Pointing Fingers:

Dear Mr. Karan Thapar,

I read your personal opinion in the Hindustan Times today regarding the need to take a deeper look at ourselves as a society and change our attitude towards women in order to stop their continuous humiliation. I must applaud you for having such an evolved mind. I also agree that in the longer run, changing mindset is what will work for us. But the question which the nation is asking about is Now, not the ‘longer run’.  

I want to ask you a question. Just how many times have you actually travelled in local buses of Delhi or walked the crowded streets of Lajpat Nagar or ever tried taking auto at night in places like Uttam Nagar or Rohini? My guess is that neither you nor anyone in your family would have done that. I have spent 16 repressed years in Delhi before choosing to live a more free life in Mumbai and in those 16 years, I lived the life of a common middle class girl doing all the above and more. So, can you even begin to imagine the humiliation I felt when as a 19 years old naive college student, I was masturbated against in a local bus in full view of everybody and I had no idea what to do? Or would you ever know how it feels when you walk down a street in broad daylight and guys on bike come from behind and grope you? Or the terror you feel when the auto driver suddenly takes you off the normal route and down a deserted, unlit road at 8 in the night? Or the feeling of frustration when you roam around your locality for an hour trying to shake off a stalker because you know nobody will help?

You talk of changing attitudes, especially the mothers. An NGO which works on the issue of violence against women once told me that it took her 10 years to make the women in villages of Sawantwadi to introspect and accept violence as unnatural. These women had accepted abuse as a way of life and had no idea that a better society existed (if at all) outside. And now you expect them to be the torch bearers of change? Tell me, how many of us who are educated have the ability to really introspect and change themselves? So, can you imagine these women who are not educated and have never seen a life without a form of abuse to first change their thoughts and then change their sons’?

You talk of changing attitudes, especially the mothers. Let me tell you three stories that I have come across in the so called educated metros.

A well educated Bengali guy (parents’ only child) worked as a manager in one of the top private banks. He was addicted to S&M porn and forced his newlywed bride to all that he saw on screen. When asked by the NGO, he said that he can do whatever he felt like because she is his wife. His parents were scared of his anger.   

A judge of a High Court often beat his daughter at the slightest pretext. Neither the girl’s brother nor her mother had the ability or strength to defend her.

A husband regularly beat his wife because she had a small room in her name which he wanted to possess. In order to punish her, he forcibly made their teenage son and daughter watch porn with him. He also passed lewd comments on his own daughter in front of everybody.

Dear Mr. Thapar, the current state of the Indian Society as I see it, cannot be simply explained as the result of it being a patriarchal society. The malaise is much much deeper. Why else would a society have gang rapes on children or sexually abuse both girls and boys? When I read this article, I was terrified because this does not have as simple a solution as changing attitudes.

You are perhaps right. We cannot ask our leaders to help because many of them are criminals themselves and won’t let the axe fall on them by changing laws. We also cannot ask the police force to help because as the Tehelka story suggests, they are worse than our tormentors. So with our leaders and protectors out, it leaves us with only you, Mr. Thapar and like minded people like you to help. You have two important media at your resource. Why not use it to influence people and work towards your solution your way?

If you can even change the mindset of any one of the three people I have mentioned above, I will forever look up to you as the evolved mind that you are.

But till that time, please stop playing the Devil’s Advocate to the better half of the country’s population.

Yours,

 A common woman on the street

For Mumbai women: Dial 103 for help, Railway Control Room (locals): 022-23004000

Women across the country, know your rights and insist on their implementation (most of these are really strong and in your favour): Protection of Women Against Domestic Violence Act, Sexual Harrassment of Women at Workplace Bill, Protection of Children from Sexual Offense Act

In Maharashtra, almost all districts’ SP’s offices have a special cell for women and children who are trained to handle cases of violence against women in any form. It is always advisable to go to them for help than go to a general police station as they are more sensitive and better equipped to handle cases of crime against women and children.

How important is your ‘ism’?

Can a country with so many religions be truly secular or for that matter can a religious person ever be secular?

Here my definition of religion as I have understood it over the years – faith (often blind) in one and only one particular way of reaching out to God or a supreme being. The ‘ism’ in that faith makes a person do a whole lot of rituals or ceremonies, sometimes without ever questioning them or even trying to understand the meaning behind them.  There are a lot of people who do understand and believe in the rituals etc, but then they end feeling that their chosen path is supreme and the rest are not really up there yet.

Secularism for me means keeping all those ‘ism’s aside and looking at a fellow human being as a human being first and not let his/her ‘ism’ get in the way.  

My father is an atheist and my mother religious. We recently went to Shirdi at my mother’s request. Being a pilgrimage town, there was a feeling of piety and a vague sense that all of us were there for the same reason. But what disturbed me was an underlying sense of madness, of religious fervour. Sai Baba disregarded religious orthodoxy and rituals putting more emphasis on self realisation, charity and being a good human being.  I am not too sure I saw any of this there. People did exactly what they were not supposed to do ... follow rituals. Offering garlands worth Rs.500 or 1000 is not really charity. Not maintaining roads within the city limits even when so much money is pouring in is not really being good.

For some reason which I can’t fathom (I do want to blame media to an extent), I feel that people across faiths are getting more and more ritualistic. The Diwali, Navratra, Id or Karwa Chauth celebrations, all are getting more elaborate and showy.

In my experience, the moment you take the path of self-realisation, all the rituals and celebrations cease to matter. When I was a kid, my father had sat me down and told me that there is a rationale behind everything, that I should question things including God and never to follow anything blindly (exactly what Pi’s father told him in the book Life of Pi). My mother’s belief in her God helped me keep my faith in a powerful being. But it was my inherent Hindu-ness (not the ‘ism’ but the philosophy) which led me to experiment with almost all faiths and various other esoteric ways in order to find myself.  Finding myself did not mean that I became a good human being without faults but that it helped me see the goodness in others and try and accept them as they are.

So I question people or a nation (ours) who term themselves secular.  The notion on paper sounds good.  But if not implemented in practice makes you question as to why the word is there in the first place. The first step towards self realisation is to acknowledge and accept your current state of being. So it is time that we as a nation acknowledge the fact that we are not really secular, that we are more a nation of multiple ‘ism’s co-existing.

It took me more than three decades of search to get my answer. So for all of us as a society to collectively reach a state where we can truly call ourselves secular, will probably take an era. But starting now is imperative.