'Indias Daughter',

Issues and perspectives

V P Jain
https://www.scribd.com/doc/258723376/India-s-Daughter

There is an outrage at the filming of a documentary, 'Indias Daughter', which focuses on the
rape case of Nirbhaya who was brutally beaten and raped (leading to her death) in Delhi in
2012. And we are only witnessing a ritualized response, on expected lines, to the
documentary from all political outfits, while the rape graph continues to go up unabated. The
brutal act is also sanctified by the likes of Khap Panchayats and self appointed godmen and
some right wing cultural organisations by invoking the proverbial Lakshamana Rekha, moral
boundary as chastity belt. Mind you, Lakshaman Rekha is only a concocted and fabricated
episode, which does not find any mention in the Ramayana by Valmiki, revered as the most
sacred scripture by the Hindus. The rapist in the documentary is only echoing the sentiments
of the Hindu zealots who are using metaphors like Lakshaman rekha, as an alibi, to accuse
the victims of indiscretion, inviting rape as retribution. Since I have not seen the
documentary, I would not go into the merit of screening it or not. But I fail to understand,
given the ever increasing atrocities against women, what state secret it would reveal about
our sensibilities pertaining to the fair sex, and become the most penetrating social and
psychological discovery of the century. At the same time, it is nave to believe that we can
salvage our eroding credibility and overcome the panic of, to borrow the colloquial phrase,
mixing our reputation in mud, by banning the screening of the documentary. Or maybe, we
are really so vulnerable, and our national pride so flimsy that it can be ruined by screening a
film as is testified by the profound observation made by a historian: the civilisation which
takes pride in its ancient golden age is in the present at its lowest ebb. We take great pride in
our Sanskriti, and what a pity, to take an example, we have to reserve a separate coach for
women in Delhi Metro, in a cosmopolitan city and the capital of the country, to ensure their
safe travel, and for the whole world to see.
The problem is that there is no political will to remedy the malady by going into the genesis
of the problem. Our concern should not be reduced to only one heinous crime, because that is
the more visible part. The crime against women is rampant and continues to escalate
exponentially. There are women in Manipur, in Kashmir, in Chhattisgarh who face the
violence of the state. There are Dalit women across India who face the violence of the upper
castes. There are women born into poverty who face the violence of a heartless economy that
excludes them. (Talking about rape: Kalpana Sharma, Hindu magazine). The Rape, sexual
assault, everyday violence that millions of Indian women suffer with a sense of resignation
every single day, though profoundly troubling, is not within the reach of reason and reform as
a law and order problem. These atrocities are not aberrations but structural in character, hard
wired into the system. The hard fact is: the strong always knows how to tame the weak: the
lion shall not lie down with the lamb, no matter how loudly the latter might bleat. Attempt to
wish violence away by chanting mouthed platitudes will not work. So long as the criminals
continue to enjoy the patronage of the system, any promise of reform is only wishful

thinking. The rapists were engaged in plying a private bus, illegally, at the behest of the
owner, who was influential enough to circumvent the law. The blue bus line, in Delhi, was a
traumatic experience, overcrowding, overcharging, rash driving leading to accidents, was an
everyday experience. Harassment of women passengers was a common occurrence, both by
the lumpen co-passengers and the bus crew. Any protest was construed as a challenge to their
might, leading to even thrashing by the crew. The passengers had no choice but to act as
hapless spectators. The white line, in which the heinous crime took place, was only a new
avatar of the blue line. The crew, under the patronage of the owner, defied the law everyday
with impunity: there was no law to be feared, even if there was one, it was entirely on their
side. On the fateful day, the crew had ventured out for a game. They have been very candid in
their rationalisation: If they were not to resist, they would have been more considerate and
desisted from inflicting the gruesome fatal injuries. They have gone further and warned if the
law punishes them harshly, the criminals would, in future, kill their victims to destroy the
evidence.
Only if we see the problems of women as facets of the larger canvass concerning the
structure of the society itself, we can see that they arise out of the basic political and cultural
premises by which we live. A hierarchical society like India, which is asymmetrically
segmented into classes by the Varna system, based on cast and creed, is inherently
exploitative as the inequalities are intentionally and rigidly built into the laws by the ruling
elite at the expense of the impoverished people. Crime appears only as an emergent property
of the system and is all pervasive, manifests in all possible ways: the poor and the powerless
often find themselves sacrificing their resources, their dignity, their children, even their
bodies (both men and women, though in different ways) to the powerful, both for profit and
for pleasure. Millions of people worldwide, called the 21st century slaves, are bought and
sold, held captive, brutalized and exploited as a resource for pleasure and for profit. What is
needed is a systemic change. That would entail a paradigm shift by becoming a part of the
Indian consensus around a more equitable society where everybody can live with dignity.
This paradigm represents more than a change in public mood or attitude. Rather, it would
mean a profound redefinition of values and a metamorphosis in the self-concept. You cannot
create a livable society based simply on the self-interested interactions of individuals ( Alexis
De Tocqueville). If democracy is to survive in this country, then the discourse cannot remain
merely at the level of general principals of justice, freedom and survival with dignity, but
device a system through which these general principles can be implemented.