Mallika Writes: Just Speaking
A Call to The People of Gujarat from a Daughter of Gujarat
It is easy to follow Gandhiji today. In fact during his life time he would have never imagined that an entire nation, barring a measly few hundred thousand, would so assiduously follow his principals so many decades after his death. Just think of it – Gandhiji always said, “Speak no evil. See no evil. Hear no evil”. And we follow it. When evil and cruelty rage around us we refuse to talk of it. When we see horrors being wrought around us, we do not see them. And when there are pitiful cries of pain, we do not hear them.
Yes, I speak of the unspeakable. The state of deafness and blindness that has enveloped us in the midst of the horrifying cries of the Patan rape case and the Pilvai molestations.
It is not new, this deaf blindness. No-one spoke when Ahalya was unjustly turned into a stone because of the lust of a god. No-one spoke when total adharma reigned in the court of Hastinapura and the half-clad Draupadi was dragged into a room of men. No-one spoke when the innocent Sita was banished at the behest of one single man’s taunts (even in Sharia courts the testimony of two men is needed to stone a woman for adultery!).
So why am I appalled at the State’s silence? Worse, at the people’s silence?
In 2002, we passed off the violence and rape as happening to “them” not to us. Surely you must remember? But now? Which “them” is it happening to, that does not include “us”? Are we silent and unseeing because all those violated are women, and “they” are always the other, even for fellow women? Or because the Patan girl is a Dalit? Or……..
What is our definition of “us-ness”? Which is the unit of belonging that will finally make us see, hear, shout? Is it the clan or caste? The gotra? The neighbourhood? The immediate family or those with the same surname? When will we finally break down and realize that it is us, our unit, our body that is being desecrated? When will the amnesia of our sanctity and safety break enough for us to realize that the six accused in the Patan case were gorging on OUR bodies, throwing US on the couch, poking into OUR souls?
Our feeling of safety and security is FALSE and totally misplaced. When cruelty and violence is allowed to grow in society it touches each and every one of us one day.
Keeping quite is the greatest adharma. We have become neutered as a populace, soothed by the jingle of wealth. And in this cocoon we let everything else happen without a cry.
Where are the throngs on the streets that should be protesting the apathy of the administration in these cases? Is it only the goondas who can gather together to protest the “sanctity” of what they see blemished? Have all of us become mute? Does this shaming of women not demand a stand from each and every one of us? What worse will we wait for before it hurts, before we are pushed out of our self serving apathy? Of what use are the cries against female foeticide when our young women are mauled with such impunity? What is the point of the farce in the name of increasing female literacy, if the very institutions of learning rape Saraswati? Every day for years together?
Once we were a land that valued goodness, not goondaness. Where our city fathers’ great concern was the betterment of the people. A State proud of her concern for the general good, not only of humans but of animals. And today we are mute and dumb, scared and numb. Isn’t what is happening today a wake up call? Or will we doze in our indulgence till the forest fire of vileness gathers us into its maelstrom and destroys us?
There is still time, but only just. Let us shout from the rooftops against the wrongs that are going unheeded, before someone has to say of us, vinahsa kale viparita buddhi. And that becomes the epithet of a once justly proud people, now reduced to cowardice.
July 08th, 08
DNA
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