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As the Kolkata Park Street case shows, rape victims in India are asked to produce character certificates before they will be taken seriously.
The recent Park street case in Kolkata where a woman alleged that she was raped inside a car after being accompanied by some men from a nightclub, demonstrates once again what we’v always known: If you get raped, you’re likely to be blamed for it.
In this case, the woman went to a nightclub (GASP!), had alcohol (cue bigger GASP!) and had met the alleged rapists before she was attacked by them were all used as sticks to beat her with.
In other words, she was not the sati-savitri sitting at home and attacked by armed intruders breaking in, which is the only sort of victim one is allowed to sympathise with (and even there, someone will point out that she didn’t have enough locks on her door). In this case, that the lady had filed her complaint 4 days after the event was again stirred up. Given the way the police treated her to begin with, is it surprising that citizens hesitate to file complaints? Again, and again, women who complain are asked to produce character certificates before they will be taken seriously.
The fact that this state happens to be run by a female Chief Minister at present, made no difference whatsoever. I suppose it is too much to expect that there will be some sort of empathy just because of gender; on the contrary, the CM wasted no time in alleging that the woman had cooked up the incident to “malign” her government.
We know for a fact that crimes against women happen everywhere – inside homes, on busy streets and deserted ones, inside so-called exclusive locations like pubs and nightclubs, during the day and at night. Why, girls have been picked up from places as busy as a communal water filling spot.
If anyone should know this better, is is the police who have clear records of and experience with where crimes happen. Yet, again and again, police forces in this country persist in first launching an investigation of the victim’s character rather than into the mechanism of the crime.
In this case, the victim’s tenaciousness in pursuing the case, her refusal to bow down to any so-called sense of shame in bringing such matters to light, and the media’s persistence in following it up have helped to keep the pressure up on the police. Could you imagine if a similiar crime had happened far from a metro and away from media attention, with a victim who agreed to believe that she had asked for it?
Pic credit: Man Alive! (This image of a protestor at a Slutwalk protest in Manchester, UK has been used under a Creative Commons license)
Founder & Chief Editor of Women's Web, Aparna believes in the power of ideas and conversations to create change. She has been writing since she was ten. In another life, she used to be read more...
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What I loved was how there is so much in the movie of the SRK we have known, and also a totally new star. The gestures, the smile, the wit and the charisma are all too familiar, but you also witness a rawness, an edginess.
When a movie that got the entire nation in a twist – for the right and wrong reasons – hits the theatres, there is bound to be noise. From ‘I am going to watch it – first day first show’ to ‘Boycott the movie and make it a flop’, social media has been a furore of posts.
Let me get one thing straight here – I did not watch Pathaan to make a statement or to simply rebel as people would put it. I went to watch it for the sheer pleasure of witnessing my favourite superstar in all his glory being what he is best at being – his magnificent self. Because when it comes to screen presence, he burns it, melts it and then resurrects it as well like no other. Because when it comes to style and passion, he owns it like a boss. Because SRK is, in a way, my last connecting point to the girl that I once was. Though I have evolved into so many more things over the years, I don’t think I am ready to let go of that girl fully yet.
There is no elephant in the room really here because it’s a fact that Bollywood has a lot of cleaning up to do. Calling out on all the problematic aspects of the industry is important and in doing that, maintaining objectivity is also equally imperative. I went for Pathaan for entertainment and got more than I had hoped for. It is a clever, slick, witty, brilliantly packaged action movie that delivers what it promises to. Logic definitely goes flying out of the window at times and some scenes will make you go ‘kuch bhi’ , but the screenplay clearly reminds you that you knew all along what you were in for. The action sequences are lavish and someone like me who is not exactly a fan of this genre was also mind blown.
When Jaya Bachchan speaks her mind in public she is often accused of being brusque and even abrasive. Can we think of her prodigious talent and all the bitter pills she has had to swallow over the years?
A couple of days ago, a short clip of a 1998 interview of Jaya and Amitabh Bachchan resurfaced on social media. In this episode of the Simi Grewal chat show, at about the 23-minute mark, Jaya lists her husband’s priorities: one, parents, two kids, then wife. Then she corrects herself: his profession – and perhaps someone else – ranks above her as a wife.
Amitabh looks visibly uncomfortable at this unstated but unambiguous reference to his rather well-publicised affair with co-star Rekha back in the day.
Watching the classic film Abhimaan some years ago, one scene really stayed with me. It was something Brajeshwarlal (David’s character) says in troubled tones during the song tere mere milan ki yeh raina. He says something to the effect that Uma (Jaya Bhaduri’s character) is more talented than Subir (Amitabh Bachchan’s character) and that this was a problem since society teaches us that men are superior to women.
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