(December 2012)
I feel scared living in this country because anything is amenable to manipulation here. I have worked in the corporate sector as an investment banker (though it’s history now), in the legal sector as an advocate, and in the society at large as a writer — all in the urban areas. The urban society can easily be classified into the power-elites, the elites, the skilled workers, and the unskilled/less-skilled workers/urban poor — Ram Singh, who is the main accused in the Delhi medical student rape case, can be said to be belonging to the unskilled/less-skilled workers/urban poor category. In Delhi and Bombay, the politicians fully and completely control the urban poor — they can’t even sneeze without the permission of the local politicians/goons. The elites, i.e. the nouveau riche entrepreneurs, the successful independent professionals, the high ranking corporate/government sector employees; i.e. the managers, etc., are under a strong influence of the pseudo-liberal capitalist ideology, which is an amalgamation of the conservative and the Liberterarian ideologies. The skilled workers, i.e. the clerical staff in the government/corporate sector, the dependent/struggling professionals, the small entrepreneurs, etc., are a disoriented class strongly under the influence of the conservative ideologies (the saffron ideology, the religious fundamentalism, the regionalism, etc.). The power-elite class is obviously enjoying the status quo.
The status quo is beneficial to the power-elite in many ways, but, in the present context, the discussion on the status of women is relevant. Except for the power-elite, I have experienced all the above-mentioned classes closely; however, I exist in such an inexplicable situation, where I have clearly understood the agenda of the power-elite. The women across the board enjoy an inferior status. Amongst the power-elite, but for few exceptions, she has been restricted, more or less, to the status of a house wife/queen. Amongst the elite, she enjoys a more powerful status but only if she has been lucky enough to rise high just on the strength of her talent & talent alone; however, the majority in this category end up working both as full-time housewives/GFs of the elite male counterpart and as independent part-time skilled workers; so, they enjoy the overall status of an elite but the independent status of only a skilled worker; a few also enjoy the independent status of the elite sex-workers serving the power-elite. However, the status of the woman amongst the workers and the urban poor is most deplorable: The woman in these categories is considered as a natural subordinate of the male counterpart, deserving of the physical violence at the hands of the male counterpart as a norm; however, ironically, they are also expected to be the bread-earners; many women in these categories also double up as sex workers serving the elites, the power-elites, and even the workers, mostly out of desperation, but, at times, also voluntarily.
The above statuses of the woman are not natural but the result of a well-orchestrated strategy of the power-elite, who are mainly men. There are various modes through which these statuses are reinforced, both directly as well as subtly, as in the “Pink Chaddi” campaign, the “Legalization” of Prostitution campaign, the “Cleavage Power” campaign, the alimonies, the beauty pageants, etc., which are nothing but reinforcements of the statuses of the woman as sexual objects, which women at large fail to understand. The death penalty for the rapists is yet another such mode, which is obviously being promoted at the behest of the power-elite. The sole purpose of such a move is to enlarge the ridge between the man and the woman. The power-elite want to completely bar the movement of women into power positions, which they can do best by limiting their growth to those positions where their sexual identities become the most important qualification, which is achieved best by protecting even the most trivial attacks on their sexual identities accompanied by very harsh punishments in the cases of transgressions; however, while allowing the power-elite and the elite to rape them with impunity by relegating their positions to that of the sex-workers of the power-elite and the elite.
This time the power-elite have made fools of the aspiring elite, i.e. the educated youth, who are agitating randomly at various places in Delhi. I visited India Gate today; the groups agitating there were completely disoriented: one group was shouting for chemical castration of rapists — eunuchs have now started preferring chemical castration to physical castration to enjoy their preferred status of no-male eunuchs and are eagerly waiting for the launch of pills which can provide them permanent chemical castration; those who want to provide for chemical castration of rapists fail to understand that their choice of punishment also relegates the status of eunuchs to that of rapists and vice versa — another was shouting for death penalty for rapists, yet another for justice in general; to my surprise, there was none seeking gender sensitization, the lack of which is the root cause of crime against women. I had much rather seen posters like, “The way to our hearts also lie through our stomachs, so, guys, learn cooking!” Now the government also seems to be budging: They are thinking of providing death penalty in the “rarest of rare” rape cases. The “rarest of rare” is a loose concept, which has not yet been defined well enough to enter the law codes; how can any government even think of any such adventure!
The present rape case of the Delhi medical student, which has led to such a wide scale agitation, is not just a rape case; it is a case of aggravated physical violence against a woman; so, the commonsense approach to this problem is to differentiate physical violence against woman from that against man, and the exercise should then lead to a deliberation towards providing a harsh punishment for physical violence against woman.
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