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Why are you standing next to
Rathore?
Sach Kanwal
Singh
 Since we all
agree that we have all become apathetic and immune to some of the
biggest problems that our society is facing, how do you want us to
start a story about your collective anger and rage that you
felt/displayed/vented at disgraced Indian police officer SPS Rathore
who was accused of trying to molest a 14-year-old tennis playing
school student Ruchika Girhotra and then drove her to suicide?
Well, here is
the generic, simple truth, if you don't mind.
You are quite a
sham. So are we. So is the world around you and us.
Want the truth
is a little bit harsher, no frills form? SPS Rathore's crime was so
very ordinary, so very common, so terribly pedestrian, that perhaps
he was only a victim of his position, his case being a
Chandigarh
case, and the media stretching that smirk into an 8-column national
outrage photo exhibition spanning a month or so.
Hold on, please.
Just don't rush to label us devil's advocates. We know a devil when
we see one, and we see one in Rathore. If we see one in yourself and
ourselves, it is because we still use mirrors. Come have a look.
Take three
portions of Deprivation, two good portions of oppression, a healthy
dose of terror, and wrap it in chronic apathy of the state and
society: you have a concoction called dystopia in which millions of
our children inhabit. We somehow manage to sideline this whole
jungle of dystopia, clear our conscience and see Rathore as the
devil incarnate, which, of course he is. But in so doing, we all
collectively cleansed our soul in the sure knowlegde that we are not
Rathore, that none of our uncles is, that none of our children will
ever grow up to be a Rathore.
But shouldn't we
have a look at what we are?
 Life for
children in India is one long nightmare. The Government of India
tells us that more than two-thirds of children experience beatings
in their homes, schools, workplace and government institutions. Just
imagine what would we have called these beatings if only these had
happened to children in prison cells? The only word is torture. The
Government of the same India that is growing at a robust economic
rate, tells us that every second child faces one or more forms of
sexual abuse.
In a country
with a massive, massive problem of child labour, it is touching to
note such concern about one case of attempted molestation. That is
because we see these two as separate things: child labour and
molestation. We forget that the moment a society learns to live with
child labour, it learns to live with child molestation too. The
children working as bonded labourers are very, very vulnerable to
molestation, rape, sodomy and every type of crime. When these kids
are caught, irrespective of the fact that the Convention on the
Rights of the Child is the most ratified human rights treaty in
human history, these kids are exposed to even higher forms of crime.
Every single state government in India, and Punjab is no exception,
has failed to provide separate homes for different age groups of
children, preferably between 7-11 years, 12-16 years and 16-18
years, giving due consideration to physical and mental nature of the
offence committed. In town after town, city after city, juvenile
justice boards are an unheard of idea.
Every time we
delay a government program, everytime the government falls back on
some commitment, we open more children to poverty, hunger,
deprivation, sexual abuse. Just take the case of National Rural
Health Mission. Now, what has it got to do with Ruchika's suicide?
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We can chose not
to connect the Ruchika case to the treatment meted out to young
girls, middle aged women and elderly, matronly ladies in Delhi in
the winter of 1984, and every single day since then. The modesty of
each of these women was as invaluable, sacro-sanct as that of
Ruchika. As Trilokpuri, Sultanpuri and myriad other colonies watch
their children slip into the menace of drugs, joblessness and utter
apathy of the state, how far are crimes against women, sexual abuse
of girls and exploitation by vested interests? Isn’t every Ruchika
important? Do we want justice for one Ruchika or for every single
child? |
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A lot. A whole
lot of our young Ruchikas are becoming vulnerable every single day
because annual action plans are prepared based on annual household
survey conducted at sub-center level, without conducting facility
survey, the health district plans are not prepared by consolidating
block level action, plans are often delayed, crores are often
unutilised or go as bribes. Such aberrations in administration leave
hundreds of thousands of slums, hutments, tin shacks, footpath
children uncovered, unprovided for, uncared for. Every single such
delay, such aberration leaves many Ruchikas are the mercy of men far
less powerful that Rathore.
But we pay
attention only when we see a Rathore. No, not when we see a Rathore,
but when he smirks at us. No, not when he smirks at us, but when we
catch that smirk on the camera. No, not when we catch that smirk on
the camera, but when the regular 10 o'clock news bulletin does not
have some more smashing, sensational item. Just think what would
have happened if the court decision had come sometime in the last
week of November 2008, or the first week of December 2008 when all
our news TV cameras were stationed either at the Taj/Oberoi in
Mumbai, or at anyone who was ready to abuse Pakistan from Bhiwandi
to Bathinda.
If you have a
doubt about how your attention remains divided unless a devil smirks
on an otherwise news-free day, sample this: A panchayat in Rohtak
recently decided that the only punishment to the rapist of a
seven-year-old girl was that his hair be shaved off. But even in
this there was a rider: the girl's family was not supposed to inform
the police as a quid pro quo for such 'dire' punishment. On how many
channels were you able to watch the story? In how many newspapers
did it make headlines? Not that the reporters did not get to know
about it. Most likely, your newspaper published it, tucked deep
inside where you hardly have time to reach when you are rushing to
pack kids' school tiffins, calling up office to say you will be
getting late and doing your social duty watching the media
lambasting Rathore.
 In Bangalore,
when Rathore was hogging shelf space on TV and in newspapers, a
two-year-old was raped by a construction contractor. Around the same
time, a 10-year-old girl from Valsad raped by her uncle, a Latur
teenager was raped by three young men in her village and hanged from
a jamun tree. If you sent in as many camera teams and the ubiquitous
OB vans of news TV studios to every such place, then there will be
little space left to talk about eight per cent growth rates and the
success of Chidamabaram's Operation Green Hunt.
So, it is much
better to satiate our conscience by talking about Ruchika. If you
feel your angst levels are not satiated by news tv, please join the
candle vigil. There is always a spare news tv camera for such
vigils, and lit candles yield reasonably good photos for page one on
city supplements of newspapers.
Meanwhile, we
can chose not to connect the treatment meted out to young girls,
middle aged women and elderly, matronly ladies in
Delhi
in the winter of 1984, and every single day since then. As
Trilokpuri, Sultanpuri and myriad other colonies watch their
children slip into the menace of drugs, joblessness and utter apathy
of the state, is it any wonder that the entire campaign against
Rathore is played out in the newspapers, on TV screens? When and
where did you see a crowd of 1,000 people on the roads, demanding
justice for Ruchika, and looking determined to launch a long-drawn
out fight for it?
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If you want to
help, ask questions. Ask why is there a liquor vend around every
corner in Punjab? Ask the media why press clubs must have a liquor
bar? Question the culture of the rise of the raunchy in our cinema.
Ask the editors why after all the hyped up coverage of the Ruchika
case, the space devoted to it was still far short of what is claimed
by Bollywood starlets. And please do ask yourself, as we ask
ourselves: Who had asked us to remain silent for nineteen years?
Speak up. Please refuse to be a complicit. None of us is going to
look very smart standing next to Rathore in any photograph.
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No, don't worry
if you did not. Indian media's capacity at ignoring crowds of
thousands is legendary. Just when India was marking the first
anniversary of the Mumbai terror attacks, on November 26, 2009,
thousands of agricultural workers, farmers, lawyers, doctors and
others, a majority of them women, from all over India, marched to
the Parliament Street in New Delhi, demanding that no one should
starve to death since there is a right to life enshrined in the
Constitution and since they are now sick of the repetetive talk of
right to food. They wanted a comprehensive Food Entitlements Act and
immediate action in drought-affected areas. They talked of urgency
of addressing pervasive hunger and starvation in a year of
widespread drought and spiralling food prices. But the media that
runs Domino Pizza ads with punch lines like “Hungry Kya?” completely
ignored the rally since an issue like food for the hungry carries
little political weight.
Among classes
that wield power and influence, the encounter with hunger is at best
articulated in an ad-linelike Hungry Kya, and it is this class that
lights candles for Ruchika and sees a devil in Rathore. If only they
light a candle for every Ruchika, and see a devil in every Rathore.
But part of the reason why Rathore’s appalling crime drew attention
was that it fitted neatly with tropes of villainy familiar from
pop-culture: among them, uniformed criminals immune from the law and
powerful politicians who guarantee them impunity.
The real picture
on the ground is different, and the cities where people protest are
not so orderly as Chandigarh. The police reactions are not so
measured as in
Chandigarh
where all media houses run multi-page local supplements and a
leakage in a sewerage pipe gets top billing on page one if it is
near the house of a VIP.
 In 2007, the
Union Ministry of Women and Child Development released the
thoughtful —and terrifying — Study on Child Abuse in
India.
More than 12,000 children were polled to arrive at an empirical
picture of the scale of beatings and sexual crimes that Indian
children endure. Fifty-three per cent of the children said they had
encountered “one or more forms of sexual abuse;” 68.99 per cent said
they had suffered physical abuse, including beatings. More than a
fifth reported severe sexual abuse, including assault, having been
compelled to fondle adults’ private parts, exhibit themselves or be
photographed nude. Well over half of those reporting severe sexual
abuse were boys, the study found.
Popular wisdom
holds that sexual abuse takes place when children are in
environments outside the supposedly safe confines of their homes and
schools. That, the study found, was simply not true. Fifty-three per
cent of children not going to school said they had been sexually
abused in their family environment. Just under half said they had
encountered sexual abuse at their schools. These figures,
interestingly, were about the same as children in institutional care
who said they had been sexually abused — 47.08 per cent. Most
vulnerable were children in workplaces, 61.31 per cent of whom had
been sexually abused.
 It is estimated
that there are up to half-a-million girl children from across the
South Asian region working as prostitutes in
India.
We hope the media will focus on the issue with as many spare
reporters, news tv cameras, front page reports, walk the talk shows,
chat shows, the Big Fights, Muqabla, or whatever inane name talk TV
employs, as it did in case of Ruchika, but only when it decides that
there are other criminals than Rathore.
The broad
picture of child abuse in India is heart breaking. Maulana Azad
Medical College researcher Deepti Pagare found that over
three-fourths of children in Delhi’s Child Observation Home had
reported being subjected to physical abuse. Signs of abuse were
found on the bodies of about half the children studied by Dr.
Pagare. Fathers made up over half the reported perpetrators, and Dr.
Pagare found a significant association between physical abuse of
children and domestic violence in homes as well as substance abuse.
Save the Children and Tulir, in a 2006 study conducted in West
Bengal, found that almost three-quarters of child domestic workers
had been physically abused. In 41.5 per cent of cases, the
perpetrator was a member of the employers’ family.
India’s criminal
justice system simply doesn’t have either the legal instruments or
police infrastructure to deal with crimes against children. India is
yet to pass a specific law on child sexual abuse — a legislative
failure that makes prosecution in many situations almost impossible.
 In 1974, the
National Policy for Children declared children a “supreme national
asset.” No country in which two-thirds of children report beatings,
and half experience sexual abuse, can make that claim with honesty.
A whole lot of
noise over Rathore, a whole lot of self-styled fighters for justice
are also in some peculiar way helping to keep in place the shroud of
silence that conceals the sheer pervasiveness of child abuse.
If you really
were so enraged at what happened to Ruchika, and what happened to
her family, if you really want to follow in the steps of Ruchika’s
friend Aradhna or her parents Anand and Madhu Prakash, come and join
the fight. Join the fight against India’s Armed Forces Special
Powers Act because of which Indian armed personnel are carrying out
serial rapes of young women in Manipur and elsewhere. Stand up
against Operation Green Hunt of Chidambaram who wants to use your
army and your tax money to kill the leaders of the poorest of the
poor by branding them Maoists and Naxalites but does not want to use
that money to lay roads, provide jobs, ensure drinking water and
bring governance to huge swathes that are awash in rank poverty.
Take a stand in your classrooms, in your parent-teachers association
meetings, in your housing society welfare group discussions about
what role you can play in mitigating the pain of the widows whose
husbands were burnt alive in 1984. Talk to anyone and everyone about
what can you do about the liquor vend-around-every-corner policy of
the Punjab Government. Ask the media why press clubs have to have a
liquor bar as their main reason for existence. Question the culture
of the rise of the raunchy in our cinema. Ask the editors why after
all the hyped up coverage of the Ruchika case, the space devoted to
it was still far short of what is claimed by Bollywood starlets.
And please do
ask yourself, as we ask ourselves: Who had asked us to remain silent
for nineteen years?
Our silence and
inaction against the paedophiles in our society, schools,
neighbourhoods make us complicit in the horrific crimes being
perpetrated against our children. Please refuse to be a complicit.
None of us is going to look very smart standing next to Rathore in
any photograph. Even if he does not smirk.
27January 2010
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