Hathras is a small town in Uttar Pradesh and, according to the Puranas, this settlement could have been as old as the Mahabharata. Popular for its literary and cultural background, it is from here that the great Hindi satirical poet Kaka Hathrasi was born. In the late 19th century, Sharat Chandra Gupta was working at Hathras Railway station as Assistant Station Master. He spotted a monk who impressed him much at this rail station. He left his job and became the disciple of that monk who, later, was known as Swami Vivekananda. Sharat Chandra’s name, too, was changed to Gupta Maharaj after he joined the Order. Hathras is back in news currently but for all the wrong reasons.
A terrible gang-rape culminating in the gruesome mutilation and murder of the victim girl at Hathras has brought the name of this place to the fore.
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Undoubtedly, rape is among the most heinous of crimes and a violation of the sanctity of a human’s body. In India, however, what is more shocking is the brutal manner in which the victims are treated after the rape; something that is horrendous to visualize. Despite strengthening of laws, more such cases of gang-rape and brutal killing of girls and women are coming in from different parts of the country — especially from the northern states, from places like Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Delhi, Rajasthan. Even Odisha has not lagged behind lately.
The series of such incidents is long and mind-boggling. The brutal gang-rape of a paramedic in a moving bus in Delhi in December 2012, known as the Nirbhaya incident, had shocked the nation. New laws were enacted in Parliament to ensure the safety of women. The government said it added more teeth to the existing law. But on the ground, more cases of brutal rapes continue to be reported. The reason is not difficult to comprehend. The system, especially the law enforcement agencies like the police, in most states but more so in places like Uttar Pradesh are unwilling to do justice. The feudalistic social structure in which the poor are treated as dirt and prey to satisfy the whims of the rich and the landlords without fear of retribution from law-enforcers has its worst manifestation in states like UP, a situation that is also compounded by the caste system in which Dalits are the worst sufferers. They have no human rights as such in the lexicon of the rich and powerful.
A former BJP MLA has shown the gumption to call a meeting of the village Mahapanchayat in Hathras a day ago to pronounce that the accused in the death of the girl “are not as guilty as they are projected to be by the media and the opposition.” This exposed the mindset of even those who ‘lead’ the people from the front. Or, take the case of the high-ranking District Magistrate who went to the victim’s family two days ago and counseled them caution and silence, by saying “the media that raised a hue and cry would go away tomorrow, and we (the officials and police) will be here thereafter too.” It came in the sugar-coated form of what was in reality a threat to their existence.
In December last, a 23-year-old girl from Unnao, in UP, had been raped and then set on fire while she was about to head for the court case. Another girl in Unnao was raped at the hands of a BJP legislator in 2017 and he was arrested a year later. The girl too was killed following an engineered road accident, and her family too suffered when three of its members, including her father, were killed by the MLA’s henchmen. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s assertion in 2018 that there will, thereafter, be ‘zero tolerance’ to such crimes was belied when this time, a week ago, the Hathras girl was cremated by policemen at the dead of the night after bringing her body from a Delhi hospital. The cops locked down the family members and all other villagers too so as to stop them from having a glimpse of her body that bore several ugly mutilation marks. The attempt on the part of the police thereafter was to say there was no rape at all after destroying all evidence. It may be because the slate has already been cleaned thoroughly that CM Yogi Adityanath has, very bravely, asked for an impartial enquiry by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). As for the efficiency of the CBI, if the recent Bombay movie world investigations are any indication, less said the better. It was only after several days of nationwide agitations and also by locals that the Yogi government decided to suspend a few cops, which is no more than an attempt to silence the people, just as ordering a CBI probe into the girl’s death is a mere eye wash. Clearly, the Yogi government was trying to protect the guilty through sham investigations and the CBI probe too will not be of any help in meting out justice to the victim if previous instances are any indication. The attempt, at best, is to buy time. New issues will arise and this will be forgotten very soon.
The plight of women in this country remains miserable and the security of poor women from disadvantaged sections of the society is non-existent. While the images of goddesses are there to be seen and revered across India, more than of gods, the mindset of the people is such that they do not respect women both in their homes and in public. Women are still considered as instruments for cooking, cleaning the home and washing vessels. At best, to bear children for these murderous men to produce more such horrible progenies. Crimes such as rape may not be exclusive to India. It exists all over the world, wherever there are men. Interestingly, since the Hathras incident seems to embarrass the BJP government of UP, a whole lot of messages are flooding social media platforms which try to insinuate that statistics claim that there are more rapes in other countries than in India, and a big issue is being made out of this particular rape case.
An interesting argument has cropped up against this barrage of diversionary messages. Since lower caste people were always thought of and still are considered ‘Untouchables’, this argument stated, why then do the Upper Caste men touch them in the process of raping their girls and again to mutilate or murder them. Untouchables should, according to this view point, be left alone and never allowed to have physical interaction with Upper Caste males. Those who do touch should be considered Lower Caste and be barred to legally inherit paternal properties.
The brutality that underpins such acts has no parallel. A change in our mindset vis-à-vis women is a matter of first priority, followed by the coming into being of a more responsive law and order machinery that does not dance to the tunes of the high and the mighty and not make the life of the poor miserable. This change can only start when men in charge of administration decide to change.
