India has been witnessing a horrific spate of child rapes. Last month, news broke of an eight-year-old girl who was tortured, gang-raped and killed in Kathua, Jammu and Kashmir. About the same time, another rape of a minor girl came to light — allegedly by a lawmaker belonging to the ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), in Unnao in the state of Uttar Pradesh (UP). Both crimes sparked widespread outrage and there were street protests demanding justice for the victims.
In the midst of this nationwide outcry, one man — a national icon — made an astonishing statement. At a promotional event for his latest film 102 Not Out, Amitabh Bachchan, arguably Bollywood’s most storied actor, was asked about what he thought of the Kathua and Unnao rapes. Bachchan replied: “I feel nauseated to talk about this issue. Don’t bring up this issue.”
To be sure, the rape of young girls is a sickening issue. What is even more appalling is that such cases are rising exponentially. Government data show that between 2015 and 2016, the incidence of child rape has gone up by 82 per cent. But should we be duly appalled and then look away, as Bachchan seemed to want to do? Is the rape of children some sort of a skeleton in our national cupboard to be kept hidden from view lest we feel discomfited?
Bachchan’s unwillingness to talk about the rape of little girls — some as young as eight months — is, in fact, braided with irony. The actor happens to be the brand ambassador of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s much-vaunted Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao (Save the Daughter, Educate the Daughter) programme for the girl child. His silence on the sexual assault of legions of such daughters is therefore odd. Moreover, in the 2016 film Pink, Bachchan plays the role of a grizzled lawyer who declaims passionately on the issue of consent and asserts that when a woman says “no” she means just that — “no”. It’s a fact that patriarchy’s entitled boys and men often choose to ignore, and that it was stirringly enunciated by a character played by none other than Bachchan, a person of huge standing and star power, was considered to be particularly significant.
However, the actor’s response to the Kathua and Unnao rapes not only takes the shine off his role as brand ambassador of a pro-girl child scheme or that of a feminist lawyer in a film. His grandiose revulsion, his wish to treat these terrible crimes as unmentionables, is squarely in the tradition of the conspiracy of silence and denial that surrounds rape. It is symptomatic of patriarchy closing its ranks to sweep such offences under the carpet.
Indeed, the firestorm of outrage that the Kathua and Unnao rapes touched off was due in large part to the fact that in both cases, the accused were sought to be shielded — by two BJP ministers in the Jammu and Kashmir government and by members of the BJP in UP. Both were text book examples of patriarchy out in full battle gear to protect its own. When it comes to crimes against women, denial is patriarchy’s stock-in-trade. And the denial takes myriad forms — “they didn’t do it”, “it didn’t happen”, or “so what if it happened?”
Hence BJP lawmaker Surendra Singh’s bizarre assertion in the wake of the Unnao rape: “No one can rape a mother of three children. It is not possible, this is a conspiracy against him.” Hence BJP central minister Santosh Gangwar’s dismissive comment: “In a nation as big as India, one or two incidents of rape should not be hyped.” Hence too the litany of excuses, victim-shaming, and rank misogyny routinely let loose by certain members of the powers-that-be each time the subject of rape comes up.
An oppressor’s biggest enabler is the silence of the oppressed. Draw the curtain of silence on domestic violence, on marital rape, and you may never need to stop the brutality. Intimidate a raped woman or child into silence and the rapist can go scot free. The Indian government responded to the public fury over Kathua and Unnao by changing the law to award the death penalty for the rape of children below 12 years. But the real challenge against rape is not to make the law more stringent. The real challenge is to push back against patriarchy and its brutish, neanderthal attitudes. It is to make it understand that India’s women and girls will no longer suffer sexual violence in silence. That every offender will be called out and held accountable. And that the shame is not on those who are raped but on the filth who rape them.
Last week, an Indian trial court sentenced self-styled godman Asaram Bapu to jail for life for raping a 16-year-old girl at his so-called hermitage in Jodhpur, Rajasthan, in 2013. The rape survivor and her parents fought the case braving untold threats and intimidation from the Baba’s minions. They chose not to be silent.
Yes, rape is ugly. The rape of a child doubly so. However, you cannot address India’s terrible heart of darkness by ignoring it. It is a pity that an influential public figure like Bachchan wants to do just that.
Shuma Raha is a senior journalist based in Delhi.
