Ever since that gruesome evening of December in
Delhi which saw the rape of the unfortunate young woman there has been a lot of
angry popular demands for delivering quick retribution to the perpetrators of
this heinous crime. Considering that in India every hour sees the heinous
violation of a woman, I guess it is time for us to look into the mirror and ask
some questions about how women are perceived in our society. It is true that
the perpetrators of the crime were scantly educated yet a lack of a proper education
can hardly be considered as an excuse for this heinous crime. Now I use the
word “scantly educated” to describe the attitude through these men may have
considered their victim. It is this particular attitude which we need to
consider when we decide to find the root cause of the prevalent rape scenarios
in India. Considering that these men had very few opportunities to get a formal
education (particularly for the 17-year old juvenile who has been accused of
being a prominent perpetrator in this ghastly crime), their outlook and world
view are formed by the predominant popular social culture in which they live
and the most important element of this popular culture which plays a great role
in nurturing these people’s world view has to be Bollywood, considered as
India’s answer to Hollywood. Ever since India opened up her economy, Bollywood
movies have gone a sea change and the media industry’s attitude towards women
also has changed considerably in the last few years. Whereas in the 60-s and
70-s it was rare to see prominent heroines showing their navels, forearms or
thighs, now days these types of expositions of women have become common place.
The display of the types of female characters also has gone a sea change
whereby previously the emphasis was given upon the female character being a
proud daughter, obedient sister, a faithful wife, a loving and caring mother
and truthful lovers, now days the emphasis has solidly shifted towards female
characters who are not hesitant to use their suggestive charms to move ahead in
life. There was a time when there was the thought to spread the message of
Indian women being the anchor of the traditional family and now days the focus
has shifted towards women using whatever means at their disposal to get ahead
in life. This should be considered as productification of women since now days
we see in our films that every feminine grace and charm of womanhood becoming a
commercially viable product which can be lured to attract as many as young men
as possible to the theaters
.
Talking about the current productification of woman
in Bollywood, one also needs to have a look at how the opening up of the Indian
economy has played its part in terms of different aspirations amongst people.
In the case of the rape victim and the juvenile perpetrator, we can observe
this chasm between how different people look to live their dreams. The woman in
question as we know by now belonged to a lower-middle class family who has had
the option of sending their daughter into higher education in the big city
since they could afford to sell a small piece of land which they owned. The
family of the juvenile perpetrator presents a completely different picture to
the family of the victim since this family was surviving on doing farm work on
someone else’s lands and had very little in terms of fortune to send their kids
to even a primary school let alone sending them for higher education. In fact
we also come to know that the mother of the said perpetrator was forced to send
his perpetrator son who also happens to be the first-born in the family to work
as a service-boy in a Delhi restaurant at the age of 11. Thus we can see the
two different India-s which came into being ever since the economic
liberalization of the 1990-s clashing with each other as fierce competitors in
an uneven game where there is very few if any decency or honorable conduct is
part of the game. Is this the economic game our policymakers had in mind when
they thought of unleashing the animal spirits in this country? After all human
mind works in various intriguing ways which can be hardly fathomed easily.
Another question which could also be raised about
the spontaneous protests and this does not bode well for the future of this
country. Most of our protestors were fixated on seeking quick gratification for
the horror by seeking death penalty for the rapists. Undoubtedly the
perpetrators of this heinous crime deserves harshest punishment however is this
also not a very good opportunity to tackle the question of the productification
of women in the most popular cultural medium in India ? After all the
productification of women in this country does very little to nurture positive
outlook towards women. The public anger which is apparent at this moment could
also be a very good opportunity to tackle the question of productification of
women in the popular culture in India and how to prevent it.
We also need to ask ourselves another significant
question. Why it was this particular gruesome incident, the rape of a young
woman from Hindi-speaking background, which made it possible for the urban middle-class
youths to come out from their self-imposed slumbers? Would we have been able to
see the same outpouring of emotions on the streets of Delhi, if the victim
would have been a Muslima from Kashmir or from any of the north-eastern tribes
in India’s restive frontiers, considering that allegations of rapes of these
peoples by Indian military men are not very infrequent in nature? This is one
question we need to answer as we look into mirror to think about this
particular tragedy.
