Trigger Warning: Mentions Rape, Sexual assault
On 22nd February, Kapil Mishra, a local leader of the Bhartiya Janta Party, vowed to clear anti-government protesters from the city, followed by his rally in Jaffarabad. In his tweet, the local minister even threatened the Delhi Police of consequences in case they fail to clear the protest sites. Clashes soon erupted in different parts of the Capital and turned into one of the worst riots the city has seen in the past two decades. What started as an attack on ‘the protesters of the unconstitutional citizenship act’, soon took the shape of communal hatred with selected attacks on the houses and shops of Muslims.
The BBC reported that people have been stopped by the police and asked about their religion. The extent of the violence is such that Muslim residents of Mustafabad were forced to leave their homes with their belongings, fearing further violence. The incidents of violence are not just limited to attacks on shops and houses of Muslims, but horrific cases of murder and sexual violence against women have been reported to the Delhi Commission for Women through their helpline number 181.
A visit made by DCW chief Swati Maliwal to the riot-affected locality in Delhi brought to light the horrific incident of a nine-month pregnant woman being assaulted. These incidents, if evaluated in light of severe sexual assaults allegedly committed by the police in Jamia’s girls’ hostel, adds to the terror towards a community. This kind of indecent behaviour was not just limited to protesters of the anti-constitutional Citizenship Act or those belonging to the Muslim community, but even women lawyers and journalists have also not been spared.
Patriarchy At The Heart of Hate Crimes
It is a known fact that whenever a situation nearing communal hatred occurs, women remain among the worst-affected. Women’s bodies are used to seek revenge on the enemy and also to incite the ‘other’. There is enough evidence from the 2002 Gujarat riots to prove the kind of violence and extremity one group can reach in order to establish one’s religious supremacy. It was reported that Bilkis Bano, a 19-year-old during the time of riots, was brutally raped along with nine of her family members. She was left to witness the gory deaths of her child and 14 of her relatives.
This is not just one such case of sexual violence on women of the minority religion. Enough evidence exists in public domain suggesting heinous crimes committed against women from the enemy clan. Sexual violence is not the worst that awaits the survivors of communal hatred. Rather, it is the shameful system of impunity in the legal and police procedure that forces many to revisit the horrors of the crime that were committed. The deep misogynistic legal procedure and the social ostracising that comes with sexual violence such as rape further hinders many families to seek justice.
Amnesty International reports evidence of inflicting violence on women, suggesting that they have not only been used as an instrument to instill terror in the population, but also to dislocate them. The humiliation and shame that accompanies rape and sexual crimes against women also ensures that they do not return. What needs immediate attention and correction with the societal procedures is the fact that women’s ‘modesty’ should not be treated as disposable or as a weapon during the time of establishing politico-religious supremacy over the other group.
In case of the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots, harassment of a Hindu girl by a Muslim boy was used as a pretext to turn the situation into what is often described as “the worst violence in Uttar Pradesh in recent history”, displacing 50,000 people from their homes. Similarly, in the politically-influenced ethnic cleaning organised by Hitler, or the Bosnian war in 1992, rape has been used as an instrument of terror by the military force against the Jewish and Bosnian Muslim women to outnumber the accused ethnic group.
This emerges from a deeply set notion of patriarchy, wherein money and political power lies in the hands of men, giving them the freedom to exploit women not just physically, but mentally and psychologically. Saadat Hasan Manto beautifully described in his writings, the ordeal of the women who faced violent physical and sexual crimes during the Partition of 1947. However, just like the everyday struggles of facing hatred, can these crimes be pushed aside as another outcome of the patriarchal society that we live in? Or is it the notion of a community’s pride lying with its women that needs to be challenged?
Whatever the root cause is, it will require sustained efforts to rectify the issue on part of everyone, to reconfigure our notions of pride and who is considered an enemy. The recent political situation in the country has made it very clear that the State and police cannot be trusted when it comes to women’s safety; instead they often become active perpetrators themselves. The brutality of the police in terms of harassment of the alleged women remains a common understanding. The brutal police trial and their behaviour with women depends on the social status and the hierarchy of the woman in the caste system.
In testing times like these, it is necessary for us to understand the source of where this notion of honour is emerging. Is it our patriarchal and Brahminical ideology, or the sustained propaganda spread by the Hindutva-supporting government that makes us believe that women are the stronghold of a community’s ‘honour’? Or is it simply our misogynistic belief that fuels the idea of instigating violence against women so as to feel more masculine?
Once this is apparent, there is a need to rectify the issue. In the recent Delhi riots, the State remains answerable and cannot be condemned any less for its inactivity. However, the problem does not stop at just that. A brief look at the literature suggests that violence against women is a global menace and has been used as a prime strategy during organised ethnic cleansing programmes across the world.
Thus, it is this patriarchal mindset and deep-seated hatred towards women that needs to be challenged and rectified by the global community at large. An inclusive global feminist movement that cuts through the notions of caste, class, colour, and creed is on to achieve something similar. However, in light of the recent hate crimes, it appears that we still have a long journey to tread on.