• Ponmala

The Kolkata of old evokes two nostalgic memories: 1. A city where women could walk alone on its streets without a sense of fear even late in the night; 2. A city that was always on the edge and could flare up at the least provocation. Should a woman who was physically or verbally harassed raise an alarm, a crowd would immediately gather and thrash up the man at whom she pointed her finger. Quite the opposite happened in Kolkata the other day. A young female doctor was heinously raped and murdered in her workplace as she was sleeping. At around midnight of the following day, a riotous crowd of about 7000 men armed with sticks and stones gathered at the hospital where the murder took place. Some forty of them barged into the hospital and vandalised a portion of it, reportedly to compromise evidence at the crime scene. A city that was renowned as a protector of women gradually turned into a protector of rapists within the span of three or four decades. And the reason for it? None other than the poisonous cocktail of crime and politics.

The BJP and the Communists staged vehement protests, alleging that Mamata Banerjee, who is the chief minister, home minister and health minister of West Bengal, was protecting the culprits. But what moral authority have they for that? Did not the BJP go a long way to protect Brij Bhushan who was charged with harassing five female wrestlers? Did they not free the rapists of Bilkis Bano from jail? Were they not thus sending a message that the rape of woman is permissible provided it served their purpose? Even as the communists were going hammer and tongs at cornering Bengal’s TMC government on the rape and murder of the doctor, their government in Kerala was facing the music for doing all in its power to protect popular film personalities whom the Justice Hema commission had found guilty of organized rape of female artists. While the casting couch is a hurdle that almost every female artist has to cross to make an entry into the film world, the Hema Committee report brought to light the existence of a ‘power group’ in the Malayalam film industry which perpetuates the sexual exploitation even after the aspiring artists have achieved stardom.

In 2017, an extremely popular Malayali actor allegedly took revenge on a female colleague of his by hiring goons to rape her. He also got a video recording of the rape made and circulated it among a closed circle. The first reaction of the communist government that was in power then was to hush up the crime. But the female film artists, who had been bearing up sexual exploitation by male actors, directors, producers and other influential personalities of Kerala’s film industry for too long and were at end of their tether, took it as a golden chance to join hands and seek an end to the malaise. The public outrage caused by what could be a unique case of using hired goons for rape forced the government to heed to the voice of the Women’s Collective formed by the female artists and appoint a committee headed by Justice Hema to look into their grievances. A year and a half later, the committee submitted its report – one that substantiated the allegation of rampant sexual abuse of women in Malayalam film industry – but the government slept on it until the other day when it was forced to publish its redacted version bowing to judicial intervention. Heads rolled within days of the release of the report. A cine director and script writer of high repute resigned from the chairmanship of the Kerala Chalichitra Academy, the entire executive body of the Association of Malayalam Movie Artistes (A.M.M.A.) resigned, and there is a deafening clamour for the resignation of a CPI(M) MLA, who is also a popular male actor.

Both in the case of the rape of the female doctor in Kolkata and the sexual exploitation of female artistes in the Malayalam film industry, we see governments indulging in hushing up the crimes and protecting the perpetrators. Women have always been at the receiving end of misogyny. In the Indian tradition, considering wives as the husband’s property even has divine sanction. Our renowned epics Mahabharata and Ramayana are the best examples for it. In Mahabharata, Yudhishthira wagers his wife Draupadi in a game he plays with rival Dushasana. The latter wins the game and uses Draupadi as in instrument of revenge by publicly disrobing her. Who is the more despicable villain here, the husband who put his wife up as a bet or the man who used her to wreak vengeance? And lo! Lord Krishna comes to Draupadi’s rescue by lengthening her sari until Dushasana gets exhausted of unwrapping her. But mind you, this very Lord Krishna had forced bathing young woman (gopikas) to appear naked in front of him after stealing their clothes. The convenient interpretation of it offered by Krishna’s devotees is that, by appearing naked in front of the Lord, women got cleansed of all their attachment to the self, but they get defiled by sin when they appear naked in front of other men. And in Ramayana, Lakshmana cuts off ugly Shurpanakha’s ears and nose for showing the audacity to woo his extremely handsome elder brother Rama. Shurpanakha’s brother Ravana takes revenge for it on Rama by kidnapping his wife Sita. In both the cases, women become victims of the ire of men. Little wonder rape and murder of women by men has become a common occurrence in our country. If the male film stars whom we worship as demigods think and act as modern day avatars of Krishna, Lakshmana or Ravan, everything that they do with women can be interpreted as sanctifying… as long as we are bent on resurrecting every bit of our glorious traditions of a bygone bronze age.