I woke up that morning to the news of the four convicts of Nirbhaya rape case being hanged. My Facebook timeline was stormed with applauding posts by citizens of India rejoicing their death. A few months back they were rejoicing the extrajudicial murder of the accused persons of in Telangana rape and murder case.
Decades prior, these same citizens were rejoicing the death of Ranga and Billa convicted for the Geeta and Sanjay Chopra murder and rape case in the year 1982 and then again they did not fail to rejoice the judicial killing of Dhanonjoy Chatterjee convicted for rape and murder case in the year 2004.
In all these cases, the process of men walking to the gallows was hugely celebrated in the country. The apex court termed these crimes (other than the Telangana rape and murder case) to be rarest of the rare and believed only judicial execution can satisfy the collective public consciousness.
‘Collective public consciousness’ is defined by Wikipedia as ‘set of shared beliefs, ideas, and moral attitudes which operate as a unifying force within society.’ Also, it mentions that collective public consciousness need not be a moral consciousness.
The Indian society that uses cuss words directed at women’s genitalia as a part of regular conversations, enjoys Bollywood songs where women are described as a sexual object, laughs at snobbish jokes about Indian wives, irks when told marital rape is a crime, believes that women are physically weaker, vilifies sex workers, passes judgement about the character of a woman based on her virginity and number of sexual partners, uses derogatory comments on women’s choice of dresses, believes that genders beyond the binary are a disease, uses slangs based on the LGBTQ community, and as a whole, bears a sick patriarchal mindset has been celebrating the death of rape convicts since decades now.
This is the same Indian society whose first response to the news of abrogation of 370 from Kashmir was that they will get to marry Kashmiri women, who vilify dark-skinned women, who keep a lustrous dirty mindset for the women from North East and look down at the women coming from the lower strata of our society. The Indian society is not only patriarchal but is also equally racist and casteist. This is reflected by their selective outrage on sexual violence against women. In the cases mentioned here, the society has been openly outraging and the judiciary seems to quench their bloodthirst rightly by hanging the convict to satisfy collective public consciousness.
This selective outrage by the society forces me to see the backgrounds of the victims, they come from an upper-middle-class background and the convicts here are coming from lowermost strata of the society. The societal outrage and the thirst for the blood of the convicts are very intensive here. But when the opposite happens, the society turns a blind eye, and at times, stands with the perpetrator of the sexual offences. Out of hundreds of such instances of the hypocrisy the Indian society has been displaying, I will throw light into few here.
On July 10, 2004 Manipuri village girl was picked up by the 17th Assam Riffles Unit of Indian Army and her bullet-ridden and badly mutilated body was found at a distance of 3 kilometres from her house. She was an alleged militant and as per the report filed by the Army unit, she tried to escape from their custody, hence they had to fire at her legs and she succumbed to the bullet injuries. But her laboratory report says otherwise.
The Central Forensic Science Laboratory, Calcutta submitted its report stating that human semen and Human Blood group A were detected on her underwear and phanek (traditional Manipuri costume for women) indicating that she was both physically and sexually assaulted. Her post mortem report also suggests that she was shot at point-blank range in her private parts, hence contradicting the statement recorded by the Army Unit in their defence.
A judicial enquiry was set up which was stopped from publishing its report for a decade. In the year 2014, the commission revealed its report to the Supreme Court confirming how mercilessly Manorama was tortured, raped and extra-judicially murdered. This case also made the great mothers of Manipur come out in a naked protest outside Kangla Fort.
Picking up someone illegally, physically and sexually assaulting her, firing rounds of bullets at her private parts, and finally killing her is not less brutal than what happened in the Nirbhaya rape and murder case. The aggression and the sadistic pleasure the perpetrators derived is evident from the fact that not a single bullet had mistakenly stroked her legs. After the incident came to light, the perpetrators of the 17th Assam Battalion of Indian Army covered under the veil of heinous and draconian Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) tried to tamper evidence which violates IPC section 204.
Is the Indian society outraging for this case in the same intensity as they were doing in the Nirbhaya or Telangana case? The difference here is that here the victim comes from a very unprivileged background whereas the perpetrators are state-sponsored Indian Army personnel. Is the society thirsty for the blood of these 17th Assam Rifles jawans? Cannot the case be considered under the category of ‘rarest of the rare’? Should not the draconian act AFSPA facilitating such offences be scrapped? I bet these are not the questions that bother the patriarchal, racist and casteist Indian society.
In February 1993, Indian security forces again under the protection of AFSPA raided a village in Kunan Poshpara, Kashmir. About 23-100 women had alleged to be raped by the Army Jawans. The government had commissioned Press Council of India to conduct an investigation in this incident. The inquiry commission visited the place after three months of the incident and reported that the allegations were baseless. This is a violation of the proper code of investigation for rape. The women, to date, have been denied their basic right to justice.
The Press Council of India had also attempted to malign their character saying they are militant wives. Again, here the victims come from a marginalized background whereas the perpetrators of the crime are a representation of the state’s power. Indian society didn’t seem to outrage in this case against improper investigation and denial of the right to justice to the marginalized women.
As we walk into our corporate offices daily, we find posters mentioning the guidelines to deal with sexual harassment at our workplace. This gives us a notion of empowerment and we hardly bother to know the struggle of a Dalit woman Bhanwari Devi’s contribution in it. Upper-caste men raped Bhanwari Devi in 1992 to prevent her from stopping child marriages in her village. On reporting the incident she had to go through layers of harassment from the administration, court and her society. Without moving an inch, she fought to finally make the court draft the Vishaka Guidelines which deal with cases of sexual harassment at workplaces.
The irony is though a Dalit woman had inspired the court to frame these guidelines, the marginalized communities got no relief out of it. In Maharashtra’s Beed district, women are forced to get their uteruses removed so that they can avoid taking leaves during menstruation. Women involved as workers in other unorganized sectors hardly have the facilities of washrooms to be used during menstruation. This a sheer violation of their rights and Indian society never outrages against it. Again the victims belong to the marginalized sections of this society.
The Indian society displays its dual-faced hypocrisy when it comes to rapes of the marginalized women. It has normalized the violence on the marginalized of this country and outrages only when someone from their community is harmed. Their casteist mindset is reflected when they turn a blind eye towards, or stand with the perpetrators of such crimes. The sexual offenders also walk in from the same society and hold the same patriarchal mindset.
Every time a convict is awarded the death sentence, the society walks free acquitted of all charges. The society is equally responsible for such sexual offences and is ignorant to address the problems within it. There is no data proving that awarding stringent punishments like death sentence has helped to curb crime from the universal society.
Death sentence has been an excuse to suppress the already marginalized communities in the name of collective public consciousness, a consciousness which is defected, immoral, ignorant, patriarchal, casteist, racist and is thirsty of the blood of marginalized communities. The problem of sexual offences can never be solved without addressing the problems in the collective public consciousness. The society itself shares a part in such sexual offences and then under the excuse of death penalty ignores the possible reformation process of the convict.
A proper egalitarian society devoid of any sexual offences can only be shaped by identifying, discussing and smashing the real problems of patriarchy, casteism, racism and classism. The society cannot keep it aside from the crime or the reformation process of the convict.
In the 21st-century, the death penalty is a tight slap on the face of a civil society and I vehemently oppose it.