Tag: new delhi

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Help victims, not the accused

Humra Quraishi writes on the malaise of rape and how a lack of policing is helping rapists get away it.

Another gang rape has taken place in New Delhi. No, it’s not really surprising, for eve-teasing is so rampant there that no woman is actually safe on the roads or lanes of this city. After dusk, it’s risky for a woman to commute, unless of course, she is a top politician or a senior civil servant or Somebody Important, in which case she has adequate security as she goes about her daily tasks.

And before I write any further, let me mention that even young men and teenage boys are not safe in Delhi either. With this, another point that cannot be ignored is that people’s faith in cop and the policing system is nil. The average citizen is apprehensive about entering a police station to lodge a complaint, because that one act results in a hundred different offshoots, with him or her facing some unsavoury consequences. There are several horror stories to be told about the city’s lockups, the police thanas, the interrogation and detention centres. The worst crimes take place right there, under the watchful eyes of cops.

In fact, there are no records and statistics to show how many cop-rapists and molesters have been hanged thus far. They get away because of all the possible loopholes in this system.

So where do you and I go for help if we are molested or raped or eve-teased? It sure does require nerves of steel to report these crimes, and that’s why most of these crimes go unreported. Reporting them is, perhaps, the last resort for most people.

I am of the definite view that hanging is not the solution. Are we so short-sighted to think that hanging a couple of men will solve all crises, be it related to terrorism or rape? Death isn’t a remedy for such ills. Those off-with-your-head orders were fine when given by rulers of bygone days, because the rule of the law was paramount then. Here, when every fifth or sixth man is trying his level best to grab an opportunity to touch or intrude on a woman’s personal space, how many men can be hanged? We will upset the gender ratio if we hang every eve-teaser and rapist.

Another important point, which most of us ignore, is what we are seeing on the big and small screens today –  obnoxious item numbers, with even more obnoxious lyrics, and our top heroines dance in them without the slightest trace of embarrassment. There are disgusting image portrayals, but there doesn’t seem to be any effort being made to stop this kind of objectification.

Today the situation is so pathetic that we have moved backwards, beyond the medieval ages. If you are planning to move out of your Delhi home after dusk, you to yourself well and try and return before it gets late. Men friends or a male companion cannot be of much help if such a situation happens to you, because rapists attack in groups, and are often deranged with drink that only a policeman can probably stop them.

Humra Quraishi is a senior political journalist. She is the author of Kashmir: The Untold Story and co-author of Simply Khushwant.

(Picture courtesy ibnlive.com)

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Confer with those who need help

Humra Quraishi writes about her disgust over international conferences that seek to include only the well-informed, upper classes of society.

I recently received an invite to the World Breastfeeding Conference 2012, and I confess, I was somewhat taken aback to see it. Hosted in New Delhi, it is said to have attracted 900 delegates from 86 nations.

No, I didn’t attend it. I didn’t feel the need to, not because I am no longer in the child-bearing or breastfeeding stage myself, but simply because I have long felt that such meets are hosted only for the ‘upper’ sections of society, or the ‘top drawer’, if you will, which is anyway well aware of the benefits of breast feeding.

Why couldn’t the organisers of this meet – The global Breastfeeding Initiative for Child Survival (gBICS), together with the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and Ministry of Women and Child Development (GOI ) – hold this meet at some of the rural pockets and locales of the country? Why hold this in New Delhi and why in one of the posh locales of New Delhi? Why not in one of those outlying colonies or bastis and mohallas and jhuggi clusters, whose women may actually need the knowledge these conferences have to impart?

And what hits the most is the fact that Minister of Women and Child development, Krishna Tirath, does not seem to react when children and young teenagers are detained and arrested and harassed by the various security agencies in the police machinery. Why is there little to no intervention from the Government, and in particular, from this Ministry, when such incidents take place?

Stretching my disgust a little further, let me also add that Krishna Tirath should try walking on any of those stretches of New Delhi or commute by any of the public transport means available to the rest of us, and then see for herself what happens. As I have been writing all along all these years, it’s actually tough for a woman to walk on the streets of the capital city without being eve-teased. I am now middle-aged, but even I have to think twice before stepping out of my house in a sleeveless shirt, unless I throw on a long flowing dupatta to cover my arms and chest.

And in the midst of these basic realities, if we hold these fashionable conferences (or let’s just call them publicity-seeking meets), then there’s something, or maybe everything here, that just doesn’t jell together. These discrepancies between two Indias stand out so blatantly.

Humra Quraishi is a senior political journalist and author of Kashmir: The Untold Story and co-author of Simply Khushwant. 

 

 

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Enough said

The pain of Gaza

Humra Quraishi writes on how our collective detachment to the Gaza crisis and our pro-Israel stand has affected Arab-Indo relations.

I’ve been watching scenes of complete disaster in the Gaza belt unfold on my TV screen, and I am left wondering: where are the so-called world leaders who talk of peace? Where is the US President, Barack Obama, who ought to start his second term in power by trying to save the lives of hapless Palestinians; if nothing else, then at least to win a few brownie points! Where is the United Nations at the moment? And more to the point, where is our own government?

I confess I am shamed and shocked at the muted response to the barbaric killings of Palestinians. We sit detached as scores of Palestinians are being killed and pushed to the  edge in their own homeland. Is this happening because of our pro-America, pro-Israel tilt? If it is, then our current politics is a far cry from the time when Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira  Gandhi had close personal ties with the Arab nations, and with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

I’d attended a few receptions in New Delhi, where Indira Gandhi had honoured Yasser Arafat, and he, in turn, had showered praises on his ‘sister’ Indira. And it’s a well-known fact that in the 1950s, Nehru had gifted a sprawling bungalow on New Delhi’s Prithvi Raj Road to the first Iraqi envoy to India. The bungalow still stands, tall and elegant, but it is just about vacant. After Iraq was pounded by the American forces, the Iraqi embassy here shrank rapidly, gradually reduced to nothingness.

While covering the social scene of the capital city for almost three decades, I have witnessed the years when traditional Arab hospitality and warmth held sway here. The frequent parties and luncheons at the homes of envoys of Lebanon, Iraq, Palestine, Libya, Kuwait and Qatar were not just vibrant, they relayed warmth. And the Arab-India bonding lasted till about the time America and the allied forces invaded Iraq.

Even today, the plight of the Palestinians gets buried in the back pages of our newspapers, accompanied by occasional pictures of hundreds dying. We tend to overlook the complete picture, the historical context, and the very basics of the problem. In this context, I quote Palestinian envoy to India, Osama Musa, who had once said to me, “We have been under occupation all these years, over several decades. Can’t America see the killings that take place on a daily basis? I tell you, without America’s support, Israel is zero. Israelcannot survive a single day if America doesn’t support it. Israel is equipped by tanks and war planes, whereas we Palestinians only have a police force armed by mere pistols.”

He added, “You ask how peace will come about? It will happen the day Israel ends its occupation. We have been telling the Israelis to leave us alone. We are restricted to only 23  per cent of the total land that originally belonged to us. The rest is with Israel. Their policies have affected over six million Palestinians – of which three million are displaced, and the other three million live in their own land as slaves, not as free citizens.”

Humra Quraishi is a senior political journalist. She has authored Kashmir: The Untold Story, and is co-author of Simply Khushwant.

(Featured image courtesy www.csmonitor.com) 

 

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