Posted:
An open letter to Jaya Bachchan By Shobhaa De
Going beyond the terrible press India has been receiving in this case, and also going beyond commercial issues ("The advisory will impact tourism... foreign women will avoid visiting India"), the more immediate concern is this: what can we do to stop such savagery? Jaya Bachchan, you can certainly play a powerful role in educating your political mentors by pointing out the immorality of their despicable behavior to them. If they fail to pay any heed to your advice, it would be best for you to disassociate yourself from this pathetic lot and resign from such a morally bankrupt party. That would win you a great deal of national respect. Can you do that? Will you?
I was in Meghalaya a few weeks ago, and had the chance to interact with some exceptional Garo women. We discussed several challenges faced by them in a rapidly changing society which is slowly coming to terms with new cultural contours that don't always respect tribal traditions. Tragically, the blood-curdling attempted rape and eventual murder of the 35-year-old Garo wife-and-mother could have happened to any woman in the village. Her assailants used an AK-rifle to blow her head off in the presence of her five children, after locking up her husband. There is cold bloodedness, sadism and sexual frustration evident here. Just as there was in the Badaun case. And just as there is in every rape that was ever perpetrated.
Let's not create categories for rape ("This one involved guns... and is therefore worse than the other ones which used knives, ropes, stones"). A rape is a rape. It's a crime not just against women but against humanity itself. Unless we are prepared to see it in that context, we will continue to downplay rape as something that happens when men can't find a willing partner and attack the first woman... child... they come across.
Do it Jaya. Force the SP top dogs to act against the murderers. You owe it to your countless fans. And to yourself.
Mirror Bureau | Jun 6, 2014, 09.31 PM IST
Dear Jaya,
I have known you for over forty years. I write this in anguish and pain. You are a senior representative of the Samajwadi Party in Parliament. But much more than your political avatar, you are a sensitive woman - a wife, mother and grand-mother.
Why have you not spoken up against the sexual atrocities being committed in Uttar Pradesh involving defenceless young girls? Or against what happened in Meghalaya with a Garo woman who had her head blown off for resisting her attackers? What crime had this 35- year-old tribal woman from the South Garo Hills district in Meghalaya committed? Obviously, it was the same one committed by the two teenage Dalit girls strung up on a mango tree in front of their humble hut in UP's Badaun district earlier - all three victims were born into wretchedness. They died in wretchedness. Their crime was poverty.
We in India demand justice all the while knowing there's none. Not so long as Akhilesh Yadav, the brash, young chief minister of Uttar Pradesh brazenly refuses to acknowledge the enormity of the crime. And he is not alone. Which makes me wonder: Has that most awful four-letter-word - RAPE - lost its impact on a society that has to deal with multiple rapes on a daily basis? It certainly looks like nobody is willing to deal with these crimes, least of all, the authorities in UP.
Here's a nauseating comment from your senior SP leader Ramgopal Yadav, "In most places, when relationships between boys and girls come out in the open, it is termed as rape." Jaya, really!! Mulayam Singh's response was still more arrogant, "Google something else.
Media's job is to speculate. You do your work and let us do our work." In other words (pardon the French), "F**k off!"
Jaya, I respect your outspokenness. And I have known you to speak your mind on several issues in the past. I appeal to you through this column, to break your silence on these ghastly, grisly, gory incidents, which have made it to the International press and generated enough of a backlash to provoke UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon into issuing a strongly worded condemnation of the Badaun incident. He damned the 'Boys will be boys' comment and added, "Together we can empower more people to understand that violence against women degrades us all."
I have known you for over forty years. I write this in anguish and pain. You are a senior representative of the Samajwadi Party in Parliament. But much more than your political avatar, you are a sensitive woman - a wife, mother and grand-mother.
Why have you not spoken up against the sexual atrocities being committed in Uttar Pradesh involving defenceless young girls? Or against what happened in Meghalaya with a Garo woman who had her head blown off for resisting her attackers? What crime had this 35- year-old tribal woman from the South Garo Hills district in Meghalaya committed? Obviously, it was the same one committed by the two teenage Dalit girls strung up on a mango tree in front of their humble hut in UP's Badaun district earlier - all three victims were born into wretchedness. They died in wretchedness. Their crime was poverty.
We in India demand justice all the while knowing there's none. Not so long as Akhilesh Yadav, the brash, young chief minister of Uttar Pradesh brazenly refuses to acknowledge the enormity of the crime. And he is not alone. Which makes me wonder: Has that most awful four-letter-word - RAPE - lost its impact on a society that has to deal with multiple rapes on a daily basis? It certainly looks like nobody is willing to deal with these crimes, least of all, the authorities in UP.
Here's a nauseating comment from your senior SP leader Ramgopal Yadav, "In most places, when relationships between boys and girls come out in the open, it is termed as rape." Jaya, really!! Mulayam Singh's response was still more arrogant, "Google something else.
Media's job is to speculate. You do your work and let us do our work." In other words (pardon the French), "F**k off!"
Jaya, I respect your outspokenness. And I have known you to speak your mind on several issues in the past. I appeal to you through this column, to break your silence on these ghastly, grisly, gory incidents, which have made it to the International press and generated enough of a backlash to provoke UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon into issuing a strongly worded condemnation of the Badaun incident. He damned the 'Boys will be boys' comment and added, "Together we can empower more people to understand that violence against women degrades us all."
Going beyond the terrible press India has been receiving in this case, and also going beyond commercial issues ("The advisory will impact tourism... foreign women will avoid visiting India"), the more immediate concern is this: what can we do to stop such savagery? Jaya Bachchan, you can certainly play a powerful role in educating your political mentors by pointing out the immorality of their despicable behavior to them. If they fail to pay any heed to your advice, it would be best for you to disassociate yourself from this pathetic lot and resign from such a morally bankrupt party. That would win you a great deal of national respect. Can you do that? Will you?
I was in Meghalaya a few weeks ago, and had the chance to interact with some exceptional Garo women. We discussed several challenges faced by them in a rapidly changing society which is slowly coming to terms with new cultural contours that don't always respect tribal traditions. Tragically, the blood-curdling attempted rape and eventual murder of the 35-year-old Garo wife-and-mother could have happened to any woman in the village. Her assailants used an AK-rifle to blow her head off in the presence of her five children, after locking up her husband. There is cold bloodedness, sadism and sexual frustration evident here. Just as there was in the Badaun case. And just as there is in every rape that was ever perpetrated.
Let's not create categories for rape ("This one involved guns... and is therefore worse than the other ones which used knives, ropes, stones"). A rape is a rape. It's a crime not just against women but against humanity itself. Unless we are prepared to see it in that context, we will continue to downplay rape as something that happens when men can't find a willing partner and attack the first woman... child... they come across.
Do it Jaya. Force the SP top dogs to act against the murderers. You owe it to your countless fans. And to yourself.
Jhanak
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