A restorative narrative after cascade of horror

Rapes are barbaric displays of power. But it serves no purpose to rate rapes by savagery quotient, lapse into whataboutery or a generalised lament about brutalities. Each rape is heinous.

That said, it’s vital to recognise that factors at play vary.  Sometimes a rape is a hate crime, as in the brutal rape and murder of the eight-year-old Bakerwal community girl in Kathua. Here rape was clearly used to signal visceral hatred towards a community. Elsewhere, it’s the marker of political power, as in Unnao. In other times, it may be just a pointer to bestialities brute physical power would resort to when it meets the weak and vulnerable.

In the 24x7 news cycles we have today, it’s also true that once a brutal rape makes front-page news, other stories about rape across India get picked up with more alacrity.

As I write, the morning’s newspapers have front-paged another gruesome story. This time, it was a seven-year-old girl attending a wedding with her family at Etah, Uttar Pradesh. What should have been a joyous occasion for the little girl ended in her rape-murder. On inside pages were details of another girl, probably between nine and 11, who had been raped and murdered. Her body, which was found in Surat, had 86 injury marks.

The barrage comes while most of us are yet to get over the two ghoulish reports that have convulsed the nation. Everyone knows the details now, but it bears repetition as it needs to be seared into our national memory as a mark of shame. The eight-year-old Muslim girl from the nomadic Bakerwal tribe was abducted while grazing horses in a meadow, and then allegedly sedated, hidden in a temple, raped and tortured repeatedly over days by a group of men who ultimately strangled her and bashed her head in with stones. A week later, her mutilated body was found in a forest near Kathua, a mile from Rasana village, where she and her family lived. The chargesheet by the police is stomach-churning.

What is perhaps worse is the violent opposition by local lawyers when the police went to court to file the chargesheet, the open support to suspects — including policemen charged with destroying evidence — by two BJP ministers in the state government. That barrage has been toned down after a national outcry forced the BJP leadership to act, but it’s not over, by any means.

Then in Unnao, Uttar Pradesh, there’s the case of a 17-year-old girl who has alleged that Kuldeep Singh Sengar, an MLA of the ruling BJP, raped her.

The girl had been seeking justice from the UP chief minister. Her pleas went unheard for months, even when she tried to immolate herself in front of the CM’s home.

Instead, her father was allegedly thrashed by the MLA’s brother and his accomplices, while the police first watched and then took the victim’s father into custody instead. The man later died in police custody.

This is the state of the nation. Just six years after the Nirbhaya case which shook India, we are back on the streets, to hold protests and candlelight marches. Still, a raft of rapes and murders flood the front pages and prime-time television.

This leaves one with two options. The first is sheer numbness which can make one switch off. Many people I know are doing just that. Unable to deal with the cascade of horror stories about little girls and young women who are raped, mutilated and murdered, they are switching off from news.

The other way is a restorative narrative that offers hope. If the brutal rape and murder of the eight-year-old girl in Kathua is a hate crime, aimed at instilling fear in her community and driving away her family from their village, there is also the countervailing narrative of a female lawyer from a member of the majority community, Hindus in this case, taking up cudgels on behalf of the girl’s family.

Deepika Singh Rajawat, who is fighting on behalf of the victim, is a heroine of our troubled times. She has said she fears for her life and that she has been dubbed “anti-Hindu” and boycotted socially, but that hasn’t stopped her. The stand of J&K police chief S.P. Vaid has been reassuring.

Ordinary people, including schoolgirls, are hitting the streets to show India will not be bullied into submission and its girls will raise their voice against gender-based violence. One of the most moving speeches at a “Not-in-my-Name” protest I attended in Delhi’s Parliament Street was by 15-year-old schoolgirl Pakhi Jain, who read out her own poem Scream.

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up... I have a dream that no girl, no woman will be tortured or molested or raped,” Pakhi said.

As before, some politicians have demanded the death penalty for the rape of minors as the solution to this epidemic. But feisty lawyers like Vrinda Grover, who has been dealing with such cases for years, warn against falling into this trap. Besides the humanitarian argument, the death penalty doesn’t work as a deterrent. The problem is the abysmally low conviction rate. The real challenge for the powerless is to get an FIR registered.

But when people get together, there is an impact. In the Unnao rape case, for instance, a CBI court has sent BJP MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar’s brother Atul and five others to police custody for four days. Kuldeep and others are charged with gang-raping a minor, Atul and others with murder and assault of the rape survivor’s father.

With the BJP on the backfoot, its supporters have resorted to whataboutery and snarky remarks about street protests and candlelight vigils. The response to that is raising one’s voice, louder. using whatever platform one can.

One can grieve alone, but there is strength in solidarity and raising voices together. India remains a democracy and the roar of the determined many cannot be ignored.