Above: mass-murderer Narendra Modi, dressed in the uniform of the right-wing fundamentalist Nazi-style militia, the RSS, gives a salute to a group of similarly attired hooligans. He is now the primary contender for India's prime-ministership.
Current Events
The Ugly Indian
AIJAZ ZAKA SYED
Some years ago, the weekly news-magazine India Today did an interesting cover story titled ‘The Ugly Indian’.
That June 1998 magazine issue has remained etched in my memory all these years because of the unusual candour with which it captured our Indian psyche as a people.
As India is rocked by yet another gang-rape, this time of a journalist and in cosmopolitan Mumbai – the land of all-embracing Bollywood dreams – I am reminded of the story by Swapan Dasgupta -- a loquacious Hindutva votary, incidentally.
The Ugly Indian is back in focus.
And our ‘ugliness’ seems to be growing by the day.
In Delhi, a 72-year old Hindu ‘godman‘, revered by thousands and with sprawling ashrams all over the country, molests a 16-year old.
In Jharkhand -- a state in Eastern India -- a female cop is gang-raped on her way home from hospital with her family and a dead relative, right in the same car.
In Western India, in Maharashtra, a 20-year old pregnant woman is repeatedly violated in front of her husband.
These are but a few of the most recent examples. Indian papers report numerous such attacks on a daily basis.
Rape is India’s ‘national problem,’ says the UN, and the most common crime against women. Every 20 minutes a new rape is reported, Delhi -- India’s capital region -- leading the way.
Many go unreported out of fear of social stigma.
In any case, justice seldom catches up with the guilty. Even the infamous Delhi rape last year that shook the nation and produced a new law, justice has still not been done.
India is a living hell for women. That is the conclusion of Michaela Cross, an American student who spent three months in India last year. Her stunning first person account for CNN, ‘India: The Story You Never Wanted to Hear’, is a stinging critique of the country that has come to look so strange to its own people in the past few years.
The 23-year-old redhead talks of being stalked, groped and even suffering rape attempts. She went back in December, days before the Delhi rape outrage, and had a post-trauma breakdown.
She writes: “There was no way to prepare for the eyes, the eyes that every day stared with such entitlement at my body. I got stares so sharp they sliced away bits of me piece by piece. There were no sex signals, only women’s bodies to be taken, or hidden away. So I was taken, by eye after eye, picture after picture. Who knows how many photos there are of me in India, or on the internet. Who knows how many strangers have used my image as pornography. For three months I lived this way, in a traveller's heaven and a woman's hell. I was stalked, groped, masturbated at.”
Cross’s powerful piece, which has had more than a million page-views, coincided with the Mumbai rape last week and understandably generated all-round shame and anguish back in India with many writing in to apologise to her.
What has gone wrong with India then?
Once the very name generated spontaneous smiles and warmth around the world. It was seen, especially in the west, as the land of Buddha and Mahatma – and of spiritual salvation and yoga. Poets and artistes, not to mention generations of footloose hippies, saw it as the fount of all wisdom and ‘shanti.’
In the past few years though, the world’s view of India has undergone a perceptible change.
Whatever happened to us in India? Why have women become so vulnerable in the land where they’ve been idolized for thousands of years?
The female form is considered sacred and associated with life itself. Many Hindu divines happen to be female – from Durga and Kali to Lakshmi and Saraswati. India itself is viewed as the mother goddess. Our movies are an endless tribute to women.
What explains the growing depravity and corruption of Indian men then? Why have we degenerated so fast? Whatever happened to the Gandhian motto of ‘simple living, high thinking’?
Rape and corruption seem to have become a national fixation. Our greed knows no bounds. Nothing is enough. ‘Hal min mazeed,’ (Give me more!) in the words of the Quran, is the mantra now. Gandhi would find it hard to recognise the nation that exalts him as Bapu.
So are we really the Ugly Indian that Dasgupta thinks we are?
Here’s what he had written in a rare outburst:
“The most fascinating thing about India is its capacity for self-delusion. As a nation, we seem less concerned with being than with reputation. Hundreds are butchered in those senseless bouts of sectarian madness … Hundreds of millions of public money are siphoned off into private coffers because Indian ingenuity is more potent than complex rules. Come Independence Day, the nation wallows in the ‘tryst with destiny’ recording and awaits reassurance it’s indeed the land of the Buddha and the Mahatma. Privately, the Indian epitomises goodness and morality; collectively he is the Ugly Indian.
“We love being sanctimonious. We are the world's largest democracy, the power of the next millennium. The Indian genius. We just know we are superior. It’s a superiority that rests on fragile foundations. We defecate everywhere, spit everywhere … bribe policemen and jump traffic lights. In short, be inconsiderate towards everyone but ourselves. Rule of law exists, but not visibly. Indian justice, unlike nuclear bombs, doesn't include deterrence.”
Phew! It’s a long but must-read rant and is available online. Here is the sting in the tail:
“To understand Kaliyuga (end times), don't look at the man next door. Just look in the mirror for the Ugly Indian.”
So are we prepared to look in the mirror? One thing is for sure. All these rapes and epic scams are only symptoms of a deeper malaise that has set in, not the disease itself. Blaming Bollywood, the internet, Chinese food – how ridiculous can we get! – and women, won’t get us anywhere.
The growing objectification of women in the movies and media and the unfettered, ubiquitous access to porn, liquor and drugs may be contributing to the sickness. But its source lies elsewhere.
First, is the endless Indian glorification of the male of the species and the inherent superiority it enjoys over women even before it comes into being. Women are a burden. So they must be discouraged and prevented from coming into existence, as thousands of ‘gender selection’ clinics across India have successfully done all these years.
Even when a girl arrives defying all odds, she must be shown her place – from sexual harassment and rape to acid attacks and dowry killings.
Second, we have lost our moral compass as a nation and it’s time we faced it. There was a time when moral education was part of school syllabus. The focus was on inculcating honesty, integrity and morality, rather than producing robots trained to crack exams and score impossible grades.
Third, no concept of accountability and crime and punishment is left. Karma isn’t about paying for your deeds but about how cleverly you beat the system. You see politicians get away with murder, often literally, and scams worth hundreds of millions of rupees. Someone who presided over the massacre of thousands of people is a pretender for the top job in the land. Men responsible for our security routinely gun down innocent men and women in the name of fighting terror and get away with it.
How then do you expect common criminals, rapists and murderers to fear the law? Is it any wonder women and the most vulnerable sections of society feel so insecure? If journalists in a metropolis like Mumbai aren’t safe, imagine the predicament of ordinary people.
One can identify with BJP’s Sushma Swaraj when she says that those responsible for the Mumbai outrage should be simply shot dead. Indeed, if justice had been swift and certain in Delhi, a repeat in Mumbai might have been avoided.
But, Ms Swaraj, can we expect the same justice in the case of Asaram Bapu and all the rapists and mass murderers in the vibrant Gujarat or should justice remain
selective?
The writer, a native of Hyderabad, India, is a commentator on Middle East and South Asian affairs.
Edited for sikhchic.com
September 1, 2013
Conversation about this article
1: Kanwarjeet Singh (USA), September 01, 2013, 11:26 AM.
Dear author - I would like to take your memory back a few years and then a few decades. The start of the fall of the Indian morality can be seen in how the general Indian populace (and I do not mean the government) handled the June and November 1984 carnage and rape and plunder that took place in cities, towns and villages acropss the country. They shielded the criminals by their wanton ignorance and silence. These same savages (as very correctly predicted by a few Sikhs, including myself) have now turned on their own flesh and blood. The foundation of this behavior dates back to about 70-80 years ago in their so called Father of the Nation - fondly remembered as Bapu or Gandhi ji. His sexual exploits and experiments with women and himself gave the green light for the masses to follow accordingly. He, by the way, was following some of the ancient Hindu texts of this very land where sexual satisfaction is giving a priority over human morality - see devdasi system, vulgar - sexually provocative poses of statues in and outside Hindu temples and the worship of human sexual organs inside. Living in India is an 'accepted' hell for women but has it's roots in their jeans (Oops! I mean genes).
2: Baldev Singh (Bradford, United Kingdom), September 01, 2013, 8:50 PM.
The Internet now makes explicit pornography available to the Indian (who has no set of values to back him up) at a click of a mouse. This, coupled with illicit and cheap alcohol, gives an easy escape to Indian men from their useless and miserable lives with nothing much to do except take out their anger on defenseless women. This is a recipe for a disaster which is unfolding on a gigantic scale. The criminals described so vividly in this disturbing piece urgently need neutering!
3: Rup Singh (Canada), September 01, 2013, 9:41 PM.
When the people of the land choose to vote to parliament proven criminals in what they proudly call the largest democracy in the world, then the conditions they live in, i.e., absence of law and order, justice, infrastructure, jobs, affordable housing, healthcare, sanitation, food, etc., etc., then extreme corruption and inflation should not come as a shock. Not a single MP is willing to stand up for the people in India. Simple logic is that elected officials are a reflection of the people that elect them, votes are bought and sold publicly. The masses have become part of the problem, so no improvements will ever be made, I believe. India is a country where the vast majority has been conditioned for centuries to just accept things as they are and they do (caste system and blind religious faith, for example) and most just consider themselves victims of their own bad karma. The will of the majority was broken long ago. In a nation where the elected officials use the army, police, and judiciary to suppress and murder their own citizens, systematically attack minorities, why do people expect justice? The people should start considering their elected officials as a common enemy, like they did the Mughals and the British, and only then can they unite to fight this oppressive system and become free.