Falak is a nice word. It has the tenacity to mean something
positive in everyone’s life – for it means the SKY – of hope and of endless
possibilities.
But since January, the word has been a grim testimony to the
atrocities against the better part of our existence – yes, the gender crime
incidents against women continue unabashed.
The baby who was brought to the Trauma Centre of All India
Institute of Medical Sciences in Delhi left all of us after fighting with pain
and injuries for many days. From battered baby of AIIMS, she had become centre
of everyone’s prayers who came to know about her. She was named Falak by the
hospital staff and they made every possible effort to sustain the hope to keep
her alive.
Falak’s case will always remain a blot on us, questioning how
cruel we can be, for, it was the sin of women and girl-child trafficking and
the mental agony of a minor-aged victim who battered the baby in a fit of rage
after finding herself staring at nowhere midst the ordeal of being an object in
the sex trade.
Delhi is India’s capital city but it is just yet another Indian
city reflecting the Indian mentality of garbaged dogmas – though such cases
were being reported even before Falak’s case came to light - their run
continued in the city even after the national cry on Falak’s plight. There have
been over 10 cases of abandoned babies and minor girls raped killed in past
three months.
And when this is the sorry state of affairs in India’s
capital city, the thought of misery in other parts is just shivering, for, every
regional formation in India is full of cases of gender discrimination. So we
come across reports of female foetuses found dumped in dustbins in Rajasthan;
so we have many researchers from abroad studying the catastrophe of underage
and highway sex workers in almost every part of India; so we have deteriorating
sex ratio after every annual population count; so we have ever-increasing
numbers of female foeticides; so we have ever-increasing incidents of
honour-killings, dowry deaths and lynching of women branded as witches; so we
have regular reports of gangrapes in India’s supposedly safest area, its
National Capital Region; so we have archaic practices of minor marriages
continued; so we come across another Falak like case, this time, in Bangalore,
yet another progressive, cosmopolitan Indian city.
A three month old baby Afreen was badly hit by her father who
was unhappy over his wife delivering a girl-child. With severe internal head
injuries, the baby is now fighting for life in a government hospital of
Bangalore.
Premise of the cases, in Delhi and Bangalore, is different,
but it underlines the eternal question mark on values of our survival as a just
human society.
Falak’s case is an outright offshoot of women trafficking.
Afreen’s case is representative of the narrow-mindedness of
human existence in patriarchal societies like India.
But rascals in every such case are the menial creatures who
somehow have come to dominate the social weaving, manipulating it for their
selfish gains, believing in the fizzy castles of male superiority. They are to
be forcefully thrown out but who will do it when the whole system is polluted
by them. A recent report by the Country Mission to India Christof Heyns, United
Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions
says the cultural killing of women in India
has social sanction. Though the report is in the context of
honour-killings, dowry-deaths and women being branded as witches, it tells of
an all-pervading male dominated dogmatic mindset that always tries to exercise
its influence making legal remedies almost unavailable to the victims.
Urbanizing India is still largely rural. And when almost of
the urban pockets are witnessing the rising bar of the crime graph against
women, we don’t need the statistical expertise to realize the ground reality in
smaller towns, villages and remote areas.
Cases of atrocities against women continued even when Falak’s
plight had become a national cry. The whole of India debated and prayed but
where was the action on the ground?
The hope floats again whenever some atrocity becomes a
national cry, for there is that rare chance of taking tough action on ground to
check the menace then. Once again, that could not be.
It is an irony that a word like ‘Falak’ comes to remind us
of despair instead of hope.
How many more incidents do we need to see before we act?
We need some immediate purging. We need some drastic measures
now to changes our mindset.
Men and women, they jointly sustain the creation but we need
to realize woman is the better part of the creation, for, men may support it
but women sustain it.
How come, we have drifted so far from this fundamental
dictum of human civilization?