Representative image.
Credit: Reuters Photo
The picture of a 12-year-old girl, raped and left bleeding, her clothes torn, knocking on one unresponsive door after another in Ujjain, with no help coming from anyone, is an indictment of our society. The image of the girl, caught on camera, desperately seeking help from people but being turned away, shouted at, glared or impassively looked at, went viral last week, and shocked the nation. She wandered for two-and-a-half hours and for eight km and collapsed unconscious on the road, when a priest took pity on her, called the police, and sent her to hospital. She had suffered serious injuries but is recovering at a hospital in Indore. The incident marks our collective failure to protect the vulnerable and to make our roads safe for women and children. Investigations are on, an auto-driver has been accused of raping the girl and has been arrested.
The people who saw her trudging along and did not care to ask her what happened to her and to extend any help to her are also guilty. No beat constable came to her help, either because patrolling was not there, or the patrolling policemen also did not care. It is callousness and lack of empathy that made people turn away from the child. It is a terrible thought that even a child in such distress did not evoke any response from people. There were shocked reactions from all over the country at the sight of the video. But can it be said with certainty that the same callousness would not be there in other places? Ujjain is not particularly known for callousness and lack of compassion. Ujjain is everywhere, it is a state of mind. All those of us who are shocked at the video should also ask ourselves the question we are asking the people of Ujjain. Would we have gone to her help? The lone priest is a flicker of hope. He saves us from total damnation, but is only one against an unfeeling crowd. Goodness is rare.
But one did not need to be saintly good to go out and ask the child what happened to her. One needed only to be ordinarily human to do so. It may have been the lack of empathy, of humanity, of civic responsibility, or fear of getting involved in police cases and procedures that withheld people from responding to the girl’s calls for help. We may have become too self-centred and individualistic to relate to others’ distress. That is why the lonely girl on the unkind street in Ujjain holds a mirror to our society, poses a question to our times and walks in our night.