Of whatabouteries and a culture of misogyny
The first casualty of being a party ideologue is that one has to hypothecate one’s moral judgement to the official party ‘stand’ even when a perceived wrong has taken place. The RG Kar episode has clearly demonstrated that for a political person, the stance has to align with the high command or the party consensus. A partyman or a bhakt is almost always prejudiced by the party ‘stand’, and by whatabouteries, but when it comes to violence against women, almost all political parties are as defensive as any other.
As in West Bengal, adherents of the Trinamool Congress consider that any criticism of the law and order situation in West Bengal in light of the gruesome rape-and-murder of a resident doctor and the subsequent campaign expressing solidarity, which has assumed a pan-Indian dimension, is all part of a vilification campaign against West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and a propaganda blitzkrieg by the Bharatiya Janata Party. Incidentally, Mamata Banerjee, in reaction to a 2012 gang rape case in a moving car that took place in Kolkata’s Park Street area, called it a ‘shajano ghatana’ (fabricated incident) meant to embarrass the government.
What is significant is that many of the so-called intellectuals loyal to the West Bengal CM are reticent when it comes to expressing outrage and condemnation, lest it should cause the Opposition to score brownie points. A cunning calculation might be at work: anything that reflects Mamata Banerjee in poor light and can have electoral repercussions against her would be akin to pandering to the ‘non-secular’ Opposition out to wrest control, Bangladesh-style, of the state. This partisanship, and, should one add, this parsimonious hesitancy to lend a shoulder to the cause of seeking justice, is adding to the arrogance of the government and making a serious dent in the integrity of those who’re silent.
Mass psychology is a curious thing. What agitates the public mind and determines the scale of the agitation, its range and sweep, depend upon a host of complex factors. While media and propaganda have a role to play, popular perception is often shaped by the physiognomies that the politicians betray. The popular perception in West Bengal is that the state police is a partisan force (as elsewhere) that cannot be trusted to act neutrally. The impression that gained ground was somehow this: the state government was less contrite about the murder but more defensive about how its image was being tarnished within India and abroad. Its handling of the case gave the impression that it had things to hide and save skins, no matter if they turned out to be true or baseless.
Earlier too, the way the teacher-recruitment scam fanned out and tales of rampant corruption and money changing hands came to the fore, many of the scamsters were seen to be close to the TMC top brass. Even in the RG Kar episode, the prompt appointment of Sandip Ghosh as the principal of Calcutta National Medical College shortly after his resignation from RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, despite allegations of several wrongdoings, was read as evidence of his close connection with the TMC and, in turn, the TMC’s ‘tolerance’ of his misdeeds (a Special Investigation Team has been constituted by the state government to investigate “allegations of financial irregularities” at RG Kar Hospital). A brutal attack launched on ED officials and the media by alleged supporters of Trinamool leader Shahjahan Sheikh at Sandeshkhali and the eagerness with which the party tried to defend him — scores of allegations of land grabbing along with complaints of sexual assault notwithstanding — sparked off widespread condemnation against both the party and the administration.
The brilliant performance of the TMC in the last Lok Sabha elections in West Bengal, despite the monumental level of corruption, various scams, and financial irregularities—the Saradha deposit collection scam, the Narada sting videos, the school and municipal recruitment scams, the public distribution system (PDS) scam, to name just a few — has also pointed out a class divide where the electoral majority, beneficiaries of her various welfare schemes, including Lakshmir Bhandar, which provides financial assistance to women from economically weaker sections of society, continued to lend her support regardless of the many transgressions under her watch. The recent “Reclaim the Night” movement on the night of August 14 seeking justice for the murdered doctor had mostly been an urban affair, and it is yet to be determined whether female members of Mamata Banerjee’s core vote bank joined ranks with their urban counterparts.
That the BJP too has consistently turned a blind eye to atrocities against women is evident from its support of alleged sexual offenders such as Prajwal Revanna and Brij Bhushan and in glaring instances such as the gang rape of a minor girl in Unnao, Uttar Pradesh, in 2017; the repeated gang rape and murder of an eight-year-old Muslim girl in Kathua, Kashmir, in 2018; and the gang rape of a Dalit girl in Hathras, UP, in 2020. Its disdain for the safety of women is further evident from the release of the rapists of Bilkis Bano and Modi’s silence in the face of sexual assaults on women in Manipur. All of these smacked of covert institutional backing of the perpetrators, alongside compromised police investigations and criminal negligence.
Former National Commission for Women (NCW) chairperson Rekha Sharma accused Mamata Banerjee of attempting to protect those involved in the Kolkata rape-murder case. But when in March this year, a Spanish vlogger and her Brazilian partner took to Instagram to recount her nightmare of being gangraped by several men in Jharkhand during their bike trip across India, that sparked widespread outrage flooding X, formerly Twitter, and Instagram, she reacted sharply to angry posts from women narrating their harrowing experiences of travelling alone in the country. She accused one person of “defaming India.”
BJP leader Smriti Irani lambasted Mamata Banerjee over her comments that the BJP has been creating a controversy out of the Kolkata hospital rape-murder case. “Please stop this politics of ‘tera rape, mera rape’,” she said, pretending as if she were against whatabouteries, but it bears recall how in her previous avatar as the head of the Ministry for Women and Child Development, she often lashed out at victims who publicly spoke out against sexual violence and accused them of “defaming the government.” Both Sharma and Irani tried to downplay rapes and the culture of sexual violence in the country, especially those perpetrated by a BJP legislator or party worker.
If we examine the record of the other political parties in relation to their attitude to sexual crime, we might see that no party can claim the moral high ground when it comes to the eradication of an entrenched culture of impunity and misogyny that flows downward from the top. One hopes that women’s movement (Manipur has shown the way) — political parties target women as a separate vote bank — could countervail the State power as there is a real need to show organisational strength for making the State take a proactive role in favour of women.
(The writer is a Kolkata-based commentator on geopolitics, development, and culture)