Delhi gang rape – The Metrognome

Rahul Gandhi will have taken a step up in politics if he changes the future of children pulled into crime.

by Humra Quraishi

Tell me, does it make a difference to you if Rahul Gandhi gets a higher rung in the Congress party, or if Nitin Gadkari gets ousted from the top slot in the BJP? You could make them kings or call them emperors of India, but the ground reality will not change. No, this is not cynicism, but it is the reality of our daily life. We Indians are currently surviving by force of sheer willpower, destined to go through the daily grind of our lives till our allotted time is up.

December’s gang rape made some heads roll, but women are still being raped and brutalised, and so are young children, both boys and girls. In Delhi itself, you can see beggars and hapless children with them; the children may not be their own in all probability. The children are often battered – just two days ago I witnessed a child being beaten with a stick by two elderly beggars because he wasn’t begging the way he was taught to!

Last spring, I saw a really pathetic sight…outside the Chandni Chowk metro station, several middle-aged and aged beggars sat with little children in their laps. The children were weak, almost lifeless, and were probably bought or abducted.

What is the administration doing about this? Surely the area’s cops know of the gangs operating in the area of their jurisdiction, of the several rackets flourishing right under their noses? And when these same children grow up and take to a life of crime, we catch them, they who are the foot soldiers for actual criminals, and we hang them and pat ourselves on the back. Or else, like Britain’s Prince Harry, we sit back and proclaim with some pride that we killed several terrorists!

What is the future of these street children? They are treated worse than stray dogs, and yet we do nothing, smug and secure in our own sheltered lives. Can Rahul Gandhi or his aides walk around the New Delhi or Old Delhi railway stations, or the metro stations and bus depots, and see the hundreds of unfortunate children there? If and only if Rahul Gandhi, or any of today’s top civil servants or politicians take up these as priority issues would I consider that he or she has truly grown up as a leader.

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

(Picture courtesy pardaphash.com)

Choose whom you honour

Humra Quraishi wonders why we’re not talking more about the young man who stood by the Delhi gang rape victim. We’re choosing, instead, to focus on rubbish statements by politicians.

For three consecutive weeks, I have been writing on rapes and its offshoots, but there’s little else in focus even now. Pushed aside for the moment are corruption scams and scandals, together with those men who were crying themselves hoarse over black money that others have stashed away. Anna Hazare has been quiet for a long time, and so have his key associates.

In the midst of this, those who are opening their mouths are speaking plain rubbish. The Samajwadi Party’s Mumbai man Abu Azmi wants the young generation to not have boyfriends and girlfriends, and he thinks couples should not step out at night. I wish Abu Azmi would try imposing his ideas on his son and actress daughter-in-law Ayesha Takia. Jumping into the fray are others, so-called leaders from various regions, proclaiming that women should don overcoats and be fully covered at all times! No more jeans and short tops! As per these men, women should be coy, dressed in saris, tending to their homes, submitting to their husbands’ never-ending demands, and doing little else.

What is noteworthy is that politicians of the capital city seem to have matured. Maybe they have been around for far too long to be reckless in their statements. Or because they have sensed the mood of the masses and cannot afford to add to the growing unrest. Whatever the reason, politicians here have not much contributed to these rubbish thoughts by their counterparts elsewhere. There was no overreaction even to Shashi Tharoor’s suggestion – that if the parents okayed it, the rape victim’s name be made official for an anti-rape law to be named after her – and it was recognised to be an earnest statement, not a malicious one.

This one gang rape has opened the clichéd Pandora’s Box. Women are not just hitting out, they are also trying to connect. But we cannot lose sight of the young man, the victim’s friend, who not just stood by her, trying to save her from the rapists, but even now has the courage to refute the police’s theories, after fearlessly declaring that the cops were not there in time to rescue the girl.

It isn’t easy to go against the establishment, especially the police and the very machinery at their command. But this young man has done exactly that, at a time when he has suffered tremendously after battling the rapists and getting injured in the process, then losing his steady friend.

If any attention is to be paid to anyone’s statements, it should be this young man’s. If anybody is to be honoured, it should be him.

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

(Picture courtesy telegraph.co.uk)