Prof Bhaskar highlights the ongoing systemic issues and struggles for justice against women, highlighting the RG Kar Medical College incident, despite the recently concluded International Women’s Day, exclusively for Different Truths.
Be it immediate past on August 9, 2024, or remote past, women in India’s non-violent great civilisation continued to live or die premature in stress and fear. It remained a perilous life-journey for them. Some describe the system as patriarchal; some describe it as Brahminical; and hence try to show that the perilous path is embedded in the system as described by Manu and other great scholars. Of course, less acknowledged scholars tried to the contrary like Vidyasagar for education-led emancipation of women in India. Let me make the analysis a little bit elaborate.
Notwithstanding the presence of a serious woman Chief Minister in West Bengal for more than a decade and the sane presence of a Woman President as the Head of the State, the serious crime was allowed to happen in the early morning of 9th August, 2024 – a young woman doctor on duty was murdered and alleged raped in the premier Medical College of central Kolkata – the RG Kar Medical College. The method that was followed by the state on the circumference followed the Hathras episode in Uttar Pradesh a few years ago, where the raped-cum-murdered body of the young girl was converted into ash without the presence or knowledge of her parents and guardians.
Atrocities on Women in India
All these happened now in the year 2024 in women-honoured West Bengal notwithstanding the feminist movement launched by the academic-elite. However, this is a continuation of atrocities on women in India, whether recorded. And record that remains as history remains questionable for the killer writes the history, not the caged or killed one.
If one goes in mythology of India’s civilisation, one may find the necessity of ‘Lakshman Rekha’ for Sita, or one may find five husbands to protect Draupadi. None could be saved – the processes and the consequences are known even if the epics have remained questionable as history.
In the current case, the rape-cum-murder was institutional because the victim was on-duty employed by the competent authority of the Hospital under the jurisdiction of the government of West Bengal. I had the idea that the state would fight for justice – for the sake of the victim. The core state went to the contrary – it tried to find one and only one scapegoat. Yes, it is RG Kar case of August 9, 2024 – the black day in the history of Renaissance (undivided) Bengal.
Gender Division of Labour
Rather than beating around the bush, let me come to the core point. Is India’s society and culture pro-rape of women? The answer is straightforward – the status of women in India’s society is one of subordination, be it in the family, in the public domain, in the gender division of labour. Probably that is reinforced by ‘Putrarthe Kriyate Bharja’, a daughter is given as a gift to reproduce – she is passive following Sankhya philosophy, chained or bonded following Manu, and a decorative object following Vatsyayana. Position of authority in matriarchy, of course, is different and is an exception.
Many of the temples in India that I visited had names like Sati ‘X’ Mandir and so on. Sati was there – the life of the married woman was conditioned by the longevity of her husband. The case of Roop Kanwar in Rajasthan documented by Mark Tully reminds us how cruel the society can be towards women and how their right to live with dignity remains demolished. My conversation in disguise with some of the supporters of the crime in the Roop Kanwar case opined ‘otherwise, that is unless the widow is set on a funeral pyre, she would have been an object of public consumption’.
Age of marriage for women was fixed at that point where she entered the cycle of puberty – the husband could be of any age. If history, with all its aberrations, is not forgotten, it took decades to raise the age of a girl to be married from 11 to 14. Let there not be much elasticity in false glorification of India’s past despite Lord Rama, Buddha, Chaitanya, Gandhi.
Crime against Women
Even if the married girl somehow survives, there are chances to face domestic violence, being trafficked, stigmatised, abandoned and all that. At the extreme, she may be accommodated in the brothel for public consumption and a limited few to being institutionally converted into ‘Devdasi’, a concubine and by whatever name she is addressed. I did not find parallel nomenclature for men in India.
In case of Roop Kanwar, not many questions of consequence were raised, for the girl was drugged and dragged into the funeral pyre of her dead husband, and probably it was the state of ‘Jawahar Brata’ performed by ‘pure’ women. Many questions have been raised and are being raised in the case of ‘Abhaya’ for it was 2024, it was Kolkata even though it had a notorious history of Sati Daha. Also, one must distinguish between murder in a funeral pyre and murder-cum-rape in an institution – the most serious was that the victim was on duty as a doctor – as a life-saviour of people as patients. It seems a historical shame that the core state, rather than going to find out the truth and punish the culprits, got engaged high-profile advocates of the Supreme Court for reasons understood by even a novice in law.
Commodification of women post-capitalism as well as in traditional society, reserved the position of inferior birth and berth for women in India. While the former is global by naked body show, the latter is understood by marital status, where the women once married have to surrender their pre-marital identity as father’s daughter to the husband’s wife. Vermillion protects the woman in the public for she is now the object of one male. Petty crimes like molestation and groping in the crowded public vehicles do not matter much: ‘Chalta hai’. Tiny crimes like stalking, eve-teasing seem non-mentionable. The silence of women in the public prolongs the crimes committed against them. The silence is because of ‘purity’ that needs to be maintained pre-marriage to remain virgin or marriageable.
A Political Cartel
While the question is socio-cultural, the core state appropriates it as if it is a law-related issue that can be dealt with only by the state. In case an issue becomes a public concern by revealed mass agitation, the core state becomes more alert and goes for a non-solution by dragging time where the peripheral state and the state at the centre work in concert, in silence and as a political cartel. The agitators and the innocent people are made to believe in the autonomous character of the wings of the core state like the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and all that.
A rarest of the rare crime like rape-cum-murder of a young woman on duty in a premier hospital in the cultural capital of India is converted into a case of money-related crime and innocent people by being income-poor jump to accept the finance-corruption of the culprits that needs to be investigated, the culprits who are yet to be brought into the arena of justice in the rape-cum-murder case.
In case of ‘Abhaya’, innocent people had faith in CBI, for they had no faith in the West Bengal police for the investigation. I failed to understand the logic – B is preferred to A because A cannot be relied upon!! Where was or is the credibility of B (CBI)? Seven months have passed since the date of the shameful occurrence, the CBI started its research to arrive at ‘no conclusion’ and ‘absence of strong evidence’. It was digging a hole in the Himalayas, and it discovered a mouse (read, one civic volunteer as the only culprit).
A big chunk of the society may suffer from illiteracy, miseducation, ignorance, that cannot be cited as reasons to justify crimes against women. A deficit more in the rate of female literacy in India probably cannot be cited as mere vulnerability for the less literate women to be raped and murdered by the more literate that is of course not the point of discourse here. The right-wing accusation of dress code does not help in explaining rape-cum-murder for the young doctor in the hospital, as the doctor was dressed as a doctor. Age of course does not matter in India for rape with or without associated murder has a high range – from birth of a girl child to death of a woman. Consent to rape a ‘prostitute’ anywhere any time is a non-question – she is rape-able.
Delivering Justice
A stage may come when the judiciary may fail because it addresses the issue based on strong evidence and law. Judiciary does not collect crime evidence, that is the prerogative of the Home Department of the government – precisely police and CID. Planned delay in collecting evidence or focusing the torch on the wrong location will decidedly fail to provide evidence that will be acceptable to the judiciary. Social justice is more than and different from law. This is not to imply that law is irrelevant or redundant. The task is to deliver justice.
I do not have much doubt that most of the people in India are not much concerned about human rights, for they do not read the law documents and literature relevant for that. This is a general statement for common people who look forward to living a life at the bottommost level – they are not even aware of a dignified living.
In this general scenario as mentioned above, asking the victim or her representatives to provide evidence or show the law provisions is synonymous with reaching a ‘no conclusion’ and hence, no punishment of the culprits. The ‘Abhaya’ case is in circulation from the Lower Court to the High Court to the Supreme Court. People are eager to get justice that seems far distant. The State is unwilling.
Bibliography
1. Basham A.L., 1954, The Wonder that was India, Picador (Pan Macmillan Ltd.), London.
2. Basu, A.R. 2002, ‘Human Rights and Arrests’, Indian Journal of Human Rights, Vol. 6, Nos. 1 &2, January-December.
3. Dutta, Ratna, 2023, Towards Equality, An Unending Journey of Indian Women, Maha Bodhi Book Agency, Kolkata.
4. Olivelle, Patrick, 2006, Manu’s Code of Law, Oxford University Press, New Delhi.
5. Sen, Amartya, 2009, The Idea of Justice, Allen Lane (Penguin Books), London.
6. Vatsyanyana, The Kama Sutra, 1988, (Translated by Sir Richard Burton and F.F. Arbuthnot), Bibliophile Books, London.
Picture design by Anumita Roy
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