Cry, daughter, cry


Nothing surprises me any more when it comes to how low we can sink as a society in heaping abuses on India’s daughters. Even before she has been able to dry the tears from the last assault, comes the next one.


Whether it is in the extraordinary crime we as a country are committing every day in eliminating our daughters through sex selection or burning young brides because they could not bring enough ‘dowry,’ or simply, the rising graph of violent crimes against women, it is now a known fact that the government, across the political spectrum, is by and large indifferent to these crimes being played out every day.


And that is why the mayhem that unfolded in a pub in the once idyllic coastal town of Mangalore in Karnataka where young girls were brutally assaulted, openly molested and physically injured and overpowered by a bunch of goons who claimed to be part of an organization called the Sri Ram Sene certainly angers us but does not surprise. It is yet another dagger through our broken hearts.


Every time we celebrate a few trophies or milestones, out come the daggers to break our spirit. Those who assault our daughters - whether they are the husbands, in-laws, fundamentalist groups or goons - they are all bold and unrelenting. Because they know that there is a political and judicial consent that they will get away with their crimes. That explains why after the attacks and the outrage they have been freely intimidating the women victims and also the sole man who came to their rescue.


The glib reaction of the Karnataka government to the Mangalore crime again does not surprise, only angers. There is a political consensus on glossing over crimes against women as if it to say ‘oh-these things-happen-once-in-a-while-don’t make-such-a-fuss-over-it-.’


The stage is now firmly set in these towns for assaults against women who dare to show any degree of independence or violate these ‘norms’ set by these Men of Hate.


Last year, there was an unprecedented attack on the STAR News television office in Mumbai because the channel was running a program on a couple who had landed in trouble because of their mixed marriage - Hindu and Muslim. It was one of the worst attacks so far on a media organization with the saffron goons bursting in to the newsroom with their hockey sticks and clubs, smashing computers, tables and attacking scribes.


As college girls come to the street in India’s IT capital to protest against the Mangalore crime, let the powers that be stand reminded that in this city 33 per cent of the total workforce in IT companies and BPOs is women. Tomorrow, if self- appointed outfits like the Sri Ram Sene goons burst into these offices and try to ensure a dress code on women and insist that they not talk to their male colleagues, India’s Silicon Valley may indeed become the object of bad media.


A complicit government which privately supports the patriarchal philosophy of these groups must know that no woman will tolerate this kind of attack on their freedom, regardless of their political affiliations.


But till there is a political will to learn from the Mangalore incident, our daughters will be unsafe in this country. Till then India’s daughters will continue to weep.


(Nupur Basu is an independent journalist and director of a recent documentary on BBC World titled No Country for Young Girls?)

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