The Delhi Gang Rapist
A month ago one impertinent, intemperate cantankerous politician –a belligerent
Marxist was sent to serve a prison term by the Supreme Court for calling the
Judges a pack of fools. Now, looking at the restraint a Judge of a Delhi court
has delivered against the airing of the BBC documentary on the “Delhi rapist
interview”, terming that the telecast or publication of the interview will be
detrimental to law and order, I ‘m obliged to endorse the view , after all the
comment about the Courts was right.
Now, what did this reprehensible sexual assaulter say to the
interviewer? He said that the victim has to be blamed for her torture and death
and that if she had not resisted the rape she would not have been physically
tortured but left to survive after gang raping her to the content of their
perverted libido. Further it is reported that he said, they would only have
assaulted the male companion leaving the girl after the rape. This statement
and perhaps the fear of far worse outrageous comments from a remorseless
criminal must have prompted the hue and cry against the telecast of the
interview and the Government’s decision to ban it. But worse still must be the
real reason to restrain the telecast or publication of the interview that would
reveal a pitiless and incorrigible male psyche- the infamous male misogynism.
We must recall that many of the same politicians, and
religious heads who display anger now over the interview were the ones who expressed
that it is women who attract rape and women who go out at night are libertines
and deserve to be sexually assaulted etc. A bishop even termed rape (in
another case of rape some months ago) as God’s instrument to test the will of
the victim and it should be accepted with all grace.A Muslim leader in Kerala called for marrying girls by the age of fourteen as longer they remain unmarried more are their chances of walking the immoral way.
When such men cry foul and wail that they and the country will
be offended if an interview with an unregenerate despicable mind is to be
telecast, it oozes vulgarly of hypocrisy and falsehood. The interview I’m sure
will reveal far more outrageous side of the rapist and generally that indeed being
subsumed in a male psyche, will make apprehensive and nervy many male chauvinistic
and misogynistic men. It is the backlash and the anger that it would create in
the vast sections of the society and mostly among women, what rattles these male
chauvinistic ogres.
The lawyer of the assailants A.P.Singh said this after the verdict sentencing the criminals to death. “…..if my daughter was having premarital sex and moving
around at night with her boyfriend, I would take her to the farm house and with all
onlookers around , douse her with petrol and burn her alive . I would not have
let this situation happen. All parents should adopt such an attitude.” A perfect specimen of the Indian male psyche.
India is a country, were value of life is selective depending upon wealth and trappings of power. This is a country were cows are sacred than the well being of women. This is the country whose government takes the role arbitrarily of a dietitian and decides what people should and must not eat. This is a country where disrobing of Draupadi is not a scene from a legendary mythical treatise- it happens daily and often have the sanction of the male dominated society. This is a country where mythical Ravana is seen as a villain though he did not even once lift as much a finger to violate Sita whom he held captive in his abode; while Rama who was insolent and chauvinistic to send Sita through Agni to purify and ensure her chastity, who later succumbing to the innuendos of a plebian about Sita’s virtue banished her and his twin sons to the wilderness of the forest, is considered a God and an ancient Mosque is razed down to build a temple atop for him. We let women be treated as commodities wrapped inside the black shades of burkha and jihabs, we dictated by archaic religious diktats, deny basic sustenance and rights to women . We ignore the hearts and souls entrapped inside the black fabric drenched with sudate and nauseating with its bacterial odour.
India is a country, were value of life is selective depending upon wealth and trappings of power. This is a country were cows are sacred than the well being of women. This is the country whose government takes the role arbitrarily of a dietitian and decides what people should and must not eat. This is a country where disrobing of Draupadi is not a scene from a legendary mythical treatise- it happens daily and often have the sanction of the male dominated society. This is a country where mythical Ravana is seen as a villain though he did not even once lift as much a finger to violate Sita whom he held captive in his abode; while Rama who was insolent and chauvinistic to send Sita through Agni to purify and ensure her chastity, who later succumbing to the innuendos of a plebian about Sita’s virtue banished her and his twin sons to the wilderness of the forest, is considered a God and an ancient Mosque is razed down to build a temple atop for him. We let women be treated as commodities wrapped inside the black shades of burkha and jihabs, we dictated by archaic religious diktats, deny basic sustenance and rights to women . We ignore the hearts and souls entrapped inside the black fabric drenched with sudate and nauseating with its bacterial odour.
Well these things are not new and the products of western
influence or the age of computer and iPad or iPhones. The wretched side existed ,only
that such heinous aspects began invading our living rooms thanks to the explosion of television
and the voyeuristic TRP crazed television channels. Look at the huge mob and
crowd that flock to police stations and courts, drooling, their dark brownish
face contorted in glee and sleazy pleasure whenever a woman -a rape victim, a
sex worker or a female girl – the victim of abuse is produced! They would all in their pious Indian minds gang rape the hapless victim many times over.
What do these tell?
Are
we trying to wish away the loathsomeness in our minds and hearts by banning such revealing journalistic
work? Are we afraid of being confronted by our alter ego?
Instead of understanding how despicable the male psyche works,
instead of understanding the incorrigible nature of the rapist, instead of acknowledging
that a greater social scourge is subsumed in our midst, we stupidly and
hypocritically cry offense; that we will not let the grand design to tarnish
India’s image succeed by airing the interview; in fact naively by blaming a sinister plot to
undermine India, we exhibit ourselves as a country of thugs, rapists, misogynists
and buffoons.
Indeed we are adept at banning, at proscribing. For, we are afraid
of facts, of reality, of light, we are afraid of our own self, our face. It
hounds us. Doesn't it?
It is not the BBC documentary or the interview with the
rapist that we are afraid of, that rattle us. It is us we are afraid of- our
reflection.
We are just not pious and we cannot make believe we are.