My Goodbye to the Braveheart

The sun stayed away and a biting icy wind blew as the family members of India’s Braveheart collected her ashes from the crematorium at Dwarka where she was cremated yesterday under a blanket of fog and policemen.
As I reached the crematorium, the first sight that met me was khakhi uniforms of the police. There were ten of them from constables to the assistant commissioner of police, Dwarka. Two constables stood guard at the gate as the family members performed rituals at the platform where she was cremated, not allowing anyone inside. Apparently, the police had kept watch all night as well.

The police outnumbered the others present there, six journalists (four of them photographers) and a couple of others who appeared to be with Congress MP Mahabal Mishra. Mishra was  was there helping the family, coming out briefly to discuss various arrangements with the ACP, especially about facilitating the family’s travel to Varanasi. 

Soon the girl’s family came out with the urn wrapped in a white cloth. It was a very small group, less than ten of them.  `The ashes should not be taken to the home,’ Mishra explained to them as he instructed police officials to make arrangements for the urn to be kept at the police post in Dwarka Sector 1, close to Mahavir Nagar, where her family stays.
The family looked at us gathered there. Perhaps they were wondering who we were and why we were there. The expression on one young boy’s face – a mixture of bewilderment and grief.
I couldn’t bring myself to say anything to them. After all, I was an interloper in their grief.
So why did I go?
When news of the girl’s death broke, I had posted on Facebook that I hoped the media would give her family privacy and not hound them during the cremation. But the manner in which the cremation was orchestrated by the police and the government angered me. Pressuring the family first to cremate her in Ballia, and then to cremate her before dawn (against Hindu custom where it has to be done after daybreak) just so that people don’t come to know (even as political heavyweights attended the funeral) disgusted me. She was a victim of utter indignity before she died. Couldn’t she have been given some dignity in death?
One battle that all women who complain about any form of sexual harassment wage is that of being labeled as the problem. By first making her father issue a statement asking for calm (when the protests were going out of hand), then taking her to Singapore and then cremating her in such a hush-hush manner, the government and the police sent out only message - that she and her dead body were a problem that needed to be disposed off without a fuss.
I went today to say in my own way that she was not a problem. To salute her.

Stop this hysteria

Sunday’s gangrape incident in Delhi is so appalling that it’s easy to go over the top in reacting to it. It makes one feel angry, helpless and extremely vulnerable.
But I am tired of seeing hysterical crowds screaming about death penalty, castration and demanding that everyone from the police commissioner to the chief minister resign.  
The main target of public ire is the police. There are calls for the police commissioner to be sacked. He has to explain to the High Court why the bus passed five police pickets without being stopped. One lawyer is planning to initiate action to ensure that policemen who were on duty on the stretch that the bus drove on that night are penalised. CPM leader Brinda Karat is also the same.

But this is one case where the criticism of the police is totally. Here’s why.
One, there was nothing – absolutely nothing – to arouse suspicion about the bus and the horror being perpetrated inside. It was a luxury bus, with tinted windows and drawn curtains. That’s quite normal. So how can anyone, police included, know what was going on inside? It probably was being driven in a way that it doesn’t attract attention. That could be the reason why the bus passed five police pickets without arousing suspicion.
Two, the police acted promptly once they were informed about the incident. No one is saying there was any delay in the police reaching the scene where the girl and her friend were thrown out of the bus. The bus was traced within hours and four of the rapists were arrested within twenty-four hours. What more could the police have done in this case?
In fact, the real indictment should be of the public. According to a story in yesterday’s Indian Express, when the police reached the spot where the girl and her friend had been thrown out, they found people just standing around, looking at them. “Not one of them took off a jacket or piece of clothing to cover the victims. There were women in cars that had pulled over but they did not approach the victims,” a policeman was quoted as saying.
When people scream into television cameras that women are being raped every day and the police is not doing anything to check it, do they even know what they are saying?
Even as people rallied at India Gate, protested outside the Police Headquarters and the chief minister’s residence, a three-year-old girl was raped in a playschool by the husband of the woman who ran it. In an overwhelming majority of cases, rapes are committed by people known to the victim. A neighbour/colleague/classmate who offers a lift. A family friend/relative who drops in home. A teacher in school or college. How can such rapes be prevented? Who can anticipate them to prevent them from happening? What is important to see is if the police acted promptly in each case. If it did not, then, by all means, ask for action against the police.
Preventing rape cannot be a police responsibility alone. It is also about having well-lit roads. It would make far more sense for resident welfare associations to fight for roads around their colonies to be well-lit, instead of lighting candles for the victim.
Preventing rape is also about good public transport. Why did the girl and her friend board that bus, which was not a regular public transport vehicle? Let me make an educated guess. There is no bus from Saket (where they had gone to see a movie) to Dwarka. So they took an auto-rickshaw up to Munirka from where there is a bus to Dwarka. Given erratic bus timings and the fact that it was getting late, when a bus taking passengers for Dwarka came, it must have been a blessing in disguise at that time. It would be far better for Brinda Karat to press for a proper and reliable public transport system that can ensure that Delhi-ites can travel safely at any time of day. Let’s just keep aside the inconvenient fact that women are groped and molested even within buses in broad daylight for the time being.
Preventing rape is also about each one of us being alert. But we are so inured to irregularities happening around us all the time that we just don’t react. So a bus not authorised to pick up passengers openly does so; we see it and keep quiet. Even if the bus had been driven in a rash manner, that is so common a sight that nobody would have thought of informing the police.
Above all, we don’t want to get involved. Even if someone had seen something amiss, they would have preferred to look the other way.
Perhaps the only person who made sense in the charged-up crowds at India Gate protesting the horrific gangrape was a young long-haired man who asked – can all of us who are gathered here take a pledge that the next time any of us see a woman being harassed, we will not remain silent and will go to her help?
This was perhaps one of the few voices to articulate what is being lost in the hysterical responses across the country – that all of us are responsible for what happened that day.
But it is so much easier to take one day off, scream at rallies and blame the Authorities and the System for everything, isn’t it?

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.

Killing the nation’s honour

The Supreme Court has issued notices to eight states and the Central government on the issue of honour killings. It has asked them what steps they have taken/will take to protect young couples from the wrath of their families. This is in response to a public interest litigation filed by an NGO, Shakti Vahini.

And as I write, the National Commission of Women chief Girija Vyas is talking on television about the need for tougher laws to deal with honour killings.

There's no disputing the fact that honour killings are a blot on society. And khap panchayats have no role in a civilized society and democratic polity. Also, young people have a right to marry whom they want to. Parents too have a right to oppose and point out problems of inter-caste/inter-religion/same gotra marriages. But they don't have the right to force their children to obey their will. Or kill them if they don't listen.

But can the issue be dealt with through judicial intervention? Or through tougher laws?

I have my doubts.

This is a mindset issue, which goes beyond kangaroo courts in rural hinterlands. It exists in urban areas, among so-called highly educated, sophisticated families. Remember the Rizwanur Rehman case in Calcutta? Or the Nirupama Pathak case in Jharkhand? Indeed, the marrying-beneath-one's-status issue is a universal one, going beyond religion or caste or gotra.

The NGO and the Supreme Court are probably going to focus on how runaway couples are tracked down and murdered and are not helped by the police. In fact the police often takes the side of the families. Think again of Rizwanur. Or of Rajnish Sharma of Jammu who was found hanging in a Srinagar police station. He had married a Muslim girl who alleged that her family and the police had colluded to murder him. Or of the trumped up rape charges that are always slapped against the boy. In fact, the Supreme Court came down strongly on the police on this count.

But let's go back to another Supreme Court order in December 2009. Two of its judges reduced the death sentence pronounced on a brother who killed his sister's husband, who belonged to a lower caste, and his father and brothers in 2004 in Bombay. The sentence was reduced to life imprisonment. Just read what the two judges - V S Sirpurkar and Deepak Verma - observed while reducing the sentence:

...Caste is a concept which grips a person before his birth and does not leave him even after his death. The vicious grip of the caste, community, religion, though totally unjustified, is a stark reality. The psyche of the offender in the background of a social issue like an inter-caste-community marriage, though wholly unjustified, would have to be considered on the peculiar circumstances.

These are learned judges making statements like this. How do you expect a relatively less educated policeman from a conservative, rustic background to react when a girl's family comes to him talking about ghar ki izzat and all that?

Look at the complexity we are dealing with. In the Bombay case, the brother - Dilip Tiwari, a brahmin - was assisted in the murder by two people from a lower caste - Manoj Paswan and Sunil Yadav. Obviously they found nothing ironic in the idea that they were helping a high caste man murder someone from a lower caste. After all, ghar ki izzat ka sawaal hai. If a girl from their families were to marry someone from an even lower caste, clearly, they would mete the same treatment to her.

Am I saying that the problem of honour killings should not be addressed at all? Not at all.

But I wonder what a court can do in the matter. Maybe ask states where this is more rampant to ensure that the police help harassed couples. That's easily said, but how will it be ensured?

Should we have a separate law on honour killings? What will it say? Murder is illegal, whether for honour or not. So what are we talking about here?

The only way this problem can be addressed is through a mindset change. Someone should have challenged the order of the two Supreme Court judges who reduced Dilip Tiwari's sentence and the death penalty should have been restored.

Politicians have to come out unequivocally against khap panchayats and not entertain them at all. Naveen Jindal should have lost his Congress membership the day he asked a Times of India journalist who went to interview him on his support of khap panchayats whether her parents would allow her to marry someone from the same gotra.

Mindset changes don't come overnight. They take time. But laws and judicial activism also will not solve the problem overnight. It all needs to go hand in hand.