Extensive media coverage of the phenomenon of rape seems to have fanned conservatism, spawned amorphous fears, and threatens to shackle women in India's villages where gender equality is a battle won or lost almost daily.
Travelling last week on a train from Delhi to Patna, and then by road to the Bihar countryside, I silently listened to passionate discussions at tea-stalls, in offices as well as living rooms, astonished at the media's capacity to create a nationwide community, united in its focus on the issue of rape.
Yet it is a community bitterly divided in its analysis of the rise in rape cases, leading me to conclude: our liberalism is a mask worn to conceal the deeply ingrained conservative values we secretly nurture because of the premium placed on modernity. Media coverage of rape has ripped off the mask to reveal our fears of modernity swamping the values inculcated in us.
The discussions I overheard, or occasionally engaged in, had a universal pattern: rape was unanimously condemned. Almost always the punishment prescribed for the guilty was public hanging as a deterrence. Indeed, there seemed to be a barely concealed admiration for the code of punishment based on the principle of 'an eye for an eye' and 'blood for blood'. A few Muslims took perverse pride in what they described as an idea of justice Islamic in nature.
With the rapist condemned to the gallows, the discussions would invariably turn to analysing the causes popularly described as social sickness. Invariably again, the culprit was modernity. It is vital, they said, for girls to acquire an education, particularly through the medium of English, enroll in professional colleges and aspire to become engineers and doctors and bureaucrats. But is it necessary, they would ask, to wear body-hugging jeans, stay out late in the evening, and for boys and girls to mingle freely? Are teenagers, particularly girls, serving a larger purpose in emulating the lifestyle of their brethren bred in metros, say, in Delhi or Mumbai?
As young Patna consciously wraps itself in modernity through spiffy showrooms selling designer wear and eats out in restaurants and coffee shops, or builds educational institutes and teaching shops, to which students from other parts of the state throng, their parents mull the outcome of flirting with progressivism. Have they erred in easing earlier curbs on children, allowing them greater personal space and independence, and believing they would not belie the faith reposed in them?
In their discourse the belying of faith is synonymous with the belying of values they raised their children with. It includes a wide array of lifestyle choices ranging from the clothes worn, the time at which they should return home or hostel room, the degree to which relationship with the opposite gender should be entered into, the use to which gizmos, like mobiles and laptops, should be put, etc. It is expected the children would voluntarily subscribe to the values of parents, impossible as it is for them to enforce discipline from distance.
The debate over rape has created a milieu in which the suppressed fears of elders have palpably come to the surface. It is relatively easier for parents to determine the dressing choices of children staying with them. It is almost impossible for them to influence it at the time they are living in another city or town. As a male parent, in a discussion on sartorial style, remarked allegorically: "Thieving can be curbed by punishing the thief. But it also important you lock your house at night. If you leave it open, you are asking for trouble." The parent went on to ask, "Why are we emulating the Western code of dressing – three-piece suit for men, two pieces for women?"
It is precisely why girls in small town India feel their freedom has been imperilled because of the ambience that the prolonged national debate has created. The perception of the brutal rape of the physiotherapy student in Delhi has undergone a radical transformation over the weeks: the unconscionable criminal act is now considered symptomatic of the crisis springing from the degree of freedom granted to teenagers. The cure, therefore, is believed to lie in curtailing the freedom the young enjoy.
This curtailment won't be universal in its application, largely because parents are under greater societal pressure to skill boys for the job market than girls. The girls fear the inability of their parents to negotiate and overcome their fears of modernity could have an adverse impact on them, particularly in circumstances involving decisions of sending them out of city or town for education.
Jeans they may willingly forego, male company they will willingly shun, but it is their aspiration they don't wish to compromise on. They are consequently keen the debate on rape should recede to the background, and the tendency of the national media to train the spotlight on every new incident be eschewed. They wish to engage in silent insurrection, not trumpet their rebellion.
