The Delhi Bar Council must act

Really glad that the Delhi Bar Council is taking a serious view of the utterances by defence lawyer A P Singh on the 23-year-old victim in the December 16 gangrape case in which she lost her life. The lawyer for two of the convicts is reported to have said, "...if my daughter was having premarital sex and moving around at night with her boyfriend, I would have burnt her alive. I would not have let this situation happen. All parents should adopt such an attitude."
A few questions for him - 1. Is there anything called 'adulthood' in his lexicon? The woman was an adult, free to choose who she wanted to be with, go out with.
2.Does the fact that a woman is out at night with or without a man, give the right to men who come across her to rape her?
3. Why hasn't he made such statements about the men who raped? Were they habitual rapists? Did they indulge in pre and post marital sex? Why is this not being talked about?
4. He would have burnt his daughter alive, he says. What would he do if his son indulged in premarital sex? Boast that he had arrived? Is finally a man?
5. As a lawyer he is extolling parents to kill their daughters. What is wrong with this man?
6. Is he actually advocating that girls be locked up, not allowed to go out so that such situations do not happen? As a lawyer, instead of advocating basic human rights, he is actually preaching that theto freedom of movement, the right to decide who to be with etc etc are curtailed!

I am waiting to see how the Delhi Bar Council will act.

To see the growing frustration of women with the judicial and police systems, watch this video, where a woman hits out at her molester. 

This is what makes India special

A lot has been said about India's politicians and her land mafia and their rapacious greed which stops at nothing. The cloudburst, and the floods and landslides that have followed in Uttarakhand and parts of Himachal, were exacerbated by the doings of the politician-land mafia who have mindlessly plundered the region. Hundreds dead, tragedy after tragedy, house collapses, property worth crores lost, the unending suffering ...

Amidst all this, come stories of how our security forces have been helping out. If it were not for them and their selfless service, one shudders to think what more could  have happened. These men, have the nation's gratitude. However, we treat them badly. Our parliamentarians have grudged them small pay hikes, while giving themselves hefty increases. That is another story.

Here I want to focus on what makes India special. It is the generosity of the ordinary Indians. People who have little, but give it unstintingly. These are the people, who rush to help whenever tragedy strikes....while our politicians quibble over turf and upmanship and our rich are slow to open their purses.

I have put together stories that are indeed moving and celebrate that special quality we call humaneness:

Grocery store keeper and friends feed over 800 a day

Chennai pilgrims bring home a hero

Youth took charge

Villagers rescue 43 foreigners

Relief camps by locals

This one celebrates the IAF women pilots
IAF women pilots to the rescue

Proud of you, Zubeen Garg!

Good to know we have an artiste who can stand up and fight for what he believes in. And that he will not be censored.

The United Liberation Front for Assam ( or ULFA),  true to its form, issued a ban on performing Hindi songs during a function in Guwahati to celebrate Bihu, the Assamese new year.  While other musicians gave in to the diktat, not Zubeen. He is reported to have said, "No power can dictate an artiste. We have our own freedom. I have earned nationwide fame singing Hindi songs. It is our national language. Who are they to say Hindi songs will destroy Assamese culture. It is an outdated ridiculous idea."

So proud of you Zubeen Garg! You sing so well in Hindi. I believe you can sing in many Indian languages and sound like the native. I would love to hear you sing in Assamese too. I wish we had more music festivals all over the country where singers from different parts of the country sing in different languages.

Great art in any form,  while it may have strong local roots, reaches for the world.  It can't and shouldn't be curbed.

Music knows no boundaries.  Glad you stood your ground against the rowdy censors!

More links to posts on Rowdy Censorship
Extremists frigthen us into silence  
A film maker who stood up to the rowdy censors

Zubeen provided security

Crime against women, people act

The need is to act. To do something about the high levels of crime against women in India. (Click here for a rape map of India). But our politicians and leaders are busy moralising, telling us of dented and painted women, of what happens to women who cross the Lakshman rekha (the line which a woman should not cross), and as usual are giving lectures to women on how to behave. To see and learn about what  India’s political and spiritual worthies have to say on women cick here. 

The police, who so far have only shown a high degree of indifference to crime against women and have even been party to molestation and rapes, have yet to demonstrate that they mean business.

So it is left only to the public to act. Apart from the protests in various parts of the country, some public initiatives -

The brave man, Srikant Bhardwa, who lost his life trying to rescue a woman from a pack of molesters in Ranchi.

In Assam women and some men caught and beat up a politician, Bikram Singh Brahma  of the ruling Congress party, after he raped a woman.

The reaction to self proclaimed spiritual leader Asaram's inane statement about the girl was to blame was vocal and furious.

A Delhi-based entrepreneur, Srikant Sastri, has started a campaign  'Save The Republic - Resign Before January 26th' asking MPs and MLAs who have been accused of crime against women needs our support. To read more about it click here

A comment on Indian culture

One day earlier this month, I found a stream of visitors landing on my blog. This was surprising for I had been neglecting my blog, had not posted for weeks and was used to seeing only one or two visitors stop by. Feedjit and Flagcounter informed that they were from Denmark.

The next day, I had an unusual friend request. It was from a young man from Denmark, a student in a business school. I discovered that my blog was part of a curriculum designed to teach the young students about culture. A creative teacher had based a set of questions on my blog.

My blog is titled the india of today for I meant to post about things that bothered and amazed me about this land. But posts that are unfavourable far exceed the positive ones. And my first reaction was – Oh! what a negative image of India I must be giving out. My blog was all about sexual harassment, the violence women face, about rape, the horrendously stupid judgments given by our judges, men in authority who made idiotic pronouncements about women, while this land I called home had much more to offer... its rich arts, its spiritual heritage, its cuisine, its freedom to speak out, which we the people so zealously guarded. Was my blog, a comment on Indian culture?

My blog is a long rant against the system and the way it affects me as a woman in today's India. Had I been living as a brown skin woman in Europe, it might have been about race. For on my very first trip there, the few hours that I spent in Amsterdam, I was made very conscious of the colour of my skin by a shop assistant at a food kiosk, who despite repeated requests did not attend to me.

My earliest recollection of something not being right in being a girl in India was when I found my aunt crying at the birth of my sister. A third daughter? How unfortunate! was the refrain from relatives and neighbours. Why were daughters unfortunate? It was something I would learn as I grew in a middle class north Indian family. As a growing girl who travelled by public bus to get a college education, as a young woman who went out to work using public transport, as someone who had to work late at the job I chose to do, I was wary of sexual harassment every waking moment I was out on Delhi’s streets. I could not let my guard down. As a mother, I have tried to raise my daughters to be conscious of this daily violence, be aware of its dangers and to be safe. As a mother, much of my effort went in training them to survive the city, the system.

This is what concerns me today as an Indian woman. The mindset of our politicians, our police and our judges horrifies me no end. For it curbs my movement, it stifles me, it prevents me from being free. The way female foetuses get aborted here, the manner in which the girl child is treated by the family, the control Indian men feel they should exercise on women, the commodification of the woman as a sex object in our films, in the raunchy item numbers, the moral police that go around slapping women for being in a bar or enjoying an evening out with a friend, where children even babies are raped. Was this contemporary Indian culture? And as I debated….

Another horrific gangrape happened. A 23-year-old medical student was brutally raped while her friend was beaten up by six men in a bus. They felt they had the right to question the couple as to why they were out! And then they were thrown out of the bus and left to die. It is amazing that not one of the six men felt that they should not be behaving in this fashion. Not one of them made an effort to stop others from commiting the crime. After their heinous act, we are told they went about their normal routine, showing no guilt, no remorse.

But this time something snapped in Delhi. Its young girls had had enough and were not prepared to take it anymore. And they came out to voice their protest, to demand justice for the medical student, to demand that our politicians, the police and the judicial system acts… With these young school and college girls were middle aged women. Even a 70 plus I know braved the cold winter to register her protest at India Gate. And there were a large number of men, who are fed up of this crass apathy towards dealing with one of the most serious problems of our times - verbal and physical violence on women.

And yes, it is sad but true that this violence, this ill treatment of girls and women personifies contemporary Indian culture.

But the new Indian woman, the middle class, the educated, is not prepared to take it any longer. She is forcing society to act.