Victim Shaming in the Independent India: Grammar of Secularism

When people start blaming a rape victim – it is bound to agitate the mind of victims beyond all controls. When you start finding faults in victims it can rightly drive them mad and crazy. Yes, you may not be in any position to extend the desired help to the victim but just a sympathetic acknowledgement is what is expected the least to pacify the victim. Sermons can only be felt like gun-shots. The victim would just wish to kill the person who would start pointing out faults in the victims. However all limits are crossed when the accused starts commanding respect instead of being blamed, and then any wild response of the victim can be easily justified. After all, when a healing touch is required to a live-wound how can you justify rubbing chilli and salt on the same?

But that is the story of modern independent India. A ‘more than secular’ majority was forced to listen to the sermons of ‘secularism’ before those who had a proven communal history behind them. While the majority could have been appreciated for its open-liberal and secular approach that they had kept since time immemorial they were being educated on ‘secularism’. Instead of acknowledging the dreaded plight and in-human treatment that the hapless majority had to live with during the forced-violent medieval era, they were preached for something that they never faulted for. When the majority should have had been asked to forget and forgive the past, motivated attempts were made to malign their own past instead. The situation and circumstances could have justified any wild response by the majority but it is their glorious and sensible past that made them wait for so many years patiently only to register their outbursts on the social media. Don’t brand them as ‘irrational’ trolls who have suffered inconsolably not only at the ‘communal’ hands of history but also continued in another manner by the ‘secular’ hands of modern India.

Padmawati - real or fictitious - represents victims of her own era....

Disappointment at the Counting Centre of Academic Council elections of DU

I sat through the AC counting this time. I had memories of this complex counting process when I had contested for AC elections in 1996 and 1998. This extremely mathematical and highly scientific process takes around three complete days and the University hosts this important event by offering breakfasts, lunches and regular snack breaks to the staff, the candidates and their selected supporters. The entire event is managed like a festival and candidates and their supporters go through several emotional and sentimental highs and lows during this three-day counting process. It resembles like a three-day cricket test. The counting officers close the process in the evening daily irrespective of the heightened interest that eventually gets built up during the entire day of counting. Candidates lose their sleep in between the days and come early at the counting centre to discover the destiny locked in the ballots. Counting of preferential voting has the potential to throw surprises just like one expects it in the slog-overs of a cricket match. Distribution of surplus votes combined with the process of elimination has scripted many excited stories over the years and that keeps the excitement alive within each one of those who attend this event. On the other hand, the process is too tiring. It emotionally exhausts some of those candidates who unfortunately fail to make it in the end.

However, I was completely disappointed to witness that in this age of computers, this painstaking counting process is being followed in exactly the same way as it was done in 1996 and even before that. University seems to have refused to modernize the event in order to simplify this cumbersome and extremely tiring process. One may think of making an attempt to replace the ballot-box voting system by customized EVM machines especially designed to serve our purpose. Understandably, this switch over would require a sustained effort with a clear vision by those who matter as this would require the University to engage a hardware developing company. However, even pending this, I see absolutely no reason for not using a computer at least for the purpose of calculations. One can easily use Microsoft Excel Sheets to eliminate the time that is unnecessarily spent in calculating votes of each candidate after each round of passing on the ballots from the tray of one candidate to another. Additionally, this would also ensure that there would be no errors in the calculations. When one can do these calculations with a click of the mouse it was disappointing to see the counting officers working almost manually. An Excel Sheet showing a row for each of the candidates would require only an entry to be done for the number of ballots that one received in a particular round and the value of those votes along with the updated votes of the candidate would show itself almost instantaneously in another column. A large screen display inside and outside the counting center can be provided to make the process as transparent and as efficient as possible. Candidates will then not be required to note down the entries of each round as these data can be uploaded on the university website in the end so that everyone would be able to inspect and verify these.

The manner, in which the counting is executed, unfortunately provides ample scope for mistakes and lapses. To plug these, one must switch to automated processes. Voting through OMR sheets could be one such option that should be explored as this can ensure zero mistakes in reading the preferences. At present this is done completely manually and I am sure that such a process has a ‘real’ chance of throwing up different counts if it is repeated to verify the entries. This would also be much easier and less costlier than thinking of developing customized EVM machines.

It only underlines the inertia with which this University refuses to modernize itself and this particular case works only as a sample. I can list out several such instances where use of computers and LAN-WAN networks, that are already otherwise available with the university, can simplify processes that are still being done manually. Nobody can deny that such a switch over from manual to automated processes will not only increase the efficiency but will also encourage the all important transparency in the system that is often seen missing in the college and university administration. For example, I fail to understand why a uniform accounting software is not being implemented in the colleges by the university as this will make auditing of accounts very easy and will eventually help in implementing policies uniformly in the entire university.

Demonizing Patriarchy: Enforcing PINK safety manual

‘Liberals’ of our country have apparently chosen the concept of ‘patriarchy’ to satiate the escapist mindset existing in our society. They use the idea of ‘patriarchy’ to blame it for being the reason of all evils in the society. I just wonder, such a faulty vision only provides them some superficial satisfaction with little intention to outline a roadmap to carry out reforms. This concept has originated outside India primarily to attack the ‘family structure’ as the concept of ‘patriarchy’ believes that ‘family’ is basically a unit created to execute ‘exploitation’. Family for them is a place created by the patriarch society to exploit women, child and weaker components of the unit. As a matter of fact, in Indian context, ‘family’ is an idea that has worked to save and protect the interest of the disadvantaged components of the unit. This one-sided abuse of the concept of ‘family’ gets reflected in the approach wherein instead of carrying out an evaluation and assessment of the system that we are in, instead of talking ‘also’ about the advantages of the system that exists at present, the focus has always been on painting ‘family’ as the main culprit of the system. In this background therefore, ‘patriarchy’ is the characteristic of a society that can be entirely understood only when you are viewing the society with a negative mindset. Unfortunately, those who refuse to notice any of the positives of a ‘family based society structure’ feel inherently resonated with the expressions of anti-patriarchy expletives and with no better alternative to offer, they prefer to break this structure in a blind hope that the new structure cannot be as bad as it exists at present. In the context of our society however, those who are exaggeratedly frustrated with ‘whatever order' that exists in our society and those who feel that they are not allowed to live their adventurous fantasies on the demand of respecting that 'order', feel compelled to misuse the term ‘patriarchy’ and then to take advantage of the chaos created out of that.

The idea of ‘patriarchy’ has been identified with a misplaced believe that men and women can form parallel structures in a society and that it is only the bad effects of ‘Patriarchy’ that has dwarfed the extent and broadness of the area associated with women when it is compared with that of the men. Whereas the fact is, that instead of being parallel they constitute different parts of a circular construct. No one can be a substitute for the other and both have many different aspects of social and family issues to deal with. In their skewed narration, ‘patriarchy’ assumes that both the parts are exactly identical and quite illogically are blinded to the realty that they are indeed ‘different’. The fact that they have different collective aspirations, that they both prefer different ways for enjoyment, that they have different fantasies to deal with and that they both have different demands to meet – is completely ignored and hushed up in this new approach of demonizing ‘patriarchy’.

Among many of their ill-conceived constructs, the one that I would take up here is their complete rejection for a safety manual for women in the name that men do not have such a manual. This issue has caught our attention like never before after Amitabh drew our attention on the issue very effectively during the narration he presented in the film PINK. Please think again, before accepting this assertion blindly. Men are also expected to follow a safety manual but that is, of course, different from that of the women. Children again, have their own safety manual. And even among them, Girls have a manual different from that of the boys. Old men and women have another set of safety manuals. So, what exactly is the problem? And therefore, instead of derailing this discussion and jumping on the issue of why do these manuals exist at all, let us discuss the ‘real issue’ of why do we have different manuals for each of these categories - as it is often objected to by the ‘liberals’ when they are in some senses relatively. Yes, why are these manuals different? Let me ask now, are the threat concerns same for these categories? Do all these categories have identical aspects and similar dimensions of threats? Would you feel equally enraged, equally devastated and equally shattered when the threats, unfortunately, happen to come true in the two cases? You cannot have the same safety manuals of a bank account that has a facility of an online transaction with those that are not registered for such a facility. When the threat concerns are different, it is only logical to have different set of safety manuals. `Realistically speaking, the day when we all would feel equally shattered in the two cases, even the safety manuals would merge into one. But till then, they will and they should remain different.

In the right urge of making the society accept an aberration, you cannot justify making that as a rule. In order to make the society accept acts of consensual sex among friends, any effort to encourage the same must also be opposed. In order to make the society accept adultery (of both the variations) as an inescapable reality, you cannot glorify such an act to be encouraged and emulated by all. And in order to make the society realize the unnecessary demand of retaining ‘virginity’ one cannot justify glorifying ‘loss of virginity’ and encourage people to lose it on the day they acquire adulthood. One must realize the positives of our family based society structure and then ask for a genuine liberty and scope of freedom without giving an impression that a section needs a freedom only to match the other section. In fact, we have already erred in doing so. People of both the genders of my generation (those who are parents of grown-up individuals) would agree that ‘boys’ in our days were subjected to a lot more restrictions as compared to what we now pose on them. Many of the arguments that have led to such a situation originate from the approach that when girls of today’s age were being allowed to have more freedom ‘boys’ started demanding even more by putting across the justification that now ‘even’ girls are doing this much and so they are ‘entitled’ to get more. That was the aspect that the society ignored completely while providing the space of freedom rightly to the girls. That the society, inadvertently allowed a relaxation in the safety manuals for men in the name of putting off some of the obsolete restrictions on women – is where we have collectively erred. We must rein the boys back to the stage of our generation to keep the advantages of our family based system intact and correct the obsolete approach of putting unnecessary restrictions on women so that our society remains as healthy as earlier. 

A visit to Khajuraho Temple Complex

My recent visit to the Khajuraho temple complex left me completely perplexed. At the first sight itself, it is impossible not to get completely stumped at the architecture of the temple complex and the beauty of the sculptures built on those temples. Temples and the carvings on them are so artistic that each corner of the complex will just leave you awestruck. And these artistic marvels just induce a sense to do something to preserve these divine works. But what bothered me was that face of not even a single sculpture could be found complete. They all, without exception, show clear evidences to have been faced hammer of destruction on their faces. None of the faces carved in the stone has been left with complete features. I have absolutely no doubt therefore, that the left-liberal historians have been working on a mission just to establish an impossible proposition as truth. They have taken up a herculean task to de-demonize the Mughal period cruelties that were carried out in the name of religion. And even if I leave aside the issue of destruction of these artistically precious structures, it is also difficult to imagine the kind of culture that could have accepted such temples in those times.

Our historians have shoved down so much hatred for our past into our mind that they have almost convinced us that we never had a past to be proud of. Just imagine, even the ‘modern’ British who discovered these temples had a horrifying time conjecturing for a possible justification of such sculptures that are openly and artistically carved on the walls of temples. The more I tried to analyze the more I am convinced that we are completely disconnected with the society that prevailed those days. Do we exactly belong to that society? Isn’t there a clear discontinuity in our evolution process? Have the invaders eliminated an entire generation, an entire culture and a developed society. Are we only the ‘left-overs’ whom they did not found worth-eliminating. It is difficult to reject that the invasion eliminated a society that was so open, so peace-loving, so divine and so religious that they failed to devise ways to face the Mughal Rakshasas.

Only a developed society can have flourishing arts and culture. Only a peace loving community that was never prepared for such a catastrophe could be so rich in arts and culture. Imagine the society which had accomplished artists in abandon. I am afraid, the manner in which our history books have presented our past, they leave us with more questions than the answers in the end. And that gives others a scope to provide us another equally (un)convincing theories and conjectures. Genuine and open minded research has not been done in ‘History’ till now. It is high time that our history books are written in a manner so that we can get answers to our genuine queries instead of misusing ‘history’ with a purpose to control our future.