If not in six years, today I am scared...

As I write, may be thousands are protesting in Delhi today, braving the spine numbing cold. I have been having thoughts, all sorts, about what the gang-rape incident means to the average women in Delhi, who cannot afford to have a personal car for her safety to travel. So the bus, auto and the metro seem to be for now the only option, for thousands others like me.

Strangely enough, I was in Munirka yesterday and even spotted that ill-fated bus stop from where about two weeks ago, the now deceased 23 year old physiotherapy student who was gang-raped, boarded the bus. I had all sorts of scary thoughts yesterday until the time I was in Munirka.

I have been staying in Delhi for the past six years. When I came here, I was cautioned by family and friends about the perils of staying alone in Delhi. In my initial days I used to stay in Vasant Vihar, a typical plush South Delhi area where streets are mostly deserted, as private cars ply around. I can’t recall of a single evening when I was not escorted back to my PG by my friends, fearing that travelling alone might be a compromise to my safety. I was in Vasant Vihar for 2 years before shifting base to JNU campus.

JNU campus can be called an oasis amidst the sea of turbulence in the capital. Every time I enter inside the main gate, I feel I have returned back safely and unharmed, for the day. But one cannot get cocooned inside JNU all the time. One has professional, cultural and social needs and obligations. Interestingly, in Delhi all three needs are structured upon the issue of safety. If you have to travel, book a flight that flies during the day time, take a train that reaches Delhi in the morning (never after 5 PM!) If you want to hang out with your friends make sure you are back (previously it used to be 8 PM), by (now I guess I myself prefer) 6 PM. And yes, we are talking about a modern, empowered woman who stays in the capital of this country. She is not at all embarrassed to follow a stricture that is tinged with medievalist tradition. Every day my freedom is infringed; my rights are trampled by a fear; my parents’ peace of mind disturbed because they want their daughter to have the best education.

Today I am scared, may be I have not admitted it, but in some corner of my mind, fear lurks large. In six years I have not felt so. I guess a majority of other women in Delhi is constantly living under this scourge of fear, for no fault of theirs. The only fault is - she might be pretty, or she might like to dress in stylish attires or she might resist someone else’s unholy moves.

I have always loved Delhi ever since I came. But I have never admired its breed of populace. At the cost of sounding biased, I would say there is a general lack of respect for women that pervades in majority of North Indian men’s psyche. It is that psyche that makes rape a passable offence, because women in general were never and I presume would never be treated at par.

One cannot have police personnel posted at every signal. It is impossible in a country like India having 1.3 billion people. Police cannot change the psyche of a man. Strong laws? Who will make that law? We have ourselves elected MPs and MLAs who have criminal antecedents, some of whom even have rape charges against them. May be what we need today is a cultural renaissance. It is this culture of subjugation that has shaped men’s psyche, which has captivated and destroyed my freedom. It is this culture which does not let me be myself here. I can only hope my children would have better and safe streets to walk on even at 1 AM at night. But that too is a hope against hope.

This post appeared on 30 December 2012 in 'Ei Samay' ( The Times of India's Bengali newspaper circulated in Kolkata) as a translated version in Bangla. The Bangla version can be accessed here:

http://www.epaper.eisamay.com/Details.aspx?id=1773&boxid=23113921

Introspection...

Seldom can you call a work of non-fiction ‘unputdownable’. The later phrase is reserved for the Dan Browns and the Forsyths. Coming from a historian, a non-fiction, which Ramachandra Guha’s latest offering Patriots and Partisans (2012) is, the phrase ‘unputdownable’ might appear to be an exaggeration for many. But after reading 334 pages, without taking recourse to any in-between fiction to keep the monotony of a non-fictional work at bay, I would say that my using of that phrase ‘unputdownable’ is apt and justified. 

Ramachandra Guha needs no introduction. He can easily be called the country’s leading contemporary historian. Guha has taken historical scholarship to a new height. He is one of those few modern day writers who tickle my grey cells. Although I would not claim to have read every article that he has written so far, yet I would dare say I have read him quite extensively. This is not a book review, let me assure you. Interestingly, what made me optimistic about both Guha and his book was the thought that the liberal voice is still alive and quite hopefully healthy in this country, though not very high in terms of its numerical value, otherwise, I was under the impression that the moderate-liberal has faded into wilderness with the death of Nehru. 

As I devoured his book, introspection stopped the pace of my exercise. I was wondering where do I stand on the issue of 'caste' per se? The introspection was called for, as in one of his Chapters titled 'Hindutva Hate Mail', Guha wrote about the kind of hate mails that he regularly gets from the self-proclaimed champions of the Hindu religion. Guha writes, "Notably all my correspondents were all male, with the exception of one woman. Along with the gender bias is a caste bias. Srivastava, Sharma, Shukla, Rao, Iyer, Gupta-these kinds of surnames recur with regularity in my Inbox" (Guha 2012: 64). What Guha intended to convey is that the upper-caste typically wield the sword of their diatribe against Guha's contestation of Hindu fundamentalism. I pondered over it for long. I realized how four years of stay in JNU oriented my understanding of caste. When I did my Post Graduation from Kolkata, we hardly spared any thought as to which of our class-mates belonged to which caste. It was immaterial and it never mattered who got admitted through a so-called 'quota'. I myself did not know the caste distinctions among the Bengalis. My knowledge was restricted to the fact that the Chatterjees, Banerjees, Mukherjees were Brahmins and I was not a Brahmin, because I was told Ghoshs are 'Kayasth' (never even had any inclination to know what or who is a Kayastha.)

 It was after coming to JNU that I came to know about the many castes and sub-castes in North India. I employed a policy of giving only my name (sans the surname) to the unknown. But that led to queries after queries until finally you satisfied them with an answer which revealed your caste. I have been part of umpteen conversations where if a surname was unconventional, it instantaneously provoked discussions on the various possible options. Here, if one says one has a boy friend, the next reaction is not necessarily "what does your boy friend do?" but quite starkly is - "ek hi caste ke ho na?" What bemused me is the near encyclopaedic knowledge of an average North Indian in JNU on which surname belongs to which caste ! I fail to fathom, how many years have they been tutored to achieve such remarkable proficiency in their caste-analysis exercise ! At the cost of sounding biased, I would dare say that in North India this phenomenon is deeply ingrained. Casteism runs deep here. It would take another 50 years if not 100 for such feudal mindsets to purge itself of its feudal overtones. I feel good each time I think that I was born in a much liberal environment, where I was not taught to differentiate between castes, I feel good that it was not imperative for me to know which caste did a Mitra, Bose, Sen or Sarkar belonged to. However, it is an irony that now I know which surname falls in the 'reserved category'.

Discrimination and differentiation does not bring a befuddled expression in me now. I have become ambivalent to the 'caste paradigm'. But what makes me happy is the very thought that I would not pass this pool of knowledge which restricts the identity of an individual to his caste, to my kids.