Once upon a time there was a son. He killed his father. When his agitated neighbours started beating him, he lodged a strong, morally-sound protest: “What sort of a callous, insensate people you are! Have you no values? You are beating an orphan?”
Today, whether you like it or not, “justice” is a “relative” term. What to “X” is justice, is un-justice to “Y”. And to the fence-sitter “Z” it is a non-issue, as long as his interests are not hit by the rascal-son.
Consult the High Court lawyers and find out the opinion of the Supreme Court judges about the plight of “justice”, kicked, pummelled, assassinated and re-assassinated by the practitioners of law and defenders of law and order like our police and paramilitary forces.
Simultaneously, this is also a fact that a God-fearing Police Station In-charge appears to be an aberration. For the maintenance of his swagger, bribe, threat and intimidation look somewhat inevitable. Equally important for him are unprintable words. His profession demands them.
Now we have women in police. They, through the sheer dint of hard work, are gradually nearing the ultimate heights of profession as we see in the case of Ms Kiran Bedi, super-ceded recently by a junior for less than chivalrous and charitable reasons.
For a critical appreciation of the problems of our lady police personnel, one has to keep in view the fact that that by nature, the famine voice is soft, sweet and pleasant. While dealing with a diehard offender, one has to speak in a harsher tone, even unnecessarily. The louder the better. Here they leave much to be desired.
Their second handicap is lack of forcefulness. Enormous, at least, proper force is needed in uttering a telling word. Without its forceful delivery, the desired effects are next to impossible. Justice cannot be done with a hard expression in a honey language. Here too our policewomen seem to cut a sorry figure. Of course, they, mostly unmarried, cannot behave like stern, seasoned mother-in-laws round the clock.
The third limitation of a policewoman is really serious in case she gets married to non-policeman. In this unequal and inequitable situation, the husband feels inclined to alter his sex. Because the ever-alert spouse always behaves as if she is in uniform and interacting with a potential convict. The husband, as a rule, feels insecure, unsafe and ever threatened. This fact robs her and him of the pleasantness of the conjugal alliance.
Her fourth drawback is her unenviable placement in the society. The manner in which the people normally do not like to live in the close neighbourhood of film villains, in a similar fashion the people, particularly the chicken-hearted ones, prefer to live away from the houses of women police officers.
Her fifth minus-point is quite significant and deserves sympathetic consideration. Her case is not for make-up or facial or wax or bleaching or pedicure at all. Her case is against the official disapproval of all that goes to present her before public, especially the underworld, as a presentable person. Yes! She is willy nilly permitted to use small nosepin. But that material should not be dazzling enough: If that is the official point, her counterpoint is: What the ornaments are made and used for? She needs to wear gold bangles, a tantalising nose-pin and diamond-studded ear-rings and necklace made of pearls or Basra. How far her uniform is justified in depriving her of her normal feminine wear?
Her male colleagues, on the other hand, charge her, and justifiably, with the dearth of spontaneity and lack of flow and proficiency in using printable words.
To meet the ends of justice, a crook tried to know the policewomen point of view. The cryptic reply of Women Police personnel is: The entire stock of unprintable words is male-oriented. Until and unless the gender-biased stock of unprintable words is dispassionately revised, we, women police personnel are found to remain disadvantaged. In fact, just revision would not help. Because the exercise however dexterous and thorough won’t do. The reason is the innate infirmity. There is something basically wrong with the abusive language. Prejudice flows in its blood-stream. The flaw is there in its very genes. That has to be undone or eliminated. There is not a single unprintable word, which may put women in a positive position. That is the first and foremost real handicap. The suspects and the criminals just laugh, at us, and laugh heartily when we use the current, popular male-oriented, foul vocabulary.