Keep politics out of the fight for women’s safety

The petition points to 11 incidents of sexual violence. These include the rape and murder of two women working in a car wash in Imphal; two students of the Nightingale Nursing Institute at Porompat where the men shouted, “Rape her, torture her”; the finding of a semi-charred, naked body of a 45-year-old woman by a pastor at Pheitaiching village; and the abduction and gang-rape of an 18-year-old on May 15.

Why are these incidents different from the sexual violence in the rest of the country? Because in all cases, the victims are Kuki-Zo women, singled out and brutalized by a mob of Meitei men. Various United Nations organisations and even our penal code recognize these as separate crimes under section 376(2)(g).

The CJI’s remarks were directed at Bansuri Swaraj and took me back to her mother’s anguish in Parliament over the December 2012 gang rape. I did not agree with Sushma Swaraj’s statement that even if the 23-year-old student had somehow survived her grievous injuries it would be as a zinda laash (living corpse). But, there was no denying her angst.

Yet, the two crimes, a decade apart, don’t compare. That was a horrific crime against a young student, its brutality unprecedented at the time, on the streets of the capital of India.

This is the selective targeting of Kuki-Zo women under the watch, and probable complicity, of the police that reports to a Meitei chief minister in a state where mobs have successfully looted government armouries and are armed to the teeth. To quote the CJI, there has been “a complete breakdown of constitutional machinery”.

If at all a comparison is to be made it is with Bilkis Bano whose petition challenging the remission granted to the 11 men who raped her and killed her family members during the 2002 Gujarat riots is pending with the apex court.

There’s another difference in the decade since 2013. We have now come to a sorry pass where sexual violence against women and girls is routine, but our condemnation of it is calibrated by our political inclinations. So the bar association at Kathua can take out a demonstration in favour of now-convicted rapists and murderers. And the rape and murder of a five-year-old child in Kerala becomes an occasion for the BJP to mock at the cracks within the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (I.N.D.I.A.) alliance with the Congress criticising the state government.

Sexual violence is the tragic reality of our country. But to choose our outrage and anger to suit a political agenda signals the loss of our moral compass. The Supreme Court’s intervention and unambiguous comments are welcome. But they may not be enough to salvage our broken conscience.

Namita Bhandare writes on gender. The views expressed are personal