THE HUNGER GAMES AT THE CAPITAL: DEJA VU OR REALITY?

Post-apocalypse, a country is formed that consists of a wealthy Capitol region surrounded by 12 poorer districts. The people in the Capitol region rule over the 12 districts and live a life of luxury in a highly protected environment where the common people are not allowed to enter. The common people in the other poor districts have to work hard to provide the resources to the Capitol region so that the rulers/leaders can maintain their luxurious lifestyle.  

The country is ruled from behind closed doors, a building without an address or a telephone number. The people in that building do not allow the leaders they appoint to actually lead and put in place a puppet leader, while they control everything behind the scenes.

 The ordinary citizens from the other poor districts have no access to any healthcare or law & order and have to struggle to make a living. Any uprising or discontent is brutally suppressed by the police forces sent by the rulers in the Capitol.

The President of the Capitol tells his council members that it is okay to give the districts hope but that too much hope can actually be dangerous.

If this sounds familiar it is the story of the “Hunger Games” which was a hugely successful movie recently. But while watching the recent protests of the enraged public to the brutal gang-rape of a young woman in New Delhi, I got a feeling of Déjà vu. This was an uncanny parallel to the movie where battalions  of police are mobilized to protect the “Inner Circle” of the Capitol where the VVIP’s live and the citizens- girls, women, old people are beaten and tear-gassed for having the audacity to come to this sacred sanctorum, meant only for the privileged people. You want to protest, fine! Go and protest somewhere else – NOT here! Ordinary people are not allowed here! This is the message that we get from the authorities as they seal off the New Delhi district and shut down the Metro services.

It is always scary when Life imitates Art or is it the other way around. Either way the message is clear - this is the comfort zone of VVIP’s and how dare you presume to enter this area!

In PART III of the Constitution of India under FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS is the Right to Freedom which says -

 (1) All citizens shall have the right—

(a) to freedom of speech and expression;

(b) to assemble peaceably and without arms;

(c) to form associations or unions;

(d) to move freely throughout the territory of India;

So here we have a revered location where in a few weeks the nation will be celebrating the birth of the Constitution of India for the 63rd time! At this same location we are witnessing the murder of the fundamental provisions of the Constitution of India!

For over 60 years we have mostly the same political parties and politicians in power and they have not done anything for the dignity & safety of women in India. We cannot expect any change from these people. It is an insult when these politicians come out to make statements when horrific incidents like this happen and claim to understand the pain of the victims as they too have daughters. Do their daughters travel in public transport and get groped and have to listen to lewd comments? Do they walk around like the other women do in markets and go to work every day? No they do NOT! They are protected by VIP security, travel with escorts, study in privileged schools or abroad! These pathetic attempts to get sympathy just because they have daughters, is an insult to the citizens of India.

What we need is a massive change in a system which fosters & breeds connivance between law-makers and those who are supposed to implement the law. We need to throw out a system which hides personal accountability behind “Committee of Enquiry” or “The Government. We cannot allow a system where politicians make hurtful and derogatory remarks and then claim they are being “misquoted” or “this is a political conspiracy”!

We desperately need ACCOUNTABILITY! And it is apparent we will not get it from this present system.

"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results." 

So can we expect an “Indian Spring” where hopefully out of chaos will arise a new order or can we expect the current unrest to be brutally beaten by “lathis” and tear-gassed into submission! Or perhaps the response will be stonewalling by “The Government” until the public anger subsides and the protest end in a whimper much like the month of March.

My money is on a brutal response to break the back of this public outrage much like the British response used to be to similar protests by ordinary citizens fighting for freedom for India.

In conclusion I’d like to quote an old Italian proverb –

“After the game, both the King and the pawn go into the same box”~ Italian proverb

(Is there some irony because its Italian – oh not at all)

RAISINA HILL: BEATING THE RETREAT OR BEATING THEM TILL THEY RETREAT?

Raisina Hill: ___________________________________________________________________

BEATING THE RETREAT OR BEATING THEM TILL THEY RETREAT?

The name Raisina Hill invokes images of the sun setting on the horizon on a winter evening in the city of New Delhi, flags proudly fluttering on the imposing ramparts of the North & South Block and the Rashtrapati Bhavan in the background. The nation witnessed the Beating of the Retreat for the 63 rd time at Vijay Chowk early this year with the President and Prime Minister and a horde of dignitaries and diplomats in attendance. They were treated with deferential respect worthy of the historical venue and the occasion while the Armed Forces bands played tunes to remind us that we are a proud democratic nation.  

As the sun sets, the melancholy notes of a bugle sound and the “Abide with me” prayer plays out to the chimes of the bell coming from a distance makes the rendition and the event very serene. 

Cut to the recent events where a massive spontaneous protest by young women, students and common citizens was sparked by the brutal rape and violence inflicted on a young medical student in a bus driven on the crowded streets of the capital of India. As these people peacefully protested and demanded justice at this venue which represents freedom and democracy they were greeted by hastily erected barricades to protect the sanctity of the VVIP’s, had tear gas and water cannons used against them and finally brutally beaten with “lathis” in a mindless orgy of  violence by uncontrollable policemen.

One image continues to stand out among all the ghastly images of police brutality – that of a sub-inspector in full uniform and polished shoes grinning with pleasure as he slams his “lathi” into the back of a young girl in jeans while his fellow policemen are grinning in the background! Ironically he is a “public servant” whose salary, uniform, shoes and even the “lathii” he is using are paid for by people like the young girl he is beating!

 Republic Day commemorates the date on which the Constitution of India came into force. To mark the importance of the occasion, every year a grand parade is held in the capital, New Delhi, along the Rajpath, past India Gate to Vijay Chowk.   The President comes forward to award the medals of bravery to the people who have distinguished themselves by their different acts of valour in different situations. Children who receive the National Bravery Award ride past the spectators on colourfully decorated elephants. The India Gate, Vijay Chowk, Raisina Hill are historical venues that celebrate how the common people supressed by an unpopular regime revolted through peaceful protests and won their freedom & independence as a free nation called India.

In PART III of the Constitution of India under FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS is the Right to Freedom which says -

19. Protection of certain rights regarding freedom of speech, etc.—(1) All citizens shall have the right—

(a) to freedom of speech and expression;

(b) to assemble peaceably and without arms;

(c) to form associations or unions;

(d) to move freely throughout the territory of India;

So here we have a revered location where in a few weeks the nation will be celebrating the birth of the Constitution of India for the 63rd time!

At this same location we are witnessing the murder of the fundamental provisions of the Constitution of India!

Since Independence there have been many rally’s held at this venue. Indira Gandhi’s last rally, the Kisan Rally, was held in 1982 at the Boat Club near India Gate and around 10 lakh attended that rally! Some rallies have been peaceful, some have been chaotic and unruly, disrupting normal life in the Capital for days.

But in most cases the Government had handled them with caution and kid gloves. The reason is that these were political rally’s with a distinct vote bank like the Kisan or the Dalit in majority and the Government would never dare to upset these groups or votrbanks.

The present protest rally at Rajpath was a spontaneous reaction to the brutal & inhuman violation and rape of a young girl. It was a heartfelt cry from girls, students, women and concerned citizens who felt her pain and were afraid that one day this could happen to them or their daughters.   Extreme crimes necessitate extreme measures! This dithering Government is incapable of taking any decisions on matters that do not pertain to either their benefits or perpetuating their hold on power.

The latest response of the administration to these injuries caused to harmless women and people during the “lathi” charges and tear gassing is that it was “collateral damage”.  These days it is foolish to expect people in positions of power to resign on grounds of moral responsibility as that would imply you have some sense of morality!

So now I have these two images in my mind – one of serene beauty and historic tradition as the Beating the Retreat ceremony is conducted and the other of the savage and mindless violence being inflicted on ordinary citizens of India. Both events are at the same historic venue ironically named Vijay Chowk.

While I find it difficult to juxtapose these images I leave it to you to decide who’s victory do we celebrate at Vijay Chowk!

How much is Bollywood to blame for the rapes in India?

A huge share of the blame for the massive increase in rapes all over India should be put on Bollywood and the type of movies they have made over the last two decades. These movies depict women in a very poor light. The hero could be a mechanic or a rickshaw driver but he will have a group of goonies with him and they stand around passing crude comments at women. The hero behaves in a rough and crude manner with a girl who may be educated and from a respectable family but this means nothing to the hero who forces himself on the girl with crude gestures & song and eventually wins over the girl. This is the myth propagated by Bollywood and it has resulted in a huge change in the way the uneducated men view women today.

If you look at the behaviour of heroes in older movies it was much most respectful towards women and so was society in the old days. Granted that fantasy was always a part of films but the hero wooed the heroine with tenderness & respect in the old days. Even in movies like Amar Prem where the heroine was a prostitute she was treated with respect. Womanhood was cherished as the font of all life. Motherhood was revered as the greatest sacrifice and women in general were given their due. The hero would never mistreat a woman and that role was clearly defined for "the Villain" who would then be severely punished for even daring to insult a woman.

In Bollywood today women have mostly been reduced to the status of accessories who dress up in skimpy clothing to perform lewd dances with sexually-suggestive gestures. They are subjected to crude behaviour by men on the street and while they don't respond to the crudity they are portrayed as secretly enjoying the attention! So now every Roadside Romeo who is jobless thinks he has licence to act in a lewd manner with women and make crude suggestions and she will eventually succumb to his "charms". And even if she resists his advances she probably secretly likes them!

So does Art imitate life or is it Life imitating Art? Either way Bollywood has to stand up and change its approach or all this anger and grief they are showing is just hypocrisy and crocodile tears!

If they really feel anything for this poor victim in Delhi or indeed the thousands of girls who have become victims of savage and bestial crimes then they need to put their money where their mouth is and stop portraying women disrespectfully. They need to convey the message to the millions of uneducated potential Romeos that the punishment of misbehaving with women will result in terrifying punishment and invite the wrath of God on them and their families.

So do they care for women or for their box office returns?

So come on Bollywood - show us how much you care and for what you care!

The Great Indian Rape Trick

The Great Indian Rape Trick

During the 19th century “The Great Indian Rope trick” is said to have been performed in and around India . Sometimes described as "the world’s greatest illusion", it reputedly involved a magician, a length of rope, and the disappearance of an assistant. It would be one hundred years before "the great Indian rope trick" was fully exposed as a hoax.

In present day India we have “The Great Indian Rape Trick” where a young woman or child is brutally gang-raped by a bunch of men and then a few days later the story mysteriously disappears from the media headlines and public memory while the battered victim is abandoned to an inefficient judicial system and a callous society!

The tragedy of the latest brutal rape case in New Delhi is that despite all the shock & anger that is being vocalized at the moment, this too will end up being another shameful statistic in the history of Modern India.

So is there some way to change history?  Can we channel all this furious energy and rage into effective action and deliver justice to the victim against all odds and in the face of official apathy? Or will this ultimately end up being all sound & fury signifying nothing, just like countless other rape cases in India over the years since Independence.

Let us do a quick recap of some of the most revolting rape cases in recent times which were highlighted amongst hundreds of rapes because of the unspeakable savagery and inhumanity which made these cases stay in our memory.

1.                   The infamous Buddha Jayanti Park gang-rape case when four members of the elite President's Bodyguards brutally raped a helpless Delhi University student. They were military men and in uniform. The crime was committed when the 17-year-old girl, along with her boyfriend had gone to Buddha Jayanti Park in the backyard of the Presidential Palace on October 6, 2003, to watch a programme of the Dalai Lama. (How ironic and tragic can life be!)

After 9 long years the courts finally gave 2 of them life imprisonment and 2 of them got 10 years in jail and will probably be free by next year!

2.                   Just weeks later, a  28-year-old Swiss diplomat stepped out of the Siri Fort auditorium after watching a film at the International Film Festival. As the diplomat was about to get into her car she was abducted and raped in her own car by two men while being driven around the Safdarjung Development area.  

3.                    On 27 November 1973, Aruna Shanbaug, a nurse at the KEM Hospital in Mumbai was sexually assaulted by Sohanlal, a sweeper on contract at hospital. Though police lodged a case of robbery, assault and attempted murder, they did not record rape, ostensibly to save her impending marriage.  It has been almost 40 years since her rape and Aruna has been living in a permanently vegetative state which does not permit her to know, least of all enjoy, favourite foods, music, people. It also doesn’t allow her to smile in response to an external influence. Aruna has mush tipped into a nasal-feed pipe going directly into the stomach to keep her alive. For almost 40 years she has been condemned to a living hell.

Her rapist, Sohanlal, went to jail for seven years but now his whereabouts are not known.

4.                   In 2001, in the first of its kind incident in Delhi, a 26-year-old woman was gang raped by four men in a moving Blueline bus. The victim boarded the bus from Mathura Road in south Delhi. The men threw her out of the moving bus after raping her.

5.                   A Delhi University student was raped in a moving car by four men near Dhaula Kuan in south Delhi in 2005. The victim was walking home after buying food from a roadside eatery along with a friend.

6.                   In 2010, an 18-year-old girl and a 24-year-old woman, who worked in a factory at Mangolpuri, were raped by four men, including a minor, in a car in Sultanpuri area in north Delhi.

7.                   The same year, a 30-year-old BPO employee from Manipur, was picked up by four drunk men near Dhaula Kuan and gang-raped for over 40 minutes in a moving vehicle.

8.                   In April 2011, a Class 10 student of Gurgaon was abducted and raped by three men as they drove around in south Delhi.

9.                   In August 2012, a minor girl who had gone to the market with her two friends, was gang-raped by nine boys who drove around Pitampura area. The accused stopped the car in which the girls were travelling, abducted the victim at gun-point and raped her in their car.

Shamefully the list of cases is endless but it’s as if they mysteriously disappear like the Great Indian Rope trick.

The usual scenario after each case is a media frenzy for a few days during which the same characters come out of the woodwork with the same platitudes and shaking of heads. “ This is terrible- Something has to be done – We cannot tolerate this!” Etc,etc.  But the rapes seemingly continue undeterred and nothing gets done to reduce and stop these unspeakable crimes against women.

Some of the resulting statements could be funny if they were not due to such tragic and horrific crimes.

One Chief Minister responded to a brutal rape of a journalist by commenting that perhaps she should not be out working late at night. Incidentally the Chief Minister concerned was a woman.

Some male member of a Khap Council blamed fast food and “chowmein” for rapes! Another Council member recommended that women should be married off at an early age.

But the recurring theme seems to be that these women were partly responsible for their own rapes either because they were not “appropriately dressed” or that they were out too late or that they were with some man who was not their husband. Reading between the lines, the implication of these people seems to be that women should NOT be educated, independent, confident and self-sufficient. They should be married off early, stay at home to perform domestic chores and not aspire for freedom of any kind.

According to this section of people, if women are raped or molested then it is apparently largely because they have brought it upon themselves.

I don’t see how this explains the rapes of infants and minors but who can argue with morons.

This is in a nation where the longest serving Prime Minister was a woman, the leader of the ruling alliance is a woman, the leader of opposition in the Parliament is a woman and the list goes on. This just seems to imply that the current leaders do not feel the pain of these traumatised, brutalized and devastated victims.

So why is this happening? 50 per cent of the votes in this country belong to women! Surely they feel the pain of these women who have become victims of such brutal sexual acts. Even among the male voters there must be some fathers, brothers or even just some decent men who are appalled and pained by these crimes against women and would like to see an end to this!

While the battered victim of the latest gang rape lies in a critical condition in a hospital in Delhi, surrounded by her grief-stricken parents who must have brought her up like a cherished little precious child for whom they had so many dreams, our administration is pointing fingers in all directions to find someone to blame.  The elected members of our democracy are indulging in an unseemly fight in the Parliament for reservations based on caste and religion so as to cater to their greed for power.

Let’s face it – no one cares enough for this poor girl to try and change the laws. To make the inhuman animals who perpetrate these monstrous crimes pay dearly.  To create such fearsome punishment that it fits the crime and terrifies any person so much that they would not even think about committing such heinous acts.

Remember it is not enough that justice is delivered but also that justice is seen to be delivered!

We need drastic changes to laws so that women in India are protected and safe. The punishment should be such that it fits the crime – like chemical or physical castration in public, the death penalty and public canning! We need to brush aside the bleeding hearts who cry for human rights because the people who commit these ghastly crimes are NOT human and exceptional crimes should have exceptional repercussions.

 For instance just recently in Salem, three teenage girls were tied to a lamp post and badly beaten up by the public on suspicion of having stolen Rs 1,000 from a textile shop here, police said. The girls were rescued by police and hospitalized.

 In another incident a minor girl, who had accused a local goon of raping her, was strangled to death by the hoodlum in full public view in a Fatehpur village after she refused to withdraw the complaint against him. After brutally assaulting her, he strangled her to death in full public view and escaped.

The current lot of political parties do not seem to have these concerns for women anywhere on their agenda. We need a third or fourth force, maybe a fifth column to address these issues. After all, women represent half the voting population of this nation. Surely that is worth something.

Or else The Great Indian Rape Trick will continue and it may take 100 years for the hoax to be revealed that our leaders and administration care for the rights and safety of the women of this nation.

The Baba and the Black Sheep!

I found it really ironic when Digvijay Singh contemptuously dismisses Baba Ramdev as a thief and a thug just hours after senior ministers from his political party went to see this so-called thug to placate him and beg him to call off his protest fast on corruption. Really Mr Singh given that so many members of your coalition ruling Government are in Tihar Jail for perpetuating a mammoth robbery of public funds you really should not be accusing others of being thieves. Given that your party was in power when millions of people died in the Bhopal Gas tragedy and then let the head of this heartless company quickly leave our country so he could not be arrested surely also does not allow you to call others a thug. By the way where do you come from, oh Bhopal where this happened and you were Chief Minister for two terms and did nothing for these suffering victims? Tsk tsk Mr Singh very poor show indeed.

So now you accuse this Baba of being a thief and a thug. So whom did he rob from? Oh he did not exactly rob from anyone. Okay and what was he doing that was so terrible? I see, he was protesting the loot of the public money over the years by corrupt politicians and administration and demanding that this money be recovered and returned to India. Oh yes that makes him a real thief! Well probably in the Dictionary of Corruption a person who objects to being robbed is a thief and therefore one who steals public money would be an honest man. Well done Mr Singh and we have seen you and your ilk have taught all your children well on these points so they may inherit your profession after you are too old to walk. Oh sorry you will use a wheelchair! Of course but your well taught children will be waiting in the wings to run this country and carry on your legacy.

So who are the Black sheep along with the Baba? Basically anyone who protests is one and the standpoint of the Congress(I) and the CPI ( which has still not realised that their last rites have already been performed) is that if you are not with us then you must be with THEM! And the them in this case is the RSS, VHP, BJP, etc. If you as a member of civil society want to protest peacefully or show your disagreement with the ruling SECULAR coalition then you are a saffron coloured thief and thug who has to be a member of the RSS or the VHP. There is no other choice for you.  

My advice to you Mr Singh and hundreds of your cronies who have bled the system for years for personal gain is " Don't spit in the wind or most of it will come back onto your face". It is this present government who has lost all credibility trying to shield criminals like Raja & Kalmadi and so many others till thankfully the Supreme court stepped in. Your present government got Anna Hazare to stop his fast and promised to implement the Lok Pal Bill only to (quite predictably) go back on your promises and refuse to allow Members of Parliament to be accountable under this bill. 

So who do you want to be accountable under the Lok Pal Bill - the milkman and the farmer? So pardon me if I find it ironic that you called Baba Ramdev a thief. It is a shame that you have behaved in such a dishonorable manner. Your ancestors will be writhing in shame at your words and behavior and you have undone all the good work they did through the generations.