Author: Shiv Visvanathan
Publication: The Economic Times
Date: December 25, 2012
URL: http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-12-25/news/35999335_1_gang-dalit-women-unnerves
 
Emile Durkheim, the great French sociologist, once observed that "socialism is not a science but a cry of grief uttered by an animal in pain". What Durkheim was pointing out was that many forms of protest are symptoms of pain rather than an analysis of a social problem. The journalist or a writer has to capture both sides of an event to be fair.

Recent protests in the Capital have been christened with romantic names. They have been called a revolt, and labelled as the battle of Raisina Hill. Others have skeptically called it children's crusade and adolescent outpouring. I think the truth lies in the middle.

 In recent times, India has seen two outpourings of protest which have unnerved the establishment. Our politicians and bureaucrats often behave like objects out of Madame Tussad's. But a huge crowd can galvanise them out of an administrative stupor. The drama of the protest said something about youth, the city and the administration.

 Beyond it, this act was triggered by something deep and primordial, the phenomena of gang-rape. Gang-rape reflects organised animality. Women who are momentarily a subject of desire become an object of contempt, a focus of release to be abandoned later.

For me, gang-rape is the ultimate form of violence that terrorises woman. It can strike anywhere and often banalised through a clerical sociology. It is attributed to urban migrants, the homeless in the city with no way of relieving repression.

 However, gang-rape cuts across social strata. The woman can be sexually vandalised by men in a BMW, an Amby or workers in a private bus. Gang-rape unnerves a society. I have seen veterans, even combat-thickened journalists, tremble at the news. It is the ultimate zero-sum game of the city. Unfortunately, instead of responding to it as an animality, our politicians explain it away as fault of the victim.

 They either claim she is skimply dressed, or out of place in a city after nine o' clock. I must state that skimpiness is a more accurate description of the state of mind of our clerks and panchayats than of the victim.

 The woman here also becomes a reflection of the freedom, autonomy and professionalism that a city and its economy encourage, but which conservatives disapprove of. A shrewd observer once said: a woman as a victim is vandalised thrice - through rape, folk rationalisation and administrative response. What our leaders did not see is that the gang-rape unnerves the society. Families cannot be sure about when it will happen.

 A daily visit to the city can become a frightening encounter. Mobiles click in furious anxiety tracking the path of a returning daughter. The administration was initially callous in its response. It read it as normal as it was an occasional hail-storm. It filed it away as statistic, failing to read it as a major problem of a city. Content with dismissing the rape of Dalit women as an atrocity, it practised the same indifference to the event. It felt that the modicum of protest that usually follows would be controllable.

A few politicians looking for photo opportunities generally wrapped up such an event. They were not ready for what followed. What incensed the protestors was not just the "un-describable" violence of gang-rape, but the pomposity of our politicians. Even the police staggered around advertising their investigative ability. What followed is being described as the battle of Raisina Hill.

Fortunately, the crowd licked away the bevy of MPs protesting. The crowd slowly found its voice, every interview became an articulation of anger because women realised it could have been any of them. In fact, as one of them pointed out, rape as an event has no predictable sociology. Men can molest a baby, a three-year-old or a thirty-year-old with an equal frenzy.

 What they were witnessing was a sick city with an indifferent administration. The protest at Raisina Hill was not led by parties and cadres. People just came out of a sense of outrage and concern. It was anarchic, and could be de-stabilised by a few hooligans. But nothing can justify the use of water cannons, teargas and frequent lathi-charges against our young people.

 What was impressive was that new generation was discovering the power of protest. Youth were realising that all that they had was the body as a medium of protest. They also realised that state is no respecter of the body. Between the lathi-charge and gang-rape they understood the vulnerability of the body in a modern society.

 I admit that some demands were unreasonable, the demand for death penalty needs deeper thinking. But one cannot dismiss such a protest as ignorant. A new generation is discovering the power of public space and realising that the dynamism of public spaces is tied to private freedom. Understanding that link was absolutely crucial for the re-discovery of the city. The crowd may make mistakes, but it showed courage and civic sense. It was a learning curve, moving from atomism to collective solidarity.

 Sadly, little can be said about the administration. We can no longer be content with homilies about rape-culture. Gang-rape has to be located between the wider anomie of the city. Two pictures stand out about the event. One is the victim fighting for life, and the other is crowd demanding that her fight for life is beginning of a new politics of pain, which understands suffering of a victim.