16 September 2013, 08:40 AM IST
Please, let's not call it 'historic'. There is much that should disturb us about the immediate aftermath of last Friday's death sentence. It will by no means be a 'deterrent' as the college girls said with such touching naivete to TV reporters. There was no cause for the 'celebration' so ghoulishly expressed outside the fast-track court. It was a moment of solemnity, for introspection, not for the bursting of crackers as if the pronouncement of the sentence was in the same league as the concurrent announcement of Narendra Modi's candidature. For me, the most unsettling image was that of the young man, his face contorted in a snarl, holding up a poster scrawled with 'India Wins'.
Really? This judgment had nothing to do with the couriers of terror delivering murderous hate from across the border or about an India-Pakistan cricket match which shamefully arouses the same orgasmic jingoism. It was about a brutal, fatal rape which turned a young woman into a tragic icon for every Indian with a conscience, but certainly not in any meaningful way for every Indian steeped in sexual entitlement.
We can understand the sense of justice delivered felt by the girl's family. But justice cannot be equated with the kind of lynch-mob attitudes played out in mass media. Bloodlust vitiates the good that justice does. The lawyers came out and melodramatically announced the 'Maut ki sazaa'; one could not miss the gloating in 'Sabko phaansi di'. I trust what I'm saying here won't be mistaken for some bleeding-heart, misplaced sympathy for those bestial five.
If i am against the death penalty it is not only because it has never been a deterrent for rape or murder. The major part of my objection comes from the belief that, however horrendous may be the prospect of being marched to the gallows, death is really the easy way out for such inhuman criminals. They should be made to go through a lifelong, living hell, reviled as much by fellow inmates as upright society. I'd like to add that i find the alternatives of castration and bobbitization equally unacceptable in a civilized society.
This raises the question: are we indeed a civilized society? Another smug cliche mouthed by so many of the solemn-faced quoterati after the judgment was that the 'national conscience' had triumphed/ reasserted itself/ been vindicated. It had? Even as they spoke several hundred women across the country were in all likelihood being molested, and the 'nation', aka bystanders, had remained only that, if not actually leering and egging on the goons.
Can we forget the perverse toll-call even in the immediate aftermath of the December 16 atrocity? The protestors and the media still blazed with anger in the capital, but that made no difference whatsoever to the man determined to satisfy his lust even if the immediately available 'object' was a neighbour's five-year-old child. Worse, all that outrage didn't stop the Delhi police from bribing her father to keep his mouth shut after the shockingly assaulted little girl was rescued. Nor did it stop the Meerut cops from beating to the ground frail women old enough to be their grandmothers when another vulnerable girl went missing; in fact they did so with impunity in full view of TV cameras.
And, in this perverse hierarchy of degree, where do we place fathers, fathers-in-law and uncle-jis who blithely continue to turn 'care' into 'custody' and keep on molesting their girls without even for a moment thinking that it is wrong, and not their socially bestowed right?
So let us not talk of a 'national conscience' as if it were some exalted entity removed from the sordid reality on the ground. Much less, let us talk of 'closure'. After the grim satisfaction of their daughter's murderous tormentors getting the ultimate punishment has waned, will even these parents ever be able to get on with their lives? Then what about all of India's women who are so routinely subjected to sexual abuse? There will be no closure for them till the entire legal system, from FIR to sentencing isn't tightened.
It's easy to shrug and say, 'Mindset change is a long drawn out process, so at least let us congratulate ourselves on the death penalty being awarded.' No, if mindset doesn't change, then nothing will. Mindset change can be fast-tracked if the processes of this case become the rule and not the shaming exception.
The police station is the first post of appeal, though if beat cops patrolled vulnerable areas instead of VIP routes, so much of every level of molestation could be prevented. So, the No. 1 priority is to get the officer on duty to register an FIR in every case, regardless of caste, community or political connections. Slapping the mother of the accused when she comes to the police station begging to meet her son, as reportedly happened in the Shakti Mills case, displays the same unacceptable gender and communal bias.
Secondly, if every case were as conscientiously pursued and presented, we would not have such an abysmal rate of conviction for sexual offences – 24.1% . Worse, as gender violence moves north, the conviction rate plummets south. It was 44.3% in 1973, 26.9% in 1983, and 26.4% in 2011. As is constantly pointed out, the true deterrent is certainty of punishment, not quantum of punishment. But slip-shod evidence collecting makes justice dead on arrival. The newly toughened law can only be as good as its enforcers.
For mindset change, it is as important for other anointed or elected authority figures to get their act together. And to get due punishment as speedily as any lumpen molestor. Think Jessica and Ruchika. In just the past month we heard a Shiv Sena MLA threatening to have the women staffers of a toll plaza stripped because they dared to ask him to pay the toll of Rs 40, and a Samajwadi Party man guilty of similar sexist abuse at a Bhiwandi toll-booth. Observe the unedifying spectacle of Asaram Bapu looked up to with such reverence by thousands of women devotees.
Consider also the role of those who may never have raised a hand or voice against a woman. By not raising their hand or voice against the mob, weren't the 50-odd bystanders not complicit in the murder of Keenan Santos and Reuben Fernandez. The gallant young duo was attacked with iron rods and knives because they had protested against the lewd remarks passed against their women companions on October 20, 2011.
Within the year of that shameful 2011 episode, another upright Mumbai man lost his life while standing up for a young woman of his housing estate. Most of her tormentors were young boys from her own locality, but how many of us raised the subject of parental accountability? Then, and personally.
So let's stop our mindless crowing over the recent death sentence. Grandstanding must wait upon ground realities.
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