Five, Six, Seven, Hate!

Dear Voice of Indian Youth,

Congratulations on once again making it to the top trending topics in India. How's the view from up there, Sir?

I know by now a lot of people have wasted their time in trying to explain to you just why rape jokes are tasteless, but I'll add my voice to the cacophony anyway. So here goes.

First of all, get over yourself. Not everything is about you. Stop classifying the world into your fans who have delegated the job of representing their voice to you, and your haters who 'lurk' behind twitter handles, stalking you, waiting to pounce. There's more to people than what they think of you and how they treat you. Nobody came to this world with the sole mission to read your books, or to badger you. You're not the good Badi Bahu in a prime time TV show, and people who say mean things about your books or your columns or your tweets are not jealous Chhoti Bahus who'll go to any extent to make Saasuji frown on you, even if it means (gasp!) pouring a cupful of red chilli powder into your daal makhani.

No, you're a writer, a popular one, and your books are available in the market for less than Rs 100 per copy. This means anyone with Rs 100 in their pocket has access to your thoughts, your ideas, your opinions, your creativity and they are in a position to say stuff about you. Deal with it. And if you can't deal with it, don't write.

Similarly, when you write something on tweeter, any and all of your over 1.8 million followers can and will have an opinion on what you say. Not all opinions will be kind. And many of them can and will share those opinions in the public space, just as easily as you share your enlightened views on the state of the economy. Don't whine.

Now on the matter of your latest foot-in-the-mouth incident. What is so wrong in what you tweeted, you ask (as do some of your supporters). Here's what:

Rape.

At a time when yet another brutal gang rape has shook the nation, when one of our Godmen has been accused of sexual assault, you merrily used the word as a metaphor for the falling rupee. And when people raised an objection to this - some politely, some not quite - you dubbed them as 'haters' and 'idiots'. Agreed, reactions to your tweet need not have been all malicious. But then, in using the word 'rape',  you weren't exactly trying to be polite, were you? You wanted to elicit some strong reactions, stir some emotion, didn't you? Why are you acting all hurt if some of the reaction is directed at you?

You have the right to Freedom of Speech. But haven't you ever learnt that freedom comes with responsibility? I do not find your use of the word in good taste, but I do recognize your right to use it to convey a strong emotion. Now that you have said what you wanted to say, why not stand your ground? Instead of calling people idiots and haters, why not defend your choice of vocabulary, using any of the various channels at your disposal? Why not make a sustained argument for the necessity of using strong, if offensive vocabulary? Why delete the tweet, and for heaven's sake, did you just use the word 'harmless'?

Please go ahead and explain how that precious tweet of yours would have contributed towards uplifting the economy. Please educate us on how we can 'raise our voices' against the fall of the rupee. Should we hold a candlelight vigil? Should we boycott Mc Donalds? Should we rise in revolution and overthrow the evil government and establish military rule - will that help stabilize the rupee? I'm asking in all earnestness, because I know nuts about Economics and have no idea what I can do to stop the tumbling currency in its tracks.

I hope you have some answers in that brilliant mind of yours. If you don't, the least you can do is acknowledge that your remark was insensitive and apologize. After all, “As an artist you have full freedom to write whatever you want to. However... Should you be exercising the right to hurt people (sic)?” - your words, not mine. You said something to this effect in the context of the Salman Rushdie controversy at a Literary Festival. You were, of course, talking about religious sentiments getting hurt. Are those the only sentiments worth protecting, Mr Writer of the Masses?

Never cease to amaze

Right on the heels of the viral CNN iReport story, came another news, of yet another gangrape in yet another metropolitan city of India. Will all the India defenders please stand up? I'm speaking to you, Mr Senior Rightwing journalist, who said the report comprised gross exaggerations. What do you have to say now that this has happened to one of our own? I'm speaking to you, guardians of morality and dispensers of wisdom. Kindly point out to me the error of my ways now, tell me how I can avoid meeting a similar fate by scaling down my ambition, by putting safety before my job, by not tempting fate, by widening my definition of unsafe urban spaces.

When we step out of the house, we do so at our own risk. When we speak about harassment, we are told to conduct ourselves better. When a leading actress requests media to refrain from printing pictures snapped of her without her permission, she is gently told to stop whining, because a picture clicked in a public space is fair game. I must really thank "FP staff" for bringing this to my notice, so I'd know better than to ever appear in beachwear anywhere in the world, because then anybody clicking my pictures without my permission would be fair game. Sure, Indian media houses won't be falling over each other to publish those pictures, but I'd better not complain if pictures of me clicked without my knowledge ever pops up somewhere I'd least expect (or wish) them to. Because if I'm in a public space, my picture, and by extension I am fair game. Oh, and do you know how I stumbled upon that article? It was linked right below this one talking about the Mumbai gangrape. Bravo Firstpost.

We are a screwed up society. We don't know the lines between curiosity, voyeurism, invasion of privacy, abuse and molestation. We have still not recognized that the only factor differentiating different levels of invasion, or containing the damage up to a certain level is opportunity. We don't take 'minor' offenses seriously, because we don't realize that the guy who can stroke a woman's thigh in a bus can rape her in an alley.

We don't take one white woman's account seriously. Then it happens to one of us.

One India, many different stories

A University of Chicago student recently recounted some of the traumatic experiences she had during her trip to India about a year ago as part of a study group. Her article was published in CNN iReport, a user-generated news platform. Another female student from the same group, a young African American student, posted her response to the story, taking exception to what she perceived in the original story as stereotyping of Indian men based on the actions of a few.

Briefly, this is what happened during the study trip:

A group of students, including our two authors - Rose and twoseat (the penname used by the second author) from University of Chicago visited India for a three-month Indian civilizations program. An incident confirmed by both reports was on their first day in Pune. It was the Ganesh Festival and the American girls joined in the street dancing - dancing which stopped as soon as the group of foreigners joined in. Through their three month tenure, the girls in the group were stared, groped, their pictures clicked and subject to every kind of misbehaviour women, especially foreigners may expect on Indian streets. There was a rape attempt on one of the girls in the group - an incident that left indelible marks especially on Rose. Upon her return to the US, she was unable to shake off the trauma and suffered mental disturbance to the extent that she was held in psychiatric ward for some time.

As of 22^nd August, Rose’s story greets you on the landing page of CNN iReport, and the statistics are impressive:

The article was read by roughly 12,000 more readers since I started writing this post. Twoseat’s kinder take on India and her defense of Indian men at large finds fewer takers at the moment:

Naturally, a part of me wants to jump to the defense of my country and cry foul over western perceptions about India. Anyway, this is not a rant against stereotyping of India and Indians by a white woman. Far from it.

As an Indian, I feel ashamed of the treatment meted out to these girls. I feel more ashamed, because I have long been aware of the strange way in which we all behave around foreigners, but never given it much thought. I have listened quietly even as people I know, sniggered, joked and shared generally uncharitable, uninformed opinions about ‘those women’ - opinions based on their strange manner of dressing, or the audaciousness of women roaming about, un-chaperoned, in places and spaces where even we the local women don’t venture alone.

Reactions to Rose’s article predictably include sage advice from Indian women about how to behave in India. No Indian woman would dance on the street during the Ganesh Festival, points out one comment. That may be true, but why is it the case? What is so wrong, in a country so fond of festivity, to display a little bit of your inner child in a space where a crowd is apparently enjoying themselves? True, I never fancied doing the same, even though I’m usually the first one to get on my feet during most family weddings. 

Sometimes it takes an outsider to make us question the little things that we take for granted. What makes us a society where men dancing on the street is celebration, while a woman joining in is a spectacle?

The incident in Goa seems by all appearances the most traumatic experience that no one should have to face. To be fair, I don’t know if I were to visit Goa with a group of my friends today, something like that would never happen to me. Molestation in India, as most of us are painfully aware, is more a matter of opportunity than the colour of your skin or the clothes you wear, or any physical or personal attribute. Let’s make no mistake about this - individual attributes are for humans; rapists, molesters, stalkers, starrers and gropers don’t see us as humans - they wouldn’t do that to you if they thought of you as a person.

What I’m trying to get at is that the Goa incident was a criminal assault, one that would understandably scar anyone in that unfortunate position. I could potentially be attacked, mugged or face one of the any number of possible unpleasant experiences in a foreign country, and my memories of the country would be permanently tainted by that incident.

As an Indian, my place is not to play the victim and lament the treatment meted out to women in this country, but to regret that a visitor to my country ended up taking back a slice of this reality with her. It is generous on the part of young African American student to weigh in that the whole country and all the men here should not be stereotyped because of the actions of a few. She’s right, there are enough good, honourable men in India to make the place liveable and loveable; my own, somewhat naive belief is that those men are in a majority.

As an Indian however, particularly in the face of such incidents, my place is not to cite the good conduct of those good men, get defensive about what my country is or isn’t like, and belittle the trauma that Rose faced. It is rather my duty to own up to the fact that there is something in the society that I’m very much a part of, that allows some of its men to behave despicably and get away with it. It sucks to admit this, but the sooner we do, the more likely we are to take little steps within our power to change this.

Update: I hadn't read this opinion piece on Firstpost, published on the same day, at the time I posted this. The author puts across many more points that I would have liked to address, and much better than I could have.