Delhi’s Many Shayan Munshis

The candles are out once again. This time they are for Radhika Tanwar, the Delhi college girl who was shot dead by what is presumed to be a stalker or a rebuffed suitor. Students are going to take out a protest march about the rising crimes against women. Police inefficiency is being blamed.
There’s nothing wrong with all of that. But let’s see things in proper perspective.
Radhika was shot in broad daylight as she was descending from a foot overbridge to go to her college. It was morning and there were a large number of people on the foot overbridge. They heard some noise, saw a girl collapsing, saw someone running away.
No one stopped him or even tried to.
No one came forward to help the girl. Not even when the police arrived.
No one came forward to give a statement.
No one saw anything. They stood around watching.
Maybe if someone had rushed her to a hospital, she would have been alive and been able to say who could have shot her. Right now, there are conflicting statements, with her friends saying she was being harassed by someone and that her family had beaten someone up and the family denying it completely. The truth may never be known because no one is cooperating. And yet there will be demonstrations and Facebook pages on Justice for Radhika.
It’s easy to blame the police for everything. Sure the police isn’t the epitome of efficiency. It is, on the contrary, the epitome of callousness and corruption. But let’s face it, the police cannot be present on every kilometer every minute. You cannot blame the police for the shooting. The police can be blamed if it had not acted promptly. From all accounts of the current case, there was no delay on the part of the police once it was informed of the incident.
This time the callousness and the delay was by all of those present when Radhika was shot.
A name flashes in my mind. Shayan Munshi, the model and aspiring actor who was a star witness in Jessica Lal murder case. His initial testimony nailed Manu Sharma, who has been convicted for Lal’s murder. But he later turned a hostile witness. He did it because he must have been either threatened or browbeaten. Or simply because he didn’t want the hassle of police questioning and court cases. Maybe he thought, `is jhamele mein kyun padun (why should I get involved in this mess?)’, a typical Delhi reaction.
Munshi has been criticised and ridiculed for backtracking the way he did. He is now going to be tried for perjury. But what about all those people on the foot overbridge where Radhika was shot dead? When they stood around watching, didn’t they also think, `is jhamele mein kyun padun’?
I have dealt with this subject in two earlier posts, Middle Class Angst and Nithari and Us.
Delhi chief minister Shiela Dixit is right. Civil society, she said, cannot remain mute spectators to such incidents. The police cannot act without our help. If we are not going to vigilant and helpful citizens, we should stop demonstrating against the police. And demonizing Shayan Munshi. We are all Shayan Munshis.

Candles Aren't Enough

When, a month or so after the 26/11 attacks, I had written my post, After the Candles, some friends told me I was being cynical. I had criticised the swish set of Mumbai for their meaningless candlelight vigils, spewing venom at politicians and `the system’, calling for tax boycotts and use of Rule 49 O of the Conduct of Elections Rules, which allows one to register presence at the polling booth and say that one is not exercising the right to vote. I had said these people need to go beyond lighting candles, that the system is made up of individuals and each one of us needs to change for the system to change.
But the voting turnout in the third phase of elections, has shown that, finally, all the ranting on Facebook and on television channels was just that - idle ranting. Voter turnout in South Mumbai (the hub of all the protests) was a mere 43.33 per cent, less than the 44.22 per cent turnout in 2004.
I had written a feature for The Telegraph on 4 January chronicling individual efforts to bring about change and had spoken to some Bombay-ites who were attempting this. One was Owen Roncon, an entrepreneur but better known as Priya Dutt’s husband. He was working to promote active citizenship and said confidently: "Things are going to happen." Maybe I should go back to him and ask what happened.
Another veteran social activist - Samuel Paul of the Bangalore-based Public Affairs Centre – had sounded a note of caution: "This will not be easy to sustain. All this is more a reaction to a crisis than a lasting shift to a higher plane or a mass movement." How right he was.
This is not the first time I have been accused of being cynical about the middle class. In April 2006, I had written an article, Middle Class Angst, in DNA, after candlelight vigils in Delhi and Lucknow and sms protests. This was seen as THE definitive sign of middle class awakening and that this section was shaking off its apathy. I had questioned this view and said in that article, “It's so much easier to light candles and send outraged SMSs. That's a quick salve for our collective guilty conscience.”
That feeling has only got reinforced since then. I am particularly impatient with all this candle lighting business. It has become a meaningless fad. Someone gets murdered and if the case is not solved within two days, there’s a candlelight vigil, with posters demanding justice for the victim. The merits or the difficulty of the case don’t seem to matter. The candlelight vigil worked in the Jessica Lal case because the issue was so outrageous – the murderers had been acquitted by the court after the case dragged on for years because the police botched up on the investigations. But now we have candlelight vigils at the drop of a hat.
But ask these very people to cooperate with the police in solving crimes and they’ll immediately back off. Ask them to not turn away when they see something wrong being done – or worse, not do wrong themselves – and they’ll ignore you.
The middle class is not capable of ushering in any lasting change. That requires an effort that will make our lives a little less comfortable, as I explained in Middle Class Angst, to which I am providing a link. Heck, they’ll have time for nightlong vigils but they can’t go out and stand in a line for an hour or so to vote. This is the middle class awakening that we are all applauding?
Another Bombay-ite I spoke to for the article in The Telegraph was Vishal Dadlani, the singer (of the Vishal-Shekhar duo) who filed a petition against the media coverage of the 26/11 attacks. He said: "It's no longer about sitting in drawing rooms and criticising the state of affairs. Each individual needs to stand up and say I will do one small thing to change things."
Forget it Vishal, just forget it.