काम कोह मद मान न मोहा। लोभ न छोभ न राग न द्रोहा॥
जिन्ह कें कपट दंभ नहिं माया। तिन्ह कें हृदय बसहु रघुराया॥1.2.130॥
“Those whose hearts do not suffer from lust, anger, pride, infatuation, embitterment, attachment or malice; those who are not deceitful nor take refuge in illusion; it is in those hearts that the foremost of Raghuraya (Prabhu Sri Rama) shall dwell”
— Goswami Tulasidas, Ramcharitmanas, Ayodhya Kand, Verse 130
The heinous crime against women in Manipur shocked the entire nation. What has been happening after that is even more concerning. When the Manipur incident had taken everyone by storm, heart-wrenching videos emerged from West Bengal on similar lines. The Udupi incident, where a few girls indulged in shooting a video of other girls in the bathrooms of an educational institution and allegedly shared it with men, is the most disgusting. Every day new such incidents are coming to the fore, and we are witnessing a media discourse depending on which party is ruling the State where the crime has occurred and the caste, communal and gender identity of either victim or the perpetrator. This attitude of responding to a crime, especially involving inhuman acts of disrobing not just clothes but the dignity of women as part of revenge, prank or politics, should be the most alarming scenario for any civilised society. Such whataboutery is just exposing double standards and hypocrisy practised in our country, mainly by the people speaking about liberal democratic values and gender justice.
When the Manipur video went viral just a day before the beginning of the Parliament session, it was clear that the monsoon session would get washed away under the flood of accusations and counter-accusations. If the incident had occurred somewhere in the first week of June and police had looked the other way towards the same, it would have been a double crime. The criminality turns multifold when the video is brought to light to derail the Parliament session and run away from the discussion. Prime Minister made the statement even before the session started, and Home Minister was ready to initiate the debate in the house. Instead of allowing the nation to understand the entire dynamics of the Manipur issue, the opposition is running away from it by changing the goalpost on a daily basis. Is it because the discussion in its entirety would expose the historical blunders made by Congress? The opposition is hiding behind the Parliament procedures and, in the process, doing injustice to the women undergoing trauma but also avoiding the more extensive debate on national security, drugs, community claims, land rights, borders and more significant peace and stability dimensions in the North East. The first casualty of this hypocritic approach on every issue is democratic debate and dialogue.
The worst collateral damage of this process is how we undermine and neglect the pattern of crime against women in other parts of the country. When some people want a Kangaroo court kind of action against the Wrestling Federation President without proper investigation, in the cases about crime against women in West Bengal, police register the First Information Report (FIR) only after the court’s intervention, thanks to the Congress and Communist party’s policy to keep mum against the Mamata Government for the sake of opposition unity. There are self-declared fact-checkers who would give a clean cheat to perpetrators depending on their religious identities and instigate others to haunt the women activists raising the issue. Justice based on equality before the law and equal protection of the law is the biggest sufferer in this process.
The Uttar Pradesh video where a woman was seen begging to get back her clothes to the inhuman criminals was blacked out as the religious identity of the perpetrators does not suit the narrative of self-proclaimed liberals. In Rajasthan, Chief Minister sacked a Minister for making a statement about growing crimes against women in the State. The National Crime Records Control Bureau (NCRB) data and news reports support the assertion made by the Minister. Still, Congress leaders, who tried to make a political pitch on the Hathras case, did not find intervening necessary. Nationwide, love jihad cases are reported, where Muslim youths fake their identities and convert girls from other religions. Talking about them has become enmity towards inter-faith marriages.
On the other hand, Muslim girls are forced to be in Hijab. If they decide to get along with a boy from another community, fundamentalist Muslim groups physically attack them. Self-certified liberal media, intellectuals and moderate intellectuals turn a blind eye towards the same. In the name of fraudulent liberalism and secularism, we are trivialising women’s issues, their sentiments and concerns. Yes, fake liberals and seculars are getting exposed for their ideological position, but we face a more profound societal crisis.
Such hypocrisy and double standards pose a more significant challenge to Bharat as an ancient civilisation. Swami Vivekananda said in his famous writing The Master – As I Saw: “Shri Ramakrishna meant by worshipping woman, that to him every woman’s face was that of the Blissful Mother, and nothing but that”. He further asks, “Do you mean to say that the divinity back of a woman can ever be cheated? It never was and never will be. It always asserts itself. Unfailingly it detects fraud, it detects hypocrisy, unerringly, it feels the warmth of truth, the light of spirituality, the holiness of purity. Such purity is absolutely necessary if real spirituality is to be attained”. (C. W., IV: 176) As a society, we must ask whether we should allow this cheating to happen to our mothers and sisters with petty political considerations. Let us openly discuss and debate the crime against women issue without ifs and buts, revisit our fundamental ideas about the status of women in society, identify the reasons for degeneration and then decide the path for correction.
This August 5, we will be seeing a joyous celebration of the foundation laying ceremony at the Ramjanmabhoomi Temple site at Ayodhya. Dr Mohan Bhagwat, Sarsanghchalak of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), had reminded the words from Tulasi Ramayana on the occasion at Ayodhya on August 5, 2021. While the construction of the Ram Mandir would continue, we should also prepare ourselves individually and collectively to create the Ram Rajya, which was the essence of his speech. As we are completing two years, when the grand and glorious temple is taking a final shape, we as a society are still grappling with the danger of double standards. As we undertook a movement to reclaim Ayodhya for Ram-Lalla, we also need a movement to establish Ram-Rajya based on a virtuous society ,where crime against any woman would not happen, and if at all, someone dares to indulge in one, we would respond in one voice of national ethos and not based on political convenience.
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