On 20th September 2018, the Supreme Court told
the media to tread cautiously in reporting rape. However it admitted that
though there cannot be a blanket ban on reporting sexual abuse, molestation
cases and rape cases, there has to be a line drawn somewhere to prevent
sensationalising such incidents.
About a month back the world heard the screams of little
girls from the Muzaffarpur shelter home in Bihar. Overnight this place of
asylum became a place of alarm to be investigated into. A place intended to
give refuge to the abandoned and the neglected, had sexual predators roaming free
in it. The stories which began to leak out of the walls of lust shocked the
world momentarily and then like always the world turned to look at other
sensational stories. Media today bombards our breakfast, lunch and dinner
tables with stories which give us indigestion and gradually build our immunity
to horrible feeds.
The story of the 34 of the 42 girls, who had sought shelter
in this horror home, was one of being drugged, violated physically, tormented
and raped. Even a disabled four year old wasn’t spared the lust of some
disgraceful men. Such savagery couldn’t have been possible without the loud screams
of the victims breaking through the walls and today we are told that the
residents living in the vicinity were probably conscious of the crime committed
and yet preferred to let their conscience hide under a cloud of fear of the
powerful few who often rule the many nincompoops.
The Muzaffarpur case is a sharp directive to the position of
women and young girls and sadly even little baby girls in India. Being a
developing country it has focussed on a lot of external developments. The present
government has in fact invited the world to ‘Make in India’; but what our
government needs to pay attention to is what is already ‘Made in India’ – HER
MEN! A mass surgery needs to be done on the pervert eyes of many men of this
land. I assume that I would be right in saying that there will not be even a
single girl or woman in my country who has not been winked at, touched
inappropriately, rubbed against in crowded public transport or stripped naked
with dissolute eyes. Every woman has sometime or the other experienced any one
or all of the above nauseating moments.
It is here, not the ‘Fault in our Stars’ kind of a story but
‘Fault in our Upbringing’ that has brought us to the level of transforming
refuge homes into repulsion homes where a place set up for protecting the unprotected
becomes a ghost house as every inmate has a haunting story to share from there.
The world is evolving and her women are surfacing to be loud
and bold. Women are today encouraged to be confident and ready to fight for
their rights. And so we see them at various junctures demanding their freedom
to wear short skirts or give up on the Dark Secrets, or to put it mildly, the
traditions which are painful like FGM (Female Genital Mutilation) and the like.
Since years now, Indian families have learnt to be proud of their daughters.
The number of baby girls aborted or thrown into public waste bins has
definitely lessened; but this progress has been one-sided. While the girls have
had an upward journey, the boys have been neglected and a large number of them
are yet struck up in their past dominance. The ‘He for the God and She for the
God in Him’ sketch in the heads of a majority of the male members today desperately
needs a face lift.
Generation after generation now, a majority of our boys are
stuck in the era of the Sati Age. In those days young widows would be forced to
jump into fires which consumed the body of their old-men- husbands and today
also, worse still, little boys, young men and old men continue to burn the
emotions of many a women.
However, not all men are left in the age old backyards, for
instance an ex-student of mine urged me to write this post. He was horrified
enough by the Muzaffarpur case to push me to write this piece. Probably he was
taught right by his parents to respect women. Probably his mother taught him to
cook like his sister, to take care of his younger siblings at home, to
appreciate working women in his surroundings, to wash dishes and to take care
of an ailing grand-parent. He was probably taught that all responsibilities had
to be shared by both men and women. Probably he was taught to set his way of
living right, to prioritize the other, even if she wore a skirt, tight jeans, a
burkha or a bikini.
Today, I think that the Supreme Court needs to warn all
parents to bring up their sons like Gayaz Khan, my ex-student. We have a few
such Gayaz Khans, but the need is for many more in order to eradicate horror
homes like Muzaffarpur.
Thank-you Gayaz.
Image Credit: Google
It's really sad to have people like Brajesh Thakur in our society . I think we need kinda sanitizer to kill these germs i.e Rapist , molester , abusers and many nasty minded people to clean our hands (society). Our next generation Upbringing should not based with discrimination and self superior mindset but should be on equality and respect for every individual.
ReplyDeleteYOU SAID IT RIGHT.
ReplyDeleteREGARDS, RUBY