Month: December 2012

A terrible thing happened to a girl who was trying to get back home after a movie. To not respond or speak or rage or demand change would make us less than human, writes Namita Bhandare.

How many went to bed that night with the same questions?

What kind of human does this to another?

How could they beat her so brutally?

How brazen to think they could get away with it?

Meanwhile, the younger of my teenage daughters wants to celebrate the end of her exams by going out with friends for dinner to the same mall where the previous night the 23-year-old student had gone to see Life of Pi (did she like it? Did she get a lump in her throat in the same parts that I did?).

I don’t know how to tell my daughter that the medical student now battling for her life had cleared every check-mark on my precautions list. She was accompanied by a male friend. She had taken public transport. She had her cell phone with her. It was not late at night. She was just a girl trying to get back home after a movie.

On social media, on the streets, on news channels and in newspapers, everywhere a slow-burning rage is building. People have taken to the streets, at India Gate, outside the home minister’s house, outside the Delhi chief minister’s residence, in Chandigarh and in Mumbai. People who are just saying “Enough”.

As a journalist I am trained to distance myself from the story; to remain objective. I have never participated in a candlelight vigil. I have never drafted a petition demanding change. I almost never sign chain letters. But now I felt helpless and angry. I needed to believe that we have not given up and reached a point of no return.

On Twitter, writer Kiran Manral suggests an online petition. What good would that do I wonder? But, I begin writing.

Stop Rape Now, I write on change.org in a petition to the President of India and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. It outlines practical solutions, short-term and long. I don’t own this petition. It is a manifesto of the collective voices I hear.

Fast-track courts. Imposition of the maximum sentence. Clear all pending cases. Train and sensitise police.

Get Parliament to stop weeping before TV cameras and pass at least two pending bills, including the Protection of Women Against Sexual Harassment at the Workplace Bill and the Criminal Law (Amendment) Bill.

Consult with the Ministry of Human Resources and civil society to see how to tackle growing misogyny. It’s a beginning.

Writing is cathartic. But this petition (http://www.change.org/en-IN/petitions/president-cji-stop-rape-now) has tapped into a simmering anger. In just over 24 hours, we hit 59,000 signatures. Some add suggestions from castration to the death penalty. Others voice their personal histories.

There are sceptics: “Signing a petition is going to stop rape? I take it you only read fairy tales?” questioned one. “What is the point of this online activism?” asked another.

Raheel Khursheed of change.org has some answers: “We are trying to enable an attitudinal change so that lack of interest in issues turns to engagement and then to action.” According to change.org, in November, a petition started by Sunita Kesara resulted in the shutting down of asphalt factories in Karauli, Rajasthan. In March, a petition by Ranganathan Manohar of Bangalore resulted in the banning of discriminatory practices by a temple.

In Sandy Hook, USA, it took the killing of 26 people to get the president to talk about gun control. In Ireland, it took the death of Savita Halappanavar to relax abortion laws, especially when the mother’s life is at risk. In India, will this horrific gang-rape become our tipping point?

Sometimes a tragedy hits you so hard, it knocks you back, leaving you out of breath, helpless, flailing. This was somebody else’s daughter. She could have been mine, or yours. On Wednesday, still on a ventilator, she scribbled a note to her mother: “Mummy I want to live.”

A terrible thing happened to a girl who was trying to get back home after a movie. To not respond or speak or rage or demand change would make us less than human.

Namita Bhandare is a Delhi-based writer. The views expressed by the author are personal.
Twitter: @namitabhandare

A memorial is not just about building the tallest, biggest, grandest statue. Namita Bhandare writes.

On the day before his death anniversary, BSP head Mayawati was disrupting Parliament to press for a memorial to Bhim Rao Ambedkar. The government was scheduled to make an announcement at noon. “Why not now?” she asked as members of her party rushed to the well of the Rajya Sabha.

When the announcement came a few hours later to hand over 12.5 acres of the defunct Indu Mills in Mumbai’s Dadar, not far from Chaitya Bhumi where Ambedkar’s ashes are interred, Mayawati was not impressed. “For a grand memorial,” she scoffed, “at least 30-40 acres of land would be required.”

If anyone deserves a memorial in this country, it is Ambedkar. The scholarly architect of our Constitution belongs to every citizen, not just to Dalit parties. A fitting memorial would celebrate his life and serve as both inspiration and rebuke to continuing social inequalities. It should also help to chastise those who disrupt the constitutional methods established by him.

Plans for the ‘grand memorial’ have been unveiled by Ambedkar’s grandson, Anandraj who last year had forcibly occupied Indu Mills to erect a makeshift memorial. They include a 109-metre high statue (16 metres taller than Liberty, it will be called, yup, The Statue of Equality). In addition, there will be a lotus-shaped convention centre, a banquet hall and a library.

A memorial for Ambedkar is far too serious a matter to be left to his biological family and parties trying to score brownie points. There is need to call for nation-wide submissions and to scour national talent: how do we best remember this remarkable Indian? Is this about tallest, biggest, grandest or do we need something more laden with meaning? Exhibits from his life? Lush gardens or a starker landscape symbolic of oppression? Or do we need yet another statue, a token towering pit stop on a tourist circuit?

Because we are a land susceptible to multiple gods, we have become a nation of adept statue-builders. Yet, popular imagination seems to flail at the idea of memorials. We have reduced the concept of a memorial to simple mathematics: Memorial = Statue. If a memorial is to commemorate a life, or an event, what can a statue, no matter how tall, really tell us?

For dramatic effect try the memorial to the 17,000 killed by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia which comprises a transparent acrylic Buddhist stupa encasing 8,000 human skulls. Or for experiencing another sort of untouchability, the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg lets visitors chose their segregated entry, white or non-white. Closer home, who can fail to be moved by the starkness of the black granite slab at Gandhiji’s Samadhi at Rajghat?

In India, alas, we seem to believe that only Great Leaders deserve memorials. So while a thousand Kanshi Rams and Mayawatis sprout in Uttar Pradesh, we have failed to build a national war memorial. While we debate the height of a Shivaji statue (also to be ‘bigger than the Statue of Liberty’), why not consider a permanent memorial to the Bhopal gas tragedy or victims of the Emergency? Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it which is why all over the world there are so many memorials to the victims of the Holocaust.

Meanwhile, in Mumbai the BMC has served notice to mayor Sunil Prabhu and Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut to remove the makeshift memorial that has sprung up for Bal Thackeray at Shivaji Park where he was cremated two weeks ago. For now, let’s not get into the merits of whether Thackeray deserves a memorial. For now, only ask: what memorial best fits the man whose stated mission was the Marathi cause? A statue at Shivaji Park (and how ironic it would be to reduce a park named after Shivaji to accommodate his great follower) or an institution devoted to the spread of Marathi language and culture?

At the very least, our intrepid statue builders would do well do remember that statues are most beloved not by the admiring masses, but by pigeons.

Namita Bhandare is a Delhi-based writer
Twitter: @namitabhandare
The views expressed by the author are personal