Why the boyfriend of gang raped Delhi Brave Heart is forgotten?

By Philip Mudartha, Doha-Qatar
Bellevision Media Network

06 January 2013: “2012 has left me bruised both on personal and collective level. I think there is a consensus that the event that affected us most was the brutal gang rape in the capital. As I pen this column the protests are still in progress and while solutions are being propounded, lasting resolution is still very distant”.Dr. Ashok Jahnavi Prasad, a noted psychologist and a barrister says in his article titled “Media Debates &The Delhi Rape”.

 

 

For a fortnight, like him, I am bruised and disturbed for a lot more reasons than his reasons. Like him, I too have followed the episode very carefully both in the print as well as broadcast media. Politicians, especially women among them, have made emotional speeches. They have issued statements in strict adherence to their party lines, calling for amendment of laws and enactment of new anti-rape law to impose harsh punishment that would deter any potential rapists in the future. Either death sentence or chemical castration is the favorite with the political class.

In a rare case of concurrence, the incensed, emotional and often violent mobs of protesters particularly in the capital agree with them. They further demand that the rapists be hanged in public immediately without judicial process and any delay.

Celebrities in cinema, theatre, art, academics and media are busy tweeting.

They are mourning on social networks and publicizing that will not party during the New Year. Great sacrifice and atonement,according to some of the movie and advertisement stars, because they have contributed in portraying women as sex toys and commodities. The call to boycott Honey Singh, an unheard of erotic singer, as a scapegoat, has only led to greater sales for his work.

What happened on that fateful night of December sixteenth?

A young couple went to watch a late evening show of “Life of Pi’ in a posh mall located in Saket, a South Delhi locality inhabited by rich Indians. Their identities are not disclosed, but media has reported that they were dating each other since two years and were planning their wedding. Going out on a weekend holiday, watching a movie, eating ice cream and riding home together to drop the girlfriend home is what dating and having fun means to urban educated lower middle class Indians.

A pack of friends, all school drop-outs and belonging to the subaltern urban class of underemployed or unemployed poor, met in the one-room tenement of 33-yr old Ram Singh shared with his unemployed brother, aged 30. The six of them, cooked chicken, ate it and drank cheap alcohol. Then, they went on a joy-ride in the deluxe bus which he drove during weekdays. It was their idea of fun: drink and drive, chase, tail and overtake other vehicle drivers on the roads; honk, holler and make faces at those who do not move out to give them way, and make an extra buck by offering rides to people looking for a ride at a bargain deal.

It was destiny that the paths of these two set of people having weekend fun crossed.

 
For the young couple, educated and sensible, it did not matter if the deluxe bus was on legitimate public transportation service or not. That the bus had tinted glasses and curtains did not matter. Twenty kilometer ride for Rs10 was an irresistible deal.  It was likely they had run out of cash after the auto-ride from the mall to the fateful bus stop. All they wanted was to reach home as fast as possible; before it is too late for the girl’s parents to worry or court-martial her. Safety and rules be damned! Alas, little did they know what awaited them, until it was too late.

 
For the men, what did it mean? They will tell their stories. They will tell they had no intention or pre-plan to rob them; or way-lay them or pick-up a quarrel, physically assault them and do the things they did and which we know in detail.
Until the police beat them to pulp, extract confessions and own up that they raped, sodomized, brutalized, threw them out of running bus with intent to kill both and destroy all evidence. They will be made to declare that they were confident of not being caught at all!

After all, the managements and teachers of elite schools did not catch them!

Or at least they too, did not care! The violations of vehicle registrations did not bother the educated administrators and teachers at the schools where the rich send their children. It did not bother the parents as they saw their kids board a bus with visible violations. Surely, the schools had parent-teacher associations and retired army officers as security officers, with knowledge of what is right and wrong. But safety and security is not a priority. They are confident that the poor from the ‘servant class’ will not turn against them.

 
The poor are not entitled to break laws. Only they are. The poor cannot dare to be immoral. Alas, how wrong they are proved again and again. Two famous fictitious scenes play in my mind.

‘Page 3’ is a Hindi movie with a scene showing uniformed chauffeurs of super-rich elite and drivers of newly rich exchange notes on their employers: their corrupt business deals, sexuality and lifestyles. The middle and lower class viewers in any suburban movie house in Mumbai will laugh with derisive pleasure when Bosco explains “wife swapping” and how it works. But Bosco has got his servant class morals right: he will not covet. Yeh apne jaise logon-ko nahin re…

‘White Tiger’ is a novel by Aravind Adiga. Adiga went to a High School in Mangalore known to patronize ABVP and its views on Indian Culture. The novel tells the story of Balaram Halwai, a school drop-out from UP-Bihar,who becomes a domestic driver in Delhi for Ashok Sharma. Ashok has returned from US with a college degree and a Gori-memsahib, Pinky. As he drives them around, his mind fantasizes about what it would be like to ‘enjoy’ Pinky. Lucky  Ashok. If only he would be rich.

 
He learns quickly how people become rich as he drives Ashok to his business meetings: delivering bribes to Great Socialist on behalf of his father Stork. Stork became a prosperous capitalist due to the unlawful patronage of Great Socialist, the political fixer in Delhi. Stork and Great Socialist conspire to bend rules and make new laws even as Balaram is around them. They are confident that the uneducated village bumpkin does not understand anything.

Alas, Balaram is no idiot. He understands: to get rich, he has to be like Stork; get fear of law out of him.He must kill, steal, and escape with the loot. He gets his opportunity. He kills Ashok and runs away with large suitcase stuffed with crores of rupees meant for the Great Socialist. He does not care that Great Socialist and Stork will take revenge on his family back in the village. His dreams come true: he has a new name, address, and a business: he owns and runs a transport company that drives BPO employees to their call centers at night. He has joined the club of rich boys who get to ‘enjoy’ memsahibs, those liberated educated shampooed and dyed girls with lipstick.

This is it! The memsahibs going out at night with boys are being ‘enjoyed’

The servant class does not learn only from their association with ‘painted and dented’ super-rich bosses. After a day serving the bold and beautiful, they come home. They are either married to their right hands or to tired and sweaty ugly ducklings without any curves and sense of physical joy. These women, their grandmothers, mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters tell them it is ‘western’ culture to be amorous, to woo one’s woman in public,  to hold hands and prance around in the garden, to mark Valentine’s Day, to go out and return late, to stay overnight out of home, and ‘cross the ‘maryada’, the ‘Laxmanrekha’. Their women are not alone in enforcing this edict. The men, excluding those spoilt by western liberal values, men of letters, faith and power, even those like Stork and Great Socialists, and their followers preach: we are Indians. Family honor is paramount. And honor is women do not love anyone and anything except the male selected for them by their male guardians.

 
The pub attack in Mangalore, the Padil Homestay Incident, the threat to women wearing jeans and using mobile phones, continuation of gender segregated schools, colleges and houses of prayer are the social norms and environment where men develop their world view towards gender relations.

 
In my view, the Delhi gang rape and the death of the woman is a result. It is not attack on a woman. It is an attack on the audacity of a young couple, unmarried and daring to be having fun outside the Laxman Rekha. Even if the girl is Sita, she should suffer. Twice, first in the hands of Ravana; then in the hands of Ram, if she survives Ravana and is returned, chaste or otherwise.
The Delhi gang rape reinforces our cultural view, held both by men and women in equal measure, that we should display our sexuality only under the marital bed-sheets.It is nothing about urban or rural, nothing about India or Bharat.

 
The brave heart woman who is dead is not the only victim. She is the celebrated victim in her shame, pain and death. The other victim, her boyfriend, who dared to choose a sweet heart, and chose to be offended at his love trivialized and interfered with by strangers, is a male and is forgotten in every debate and analysis I have read. The poor boy is a greater victim because he has to live with his shame, guilt and anger. No one has given him free treatment, support and sympathy let alone cash compensation and a job. He is conveniently forgotten. I will not be surprised if he will be demonized and blamed for the misfortune that befell on his fiancé.