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Book
Reviews
A Gallery of Failures
by Deepti Priya Mehrotra
 Women's
activists throughout the country have reported the hostile attitude of
police and judiciary when it comes to punishing perpetrators of
violence. But when a high-placed government functionary faces similar
hostility, and finds herself powerless to deal with it, it is indeed an
eye-opener.
Planning Commission member Syeda S Hameed is one such person. In her
recent book, 'They Hang - Twelve Women in My Portrait Gallery',
she narrates her personal experience of trying to help 12 wronged women
get justice.
Syeda Hameed's book, based on her work as Member of the National
Commission for Women (1997-2000), is an explosive account of the
impotence of this institution. Not only does she document, in brutal
detail, the violence committed on women in a range of contexts, but also
the chilling refusal of `the system' to bring the guilty to book.
The atrocities Syeda recounts are not unusual, nor are they unknown to
us. Several have been in the public eye during the late 1990s. For
instance, Ila Pandey's case against her husband Rajneesh Pandey, who was
repeatedly raping their 10-year-old daughter in Karvi, Uttar Pradesh. Or
the story of Lalita Oraon, raped by Amrit Lugan, India's First
Secretary, Economic Affairs, Paris, while she worked in his house as a
maid and nanny.
Syeda provides information from her role as investigator in these cases:
she took down testimonies of hundreds of people, and wrote detailed
reports. Her Karvi report clearly indicated the culpability of Rajneesh
as well as the virulent campaign launched by his supporters against
local women's groups who took up the case. Entitled `Case of Child
Sexual Abuse and Targeting of Women's Rights Groups', the report
received media coverage and "momentarily shook the establishment". Years
later, however, Rajneesh remarried, while the case filed by Ila drags
on.
Similarly, Syeda wrote an NCW report entitled `The Alleged Exploitation
and Abuse of Lalita Oraon in Paris, France' and sent it to all relevant
government departments authorized to present an Action Taken Report on
the issue. But the report was stillborn. Says Syeda, in the book: "I was
anxious to begin taking action, but the matter never saw the light of
day. No matter how I tried, I could not get the report released. It
disappeared mysteriously from the scene, fell between the cracks of
procedure and protocol.... Lalita Oraon vanished into thin air. Years
passed without a word about Lalita."
One NCW report, `Come In, but One by One: Sexual Harassment at Delhi
Public School' - connected with the alleged harassment of women by the
DPS NOIDA principal Varma, was released at a crowded press conference in
New Delhi. It got media attention, but soon vanished from the public
sphere. The school protected its principal, despite concrete evidence of
sexual harassment of at least three women teachers (whose services he
had terminated as soon as they refused to comply with his wishes). Varma
served his full term and, after superannuating, was given an extension
for another three years. Syeda notes bitterly, "My report probably still
lies (in NCW), carefully preserved in files which no one ever opens, or
it may have been shredded with all other five-year-old documents...."
Syeda's book displays strong personal commitment as well as rare
honesty. The book is uncompromising in its recording of experiences. At
places she moves beyond precise facts into an imaginative reconstruction
of events and persona - always clarifying which of the writing is fact,
and which is `faction'.
One disturbing aspect emerging from her accounts is the nasty role
played by `society' - families, relatives and neighborhoods - in
instigating violence. In Haryana's Sudaka village for instance, 15-year
old Maimun's family forced her to marry Aijaz. This was to protect their
`izzaat' (honor) that was compromised by Maimun's affair with
Idris, a man from her own village. Aijaz and his cronies gang-raped
Maimun, slashed her with a knife from neck to midriff, and left her to
die.
Later, strangers found and nursed Maimun, and then Idris located her.
Her parents filed a case against Idris, and the police arrested Idris's
old parents. When Maimun and Idris came to NCW, Syeda and her colleagues
were moved and angry, and immediately drove to Sudaka village. There
they faced an extremely hostile mob of villagers, who dragged Maimun out
of the vehicle. The Haryana police did not move a muscle to prevent
this. The NCW team returned empty-handed - no justice delivered.
Instead, they had actually handed over the lamb for slaughter.
All the 12 stories indicate that NCW lacks infrastructure, back-up, and
`teeth'. Although it is the apex body for women in India, it is
powerless to actually move the administration, police and judiciary, to
make them take appropriate action. Gross violations of women's human
rights carry on with impunity. Everybody knows that the guilty are
seldom punished.
Even though, NCW members and hundreds of other women's groups might work
tirelessly to handle the deluge of cases that pour in, their efforts
could still end up in vain.
In the same book, Syeda also highlights the stories of fighting women,
those who speak out against exploitation - file First Investigation
Reports (FIRs); refuse to succumb to brutal backlash; and refuse to
kowtow to the powers-that-be. Thus, one elderly trustee of DPS, refused
to condone the principal's misconduct, rather she testified that the
principal "used his power and position to extract sexual favors from
women teachers...." Sometimes, Syeda `imagines in' a woman who fights
back - Rajneesh Pandey's second wife perhaps; or Chaddo, who becomes a
lawyer after her elder sister Shaddo was killed by in-laws. She imagines
Sajoni - a tribal woman from Bagjori village, Bihar, branded a witch,
thrashed by villagers after she ploughed her fields - leaving the
village with her five children to find a better place to survive in.
Sheila Rani, a sweeper in DPS, provides incisive analysis as well as
ground-level strategy. When the principal tried to molest her, she
fought back, and later told a teacher of the school, "Every dog in this
place wants a piece of flesh.... We can fight our battles in our own
way. We can kick and bite and scratch. Your court-kacheri will
never get us a scrap of justice." She asked for a transfer saying,
"There is no dearth of toilets to clean. If not here, I will find them
in other schools. But the shit has become JK cement on these haramis
('bastards'); only a bolt of lightning can shatter it. I am going where,
if I clean hard enough, the dirt will come off!"
Sadly - nay, tragically - the NCW has been unable to send the bolts of
lightning needed to shatter the concrete structures sheltering criminals
and routinely abetting crimes against women.
Syeda wrote the book because she doesn't want these stories of terrible
violence to disappear from public memory. She also wanted to highlight
that NCW is unable to achieve justice in these cases because it is
toothless: "The Commission's reports are not binding on anyone, and its
jurisdictions stops at its front door."
May 21, 2006
(They Hang - Twelve Women in
My Portrait Gallery, Syeda S. Hameed,
Women Unlimited, New Delhi, 2006, 183 pp, Rs 275.)
By arrangement with
Women's Feature Service
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Reviews
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The Da Vinci Tsunami by V. Sundaram
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Think Tank Propaganda Machines & the Death of the
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And, the Way Up is the Way Down ... by Pradip
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Ahalya: Incest and Temptation by Satya Chaitanya
Hinduism: A Holy Water Religion by Dr. V.
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Reservations about Quotas by Usha Kakkar
Data Backup to Avoid Disasters by Ruchi Gupta
Police Story Kolkata Diary by Dr.
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The Witty Side by Melvin Durai
A Gallery of Failures by Deepti Priya Mehrotra
Geetli A Long Story by Kusum Choppra
Love, Struggle and the Poetry of Nepal
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Rama Suresh : The Rural Aesthete by
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