Midnight’s women

“At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance. It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity.”

-          Jawaharlal Nehru, 15^th August, 1947.

It is a mournful irony that sixty-five years after the midnight on which the words above were first uttered there came another midnight on December 16^th 2012 wherein the undeserved fate of a paramedical student left a nation shaken, shattered and shell-shocked.

The stroke of the midnight hour in 1947 may have sought to bring with it an awakening to life and freedom of a nation, but the midnight of 2012 only saw an awakening to a brutal reality that an Indian woman was not free to meet a friend, to walk on the street, or to catch a bus to reach home at night. She wasn’t free from advance, ambush and assault. The stroke of midnight in 1947 may have sought to bring with it the utterance of the long suppressed soul of a nation, but the midnight in 2012 only saw the utterance of brutal abuse. In a place where a woman is stalked and molested; where it is customary to kill her before she is born, where she is groomed only to be a good wife without freedom of thought and expression, where she is blinded and her face left marred by acid; where she is forced to incarcerate herself for not meeting dowry demands: there is indeed a nation with a soul still suppressed and contained. The stroke of midnight in 1947 may have sought to bring with it the dedication to the larger cause of humanity, but the midnight in 2012 only saw the turn of this cause into a barbaric joke; where the Indian woman was coerced to serve in the flesh; where she was stripped, whipped and worse. What happened to her freedom and to the humanity that was promised her upon independence, at the midnight’s stroke?

Government’s reaction:

This gang-rape of the 23 year old paramedical student can hardly be considered an isolated event. This incident was only a trigger to the everyday security problems that women face while using public transport. Protests of gargantuan proportions which followed the rape gave vent to genuine anger which remained suppressed until then. Crowds braved the cold and gathered all over the capital to seek justice for the victim. The government reacted more on the lines of assuaging protests rather than addressing the core issue: it blocked protestors by barricading all roads leading to India Gate, the Chairperson of the Chhattisgarh State Women Commission stated that women were equally responsible for rape as they displayed their bodies and indulged in obscene activities, the President’s son (Abhijit Mukherjee) who is an MP from Jangipur termed the protestors as shundori mohila (beautiful women) who were ‘dented and painted’, the Prime Minister belatedly made a statement a week after the incident.

However soon there was a shift in government thinking. The government broke its repose and saved itself from being a subject of blame after it set up 2 commissions in response to the incident. The first was to investigate the rape itself, its report being due on the 26^th this month. The second was under the chairmanship of Justice J.S. Verma, a retired Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. This commission was to review all the prevalent laws on sexual assault and recommend changes so as to cope with the growing needs of the nation. The commission came out with its report on the 23^rd of January. Following which the President passed an ordinance on the 3^rd of February based on the findings of the report.

President’s Ordinance vs The Verma Committee Report

The President’s ordinance is a measly attempt to sidestep the real issue of substantially amending legal provisions regarding sexual assault. The President’s claim of having incorporated 90% of the recommendations is far from accurate. He has merely cherry-picked from the report and discarded its most hard-line recommendations. It is evident from the report that if the government were to implement a majority of its provisions the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) and other policing and law enforcement laws would have to undergo a drastic change. Hence, the government found it rather convenient to enforce ‘safe’ and ‘non-controversial’ provisions. Here is a study:

1. The Committee sought criminalisation of marital rape, the ordinance rejected it.
2. The Committee recommended that politicians against whom charges of sexual assault had been framed be disallowed from contesting elections. The ordinance rejected it.
3. The Committee recommended that the AFSPA be reviewed so as to enable ordinary Sessions Courts to try officers accused of rape. The ordinance rejected it.
4. Police reforms were recommended, inter alia senior officers should be held accountable for their juniors committing rape. The ordinance rejected it.

While rejecting some parts of the report, the ordinance has implemented certain recommendations such as widening the ambit of ‘sexual assault’ by including offences such as stalking, voyeurism, acid attacks, indecent gestures or words and inappropriate touch. The ordinance enhanced the punishment of rape to involve death penalty and chemical castration in certain cases contrary to the Committee’s recommendations.

What is important to note is that the government has remained tight-lipped on providing an explanation as to why some recommendations it has adopted and others it has rejected. There has to be a reasonable basis for such differentia or else it may be termed at best: arbitrary. It is clear that the moot issue is not what the government has done, but what it is in fact unwilling to do. The ordinance is scheduled to be tabled and put to vote in the current budget session and one can only hope that the afore stated questions raised by the author be raised on the floor of the House. However, there has been no sustained pressure from opposition parties on the matter till date and hence it may be unlikely that controversial provisions of the Report would be looked into comprehensively.

Indian dichotomy:

The hastily drafted ordinance may have managed to appease angry protestors, yet only time can tell whether it will stand the test of what our society is dealing with at present. Since 1995-2011, rape cases have increased by 50%, abductions and kidnappings have more than doubled, cases of molestations and sexual harassment have doubled, cruelty by husband and relatives have increased three-fold. It would naive to attribute the entire chunk of this staggering rise to the fact that women are reporting more of such cases than they used to. Thus, in which way is Indian society evolving? How can women feel safe in a country with such statistics? Is it so that European liberal and rational thought which was arguably superimposed by British rulers never really dug deep into Indian society? Is it only a small section of India’s elite who adhere to equality of rights and opportunity or at least pretend to do so, while the rest of India reverts to feudal conjectures which remain entrenched in every corner of the Indian polity? Is India caught between two divergent belief-systems? If yes, then we are a living dichotomy. The 2012 gang-rape and the subsequent uproar was indeed heartening; however a long journey lies ahead to give the Indian woman that which she was promised more than six decades ago. And it is only when her long suppressed soul finds utterance India will awake to life and to freedom.