A constant stream of news reports from across the country highlighting rape, abduction, kidnapping and other forms of sexual assault on women citizens is indicative of a dangerous contagion spreading through Indian society. If unchecked by a series of intelligent initiatives within the education, law, order and justice systems, it has the potential to force women out of the workforce, adversely affect foreign investment and tourism flows into the economy and in the long run, let loose the anarchy of vigilantism within the body politic.
India’s emerging middle class is increasingly being targeted by unrestrained lumpen elements running wild in under-policed urban streets, and increasingly in rural habitations. According to latest (2014) data of the National Crime Records Bureau, 36,735 women citizens were rape victims countrywide (ten per day), 57,311 were kidnapped and abducted, and 82,235 suffered sexual assault. These figures can be safely multiplied by a factor of ten because notoriously corrupt police personnel nationwide are inclined to dismiss crimes against women as harmless playfulness. In April 2014, Mulayam Singh Yadav, leader of the ruling Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh — India’s most populous (215 million) and lawless state — dismissed mass molestation of women in the state as natural, stating “boys will be boys”.
In a more recent case of molestation of women on New Year’s eve in the hi-tech city of Bangalore, the home minister of the Congress state government attributed it to the Western dress styles of victims and said “these things happen”.
Although women’s organisations including the National Commission for Women and state human rights commissions have dutifully condemned these incidents and the rising crime wave against the fair sex, most fail to make the connection between education reform and the fundamental right of gender equality guaranteed by Article 14 of the Constitution of India. Unless textbooks from primary classes upwards are thoroughly vetted for gender bias and stereotyping women, and teachers are trained to practice gender equality in the classrooms of the country’s 1.40 million primary-secondary schools and 1.20 million government schools in particular, ugly crimes against women citizens won’t abate.
Simultaneously unless police and judicial reforms prescribed by several high-powered commissions to improve rock-bottom police recruitment and forensics standards and to speed up the agonisingly slow wheels of the justice system are implemented, lumpen youth will continue to rule the public spaces of Indian society.
Righteous indignation and ritual lamentation when atrocities are committed against women citizens are futile without intelligent solutions and resolute action. Nor is the disinclination of the country’s educated middle class to look for political alternatives instead of fatalistically voting for patriarchal political parties cut from the same coarse cloth, any help.
Jallikattu stir poor schooling outcome
The massive and sustained Jallikattu agitation in the southern seaboard state of Tamil Nadu (pop.78 million) is being projected as an assertion of Dravidian identity and Tamil pride. But beneath the surface, it is symptomatic of the steady erosion of the country’s education system across the spectrum from KG to Ph D. To observers with a modicum of intelligence and powers of analysis, it’s clear that this agitation is the outcome of political manoeuvring within the ruling AIADMK party to fill the huge vacuum in the party following the death last December of J. Jayalalithaa, the party’s undisputed supremo since 1989, with the opposition DMK also forced to adopt a competitive populist stand and confront not only the AIADMK, but also the Central government. And in this intra and inter-party confrontation, both parties have resorted to stoking latent sub-nationalist passions in this state, ruled alternatively by these two political parties drawing inspiration from the make-believe world of popular Tamil cinema.
The facts behind the Jallikattu agitation are simple. This celebratory sport which coincides with peninsular India’s harvest festival of Pongal, requires teased and inflamed — often with alcohol — bulls to run the streets of towns and villages with derring-do youths encouraged to subdue them with their bare hands. The youths who succeed are awarded cash prizes. Undoubtedly, this animal sport tests the courage of young males.
But undoubtedly also, it’s agony for bulls. This prompted the animal rights organisation PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) to move the Supreme Court to ban this cruel sport. In 2014, after detailed and prolonged consideration, first the Madras high court and following an appeal, the apex court banned Jallikattu and bullock cart racing in Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra for “subjecting it (bulls) to all forms of torture, fear, pain and suffering”. It’s pertinent to note that the public in Tamil Nadu accepted this reasoned verdict for three years. Therefore, the sudden upsurge in favour of this brute sport statewide at a time of political uncertainty, is an indicator of political mischief and the gullibility of the public.
The connection between this orchestrated agitation drawing rousing support from Tamil Nadu’s youth, and the state’s deliberately run-down education system is clear. The youth and shallow intellectuals in the forefront of this movement who equate it with Tamil cultural pride, are clearly unschooled about constitutional governance. The country’s courts have been established and staffed by learned judges to adjudicate contending viewpoints on matters of public interest.
Therefore, their considered verdicts should be accepted after completion of due process. Obdurate refusal to accept this basic tenet of constitutional governance is an invitation to anarchy. Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of the public is oblivious of this danger.