India's daughter- analysing the Outrage

Indias is seething with outrage, again. Perhaps justifiably so.As if the savagery of the brutalisation was not enough, it is now followed by crude justifications. The outrage ,therefore does not surprise. What does surprise though, is the expression that is being given to this outrage. It is equally disturbing, if not more.  It reinforces the very thought that has provoked this outrage. It is guilty of the very notion that this outrage seeks to uproot. It betrays,and ironically so, the very revolution this outrage intends to bring about.

When the views of one of the accused found its way out in to the wider public, a sense of rage engulfed the nation. And this rage found expression in print, visual and on social media platforms. Since social media is the only platform which allows the common among the privileged(almost 95% of Indians do not have access to social media)to air their expression in its pristine(read unedited) form, it is perhaps the best way to understand what India's 'educated' class thinks. One thing that the analysis pretty much proves beyond doubt is that patriarchy-in many ways the root cause of violence against women , is deeply engrained in the Indian psyche irrespective of gender. Consider this. The most common expression of the outrage was why doesn't the accused who aired these views go and do the same to his sister or his mother(this or some related expression where the underlying thought was the same). And this view was widely expressed by both genders. While one may argue that it was not meant in the literal sense, it is nobody's case that it does reflect a thought process which does not outrightly reject such notions at its very inception. What difference is in the view held by the convict and you-the outraged, if at the end of it all the treatment that is meted out to women is the same . Or was the outrage just because what was so far said in private, what each one of us has at some point and frequently at that heard , has now been said in public. In any case we as a nation are adept in being infuriated when thoughts and actions which are quite commonplace in private are as much as even euphemistically mentioned in public. 

It is therefore important to analyse our outrage, to measure our words and to weigh in our expressions .Who are we fooling by being outraged, by pretending to have evolved out of our patriarchal mindsets. None, but ourselves. As for outrage, it is more than necessary. Not because she was my sister,not because she was my mother, not because she was a woman, but because she was a human being, a human being full of life. And if we are not outraged by this , perhaps we have ceased being human,perhaps we have ceased living itself.

LET THE DEAD BURY THEIR OWN DEAD......