How does read­ing and view­ing the Hathras tragedy af­fect a teenager? Is it numb­ing and dis­turb­ing? What should the youth do? How does one em­power one­self un­der such cir­cum­stances? Ob­serv­ing the suf­fer­ing of the 19-year-old Dalit girl and her fam­ily, read­ing about racism in the United States strik­ingly dis­turbed young poet, painter and po­lit­i­cal sci­ence stu­dent Gurleen Kaur. In­stead of be­com­ing de­spon­dent, she took in­spi­ra­tion from read­ing Mar­tin Luther King Jr. She ap­peals that it is time to join hands and fight in­jus­tice against women.

FLIP­PING THROUGH THE PAGES OF A SCHOOL MAG­A­ZINE, I FROZE.  What a co­in­ci­dence?  The sketch I saw brought an on­slaught of thoughts and con­cerns.  I painted the im­age afresh. The dis­fig­ured face of the lady was a re­minder of the men­ace against women, the de­grad­ing po­lit­i­cal abuse of the sys­tem, the ‘mis­use’ of power and au­thor­ity or the dis­dain­ful ‘no use’ ar­gu­ment.

I can see it every­where. The bru­tal as­saults on women, es­pe­cially the so-called “lower caste” women in In­dia, the im­punity pro­vided by the gov­ern­ment to the cul­prits and the po­lice which is duty-bound to pro­tect and pros­e­cute -every­thing came gush­ing through. Not to for­get the anti-Black racism at its height in the US, the stark poverty in Yemen and Africa, the de­ten­tion of an 83-year-old Je­suit priest Fa­ther Stan Swamy work­ing for the un­der­priv­i­leged and mar­gin­alised Adi­va­sis in Jhark­hand, the por­tents for dev­as­ta­tion in the farm­lands of Pun­jab due to new leg­is­la­tion -all have en­gulfed me in the past weeks.

What should I do? Should I do some­thing? Where should I run? Are there no an­swers? Are there any op­tions?

A rat­tled me sought refuge in Mar­tin Luther King Jr’s Let­ters from the Birm­ing­ham Jail. In one of the let­ters to the clergy which ques­tioned his protests, he wrote, “In­jus­tice any­where is a threat to jus­tice every­where.” Fur­ther­more, he said the oft-re­peated words nowa­days, “Jus­tice too long de­layed is jus­tice de­nied.”

We are in the throes of in­jus­tice across the world. Yet, we have the power to change and em­power our­selves and oth­ers and to unit­edly face the chal­lenge and strug­gle for jus­tice and change.

What should I do? Should I do some­thing? Where should I run? Are there no an­swers? Are there any op­tions? 

King wrote “I stand in the mid­dle of two op­pos­ing forces in the Ne­gro com­mu­nity. One is a force of com­pla­cency, made up in part of Ne­gros who, as a re­sult of years of op­pres­sion, are drained of self-re­spect and a sense of “some­bod­i­ness” that they have ad­justed to seg­re­ga­tion; and in part of a few mid­dle-class Ne­gros who, be­cause of a de­gree of aca­d­e­mic and eco­nomic se­cu­rity and be­cause in some ways they profit by seg­re­ga­tion, have be­come in­sen­si­tive to the prob­lems of the masses. The other force is one of bit­ter­ness and ha­tred, and comes per­ilously close to ad­vo­cat­ing vi­o­lence.”

The seg­re­ga­tion of so­ci­ety, the sense of ‘some­bod­i­ness’, the lethargy of the aca­d­e­mics res­onates in Pun­jab, In­dia, the US and the world at large. We clearly see these forces ex­ist­ing in al­most every prob­lem we are fac­ing to­day, in one or the other way.

“In­jus­tice any­where is a threat to jus­tice every­where.” 

Mar­tin Luther King Jr.

With the farmer strikes, there are many who de­spite be­ing farm­ers don’t protest and have priv­i­leges like the po­lice­men and po­lit­i­cal fig­ures who are still work­ing for their own cause and seg­re­gat­ing the pub­lic. If there were no trai­tors among us, en­e­mies can­not harm. An­other ex­am­ple is the lower caste women, who many times don’t stand up against sex­ual as­saults as a re­sult of years of op­pres­sion.

So what do we do? What do I do? Shall we re­main mute spec­ta­tors, be­numbed and men­tally sick?

Kim­berle Cren­shaw, Pro­fes­sor of Law at UCLA and Co­lum­bia Law school in her TED talk, “The ur­gency of in­ter­sec­tion­al­ity” said, “Com­mu­ni­ca­tions ex­perts tell us that when facts do not fit with the avail­able frames, peo­ple have a dif­fi­cult time in­cor­po­rat­ing new facts into their way of think­ing about a prob­lem.”

“If we can’t see the prob­lem, we can’t solve it.” So when we talk about the Hathras rape case, we must see that it’s not just the mat­ter of women, it’s also a mat­ter of caste. In­vari­ably, lower caste women are vic­tims and the up­per caste men are cul­prits. It should not come as a sur­prise to any­one that the un­justly priv­i­leged pan­chay­ats of twelve vil­lages de­fended the rapist cul­prits. What more proof is re­quired?

“If we can’t see the prob­lem, we can’t solve it.”

Kim­berle Cren­shaw, Pro­fes­sor of Law, UCLA

It is very much sim­i­lar to black women fac­ing dou­ble dis­crim­i­na­tion at the in­ter­sec­tion of racism and sex­ism. To which, Pro­fes­sor Cren­shaw said, “Why they are lost lives, don’t gen­er­ate the same amount of me­dia at­ten­tion and com­mu­nal out­cry as the lost lives of their fallen broth­ers.”

If we can­not see the prob­lem, we can­not solve it -it is time to open our eyes, lest they de­stroy us com­pletely. Should the eyes re­main closed, it will strike like the Covid19 pan­demic and catch us all, un­awares!