By Praful Bidwai
Jalgaon, an undistinguished sleepy dusty town in northern Maharashtra (population 2.5 lakhs), has been suddenly thrust into the limelight by a sex scandal. ‘The dimensions of the scandal, as Reported by police officials, are Staggering: the racket has in volleyed between 300 and 500 women and has been running for an estimated five to 12 years. *
The women, many of them Schoolgirls and minors. And some time tortured into respectable middle class families, was tricked, drugged blackmailed and sometimes tortured into sleeping with powerful businessmen and professionals politicians and depraved Criminals. The location of the facet featured the town’s better known hotels and farmhouses. And the methods included trapping the ‘women into compromised postures, photographing and videotaping sexual acts involving them: ‘md then using the evidence to abuse them sexually. 2 The revelation that no young woman could be safe in Jalgaon has sent shock waves through Maharashtra’s society; Jalgaon is the name of a new syndrome, at the heart. Of which lie male insecurity, lust and sexual exploitation. It has also become a political issue and the subject of a vigorous debate. In response to the debate, the government has acted but done 100 little, 100 late. The impression i$ gaining ground that it is attempting 2 damage control exercise to protect powerful Congress and Shiv Sena politicians. A recent police statement claiming “only 47” women were involved has only stoked public suspicions. Jalgaon cries out for a high-powered, concentrated effort to unearth and methodically document precisely what happened, This Must involve counseling and confidence-building so that the victims feel encouraged to tell the truth, without fear that they will be socially stigmatized, Ideally, the effort should be undertaken by an independent commission of concerned citizens, psychologists and sociologists, assisted by officials, which analyses the root cause of the syndrome.
Jalgaon is important, what happened there could happen anywhere; indeed it may already be happening. The mix of social conditions, men’s lust for power through sexual domination of women, and the racketeer politician criminal nexus is not unique to the town.
Jalgaon is only the latest case of Sexual violence against women in Maharashtra, albeit of a premeditated, organized variety. In the last four years alone, at least half a dozen young women have been killed by possessive, insecure young men out of a sense of frustration and’ rejection. The most dramatic of these, in 1990, involved 16 year old Rinku Patil in Ulhasnagar, an industrial suburb of Bombay. Rinku, who was once friendly with Haresh Patel, later moved away from him. Haresh, unable to cope with the sense of being jilted marched with gun wielding goons into a classroom where Rinku was writing her 10th Standard paper, poured kerosene over her and burned her alive yen as the police watched.
No less horrifying was the case of Janhavi rupe, a student at Punch’s prestigious Fergusson College, in 1993. Her deeply insecure boyfriend and classmate killed her ‘will a shotgun and then shot him. In 1991, in Aurangabad, Veena Deshmukh, a bright young woman, who had distinguished herself as a cricketer, fell victim to Pramod Rajhans, to whom she was engaged. Out of a savage sense of jealousy, Pramod decided to kill her. He first got her to sign a voluntary suicide note, lured her to go. Out on a picnic with him on his. Two-wheeler and even persuaded her to bring a can of petrol, A short while Later, he poured the petrol over Veena and set her on fire. Such examples can be multiplied; each case involves intense male Jealousy; a huge ego insensitive to the woman’s needs and desires; suspicion of her fidelity; an all-consuming desire to brutalize her.
Remarkably, these events have occurred in a state that has a long history of social reform, was a pioneer in women’s education, and boasts of Mahatma Phule, Shahu Maharaj, Dhondo Keshav Karve and. Ambedkar. Typically, in Maharashtra, young women routinely wear skirts and feel safer riding mopeds and bicycles than in the conservative North. But, evidently, the liberal tradition there is weak and can evaporate easily under the pressure of hostile forces.
Elsewhere in the country, the general situation of women seven grimmer, In U.P. and Bihar, where three fourths of all women are illiterate and where male chauvinism runs deep, it is grossly unsafe for women to go out. Young men routinely greet their women colleagues with lewd gestures and obscene proposals.
Sexual frustration is pervasive among young men, and sexual gratification of a normal, healthy kind a rarity. The result is the prevalence of smut ex prickly suggestive gestures, scorch for aggressive physical contact with women, and outright harassment.
Women figure here as mere objects, to be possessed and used. A. colossal amount of energy is wasted in thinking about sex, fantasizing about women, plotting 10 achieve libidinous pleasure. Men. Like to see themselves in aggressive, macho roles. Like men, women too are cast into reassigned roles and stereotypes. This is equally true of Alwaye or Allahabad, Calcutta or Calicut, Jamnagar or Jalpaiguri, Madurai or Moradabad, New Delhi or Nagercoil. Only the forms of fantasy vary, this growing concern with sex has little todo with self-discovery, or free, liberal, matter of fact, mature, liberated attitudes. Rather, it is obsessive-compulsive, a fetish, and a stress causing burden. It is also sexist and biased against women. Instead of liberating young people’s creative energies, it shackles them. It is emotionally impoverishing, inequality generating and profoundly destructive.
‘The new sexual obsession has its roots in three phenomena. First is the conservative, male supremacist and sexually repressive nature of this society which has traditionally permitted such obnoxious Practices as female infanticide, elitoreetomy and sati, and which continues 10 practice vicious gender discrimination to the point of eliminating women; witness the decline of the sex ratio from 972 to 929 per thousand, as compared to 1040 globally.
Secondly, there is the rampant growth of blatant hedonism, which sees sensual pleasure as an end in. itself, and which is vigorously promoted through satellite TV, cinema and the booming porn business, There is a complete disjunction between images in seminude in these, and drab, prosaic reality, which does not even permit peripheral Sexual contact.
And, thirdly, there has been a sudden implosion in the nineties of 2 new, aggressiveo” consumerist culture and macho values of achievement, of selfishness and greed, of worship of money, in conf—mlity with the ideological baggage sustaining our new economic policy. This culture involves treating everything, including sex, as a commodity and measures success in terms of maximizing the consumption of commodities.
The belligerent, I get what I want; yuppie role model is closely tied up with a one-sided, violent view of sexuality as a symbol of power, involving the subjugation of women. In some sense, the chickens of our neoliberal rightwing turn in economic policy and social values tire coming home to roost. Unless we take corrective steps, more and more Jalguons are liable to happen.
Is there an alternative? Short of a radical change in social perceptions and values, all we can think of is an effort to promote sex education, coed institutions, free, healthy, normal contact between boys and girls. open classroom discussion of sexual problems to demystify sex, compulsory Lessons in ethics to inculcate respect for gender justice and women’s rights, good, high-quality entertainment, 4 policy on culture which encourages good popular cinema and TV, and serious measures against sexual harassment. There is more need here for voluntary citizen action and education than state level effort, as citizens, we owe this to ourselves and to our future generations.
Article extracted from this publication >> September 2, 1994
