Kolkata Rape Case: Thoughts by a Fatigued Feminist
Image: PTI
The last few days have been exhausting. I am tired of reading endless posts on Instagram, of the dirty politics around rape and of the hopelessness of it all. What defeats me is not the fatigue that comes with being a woman and a feminist – today, I am engulfed by the rage that follows it. It is a rage reserved for those who proclaim to care about women’s safety.
It is the selective outrage of the Indian middle class that holds a special place in my feminist rage.
A senior post graduate doctor was brutally raped and murdered at her workplace in Kolkata. And cue the public rage. Yes, the outrage is essential. Thousands are on the streets attempting to reclaim the night. I remember a similar outrage after the Nirbhaya case in 2012 and I can’t help but feel that every few years, we chew in a heinous rape and spit out a national outrage that vanquishes into the night with the next breaking news. The middle class treats each outrage-worthy rape as an exception. The government promptly proposes amended laws and new bills to placate the fuming masses.
When I was 15, shortly after Nirbhaya’s rape and murder, I got in an argument with a boy from my class. He confidently threatened to “do the same to you as Nirbhaya” if I didn’t shut up.
That night, glued to the TV, I nodded my head naively as politicians promised the death penalty of the convicts. “Kill these bastards”, my father shouted. I felt reassured.
Seven years later, another man attempted to act on that boy’s threat. He wasn’t deterred by the death penalty, or the increased 10 year jail sentence. At 15, the raging middle class reassured me that they would protest on the streets to keep women safe. That was 12 years ago. Everyone went back home, shut their doors, and pretended that sexual violence happened in homes that were not theirs. Their apathy enforced my silence, as I am sure it did many others.
In India, women’s bodies, particularly a certain kind of woman’s body, exist in a no man's land. First, our bodies are sexually harassed, assaulted or violated in varying degrees. The everyday violence preempts women to distance ourselves from the shame our bodies bring – we either veil, strategise or join the patriarchy to keep safe. On the other hand, those who support with sporadic rage treat rape as the pinnacle of national shame. Their collective outrage garlands rape as the bane of society, an evil that must be castrated off our social body. When the middle class comes together to eradicate rape – an exceptional, henious crime – they call for justice with comparable violence. Castration and death penalty are routinely proposed and debated. Either way, women remain alienated – first from their own bodies at an everyday level and then from the sympathy of the public when outrage occurs. Their sympathy only reaches women when they become the perfect victim – a dead one.
The Kolkata rape case has shown me that much of our outrage today, from the deluge of stories and posts, is selective and performative. Early years of social media movements (#MeToo) filled me with a sense of solidarity and hope. Today, I know the virality of social media activism is embedded in an algorithm of engagement where we are one scroll away from the laughing track of gag reels. The tech induced amnesia quickly lures us back into our ‘normal’ – away from such exceptional crimes and criminals.
Another incident – Kathua/Kolkata/Hathras/Nirbhaya – and we are enraged again. When the fleeting rage of scattered minds call for change, they are satiated with a new bill to assuage the wound. Finally, the moral public absconds their collective shame with legal assurance and the government churns the bureaucratic machine.
On normal, quiet days, clogs in the institutional wheels move everyday harassment claims without an audience. Violence against ‘bad victims’, i.e., Dalit, trans, bahujan or poor women is normal, only gruesome rape of upper caste, middle class women is not, particularly when an audience arrives. Voices are measured and heard on the basis of an imagined audience, state spurs into action when ‘valued’ voices cross an exceedingly high threshold and spark an outrage. Government officials routinely tow this unspoken line.
We know people in the government do not exist in a vacuum. We know that being embedded within a patriarchal culture, the nexus of power and patriarchy means they are implicated in the violent outcomes of such culture. I am urged to ask – does the public’s reliance on dubious government leaders and state agents imply a systemic mortification of women’s bodies or just plain ignorance?
If we expect such interventions to deter criminals with the fear of law, I wonder: fear of whom? Is it the fear of the police, who produce botched post mortem reports and speed up last rites of victim’s bodies (Hathras)? Or is it the fear of prison, where high profile rapists are granted unusually frequent furloughs (Baba Ram Rahim)? Or is it the fear of the judiciary, who advise victims to marry rapists to secure a life without shame (Justice Sharad Bobde)?
The convicts of Nirbhaya were hanged in 2020. Yet, the burden of fear aligns with the status quo – women are afraid of being raped more than men are of raping us.
Indians calling for changes in the law must understand that our problem is not just legal – its cultural, social and everyday. Calling rape an exception is a problem. Rape is not an exception, it is happening everyday, and it is an outcome of a rape culture that is deeply embedded into our daily life. The spectrum of violence between eve teasing and rape does not have a vacuum in between, rape is not the exception to an otherwise just society. Rape does not happen despite of laws, it happens systemically in a society where the rule of law is regularly flouted. In a society where power supersedes the rule of law, where cult following and idolisation of larger than life God men is embedded in a hierarchy of violence. Where Dalit, muslim, poor women always reside at the bottom, rape is an outcome of violent oppression. And your selective outrage is going to do nothing to change that.
Understanding how and why sexual violence occurs should not be a cause and effect issue – it is embedded in the everyday life and power struggle that women are always losing. I wonder if a prerequisite for safety could be our ability to organise communities rather than relying on institutions that have routinely failed us. In a recent anti-fascist protest in London, I heard the phrase ‘community keeps us safe’. And that is something we need to work on.
In a country where a sense of community or localised action is rapidly shrinking, where women can voice their opinions only on social media and nowhere else, a voice, driven by social media algorithms, is only reaching audiences that choose to listen to it. Maybe, it's about time we put our phones down and talk. And no, not on social media or podcasts or on the comment sections, but real talk. Facing each other, sharing our grief and anger about the state of affairs. Let’s rage in the streets and allow the magnitude of our hurt to absorb us and others. Maybe if we feel our rage and embody it, it circulates across the social body and resists the amnesia that deters us.
I am fatigued with social media activism. It limits itself at dopamine hits and moral brownie points, and my outrage, your outrage, needs to go beyond it. Posting on social media will not soothe your pain or subside your rage. Your rage will simmer in the backdrop, and the next time you see your father ask your mother to cook in the smouldering heat as he sits in AC, your rage, overwhelmed by the thousand voices of gag reels, will not be equipped with a voice to challenge it. You will fall silent. I sincerely believe that no matter how many stories or reels you share, a single conversation will always have more power than fleeting digital activism. I know it is easy to jump on the bandwagon of social justice trends, but our scattered attention neither helps the victims nor prevents future ones.
We need to go beyond the performance of politics, sustain our outrage and transform it into meaningful pressure on those in power. If we are embedded in real life community, with real conversations, actions and consequences (not just social media amnesia), we reduce the garb of anonymity that predators can hide in. Knowledge, connection and a shared reality creates an alternative environment where everyday violation has an large audience and thus, increased accountability.
And yes, ofcourse. It’s about time we believe women. At a time when women are systematically denied safety and justice, believing them helps build solidarity and courage, and we desperately need it.
I dream of a rage I am unable to forget, that consumes my fatigue and grants me hope. I dream of raging within my RWA, at aunties who shame us, men who objectify us and powerful people who ignore us. I dream of a feminist rage that does not die down like every other movement that preceded it.
