapes, after all, occur within the family. The poor man does not live in reality.
Nor does Mohan Bhagwat if he believes that Bharat has fewer rapes than India. The notion that a bharatiya nari should stay at home and devote herself to the well being of her husband is a view that only a brahmachari can hold. For one thing not all women are married. Outside a few uppercaste middle-class families, women work, both at home and outside—in fields and factories and construction sites. Indeed, India has too few women in the labour force; only 29 per cent compared to China’s 70 per cent. We waste a lot of human potential thereby.
Then there are the people who fall back on the epics and talk about lakshman rekha, yet another device to shift the blame on the woman for being raped. Within the Ramayana, the wanton disfiguring of Shurpanakha by Rama and Lakshman is a horrible episode. This was done for no offence on her part but as a sort of joke by the two brothers, one of whom is a maryada purushottam. Sita, abandoned as a child by her parents and later twice by her husband, commits suicide in despair.
Hindu mythology is replete with misogyny. Vyasa fathered two of Vichitravirya’s widows’ children. They were frightened enough for one to have shut her eyes while being set upon by Vyasa and for the other to turn pale with fear. These reactions, which are described as reasons for Dhritarashtra’s blindness and Pandu’s diseased body, are obviously signs of forced traumatic sexual encounters. Vyasa is the author of the epic in more senses than one.
But then, Brahma the Creator also rapes his daughter. Shiva, when he returns after a long absence, is so distrusting of Parvati that finding a strange child at her door he cuts off the child’s head. He does not even stop to ask Parvati about the provenance of the child. Thus is born vakratunda Ganesh, a deformed child with the head of an elephant and the torso of a man.
We have been brought up on all this to believe it harmless.Yet it reflects a psychology in which women are used and abused and distrusted. Years ago, Damodar Kosambi taught us to examine Hindu mythology critically but all that has now been forgotten. Secularism has come to mean that we have to be appreciative of all religions, none of which is better than the other when it comes to misogyny.
This will be a long struggle not so much of Bharat versus India but of young and modern and aspirational India against the older conservative India. All political parties have been found on the wrong side of this debate. Brinda Karat was the only political activist who joined the crowds. Jaya Bachchan, Shabana Azmi and Hema Malini were out there, but in their own right as artists. The ‘inheriting’ sons and daughters of MPs stayed away, confused and fearful.
Soon, there will be a scramble to win votes from the anger of the movement by the same people who stayed away in the hour of the citizens’ need. What would be more effective is for the movement to find its own political expression and make sure that their votes are not given away cheaply to the same old gang. It will require innovative thinking to succeed.
As another champion of the downtrodden said, Agitate, Educate, Organise!
[courtesy : “The Sunday Express”, 13.01.2013]
