Angry and Ashamed

This past week has been full of extremely belligerent, shocking, and painful emotions. The city in which I live has been shamed and assaulted in a manner so brutal that hardly a mortal being would have the devilish ravings to imagine such a pathological, inhuman, filth-minded savage act.

The mere thought of the dreadful incident fills you with utter contempt, anger and shame, making you livid and restless.

Why did this happen? How could they become so ruthless, pigheaded and of abominable nature?

That a girl is assaulted upon is in itself a barbaric crime, an act of grave mental wickedness, and this bunch of hooligans raped her, kicked her, beat her up with iron rods damaging her intestines and threw her off the bus  to die on the road is shocking, never heard of, unparalleled display of brutality and sheer wantonness.

We seem to have become accustomed to, or shall I say, we have resigned to the fact that crimes like robbery, murder, rape etc are just not going to dwindle. We have become accommodative to the vulnerabilities of a subdued, hollow society.

And it’s not only in Delhi. Pick any city, town, it’s the same tragic story everywhere.

A number of rapes, sexual harassment, sexual assault, eve teasing cases take place every day, some are reported, most are concealed for fear, honour and other reasons. Among the lot, the most outrageous and despicable are cases like – a three-year-old baby raped by neighbour/relative.

The memory of Guwahati molestation case is still afresh. A girl was slapped repeatedly and was groped by a lecherous mob in a bustling bazaar in front of tv news camera. No one came to her rescue for about an hour. She had herself publicly molested, abused and beaten by some amoral ruffians claiming to be custodians of the culture and values of our society.

Then recently, there were a spate of rape cases reported from Haryana, mostly sexual assault on Dalit girls by the upper caste youths.

Some time ago, in Uttar Pradesh, a woman stabbed a local politician in public for raping her for months and threatening with dire consequences to her and her family members if she dared speak against him. She was courageous enough to go to police station but instead of lodging a complaint she was allegedly insulted and roughed up. Humiliated and ostracized she decided to take the law in her own hands.

These incidents, for a flash of time, draw angry reactions and demand for strict action echoes again, then, as time goes by, once the media glare is shifted to the next breaking news, we too, comfortably let ourselves absorbed in the new thing! Everything is normal again, until something big happens.

But, the heinous crime that took place on a moving bus in Delhi has proved to be a tipping point. The heart wrenching, brutal assault on the young girl has shaken us all to the core.  Filled with angst and disgust, youngsters have come out on the streets. They swarmed the India Gate and marched on to the Raiseena Hill leading to the President’s Palace. This made the police to unleash its riot quelling measures on the peaceful protesters.
Water cannons, teargas bombs, lathi charge were used to disperse the crowd. But the anger over the gory incident is palpable.  It’s time something is done to stop this. This has led to nationwide protests. The government -- always setting new standards of its ineptness-- is once again pushed to the wall.
The President, PM, Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Sheila Dixit and Mr Shinde, have all been bared of their feigned concern on the situation. These people, at the helm of the affairs, just don’t have the heart to understand the agony that girl is going through battling for life on a hospital bed.

When their words of assurances are needed most they chose to wait and when they have missed the opportunity the PM reads from a script bereft of substance and resolve and at the end of it quickly  asks the cameraman—Theek hain. This is the attitude of our honest, venerable Prime Minister. A PM, who rarely speaks, and even when opens his mouth, needs a poorly written script to address the nation on a crime as horrendous as the one in question.

Yes, we agree, no police, no state, can stop every rape, but they can instill fear of law and exemplary punishment to the culprits. Isn’t it their duty?

Post script: The brave girl lost the battle for life in a Singapore hospital on Saturday, 29th Dec 2012.