by B. R. GOWANI
“Amid the public grief and anger across the country, the 23-year-old paramedical student who was gangraped and tortured in a moving bus in the capital was cremated in a private ceremony here early on Sunday morning, hours after her body was flown in from Singapore.” The ambulance in the picture is carrying the body of the victim. Indian law prohibits from naming the rape victims. Thus, the anonymous victim has been called “Amanat”, “Nirbhaya”, and so on. The parents of the girl have said they’ll be happy if their daughter’s name is given to the revised anti-rape laws and they wouldn’t mind “if her name is made public for this purpose, they have no objection to it”. PHOTO/The Indian Express
My dreams:
of becoming a physiotherapist,
of uplifting my family economically,
of becoming a healthy member of society,
of building a hospital in my ancestral village, …
were crushed mercilessly.
Because:
My friend and I boarded the wrong bus.
The question raised was:
Why a woman and man were together at night?
He fought back but became unconscious after he was beaten.
I was then dragged to the rear of the moving bus.
I fought back but they were six men.
I lost.
I was bashed,
I was tortured,
I was raped,
I was violated with an iron rod.
Then we were thrown out of the bus.
They tried to run the bus over me,
but my friend pulled me aside.
Everything happened in half-an-hour,
most nightmarish 30 minutes of my life.
I was an ordinary person.
People heard about my plight
some called me “Damini” or lightning,
others named me “Amanat” or valuable,
for many others I was “Jagruti” or awareness,
many saw me as “Jyoti” or light,
yet others declared me as “Nirbhaya” or fearless.
I was humiliated and almost murdered, in Delhi,
the capital of India
(South Asia’s Super Power),
where India’s most powerful person, a woman, resides
and where the Chief Minister is a woman.
But for the ruling class,
I was nobody.
In 2011, in Delhi alone,
572 women were raped
(573 women met the same fate in eight other cities).
I was one more number to the 2012 statistics.
But this time, when people came out on the streets,
I became somebody.
The Government took notice.
When more people joined the protests,
the Government promised reforms.
When hundreds of millions raised their voices
the government perceived me as the menacing Goddess Durga.
Durga, whose half-dead body unleashed so much protest
for a while, the powerful were baffled.
They felt they were loosing grip on power.
I became a liability.
My absence they craved.
Those who have power,
have also the way.
So I was bundled out to Singapore, that is,
my brutally violated,
my intestines-less,
my barely-beating heart,
my almost lifeless body.
Experts were only asked:
“Whether it would be safe to move her,”
not whether it was medically advisable.
With little life I left India,
lifeless I returned.
Everything was over in 14 days.
I was quietly cremated
in the early hours of morning,
in the absence of media,
in the absence of hundreds of thousands of people
who made me somebody.
Everyone was prevented from attending my last rituals,
by hundreds of police and paramilitary forces.
Why?
Was I some politician,
that the dictator was afraid of me?
I would have received a heroine’s funeral
if my body was in the opposition’s control
(also under the leadership of a woman),
not because it had any special sympathy for me
but it would have been politically profitable.
Either way, I was going to lose.
Some are demanding
the culprits should be hanged.
Many people want them to be flogged.
They should be punished but not hanged or flogged.
How many men are you going to flog and hang?
What needs to change is
the culture,
the mentality,
the TV programs which frowns over equal rights,
the TV producer who looks for school girls to act,
because girls over 20 don’t look “virginal” enough.
The politicians who don’t treat women as equals….
A politician Botsa Satyanarayana says:
“Anyway, it was a small incident.”
India got independence at midnight,
does it mean women should be “moving at midnight” too?
Of course not.
It is all a men’s world
Indian President’s son Abhijit Mukherjee
had this to say about the protestors:
“Those who are coming in the name of students in the rallies, sundori, sundori mahila (beautiful women),
are highly dented and painted.”
What do I want?
I want equal rights for men and women-
without any “ifs” “and” or “buts”.
When that happens,
it will be my victory, albeit, in death.
until that happens, everything is political facade.
B. R. Gowani can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com