If hanging were a solution to violence against women, we wouldn’t have enough rope in this world to execute men who have committed acts of violence directly or indirectly against women. We can exclude this option for lack of rope more than anything else. We still could keep most men in the “deserve to be hanged” category. I think that would help in bringing about some awareness of the violence being done against women.
I don’t think people should take to the streets for every act of brutality which ironically involves one of “them.” No government or police on earth can stop such violence. The people on the streets of Delhi—either they are a bunch of hypocrites or simply appointed by the political parties in the opposition to cause mayhem. I don’t think they really care for the five-year old child that was raped or the rapist. It is just not their area of interest so to say.
Protest, more than a way of expressing discontent, is a weapon to fight an unjust order. When it is used without any basis and a government is accused for what it could not have prevented, it loses its legitimacy. When a policeman slapped one of the girl protesters, he did it instinctively. That’s how police operate in India. But, we want the police to be brutal with one section of the people and not with others. That’s not possible. The same policeman who is used to raising his hand will raise it everywhere including in his own home. Read Frantz Fanon’s chapter “Colonial War and Mental Disorders” from The Wretched of the Earth for further discussion on this subject.
Colonial societies are violent societies and that is the language understood and used across the board. It is no surprise that the policeman raised his hand against the female protester. Maybe he should be seriously reprimanded but to expect him to lose his job is an unfair proposition. They should on the contrary be trained to be more responsible and less instinctively violent with the public—which seriously speaking is an unreal expectation because in a country like India the masses are used to submitting to the “rod” rather than dialogue based on a principle of reasonableness. If they were attempting to bribe the victim’s father, that’s no good reason either for the police to be removed from their jobs. I would like to see the face of at least one protester who could honestly say he or she never indulged in an act of corruption. Why this hypocrisy then about the police being corrupt?
I know this government is on the wrong which has been true of almost all the governments in the subcontinent that followed Nehru’s death in 1964. I also know we need to protest against a powerful order through an insight into the violent nature of that order. Any society left to the mercy of lawyers, policemen, bureaucrats and armies is a dangerous society to live in. These are societies that have no respect for human freedom and individuality. They can only be fought out through some kind of international solidarity where people come together as men and women without being hindered by the chains of nationalism. They must be fought intelligently through thinking, reading and writing. Merely going on the roads before a news-hungry media and dramatizing what are mostly personal agendas is actually strengthening the government and weakening the masses.
The heart of the problem is that people don’t care. The protesters are not interested in what is happening to the downtrodden classes. They don’t want to be dealing with them. They don’t want to be taking responsibility for them either. The middle classes want to see their incomes rise but when it comes to the housemaids who do back-breaking work they pay them peanuts. Isn’t this violence committed by women in a patriarchal society against other women?
I had to fight a running battle before I could persuade my mother that the maid had a family that needs money as much as we do. My mother insists on the virtue of charity to the oppressed and I keep quoting Saint Augustine to her that justice is the highest form of charity. Even in an exploitative situation we need to be just. The maid too has dreams of having a decent life free of exploitation. Why it is that feminism is for the middle and upper class women and no feminism for the lower class women—for whom in fact feminism would have its greatest relevance!
Rape is a social problem. We should be dealing with it at the social level and prevent it from becoming a law and order problem. The bigger problem in India is female feticide. There should be draconian laws at that level. Similarly, the poor of the villages and small towns must be given education and a sense of belonging. I don’t mean mainstream education. I work in a university and I know the results of this education. The boys and girls are as cynically self-centered as their parents and teachers a generation ago. We don’t need that kind of education and we don’t need those kinds of educated people either. Maybe they are fighting for a personal space and for personal rights—but it is only about themselves! They do not even have the minimum social sense you would expect from a human being.
I still think that the working classes for all their limitations are the hope of this country and every other country on earth. Not just because they are in touch with reality. Also, it is not because of any romantic notion that they are morally superior as human beings. They are people like everyone else. The condition of being exploited puts them in a position from which they could think of serious alternatives with regard to their own lives and the future of the society they live in. They are in a position to change these things because “change” is meaningful to them. Most importantly they have fewer illusions about the cruelty and selfishness of bourgeois society. They can see clearly as sunlight pierces the darkness of the night what it means to be at the receiving end.
Prakash Kona is a writer, teacher and researcher who lives in Hyderabad, India. He is currently working as an Associate Professor at the Department of English Literature, The English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU), Hyderabad.
RSS
If hanging were a solution to violence against women!
Posted on April 25, 2013 by Prakash Kona
If hanging were a solution to violence against women, we wouldn’t have enough rope in this world to execute men who have committed acts of violence directly or indirectly against women. We can exclude this option for lack of rope more than anything else. We still could keep most men in the “deserve to be hanged” category. I think that would help in bringing about some awareness of the violence being done against women.
I don’t think people should take to the streets for every act of brutality which ironically involves one of “them.” No government or police on earth can stop such violence. The people on the streets of Delhi—either they are a bunch of hypocrites or simply appointed by the political parties in the opposition to cause mayhem. I don’t think they really care for the five-year old child that was raped or the rapist. It is just not their area of interest so to say.
Protest, more than a way of expressing discontent, is a weapon to fight an unjust order. When it is used without any basis and a government is accused for what it could not have prevented, it loses its legitimacy. When a policeman slapped one of the girl protesters, he did it instinctively. That’s how police operate in India. But, we want the police to be brutal with one section of the people and not with others. That’s not possible. The same policeman who is used to raising his hand will raise it everywhere including in his own home. Read Frantz Fanon’s chapter “Colonial War and Mental Disorders” from The Wretched of the Earth for further discussion on this subject.
Colonial societies are violent societies and that is the language understood and used across the board. It is no surprise that the policeman raised his hand against the female protester. Maybe he should be seriously reprimanded but to expect him to lose his job is an unfair proposition. They should on the contrary be trained to be more responsible and less instinctively violent with the public—which seriously speaking is an unreal expectation because in a country like India the masses are used to submitting to the “rod” rather than dialogue based on a principle of reasonableness. If they were attempting to bribe the victim’s father, that’s no good reason either for the police to be removed from their jobs. I would like to see the face of at least one protester who could honestly say he or she never indulged in an act of corruption. Why this hypocrisy then about the police being corrupt?
I know this government is on the wrong which has been true of almost all the governments in the subcontinent that followed Nehru’s death in 1964. I also know we need to protest against a powerful order through an insight into the violent nature of that order. Any society left to the mercy of lawyers, policemen, bureaucrats and armies is a dangerous society to live in. These are societies that have no respect for human freedom and individuality. They can only be fought out through some kind of international solidarity where people come together as men and women without being hindered by the chains of nationalism. They must be fought intelligently through thinking, reading and writing. Merely going on the roads before a news-hungry media and dramatizing what are mostly personal agendas is actually strengthening the government and weakening the masses.
The heart of the problem is that people don’t care. The protesters are not interested in what is happening to the downtrodden classes. They don’t want to be dealing with them. They don’t want to be taking responsibility for them either. The middle classes want to see their incomes rise but when it comes to the housemaids who do back-breaking work they pay them peanuts. Isn’t this violence committed by women in a patriarchal society against other women?
I had to fight a running battle before I could persuade my mother that the maid had a family that needs money as much as we do. My mother insists on the virtue of charity to the oppressed and I keep quoting Saint Augustine to her that justice is the highest form of charity. Even in an exploitative situation we need to be just. The maid too has dreams of having a decent life free of exploitation. Why it is that feminism is for the middle and upper class women and no feminism for the lower class women—for whom in fact feminism would have its greatest relevance!
Rape is a social problem. We should be dealing with it at the social level and prevent it from becoming a law and order problem. The bigger problem in India is female feticide. There should be draconian laws at that level. Similarly, the poor of the villages and small towns must be given education and a sense of belonging. I don’t mean mainstream education. I work in a university and I know the results of this education. The boys and girls are as cynically self-centered as their parents and teachers a generation ago. We don’t need that kind of education and we don’t need those kinds of educated people either. Maybe they are fighting for a personal space and for personal rights—but it is only about themselves! They do not even have the minimum social sense you would expect from a human being.
I still think that the working classes for all their limitations are the hope of this country and every other country on earth. Not just because they are in touch with reality. Also, it is not because of any romantic notion that they are morally superior as human beings. They are people like everyone else. The condition of being exploited puts them in a position from which they could think of serious alternatives with regard to their own lives and the future of the society they live in. They are in a position to change these things because “change” is meaningful to them. Most importantly they have fewer illusions about the cruelty and selfishness of bourgeois society. They can see clearly as sunlight pierces the darkness of the night what it means to be at the receiving end.
Prakash Kona is a writer, teacher and researcher who lives in Hyderabad, India. He is currently working as an Associate Professor at the Department of English Literature, The English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU), Hyderabad.