Kathua Rape Case and 'Breaking India' Forces

A large part of my news and social media feed recently has been filled with reports and opinions related to the brutal rape and murder of an 8-year old girl named Asifa Bano in India. According to the reports:

The little girl, who came from a small village in the Jammu region of  the state of Jammu & Kashmir (J&K), was abducted by some Hindu miscreants. They locked her up inside a nearby temple, and raped her several times for a week before killing her by strangulation. Her battered body was found close to the temple a week after she had gone missing.

Even if you are not an Indian, you are likely to have come across this news, because it got huge international coverage.

The New York Times tweeted (@nytimes) April 11, 2018, "In India, the rape and murder of an 8-year-old girl has led to protests by Hindu nationalists — coming to the defense of the accused.

Barkha Dutt reported in the Washington Post, "Hindu ‘nationalists’ defend accused rapists and shame India."

The case in question had actually happened in early January, so why was the national and international media reporting it only in April? This was supposedly because the "Hindu nationalists" were trying to defend the rapists.

Like most people, I too was gullible to believe these reports. Rape is anyway one of the most heinous crimes possible. But hearing about a little kid getting raped is extremely distressing. The thought that people were defending the rapists of a little kid for reasons of common religious identity was downright sickening.

Media's Falsehoods

However, as I started researching more about the incident, I found that a large part of what the media  has been airing was misleading and even factually incorrect. I won't go into the details of all those inconsistencies, but below is is a quick brief of some of the important ones.

1. The "Hindu nationalists" who according to many media houses were "shamelessly defending the rapists" were actually demanding justice for the Asifa. In fact, in every interview that I have seen of these protesters, they always emphasized that they want the true rapists to be punished, and in the severest terms possible, irrespective of what religion they belonged to. Unfortunately, the partisan media houses continue to paint a different narrative.
2. The "Hindu nationalists" were simply demanding that the case be transferred from the Special Investigation Team (SIT) appointed by the state government to the Central Bureau of Investigation (or CBI; this is the equivalent of FBI in USA). You can see this in the Bandh call given by the Hindu Ekta Manch in the first week of March. These "Hindu Nationalists" observed that SIT was not conducting a fair investigation, and was instead harassing all Hindus living in the vicinity, to the extent that many Hindu families had been forced to leave their villages. It certainly did not help that the SIT was also headed by a cop who had himself been accused of rape and murder in the past and had the reputation of being sympathetic to Kashmir separatists. CBI investigation has always been of much better quality than that of local police investigations, so how does demanding CBI investigation constitute to supporting rapists?
3. According to the charge sheet filed by the SIT, the accused kept and raped the kidnapped girl in a village temple. However, as can be seen in this report, this seems impossible, because the temple was a small one-room building that was common to three different villages. That is the reason it had three doors in three different directions to allow villagers from the different villages to visit it at anytime of the day. How could a girl have been kept captive for a week in a small temple that was frequented daily by Hindus from local villages? Also, as pointed out in this video, a few meters away from where the body of the girl was found started deep forests. Why would the culprits throw the body of the girl close to the temple when they could have safely dumped the body in deeper forest?
• For those who are not from India or are unfamiliar with Hindu traditions, it should be noted that Hindu temples aren't just visited on any one particular day of the week--as happens with Christian churches, for example. Since temples are frequented by devotees everyday of the week, it is difficult to imagine how no one noticed the poor girl if she had been locked up in this small temple. 

I stumbled on this picture while I was researching for this article. See how large parts of Kashmir (that occupied by Pakistan) have been cut off in this depiction of India's map? So have we Indians now given up our claim on POK? Picture Credit: https://www.newsbugz.com/kathua-rape-case/

Many authors have written before about the Breaking India forces that exist within certain sections of the Indian media. I too had observed the divisive reporting of of some media personalities, but I had always given them the benefit of doubt. For example, I reasoned may be these journalists were just overenthusiastic when they "inadvertently" reported on the locations of our soldiers during the Kargil War on live television, thereby endangering the lives of our soldiers. Similarly, may be the Lutyen's media was supporting the leftist JNU students' slogan of "Bharat Tere Tukde Honge (India, may you be broken into fragments)" because they genuinely believed in the freedom of speech. I even thought that they never deliberately intended to denigrate Hinduism when they started using the revered word  of Bhakt (a Hindu devotee) derogatorily. However, given the deliberately misleading way that some media houses and personalities have covered the Kathua rape case, now I have no doubt in my mind that the Breaking India and Shaming Hindu forces are real. Sadly, this partisan media is also winning, at least going by the sentiments expressed on Social Media by some of my friends. People are generally gullible, so easily fall prey to the manipulative tactics used by these media powerhouses. But more on that in the next post.

...To be continued.

What's wrong with Papon's kiss and the people who came in support of him?

Most Indian readers of my blog would be aware of the kiss controversy that erupted last week when Papon, a 42-year old Bollywood singer, kissed the lips of an 12-year old girl. The girl was a contestant on a music show where Papon is a judge. The kissing incident happened off-stage, I believe in Papon's vanity van where the contestants and some crew members of the show were celebrating the festival of Holi.

I had read about this incident in news but hadn't given much importance to it, because I am not a big fan of celebrity gossip news. In fact, one of my pet peeve is that Google Now feeds me with a disproportionate amount of celebrity news that I don't care much about. Like most other celebrity news that come my way, I had simply read the headlines but hadn't bothered to find details about the incident. However, today I stumbled on the original video of the incident, and watching it made me very angry.

First things first, I strongly condemn Papon's behavior, but even before I discuss the reasons behind it, I must acknowledge that both the girl and her parents have come in support of Papon on this issue. You can watch their response to the incident in the last video shared in this blog post.

Why Papon's behavior needs to be condemned?

1) A potential case of workplace sexual harassment.  There is a big movement going on around the world (including India) over the last several months called the #MeToo movement, where thousands of people have voluntarily shared their experience of how they were sexually harassed in the workplace. I see the kissing incident also as a potential case of workplace sexual harassment, because it happened in the context of the workplace and involved touching someone in a way that goes beyond the acceptable norms within a society.

People have been arguing that the intentions of Papon were good and that he is a good man, which may all be true, but those are no excuses for he kissing somebody else's kid. Papon has explained his behavior by claiming that he is an "emotionally expressive person" and that 's how he expresses his emotions with everybody. My point is that your intentions may all be good, but you could still be accused of sexual harassment, because it can easily be perceived as sexual harassment, especially when you pull a kid's face towards yourself and plant a kiss on her lips. No excuse of you being an "emotionally expressive person" is going to prevent you from being sued for sexual harassment.

2) Kids can't give consent. To be fair to Papon, you could argue that this was a first-time incident (at least, as far as we know). He did not continue to "express his emotions physically" after people expressed their displeasure about it. Some people don't consider a behavior harassment if the victim didn't object to the perpetrator's behavior. In other words, a behavior is seen as harassment only if the perpetrator persists despite the victim's objection. However, the problem with this argument is that kids are unable to give consent and express their displeasure assertively. That is the very reason we have laws against statutory rape and child marriage. In fact, even adults find it difficult to be assertive, especially when they are in low power situations of the workplace. That is the reason I condemn Papon's behavior irrespective of who have come in support of him.

3) Kids are a vulnerable. They need our protection. We need to teach them about "good" and "bad" touch instead of justifying a potential perpetrator's behavior. What angered me most about the incident was not so much the action of Papon (although it did, and I have already explained that). It was also not the silence of the otherwise vocal human rights conscious Bollywood celebrities. What upset me the most about the incident was the mindless way some people came in support of Papon's actions. Below are some examples.

In the first video that I shared on this post, you see some Bollywood heroine (I don't know her name; let me know if you do) trivializing the incident completely by disparaging the people who filed a legal case against Papon. Specifically, she said, "Those who have filed a legal case against Papon are the kind of good-for-nothing people who have nothing better to do." Unfortunately, this is a common strategy employed by some people. Since they can't argue against your arguments, they will simply put you down.

In another article I found, a Bollywood lyricist coming in support of Papon by calling the incident an "unfortunate camera angle and a goofed-up peck-in the cheek gesture." Interestingly, Papon has also given the same "unfortunate camera angle" excuse. Again, there may be some truth in the "unfortunate camera angle" argument, but still what right does an outsider have to even kiss the cheek of a 12 year old girl?

We see in the below video, actress Dia Mirza indirectly supporting Papon by first claiming that she can't comment on the incident because she doesn't know much about it, but then going on to exalt Papon to the heights of a saint.

The most disgusting video: Unfortunately, the worst case of putting a potential perpetrator on the pedestal of God was done not by some outsider but by the girl's parents and the parents of some other contestants. You can see that in below video. They literally say several times, "Papon Sir is like God! How can people even think about this God in such lowly terms?" They also put words in the mouth of the girl by prompting her to speak highly of "Papon Sir" when she is speaking in the video..

The reason I found this video the most disgusting is because parents are supposed to protect their children. They are not supposed to legitimize an adult's inappropriate behavior towards their child. Again, to be fair towards these parents, may be they are very simple-minded people who can't help but see the best in everyone. However, I can never condone such behavior if anyone acted in a similar way towards my nieces or nephews, for example.

Many of my friends know how fond I am of my little nieces and nephews. But despite being their beloved uncle, I have never kissed them on their lips, not even when they were toddlers. There are certain boundaries that should always be respected. To express your love for somebody you don't have to pull them and kiss them.

Thankfully, kids in India are now being taught about the differences between a good touch and bad touch. I came to know about it just two weeks ago when my five-year old nephew in his childlike excitement shared with me on phone all the new things that he had learnt in school that day. One of those things was about the difference between good touch and bad touch. Now, that gives me hope for the future generation of the world... We should certainly not destroy children's innocence, but in the name of protecting innocence we should also not endanger children's lives by making them believe that it is alright for anyone to touch them inappropriately.