Women's safety can't be limited to "mindset" issue. Stop using it as an excuse
The home minister's call for a ban on the documentary film India's Daughter has brought the gruesome gang rape of December 16, 2012 into the media glare once again. Since the ban, there have been many debates on the topic with various sides disagreeing with one another. But there is one common theme everyone agrees on, which is - this is a "mindset problem". This mindset problem has to be solved by education and activism. But, what till then? What if this takes 50 or a 100 years? Will half of the Indian population wait with bated breath to be "set free"? Is misogyny a global battle that shall be fought endlessly and eternally?
By making violence against women primarily a mindset debate with a solution decades away is veiling the failure of our law, order and justice system. We cannot allow the upholders of law to hide behind it and shed their responsibility of taking immediate action. Unless India's parliamentarians are planning to follow in the footsteps of a few regressive countries in the world and change our laws that makes it illegal for a women to travel without her father or brother, unless it is a crime for a woman to drive a car or go to a bar/club, unless it is punishable by law for a woman to wear a dress of a certain length - why should we care or even give heed to the opinion of the enforcers of law (the police) or the administrators of law (the judiciary)?
The police are responsible for enforcing and maintaining the law of the land and they should stick to doing their job rather than giving their opinion on what a woman should wear or what time she should be out until. Recurring incidents of sexual violence are clearly a failure of our policing system. Misogyny exists in the Western world as well, yet the brazenness of the criminal, the gruesomeness of the crime and the number of incidents are undeniably lower than those occurring in India today. I do believe that the reason for lower crime rates against women in the Western world is because they have a more accountable policing system and not complete gender equity. By not effectively enforcing the law, the police is creating an environment that emboldens the rapists.
Our judiciary like any other is responsible for administration of justice according to the law of the land. The December 16, 2012 gang rape sparked unprecedented nation-wide protests due to which fast-track courts were set up and a comprehensive Justice Verma committee report was constituted. However, it is ironical that even for this high profile case, 26 months later, justice has still not reached its conclusion. Is delayed justice really sending the right message to the perpetrators of such horrific crimes, which are taking the lives of hundreds of women every day? This debate on the safety of women must shift from this unsolvable century long "change mindset" project that kills any hope for the next two or three generations of women to accountable policing and speedy justice which is clearly a more reachable and reasonable goal giving the women of India hope.
This is achievable and not unreasonable to expect as India has already shown progress in another issue that has been plaguing us - our caste system. I make this comparison to give the Indian women hope. The two problems have similarities; caste discrimination is between upper caste and lower caste and gender discrimination is between men and women. Both date back hundreds of years and we as a modern society are nowhere near being rid of either. But fortunately for India, and to her credit, we have progressed to a place where at least by and large people are aware that propagating/justifying/supporting the caste system publicly will have severe consequences and shall result in the law clamping down on them. This is because there has been political awareness and a will across party lines to relentlessly pursue the cause of caste equity.
As a result, today, we don't see lawyers making brazen hate speeches on television about burning Dalits at their farmhouses, politicians publicly professing empathy for their upper caste brethren, justifying assault on Dalits, godmen or police officers saying that Dalits need to stay clear of upper castes to survive or they are inviting trouble. All the above statements have been issued by the same set of people in the context of women. This is purely because people are acutely aware that any such statement against Dalits would land them in jail and action would be swift and uncompromising. To say that this restraint is because our collective mindset has been purged of all caste bias would be grossly incorrect.
To cite a few examples in the recent past, Ashish Nandy, an academic who has spent his career writing about the emancipation of the caste was taken to task over a comment at Jaipur Literature Festival to the extent that a criminal case was registered against him. Even in omnipresent Bollywood, a complaint by a caste group, has led to the removal of the word "teli" from the chartbusting number "Dhante Nan" from Vishal Bhardwaj's Kaminey. However irrational or an overreaction it may seem to some, the police was swift in taking action and clearly Bollywood was not willing to shout "freedom of speech" and corrected itself without arguing its meaning or merit. In stark contrast, Yo Yo Honey Singh, who shot to fame with his infamous song "C***t" with its extremely violent lyrics against women, which should clearly be classified as a hate speech, continues to be extremely successful in the film industry with superstars dancing to his tunes. Moreover, politicians of all parties, godmen of all religions and personalities are brazenly advocating misogyny with no fear or shame.
Instead of waiting endlessly for the mindset for our society to change, like in the case of caste discrimination, gender discrimination can be tackled effectively if there is political will ensuring that the twin pillars of enforcing the law and administrating justice are accountable in giving immediate relief to 50 per cent of our population.