BBC documentary on nirbhaya has
divided the opinions sharply across the nation and I must say that both the
sides in favor of the ban and against the ban have in no way the intention to
show women in derogatory way or to show India in bad light or any intention to
give the rapist a platform to give a hate speech and just like the divided
opinions across nation I have myself walked from one viewpoint to another
thinking various point of view in last 2 days … but since the ban was hardly of
any use as the material was available on internet outside India as well as in India
easily I did watch the program and I must say that it was worth watching …”I am
sorry mummy , I gave you so much trouble” these were the last words of that
girl seconds before she breathed her last , you cannot stop tears rolling down
your eyes thinking of those moments and you don’t need to be a parent to relate
what would have the parents of nirbhaya gone through… I mean how can any parent
bring up a child fighting all the odds
in life to be left down on roads dying with her intestines and every organ pulled
away from her body because someone thought it unworthy of a girl going out at
night.
However to my own surprise the
maximum amount of disgust and repulsion I got watching that episode went to some
rather unusual candidates and they were the defense lawyers of those rapists. I
could still understand the background from which those rapist came from and the
reason they thought what they thought but my head hung in shame hearing what
the defense lawyers said. And it was then I realized why it is important for
this episode to be telecasted across India. Because What they said was no
different than what we hear sometimes from people of various religious
organizations across different religions, sometimes openly and brazenly by head
of police departments across different states, sometimes by head of village
panchayats, sometimes by some sitting judges and MLA’s and MP’s, sometimes we
see these same biases in the dictats of Khaps and sometimes we see these biases
in the skewed sex ratios in states like Haryana, sometimes we see this dirt in
the human trafficking resultant of a skewed sex ratio in different parts of the
country, sometimes we see this in the growing number of illegal abortions
clinics running in every corner of this country, sometimes we see this in the
dowry system prevalent in almost every household of this country, sometimes we
hear that in our own circle as we move in different sections of society from a
normal hairdresser in a hair salon to a vendor in vegetable market and we have
heard that all sometimes said openly and sometimes from the most educated and
literate people not so openly but with an undertone where the logic of their
arguments try to color the truth of the
bias we have against women.
And it is to fight and confront
this ugly truth of our society that we need to watch this program. It tell us
how in so many ways we all carry or become the carrier of some of the same
thoughts and same biases in our society. And this is not a small battle which
can be won overnight, it’s a battle of beliefs so deeply ingrained in our
society that it takes decades to fight it through. But not to take away any
credit from what our society has achieved in last century is no less a feat in
its own. It is not as we are not fighting it or trying to change but the pace
at which things have changed over past few decades that the desire of the evolution
of our beliefs have not travelled at the same pace. And it is this haft hearted
attempt that is the biggest threat to our society. That people who believe in
equality still don’t believe it fully, that time has come when this halfhearted
effort won’t do us any good anymore.
But what about the other view which
is in no way against any of what I have written above but has some legitimate
concerns regarding the image on the country taking a beating due to such news
broadcasted across the world. They are questioning us just as we are
proclaiming it is right to understand a rapist’s mindset will tomorrow we will
have to hear a hate speech to understand the mindset of rioter. Probably it was
the thought that whether this program is giving the rapist a platform to set a
misogynist agenda across the nation was what forced the govt to seek a ban to
this documentary. However complicating this question any further is not helping
us anymore. A country’s image is not just formed or broken by a documentary,
neither does it give any kind of satisfaction to find solace in the number of
rape cases in other western democracies. Ultimately it is the question of more
than 600 million women who have given birth to every man present in this
country. And the welfare of these 600 million women goes to add to the welfare
and the image of this country. A century back women were burned on pyre of
husbands, banning news or film on that would not have served us any purpose, it
was the collective effort of the govt and people which took us out of that
abuse. Today we are again reminded by this program how deep in our mind are
biases against women. And it is not impossible to fight it out, a
well-intentioned effort by all sections of society can actually see us winning
through this within few decades. Also another important point is that while a
few may understand that such a program may bring bad name to the country but
does the youth of the country which is 18,19,20 really cares about that? Is
he/she really ready to buy this argument of country’s prestige coming in the
path of the fight against overcoming these biases? Is politics not about doing
the art of what people really aspire to achieve or are we ready to do a
politics in a vacuum of our own imaginations? The truth is that what happened
with Nirbhaya should not happen with anyone else, Let this one story be played
again and again and let us relive that horror a thousand times so it doesn’t
take us millions of nirbhaya to recognize that we have a problem which needs to
be addressed.
