84 Years On The Dreams Have Turned Into Nightmares

Questions keep hammering in my head, what am I feeling ever since the news broke, I am sad, angry, helpless, frustrated. My emotions range between numbness, loss, disbelief . And as the demands for the harshest punishment get shriller all round, I find myself asking: Has the death penalty helped as a deterrence, be it of Rape or Murder?

My exposure to the issues of rape, dowry deaths, and other variations of everything that was clubbed under that ubiquitous phrase ‘Violence against Women’, started in the 1970s in Delhi. In my mid 40s, and hitherto living a totally sheltered life as a Navy wife, I found myself thrown, through a life changing workshop on Education to Reality, into another, harsher, uglier world than I had hitherto experienced.

The autonomous women's movement was beginning to make itself seen and heard in the ‘bastis’, resettlement colonies, on the streets and knocking at the doors of sarkari departments and policy makers. Together, we worked, marched, debated, listened to what women in cities and villages were living through.

We felt that together we could transform the world and create a different reality. But we also learned the hard lessons that the struggle against Patriarchy was to be a lifelong one.

For over four decades so many of us have actively fought patriarchy, sexual violence, domestic violence, in homes and workplaces, in bastis and urban and rural areas, in political parties, and the military and police, in schools and colleges. I even managed while my husband was serving, to persuade my sister Naval Wives, that sexual abuse, violence happens in our homes and community as much as in those of the poor, the slum dwellers, and so called uneducated.

Some day we should document a short profile of the horror stories of mental and physical torture to which women were subjected by some of our acknowledged decorated heroes.

And we are still facing these horrors - they seem to get more gruesome with the years - Were human beings always like this? Where do we begin the process of change? I still say: From the cradle, in families, in kindergarten!

Yes, we need to start from the very same hospitals and clinics and homes where dais, ayahs, nurses and grandmothers all distribute the choicest laddoos at the arrival of a boy, and commiserate at the birth of a girl. But it goes deeper and further into places yet unexplored.

I am 84 years old. I thought I was educated, modern, progressive, but such is the power of social conditioning that in a Naval community at the age of 24, I found myself bombarded, even susceptible, to the well meant but insidious messaging in my third pregnancy, “two daughters? Oh don't worry, you will have a son this time… start observing Karva Chauth… take a vow to shave your head at Tirupati,” and suggestions for a host of other rituals and practices were flowing in, largely unsolicited!

Every single piece of advice was flying in the face of that basic scientific principle of the X & Y chromosomes , that had already decided the sex of this unborn child!! And for many decades since, the slightly pitiful glances, “oh only daughters.. you can always try again”

So if this is happening in educated, upper class homes, one can imagine what happens elsewhere across the vastly differentiated, highly unequal, social, economic, cultural, religious people and practices that are characteristic of this India that is Bharat.

Does scientific temper, legal measures and harsh punishment work? Scientific temper never really has had a chance no matter how much we tout this as a national goal. And of course the public demonstration of this superiority and power of the male, from child to man showed itself in different ways.

In my teenage days we called it 'eve teasing' - and then sexual harassment. It took a long time before we could even embellish it with that dreaded word "sexual". I would arm my daughters with dividers from geometry boxes and some easily available chilli powder, to fob off probing hands and would be molesters on the DTC buses of Delhi.

Elite women, who are often in total denial about what was happening in their own bedrooms, found it easier to point to "those slum dwellers, labour class, migrants, those of another religion, preferably the guys with beards. This was the precursor of what is now popular usage across many northern states in our country, ‘Love Jihad’.

I guess I was moulded over time as a ‘rebellious’ woman. I am a mother of three amazing daughters. My husband did everything he could to rear his girls to do most things that boys could, including how to whistle! But it took me many years to call out wherever and whenever one encountered sexism, gender discrimination and violence.

I learned to listen carefully for the ‘men only’ Jokes that I once laughed at and then finally began to explain to my father, my husband and their friends that the hidden seeds of overt male sexual superiority and violence often lay there. They would shake their heads and sadly say I had lost my sense of humour.

Why? What can we do? When will it stop? Whom do we blame? Till today, the questions won't go away! Hundreds of marches, candle light memorial meetings, open letters, petitions and protests down the line, leaders and public baying for blood and death penalties after every reported raped, one is still left asking the same old questions.

The answers are staring us in the face at one level, and on another, lie hopelessly enmeshed in a complex web of human frailty, sexuality that is never acknowledged or discussed, cultural norms enforced by every religion , and it all boils down to an unchallenged combination of patriarchy, power, gender injustice and yes militarism.

With the challenge to male dominance/superiority growing in every sector, perhaps there is also a deep deep insecurity in men which has never been acknowledged or counselled . This deadly toxic combination continues to find its ultimate expression of power and victory in the mutilation of a woman's body and the unstated social sanction to treating women as chattel, private property and ultimately dispensable.

The legal and justice system and political leadership are at once part of the problem when they should be part of the solution. Judges sit in judgement in the very committees that are set up to investigate their own sexual misconduct and sexual harassment accusations.

The ultimate blow was the decision by our law makers to exclude marital rape from punishable crimes under rape despite the strong recommendations of the Varma Commmission set up after the Nirbhaya Rape case. This was because of the "sanctity of the institution of marriage" in Indian culture. Conjugal rights of the man are sacrosanct after all!

So, where do we go from here? As has been oft repeated , as in each case, once the outcry dies down, public anger will soon be assuaged when three convicts are hanged [Nirbhaya case], and Committees are set up.

Why did we not protest when the rapists and murderers in the Bilkis Bano case were repeatedly granted parole and eventually released and greeted with garlands and sweets? Why are we not protesting when the ‘Godmen’ like Ram Rahim are given bail and young men like Umar Khalid, and so many others in the Delhi and the Pune so called sedition and UAPA cases continue to rot in prison, and some like father Stan Swamy even dying while serving a totally unjust prison sentence.

The complicity and corrupt practices of Political Parties must be called out. Today that too is difficult to do – given the environment of open intimidation .

I return to a basic belief that in addition to all that we do in the public sphere, to take forward the fight for legal and societal penalties, it is finally up to each one of us to stand up, speak out. We have to begin the long, tough process of change of mind sets, fighting deep rooted patriarchy and misogyny, sanctioned all too often by pseudo religious texts like ‘Manu Smriti’ and many others.

Every Religion in practice has a built in gender discrimination. That too needs to be called out and challenged. Our ability to analyse and discriminate the actual values and principles for which political parties stand must be sustained and rigorous. “Boys will be Boys” – was a call in our hallowed Parliament, it was met with laughter, and allowed to pass.

So too the decision on Marital Rape. So too, infamously, the hypocritical outcry against the suggestion of introducing Sex Education into the school Curriculum in a state where we lived for many years.

Silence is no longer an option. Where do we begin? Start talking about this, from RGK rape in Kolkota to all the others we know of, at home, with family, your kids, neighbours, at the work place, at parties, bhajan mandalis. This is the only way we can hope that people pay attention, think about it and start reflecting on possible solutions.

In this past week I have spoken to the women who come to work for me, the young man who drives me to hospital, the labourers who are working on renovating my home, the physios who administer my laser and ultrasound treatments. I have sent many messages to doctor friends and other professionals in other institutions. I, you, we, need to remind people that it can be your daughter, sister, mother, friend who will face a similar situation tomorrow.

The time for polite silence is gone, this is not a task for just government or legislators or heads of institutions alone. Most of them have to be called to account for their silence and inaction. It is up to us to find ways to draw attention, begin discussion and take action.

If not me or you, then WHO? If not now, then WHEN? An oft used cliché – but true. Rape is not acceptable, assault on our bodies is not acceptable, the impunity and indifference in our institutions is not acceptable. It was Gandhi who said each of us must be the change we want to see

Lalita Ramdas (born 1940) stepped out of a conventional, hierarchical environment to become a voice in support of alternative education, gender sensitivity, secularism, peace, and nuclear disarmament. She is a strong voice today, well respected and admired.