Another outrage in Kolkata

In her handling of heinous rape and murder, Mamatadi has failed her gender and opposition

By Alok Tiwari

If there is one thing that lays to waste all tall claims, all achievements, all ancient knowledge of this country, it is recurrence of horrifying instances of rape-murder. It has gotten to a stage when there are no words that can cover the shame, the impotent rage, the sheer hopelessness of the situation felt when another such case is hurled upon us. The words of condemnation, outrage, and despair seem to have lost their meaning. The language itself seems inadequate to express the feelings. And it happens with sickening, unfailing regularity. If that were not bad enough, we know that such high-profile cases are but a small fraction of the total. The rollcall of shame continues unabated. Nirbhaya, Kathua, Hathras, Unnao, Hyderabad, Rishikesh and now Kolkata. For each of them, there are hundreds that got buried because the victims were just not important enough or it was not politically expedient for anyone to make it a cause celebre.

My personal feeling is of utter shame and confusion. How does one react as a man, as a dad, as a citizen, as a journalist? The stigma of such events diminishes all of us. I would like to believe as humans and citizens that we should feel safe in each other’s presence. Yet, no one can escape the knowledge that for half of us at least, presence of another man means more fear, more suspicion. It is not a great advertisement of our culture if women feel safer alone than in presence of a man. We are not even talking about some deserted street or in a jungle. If a woman, a doctor at that, cannot be safe in a large hospital of one of country’s biggest metropolis then where? The answer, all of us know, is that nowhere. Not in offices, not at home, not in public transport, not even in police stations.

One can talk about the complex nature of rape as a crime. We can hold responsible all our twisted ideas of manliness, our hopelessly skewed gender equations, the patriarchy, the lack of law enforcement that makes perpetrators think they can get away. Yet, identifying the causes is not same as knowing the solutions. The reasons are complex, so it follows that so will be solutions. What is disturbing is that we do not seem to be making an honest effort towards them. When a crime happens, it is natural for citizens to look at first response of law enforcement, the behaviour of the leaders. The failure begins from that point itself.

Our police forces are programmed to avoid registering crimes. So, in many cases, it is a task just to get them to take note. This is especially so if the accused happen to be person(s) of some influence. Even if they do take cognizance, the process itself is not sensitive towards victims or their families. If the woman is lucky enough to survive the violence, she may end up being violated all over again by the legal system.

Then comes the involvement of political executive. The instinct here, again, is damage control. This makes the government play down the crime itself. They appear to act only when media exposure and public outrage reach a point when inaction is not an option. Even then, they try to shield politically important persons, often to the point of disgracing the victim or her family. It becomes more important for them to prevent opposition from scoring points over the scandal than to bring the perpetrators to justice. We saw it in Kathua, Hathras, and Rishikesh. Instead of everyone uniting to bring the accused to justice, the aftermath dissolved into a slanging match between political parties with their loyal followers in social media duly pointing out follies of the other side.

If there was one place and one time when things were expected to be different, it was at Kolkata when Mamata Banerjee is chief minister. Unfortunately, the pattern is repeating in the same manner there too. Neither the initial police response to the heinous crime was adequate, nor was the response of administration appropriate. This did not look like response of a government headed by a woman and run by a party that prides itself on having just sent the largest number of women MPs to the parliament. The government reacted with the usual strong-arm tactics at first hoping to bury the case and suppress the outrage over it. Mamata responded with characteristic counter-aggression when those tactics looked like backfiring.

Both are not needed there. What is needed is sensitivity towards victim and firmness towards perpetrators. A willingness to accept that things are bad would help. As the only woman chief minister in the country at present, she owes it to women of the country to show how an outrageous crime like this should be handled. She also owes the country looking for an alternative to toxic masculinity displayed by several BJP-run governments in similar situation. She has failed on both counts.

If anything, the incident and its aftermath have exposed the rotten core of governance in West Bengal that has continued since the Left-front days. It is still dominated by local goons who are part of ruling party and run a mafia based on protection and influence. The local administration is completely in control of such characters who obviously are law unto themselves. Such people or people close to them are often behind major crimes. Mamata needs to shed her reliance on them and come out with more functional party. She may be credited with stopping the march of right-wing hatred in WB twice but that is not enough. If she has ambitions of presenting herself and her party as national alternatives, then she needs to ensure a much better governed Bengal.

This column appeared in Lokmat Times on Aug 28, 2024