DR. S. AUSAF SAIED VASFI suggests measures to make India worth living for girls and women with dignity and grace.
Is the ambiance of plural Bharat – the basic question is – salubrious for the efflorescence of virtue and de-efflorescence of vice? Have we an atmosphere where the honest and upright are honoured and the dishonest and cheats are looked down upon? Have we an environment in which the chaste, the faithful and the modest earn encomiums and sluts, housebreakers and call girls are hated?
YES OR NO
If your response is in “yes”, it is a matter of unalloyed gratitude. But if the response is in “no”, why do you not start reform from the scratch? We say so because not only the individual character but the national character is also involved in the question.
Mind it that the national graph of crime, particularly crimes against woman, girl child and girls is rising at a galloping speed. The irony is that now New Delhi is also called a crime capital.
According to official figures, crimes against women in the national capital shot up by 70% in 2013 as compared to 2012. The Delhi police gave this disturbing information to the Supreme Court recently. After the December 16 gang-rape, the number of such offences has doubled. The number of offences against the fair-sex registered till October 15 is already more than the total cases registered last year. The number of rapes has doubled since 2012. Until October 15, 2013, 1,330 rape cases had been lodged as against 590 registered during the same period last year. The cases of molestation and eve-teasing also went up manifold compared to last year. While 727 molestation cases were registered in 2012, the number in 2013 until October is 2,844. While 1,750 cases of kidnaping women were lodged until October 15 last year, over 2,900 cases have till now been registered.
You live in the proverbial fool’s paradise if you think that by sermons or laws or other cosmetic changes you can alter the situation. You will have to restore dignity that we have robbed from her elegant persona.
The nadir was touched recently when the US ambassador to India, Ms Nancy Powell said: The American students do not come to India because of the fear of rape.
OUR FEELING
Our feeling is that India as a whole should feel tightly slapped by the US ambassador at this sharp statement. New Delhi has not denied her remark and this is an indirect admission of the ground reality.
To quote Her Excellency verbatim: “The concern for personal security and perceived increased danger to women as a result of the rape cases was perhaps a factor in US students’ decision regarding study in India.” Powell said in reply to a question asked in the course of a chat with students at the Xavier Institute of Social Science (XISS) in Ranchi. The students at XISS agreed in the presence of Powell that they too faced sexual harassment on the streets. “Even we Indian girls face a lot of catcalls and are subjected to teasing outside the college campus almost every day,” said a student who was part of the interaction session but did not want to be named. Asked to elaborate on her observation, the US envoy said: “What I said was one of the factors for US students’ decisions regarding studying in India.”
Do you need more proofs of Indians’ barbarity?
HOW TO REACT
One really does not know how to react when a Supreme Court judge is charged by a female intern with sexual harassment. The accused is a retired judge of the Apex Court, who denied the allegation with a straight face.
Leave the victim for a while, had the accused forgotten the dignity of the institution and the chair he happened to occupy? Should we remind his lordship that the integrity of Creaser’s wife has to be above reproach, above board and beyond criticism?
Can mere laws prevent the births of the Gangulys? That is why we submit: Go to the roots of the problem and the roots of the problem lie in the lap of mother, the lap of father, the lap of sisters and aunts, so on so forth, and above all, the atmosphere around.
A celebrity, Mr. Tarun Tejpal has, not long ago, been charged with ‘rape’ by one of his female colleagues. His contention is all was consensual. The argument boils down to the point a consensual adultery is not a crime. We beg to differ. Adultery is adultery. And it is not negotiable.
LIVING-IN
Equally insulting rather horrendous is the new institution called “living-in”. Absolutely free from any kind of solemnisation, presence of witnesses or elders or friends, a male and a female, rabidly enter into an agreement which they think empowers them to live like the married couple. To us rather to many, the act is outrageous and has no sanction of decency. It is uncivil and runs into the face of nobility.
Equally outrageous is the verdict of the Delhi High Court, delivered recently in which a Bench of Justices Kailash Gambheer and Indermeet Kaur reduced the punishment awarded by the trial court in 2010 by relying on mitigating circumstances, mainly that convict Mukesh Kumar was a young man of 22 years at the time of offence in 2005. To their lordships, the act of the convict was not ‘preordained or preplanned’ as there was no evidence that the victim’s body was intentionally ripped into two and Kumar has no criminal antecedents.
Here is another heart-breaking story in which a 5-year old, physically challenged girl was allegedly raped by a 24-year old man in Beldara Seoni village in Riapur district of Chhattisgarh. The Additional SP Raipur disclosed that the mother of the child had died during her birth and the child was living with her grandparents.
UNCALLED FOR
When a girl is deflowered or a woman is assaulted, her life changes totally. She carries a stigma for which she is not responsible. And the rapist roams on the streets like a victor. What the society usually ignores is that a raped girl feels degraded; she feels assassinated; she feels dispossessed of her dignity, self-esteem and what not. This is the argument which necessitates death for her tormentor. It mitigates her outraged feelings almost completely.
But the frequency of the crime and the shamelessness with which it is committed compels us to ask: have the parents no control at all over their growing up children? Or, is pervert sex in the genes of Bharat or extramarital sex Indians’ second nature or profanity in our blood? The pointed question is why promiscuity is so popular in our country that foreign students are reluctant to enter into the temples of learning and our own daughters and sisters think twice before hitting the semi-lit roads and streets.
FROM PRIMARY LEVEL
Where do we go from here?
1. Our thinking is respect for women should be taught from day one in the primary schools up to the college and university levels. Particularly to be inculcated in the plastic minds of children are certain values like chastity, fidelity, and character. The children of both the sexes have to be taught how to walk on the streets. The ideal manner of walking on the street is walk with your eyes downcast, staring at none. Respect has to be shown to all and sundry, particularly the neighbours and the elderly.
2. Up to the university level there must be segregation of sexes for no opportunity at all to mixing of males and females.
3. Marriage age should be lowered while spending on marriages should be curbed which would made marriages cheaper and dowry redundant.
4. Make extramarital sex illegal, unlawful and a taboo, punishable with death. The AIR and the various official and private channels should illegitimise promiscuity, consensual sex should be outlawed.
5. Fifthly and finally, rapists should not be hanged in the darkness of jails. They should be hanged in public and at public places where hangman’s first move would vanish the lasciviousness of the rapists in a jiffy. And then India would be worth living for women, girl child and the girls.
FEARLESS TRAVEL
We are of the view that the day this formula is successfully tried, a woman, all alone, will be able to travel from Kashmir to Kanya Kumari and Kerala to Kutch with fear of none in her heart other than that of Allah.