I have not seen Oh My God, the recent movie about something that touches all of us: religion! I believe  it shows us how from God lover we have become God fearing and how religion has become a business. I think most of realise this or am I being too optimist?

For the past 2 days, thousands and thousands from all walk of life are fervently washing feet of nine  little girls to mark the end of Durga puja. This is done as a mark of respect of the Goddess the symbol of the purest creative force. There are many interpretations of this ritual but one thing is certain: young girls are meant to be the image of the Goddess. So  they worshipped, venerated, idolized just for the few minutes of a ritual whose meaning everyone had forgotten. Come the said morning and in every Hindu home pressure cookers whistle, potatoes are peeled and cooked into a spicy dish and sweet halwa is eagerly stirred in large woks, flat breads are rolled and deep fried. The food is then served in nine containers and money or gifts as is the fashion now – pencil cases, lunch boxes, hair clips – are added.The feast for the Goddess(es) is ready. Every family has ‘booked’ their goddesses of the day – children of neighbours in slums and shanties, children of those who work for you and so on. The little girls are sat in a row, their feet are washed by all members of the family, then they are given the food and the gifts. Often little girls are seen going from home to home collecting their bounty of the day. It is not every day that girls are feted in India! No wonder project why classes are quasi empty on these days.

The status of women has known many mutations in India. From having equal status to men in ancient India their history has been eventful. It sad to learn that according to a recent study by Reuters India is the “fourth most dangerous country” in the world for women today. And though the are supposed to enjoy equal right to men the reality is different. In a male dominated society women suffer immensely. So is not hypocritical to worship little girls and the next moment forget that they are the image of the Goddess you venerate with so much false piety.

I for one do not wash feet of little girls once a year. I would rather continue in silence the work I do where I worship them in my own way every day by giving them what they need to fight for the rights so many of us have usurped.

Eating chowmein contributes to the increase in rapes. No this is not a joke. This is the latest pearl of wisdom cast by the antediluvian kangaroo courts that ‘rule’ Haryana by force: the (ill)famed Khap Panchayats. To my understanding, consumption of fast food contributes to such incidents. Chowmein leads to hormonal imbalance evoking an urge to indulge in such acts, is what the leader of one such Khap recently stated. To end rapes one must eat light and nutritious food. Voila. Rape over. So if I understand well girls should be married at the age of 16 and we should not eat any spices or fast food and we will be rid of the heinous crime of rape. All hormonal issues will be solved. I guess all of us that each such foods are potential rapists.

To the idiosyncratic remark that stated that 90% of rapes are consensual, there was the added one that rapes are a conspiracy against the ruling party. I cannot begin to imagine where all this will end. But what is reality is that rapes are continuing unabashedly. Yesterday a 50 year old was gang raped by 4 men. For a person of the female sex is do not matter what age you are: 15 months or 50, you still run the risk of being raped. And that is not all, the 62 year old rapist of the 13 year old child is now being shielded by his community by offering the victim’s family money. 35K is the price of innocence.

There is seems to be no justice for the innocent victims. Instead of immediate and punitive actions against the perpetrators, one what sees is shielding the rapist, finding ludicrous explanations ( consensual rape, eating chowmein), blaming the victim (the way she dresses, she drinks, she goes out at night etc) and so on. Everyone is on a single mission: protect the perpetrator! It is time to stop this nonsense. But how? That is the question.

What all the above shows is that in the mind of the law makers, protectors and enforcers rape is a trivial crime where the victim is a much if not more to blame than the perp.

When a little girl is born she has the same rights as her male counterparts. She has the right to live, to laugh, to play, to grow, to study, to work. She has the right to be loved, respected, cared for and protected. She has the right to dream about her morrows and to see them become reality. Sadly in India all these rights are usurped in the name of false honour, false morality and social mores made by a male dominated society. Her life is controlled by a series of males: her father, her brother, her husband and even her sons. She has not much say in anything. Is she steps out of the line drawn by these male relatives she is reigned in and even branded. Her dreams remain dreams shared with no one.

When she hurts or is hurt by anyone, she is far too often held responsible and ordered to step back in line. The extreme instance is rape where the first accusation falls on her: why did she step out, why did she wear ‘revealing’ clothes, why did she stay out late etc. She seems to be the custodian not only of her family’s honour but of the honour of the entire world.

Trivialising rape is the highest insult to women. It is time this stopped!

Today is the first day of Navratri or the nine nights in which we will worship the Goddess Durga .We will worship her in each and every form from the young Kumari, to Parvati to Kali to Lakshmi to Saraswati and along the way we will beseech her to protect us, to give us wealth and prosperity and knowledge and wisdom. We will end our devotion by worshipping nine little girls whose feet we will wash and who will endow with gifts and blessings. The we I refer to here is all of us Hindus, men and women. It is also all those who normally deride and dismiss women, treat them like second class citizens, who rape them with impunity, who use and abuse them without mercy, who even kill them in the womb! The disparity between the way we revere our Goddesses and treat our women every day is glaring.  Is it not hypocritical?

True some of us do not feel or act that way but do we hot keep strangely mum and behave like ostriches when aberrations occur? What right do we have to worship Goddess Durga if we are unable to protect girls and women? Why should she bestow anything on us when we forget once the nine nights have passed that she resides in every woman?

For the next none nights Durga will be adored and worshiped in every way imaginable. On the eight or night day nine little girls will also be worshipped as many will wash their feet as a mark of respect to the Goddess, each one symbolising one of the Goddess. Yet once the festivities over these very little girls will go back to the reality of not being wanted and treated respect and love. Every little girl has the right to ask why she is being worshipped once a year and abused for the rest of time.

I guess I am a believer though I cannot accept to be part of a show that his to say the last hypocritical. I have in days gone by been guilty of falling prey to the lure of ritualism. I guess it had to be a rite of passage, mercifully a short one. I was blessed to have had the privilege of entering a world that may seem alien to many but that brought straight back to reality and showed me the way I sought.

Today I do not go seeking the elusive God I believe in, in temples and faraway pilgrimage sites. I see Her everyday in the eyes of the little children who have been forgotten by all, and yet who open their hearts to anyone fortunate enough to look into their eyes with their hearts.

For the next nine days I will worship all the little project why girls and seek protection, prosperity and wisdom. 

She was 13. An age when you are and should be a child, carefree and happy. Your life should be filled with laughter, friends and happy occurrences. You should be going to school, spending time with pals and coming back home. And above all you should be safe. But that is not what happened to a young 13 year old in a small town in Haryana, the state which is now (in)famous for a spate of rapes. For the past 3 months she has been raped by a 62 year old food street vendor  who lured with a plate of hot food. It took three months of being abused by a dirty old man who thought his plate of food who keep her quiet forever. I cannot begin to imagine the trauma that little child went through. The pain, the shame, the hurt, humiliation that little soul experienced as her barely nubile was being assaulted over and over again by a vile old man. How hungry she would have been to accept the first plate of food? Or maybe it was offered because the tithe was demanded and she has nowhere to run. She was caught in the wily trap laid by crafty old sod. Anyway it was too late.

The horror lasted for 3 months. Just trying to imagine what she must have gone through day after day makes my blood run cold. I also cannot fathom what was the tipping point that made her break her silence and tell her father. I must salute the father who believed his child and contacted the police. The rape was confirmed. But the outcome was not what one would expect from a civilised society. The victim was arrested but one wonders for how long but the school authorities and the local political entity decided to expel the child and her sisters!

Yes you read right, the victim, the girl who had been repeatedly raped was thrown out of school. This is justice India style. Hang your head in shame or speak out the choice is yours. But this is a reality and we cannot run away from it. A young rape victim has been denied her right to education because she was raped. How that works is impossible for me to comprehend. Even the warped and skewed logic of a politician who wants us to believe that 90% rapes are consensual cannot be applied here. The victim was 13, the rapist 62. In any law book it is a rape!

My mind travels back some 7 or 8 years when I was faced with a similar situation. In one of our primary classes a girl always sat alone, never next to the others. No one spoke to her. She came and went alone. She was about 12 or 13. When I enquired upon the reason of such behavior I was shocked to hear that she had been raped when she was 3 year old, the rapist was her neighbour. he had been caught and served a sentence and was freed. But the girl had been branded forever. We took matters in hand and ensured that she was accepted by her class mates. I even got her to learn karate and she was a star. Slowly she regained her lost confidence but sadly her mother died and the family moved away. I wonder where she is now. I just hope and pray she is safe.

How long will this terrible injustice last? When will we gather the strength to say enough is enough! I feel so helpless.

Are we responsible for the arrogance of our law makers and rulers is the question any self respecting India should ask him/herself in the wake of the spate of incidents that have occurred in the past 48 hours or so. Let us begin with the premise I hope still holds true. We are a democracy of the people, by the people and for the people. We are the ones who elect our representatives both in Parliament and State Assemblies. These representatives are supposed to protect our interest and  put forth our views. I guess we are all agree on this. So in the best case scenario representatives should be a reflection of who we are and it is our responsibility to ensure that.

However the reality is quite different if we are to go by what happened recently. We are agree that rape is a heinous and loathsome crime. It is a crime against women and girls, the worst form of abuse you can imagine. No a political leader of the ruling party in a State that has seen an unacceptable number of rapes in the past month stated two days back that in 90% of cases rape was consensual! Please explain how rape can be consensual as I am unable to figure this one. The last rape was that of a 6 year old who was lured with a bar of chocolate and raped by three men. Now is accepting a chocolate consent to rape? And what about the 13 MONTH old that was raped yesterday! How can we hope that with such a mentality our politicians will take rape seriously and get the victims justice they deserve and hope for. As I write these words, a Khap Panchayat, read Kangaroo court- is busy discussing lowering marriage age for girls to solve the rape problem. It is never the man’s fault, is it?

Let us move on. Some days back a senior politician and Minister insulted a priestess. The altercation was cost on camera and it was horrific to see how he abused the poor woman and ordered that she be locked up to teach her a lesson. Now Mr Minister there are laws in the land and no one can and should get locked up at the whim and fancy of anyone, let alone a person who can only aspire to the holds without the help of people just like the woman he was abusive to. It is a democracy and not your fiefdom.

But that is not all. You agree that an official needs to do his duty. The duty of a toll tax officer is to collect the toll tax. Now some people are exempted – why is that I do not know – and need to show proof of their identity. If I told you that one such exempted person – a Member of Parliament in the occurrence, the kind of bloke you and I are supposed to put there – chose to jump out of his car gun in hand and threatened to shoot one and all in true John Wayne style. Now wonder what would have happened if you and I had tried that!

And last but not the least, should you not like what an officer is doing and want it done your way, then kidnap him! Yes you read right! That is exactly what another Minister did recently. It is true that he has since resigned, but on the other hand no FIR has been registered against him.

So it seems that when we – and by we I mean voters – elect a representative we give license to shoot his mouth, license to insult and abuse, license to brandish a gun and maybe even kill and license to kidnap. Wow that is something I was not aware of.

But let us come to the main point. We are a democracy and a democracy can only function well when each and everyone of us exercise our right to vote freely and intelligently. We are proud of being a democracy and cherish the freedom it gives us. Then why is it that most of us – so called enlightened electorate – fail to go and vote. I too have been guilty of this crime, for crime it is. We have to accept responsibility and take our role as citizens seriously.

The recent spate of rapes in the state of Haryana – 13 in just one month – have once again brought the extreme vulnerability of women in our country to the fore. It is not just the crime that is heinous and reprehensible. What is more shocking is the reaction of the law makers and keepers. Last week a young sixteen year old girl was gang raped by four men. Not able to bear the shame, she set herself on fire and died. In another case the father of a rape victim committed suicide as we was not getting any justice.

Rape is an abhorrent crime to say the least. What makes it worst in our land is the fact that it is the victim that is put to trial. Some months back following another spate of rape the administration had come up with astonishing prevention measures: women should not be working after 8pm, and should wear appropriate clothes! This time the local village council leader as come up with an even more astounding solution to rape. He feels early marriage would put a stop to rapes.  “I believe this is happening because our youth are being badly influenced by cinema and television. I think that girls should be married at the age of 16, so that they have their husbands for their sexual needs, and they don’t need to go elsewhere. This way rapes will not occur,“. Voila! Rape over! And that is not all, a political leader of the ruling party goes on to call rapes a conspiracy to defame the government. How that works is beyond my comprehension.

The bottom line is that in our country, where Goddesses are worshipped with passion and devotion women and girls are treated with utter contempt. If they are not killed in the womb then what awaits them is a nothing short of hell. As they have been branded as the keeper of the family’s honour they are divested of any form of freedom. Should anything untoward happen, they are the ones to bear the consequences. This is what the recent stories seem to tell. Rape is the worst form of crime where a man or many give themselves the right to use and abuse of a woman’s body. The tragedy in our land is that the onus of the aberration is squarely placed on the shoulders of the victim. They dress wrong, they watch the wrong movies, they have sexual needs that they need to fulfill being the latest accusation. How does all this apply to a minor who has been gang raped is a question begging to be answered.

It is sad that instead of being condemned by one and all, a reprehensible and depraved crime like rape becomes a political issue. I have no words to describe how it makes me feel. The country has a democratic system and an independent judiciary and the law is in the hands of judiciary and nobody else said one leader. We all know how the law works. We all know how humiliating the process is for the victim. Some countries have chemical castration of rapist. Maybe we too should consider that. It is time that women were treated with the respect and dignity they deserve.