Heated debates, countless proposals
and no solutions in sight. I guess we can sum up the current happenings
regarding violence against women with this! It is a sad thing that until the
fire reaches one’s own locality the person is always reluctant to act. And now,
when the spill over effects of the incidents occurring elsewhere in India are
becoming more and more explicit here, in Kashmir, we ought to put our heads
down in shame and introspect. Is it always necessary that only after an
innocent girl/woman is murdered or is attempted to be murdered we begin to
think about the solutions or even the problem in the first place? Nevertheless,
if we take the necessary steps now to ensure that such incidents don’t recur,
what better could be the tribute to the victims or the survivors of such acts.
Parents
form the bedrock of every person’s upbringing and have a very important role in
maintaining the societal order. With respect to our immediate society it is
good to see that there is some sort of parental regulation when it comes to
social affairs of children, in majority of the cases. But, I think, in many
cases parents tend to discriminate between a male and a female child with
respect to regulation. Parents who have all along, since infancy of their
children, been there for the good of their children have it as a right as well
as duty to regulate what the boy or the girl; is doing with equal measure for
both. With respect to this, the parental regulation must be equally applied to
boys as is in place, in majority of the cases with the girls. The bigger
picture being that it is not only the cases of eve-teasing or violence against
women but drug abuse, hit and runs and revenge killings also need to stop. The
cases of the likes of Tabinda Gani, Romana Javed, Atif Mudabir, and Kaleem
Qadri are still fresh in the collective memory of our society. And now the
recent case of acid-attack on a school teacher and the gut wrenching incident
in Shopian explicitly point towards the ill effects of this Khanemoul syndrome in the Kashmiri
society!
Moving
towards the larger Indian context; Until recently someone called by the,
strange it may seem, name Honey Singh was gleefully accepted in the society and
was touted as a Rap sensation. People felt proud and were seen bragging about
having attended his concerts and used to sing his songs with reverence to that
of a national anthem. And again, it took a shameful act for people to realise
that something was inherently wrong in what Honey Singh sang. Now he is
demonised, his parties and concerts are cancelled. Rightly so and I appreciate
this. But the point to be looked at here is that why don’t people corner all
the other people who are sailing in similar, if not the same boat. Why can’t we
censure the media campaigns of different brands which explicitly portray women
as intellectually poor emotionless commodities? A case in example is the TV
commercial of the world’s largest telecom provider. In this ad you have a young
boy bragging about connections with different girls at a time with a typical
phrase, “Karishma ko phone lagana that
Kareena ko lag gaya”! And there are ads which are even worse! And if anyone
dismisses this argument saying that censorship is not a viable option then we can’t
stop (or even blame) Honey Singh either. Let me declare that I have never been
his fan or even listened to his filth even once lest I be taken as pleading for
him!
In
the season of cricketing fever one can’t but bring it into context as well. A
cricket match was, in the not-so-distant past, the only thing besides news
bulletins which one could easily watch with family. But as Harsha Bhogle, the
Chemical Engineer turned Cricket commentator says, “With a simple, beautiful,
nice family game, all of a sudden you saw this thing happening (– glitz,
glamour and cheerleaders!)”. While Harsha was specifically talking about IPL
and went on to elaborate only the positives which the corporate invasion has
brought into cricket, I think its negatives merit a mention. Apart from the
indecent advertisements which pop up during the play itself and the
advertisements interspersed between the overs you even have top notch
cricketers participating in ads which supposedly teach you how to stalk a girl!
And one has to keep the remote control in hand to switch between channels to
avoid them lewd TVCs. I guess, this is but ludicrous!
I
would like to end with a few lines on the optimistic note. Keeping in mind that
people have begun recognizing the ill effects of the Rap/Pop culture and lewd
advertisements on the psyche of the populace, it won’t be a farfetched argument
if I say that regulation is the way forward. And with demands for harsher
punishments for the perpetrators of crimes against women getting shriller day
by day, I just hope that the year 2013 witnesses a appreciable decrease in such
incidents and the culprits are brought to justice. Hope!
