It was almost a “Gudiyagate” — evil neighbour, apathetic and corrupt police and indifferent government. What kind of world do we welcome our children intoIJ It’s time we evolved a campaign on a war footing to end the conspiracy of silence which condemns our children to such horrific fates
It was almost two decades back. A friend came crying to me, she was obviously very upset over something and wanted to talk. What she told me was shattering: both she and her husband worked in a government hospital as senior doctors. Their two-year-old boy child was left in the hands of a teenaged domestic help, a boy who sodomised him daily. The parents got to know this when the child had acute diarrhoea and after much questioning the little one shared all with them. As a reaction, the parents replaced the male helper with an elderly woman. After she poured out her heart rending story, my friend requested me not to share the incident with anybody else. I remained shocked for days. Even today I wonder how they let go the incident so calmly. But this is not an isolated case in our country.
How on earth are these tiny-tots expected to know the difference between the right kind of affection and a lewd act, between a tender touch and an inappropriate oneIJ Charity begins at home and in this case it surely does. It is the duty of each parent to educate their children about such differences. You don’t need to go into lengths of sex education but surely it is not impossible to tell a toddler about his or her body parts and how they need to protect it. I can vouch for this one education being a mother myself. And let me tell you children are very quick learners and they never forget.
Times have changed, we have progressed and yet as adults we are feeding our children with a toxic pill called ‘silence and shame’. Children who are raped and sodomised are often told to be quiet about the incident while the criminals go scot free. The reason as far as I can think is two-fold. People are scared about their so called reputation and secondly the perpetrator is often a relative or close associate they’d rather not get into a web of complication. This attitude, what most Indian parents fail to understand, can mar a child’s psyche and even physical abilities forever.
And in cases when the parents pull themselves up to report the incident, most often they are scoffed by the police or sometimes the khaki-clad even refuses to file an FIR. Admits a senior police official from Kolkata, Gautam Mohan Chakraborty, “It is true that police refuse to file FIRs but they do it many cases not solely such cases. This is indeed a huge lacking in our department police being the first responder need to act fast.”
He adds, “There is surely a need to sensitise the police especially in cases of women and children where they are required to be more caring and compassionate.” In the recent case of the five-year old girl who was brutally raped in Delhi, a senior cop displayed immense insensitivity and crudeness of the force when he asked, “How can you or we decide thisIJ Did the girl’s relatives see her being rapedIJ
Tall claims
We Indians take pride in making tall claims of climbing up the ladder in global economics; of having the best democracy which, apart from being so large is also varied in nature. How many times do we sit back and calculate the pain and abuse that our future generation goes throughIJ When such a heinous incident occurs in the Capital or nearby locales, there is a huge outcry. TV channels go ahead with days of discussions, people express militan opinions all over the social network. And, after some time, human attention span being what it is, it’s back to square one.
There is silence (I would prefer to call it a lull before another storm) and the story is put in the back burner till the next, identical crime is committed. And then once again data are drawn up, past incidents are recalled (or totally misrepresented) and, increasingly, the turf is muddied with politics.
We are all aware that child abuse including rape is on an increase in the country. According to the National Crimes Record Bureau (NCRB) figures, 48,338 child rape cases were recorded during 2001-11, which was an increase of 336 percent in such cases since 2001 when only 2,113 child rape cases were recorded. “Addressing child sexual abuse in a challenge all over the world,” Human Rights Watch said in its report. “But in India, shortcomings in both state and community responses add to the problem,” it added.
One of the most standardised generalisations heard after each ghastly rape is that since our’s is a “patriarchal society”, the abuse of women of all ages — even infants — is part and parcel of a long, inglorious tradition. This is undistilled escapism. In the 21st century it is almost criminal to take umbrage under such weak excuses. The advent of technology, participatory democracy, governance reforms and women’s emancipation should have made life difficult for rapists. But it’s here that reality stares back at us. Every aspect of our progress has been half-baked. Technological strides are synonymous with hi-tech. The masses remain on the wrong side of the digital divide. Participatory democracy is practiced more in the breach, particularly in places like our “rape capital”. Governance reforms — the less said the better. Mythical levels of corruption are dragging our politics back to medievalism. And women’s emancipation, my favourite sob story, is limited to loud-mouthed women from well-to-do backgrounds and that too in basic ways covering formal education, perhaps a little choice in selecting a life partner and the latitude to mistake insouciance with emancipation. As I have written in these columns before, women in globalisation — hit societies have actively assisted Big Business in their own commodification and humiliation.
In my city I love and admire the hoardings and posters that use popular songs and heroes to educate people on the rules of road safety. Why can’t we start with similar campaigns and hoardings, directed specifically at educating our children on the need to be wary of affectionate strangersIJ Is it so difficultIJ The National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights is seldom seen taking a pro-active stand. If one minister could work towards and end smoking in public places why can’t we work with equal verve towards protecting the child. Are we so short of our intellect and so tied down to some books that we find no means to instil the fear of God in the offendersIJ If we can progress from our planet to another to prove our scientific feats why does it become so difficult to think ways out to be high on the humanitarian graph and protect the child and keep the rapist under a huge fearIJ
Our legal system has matured to the extent of protecting the suspect till the court holds them guilty. We refer to the crime as ‘alleged’. We have moved far ahead from the times when such a suspect would be seated on a donkey with their head tonsured, face painted black and paraded all across the city, without a fair trial. Great! We are moving ahead and it’s a logical fallout of evolving rationalism. Then in that case why do we need to be dole out archaic values for our children. While a child is taught to respect their elders, why can’t they also be taught to respect themselves moreIJ Why can’t they be taught that even if it’s an elder or a relative the child has the right to revolt if anyone tries to access their bodiesIJ
Sutapa Mukerjee | (The writer is a columnist)