Why are we here? We are here to say, that if the Delhi Police is running an ad campaign about violence against women — you must have seen the large hoardings everywhere — why is there not a single woman in these ads? They have instead a Hindi film actor, Farhan Akhtar, exhorting us ‘Be a Man, join me in protecting women’. I want to ask — what about the brother who cuts his sister’s head off when she dares to marry into a different community? Is he not playing the role of a male protector too? This machismo is not any solution to the problem of violence against women — it is the root of the problem itself. This is what we need to reflect on.
It’s clear that in this country, if you leave out the women’s movement — everything else, the government, the police, the political parties, the judiciary; when they speak of women’s ‘safety’ they are speaking from within a specific patriarchal understanding of the term. No one is talking about protecting her ‘bekhauf azaadi’, or her freedom to live without fear. These protests on the street today, I hope they continue and grow, because this is where the answer lies — not with CCTV cameras, with death penalty or chemical castration. I am saying this because even though our rage is justified, I am afraid of some of the solutions that are being offered. If the conviction rate for rapists is low, how can death penalty be the solution to the crime? In your entire procedure, the one person you have failed to take seriously is the complainant who was raped. It is an entirely different matter that the laws for rape are also extremely weak and flawed — for instance, if an object is inserted into a woman’s genitals, it is not included within the definition of rape. The recent incident on the bus when tried in court, will not include within the description of rape that the men inserted an iron rod into her vagina — the reason that she is battling for her life today.
Yesterday on television, I heard Sushma Swaraj say something in Parliament that I found disgusting and highly condemnable. She said, “If this girl survives, she will be like a walking corpse,” Why? If she survives, I believe she will live with her head held high, just as she fought off her assailants. She struggled, she fought against sexual violence and that is why she was raped — to teach her a lesson. There is barely a woman here who has not at some point fought for her dignity on the streets ofDelhi, or in its buses. There is not one amongst us that has not found herself alone in such a situation. When we do this, we are told that we are inviting trouble; that we are asking for it. I read – and I don’t know if this is true – that when the girl regained consciousness in the hospital she asked if the rapists had been caught. Her will to fight is still alive. She is not a corpse. We salute her will, and say that those who survive rape are not walking corpses. Rape survivors are complete, strong, fighting women and we salute their spirit.
The last thing I want to address are the people who say not to mix politics with rape. We cannot disregard politics as insignificant; we do need to talk about politics. There is a culture in our country that justifies rape; that defends the act through the words of people like KPS Gill who said that women who dress provocatively invite rape, and many other such high ranking officials like him. If we are to change any of this, we need to politicise the issue of violence against women, find out what women are saying about what is being done to them. The government has to listen. Just shedding a few crocodile tears within the confines of the Parliament is not enough, it is not enough to scream ‘death penalty’ and wind up the issue. I find it funny that the BJP is demanding death penalty for the rapists, when within it’s own constituencies it gets goons to chase down girls who wear jeans or fall in love with members of minority communities — saying that women must adhere to ‘Indian sensibilities’, or else. We need to create a counter culture against this ultimatum. We need to create a counter politics, one that asks for the right for women to live freely without fear.
I don’t want to say a lot more; apart from the fact that it is surprising to me as well that the police is ready and waiting to fire water cannons at us here. I was under the impression that there were protests everywhere in the city today. Shouldn’t the government know this much, at least, that our rage will not be washed away with water cannons, or beaten out of us with sticks? It is shameful that the government and the police who are ever willing to defend the actions of rapists are now poised to attack those fighting for the rights of women.
Translated from Hindi by Nishita Jha
