The politics of protest

When I read about the ghastly rape of a 5-year-old last night, I will confess, my first reaction was of exhaustion. So it wasn’t an iron rod in a 23-year-old but a bottle of hair oil and some candles that were found shoved inside the baby. Does that make it more or less horrifying? Should that even be a question? Didn’t this just happen a few months ago? Didn’t we go out and protest, didn’t we pour our anguish out in blog posts and op-eds, didn’t we sign every single petition we could find on Change.org, didn’t we send recommendations to the Justice Verma Committee? Why should we have to do this every single time? What is the point of sweating it out in Delhi’s searing 40-degree heat for change that never happens?

But as I read more, as I watched the video of a woman being slapped by a cop at the hospital where she was protesting against the negligence and subsequent corruption of the cops involved, my reactions changed. I wept so violently that I almost threw up, and I knew that despite myself, I was not jaded. Not yet. No, I do not think that protesting outside the hospital was in any way a good or ethical idea. Doctors need a calm and peaceful environment to work in and nothing will be achieved by anyone, civilian demonstrators or Aam Aadmi Party workers, invading that space and demanding resignations of police topdogs, or to see the victim, or whatever the hell they were demanding. A hospital is not the place for this kind of protest. But that still doesn’t justify the complete brutality of the police that we all saw yesterday. Yes, inquiries have been ordered to examine allegations of both bribery and brutality, and the slap-happy cop has been suspended for now, but we know that this is not enough. We cannot expect mindsets to change and patriarchy to be rooted out if those in positions of authority are allowed to behave like this and get away with only minor punishment.

With this in mind, I attended this morning’s rally outside the police headquarters at ITO. My friend had very generously offered me a ride along with a colleague of hers, and when we got there at 10:45 in the morning, we were the only women there. The entire protest had been taken over by the Aam Aadmi Party, and because they were the single largest political presence there, the media thoughtlessly began calling it the AAP protest, completely ignoring the fact that there were other people there who did not want to be aligned with the party, who were there as individuals who felt strongly about what had happened. Who did not agree with the mindless AAP chant “Choodi pehen ke dance karo, dance karo”, which was meant to highlight the weakness of the police force but ironically ended up being as misogynistic as the crime that was being protested against.

There were many such chants that I disagreed with – the murdabad one being the most popular. It started off against Police Commissioner Neeraj Kumar and Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde, but soon turned into a slogan against the entire government and police force. Neither helpful nor tasteful, and not something I could bring myself to say. While I have no moral problem with death penalty to rapists, I do not wish death to any of these people, and I do not see the point of demanding it using this platform. Demands for resignations/arrests of certain cops, swifter punishment for rapists, and for Kumar, Shinde, and Sheila Dikshit to speak to the public (by which I mean say something meaningful and concrete, not spout useless clichés) – those I yelled for till I was hoarse. Unfortunately, the murdabad ones are the ones that people seem to like the most.

The advantage of being part of a small group of women was that the news channels actively sought our views, which worked for us because we had genuine and concrete things to say. We also had perfectly pleasant exchanges with a few cops on duty, who offered us water and discussed yesterday’s slapping incident with us quite freely. Within an hour, a few other small political parties had joined the demonstration, so even though there weren’t too many individual protesters, the crowd was sizeable and only growing. So far, so peaceful. But after about two hours of perfectly civilized protesting, we were suddenly, violently pushed and shoved aside by an army of crazed AISA workers who ran up to the police barricades and began to upturn and break them, climbing on top of them and yelling for absolutely nothing. We managed to get out of the crush of people, holding the hands of strangers as we tried to help them escape as well, and eventually, all the women protesters were standing at the back or to one side, continuing their demonstration, while the guys from AISA jumped and yelled like animals up in front.

We continued to protest for a fair while longer, but when we saw a new deployment of cops arriving with lathis and rifles, we knew there was no point staying. The protest had officially been hijacked. The media had got its story and the police and politicians, their excuse to justify brutality and clampdowns and Section 144.

But despite all this heartbreaking, frustrating mindlessness and political hijacking, there were enough people there who really cared about what was going on, whose demands were genuine and whose anguish was heartfelt. And the media, cops, and politicians would do well to remember that those people may leave the protest venue but they are not going anywhere.

Boston or Baghdad, we are all one

Since last night, when the news about the Boston marathon bombings broke, I've read and heard countless expressions of either shock at the attacks or outrage that other terror attacks the same day didn't make that kind of news or elicit such expressions of heartbreak. Then people started talking about other countries that face terrorism routinely, and of course, all discussions, especially online, end up in ma-behen abuses and Indo-Pak issues. Always. But I just had a few things to say:

1. The Daily Mail article about 30 people being killed at a wedding in Afghanistan is a 2002 article that has been repackaged; please stop spreading the rumour that it happened yesterday.

2. I can understand criticizing the media for not giving enough coverage to other terror attacks that actually did take place yesterday (notably in Iraq) – the media is supposed to be objective and fair and all that. But please stop judging people for expressing their shock at what happened in Boston. For one thing, while both events are equally tragic, both are not equally shocking in the strictest sense of the word. Attacks on a super high-profile, globally watched sporting event (with tight security measures in place) in a city that doesn’t face terrorism regularly are obviously more shocking, although not more tragic, than attacks in Iraq, a country that, sadly, faces more terrorism on a daily basis than many other places in the world. Also, posting/not posting something online is no indication of a person’s empathy or apathy.

3. Let’s just think of things that restore our faith, like the runners who crossed the finish line and continued to run – to hospitals to donate blood to the blast victims. These are things that matter, not which attack got more tweets/fb updates.

Hypocrisy of the versed kind

Dear Kapil Sibal, 

I know you thought you were making all the right noises by reciting your poem about the Delhi bus gangrape victim at tonight’s Jashn-e-bahar mushaira at which you were chief guest. And I know you were there as a poet and not a government representative. But I find it difficult to understand how you can write poetry that asks why patriarchy exists and is allowed to exist when your government didn't even have the guts to back one Verma Committee report in entirety, a report that actually did more to attack the roots of the patriarchy you claim to abhor than your government has done in years. I fail to understand with what integrity you can lament the breakdown of communication and cite, as an example, how the protesters in December refused to talk to the government. When did they refuse? Do you mean when they heckled one politician who bothered to show up at a protest venue only after several days of complete silence from everyone in power? They were angry, but all they had wanted was for their government to talk to them. To be fair, you also expressed your sadness at the government's unwillingness to talk to the people. But aren’t you part of that government? If you wanted to talk to the people, or even just express your solidarity with them even if you couldn't make an official statement, what did you do to make that happen? Did you go to India Gate even once? And then, after an entire poem on women's rights, you end by asking men how, despite their role as protectors, they can do this to women, who are their mothers. Because THAT'S not patriarchal at all. 

So yes, you thought you were making all the right noises. But really, you just answered your own questions about why this happens.

Sincerely,

A person (because all my other identities should be irrelevant to you).