How the demand for summary justice for rapists will backfire on India's poorest citizens

This comment piece by me appeared in The Telegraph, London on December 12, 2019

Link: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/12/09/demand-summary-justice-rapists-will-backfire-indias-poorest/

The gruesome rape and murder of a 26-year-old woman, within the city limits of Hyderabad on November 27, has set off a furious debate in India on crimes against women. 

There are growing demands for summary justice, including public lynching of rapists, even though the death penalty was included in the rape law in 2012. Have people lost faith in the law and in the criminal justice system? Or does this represent growing lawlessness and demands for retribution and revenge that have come to dominate public discourse in India?

In 2012, when a 23-year-old woman was brutally raped by six men in New Delhi, there was nationwide outrage and demands for a change in the law. 

The law was changed in 2013. The death penalty was introduced. Policemen refusing to note rape complaints were to be held criminally liable. A special fund was created to set up one-stop crisis centres across India. And state governments were directed to fast-track rape trials so that they were not indefinitely delayed, as they tend to be.

Six years later, crime statistics show that the incidents of rape have not decreased. The conviction rate is an abysmal 27 per cent even of the cases reported. Police continue to ignore complaints by poor and marginalised women despite the law. And only 20 per cent of the funds for the one-stop crisis centres have been used. Also, many states have failed to set up fast-track courts for rape. 

Clearly, a stronger law alone makes little difference when the criminal justice system continues to fail women, from the first step of registering a complaint to the trial that stretches for years. Many women simply give up. Many more, stay quiet. 

This apart, what is more worrying for the future of women in India, and for India itself, is what followed the Hyderabad rape. 

Within days, the police had rounded up four suspects and claimed they had confessed. Their names were made public. One happened to be a Muslim. This led to demands for summary justice on social media, dominated as it is by Islamophobia. 

Then a woman member of parliament demanded that rapists should be lynched in public. Another suggested chemical castration.  Instead of disgust, such demands were applauded. 

The calls for lawlessness by our lawmakers were heeded, it would appear, by our law enforcers. In the early hours of December 6, the four suspects, who incidentally could find no one to represent them in court, were taken out to the scene of the crime and shot dead. 

The police claim the men tried to escape and snatched their weapons. They had to fire in retaliation, they say. Yet there is no evidence yet of anyone from the police contingent being injured. The four suspects are dead. And the case is closed. 

As worrying as is this extra-judicial killing, of men against whom even a charge sheet had not been prepared, has been the response of the public and politicians. Almost across the board, there has been praise of the actions of the Hyderabad police. People showered flowers on the policemen. And there are demands for similar action, known locally as ‘encounters’ against other rapists. 

In fact within days of the Hyderabad incident, a young woman was set on fire by men she had accused of rape in a village in the northern statue of Uttar Pradesh. She died a few days later. Now her parents are demanding that the accused be ‘encountered’. 

It is this deadly mix of demands for public lynchings, and for the police to simply eliminate suspects of crime, that should worry us. India still calls itself a constitutional democracy. But when law-makers endorse lawlessness and law enforcers implement this, you are looking at the beginning of a serious breakdown in civilisational norms. 

Since 2015, we have witnessed public lynchings of poor Muslim men, in the name of protecting the cow, held sacred by Hindus. The ruling  Bharatiya Janata Party has deliberately turned a blind eye to this. 

Today, in the name of protecting Indian women, summary justice is being demanded. The men who will receive this will only be the poor, the marginalised, those unable to mount a defence. While the rich, the powerful, including so-called godmen, remain untouched. 

Indian women will only feel safe if we fix the criminal justice system, deal with the rape culture being reinforced by mass media and end embedded patriarchy that still views women as property. 

Why does India’s media cover some rapes extensively and ignore others?

 This is a new fortnightly column that will now appear on the website newslaundry.com.


BROKEN NEWS

 

Published December 4, 2019

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2019/12/04/indian-media-rape-coverage-journalism

Does the media contribute directly, or indirectly, to distorting our
understanding of the reasons for the increasing violence against women?

I ask this question against the background of the horrific rape and
murder of a 26-year-old veterinarian in Hyderabad on the evening of
November 27. Her charred remains were found the next day after her
parents managed, after several failed attempts, to get the police to file a
missing person report.

All media ran with the story – print, TV, digital. It had all the elements
of horror. It happened not in a desolate, distant area but near a toll
booth in a metropolitan city. And it reminded us of the everydayness of
violence: a working woman, waiting to go home, could be abducted,
raped and murdered within shouting distance of a toll booth.

There was outrage, as expected. Demonstrations, young women holding
placards that asked “Am I next?” These were mostly in Hyderabad, with
a few protests in other cities.

The public demonstration of anger and the media coverage was enough
to push the state government to act. Within days, the police
apprehended four young men who apparently confessed to the crime.
The government promised to “fast-track” the case. And the policemen
who had delayed noting the complaint by her parents were suspended.

At the same time, there was a show of competitive concern, especially
amongst politicians. As “Hang the Rapists” was a slogan that was past its
expiry date, as the death penalty for rape was already in the statute after
the 2012 gang rape of a 23-year-old woman in Delhi, what else could
they demand to be noticed above the anger on the street?

Samajwadi Party MP Jaya Bachchan won that competition hands down
when she declared in Parliament (the place where laws are made) that
rapists should be lynched in public. In other words, the public should
take the law into its own hands. This in a country where public lynchings
of defenceless Muslim men have been conducted in the name of
protecting cows, with the full knowledge that there will be little or no
punishment for the crime.

Given the recent history of lynchings in India, Bachchan’s remarks are
even more ominous. In the Hyderabad case, the names of the four
accused were leaked even before the police held a press conference. One
of the accused is Muslim. That was enough for the Hindutva army on
social media, as AltNews reported, to dive straight into a communal war
of their own creation, painting dire scenarios of what could happen in
the future. As the article rightly points out, “A disturbing phenomenon is
observed in recent times where crimes as heinous as rape are
communalised. The trend is not only true in the case of social media but
for also prominent individuals in the government and media outlets
capable of shaping public opinion. Since the brutal incident was
reported, the police had identified all the four accused. But a social
media campaign attempted to paint a communal picture. Irresponsible
media reports, with clickbaity headlines, furthered the misleading
narrative instead of dousing the hate.”

The question for the media, given the growing atmosphere of hate,
compounded now by politicians suggesting rapists should be lynched, is
whether the photographs of the accused should be printed.

These are men against whom the police claim they have a case. But a
chargesheet has not been filed. Do they not have the right to a fair trial?
How many men have been accused and imprisoned for years on terror
charges, for instance, before being acquitted by the courts? Given our
dysfunctional criminal justice system, is it not incumbent on the media
to err on the side of caution, rather than encourage, and even join, the
lynch mobs? Is it not the duty of the media to aid justice rather than
perpetuate injustice? These are questions we must ask.

There are other questions. The name and identity of the woman were
used in practically all media in the immediate aftermath of the crime.
This happened despite a 2018 Supreme Court ruling, in the context of
the rape and murder of an 8-year-old girl in Kathua, Jammu, that the
media cannot name a rape victim even if she dies. Yet, the same mistake
was repeated. By the time some media houses realised their mistake, her
name and photograph were all over social media and even today come
up when you do an internet search.

Linked to this is the norm that any respectable media house ought to
follow: that even reporting on the locality where the victim lives, or
giving away the identity of her parents and family, is equivalent to
revealing her identity. Yet, this too continues to be violated. Not
surprisingly, the residents of the colony in Hyderabad where the
woman’s parents live locked the gates and put up a notice that read, “No
Media, No Police, No Outsiders - No sympathy, only action, justice”.

Finally, there is the question of the selective amplification of crimes
against women. How does the media choose which ones to report on
extensively? Convenience, proximity, scale of the crime are some criteria.
But also class, caste, locale – biases that are so routine they go
unnoticed.

A few days before the rape in Hyderabad, a Dalit woman who sold
utensils and balloons was raped and murdered in a village in Telangana,
129 km from Adilabad. The Deccan Chronicle carried a story about her
husband complaining that the state government did not respond,
perhaps because they were poor and Dalit, nor did the civil society. Nor
did the media, I might add.

The lack of interest in the media about crimes away from regular beats
and metropolitan areas has a direct impact on our understanding of the
extent of violence against women, especially poor and marginalised
women, and the reasons for it. In fact, in the week before and after the
Hyderabad rape, several such horrific incidents were reported from
different parts of the country. But only one was pursued by the media.

Such selective reporting reinforces the belief that public spaces are
unsafe for women. Instead of our society questioning why any woman
should be afraid to step out, women are asked to take precautions.

In fact, within days of the Hyderabad rape, the city’s police
commissioner came out with 14 recommendations on what women
should do to be safe. Many women were outraged by his advisory.

One of them wrote on Twitter, "We are raped by men so for heaven’s
sake issue a damn advisory for men to NOT RAPE us. Why the hell are
we paying the penalty for men who are monsters? This is the problem,
tell your men to NOT RAPE WOMEN! Keep your
damn safety advisory to yourself.”

The other side of selective focus on some crimes against women is that
people forget that over 90 per cent of sexual assaults on women take
place in their homes, in their neighbourhoods, by men known to them.
By constantly reporting only on crimes in public spaces, this reality gets
obscured.

Although one could argue that the media cannot report every crime
committed against every woman, it is evident that reporting crimes
against women is a selling proposition. The media thrives on crime,
controversy and crises. The media can generate the latter two when they
are in short supply. But as there is no shortage of crime, the media sets out
to pick and choose the crime stories that sell.

In doing so, despite the debates, the judicial rulings, the protests from
the afflicted, the media continues to fail women victims of crime and to
create false narratives on an issue like violence against women.

We cannot give up

I don't know about you, but I have not been able to watch that video of Tabriz Ansari of Jharkhand being beaten to death. 

I will not even give the link to it even as I write this. Because it marks the culmination of a month where the expected happened, the BJP won a thumping majority in Parliament, and the dreaded playing out of the consequences of this victory also happened.  (But it is worth reading Apoorvanand on this.)

Members of Parliament from the ruling party mocked members of the opposition, including Muslims, with chants of "Vande Mataram" and "Jai Sri Ram" as they took their oath, unprecedented in the 57 years that the Indian Parliament has met. (Read Jyoti Punwani's excellent piece on this.)  And echoes of those chants reverberated in different parts of India as individuals like Tabriz Ansari were targeted and ordered to chant "Jai Sri Ram".

The depravity and brutality of the mob that led to the death of Ansari is not an aberration. We, as Indians, are a violent people.  Given a chance, we will lash out, hit, attack, lynch and butcher those perceived as our enemies.  Compassion is not a highly regarded virtue in our society. Gandhi knew this even as he appealed for non-violence. Today's leaders know this too.  But the idea of non-violence and peaceful resistance is not part of their vocabulary. They support vindictiveness through their words and by way of their silences.

Surrounded as we are today with the war cry of "Jai Sri Ram" and the silences that denote acquiescence at one level and defeat at another, what is the future?

At a meeting in Mumbai organised by Indian Express as part of its Explained series, political scientist and commentator Suhas Palshikar predicted the future in a few quiet words. 

As he explained the concept of majoritarianism in the Indian context, where a majority community will always be dominant, and analysed the fallout of the BJP's election victory in the 2019 general elections, he said that in future, pogroms of the kind seen earlier would not be needed because the message that Muslims can live happily in this country if they live like Hindus, has already been conveyed. 

This is being conveyed each time a Muslim man is lynched. He does not have to be a cattle trader, or be accused of eating beef. He is a target because he is a Muslim, a hapless representative of a minority that has to be shown its place.

And now, inspired by our members of Parliament, we have a new test of loyalty to "the nation", the slogan "Jai Sri Ram". Another stick with which to bludgeon non-Hindus into conformity. Another vehicle to instill fear and squash any notion of rebellion.

Not to forget that this government has already issued orders that Foreigners' Tribunals, of the kind functioning in Assam that are already seen as hallmarks of arbitrariness and injustice, can be set up in any state. Combine this with the Citizenship Amendment Bill that the government is determined to push through, which effectively determines citizenship on the basis of religion and runs counter to the founding principles of independent India, and you have the makings of an upheaval reminiscent of the Partition, as Harsh Mander writes in Indian Express.

I write this on June 25, 2019, marking 44 years since the midnight hour when Indira Gandhi declared a State of Emergency and locked up the entire opposition. Press censorship was imposed, fundamental rights were suspended and a shroud of fear descended on the country.

Yet, that dark and what appeared endless night, did end.  The blanket of fear was thrown off.  The Indian electorate did vote out a person and a party considered irreplaceable because there was no alternative.

We have no option but to cling to the hope that things can change, that the trajectory of events today is not irreversible, to not give up.

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