Aug 24, 2024 10:28 PM IST
Kolkata’s collective response, demanding justice and systemic reforms, signals a turning point in the fight against gender-based violence and corruption.
The mind has gone numb. Anguish, unproductive rage and helplessness born of it have seared any semblance of sanity which one may hold on to. The city is caught in a frenzy of despair and distrust leading to an outburst of anger while I, an individual, am still struggling for a means to process the entire situation. In a society which still desires a male child at any cost, rape is nothing new. If we look at history, the powerful silencing any threat against itself by prescribing death is also nothing new. What has happened at RG Kar is part of the system that nurtures such violence, misogyny and corruption at multiple levels. We all, willingly or not, are a part of that system, threatened or bribed to silence. The death of the intern has perhaps proved how golden that silence is!
The incident at R G Kar Hospital has raised several questions. It speaks about the safety of women in the workplace. It also speaks about the safety of doctors in their hospitals as well as the safety of a student in the institution, reminding us also of the death by ragging that happened in Jadavpur University hostel just a year back. But most importantly, it reveals the rot in the system that is almost falling apart. It reminds us of the rampant corruption that is termite-like eating away the fabric of our social systems—primarily health and education. Ironically, here both these institutions merge—R G Kar being both a college and a hospital. However, despite everything, the way the crime has been committed, the case has been handled, and the initial responses of the administration—all these remind us strongly how gender equality is still a thing on paper.
Also Read | CBI starts polygraph test of 7 persons in RG Kar rape-murder case
The rape and murder of the young intern in her own medical college has left all of us aghast at the brutality and heinousness of the crime. That she was on duty at her own institution—at a place where one is supposedly safe, is what makes the crime even more noxious. Rape is never just a sexual assault, it has been the tool of the patriarchy to ‘teach’ a lesson to the enemy. Rape is the ultimate tool which not only physically tortures the victim, but also violates the dignity of the human body. And it is the woman, again and again, who has to go through this double travesty. The inconsiderate and irresponsible comment in the immediate aftermath of the crime, by the then principal of RG Kar, conveniently shifted the blame on the victim. By questioning why she was alone at night in the seminar hall, he not only justified the crime but also established a predatory relationship between the male and female genders. Such a question also denies freedom to women, and interferes with her right to work.
Rape is a violation of the body, a travesty of the self and so is murder. Yet, here things did not stop there. After such travesties the deceased has been further subjected to posthumous humiliations by labelling the killing as suicide, by denying the parents the sensitive treatment that is expected of any civil society, and by sharing photographs of the victim’s body in its maligned state of being. How far have we sunk as a civil society to have forgotten to protect the dignity of the victim! The humiliation continues each time the victim’s identity is shared publicly, in spite of there being directives against such acts. When I sit back to think of this particular case, I am horrified by the multiple levels of breaches involved. I try to gather my thoughts as they threaten to get scattered each time. I fail miserably and yet I try. Can there be any coherence in an incident that defies all human sensibilities!
Also Read | Why Kolkata doctor rape-murder case accused Sanjoy Roy broke down in court
Yet one thing that came out of this murky episode is a collective outrage. The city is in the throes of protest marches, solidarity marches, rallies and demonstrations. All this is nothing new for anyone who has lived in Kolkata for any considerable number of years. Yet there is a substantial difference in the movement this time. The difference is in the way common people, particularly women, have stepped out of their homes. The call to claim the night of August 14, 2024, created history. It is too early to say how history will remember the night but it will definitely go down as a night to remember. Women not even remotely connected with any form of activism joined these marches. The gatherings were not restricted to the city but had spread to other districts as well.
The call to claim the night resonated deeply with a large section of women tired of their everyday struggle that they had to undergo simply because of their gender. Somewhere in this call the collective consciousness as women had merged with the individual identity of a woman. It was perhaps not just solidarity alone, but also a desire to act. It’s not always that one sees such a huge response. Critics taunted it as the great Bengali ‘hujoog’, many said that such amateurish protests would remove the focus from the actual incident, and so on. I would not like to dismiss this spontaneous outburst so lightly. Even if for a single day something could shake the comfortable slumber of our undulating existences, anaesthetized by the rigours of a corporatised urbanity, that definitely proved that we were still alive. In the bleakness that grips the city which has not dissipated even with the Supreme Court plunging into action, such outrage among the population sparks hope.
One might claim that the powerful has always used death as a weapon to silence any voice against it. People have agitated for a while and then gone back to their comfort zones. What is it that has made this particular incident so different that the mass is out on streets? People of this city and perhaps the entire state seem to have reached their threshold of tolerance. Losing their faith in the State to be able to deliver justice, there is an urgency that has gripped everyone. The RG Kar incident has triggered a dissension that had been brewing for quite some time now. The apolitical call got the common people out of their house – irrespective of their gender. It also shows the way our political parties are losing their credibility among people. The apolitical call might not remain so for long, I won’t be surprised if it gets hijacked by any political party soon, yet the fact would remain that it was the apolitical call that had brought the people out on streets.
The poster that began it all had no face, no name, no symbol of identity. It was just a poster to call the women out in the public place at a time when they are expected to remain indoors. I doubt whether any call by any political party would have received such a response. Isn’t this an indication of the way general people feel about those in power, those who have a claim to be in power? It calls democracy based on the political parties in question. The vacuum that we are now facing country wide – lack of proper political leadership, a situation that has led to creation of singular faces of reckoning, has been exposed in this single incident of people stepping out to protest against an incident. Mass uprisings will always be chaotic. In case of a mass clamour for justice, there might be a few ‘unjustified’ claims. Yet, such uprisings are significant. They have the power to set the rusted wheels of power in action. In this case, it has made the Supreme Court take suo motu cognizance of the case and immediately act on it. That too is not at all any mean accomplishment.
Dr Nabanita Sengupta is an assistant professor of English at Sarsuna College, Kolkata.
Story Saved
