The heavenly duties of stones in our punyabhumi

Police in the Indian Union often organizes local football tournaments. A smiling lion of a man handing a cup to some sweat-soaked youths. In other nations where police atrocities happen less frequently, the police organize fewer football tournaments.

The Justice Verma commission, set up in the aftermath of the Delhi rape-murder case, invited views from the public. It received many inputs from many quarters on their own. Not a single Director General of Police responded to the commission’s notice. They were probably giving prizes at football tournaments. Image building becomes important when it fails to protect the rights of common people.

But I am dirty-minded enough to suspect that there is more to this ‘failing’. Let me ask — which domestic organization, getting monthly salaries and occasional bravery medals, happens to employ the largest number of alleged rapists and serial abusers? Hint: they also fight against ‘vices’ by extracting money from sex-workers of all genders after raping them. The ‘rule of law’ comes down hard when certain lines are crossed, so I will not answer the question. Are you thinking what I am thinking?

This punyabhumi is choc-a-bloc full of men and women whose sensitivities are bruised by the ‘non-desi’ concept of a sexual woman — in paint, on screen, in public. Stones are the weapon of choice of these people against this anti-national evil. Where do these stones go after national duty like attacking artists is done? Since every inch of the land is punyabhumi, the stones also carry heavenly qualities. The national fervour that is embedded in every such piece of stone does not decay with time like radioactivity. The stones continue their holy duty by marching forward to Chhattisgarh.

Some of the stones made their way into the vagina and the rectum of one Soni Sori, held by Chhattisgarh police for 8 cases. In spite of the stones that were inserted deep inside her vagina and rectum, the police could not prove the charges in 4 out of 8 cases. The other four are going on. The patriotic stones might have continued to torment an adivasi woman like Sori unless her medical examination was shifted out of Chhattisgarh to less godly Kolkata. Sori has also alleged that she has been repeatedly raped. But some of the prime witnesses, the patriotic stones, have been removed by the Kolkata doctors.

Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose of Kolkata, in his later years, started finding ‘the living response’ in many inorganic matters, including rocks. Nothing short of the expertise of that departed soul can help make sense of the testimony of the stones. Till such time, Sori’s rape will remain ‘alleged’.

The charges against Sori that were proven false in court included very specific things like opening fire and using explosives to blast the vehicles of Essar Steel, attacking the police at Kirandul and blowing up a police station. If the state were a person that conjured such crimes from thin air, concerns about mental health would arise. If the state deliberately made up these cases, then it is sociopathic. Last week, the state, after failing to prove charges against Sori (incidentally, a school-teacher), has started an enquiry to ascertain whether she should be sent to the mental asylum in Agra.

Let’s concentrate on the football tournament instead. SP saheb has already arrived for the prize distribution ceremony. I think we should all stand up, clap and smile because our culture teaches us that we should be respectful to elders, especially those who win gallantry medals. Brown women need not fear — too many lions of Bharatmata are protecting them in every street.

The writer is a scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

@gargac