What we see today is less of governance and more of political rulers of the day indulging in the age-old tactic of divide and rule: set one community or section against other and see them kill each other.
There seems little relief and much hopelessness as violence spreads. Ask citizens surviving; rather trying to survive. Mute spectators, witnessing abuses and tortures and violations, sitting so disadvantaged and distraught and by-passed in these so-called developed times! Couldn’t be a bigger irony!
Barbaric and dark and ruthless. Women stripped naked and raped in strife-torn Manipur. The video surfacing relays what tortures and humiliations and barbarism the two women went through in Manipur, over two months ago.
Mind you, this is a reported rape case. What about other victims of rape and killings and torture, in the un-reported gruesome happenings? There could or would be many more cases of torture and abuse and humiliation and molestations. Nah, sitting in New Delhi, we don’t want to talk of these horrific realities! We seem to be pushing these gruesome realities under the stained carpets! But for how long! Truth has the tendency to come up, one day for sure. Come up in such a forceful way; strong enough to hit even the mighty.
In fact, these rapes remind one of the film ‘Hotel Rwanda’, where as the civil war raged, rape was used as a ‘weapon’ by the two warring tribes of Rwanda to ‘settle’ the other. Disasters and destruction of the worst forms unfolded. Uncontrolled was the horrifying situation, with the powerful politicians flying away Westwards! Nowhere near the masses!
Where is the governance?
Getting back to the tragedies unfolding in Manipur, the very first set of queries that hits is this: Where’s governance? Where are the political heads or the administrative representatives in the state? Couldn’t they have sensed the frenzy and unrest and anger reaching the limits? Couldn’t the vulnerable sections be protected? Why don’t these politicians and sarkari men be questioned and made answerable?
The grim reality is this: What we see today is less of governance and more of political rulers of the day indulging in the age-old tactic of divide and rule. Set one community or tribe or section against the other and then sit back. See them kill and throttle and demolish and destroy each other.
Bluntly put, this present situation in Manipur required immediate and urgent action or dialogues or talks to reach out to the ground situation. Mind you, with earnestness and genuineness involved. But here, the political rulers believe in giving lofty speeches along the strain of ‘All’s okay …see how great and developed we are!’
Weeks and months of people’s unrest in the state and yet there seemed no reaching out to settle the grim issues. Even the naïve do realize that no people’s grievance can be settled by arrests or encounters or razing homes and burning abodes or playing stale political games. One can’t, just can’t, suppress people’s anger by the boot. Yes, one can frighten and threaten the people but for how long?
Catching hold of the foot soldiers is no solution to settling the grievances of the masses. That is mere sham. This is mere mockery that the state has been indulging in. Stuff the foot soldiers in hell-holes and then declare the culprits have been caught or killed in encounter killings and problems are well settled and the situation under control! Really!
The actual and factual political masterminds have got to be arrested, and immediately. Political mafia seems to be spreading out ever so steadily with an agenda to destroy forms, human and otherwise. Till the master minds are not exposed and off their camouflages, people’s grievances cannot be settled with political games surmounting. Serious issues require earnestness and genuineness and not shrewd distractions. Enough of all those stale bogus strategies.
And where are the political rulers of the day? Nowhere in sight. No one out there, who even bothers to travel down to the state and sit with the bruised masses.
There’s no one to hear human cries and pleas and shrieks. Such is the level of ruthlessness spreading out that human forms are raped in public!
Facts and figures
India registered 31,677 cases of rape in 2021. That is, an average of 86 daily, while nearly 49 cases of crime against women were lodged every single hour, according to the latest government report on crimes in the country.
News reports had also stated: Among states, Rajasthan (6,337) was on top of the list followed by Madhya Pradesh (2,947), Maharashtra (2,496) and Uttar Pradesh (2,845), while Delhi recorded 1,250 rape cases in 2021.
The rate of crime (per lakh population) for rape was highest in Rajasthan (16.4) followed by Chandigarh (13.3), Delhi (12.9), Haryana (12.3) and Arunachal Pradesh (11.1). The all-India average rate stood at 4.8, according to the NCRB.
Overall, 4,28,278 cases of ‘crimes against women’ were lodged across the country in 2021, with a rate of crime (per one lakh population) at 64.5. The charge-sheeting rate in such offences was 77.1, the official data showed.
In 2021, the maximum cases of crimes against women were lodged in Uttar Pradesh (56,083) followed by Rajasthan (40,738), Maharashtra (39,526), West Bengal (35,884) and Odisha 31,352, the NCRB showed.
However, in terms of rate of crime against women, Assam (168.3) was on the top of the list for 2021, followed by Delhi (147), Odisha (137), Haryana (119.7) and Telangana (111.2).
Together with the rising rape cases, the latest figures focusing on the rising graph of murders and kidnappings and abductions, are shocking. To quote from news reports:
An average of 82 people were murdered daily across India in 2021, while more than 11 kidnappings were reported every single hour during the year, according to the latest National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) report.
The rate of murder per one lakh population was highest in Jharkhand, while that of kidnapping and abduction in Delhi, NCRB’s ‘Crime in India 2021’ report showed.
A total of 29,272 cases of murder involving 30,132 victims were registered during 2021, showing a marginal increase of 0.3 per cent over 2020 (29,193 cases), showed the NCRB.
While 1,01,707 cases of kidnapping and abduction involving 1,04,149 victims were registered during 2021, showing an increase of 19.9 per cent over 2020 (84,805 cases), nearly a lakh were “recovered” too, during the year, the data showed.
Among the top five states reporting murders were Uttar Pradesh (3,717 cases, 3,825 people), Bihar (2,799 cases, 2,826 people), Maharashtra (2,330 cases, 2,381 people), Madhya Pradesh (2,034 cases, 2075 people) and West Bengal (1,884 cases, 1,919 people).
And every single day there are reported cases of human trafficking, theft of children, abuse of staff and domestic help. Not too sure how many cases go unreported, as fear holds sway among the victims and their families.
This is the condition of us human beings! Surviving in the midst of severe violence and abuse and torture.
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Leaving you with these lines of Faiz Ahmed Faiz – ‘If Pain Could Speak …’
‘If pain could speak /
My pain, a voiceless song ,/
My being a nameless mote./
If only my pain could speak,
I’d know who I am ./’
******
And also these lines of Faiz Ahmed Faiz – We People –
‘Carrying in the hallways of our hearts /
Rows of extinguished lamps/
Bored and fearful of sunlight /
Like the mercurial image of the beloved’s beauty ,/
Hugging our darkness, wrapped up in it./
Our concern – loss and gain /
Beginning and end – /
The same futile curiosity, the same pointless quest /
Fatigued by the greyness of the daily scene/
Grieving over the remembrance of things past /
Enervated by the dread of the future ./
Unquenched thoughts, never satiated;/
Burnt –out tears that never well up in the eyes -/
A harsh pain that never melts into a song,/
Never oozes from the heart’s dark crevices …’
‘
