Column

I am sick of people having fun. Seriously. It’s not funny. This week fun-seekers almost put me off fun forever. On the eve of Holi, a Dalit child, Rajesh, 12, was beaten up and thrown into the Holi bonfire. It happened in Ambedkarnagar, named after the Dalit cult figure, in Dalit diva Mayawati’s Uttar Pradesh. All part of Holi revelry of course, and the anger that bursts forth when a low-caste child lights the bonfire without permission.
Meanwhile in Himachal Pradesh, Aman Kachru, 19, was killed by his college-mates at the Rajendra Prasad Government Medical College. The killers — Ajay Verma, Naveen Verma, Abhinav Verma and Mukul Sharma — were his seniors, all training to be doctors. Aman died of head and chest injuries following prolonged torture by these four. The government college had taken no action on his complaint. It was just ‘ragging’ — a normal part of the college initiation process.

Every year new kids are humiliated and brutalised, many are maimed for life, many drop out to escape the physical, mental and sexual torture, several suffer from severe stress disorders and some are driven to suicide. A few, like Aman, die. And every year, hundreds of psychopathic power-mongers like these killers graduate from college and take their place in society as doctors and other professionals, masquerading as responsible citizens.

If raggers were prosecuted, or even rusticated, we would be safer as a society. But
staggering under layers of social injustice, we prefer to gloss over facts. So ragging is seen as mere college pranks. Boys will be boys, we sigh. Till the next death.

Last month, the Supreme Court had once again directed educational institutions to take tough anti-ragging measures, including criminal prosecution. Since 2001, the SC has been periodically calling for stern steps against ragging, “a form of psychopathic behaviour and a reflection of deviant personalities”. Many states have anti-ragging laws, but only a few institutions actually follow them. Generally, we allow ragging.

Just as we allow harassment of women on the streets. It’s just ‘eve-teasing’, we laugh, boys will be boys. Like ragging, it has the tacit approval of a society unwilling to recognise such acts as criminal. Unlike ragging, ‘eve-teasing’ is not confined to a campus. The victim can’t run away. She can be publicly taunted, groped, molested, humiliated, slapped around, assaulted and brutally attacked anywhere at all.

Public harassment and assault is not a benign activity. It has no business being humoured as ‘eve-teasing’. Girls may learn to deal with the taunts, the catcalls, the quick brushing against them, even the yanking away of their dupattas, but they cannot be expected to single-handedly deal with being beaten up or groped or being hit with acid, bikes and cars. This ‘teasing’ can kill.

Outrageously, our films have helped perpetrate such public sexual harassment. Often, as the demure heroine totters past, the hero and his tittering friends make lewd gestures and comments. There may even be ‘eve-teasing’ songs that swiftly turn the frowns of the heroine to coy smiles leading to mustard fields and marriage. Such scenes are even more offensive today, when women are gravely injured and often killed by ‘eve-teasers’. It’s not just a hushed and hurried ‘hello darling’ anymore. And though several states — including Maharashtra, Delhi and Tamil Nadu — have made ‘eve-teasing’ a non-bailable offence, it continues. Because we as a society humour it.

We must stop sticking benign labels like ‘eve-teasing’ and ‘ragging’ on humiliating and brutal attacks by the powerful on the less empowered — whether girls on the street or freshmen in college. It’s wrong. It’s criminal. It needs to stop. And it’s not funny.
Antara Dev Sen is editor, The Little Magazine.