Are we 'Man in a Beast'?

The Delhi gang rape case has shook my soul to its deepest foundations and has filled me with utter shame, regret and sorrow, for being born in this ‘free’ country, for being born as a ‘male’ - supposedly the more powerful of the two sexes, but still being unable to do anything except lie down and think. The incident has forced me to think, why is it that we always need a quake to wake us from our slumber, and why after every quake we are spurred to run hither and thither only for some time, till the quake has subsided or we have found a safe exit out of the old, shaky building we live in. Why we only react and that too for something bad happening in the immediate vicinity, and why we don’t proactively strengthen the foundations and pillars of the building, so that it can save us from any such quakes from slowly destroying our very civilization.

Before I continue, I will take some time to also think about the girl, the victim who endured, and is fighting for her life (whatever has been left of it). I sincerely pray to the almighty forces to give her all the strength, as it seems rest of us hardly have any, or need any.

They are demanding for death penalty for the six accused in this case. This demand, a very natural one in this furious atmosphere, only tells me about limitation of our minds to think what can be done to give justice to the girl and to set things right, for had there been anything more dreadful than death, they would have demanded that too. I am almost sure though, that the demands will not be met, for our penal code doesn’t have any such provision for incrimination for rape, the maximum punishment being 7 years of rigorous imprisonment. Even a change of law, as being demanded, won’t help for the Article 20 of our constitution doesn’t allow retroactive criminal legislation.

Irrespective of the fate of these accused, which I believe would not be better or worse than what they deserve, it is important to decrypt that why do such incidents happen in first place. And then along with the demonstrations and the candle light processions that are being held to demand justice for the girl, we must as well take a resolve to remove the reasons that culminate into such ‘heinous’ incidents.

From the facts about this case that have been disclosed by media till now, it is evident that the six accused had gone out for a joy ride, not premeditated to be a rape ride. It was the rage that one of the ‘eccentrics’ felt after a brawl with the girl’s friend, that they decided to ‘teach a lesson’ to both of them. It was a sense of power that the six felt vis-à-vis two of the victims, that led them to take the first step towards a situation that later went out of control, and up to a level which I am sure they must be regretting at this moment. Under a sense of unabated freedom, to me it appears that an act of violence against any person is bound to end in a similar way. They man-handled the girl to vent out their anger and logically concluded the action by raping her to ‘teach her a lesson’. Had there been one of them with some hormonal imbalance too, apart from psychological sickness, he might have even ended up sodomizing the poor girl’s friend. It is also important to note here the reason why the brawl started in first place. Apparently, the reason was that the accused considered the freedom of the girl to walk in a free country at night hours with a male friend, hurting their patriarchal ego or against their wretched morals.

From the whole incident, as I perceive it, I filtered out three interconnected social-psychological issues that we, as a society, are diseased with. First is anger and violence. Today, we are becoming unendurably intolerants, with our blood always boiling, temper always on fire. Anger, my friends, blocks our humanly senses, leaving no space for rationality, and lets the beastly tendencies overpower us, making us act and react impulsively, often to our regret later. I don’t know if this is because of some ecological changes in our environment, or due to lack of better avenues to channel this energy, but what I know is that the growing anger needs to be controlled. The anger is what I see, when I open daily newspaper, be it in form of communal riots in Assam, shoot-out in US, murder of own parents by a son refused to be given more money, merciless beating of student by teacher leading to death, conflict between Israel-Palestine, diktats of Khap Panchayats or suicide by a distressed lover.

Closely connected to ‘anger’ is a false sense of power. We all feel angry sometime or the other. But we don’t always end up shooting or raping people. We don’t show our anger by trying to mess up with a hungry lion, or some dreaded armed terrorist. We vent out our anger against the weak, who we know won’t or can’t retaliate. So the false sense of power, or superiority or being mightier than the other, be it in status, physical strength, political clout, color, caste, class, age, money or gender, is what is leading to such acts of violence with impunity. We look for easy targets to show our power, by humiliating and mutilating them. Gandhi wrote, “I fail to understand how men can feel themselves honored by the humiliation of their fellow beings”. So do I. Over and above that how can we, to our convenience, decide who is more powerful? We all are born free and equal human beings. It is just a matter of time that some are apparently strong in the present context. But still they choose to tread over the weaker to reach higher heights, trying to perpetuate their power, but stooping irrecoverably low in the process. The spectacle of a person pulling aside his car to step out and incessantly beat a poor rickshaw wala, only because he failed to hear the haughty honks or the car owner, is both common and heart rending. Some of us may feel bad about the rickshaw wala or some may curse him instead. Neither the former of us would do much to help him, nor the latter take out some time to think of the problems of the rickshaw wala. Perhaps we are so used to such things happening and we are too busy to care. And also we have found it easier to endure this injustice, whether being inflicted upon us or others, than to take the painful path of bringing a change.

This brings me to my third observation, about the incident i.e. accepting the weaker status of women. Whenever any cruelty against women happens, or I must say is taken into mass cognizance, we see men, women, elders, children, cutting across diverse backgrounds, and considering themselves modern enough, calling for a change, a change in laws to be more women friendly, a change in public services towards being more gender sensitive and a change in society as a whole to respect women’s physical and mental integrity. They stage protests, demonstrations, slut walks, candle light processions, shouting slogans to highest pitch and volume and at least, flood facebook and twitter with words of concern. These people include a father, who will go back home to start rechecking his account books to see how much short he is for his daughter’s dowry; and a mother, who will resume making a list of demands from his son’s to-be-life partner’s family; a brother who will go back to hit his younger sister who meddled up his stuff; a son who will go back checking out and eve teasing the girls of his college; a grand-father who will be angry over his daughter-in-law for not covering her head; or a grand-mother who will cuss at her grand-daughter for wearing stylish clothes and going to college rather than staying at home to help her mother. This is bound to happen because we are all hypocrites. And this is what we are to realize and set right. We must start respecting women at our home. We must teach our children and younger siblings about the gender equality, rather than letting them become the baton carriers of this male dominated society to the next generation. And this is not an elusive dream, but already a reality in our own country, in the seven sister states of north-east where dowry is considered a mystery. Unfortunately, however, many of us still consider those of our fellow friends as foreigners. We need to change. But the change must begin at home, not at India Gate or at facebook. Though it is important to voice out our feelings and to tell the girl victim that people do care, what is even more important is to act truthfully for what we stand.

Finally, it is more important to not only keep our focus on this albeit very important but not the sole issue. We must purge ourselves of all evils in and around us. This rape got attention, so many do not. Why not ask the political parties to set up fast-track courts against their members charged with rape, murder, extortions etc. Also, as Justice Katju says, rape is not India’s only problem. We, the people of India, must show a similar unity and fury over corruption, farmer’s suicide, malnourishment, poverty, unemployment, untouchability.

Let us shed our fears and masks and come out together to clean our country, but only when we are clean from within. Then I am sure we will be more capable to deal with the obstinate rest of them.