How NCW is Raping its Own Dignity
One can understand frenzied
feminists descending like vultures on Salman Khan for his alleged insult to
women with his rape analogy. But for the National Women's Commission (
NCW) to send a summon to Salman Khan with the threat of suing him, is to rape
the dignity of NCW-or whatever little there is left of it in this otherwise
ineffective and toothless institution.
When is the last time
you heard or saw the NCW do something meaningful or memorable for women?
Most of its chairpersons have been political appointees and have therefore used
the office to emote profusely while doing very little constructive work. It is
also a poorly administered institution without fine tuned systems for
responding to challenges that women of India face today. Therefore, all we get
from NCW are knee jerk responses to trivial events rather than a well thought
out vision and program of action for improving the lot of women.
 |
Left:
Lalitha Kumaramangalam-- Raping the dignity of National Commission for Women
Right: Salman Khan--Hounded by frenzied feminists on frivolous charges
|
At a time when, on a daily
basis, we are being confronted with gruesome reports of gang rapes of women and
kids, thousands of children being abducted every year for inhuman forms of
trafficking, millions of women been sucked into the flesh trade every year,
countless women becoming victims of cyber crimes; the NCW had to pick up the
most ridiculous issue to flex its muscles. Its chairperson is acting as though
a man using the word ’rape’ commits a far more heinous crime than actually
raping women. We, however, have not seen such macho threats issued to actual
rapists.
Before I offer my reasons for
coming out in defence of Salman Khan, let me refresh the readers' memory by
quoting, from the original source, the exact statement as well as the
background of the controversial remarks. In response to a reporter's
question as to what kind of effort he put in to get the character of wrestler
Sultan (in a soon to be released film of the same name, depicting the life of a
Haryana’s wrestlers ) physically right, Salman said:
It’s a tough process. You need
ample training like the wrestlers. The training Aamir Khan and I have been
through is similar or probably a little more than what the wrestlers go
through. If we didn’t do it, we wouldn’t be able to fight convincingly in the
ring…. I underwent weight training. Then I perfected the moves. I spent 2-3 hours
in the day practising those because in the film, I go from the village level
akhada to the mat-based ring and then the MMA arena. So I had to do a lot of
punching and kicking. I had to be convincing or else I’d look like a
fraud.
The reporter then comments,
"The shoot must have been gruelling..." To this Salman
responds:
While shooting, during those
six hours, there’d be so much of lifting and thrusting on the ground involved.
That was tough for me because if I was lifting, I’d have to lift the same
120-kilo guy 10 times for 10 different angles. And likewise, get thrown that many
times on the ground. This act is not repeated that many times in the real
fights in the ring. When I used to walk out of the ring, after the shoot, I
used to feel like a raped woman. I couldn’t walk straight. I would eat and
then, head right back to training. That couldn’t stop.
Far from finding these remarks
offensive, I was actually moved by them for the following reasons:
Salman did not make a casual
light hearted comment about rape, nor referto it as an enjoyable sport.
He offers his analogy to refer to the kind of physical pain and torture an
actor has to go through in order to do those macho roles involving what is
light-heartedly referred to as Bollywood style dishum-dishum, which
many youngsters think is a lot of fun. But describing the gruesome
battering the body takes to prepare for, rehearse, and enact those roles for
the camera, Salman is in fact de-glamorizing the entire exercise. He
describes the vulnerabilities of screen heroes in real life and how such
situations can even lead to grievous and life threatening injuries, as they did
in the case of Amitabh Bachhan on the sets of the blockbuster film Coolie’.
If a man who has been put
through the grueling experience described by Salman Khan compares it to the
physical battering of a raped woman, the analogy is not so inappropriate as to
cause a media uproar especially considering that a majority of rapes don't lead
to a Nirbhaya like catastrophe.
True, rape is far more than
physical trauma—it’s also a violation of a women's selfhood and dignity whereas
Salman is undergoing that grueling predicament voluntarily -- for money, name
and fame. But the seriousness of the occupational hazard should not be
undermined just as the occupational risks involved in being a pilot flying and
dropping provisions to soldiers based in Siachin can’t be lightly dismissed by
saying ‘well, he was paid for the job and chose it voluntarily.” Similarly, no
one is dismissive of the risks taken by a mountaineer going up Everest by
saying he is well paid and chose to climb the treacherous peaks for name and
fame! Remember what a tsunami of national sympathy flowed for Bachhan when he
nearly died during the dishum dishum sequence of Coolie!
Moreover, analogies -- whether
negative or positive -- are not meant to be taken literally. For
instances, if a poet compares the beauty of his beloved to the radiance of a
full moon, it doesn't mean the woman has to have a perfectly round, silver blue
face which can be taken as a replica of the moon as seen from the earth.
Likewise, when you say someone eats like a pig, it doesn't mean that the man
actually eats muck.
While Salman used the rape
analogy to describe a life threatening situation during shooting, in fact, the
analogy is often used light heartedly to refer to a range of situations, not
just by men but also women. I have heard young female students describe
the experience of sitting through the classes of aggressive teachers who act
like bullies vis a vis their pupils as "intellectual rape".
Recently, a well known author
talked about the "Rape of the Rupee." Environmentalists often
use the phrase "Rape of Mother Earth" to describe the the callous
manner in which governments, corporates and other vested interests are
plundering and vandalizing this planet unmindful of its consequences for future
generations.
Alexander Pope's
satirical poem "Rape of the Lock" is till date taught as a literary
classic the world over, including in India even though it uses the term
"rape" to poke fun at the foibles, vanities and fantasies of
18th century British women. Had it been a 21st century Indian male who
wrote a similar poem using the term "Rape" in a satirical manner, our
frenzied feminists would have stopped at nothing short of seeking the death
penalty for him! Even with Salman many of them menacingly declared
that a "mere apology" won't do. Who knows with the majestic Women's
Commission leading from the front, they might not be satisfied with anything
less than castration or life imprisonment for Salman! Would the NCW dare
demand a ban on Alexander Pope's writings?
Unfortunately, by making a
mountain out of a molehill and hyper-ventilating for days on end on prime time
television--self appointed thekedars of women's rights have
made activist women a laughing stock of the nation. Those who cry for
frivolous reasons have created conditions for serious backlash on women's
issues. As it is there is a great deal of anger and outrage brewing in
society over the all too frequent misuse of the draconian anti rape law which
lends itself to easy abuse but has failed miserably to provide relief to
genuine victims of brutal rapes, leave alone help in curbing the growing
frequency of sexual crimes in our society.
However, women who descend on
police stations after a failed live-in relationship to allege that the
concerned man was raping them for X number of years on promise of marriage have
found it easy to get their estranged lover arrested and locked up in jail even
before the start of the trial. This is because the anti rape law mandates that
the mere allegation by a woman is enough to book someone for rape, no matter
how flimsy the charge. How can a man you voluntarily lived in with for three or
four years suddenly become a rapist—all because he doesn’t want to tie the knot
of matrimony? Women for whom holy matrimony is so important should not risk
fashionable live-in relationships whose basic premise is that both partners are
free to walk out if things don’t work out.
Remember the false rape charge
made on prime time TV shows by a young woman against film director Madhur
Bhandarkar—all because he did not yield to her demand for the role of a film
heroine. He had to go all the way up to the Supreme Court to get his name
cleared. Imagine the trauma, not just for the man but his entire family
including children, of having your name splashed all over the media as a
rapist, when you haven’t been guilty of it.
Sadly enough, it has become
fairly common for an increasing number of women to make totally false allegations
of rape for the purpose of extortion and blackmail because the ultra feminist
law makes it easy to do so without inviting any punishment. As a result a lot
of employers have begun to avoid hiring women in their offices especially if it
involves direct contact with them during day to day dealings. While the
draconian anti rape law has not really come to the rescue of many genuine rape
victims, it has brought into play new prejudices and fears against employing
women.
Have our zealous
feminists—both male and female—ever objected to trivialization of rape law by
such unscrupulous women even though it is causing incalculable damage to women’s
credibility and dignity? They would cry murder if any attempts were made to
build safeguards against easy misuse of such laws even though it has ruined
many innocent lives.
The most bizarre part of this
entire saga is that most of those who are baying for Salman's blood go
hysterical when it comes to government censorship over pornography or even
minor cuts in films like Udta Punjab which are replete with
the foulest abuses which are highly sexist. They don't want censorship over
pornography which is highly demeaning to the female dignity and filled with
gross forms of violence on female bodies treating them as virtual sex slaves.
But they support "verbal
censorship" of the most tyrannical variety in our daily conversation. Any
attempt by state institutions to curb vulgarity, violence is rejected as
unwanted ‘moral policing’ and sign of authoritarianism. But TV anchors
and sundry feminists think they have a god given right to impose their moral
code and censorship even on casual conversations.
Do they expect public figures
to submit advance script of their daily conversation to the Women's Commission
or TV anchors? Such verbal policing would make women the new “Unmentionables”
of our society even while they would not be ‘Untouchable” as far as violence
against them is concerned.
We must say a firm 'No’ to
this fake and frivolous manifestation of political correctness which is
distorting public discourse and hence distracting attention from serious
issues.
And my sincere advice to
Salman Khan, please don’t buckle under the illegitimate pressure NCW is putting
on you to apologize publicly for your comments. Dekhna hai zor kitna bazzoye
kaatil mein hai! (Lets see how much power this tyrant is capable of exercising)
Best not to yield to such blackmail because once these viragoes taste
blood, there is no stopping them. Would be interesting to see if they dare take
the matter to court in which case they may well get a sound drubbing for their
frivolity so that next time round these zealots will think ten times before
going unleashing their fury on soft targets.
At the same time, you have a
good case to file a defamation suit against NCW for humiliating, hounding and
blackmailing you publicly day after day on prime time TV!
