World Sikh News pre­sents a two-part se­ries of es­says to un­der­stand the com­plex­i­ties that plague a so­ci­ety where an eight-year-old is bru­tally as­saulted and mur­dered, the guilty are de­fended through de­lay and awe and how ver­bosity and in­ac­tion from the Prime Min­is­ter of In­dia dowards fails to iden­tify, ad­mon­ish and re­strain can­ni­bals in our midst like the ones in Kathua and Un­nao. WSN ap­peals to read­ers to un­der­stand the per­spec­tive pre­sented in both the ar­ti­cles and see them in to­tal­ity. 

Believe me, the last two weeks have not been easy, squirm­ing through sleep­less nights, read­ing and view­ing TV, on­line videos to make sense of the bar­barism and can­ni­bal­ism in Kathua and Un­nao. As I cog­i­tated, more were added to the list of shame towns. Ir­re­spec­tive of their name, caste, re­li­gion, pro­fes­sion and po­lit­i­cal lean­ing, the per­pe­tra­tors per­son­i­fied can­ni­bal­ism clearly show­ing a col­lapse of ci­vil­ity and or­der in a bro­ken so­ci­ety.

I could not look into the pho­to­graph of the baby girl. I lis­tened to the par­ents of the girl with­out eye con­tact. It was as if, I was also guilty.  The poignancy of the il­lit­er­ate vagabond fa­ther of Asifa was strik­ing when he said, “What would the girl know be­tween a Hindu and a Mus­lim.”

She loved an­i­mals, es­pe­cially horses. When they went astray, the lit­tle one search­ing them fell prey to beasts lurk­ing in hu­man form.  Re­call what Guru Nanak said wit­ness­ing mur­der and may­hem per­pe­trated by Babar. “Eti maar payi kurlane tain ki dard na aaaya? – so much mis­ery and blood­shed, O God, did you not feel com­pas­sion?” God must have felt the pain of the eight-year-old in Kathua.

“Rav­ish Ku­mar of NDTV In­dia has re­minded us again that there is a mob hid­ing in your neigh­bour­hood wait­ing to pounce on you! Be­ware! ”

Hu­man­ity failed. Peo­ple failed. The state failed. The pro­tec­tors failed. The lead­ers failed. In­dian PM Modi failed us with his death-de­fy­ing si­lence bro­ken af­ter five days with a mere in­di­rect ref­er­ence, fol­lowed by pol­i­tick­ing about the crime in a Lon­don talk show and a boast in Mad­hya Pradesh af­ter  pas­sage of a death penalty or­di­nance for child rapists, say­ing “Delhi lis­tens to you.” Be­lieve me, it does not. Delhi was woken from slum­ber by pan-In­dia protests and the fast of Delhi Com­mis­sion for Women chief Swati Mali­wal.

Delhi -the City of Djinns is pur­blind! Delhi is in­sen­si­tive! Delhi is not ashamed even when the UN Sec­re­tary gen­eral An­to­nio Guter­res asks In­dia to pun­ish the guilty in Kathua. The IMF chief Chris­tine La­garde has called Kathua as­sault “re­volt­ing” and di­rectly asked PM Modi to do so some­thing about women in In­dia. For the first time in many decades, In­dia has not termed such state­ments as “in­ter­fer­ence in in­ter­nal af­fairs of the coun­try.”

Can some­one in the cor­ri­dors of power in Delhi ex­plain why it has not yet re­sponded to var­i­ous calls for ju­di­cial and ad­min­is­tra­tive re­forms for safety of women, loudly ad­vo­cated by the likes of Vrinda Grover and Nirb­haya’s mother!

The Delhi bosses have so far not rep­ri­manded in pub­lic or in pri­vate the BJP rank and file and lead­er­ship or done any­thing to reign-in ma­raud­ing mobs and their cheer­lead­ers. The rape ac­cused law­maker from Ut­tar Pradesh -Kuldeep Sen­gar has not been sus­pended from the party. And then we are told “Delhi lis­tens to you!”

In­di­a’s Delhi does not use in­ter­na­tional par­lance to avoid in­ter­na­tional op­pro­brium for non-com­pli­ance of in­ter­na­tional treaties and con­ven­tions. Adi­va­sis are “our own peo­ple” but they can­not be “abo­rig­i­nals”. De­spite ev­i­dence, ir­re­spec­tive of the po­lit­i­cal dis­pen­sa­tion, In­dia fla­grantly de­clares, “In­dia does not tor­ture.” In­dia has not rat­i­fied the UN Con­ven­tion against Tor­ture. Even the Supreme Court while ad­ju­di­cat­ing the mat­ter ac­cepted “the gov­ern­men­t’s com­pul­sions….as this is a po­lit­i­cal de­ci­sion…..” Need I say more!

Nan­dita Rao writ­ing in the In­dian Ex­press says, “The Kathua rape and mur­der is the first, post-par­ti­tion, pub­li­cised hate crime, where a con­scious de­ci­sion was made to tar­get a child. It is the man­i­fes­ta­tion of a grow­ing po­lit­i­cal dis­course which views the mi­nor­ity com­mu­nity, even chil­dren, as de­serv­ing of vi­o­lence.” Shud­der­ing, is­n’t it? She de­clares that call a hate crime by its name. Will In­dia do it dur­ing the pre­sent times of ris­ing chau­vin­is­tic na­tion­al­ism?  

In­dia con­tin­ues to deny that rape is a weapon of war by In­dia against the Kash­miri peo­ple and this has been ad­e­quately doc­u­mented by Amnesty In­ter­na­tional and Hu­man Rights Watch. Whether the pros­e­cu­tion will be able to prove in court or not, the bar­baric as­sault on the girl child was a weapon to dis­lodge the poor, vagabond Gu­j­jar Bakar­wal Mus­lims from the re­gion, in or­der to save the “de­mo­graph­ics of the re­gion.”

When BJP spokesper­son Meenakshi Lekhi tried to wrig­gle out of the sit­u­a­tion with in­nu­en­dos and il­log­i­cal state­ments, she was sim­ply ful­fill­ing her po­lit­i­cal duty.  The il­lus­tri­ous lawyer-pa­tri­arch of the fam­ily of the Lekhis -Pran Nath Lekhi must be turn­ing in his grave. On the streets of Lon­don, a group of women -In­dian Ladies in UK, were chant­ing, “We love Modi.”  Re­mem­ber, “my coun­try, right or wrong”! Hitler said it and what did it lead to? 

Bol­ly­wood vet­eran Amitabh Bachchan said that even talk­ing about Kathua is bizarre. It is sat­is­fy­ing that Bol­ly­wood makes some po­lit­i­cal noise from time to time. It needs to do more of­ten. Bol­ly­wood per­pet­u­ates ob­jec­ti­fi­ca­tion of women and must stop it. The over­loaded dou­ble en­ten­dre against women in the name of hu­mour in the Kapil Sharma show watched by mil­lions on prime-time tele­vi­sion is re­pul­sive!

Fem­i­nists must un­der­stand that hu­man weak­nesses abound and re­spect for wom­an­hood re­quires a gar­gan­tuan so­lu­tion which should in­volve women from all strata of so­ci­ety.

The dis­gust­ingly shock­ing be­hav­iour of the rape per­pe­tra­tor BJP mem­ber of the Ut­tar Pradesh leg­isla­tive as­sem­bly Kuldeep Singh Sen­gar in Un­nao is a clas­sic ex­am­ple of the kind of law­mak­ers we have. Apart from mur­der of the vic­tim’s fa­ther, the naked dance of sup­port drummed up by the BJP from the CM Yogi Adityanath down­wards was demon­strated fla­grantly as they swung into some ac­tion only af­ter be­ing stung by the High court in Luc­know. 

Re­sist­ing the threats is­sued to her, it must be said that it was the brav­ery of lawyer Deepika Singh Ra­jawat that the Kathua case has not been dumped the way the girl was by the crim­i­nals. The mem­bers of the Kathua Bar es­pe­cially its chief B. S. Slathia, who blocked the po­lice fil­ing of the charegesheet, were made to eat hum­ble pie by the Supreme Court but they should not be al­lowed to go scot free. Mere de­nounce­ment by the Supreme Court is not enough. The re­ported ver­bosity of the chief of the Bar Coun­cil of In­dia Manan Ku­mar Mishra left me dumb­founded. 

“Is­n’t it amus­ing that the erst­while home min­is­ter of In­dia P. C. Chi­dambaram calls In­dia, The Re­pub­lic of Im­punity in his weekly Sun­day col­umn of the In­dian Ex­press. Need I re­mind him  that dur­ing his tenure, he was the god­fa­ther of Pun­jab’s po­lice chief KPS Gill and oth­ers whom he gave full im­punity to rape, plun­der, pil­lage and kill. ”

I won­der whether the lawyers in Kathua and the con­stituents in Un­nao-who among other cit­i­zens of the coun­try “must learn to re­spect girls and women” ac­cord­ing to PM Naren­dra Modi, can ever look into the eyes of their daugh­ters, sis­ters and moth­ers!

Sta­tis­tics from In­di­a’s Na­tional Crime Records Bu­reau con­firm that the Delhi is ac­tu­ally the rape cap­i­tal of the coun­try.  Leader-lawyer Kapil Sibal did not hes­i­tate to em­pha­size that “In­dia is the rape cap­i­tal of the world.” Right un­der the nose of the Prime Min­is­ter, the Par­lia­ment and the Supreme Court of In­dia, Delhi is not safe, if Delhi is not safe then what can be said of the other thou­sands of miles of this vast un­man­age­able sub-con­ti­nent? 

Notwith­stand­ing the in­ter­nal de­mo­c­ra­tic churn­ing among the judges of the Supreme Court, jus­tice eludes the cit­i­zenry of In­dia. When will In­dia have more judges, more courts, more po­lice peo­ple, more ac­count­abil­ity and equal­ity be­fore law?

Is­n’t it amus­ing that the erst­while home min­is­ter of In­dia P. C. Chi­dambaram calls In­dia -The Re­pub­lic of Im­punity, in his weekly Sun­day col­umn of the In­dian Ex­press. As In­di­a’s home min­is­ter, he was the god­fa­ther of Pun­jab’s po­lice chief KPS Gill and oth­ers who had full im­punity to rape, plun­der, pil­lage and kill.

To­day AF­SPA -Armed Forces Spe­cial Pow­ers Act, may have been re­pealed in some parts of the North­east, but 11 years of fast­ing by ac­tivist Irom Chanu Sharmila did not be­stir the pow­ers that be. The rapes of protest­ing women by the In­dian armed forces were con­doned as re­port­ing such in­ci­dents and pun­ish­ing the per­pe­tra­tors would be “harm­ful to the morale of the forces.”  Who is ac­count­able for this?

The re­cruit­ment of Spe­cial Po­lice of­fi­cers -two of whom are the ac­cused also needs un­der­stand­ing. Who is a Spe­cial Po­lice of­fi­cer?  A trained per­son­nel? No. The SPO is an un­em­ployed in­di­vid­ual, gen­er­ally be­long­ing to a caste or class dif­fer­ent from those whom he has to pro­tect and is re­cruited into the po­lice force to aug­ment the num­bers ei­ther at po­lice sta­tions or to act as can­non fod­der for the para mil­i­tary and mil­i­tary forces. Strictly speak­ing, he is an il­le­git­i­mate re­cruit­ment, un­der­paid but faces the same risks as oth­ers. Know­ing all this he be­comes care­free and a law unto him­self. The havoc wreaked by such Spe­cial Po­lice Of­fi­cers (SPOs) in the coun­try­side in Pun­jab is not yet for­got­ten.

Rav­ish Ku­mar of NDTV In­dia has re­minded us again that there is a mob hid­ing in your neigh­bour­hood wait­ing to pounce on you! Be­ware! We have seen this mob -the mob of Kathua lawyers, the mob of con­stituents of Un­nao sup­port­ing their un­der­trial MLA Kuldeep Syen­gar and the mob that has at­tacked the house of self-trained artist Durga Malathi in Ker­ala, to tell her “how not to protest through car­toons!”

Over the last four years, an or­ga­nized mob, masked and face­less, has been telling peo­ple what to eat, what not to eat, what to sell, even where to live, where not to pray, whom to marry, which road to walk on and how to jus­tify all this. Be­ware!!

Some­time back Jus­tice Markandey Katju said, “Noth­ing short an up­heaval like the French rev­o­lu­tion can save this great coun­try of di­verse peo­ple.”  If you have any other so­lu­tion for this “biggest democ­racy on the planet” do let me know. Tem­po­rary re­prieves, a lit­tle jus­tice here and there, some out­pour­ing of grief, even croc­o­dile tears, may be some com­pen­sa­tion are only face-sav­ing ges­tures.

 If you like our sto­ries, do fol­low WSN on Face­book.

Half-truths and al­ter­na­tive facts are on a 100 % dis­count sale in In­dia and there are many buy­ers. If you buy, you are a can­ni­bal, and there is no hope; should you re­sist, fight tooth and nail and pre­pare for a rev­o­lu­tion, there is hope. Choice is yours.