While one set of hands work openly in public offices, schools, colleges, universities, religious places and within families; the other set of hands work in the exact spaces at different verticals.
ROSHAN
In two back to back rulings of the Honourable High Court of our land the spirit of
goodwill amongst sexual violators have been rewarded, handsomely. I am not going to venture into explaining what the specifications of the ruling have been, simply because we
all know a person or two sexual violators who have easily slipped from the broken net of confrontation. Great grandparents to unborn children have already been assigned their customised conditioning to overlook certain domestic violations, only to breathe impunity of any violations exercised within organised society, religious, professional and educational institutions; not to forget the institution of family. Such strong institutional structures within which pivot the threshold of the present moment, stand at the risk of being an alibi to castrating one’s prudence, sense of reason and judgement. In parallel we grow so powerfully indifferent within the same institutions that have cradled values of justice, honour, compassion and integrity.
Twenty-five years back, I made a 10-minute walk with my older cousin to her friend’s house. I was holding her hand, as we returned home in a hurry before dusk. As we got closer her grip on my hand grew tighter; by now, we were almost jogging. Before I knew it, her dupatta landed over my face and we squatted; I heard cat calls just after the skidding of a bicycle tyre. She rose up with my hand still in her firm grip, as she tossed her dupatta back and uttered the first swear words I had heard from a girl. She was unapologetic. I couldn’t help but ask her if that ‘anna’ was someone she knew, looking ahead she said ‘some useless boy’. Her face and eyes were burning with anger, but the palm of her hands turned cold that evening. This incident never made it inside the ears of our neighbourhood walls, nor whispers during family prayers.
History is filled with instances of rulers, kings, ministers, law enforcers, medical doctors and agents of jurisprudence support, commit
or defend acts of violation – especially sexual violation. Checks and balances are placed in these loose frameworks just to shame the victim of violation and strangle any support system that seeks to mitigate justice. As many hands as there are at work to bring the system to justice, there are even more hands strangling efforts of justice, empathy, law, misleading public opinion, violating the vulnerable, breaking the strong willed and assisting the violator in a timeless immorality of exclusiveness, half-truths, misinformation, fear and worst of all planting socially engineered doubts.
While one set of hands work openly in public offices, schools, colleges, universities, religious places and within families; the other set of hands work in the exact spaces at different verticals behind closed doors, in ‘minuteless’ meetings, under the table, wearing the armour of age old wisdom and ritual while castrating social influence on public consciousness; needless to also say the privilege meted by being born on the right side of history. They navigate leaving no fingerprints, forcing even the deepest minds to drown in the gutter of their doings.
The deafening silence around sexual violations spoken about in the public space sadly appears to indicate that the castration
is working, especially on our young minds – it seems as though adult minds are too brittle
to handle important issues of privacy. Sexual violence is not an end by itself, it’s a means to exerting power; which is why an ecosystem needs to be created to accommodate the collective goodwill of unwelcome saviours, overstaying guests and of course, sexual violators.
Sexual violators like pimps or drug peddlers survive within a framework specifically contained to thrive through time, human bonds and space. Rightly so, November 25, 2019 – The International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women saw the performance of Un Violador en tu Camino in English called
The Rapist Is You. It was first performed by the women of the Chilean Resistance in 2019, which later spread to several other countries. It was performed in public places by large numbers of women usually blindfolded, with choreographed gestures and anthem like reverence in song. The translation goes like this: The patriarchy is a judge, that judges us for being born and our punishment is the violence you don’t see. The patriarchy is a judge that judges us for being born and our punishment is the violence that have seen. It’s femicide. Impunity for the killer. It’s disappearance. It’s rape. And the fault wasn’t mine, not where I was, not how I dressed. The rapist is you. It’s the cops, The judges, The state, The president. The oppressive state is a rapist.
Clearly, we are missing out on something if in the middle of a people’s civil uprising against an oppressive state in Chile is born an anthem for women addressing an age-old weapon of oppression. Consequently, this experience forms a language by itself and is adapted by the women of various countries, cultures, ethnicities, religious or no religious convictions, language and class. The hands that latched opportunities behind victims, fondled over and into the clothes of another without solicitation, and ‘cry wolf’, have other priorities in mind. The fact remains that the same hands that have cradled civilisations, written scripture, moulded gods, embraced the broken hearted and carried out revolutions resiliently carry infinite memories that are as old as time and as real as truth.
The recording of small isolated instances of violence would eventually lead to a meaningful ecosystem of support and resilience. The exhaustion of emotions would indeed bring out the honesty of action, and the truth will defend itself.
Where do we keep our hands when no one is watching? Well, let’s grow some insightful courage.
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