Peepli Live director Mahmood Farooqui convicted of rape

Sanjukta Basu Jul 31, 2016 13:06 IST

#Bollywood #Crime #Crimes against women #CriticalPoint #Entertainment #India #Mahmood Farooqui #Mango Souffle #Peepli Live #Rape #Salman Khan #Women

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I have seen and loved the film Peepli Live. I also knew about the Dastangoi theatre through my friend Danish Husain but I didn't know Mahmood Farooqui until I saw the headlines today, Bollywood film maker Mahmood Farooqui convicted of rape.' So I immediately googled him to find out who exactly he was.

The label Bollywood film maker' made me wonder if he was a mediocre director of B grade films. Because surely, only men who make or act in sexist films with hyper masculinity, violence and hero worship do not know how to respect women, right?
Google had by now shown me the search results and what did I find? A history scholar who went to two of the world's most elite institutions: St Stephens in Delhi and Oxford University in UK; theatre artist who revived the dying art of Dastangoi; a public speaker who gave a TEDx talk at IIM Lucknow; author of history books; associated with meaningful movies likePeepli Live and Mango Souffl; comes from a family of illustrious literary men (of course who cares who the women of that family were) and most interestingly, is the husband of Anusha Rizvi, the director of Peepli Live.

Whoa! All that and a rapist.

So what explains the sexist behaviour of a man with such intellectual and professional excellence and what are we going to do about it? I mean it is not like he is some Salman Khan who can be so conveniently blasted at for acting in unintelligent hyper masculine films, whose entire 30 years of film career can be trashed without exception, and popular appeals can be made to boycott his future films. Imagine someone like me now making an appeal to boycott Dastangoi or burn all copies of Besieged: Voices From Delhi 1857', the book authored by Farooqui. That would be ridiculous. But, what would not be ridiculous is to be united in our outrage against Farooqui for being a convicted rapist and unequivocally condemn him and shame him.

Let us not mince our words, let us not pretend that such an illustrious man probably didn't mean to rape' and merely got carried away' or that it was a silly drunken mistake' for which he would have to pay too heavy a price.

Let us call him exactly what he is, a rapist. A man who didn't care to stop when a woman said no'. Sexual penetration against a woman's consent is rape. It doesn't matter whether there was any struggle, violence, physical force or not. A woman may say no' at any point of time and when she does that, you have to stop and leave her alone. If you don't stop, you are a rapist. You, Mr Farooqui, are an uncivilized person who has no respect for women, who doesn't understand that a woman has the right to control what happens to her body. You probably have a sense of entitlement just because you are a talented person. There can be nothing more cruel and savage than raping a woman who approached you to seek knowledge. Women across the world over thousands of years of civilisations have been relegated to the four walls, denied education and reduced to slaves. Today, we are fighting all odds to gain our place as full human beings and instead of extending a hand of support to a woman scholar, you decided to thrust your manhood upon her. What a deadly message given to future scholars. All your talent and education, Mr Farooqui, is utter waste because you have not learned the most basic thing, that a woman is also a human.
As a society and as people who love to make opinions heard, we have to set our priorities right when deciding about whom we condemn and whom we don't. Why is it that when men like Farooqui, Pachauri or Tejpal are accused or convicted, the outrage is not quite the same as when the accused is a Salman Khan or Sooraj Pancholi? Either there are sympathisers raising their heads from all corners of the fraternity and defending the elite perpetrator. Or there are those who are not dumb enough to out-rightly sympathise, so conveniently keeping quiet. It is precisely due to this sort of silence and tacit condone of their misconduct that these men have a sense of entitlement to begin with. They cannot even, for life of theirs, understand how can a woman possibly say no to the sexual advances of such a great man as they are. She should rather be thankful and get on with it.

For the next few days, I am going to keenly observe how many articles are being published condemning Farooqui with appropriate anger and harshness, how many and who directly or indirectly condone him and how many and who are, what Rajdeep Sardesai calls the monkey balancers' who'd talk about this being lower court verdict open to challenge.