Author: Radha Rajan
Publication: Vigil
Date: January 4, 2006
URL: http://www.vigilonline.com/news/plain_speak/ps_view.asp?plainSpeakId=99
Our 24 hour news channels dished out some
mixed stuff for their viewers on New Year's Eve. Sonia Gandhi was 'elected'
Person of the Year by NDTV. This news channel also carried an interview with
the lady, by who else, but Barkha Dutt, Madame's Lady-in-Waiting. Picking
Sonia Gandhi as Person of the Year was a foregone conclusion and akin to Jaya
TV crowning Jayalalithaa Miss Universe and about as credible and earth-shaking.
'Headlines Today' conducted a poll to choose
the sexiest man and woman while CNN-IBN, zestfully entering into the game
of competing sycophancy with NDTV, had Rajdeep Sardesai also interviewing
Saint Sonia. If I remember right these were the same two individuals who when
they were working together for the same news channel, sobbed their hearts
out and with red-rimmed eyes announced to the world that history was in the
making and Saint Sonia had made the biggest sacrifice in human history when
she declined to become the Prime Minister.
But these were the comic interludes. The same
news channels were also showing us late-night horror movies, real nail biting
stuff - Lady Teesta Macbeth Setalvad and her terror gang digging up graves
in Gujarat, hatchets and pickaxes in hand, with a panting media in tow salivating
at the thought of lynching Narendra Modi against the backdrop of skeletons
dug up from their graves.
And as we all sat glued to our TV sets waiting
to ring in the New Year watching Barkha Dutt, Lady Macbeth and Saint Sonia,
a young woman was dying a painful and prolonged death. She finally died on
New Year's Day, news of her death meriting no more than a runner below our
TV screens. And no one seemed to care; at least not the TV channels, not those
bleeding heart human rights activists, not the NGO industry, not the National
Commission for Women or the National Commission for Minorities and not Teesta
Setalvad's Citizens for Peace and Justice. Justice Anand, the Chairperson
of the NHRC who wastes no time rushing to do Teesta's bidding when it comes
to lynching Narendra Modi, the Gujarat High Court or the Gujarat or Delhi
police force, also did not care to know why and how the young woman died.
Remember this young woman Gudiya any of you?
Gudiya married Arif, a soldier in the Indian
army
Within ten days of the marriage Arif is called away on duty because of Pakistan's
invasion in Kargil
Arif doesn't come back home even after the war has ended; he is presumed dead
by the family while the army thinks he deserted. He was in fact a Prisoner
of War held captive in Pakistan
Gudiya's family married her off to a distant relative Taufeeq. We do not know
if Gudiya's family asked her if she wished to marry again
Gudiya was carrying her first child, fathered by Taufeeq and was eight months
pregnant in August 2004 when her first husband Arif after being released by
the Pakistanis, returned home
Because Arif was presumed dead and because widow remarriage is accepted by
Shariat, Gudiya was remarried to Taufeeq
But she was remarried to Taufeeq without dissolving her first marriage because
Arif was supposed to be dead. You needed to dissolve a marriage only if the
husband is alive and you wanted to end the marriage
Gudiya now had two husbands and was carrying her first child fathered by the
second husband
This was a tragedy and a life-threatening
dilemma that should not happen to any Muslim woman. I say Muslim woman because
what killed Gudiya was Muslim society whose antediluvian attitudes towards
women in this instance was fanned and fuelled by an insensitive and news-greedy
media. Islamic law and the predatory media killed Gudiya. In the final trimester
of her pregnancy, when what Gudiya needed most was physical rest and mental
repose for the well being of both mother and child during delivery, her own
family, Arif's family, Muslim clerics and media attention subjected her to
the most grueling physical and mental stress. Gudiya's health began to suffer
seriously from then on. http://www.rediff.com/news/2004/sep/23spec.htm
In September 2004, one month after Arif's
dramatic and unfortunate return from the dead, ZEE TV held a kangaroo court
with so-called Muslim scholars and elders who sat around solemnly in the TV
studio to decide Gudiya's fate - with which husband should she be allowed
to live. Two points here - Gudiya's predicament was her private business and
her personal tragedy but for ZEE TV the public humiliation of Gudiya and Taufeeq
in their studio was just so much TRP and viewer numbers. And a TV news channel
arrogated to itself the right to seal an individual's life and fate.
The second and more important point is the
devaluing of individual entities by global ideas and structures. Globalised
religions like Islam and Christianity, globalised economic ideas and structures
like communist imperialism of yore or the capitalist/imperialist WTO have
no sense of sanctity or the dignity of life of individual persons, societies
or nations. Globalizing agendas whether religious or economic are essentially
about conquest and control. Their lust for power uses individual entities
as so much fodder for self-perpetuation. Islam used Gudiya as fodder to perpetuate
the inviolability of the Shariat and the authority of the Mullahs.
The Mullahs in the Zee TV kangaroo court pronounced
the verdict that Gudiya must return to her first husband and also pronounced
that the child in her womb would otherwise be considered illegitimate. How
could a young Muslim woman take on the entire Muslim society alone? The despicable
and shameful silence of the human rights and NGO industry was not lost on
those who have been watching them closely for some time now. Where was Teesta
Setalvad, Shabana Azmi, SAHMAT, Sandeep Pandey, Kathy Sreedhar, Gabriele D,
Kuldip Nayyar all bleeding heart activists who have made a career out of human
rights and women's rights as human rights? Where were they all? Where was
the American-based Indian Muslim Council? Where were our dear padres Cedric
Prakash and Valson Thampu and where was the ubiquitous Swami Agnivesh? They
had all crawled into a hole and pulled the hole behind them. They did not
want to confront Islam or the Shariat. They did not want to take on the Muslim
community.
No NGO, no human rights activist, no Muslim
women's organization, no national commission came forward to fight for Gudiya's
right to determine her life, to encourage her to revolt against this shameful
verdict. And so poor Gudiya, in the eighth month of her pregnancy was torn
apart from the father of the child she was carrying in her womb, and forced
to live with the husband she hardly knew. And that was the last the world
saw and heard of Gudiya. No activist followed up on the issue, no TV news
channel went to meet her to find out if she had delivered the child, if Arif
had accepted the child as his own, if Gudiya was happy, or what happened to
Taufeeq, the father of Gudiya's child. The 24 hour news channels which ran
their industry on Gudiya's misery for days together, forgot her. She and her
tragic life were not news-worthy anymore. They had milked her tragedy dry.
What happened to Gudiya? I can only presume
the following. Gudiya must have delivered Taufeeq's child soon after she was
forced to rejoin her first husband, which must have been sometime in October
or early November, 2004. A husband and his family who considered the issue
of her return to Arif as a matter of honour and prestige with no thought to
her wishes or feelings would have had little respect for her body or mind.
Muslim society had tossed her about like a commodity and her first husband
probably thought she had to be made to carry his child at the earliest as
a matter of honour. The child would be his proud trophy of his right to possess
Gudiya.
And so poor Gudiya immediately after having
delivered her first child, was made pregnant with her second child by her
first husband. Having been subjected to severe trauma during her first pregnancy,
Gudiya was neither physically nor mentally fit to conceive again besides having
to care for her new-born infant without the physical and mental support of
the father of the child. Not surprisingly, the child was delivered premature
and stillborn in Meerut in October 2005.
Gudiya's health deteriorated rapidly thereafter
and she was moved to the army referral hospital in Delhi in December 2005
from where she has been battling for life. She died on New Years Day, 2006
after a prolonged battle, of multiple organ failure. But the world never knew
the horror story of Gudiya's life after she was forced to return against her
wishes to her first husband. Gudiya is dead and she is already forgotten.
But these questions remain:
What does a Muslim woman in Gudiya's position
do?
What do we do to human rights activists and the NGO industry which let her
down shamefully and who have shown themselves to be abject cowards when they
have to confront Islam and its Mullahs.
Why was the NHRC which takes suo moto notice of human rights violations against
Muslim men at the say so of activists like Teesta Setalvad and Praful Bidwai,
remain silent when the human rights of a Muslim woman was so grossly and publicly
violated?
Why was the National Commission for Women silent?
Above all, why didn't any of them try to keep track of Gudiya after she returned
to Arif and offer her the necessary counseling, mental support and advice
which would have helped her to cope with the situation?
Who is to blame for Gudiya's death? Muslim
society for its stubborn refusal to reform; Muslim activists like Teesta Setalvad
and her husband Javed Anand, Shabana Azmi and Asghar Ali Enginner for not
coming forward to take on the Mullahs of their community; the NGO human rights
industry which refuses to work without media attendance and publicity and
which while it attacks soft Hindu targets ferociously, is forced into silence
and hiding when they have to confront Muslim society; all our national commissions
which think that confronting the Muslims is anti-secular and the 24 hour news
channels which have reduced human dignity and privacy into dispensable commodities.
Had Gudiya been a dalit or a Hindu tribal girl and had ZEE TV organized the
kangaroo court with Hindu village priests and elders, how do you think all
these worthies would have responded?
Gudiya's tragic life and even more tragic
death should open our eyes to the duplicity and abject cowardice of all important
national government and non-government organizations on issues concerning
the two most organized and vociferous minority communities in the country.
