The first time she was taken to the police, she was ridiculed and sent back. If she did not have hope in justice, decision making and seeking the truth I do not believe she would have persisted her case along with her family. She would not have appeared for a delayed medical examination by the police, intended to very well erase primal evidence establishing rape. She would not have recorded her statement twice over when the police finally registered the complaint. I believe she did this simply because she was more alive in all her feeble strength trying to wake us up from our sanitised existence.
ROSHAN
Have we noticed the impact news of sexual violence has on our household? For far too long we have sanitised conversations on justice, decision making and the truth; beginning from our homes this sanitisation happens in an elegantly poor and subversive manner. So how have we dealt with news of sexual violence within our household, work places, classrooms, buses, trains, restaurants, discos, farmlands, factories, offices, media houses, religious spaces, political parties, public spaces and government spaces?
Walk Down Public Memory Lane
It took the media to report on a young physiotherapy intern who was horrifically raped on a moving bus in the capital of our nation, for lawmakers to review the Indian Penal Code. She was sanitised as Nirbhaya – the girl into whose vagina a rode was inserted, and continually raped by five males. In response, the Justice Verma Commission worked in depth with a network of informed and concerned citizens. NGOs, individuals did their part in seeing to the compilation and processing of data received with Justice Verma at the forefront. The Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013 was eventually passed, but criticised for not meaningfully considering the recommendations and suggestions of the Justice Verma Committee.
Seven years on, as of March this year, hours before the hanging of the convicts who raped and murdered Nirbhaya only 36% of the Nirbhaya Fund had been used; in other words the Fearless Fund was sparingly used. In the meanwhile, what hit news headlines were the gangrape of a photojournalist in Mumbai; two teenage girls were gangraped, murdered and hung from their necks on the branches of a Mango tree; a law student in Ernakulam was gangraped and murdered – she was stabbed over 30 times on her chest (it did not stop there); another girl lured into employment was duped and raped multiple times, before being sold off and violated again in Unnao; a Hyderabad based veterinary doctor was gangraped and murdered, her body left burnt on the highway. Most recently, as if conducting a delayed medical examination was not enough, the police burnt her quadriplegic body which had a broken cervical spine and a cut tongue; while keeping her family barricaded in their own home. A 19 year old girl from Hathras was gangraped on September 14, and succumbed to her injuries on September 29. Later the same day in Balrampur a 22 year old Second Year Degree Commerce student was gangraped when she was returning home. She bore severe injuries on her body, and couldn’t even make it alive to the hospital.
In the case of the young woman who was gangraped in Hyderabad justice was processed differently. The accused, Mohammed Arif, a lorry driver and cleaner, boys Naveen, Shiva and Chennakeshavulu were killed in a police encounter. However in the case of the Dalit girl from Hathras, for the accused Ram Kumar, Ravi Singh, Sandeep Thakur and Luvkush Thakur it was quite different. A former Minister of Parliament called for a Mahapanchayath in his residence in support of the accused. The complaint was filed only after six days of the rape. One of the accused Ravi and his father had been arrested previously for assaulting her grandfather around 20 years ago. Yes, this complexity is what gets easily sanitised into a hypothetical universe where everyone is equal, and by virtue of forgetfulness, justice is served without anybody being told what to do. How delightful, but sorry to burst your bubble – structural violence is an unequal playing ground, culturally rooted in a prejudice that is disseminated through an educated intolerance. Sexual violence therefore is a display of power to enforce a sense of prejudiced superiority.
Sanitising Complexities
How does news of sexual violence impact our boys and men? I am no super expert on this, but timely sanitising of this impact on our male population has been the most successful. The sanitisation of complexity becomes the alibi – it is so difficult to talk about it, we may end up being politically incorrect, how to mention words like penis, vagina, rape and sexual over the dining table to our family who we have known almost forever. So, we continue to say a prayer, feel spiritually cute and sanitise our insight more intensely so that the next time our eyes meet indicators, symptoms or actually instances of sexual violence – we promptly sanitise the Jyoti Singhs into Nirbhaya (fearless), chant hashtags on social media. While frequently using gender-based slurs effortlessly in our minds and regular conversations. We refrain from engaging in dialogue with those who create and peddle sexist communication, while preserving structures that provide a space for the contemplation and execution of sexual violence. Justice, decision making and the truth are indeed complex, do we expect, somebody else to judge, decide and tell us about the truth?
Still more alive than Dead
I wonder how she would have processed those final moments before her death. The first time she was taken to the police, she was ridiculed and sent back. If she did not have hope in justice, decision making and seeking the truth I do not believe she would have persisted her case along with her family. She would not have appeared for a delayed medical examination by the police, intended to very well erase primal evidence establishing rape. She would not have recorded her statement twice over when the police finally registered the complaint. I believe she did this simply because she was more alive in all her feeble strength trying to wake us up from our sanitised existence. She would never have wished the same for any other son, brother, father, grandfather, uncle, nephew, male friend, boyfriend, husband, brother in-law, father in-law and all the other types of the male population to experience the real price of sanitising the complexity of a girl, a woman who faces violation, is murdered and denied a humane funeral.
She did not Scream
A young Adivasi girl from Mathura who went to settle a domestic dispute in the police station in 1972, returned raped by two policemen in the police station. Orphaned and illiterate she went to the courts. The Sessions Court called her a ‘shocking liar’ amongst other things and acquitted the accused. The Bombay High Court found the policemen guilty and convicted them. The Supreme Court in 1978 overturned the convictions; Justice A D Koshal said the young Adivasi girl had no bruises on her body and did not scream – therefore the sexual act was consented. ‘She did not scream;’ last month at 02:30 am the Hathras victim’s body was burnt without the consent or awareness of her family. The police used petrol instead of sanitisers to burn her remains in the presence of the Hathras Superintendent of Police and the whole village, except her own family. She could not scream any more.∎
Roshan is a Digital Print Maker, Educationist and Writer with an interest in Media and Society
