Tipster Scherezade alerts us to a disturbing story out of Guwahati, about a protest gone horribly awry:
Assam was rocked by violence during Saturday’s protests by tribals backed by the All Assam Adivasi Students’ Association (AAASA) students when locals brutally beat them up resulting in at least one death and over 250 people getting injured.
But not only were the Adivasi students beaten up but the women protesters were stripped and molested by the residents of Guwahati.
A local Assamese businessman Ratul Burman was seen attacking a woman after she was stripped during clashes on Saturday. Burman and two others have been arrested. Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi has announced a Rs 1 lakh compensation to the woman.
The Chief Minister has indicated that he wants Burman to receive the “maximum punishment” for his role in this assault. More than 250 people were injured in Saturday’s protests.
In more incidents of violence in Assam two more people have been killed, one of them shot in firing by the army.
Army was called in to stage flag marches in Guwahati on Saturday evening after Adivasi students went on the rampage, looting shops and burning vehicles in Assam’s capital city.
The cause of the protest? A desire for Scheduled Tribe status.
In her tip, Scherezade says:
Residents beat up women who were a part of the All Assam Adivasi Students’ Association (AAASA). Local media has been circulating videos of a businessman constantly hitting a naked woman in the genitals with his boots and beating her with a wooden plank. Heart-breaking stuff. Stories like these almost never catch the eye of the larger(read: western) media. People I know of, who were witness to this horrendous atrocity lie injured in a hospital. It’s tragic.
::
Title is a quote from Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi, about Burman’s violent assault on the women in the photograph.
One disturbing trend is how common violent action is/is becoming as a “means” of political protest or action. Cuts across all parties and all groups.
Hey Kush Tandon, don’t stop commenting on my account. I’ve always avoided frat-like groups because I’ve always had some kind of unjustified aversion to them, so I had no idea that things routinely got that bad. (And, ever so predictable, here comes the Frat Defense Committee…)
spidy @ 42,
This retaliatory attitude amongst people in the Indian subcontinent is very great. I have also seen people don’t like criticism of their action also very much. What is the psychology behind that ? I feel as acommunity aren’t the Indians most voilent – look at ragging, domestic voilence, political voilence etc. etc. and forget all this what about the parent/teachers beating children at home and school. That doesn’t happen everywhere.
Amit @29
I take exception to this comment. His movies are excellent and subtle portrayal of reality.
I think the crux of the matter is that people in the sub-continent need to respect humanity and vent their anger in more refined, democratic ways.
Hierarchies and established pecking orders are very rigidly maintained in Indian culture. It’s perfectly acceptable for a man to beat a man from a lower caste, a man to beat a woman from his own or lower caste, and for anybody to beat a child from an equal or lower caste, etc. Anybody who is lower in the pecking order is fair game, and society will back this up. Schools have introduced yet another hierarchy into this millennia-old mix. What’s really interesting is that most everybody knows exactly where they fall in the pecking order–whom they must defer to and who they can abuse.
Thanks for posting this story. I would have commented earlier than this except I have been trying to get information from a journo pal who is in Assam right now. Apparently some of the processionists/activits started vandalizing shops in the locality and from thereon it was more of a violence begets violence situation.
More at: http://www.merinews.com/catFull.jsp?articleID=128041
Brij, my comment was tongue-in-cheek, poking fun at some folks who use that line to criticize him. Satyajit Ray is one of my all time favorite directors, no questions asked. I wouldn’t have his pic here otherwise. ๐
Disgusting.. It looks like there was just one person (or a handful) committing the crime. I wonder why the protesters did not gang up to pay him back.
L- does not spend anytime criticizing the indian judiciary! Just an observation:)
Hey Kush Tandon, don’t stop commenting on my account
Oh, I just meant on this thread. Later, I also thought that ragging/ hazing discussion was a digression on this thread.
The picture and story absolutely broke my heart. Just broke my heart. =(
nil said:
And this is why, in part I’m sure, those men in the background are laughing at the naked, beaten woman. They don’t see her as their equal..she is probably a dog in their eyes. Which is sad because not even an animal deserves to be treated in such a manner.
Having lived in north and south india – metros and also smaller towns (but not lived in villages, only visited), I can say this – there is too much generalization and black-and-white portrayal in your statements. Whatever you state, the opposite is also very often true – that is India.
by the way the recent bbc story on this is much better….you actually get answers to some of the questions raised in this thread and some history (it tells you why the humanoid “businessman”–actually a shop owner– was a prominent attacker).
I just don’t understand why one has to be voilent to express their anger against anything. Why cannot it be done in a more refined way ? Tit-for-Tat can lead into a never ending absyss and cycle of atrocious acts. Or is it that the “system” has become so rigid that to catch the attention and make any difference with protests, one has to resort to voilence ? And will such voilence become more of a norm as segments of the population start doing well as opposed to and in some cases at the expense of the have-nots ?
It took 54 comments to link this incident to Hinduism?!! Man, SM is not the same it was a couple of years ago!!
But what about Gujarat? And Modi?
M. Nam
Paging Pink Brigade. ๐
MoorNam – you’re overreacting. Hierarchy trumps religion on the subcontinent.
Everyday the US arms uses airpower against civilian areas in Iraq. Every week NATO helicopters bomb a school in Afganistan.
NO PROBLEM. This is acceptable because white massa is doing so. He is always right and whatever he does very proper.
But this stupid hindu brown people – how gross and uncivilized they are ! They dont treat people right. They also have this horrible caste system. And have you smelt their food? Ugh !
Now I must go and enjoy my nice suburban home. The land was taken thru war from the native inhabitants of the region, the local economy was built by slaves. NO PROBLEM.
Al beruni @ 67,
Is somebody else wrong-doings a raison d’etre for India’s unjustified acts. Right now it is about calling spade a spade and analyzing that. Digression is escapism.
You’re right, we should aim our anger and attention that way, because we might run out of it if we express it over this brown-on-brown and thus, by definition, less-outrageous incident.
So we should ignore this or not get exercised over a booted man kicking a woman’s vagina because it was an Indian man assaulting a woman? That’s some shameful trolling you’re up to.
Disappointing, Al beruni.
The issue is essentializing a horrific atrocity (extreme violence against a woman) and turning it into broad cultural commentary. My point is that this treatment is exclusively reserved for other cultures, not the western ones. There have been many comments on this thread that lean in that direction. So there is often a kind of cultural blindness at work here.
Nala,
But Harbeer is linking hierarchy to religion (via caste). And that’s what I was reacting to.
Harbeer,
When Karunanidhi (who is a notorious hindu-baiter) came to power, he and his henchmen (who profess to be low-caste) tried to strip Jayalalitha (an upper-caste) in the TN parliament. Would it be right for me to presume that such acts are usually done by people who profess no affinity to Hinduism?
What people don’t realise is that violating a woman’s chastity causes a major disturbance in the force, and those who do it will suffer severe consequences. When such an incident happened a few thousand years ago, all the hundred brothers responsible for it, including passive onlookers who could do something but did not, paid for the incident with their lives. There’s a lesson in there somewhere.
Could’t the shopkeepers (whose shops were being vandalised by the woman) just have pinned her down and handed her over to the police? Let her get 10 years, 20 years in prison. How difficult is that?
M. Nam
Anand (28):
Whoa. Execution? I agree, this is vile. But I don’t think the perpetrator deserves death. Seems like you’d need a bit more information before you run him off to the gallows like that.
To the loony-toons troll in 67 (and yes, I know all about the care and feeding of trolls, thank you):
You’re so right! Oh my god! We should all immediately kill ourselves! Preferrably by strapping a few pounds of high explosive to our chests and then running into the nearest crowd of people who stereotype! The resulting identity chaos will totally confuse the white massa, who will suddenly be forced to mix Muslims with Hindus when fearing the brown!
Who’s with me?
Too late :-/
This really burns me up!!!!!!! So it was the victim’s fault?!!!! Whether the vandalizing happened or not, I don’t see the connection between that and the humiliation of this poor woman. Damn! I wish someone would post that picture of those bastards on billboards all over India, along with their names.
Depends on from what perspective you’re looking at it. It’s the same ‘natural’ behaviour one sees during war where (especially)the woman of the combatting parties become victim of sexual violence. By raping/assaulting the wifes of the so-called ‘other’ one claims dominance over the other (in patriarch societies the male others). The violence against this woman was not only directed at her but at her whole community who by being unable to defend her were psychologically defeated .
Nobody likes to be told to be wrong, even worse to be morally wrong or accept to be ‘de-throned’. The hostilty that a new employee with a ‘big mouth’ experiences or a family member that goes against the elders will be of less proportions when it’s somebody outside the community. Somebody above mentioned Irak, it’s basically the same; if the same kind of massmurder would take place within the ‘American community’ nobody would even think of accepting it but since it’s ‘the other’ it’s somehow justified or evokes less sentiment.
“will such voilence become more of a norm” I think that is really the key thing the officals should focus on. In my opinion the woman, her community, the entire Assam community are not really helped with a statement or even a punishment. People tend to get defensive (feel attacked, want to preserve their position) when they or their community are critized (morals are attacked) and therefore dismiss, glorify, justify actions such as these. Jail won’t change a thing, most likely the assaulter (is that a word) will think of himself as innocent and that’s the last thing that will help this woman to recover from these brutal events. One of the things I d0 believe help her in her ‘healing’ process is when her attackers and the people who let it happen fully realize/aknowledge that what they did to her was wrong and that they did not only hurt her community but their own as well. And that’s the diffrence the officals in Assam should make… I think.
That said I have to say that I absolutely heart the term South Asian, it gets rids of ‘the other’ sentiments on basic levels and helps to prevent violence or hatred against the other. Most likely people will demand a punishment but the demand for equality will ensure more justice and I hope they will continue their protest.
(Ofcourse I could be totally wrong when it comes to my views)
Still, it is startling to read about so much violence against another human my prayers go out to her and her loved ones.
More on point, I have to wonder what the diaspora’s role in responding to this kind of thing should be. It strikes me that there is a fundamental problem for the West in reporting on this stuff without seeming to be racially biased. Yet this is obviously a major human rights issue, especially given how heavily the West (well, the US anyway) leans on India as a model of third world secular (well… “secular”) democracy. Going back to that USINPAC post, it seems that the diaspora could serve an important role in structuring a response that is both strongly critical but coming from inside the community.
If the problem is that the Indian legal system is just letting this stuff pass, it seems to me that diaspora-driven political pressure from its allies (and, more importantly, the sources of its newfound economic boom) could be very effective.
While so much being talked and shown about India’s “progress” these sorts of things really show where India stands! What a shock when a businessman from a local community taking part in this act!! I recall the BJP government had slogans “India Shining”. I do not know what the Congress and the Communists are doing now (probably a lot of back door deals). India cannot aspire to be very high up in the ladder of human rights and transparency unless the entire system is dismantled and started from the scratch. Do you imagine this would have happened in China? No – those three men would have been short on the back of their head the next day.
Indians are indifferent to such things. They forget and avoid as nothing happened to them. I have experienced that in big cities like Delhi and Mumbai (Calcutta slightly different). Media rarely follows up on past events. The legal system is corrupt and weak. The police forces are dysfunctional, corrupt, and at the mercy of the politicians. How can you expect to be in 21st century when people do such things? Let’s try to read the minds of these people —
1) are they upset because the tribal folks will get better jobs? 2) why is there no program to teach tolerance to these ignorant “beasts”?
These beasts and their associates should think of surviving in a competitive world.
Unless India tackles such problems, it cannot aspire to be country with high values and prosperity. I think it can barely reach the level of countries like Brazil and other Latin nations. Rich can have their expensive cars and nice houses surrounded by slums — they cannot drive — may have to take helicopters to work as do the executives do in Sao Paulo. China is on the other end – disciplined work force, a common national goal to be the #1 country in the world.
Shame on India!!
Javier, striking diff between China and India: no religion.
At times, I’m very intrigued by China’s political system. You have one Party, anyone can join it, and they have elections within the Party. So you have a democratic system that includes only the politically educated. And the effect is that policy changes are gradual as the Party composition and thinking changes, instead of the random and unproductive lurches in policy in the multiparty democracy system.
are you claiming that the best wy to be high up on the ladder on human rights and transparency is be like China and shoot prisoners in the back of the head? China has one of the worst records on human rights in the world!!! are you serious?
Let’s not confuse following a political system with following/repeating a country’s history :).
Well, all indications are that the videotapers did nothing. The BBC news article reports that the woman was rescued by a few local people. If a few locals could do so, why not the journalists and TV cameramen? They would lose the story? Many news agencies—including the BBC—claim this as their story—which would have meant there were multiple people covering the story there if not videotaping. In fact, some news reports do indicate this was not one of those citizen-cameras, there were regular TV cameramen.
This point is very disturbing to me—when I was in Mumbai a month back, there were similar stories—among them was an identical story. It has been ignored by western news tabs since, but it aired on Indian news channels—CNN/IBN, NDTV, Aaj Tak and some others. A boy was stripped and beaten up in Andhra when he was suspected to have been a thief.
Not one person rescued the boy, who could not have been more than in early teens. And it wasn’t as if there was a mob—it was a “family affair”, with men and women, who all further encouraged even children to take turns beating up the kid for what appeared to be a long time.
Why did the photographer who gleefully shot the footage say nothing? Don’t care if s/he wasn’t successful in stopping it, but say something—or call/go get the police, your camera gives them a chance to play the hero after all—is that so hard? It wasn’t as if s/he was dealing with hundreds of people, there were about 4 or 5 at any given point. Maybe once, twice, you don’t know what to do—but the news agencies that train their journalists, you would think they would teach them to react better. But no, let us watch the fun?
If something doesn’t stir inside someone in the face of such disgusting actions and s/he uses the camera to get a story when it can help the victim, I don’t get it. But while I am not so keen on absolving the TV cameramen and journalists and calling them heroes as Harbeer likes to, I agree we should not forget who the criminals really are.
Second point: while many of you are making into a women’s rights thing, I think these shameful stories—if you include the many others (you probably didn’t hear of them) which did not always involve women or adivasis but were identical to this in every other regard in the recent past—are part of a broader picture. It is the assumption of impunity that many have in India. While, it is not always correlated with caste, wealth or even gender alone, it is often a combination of the above. The reason for that is not hard to see—for the last half century, lot of people indeed have had complete protection from law. Take that away, you get rid of all this in my mind. And like it or not, this protection from law is a fallout from unbridled socialism—just as unbridled capitalism can fester.
Unfortunately or fortunately, it is almost never as simple as higher caste= more power, or more wealth as any article about India in western papers allude to. It is the dominant local caste (many times, OBC)=more power. Imo, it is no longer the ancient hierarchy at work, rather, it is a new social grouping/ordering that is happening to compete for insufficient resources in India. But what is always true is that some groups are always at the bottom—adivasis, dalits and women among these groups.
And it is not specific to India as many of you are so thrilled to say—when you know the law won’t hit you (whether you are these monsters in Assam or a white guy in 50’s America exploiting a black person or a mid-eastern Sheik exploiting Indian workers or a British officer at the turn of last century in India or a European today in the many countries where illegal immigrants do not have sanctuary laws), it is the same.
i have to wonder about those who think india is a hellhole and in the same breath think india should look to that shining beacon of human rights, china, for inspiration in that department. at least in india you have a better chance of seeing video or reading news stories about this disgusting way of exacting revenge on someone. while these men are probably a waste of space and taking up good oxygen on this earth, summarily executing them is hardly something to which to aspire. and let’s not forget – there were assamese who did help her after seeing her plight and alerted the police.
Not to mention China’s excellent Quality Control system. No thanks, I’ll take India’s messy democracy and take steps (however small/slow) to improve it, rather than 15% growth rate and a system like China’s.
True the people on this side of the globe are extremely interessted in politics and human welfare and have no clue who Angelina Jolie, Madonna or Britney are.
From what I know the celebs here sell better than any social issue. Man and woman have to deal with with extreme violence (say it in diffrent forms)in your backyard too and the media is just as indifferent/selective as the endless stream of badnews is… a bit boring.
Violence doesn’t have a nationality or an ethnicity.
aaargh.. Javier, I just assumed you were living outside India forget the backyard thing. The whole point I wanted to make is that Indians don’t have the monopoly on violence and indifference.
Data?
A terrible, terrible crime, but sexual(ized) violence and humiliation of women, even in public, is nothing new in human behaviour, nor is it limited to Desh. What is rare is an actual media image of it.
@Javier Calling him a ‘businessman’ and an active recepient of the ‘India Shining’ windfall would be a stretch! He actually ran a small roadside shop, and vandalism in his shop would be a direct assault on his livelihood. Now read the mind of this person you moron! He had every right to be pissed imo. But what he did was horrible, and hopefully will be adequately punished. But still some perspective always helps drown inane comments calling for this man’s execution. Whatever problems you have with India and higher castes in particular.. shove it!!!
A report of a meeting with the women who was so brutally beaten –
Dignity devoured, by pack of wolves
For the folks who get all hot and bothered when I pointed out their hypocrisy in casting this event as flowing out of indian/hindu culture – another NATO air-strike on afghan civilians is reported today !!
NATO Airstrike Kills 14 Afghans
What do we learn from this? That european culture is fundamentally brutal? That while christians dont care about any other race?
An example of the misogynist attitude held by many Indian men. Leave the men alone with their right to free speech but how dare a woman dissent, in public no less? stripping them is an act meant to remove their identity, their dignity and ultimately, their voice. The public beatings are also indicative of deep rooted hatred towards an entire sex, especially the focus on damaging her genitals.
I sometimes wish to go back to that country, then something like this happens and I remember why I left in the first place.
Read Sudhir Kakar’s Freudian analysis of India’s sexual culture and view of women. I’m not a Freudian myself, but I gotta admit, there’s alot of material for a Freudian to work with there.
From Indian Express,
Looks like the girl is braving it well and ready to fight back. Good to see her being supported by the family and community (as opposed to the many cases where they are shunned and even punished by their own for getting into the unfortunate situation).
Thanks, SJB, you illustrate perfectly the one-note “essentialism” and hypocrisy of some commentators that I have earlier noted in this discussion.
You forgot to mention that many indian men grow a lot of ear hair; the combination of curry smell and ear hair would make anyone wanna throw up !
I would aver that you’re not scoring any debate points or persuading anyone with statements like this. There is no need to lash back with “but…but…America sucks!” whenever something negative is blogged about India.
Your focus on this instead of the woman’s plight is telling; perhaps there is nothing more to discuss and it is time to close the thread.
Thanks Jungli, I checked the book out on Amazon and am looking forward to reading it. I was worried about expressing my opinion here, as the general tone of commentators on this site seems to be terribly gynophobic. As such, I thank you again.
This is silly and condescending. India has a (fiercely) independent media and a (substantially) independent judiciary. These things tend to sort our issues on its own. The diaspora is not really relevant to India, or its economic boom, and won’t (nor should it) have any real influence in India.
This comment is no more helpful than Al Beruni’s. To contend that the general tone of discussion on this site is gynophobic is a sweeping insult, one which I don’t think we deserve.
Thank you, dont come again!!
As an Indian living in India, I sometimes feel that I have overstayed my welcome in this site.
This site is more than one or two commenters, in fact, the vast majority of our readers are lurkers who read but don’t participate in the discussion. If you want to leave for your stated reason, you would be mistaken about “overstaying”.
This thread is inspiring some odd reactions in a few of you. Lots of assumptions, petulance and inaccurate characterizations. No one would want you to leave this site. This site is not gynophobic. Ear hair and curry don’t mix.
What’s wrong with you lot this morning?