Slicing and dicing the recent rape in the capital

On the night of 16^th of December 2012, a 23 year old woman was brutally raped in a moving bus in the heart of our capital by six men. Then they threw her out on the road and fled. The Delhi Police cracked the case in the next 24 hours and took five of the six accused into its custody. As I write, the whole nation is enraged by the fact that this particular rape was done in the most brutal manner that the survivor had to be put on ventilator for the next few days and is even now in a critical condition. The physical and emotional violation which took place was barbaric and abhor able and the common man of this country is once again on the streets asking that justice be delivered at the earliest.

As before, and now again, the systemic failures within the government are coming out strikingly in public gaze. The Delhi government washed its hands saying that the Delhi Police is not under it, but comes under the Union Home Ministry so its hands are tied. The Union Home Ministry did step into the scene and elaborated on the measures it has taken and are going to take to prevent recurrence of such incidents. But my question is –Isn’t this a mockery of the trust of Delhites who through voting have elected a legitimate government but this government is not empowered to ensure their security. They are actually looked after by the Union government as the Delhi Police come directly under the Union Home Ministry. This is absolutely unreasonable and illogical. And what accountability does the Union Home Ministry have anyways, to ensure that Delhi‘s three crore citizens are safe, when they are not the real representatives of the Delhites. It is high time that we put the Delhi Police under the Delhi Government so that it looks into law and order situation than guarding the various ministers and VIPs of the Central government. The Union Government anyways has umpteen numbers of Central Paramilitary forces under them which they can utilize in case of any exigency. And in situations of conflicting opinions the Union Ministry could be vested with overriding powers over the Delhi Government.

The Union government has fared no better in discharging its duties, so far at least. To pacify the irate protesters at the Raisina Hill who were demanding that justice be done at the earliest, the union government had flimsy solutions like extending death penalty to cases of rape, immediate suspension of the beat constables who were in charge of the area where the rape took place and some others. As a matter of fact death penalty is already in the statutes and does get invoked in the rarest of the rare cases irrespective of the matter whether it is a rape or not. In fact the person to be hanged before Ajmal Kasab, Dhanajoy Chatterjee was found guilty for raping and murdering a 13 year old minor. Not only this, they have failed miserably to engage with the protestors. No minister was seen at the scene engaging or at least listening to the demands of the people. And it is only this apathy which got shown and lead to the protesters breaking the barricades at the foot of the North and South Blocks in the evening of 22^nd December, and clashed with the police. Why is this government always reactive and why it cannot be proactive in such instances is my question as a common citizen of this country. Look at the Obama administration. After the shootout at Newtown, Connecticut the way it engaged with the people was quite mature and healing. Soon after the unfortunate disaster took place, the President made a statement and later also attended the memorial service and then he came on television to propose and seek support for the steps he plans to take in controlling the misuse of guns. A brief outline of the plan was provided and even the timeline was set for January. All this show some seriousness of the Obama administration in dealing with the issue at hand. These are the ways in which the government of the day can reassure its constituents. Not by huddling up inside their plush offices and then showing up in Press Conferences with all the more illogical and tardy solutions like establishing a judicial commission to look into crimes against women. Can the government of the day win the trust of the masses in such immature and sluggish ways? This government is like a tortoise. When situations are hostile its head is always inside the shell and only during election does it come out.

Coming to the societal aspect of rape, I am so bemused to find elements in our own society who can do such dastardly act to a woman. It seems to me that the moral fabric of our society is under severe strain and the collective conscious has shrunk terribly. And there are telling facts which convey this. As per the data served by the National Crime Records Bureau, in 1971 there were 2,487 cases of rape which were reported in India and in 2011 there were 24,206 rape cases which were reported. Almost 870 % increase in rape incidents. Now this does call for some introspection. When the nation is developing the crimes against women and especially the heinous ones as rape is on the rise. Also there is data which makes us believe that not only a vast majority of these cases have survivors who were in age group of 18-30 years but also that the majority of the perpetrators of these crimes have been neighbors. These are some inferences which can be drawn. Now this is really discomforting. We usually tend to rely on our neighbors for help in times of need. The Bible says-“Love thy neighbor as yourself”. And it also commands that “You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor's”. And if our daughters are not safe even within the precincts of our own immediate neighborhood then it’s a matter of grave concern.

Ironically even literate states like Kerala are high on rape and cases of incest. You cannot be treating half of the population like thrash and still have a healthy society. The recent cases of incest which have come to light especially in Kerala are also of grave importance in this context and indicate the fact that our families have become dysfunctional at the first instance. As ‘family’ is the foundation for primary socialization for any individual in his or her formative early years if there is a virulent strain within our families then there is all certainty that this would infest the society also, and that to in an amplified form. And therefore incest magnifies and becomes rape when it transcends the limits of family to that of the larger society.

Our society needs a course correction now at least. Moral education is missing today from the school curriculums. The whole syllabus has become entrance exams oriented. As long as the syllabus is catering to these exams, parents also are not bothered. Because for them, what is important, is their child’s future with regard to his or her better employability. Whether he becomes a responsible citizen of the country or not, is secondary. If a society has to be functional then they has to be an agreed code of conduct. And having a uniform curriculum is one way of achieving this. We can only inculcate right values during the formative years of a child. Once he is out of school, professional studies take precedence over other things. Under such circumstances an overhaul of the school curriculum is the need of the hour. We need to have lessons imparted to the next generation on values of tolerance and teach them to practice respect towards women, in all walks of their life.

We are living in an anomic situation today wherein such social ills exist. But once these corrective actions take root in the society the change would be visible. But for such a change to happen and its fruits seen in our lifetime what we need is concerted action. We need action from those in politics, education, and civil society and above all, from us, the citizens of this nation.   

Are we better off with the execution of Kasab

The 21^th November, 2012 news read that one of the ten terrorists who was part of the 26/11 carnage in the city of Mumbai and the only one to have been captured alive, Mohammad Ajmal Aamir Kasab was executed at the Yerwada jail in Pune. Kasab and his fellow terrorists were involved the loss of 166 lives over the next three days after 26/11 until the security forces neutralized them in a surgical operation conducted by the National Security Guards. Of the dead were military personnel, police officers, foreign nationals and ordinary Indian citizens.  The city of Mumbai was scared forever from the tragic turn of events.

A special trial court was setup to hear the case. The defence lawyers changed many times due to various reasons. Finally the special court gave its verdict on 6^th May, 2010 awarding capital punishment to Kasab. This was challenged at the Bombay High Court which upheld the judgment of the trial court. And later Kasab moved to  the Supreme Court which also upheld the death penalty to Kasab in its judgment dated 29^th August, 2012. Even the last option, the one that of submitting a mercy plea to the President of India was invoked for Kasab. The President as per constitution has to act on the advice of the Council of Ministers (Art. 72) and once the Home Ministry also rejected the petition, the President gave his consent and the execution followed.

Now what was interesting is that our politicians across party lines were quick to gather some brownie points from the whole episode. Some said, this is the victory of India, others termed it as honoring the wishes of the Indians and still others said that this would send a strong message to our neighbor. But my argument is a simple one. What is the result we are trying to achieve by executing the one who had anyways embarked on the journey to India as part of a ‘fidayeen’ squad, and was anyways prepared to die on 26/11 itself at the first place. In retrospect the execution of Kasab I feel was just mere tokenism on part of the government? And what was more interesting that the principal opposition party was quick to jump on the bandwagon and rake up the issue of Afzal Guru, the one found guilty of the attack on the Parliament in 2001, and demand his execution too. Look what politics and political parties have stooped to, in our times. In the absence of any clear ideological backbone they have reduced to using death convicts as crutches for survival and sustenance of their appeal among the masses.

On the sidelines of preparation of the execution of Kasab there was a the debate unfolding in the UN General Assembly on the 19^th Nov,2012 on having a moratorium on capital punishments in the world. In this debate India voted against having any such moratorium. Altogether 110 countries voted for the motion i.e. to have a moratorium, and 39 were against it. India was among Iran, Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, China, Japan, Singapore and the US who all voted against the motion. Now I have a slight discomfort with this. Though in India, the actual figures of executions are far less, as compared to that of countries like China and Iran. The previous execution was carried out in India in 2004, when India hanged a man convicted of raping and murdering a 14-year-old girl in 1990. But still is it befitting for a nation like ours which espouses the beliefs of non-violence and ‘satyagraha’, to be found in such a club of nations. I certainly feel that all the Gandhian principles and philosophies of our founding fathers have gone for a toss. Are our actions as a nation in consonance with the long cherished values of peace and non-violence espoused by them?

Nevertheless there is a silver lining among the dark clouds. One has to compliment the Indian judiciary which persisted four years to take the case to its logical conclusion. Our judicial framework provided the best possible legal arrangements for Kasab from having a lawyer to submitting a mercy plea to the President. The entire gamut of options was exercised. This should re-affirm our faith in the legal framework of our nation which grants all, the right to explain and place before the court her or her side of the story, even if it’s a non-citizen terrorist like Kasab. And as far as long as death penalty is concerned as long as this option is available in our statutes it would continue to get invoked in the “rarest of the rare cases” as was this one.

Now the prime issue here is not of Kasab who, as the honorable Supreme Court noted, never showed any sign of remorse or repentance throughout his prosecution and therefore his rehabilitation was ruled out by the apex court itself. But I have a larger point to make here. Kasab in his confessions clearly stated that he came from an impoverished family and was lured into joining the ‘jihadists’ for money and for leading a decent life. Kasab was illiterate as his lawyers have pointed out that he knew to neither read nor write. He even spent some time working as a daily wage laborer before joining the LeT. The story of Ajmal Kasab corroborates the fact that poverty, illiteracy and unemployment are the greatest scourges in any society.  And with these issues looming large in our own society can India really claim victory from the execution of Kasab? Executing someone who was already been put behind the bars or had already decided to die several years’ earlier, serves little purpose. I understand that no amount of words or actions are enough to console the ones who lost their loved ones in the shootout in the wee hours of November 26, 2008 in Mumbai and the kith and kin of our security personnel who fought to free Mumbai from the clutches of terrorists. Especially the courageous act of Tukaram Ombale, the valiant police officer who laid down his life which led to the capture of Kasab, will always remain etched in golden letters in the history of our country. But one thing is sure. Unless we get our act together and fight the ills in our society we would be no better than the society which Mohammad Ajmal Aamir Kasab came from. Therefore the question remains are we really better off with the execution of Kasab?

Lessons for Shiv Sena and Indian Politics

Bal Thackeray may have been the epitome of divisive politics in the country, as has been portrayed by at his demise. But one cannot deny the fact that his following especially in Maharashtra has been mammoth.

I presume the theory of - ‘bhumiputra’ or ‘sons of the soil’ as propagated by Bal Thackeray, was a result of his, not so good experience during his early life when he was  a mere political cartoonist in one of the English dailies. His cartoons lampooned the Congress governments of the day and flayed their policies and painted them as anti-marathi. Over time his ideas, through his cartoons started finding favor with the Marathi ‘manoos’.  Later he started his own cartoon weekly called ‘Marmik’ and subsequently in 1966, once his following had reached the required critical mass, founded the Shiv Sena at the Shivaji Park, the same ground where his funeral pyre was consigned to flames. By virtue of pure rhetoric and good public speaking skills he managed to galvanize the opinion of masses that would swear by his ideology and could go any extend to follow his dictates, in letter and spirit. No wonder in 1995 Shiv Sena secured 73 seats of the 288 seats in the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly. This has been the best performance of the Shiv Sena till date. And later in 1996 it sent 15 Members of Parliament to the Lok Sabha of the 48 seats in Maharashtra.

Now that’s the beauty of the Indian Politics. You can reach the citadel of Indian Democracy- The Parliament, with the help of a sub – national ideology. Only pre-condition is that you should have the numbers on your side. People who would buy-in to your kind of ideology. Example is the BJP, which had secured just two parliamentary seats in 1984 general election and later under the ‘Ramjanmabhoomi Mandir’  banner was catapulted to become the ruling party (under NDA coalition of course) of the country between 1998-2004. But has since faded to being the opposition, with the retirement of Atal Behari Vajpayee. Similarly Shiv Sena also stands at cross roads today. There is very little optimism that BT’s son Uddhav Thackeray, will be able to fit into the shoes of his father, who by all means had a larger than life image in the Indian political diaspora.

I have just two recommendations for Shiva Sena. First, try to have a more inclusive in terms of the ideology. Over the past elections, data shows that Shiv Sena has steadily been losing its ground. In 1999 the seats it won were 69, in 2004 it stood at 62 and in 2009 it again fell to 45. Now this calls for some introspection. Second, get your act together and ensure that your leadership is able and has a futuristic vision. Charismatic movements have the danger of being short lived. It is driven by the charisma of the leader in most of the cases. With BT demise Shiv Sena is likely to face struggle, as has been the case with Azad Hind Fauj after Netaji.

If you watched the US presidential election debates you would realize on how progressive the ideas on which elections are fought, are. Healthcare, jobs, taxes, friendly environment for small business and education loans are the substantive issues on which votes are garnered. Even in the US there are a host of communities like African Americans, Hispanics, Jewish Americans, Arab American and Asian Americans. But in US politics one would rarely be able to find the strains of communalism or policy of appeasement to that of any sub-national identity today, at least not overtly.

As an Indian sometimes it occurs to me whether in our country such mature politics would ever find place. Perhaps American democracy has matured over time (since 1787) and we are still in the nascent stages of growth. But my only contention is one. Can poverty and illiteracy wait for the dawning of sense and statesmanship in our politicians?