During the second innings of the late Mrs. Indira Gandhi in parliament, a Member of Parliament – you know which party he belonged to – hurled an unprintable word on her.
The elegant lady cast a cold and contemptuous glance at the foul-mouth; the Congressmen paid back in appropriate coins and the obscene word rather words were expunged from the parliamentary proceedings.
That, however, is not the news. The news is: the next day, a cartoonist of an English daily, drew a few lines, suggesting a parliamentarian, who was absent yesterday, asking another one in a hushed, confidential manner: What exactly was the word that was used ?
My morbid feeling is: abusive words can be spoken without speaking at all. For instance, take the dialogue between a father and his son. The father asks his son to marry. The son replies what about the immediate neighbour’s daughter? The father coolly says: No, she is your sister. The flabbergasted son points a girl on the second floor, about whom the father says with equal equanimity: No, she is your sister. The son refers to another, yet another, yet another girl who all were living with their respective parents on the several upper floors. In each and every case, the God-fearing father’s reply was: No son, she is your sister.
Tired of the monosyllabic replies, the boy went to his dotting mother and bleated, Mom! About each and every girl in our block, Father says: No son, she is your sister. Please tell me what should I do? I want to marry.
The affectionate mother, consoling her almost-sobbing son said: Don’t worry my boy, marry any girl you like. Your father is not your father.
Everybody wanted to know what Ms. Rita Bahuguna Joshi said that made Ms. Mayawati so furious. A reporter, Pragya Kaushika (Times of India, July 17) quotes from the FIR filed in Moradabad against Mrs. Joshi:
“…One police officer took a helicopter which consumes Petrol worth Rs. 5 lakh…in the first district he gave Rs. 25,000 to the rape victim, gave Rs. 25,000 to another newly married rape victim…he gave Rs. 75,000 to a rape victim’s family as she was murdered. Throw this money at Mayawati and tell her that if she is r… we’ll give her Rs. 1 crore as compensation.”
At least, Mr. Rahul Gandhi has defended the accused, though like all and sundry, he too has taken exception to the less-than-acceptable language.
The point in question, I feel, is not language. The point in question, blissfully ignored by the commentators, is the philosophy behind compensation for rape.
Can we infer from this revolutionary thesis, propounded by the UP Chief Minister, that adultery, fornication and their near and distant cousins and nieces like sodomy and incest too can, in future, be considered for compensation?
O Tempora, O Mores!