“Ugliness is in the eye of the beholder
But may also be in the looking glass;
Vanity thinks it will never grow older
And yet that judgement will come to pass!”
From Green-Eyed Proverbs (Ed. by Bachchoo)
During my current so-journ in India three events dominate the newspapers: US President Barack Obama’s visit to Delhi, the forthcoming elections for the Delhi state and, only perhaps because I was involved, the Jaipur Literary Festival.
Kiran Bedi, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s nominee for chief ministership of Delhi, has not published her party’s manifesto but has made statements to the effect that the safety and welfare of the women of the city will be one of her central concerns.
As chief minister she will not have control of the Delhi police who report to the Central home ministry, but as an ex-police officer she will manifestly address the issue and go some way towards making the city safer for women.
Mr Obama in his various addresses and broadcasts made the success and safety of the women of India a theme. He referred to the fact that he had two daughters and was dedicated to their prosperity. What he, in the company of Narendra Modi, was saying that the potential of India can only be fully realised when women have safety, liberty and equality.
In Jaipur, there were several platforms from which the cry and concerns of the feminist movement were heard.
Driving through any city in India today one may see the hoardings with posters of the Prime Minister making respect for the daughter and the education and progress of the female Indian his clarion concern.
Even walking through Lodi Gardens in Delhi I noticed a dustbin painted with the face of a girl with a slogan urging respect and education for the females of the nation.
About time. Obviously, as any good Leninist knows, no Mr Modi,
Mr Obama, Ms Bedi or literary festival initiatives can go any way without the mass involvement of women themselves. Wouldn’t the nation welcome, instead of stalwart young and old women jogging around the parks of our cities at all hours of the day in salwar-kameez or in track suits, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-style squads of feminists in civilian clothes with lathis parading in their thousands?
These would vow en masse to end female foeticide, child marriages, dowry demands, the inequality of education between boy and girl children and furthermore training to be vigilantes against molestation and rape?
The time for such a mass movement is right and it can do what no government initiatives or pronouncements by militant feminists can.
I submit as evidence for this conviction my experience in Britain where in the Seventies, there existed a phenomenon called “Paki-bashing”.
It entailed the random assault on people of Asian origin walking the streets and minding their own business. The police were well aware of the persistent crime but took no initiative to stop it.
The Bangladeshi youth of the East End of London, where “Paki-bashing” was especially prevalent were goaded into defending their community.
The racist joyriders would drive into the Asian community in vans and cars and step out to beat up lone Asian men walking the streets.
In another dimension of offence, the racists would throw rubbish, excrement and even lit Molotov cocktails through the letter-boxes of Asian flats on working class housing estates.
The Bangladeshi vigilantes formed themselves into squads who would gather down the streets or patrol the housing estates and challenge the marauding racist gangs. It worked. The newspapers, politicians and police took notice and “Paki-bashing” by and large came to an end.
I don’t know if the same determination will deter the male elements of Indian society who prey on women. Allow me to admit with some shame that when I was in college in Pune, I would join with the gang of boys I went around with in shouting playful things at women on campus.
The female leader of the women’s National Cadet Corps was a very attractive young lady who looked stunning in her khaki uniform and when she passed us in the grounds of Wadia College boys would shout “Oi! Jhansi ki Rani!” And if a girl passed by with a colourful parasol someone would inevitably shout “chhatri vaapus!” “umbrella return!” They were not obscene or objectionable slogans and were intended playfully, but I suppose in this day and age they would be characterised, perhaps rightly, as intrusive on the young women’s space.
The “Nirbhaya” incident of rape has rightly caused concern and discussion all over the world. In the UK, I am asked if India has become some haven for rapists. I have to say that I am no sociologist, criminologist or statistician, but as far as I can gauge the droit du seigneur, the right of upper-caste men to rape lower-caste women existed in rural India and was not exposed till the victims began to have the confidence to come forward, having absorbed the truth that they were not born victims but equal citizens in democratic India.
As far as rape in the cities goes, it is partly owing to the rapid capitalist expansion of India. The displaced people from villages flood into the cities and live in urban slums. In their rural environment, age-old rules of conduct and caste and class prevailed. In the urban slum, none of these obtains.
No pattern of prescribed behaviour prevails. What does prevail among the young men of these fledgling urban slum communities is a sense of envy at the females who seem to be getting ahead of them through education and enlightenment. Rape becomes a weapon of resentment.
The slums and shanties in every Indian city are politicised and controlled by one party or other who treat them as votebanks. Is there no mechanism whereby these controlling parties, whether it is the Aam Aadmi Party or the Shiv Sena, can be induced to take on the education (read “deliberate brainwashing”) of their male populations towards respect and fear of women?
