Proud to be Westernized!
Tavleen Singh
When I am in Mumbai I live on Marine Drive within spitting distance
of the police cabin in which monster More raped a girl so young we
cannot tell you her name. Much horror has already been expressed
over a 16-year-old virgin being raped by a policeman in broad
daylight on Mumbai's busiest street so I am not going to go over
that ground again. Only somebody as monstrous as police constable
Sunil More would not be sickened by what he did. As far as I am
concerned the cruelest punishment is not cruel enough for men who
rape children.
What worries me is that in all the expressions of horror and all the
protests that have followed the rape, nobody has noticed that the
obscenity law and (ironically) middle class morality are to blame
for what happened. In case you have forgotten, Maharashtra's
high-minded rulers have a proclivity for moral policing that
precedes the advent of Mr R.R. Patil. Even before Patil decided that
he was appointed Maharashtra's Home Minister to close down dance
bars, Mumbai's rulers gave policemen the right, under some vague
obscenity law, to arrest lovers who make the smallest gesture of
love in public places. In this column, a few years ago, I wrote about
a young couple having been arrested on Valentine's Day on Marine
Drive. The girl was from Manipur and her boyfriend a young student in
Mumbai. They arranged a Valentine's Day assignation and being too
poor to afford the luxury of a hotel room in this hideously
expensive city were sitting in a quiet corner of Marine Drive when
the police swooped down and hauled them in.
They were seated in a police van when I happened to walk by. The
girl had such an expression of terror on her face that I stopped to
ask the fat, leering policemen who sat by her why she was being
arrested. The leer deepened as one of them said, "They were breaking
the obscenity law. What are they doing here at this time of the
night".
Luckily, I was with a Maharashtrian friend who intervened to point
out angrily that in a city where the police could not protect young
girls from rape what right did they have to arrest lovers. The
couple was released but middle class morality remains in place and
the man who was Police Commissioner at the time defended the arrest
of lovers on the grounds that it was not in keeping with 'Indian
culture' to express love in public.
This time it is the Shiv Sena that has reminded us of that nebulous,
ill-defined thing we call 'Indian culture'. Saamna, Bal Thakeray's
mouthpiece, virtually absolved More of blame in a front page article
last week. Had pictures of semi-nude women not been found in his
cabin? Did this not mean that the poor creature was aroused? How can
men be blamed for their acts when women dress provocatively?
"Those who argue that there is no connection between women and girls
wearing skimpy clothes and rape should keep the social structure in
mind. Besides rape, it is in the evil eye of men provoked by the
culture of skimpy clothes that is harmful. Why encourage these
perverse tendencies." Elsewhere, the article blamed 'page three
culture' for declining moral standards.
The Shiv Sena sickens me at the best of time. I find their political
ideas and moral values so repugnant that I only comment on them when
they go too far like that time in September 2001 when they burned
down a Mumbai hospital because one of their workers died in it. If I
comment this time on their views it is because I believe that a
dangerously large number of middle class Indians unthinkingly
subscribe to them.
The Shiv Sena is an urban phenomenon and so perhaps unaware that
most rapes in India occur in the villages. Most victims of rape are
Dalit and Adivasi women who are considered fair game by the upper
castes. That is our Indian culture.
A favourite way for rural Indians to humiliate Dalits who get too
uppity is to strip their mothers, wives and sisters naked and parade
them through the streets. When this is not considered humiliation
enough rape follows.
When a woman dares to go to a police station to report rape she is
often raped by the policemen. If the case ever comes to court the
rapists are usually acquitted. Remember Bhanwari Devi, the saathin
from Rajasthan who was gangraped by upper caste men because she was
trying to prevent child marriages? Remember what happened? The
rapists were acquitted because the judges did not believe upper
caste men would rape a low caste woman. Nearly eighty per cent of
rape cases result in acquittals.
Most do not even get reported because, according to some statistics,
more than sixty per cent of rape cases in India occur within the
four walls of the family home, usually by a father, brother or uncle
and usually of a minor. Statistics from Delhi, our proud capital
city, a few years ago showed that 75 per cent of all rape cases were
of minors and 25 per cent were of girls under the age of twelve.
Neither the village women who get raped, nor the little girls who
get raped in their homes, have anything to do with 'page three
culture'. They have everything to do with traditional Indian culture
and values. It was among the crowds who tore down the police cabin
on Marine Drive and protested for days in the streets that you saw
Westernized Indians. If the Shiv Sena represents 'Indian culture'
then I am proud to be Westernized.
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