A WIDE CANVAS
INDIA'S DAUGHTERS OR ENGLISH MEDIA DEVILS?
The BBC film 'India's Daughter' on the Nirbhaya rape incident has become handy for our English language newspapers to have another go at Indians, Hindus who are called by all names including 'misogynist'. That the film was banned by the Govt. has added grist to their mill. Following the noise made in the media, a German female professor denied admission to two Indian students in German institution.
The question of the ban is a matter I don't take up now. There are other aspects to deal with now. The media makes it appear as if India is a country of rapists. Rape is no doubt a horrible crime, but the cacophony raised by our newspapers is silly and motivated. First, some statistics.
According to a report in the English newspaper Guardian, appearing on 22 January 2015, England and Wales recorded a 31% increase in reported rape cases in 2014 over the previous year, to 24,043- the highest level in the last 10 years. Overall sexual offences increased by 22%, while there was a drop of 11% in overall crime rates. A 2006-2007 crime survey in UK had found that 1 in 200 women suffered from rape during that period. According to www.rapecrisis.org.uk/Statistics2.php (accessed 17 March 2015 16.25 hrs), 85,000 rape cases are reported annually in England and Wales (as against 400,000 cases of sexual violence). I in 5 aged between 16 and 59 have experienced some form of sexual violence since the age of 16. There were 230 cases per day. In the US 1 in 6 women had experienced rape or attempted rape in a lifetime. In all countries many cases go unreported, either due to reluctance of the victims to report, or the police procedures. (Google and YouTube are full of information that the govt of England refuses or hesitates to share.)
In the UK there is another phenomenon. Young white school girls are systematically raped by Muslims, mainly immigrants. In one small town Rotherham (population 2,75,000) it was found that 1400 white school girls had been raped repeatedly by Muslim immigrants from Pakistan between 1997 and 2007. This continued right up to 2013. But when a report was made to the Rotherham council in 2002, it was quashed by the authorities for political reasons and the author was sent for "diversity training"!
In 2002, Labour MP Ann Cryer complained to the police about "young Asian lads" raping girls in her constituency. Of course, these were Pakistani lads, but her party had ruled that it should not be mentioned openly.
In 2011, British Labour MP and former Home Secretary Jack Straw said that "there is a specific problem which involves Pakistani heritage men....who target vulnerable young white girls."
(See:www.nationalreview.com/article/387428/1400-english-girls-raped-multiculturalism-denis prager.
Accessed 17 March,2015 at 12.55 hrs)
Nothing came of such complaints. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. For, the UK govt is also following "political correctness", following the leftist-secular agenda of suppressing crimes involving Muslims. Devil take the truth, while the govt will deliver political correctness!
Now the question to BBC is: with so much happening in your backyard, why are are you so eager to shoot a film about India? Do you have the courage to show what is happening on your soil, in your "beautiful" England? Are you "free" to deal with the matter, as you claim your freedom in regard to covering what happened in India? Will you mind your arse-hole first?
No reasonable person will justify rape or other serious crime involving women or human beings generally. But the kind of motivated and lop-sided coverage given by our English language newspapers clearly shows that they have lost all sense of proportion and original thinking. As the German Ambassador noted, India did not keep quiet when the Nirbhaya incident happened; the whole country protested. As a matter of fact, the rape rate in Germany (as in the other 'developed' countries- US, Canada, UK, Sweden, France )is much higher than in India. This is not a justification for what happens in India, but to show that it happens everywhere and we should not lose the sense of proportion.
Another word bandied about in this connection is that Indians are 'misogynist'. From where do our progressive professors get such ideas? Individuals are found everywhere who may be misogynist- ie dislike women. But Hinduism as a whole never advocates hating women. If we tabulate what the major religions say on issues connected with women, it will be found that Hindu provisions are most liberal., and the Islamic provisions the most outrageous and backward. Manu no doubt says that women need protection; the progressive secular elements and women libbers shout against it. Yet how many of them can make a woman walk the streets of our cities alone at night- anywhere in the world ( except perhaps Ahmedabad in India)? In many areas of cities like Chicago and New York, they cannot walk alone, even during the day. In orthodox Hinduism, the man is not eligible to perform any ritual without the participation of the woman- who is his Sahadharmini- partner in the dharma. The man is not even free to offer the fee to the priest without the formal, ceremonial permission of the wife- which is a recognition of the fact that she is the master of the household income. Compare the provisions of other religions in these matters and you will know the truth.
It may be objected that these are ideals may be, but hardly ever observed in practice. Yes, it is true- we are not following many things. Do we follow our Constitution perfectly? Do all citizens of India know the National Anthem or the National Song? Do we all know how to honour the National Flag? But that is no reason to blame the Anthem or the song or the Flag. Our religion has the prescription in support of women; show similar prescriptions in the Abrahamic religions, which are male centred.
By Dietrich Krieger (Own work) [GFDL (http:://www.gnu.org/copuleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 http:://Creative commons.org/licenses/sa/3.0] via Wikimedia commons."
It is they who are misogynic- Bible says woman is responsible for the temptation and fall of man! In Islam, misogynistic tendencies are traced to the Quran- Sura 4, verse 34. Islam is on the whole male-centred.
It was Milton who had the courage to say that even when expelled from the Garden and thrust into the world 'our ling'ring parents' walked hand in hand:
In either hand the hast'ning angel caught
Our ling'ring parents and to the eastern gate
Led them direct and down the cliff as fast
To the subjected plain, then disappeared.
They, looking back, all th' eastern side beheld,
Of Paradise, so late their happy seat,
Waved over by that flaming brand. The gate
With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms.
Some natural tears they dropped but wiped them soon.
The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide.
They hand in hand with wandering steps and slow
Through Eden took their solitary way.
(Paradise Lost, Book XII, 637-649)
Milton dictating Paradise Lost to his three daughters.
Eugene Delacroix. Public Domain. Wikimedia Commons.
Milton was a revolutionary, was against the Anglican Church. He was not buried in the poets corner of Westminster Abbey.
Unfortunately, neither our critics nor the women libbers themselves study these issues from the original sources. They are simply carried away by the winds of fashion blowing from the West, in the name of modernity. Arun Shourie pointed out this trend among our so called 'intellectuals':
Most of the intellectual work in India consists in writing footnotes to the work done in the West.....And when our intellectuals are not engaged in writing these footnotes, they are busy following the fashion of the day in Western circles, busy 'applying', as the phrase goes, to Indian material the notion or 'thesis' which has become fashionable in the West. In a word, our scholarly work is derivative.
(From: The World of Fatwas, Introduction. HarperCollins Publishers India, 2012.)
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