Noida rape and something even more disturbing

Ten young men gang raped a MBA student who was with her boyfriend in her car.
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/mba-student-gangraped-in-noida-5-arrested/407318/2
Can this news get any worse and reveal something extremely disturbing about our society? Just read the above news and last paragraph of it, one of the accused 'claimed' that he saw the girl and her boyfriend in 'intimate' and then they did whatever they did. What does this sentence in the report reveals about us as society? Is not it sickening that the rapist is making a 'claim' and this claim (irrespective of being true or false) is being considered 'worthy' of being reported by reporter, of the prestigious newspaper? By the langauge of the report, it appeared to me that the rapist meant that since the girl was being already intimate with someone so their crime is not so serious. Or who knows, he might be thinking that they will be acquitted, after all is not a girl being intimate with someone in a car a characterless woman, and they are licensed to rape her (if you do not get it, I am being sarcastic). Men of such convictions should be in the asylum or in psychiatric wards or jails and not on the streets.
This primitive thinking is still permeating in our modern India. If a woman is being fucked by someone other than her husband, we also have right to bang her- many of us may not think that way, but the roots of this thinking is deeply embedded in the psyche of most Indian women as well as men. This idea of equating the worth of a "woman" by her sexual behaviour. There is not only the excessive and unnecessary glorification of idea of sexual purity- the virginity and preserving it for the postmarried life in most of the middle class but the contrary is considered almost crime in most of the India except a few metrocultures. This is not the first case, we have been here before, I do not remember exactly where the gurads of the President raped a girl because they found her intimate with boyfriend in some garden behind Rashtrapati bhavan. At that time it was reported such cases are widespread and most go unreported because the couples were unmarried and did not want the news of their 'affair' to taint their families otherwise the female has to be branded with an additional shameful label of "characterless" too, in addition to having lost her 'worth' irreversibly to the rapists.
Why we have built a society where 'sexual purity' should be a criteria by which worth of any woman is measured, unless we are very sex obsessed decaying civilization. Why we, as a society can also respect the right of an adult woman to have sex, when we do not look down upon the men having such sex (rather they are considered macho, object of envy). Whether man or woman in a relationship be faithful to one another, is entirely a matter between the two. There they can have issues like commitment, fidelity and so on. But society should not have any say in this, at least not considered it 'criminal' or 'making a person' less worthy. And if it does it should apply the same standards to man also. Why we consider any sexual behaviour of a woman other than that dictated by typical middle class patriarchal orthodoxy the sole content of character. We can respect a village sarpanch eating mid day meals of starving children, we can respect teachers coming to schools only on the pay day and taking money to pass students, we can respect doctors killing thousands in government hospitals by sheer negeligence, we can respect babus wiping the shitty assholes of their superiors and sucking life out of every poor man, we can respect the political leaders, MLAs, MPs, who are hoarding real estate and foreign cars while next doors there are children starving and mothers selling bodies to feed husbands, we can respect policemen whose only function is to protect corrupt politicians and their family members, we can respect heartless beaurocrats for whom starving malnourished children are mere numbers, we can respect everyone who is ready to kick our behind, but by God, let any woman be caught in affectionate embrace with someone, we will fuck her and still be able to render her characterless. And that goes not only for stupid men, but our great Indian women too. Of course our Indian females will not rape her, but in their eyes and conversations too, such a woman will be termed as 'characterless' and somehow worthy of being raped.
Many modern middle class men and women are commenting that these guys should be killed in encounter or hanged or so on. This is repeated ad nauseum till there is another distraction, another terrorist attack or another hit movie, or another sex scandal.
But do we bother to ask ourselves, why should we kill them in encounter or hang, why not have a quick dispensation of justice, and legislate whatever penalty we wish to have. Personally I am against capital punishment and I think we can have any harshest punishment for these guys, and even I can suggest the confiscation of all of their property for generating funds to help victims medically, psychologically and financially.
But it is better said than done. On the same day we have this news about a woman gang raped fighting in vain for justice after two years. Renuka choudhary, minister for women and child welfare instead of making political issue out of Noida rape and asking Mayawati an explaination, should try to ensure justice is done in this and her own party ruled state. To ask for an education campaign to delink a woman's character and her worth from her sexuality will be asking for too much, until women of India come out of age to take their fair share of power in government instead of one or two exceptions like Mayawati or Renuka.

About Art

Here is the most critically aclaimed moments of bollywood.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0TW6xMl9l0&feature=related
Film directed by Gurudatt, Pyaasa (1957), meaning thirsty. These are the moments where an artist reject the society, even when society is worshipping him (under the illusion that he is a dead poet) The lyrics says
'this world it is consisting of the enmeies of men.
It is the society of throne, palaces, crowns. it is the society hungry for rituals of wealth
even if I get this world, how does it matter.
Each body is wounded, each soul is thirsty.
There is dilemma in eyes and sorrow in heart
Is it this world or the humans gone mad.
Even if I get this world, how does it matter
Here, existence of a man is a toy,
this settlement is the settlement of dead worshippers,
here death is cheaper than life,
even if I get this world, how would it matter.
Youth is strayed,
young bodies are decorated like shops
love happens as the trade
even if i get this world how does it matter
this world, where man is nothing
loyalty is nothing and nothing is friendship,
where there is no value of love,
even if I get this world, how does it matter.
Burn this world, Incinearate this world,'remove it from my sight,
It is yours, and you only arrange for this,
Even if I get this world, how does it matter.."
Gurudatt's three movies Pyaasa, Kagaj ke Phool and Sahib Bibi aur Ghulam, all directed and and acted by him between I think 1950-1960 were placed among top ten bollywood movies by India today magzine. And those who admire Gurudatt consider these moments (of this song) as most emphatic expression of Gurudatt. And they are true- Gurudatt committed suicide. How tragically true these words would have been for him too. After all, after the material success of Mr. and Mrs. 55 he was also considered cash churning director ot the day.
Many will consider it as an art- and quantify it- top 10 bollyoood or top 100 or top 1000. I was not surprised when I saw a programme conducted on an american channel as top -100 quotes from the movies.
What I consider as art is something which can make even somewhat vaguely- even represent the truth of the matter. And the truth never brings depair, it might bring laughter, it brings the lightness of the existence in the forefront.
Compare this with Gurudatt's or Sahir's (whom I think is the lyricist), it is from Namdeo, a sixteenth century poet from Maharashtra. Gurudatt is talking only in terms of how poor and down trodden are screwed by rich humans- there is no love and so on- this world is not worth living-the protagonists goes away- as we;; as Gurudatt who committed suicide eventually.

Now Namdev, as he prepared some chapatis, for offering to God and subsequently his own consumption, a dog broke into his hut and ran away, taking all the chapatis in his mouth.
Now Namdev is running behind the dog, with the container of ghee in his hand, "please don't eat these chapatis as such, let me apply ghee on them. They won't taste good without ghee".
I don't know why, I find that there is art in Namdev's, not only because it is religious, but his psyche has travelled much more freely into the experiences he was having rather than one, where whole "world" is not worth living just because some humans treat others humans like shit.

This is more terrifying than any terrorist attack or Pakistan

I did not write any thing in response to Mumbai terror attack. Tragic as they were, there was something really comic about those attacks and the response to them. I will elaborate about them in later columns. Let the whole comedy play itself, though it is dark or black humour as one would call it.
But the following incident about lynching by people led by a politician in UP reveals something about us, which really threatens us as a civilization. And I can say that this incident is not an aberration, but these incidents are much more common and there would be many more if people are not paying up to these antisocial criminals. More than such incidents themselves, real threat comes from those elements in our society which perpetrate such incidents, which tolerates such incidents, those who take advantage of incidents, those who ensures that such acts can be committed with impunity, those who colludes with them and the mob which supports these incidents.
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/engineers-death-sp-cong-call-bandh-ljp-backs-it/402569/
Why this is real threat. Because it happens in almost every area, every state, almost every village. This lynching mob. And they are in power in democracy. or worse this is the only way to get power. Mao said power flows through the barrel of gun, here it flows through the stones of the mob. And this mob is to be respected, worshipped if one has to get power, to win an election. How can they be wrong? How dare anyone chastise them? Even if leader points out to them that they are lynching, he will loose election if lucky or lynched with family if unlucky. There are these criminal elements, whose place should be a psychiatric treatment in jails; but they are out acting as leaders. And those sophisticated leaders who would not openly incite mob, who are not like Thakre brothers, have their agents who would do this jobs. And even if one may succeed in putting these leaders in jail, what will this unthinking, following mob would do? Is there anyway to reform it? Can it be reformed by force? Because even if this mob refrains from doing something illegally, is not these mindless, dimwits, with no sense of moral conscience, with no sense of empathy, would create disaster in whatever they are doing?
And this my friends is the biggest danger.
And most of the issues which arose during and after Mumbai attack, whether comical response to the ongoing attacks, or the preparation for such attack after being repeatedly warned by terrorists themselves as well as intelligence agencies (even in absence of such warning, any numbnut would have guessed seeing the attacks occurred in past months), the coverage by television channels, the following warmongering or rumours- all this is because the only mind we have is mob mind. And so do our neighbours.
Freeing this mob mentality requires education- not what the middle class means by education which is merely that which is leading to job and prosperity (and now we can have little sex education thrown in it), but learning about one's own structure by oneself (because no other can teach it) because what we all are, one is and in that learning lies the liberation from mob mentality. This would require enormous patience and most of our GDP. But when any investment in education is measured only in terms of income it will generate, who wants to 'learn about oneself' or 'any such metaphysical crap'. Should not such person go to monastry, they would ask.

Where I differe from Roys and Chomskys.

I have argued before that the massive energy we are investing in keeping Kashmir in, does not worth it and we should let them go, or to appease my more nationalistic friends I would say, we should kick Kashmir out of India. This is something which I wrote in detail somewhere before, and recent attacks in Mumbai again bring my attention to this matter. However, my position is not same as that taken as that of Roys and other leftist liberals- supporting Kashmiri cause, or supporting their independence. I find the Kashmiri or any type of separatism disgusting. These separatist tendencies, isolationist urges, extreme identification with ethnicities- they are equally rotten, whether Kashmiri or Indian. As long as one party is demanding this land for oneself, other would be there to contest it. Separatism and isolation do not solve a damn thing. Of course one can ask for more rights for state, more autonomy and one can almost make the demand for independence almost redundant. One is born in a culture and one carries the way of life associated with it, and one can enjoy it and live it. But the excessive obsession with it, the emotional appeal for separatism based on regional or ethnic identity, or even national or religion for that matter leads to divided and fragmented view of reality, which breeds violence, or rather I would emphasize this fragmented and divided view is violence itself.
What problem separation of Pakistan and India has solved- and I don't live under the illusion that it would have been different had there been no partition. These intellectuals think that world is fixed, there are victims and victimizers. But it is never so and had never been so. These so called oppressed, marginalized victims are as dumb and stupid as their victimizers. These witless victims of oppression have their own victims and they are as much sadist as any other. Moreover since they lack refinement and sophistication- just because of lack of exposure to education, they are even more dangerous. Laloo, Mulayam, Mayawati, Karunanidhi, Chautala etc. - they all came into power with the promise of uplifting backward classes, but they only uplifted themselves and their relatives. The plight of tribals of Chhatisgarh and Jharkhand that Roy often cites, they are controlling the governments over there. But have those tribal chief ministers worked for them- Shibu soren, Munda, Ajit jogi or they have turned into pipmps of greed, cruelty, insensitivity, corruption, political manipulation themselves.
And everything is so evident, still Roys and chomskys remain so confident in viewing everything from their fixed glasses of class struggle and keep on propagating the myth that changing a system, just manipulating some circumstances- giving independence to Kashmir, educating tribals, preventing mining, and so on would somehow change everything. It is very hard to realize that nothing changes. History tells us, we had handed over complete dictatorship to proletariat- nothing changed. It is high time we realize that there are seeds of destruction inside our psyche, there is something flawed with it, and unless that is seen and tackled everything would remain merely cosmetic. Whatever utopia we build with that flawed psyche, it will not only be meaningless, but the added energy and enthusiasm would make that even more lethal. But seeing the things as they are, this vast reality as it is, requires a solitary journey, losing our beliefs and faiths of religious and secular utopias, not being able to take refuge in anything man made something which ignorant as well as so called intellectuals obsessed with activity are singularly incapable of. It requires a receptive heart, one which is silent, one which is humble in its approach to reality, one which is seeing the totality of it- and not imposing on the reality its own learned knowledge and classification- seeing the oppressor as well oppressed, and the rest of it, what is outside as well as what is inside. to explore what an extraordinary phenomenon life is. There is no leader in this not are there followers in it, no one can be guide or intermediate in this. And without understanding this extraordinary movement of life, this vast reality one is bound to live in illusion and life is reduced to the mechanical labor which has no meaning. And history has shown us, without clearing that corruption and poverty of the psyche- all the movements inevitably degenerate into same thing against which they arose.
It does not mean that I support the oppresors or exploiters, I just wish to add that situation is far more complex and demands far more seriousness and attention then viewing and applying Marxist solutions to it.

Lessons from Malegaon Probe

There are many who are criticizing police for going hard on so called "Hindu terrorists" and others who are criticising these critics in turn, each labeling the other as traitors or political manipulators.
We do not know what was right or wrong. BJP is setting a bad precedent for so called secularists also, now if there is any anti terrorist investigation against Muslims or minorities during the BJP rule, BJP would have to face the same criticisms which it is labeling right now on congress.
This does not mean that the methods of ATS are not flawed and they are not to be criticized or to be called to explain certain confusing and deliberately misleading aspects of the probe. But it also hints that similar travesty of justice would have been carried out when several Muslims have been held in the past.
I have many friends of the patriotic sort who have supported heavy handed and preferably extrajudicial actions (even killing in encounters) against terrorists when they happened to be Muslims. The same pattern of action is expected against other criminals too. They also invariably concede that our police forces are extremely corrupt and inhuman. But somehow they could not connect these two points to see that the supporting police force in these incompetent and cowardly encounters done mainly to get promotions or please political masters would not only lead to suffering of many innocent people and their families in particular but would also lead to general insensitivity of police force and people towards human rights and rule of law to an extent that no one would expect that these agencies should be transparent and accountable to the most ordinary Indians, who usually shiver with fear with the very thought of going to police stations. For every real terrorist caught (if at all) there would be thousands of ordinary people who would be harassed by our corrupt police force. The sense of power and invincibility police gets when it is not questioned will lead to immense torture of ordinary poor and downtrodden who will be routinely rounded up, tortured into confession to 'crack' the case. And then there will be many even in middle class who will be facing the similar prospects just because they have offended someone.
According to a human right group there have been 7500 deaths in past 5 years in India in police custody, though the actual numbers might be far higher.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7474656.stm This does not include the people killed everywhere in police firing during demonstartions and crimes and deaths resulting from the nexus of police and criminals. Some estimates put the cases of torture by police every year at around 1.8 million
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7689491.stm
The terror of police is much more prevalent and pervasive than the terror of terrorists. 99% won't know anyone who has been directly affected by terrorism, it is so rare, while almost all of us would know someone or the other who has been harassed by police. It will be hard to find a village or town where someone or the other has not been tortured by police in recent memory. Still we and our media keep on suppporting police against the innocent victims caught in the name of terrorists. Now since so called 'Hindu terrorists' have been caught, it is time not to attribute political motives but to ask for greater accountability and transparency from the police-whether the accused are Muslims or Hindus. We should expect them to follow the rule of law themselves first and they should be expected to operate within the constraints of our constitution and human rights to nab the criminals. Of course it would be tougher but let us realize that this is the only way to do things. Apart from victimization and framing of thousands of innocents accused from the petty to very serious crimes as terrorism, it also breeds a culture of incompetence where police forces loose their capacity to solve a case (if at all they have), to bring real culprits to justice and to challenge our judicial system to perform better. While the innocents will be trapped behind the bars caught in maze of judiciary- real criminals will prevail and prosper. They system would be inevitably skewed in the favour of real criminals- and the crime rates would be bound to go up.
I often hear that the job of police will be very difficult then, but is it not precisely why they get salary and power. Right now would be constables have the attitude of harassing innocents and making money, let them be aware of the situations in which they would have to operate and perform, and then let them decide to join the police force or not.

Liberation of females and progress

I visited India in OCtober 2008, and was able to talk to people from many walks of life and could see the very obvious lawlessness, and rule of goondaism in daytoday life. While media will focus on Raj Thackrey etal, in most of the Hindi speaking provinces, there is no rule of law. The only reason that there is apparent peace, is because of vast majority goes about their lives bending their heads and deriving whatever benefit they can from such lawlessness. THere are goonda politicians who rule the population as well as the resources, they can insult, and even physically threaten bearocrats. There are courtiers of these feudal lords, their psychofant loyal supporters, who are situated in every department of public sector right from education, health, taxation, water supply, housing, transport- whose only job is to control the government funds and in return provide protection to incompetent government workers from being reprimanded. And in order to assert and reassert their power, to reassure themselves of it, they have to abuse daily, their coworkers. Helpless though they are, yet they accept it readily as it only to victimize most ordinary Indians.
Only one or two really thinking man/woman I encountered were pessimistic and their only solution was to 'wait for another Gandhi'. But I felt optimistic, there was a reason for it.
I have a hypothesis. If I spread the map of the world before me, and I mark those societies where women are liberated-sexually, financially, socially, politically and free to pursue their own identities- through education or otherwise and have entered the public space- I inevitably see these societies as free from corruption, goondaism and so on. And those societies where females have been subjugated, suppressed are practically exploding, or they are under dictators who are under great strain to postpone the explosion. And there might be various reasons for this.
And as I moved across India, I saw women asserting themselves, young girls being educated and being able to express themselves much more freely than the previous generations, being liberated from the 'kitchen' and attached responsibilites- I have a reason to be optimistic.
Don't agree with me? See this news coming from my own home state.
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/mp-minister-gets-jail-lady-officer-gets-appreciation/384297/

Would state sue Imam Bukhari?

As I mentioned in my earlier post regarding dispelling of doubts by the sacrifice of Ins. Sharma, I also cautioned and left unwritten, till the pseudosecularists..
Now since Bukhari himself has mentioned, that Inspector Sharma was killed by his own companions, and named Patil and Delhi Police chief as main conspirator
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Delhi/Imam_counters_encounter_story/articleshow/3532050.cms
and very soon our Laloo-Mulayam Brigade will endorse this conspiracy theory, is there anyone to take legal action against Bukhari. Forget about the broader implications, does not it constitute defamation to living people, and the real organization.