'Getting Rid of a Dark Age'

Natalidita Ningthoukhongjam *

Womenfolk taking out a torch rally at Singjamei, Chingmakha, demanding justice to Brahmacharimayum Neena on 9 May 2013
Pix - Deepak Oinam

"There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle, because we do not live single-issue lives."
- Audre Lorde

Recently, reports of local crime have grown both in number and shock value. They're accordingly greeted with horror and disgust. Pronouncements such as "we're living in a dark age" can often be heard. Others dismiss controversies as easily as they would wave off a fly; "This is nothing", they say. "It will only grow worse from here." Teenaged students are missing; adults are found brutally murdered; toddlers are raped; houses are burnt to the ground. In addition to these, there are several incidents that don't make it to the papers. Fistfights over minor issues. Cases of domestic violence. Though bookended by technological development and baby steps towards globalisation, it is clear that the increase in volume of crime to that of social progress is directly proportional in Manipur.

To say that, in the past, we lived through eras marked by peace and harmony would of course be incorrect. The way our socio-cultural systems function, the time has always been ripe for civil unrest, no matter how small in scale. We are no strangers to losing family members to unsolved murders or mysterious disappearances. Crime against women is not a by-product of today's fledgling technological age. We have braved multiple strikes, bandhs, blockades, rallies, and protests. Nothing, in fact, has changed completely. What we're witnessing is simply the mutation of latent illnesses.

What are the solutions? Let's look at the subject of violence against women. In this case, warnings such as "don't wear revealing clothes" and tips like "carry a pepper-spray" are handed out as freely as paper napkins in a restaurant. What are the causes? "Men are animals, and women should know this and behave accordingly." Such a reaction only perpetuates the crime by putting the responsibility on the victim, and excusing the criminal by deflecting the blame to some primal cause. Evolution is apparently at fault for not doing its work thoroughly.

But evolution wasn't made possible by natural factors only. Human civilisation survived and thrived because each generation learnt to weed out the behaviours that acted against social harmony, while retaining and regulating those that contributed to it. This is why we aren't out in the wild today, conversing in grunts and living in caves.

If we are dragging through a dark age, then how are we coping with it? Carrying a pepper-spray is a short-term measure of protection. You can defend yourself against harassment for one day with a pepper-spray. What about the fact that sexual harassment exists? How do we change that, by covering our bodies from the neck to the toes? By not going out alone after dark and not speaking to strangers? How do we make the idea of needing protection a thing of the past?

Sending one rapist to court will not solve the problem. If that had been the ideal strategy, every woman and child in the country should have been safe after the high-profile Delhi gang-rape case of 2012. Education, on the other hand, is a more effective method. By education, I don't mean literacy, or studying the sciences. It's possible to score more than 90% in the HSLC examination without knowing the difference between the terms "sex" and "gender".

By education, I mean the spreading of knowledge related to the attitudes we have to live with. The ability to understand why it is wrong to objectify women in the first place, to portray them as items of male conquest. The harbouring of empathy towards fellow citizens. The power to exercise and uphold basic human rights, not just recite what the Indian Constitution provides when asked to do so in an interview.

There is a wide gap between the distribution of entertainment media and all the faults it comes with, and that of knowledge in the area of gender sensitisation and sex education. While the former is occurring at an alarming speed, what the boom in internet usage and availability of cable TV, the latter is slugging along like a snail on opium. The need to introduce students to the latter is more urgent than before; parents can start the project at home, and schools authorities and teachers should join hands and take it up and carry it forward, whether they are situated in the city, or in rural villages. Youth committees could organise seminars. The film industry could convey positive messages to its audience.

The instruments are all there, waiting; we just haven't got around to using them productively. Instead, our default reaction to crime has normally been to answer with collective hostility. A female actor got molested last year. The public got up in arms. Curfew was imposed. A journalist lost his life in the mess, while the attacker still remains at large. The body of an adult female was discovered. She had been disfigured by her murderers, who were soon caught by the police. People poured into their residences and went about torching them. Fitting punishment? Mindless cruelty, rather.

Our culture is comfortably settling down into its own passive-aggressive disorder. While we are willing to snarl at the slightest provocation, we prefer not to cultivate a common proactive spirit. The police cannot handle their jobs, we say. The government is a hotbed of corruption, we accuse. The western world is demoralising our youth, we lament. Yet the police can't come to the public's rescue every time. They can patrol the streets, but they cannot prevent the sexual abuse that a five-year-old child may be suffering within the confines of her home.

The government is, well, elected by us. The western world gets too much credit as far as destructive forces go; it didn't invent domestic abuse, for example, and a lot of our men indulge in that without blinking. If we want to exist in a safe, peaceful environment, we have to build it ourselves, and we cannot do it as long as we keep looking for scapegoats.