Rerun & (not)return of the Phallus
The act of Rape is theorized, theorized in many ways, none scaled the
reality! The latest feminist theory that rape is an expression of power also
failed in case of India through the incident of a 28days toddler raped by 25
year old man(!) and going scot free. How could this be? Well, theories pour in
to answer that too! All bovine scat to the least!
Rape is a weapon indeed, a weapon of torture, of subjugation, of threat
and what not… what about this case? Is it a stray case? Check out the number of
child rape [I deliberately do not use “paedophila” – the word is euphemism] in
India, a whooping 3 a day!!! Tally that with the number of women being carnal
oppressed, more than 26 a day and that number is highly debated as the number
is increasing exponentially, tally it with the number of pogroms on Dalits and
Muslims and associated mass rapes… there is no count to that! Rape is a
nation-state cultural heritage- an Indian heritage, a Hindu heritage, an Indian
sub-continental Islamic heritage [as it takes pride in marital rape and paving
for raped victim married to the rapist] Rape is if not specifically, but
loosely an Indian phenomenon!
Rape is there in every culture, every civilization and yet rape is very
Indian. Rape is the one that is valorised and glorified as a divine act, all
the Hindu male gods raped, all the Hindu kings raped with impunity and rape,
multiple marriage, marital rape. Mutah marriges and all related acts were
glorified. Rape is thus an act of male macho symbol. Poor English does not have
a proper word, we have… we have “Pourush”, we have “Mardangi” , the poor
westerns could only think of a cheap patronising called Chivalry. In India
there Chivalry is not glorified but rape is. Protection of women means keeping
women like cattle and then gifting them as many times as it could be and then
dumping them into the widowdom on riverside after menopause – That is Hindutva.
Rape is Hindutva and Hindutva is rape in every sense and metonymy of the word.
The mythology supports rape , glorifies it, considers this as a
signature of maturity and of power [ “taqat” with special connotation and the
most generally accepted on the streets and in the market place] Rape is then eulogized
in verses. First the only value of a woman is weighed in terms of her chastity
and then rape is used as a mark of royalty and a sense of upper caste
position]. A man can rape but cannot accept water to drink from the victim, a
man can rape and again prostrate before the god , ask forgiveness and be
forgiven [ special atonement and redemption present both in Hindu and Islam as
well]. Rape is never a crime, it is simply O-gomon [ some mis-advances]. Rape is
a national tradition and culture.
We have been raping – the Indian male that is from time immemorial and
with not much compunctions or qualms. An upper caste boy can rape women of
lower caste of any age and be overlooked as children frolic [ North Indian
value system]. Rapists in India are seldom convicted and even if so only with a
maximum penalty of 7 years in royal style jail life-all taken care by the
government at the expense of tax payers’ money. Our liberals take pride in giving
them royal treatment in our jails.
Rape is our religious tradition, we put male deitry over female ones, we
are allowed to dump our mothers and wives and sell off our daughters in the
name of marriage and sanction marital rapes as our “modern” judiciary has
declared that marriages are sanctioned and solemnized in heaven so marital rape
is divine!
We in our supposedly oldest civilisation had been raping our mothers and
foremathers and would be doing so for all the future generations to come! Rape
is an Indian tradition! That our forefathers pumped in babies and squeezed them
at least every year of the carrying life of our foremothers and considered that
it is divine gift, it clearly shows how rapists are our forefathers who we
respect and honour. We respected and honoured rapists throughout generations as
our foreparents- what does that make us? Rapists indeed! Beyond the mere
epitaph of Rapists-indirect! That no one known ever tried it with a 28 day
toddler makes therefore the particular rapist an innovator , a great
technologist, a trend-setter- we now await multiple and fast-forward repetition
of the same act!
This one incident should have put the entire national collective
identity to shame, it did not! We almost rejoiced the news value of the news –
its sensation value! We had long commoditized rape and now we are doing it with
toddler-rape… We Indians have now spread it worldwide, when even the soldiers
in warring countries had failed till today we Indians have successfully
transgressed the wolves, the occupying and ravaging soldiers of every nation-
We are proud Indians, who would still consider ourselves as “Proud Indians”
when some innovators would go on raping the just-born neo-natals – We are
Indians indeed and Indian males of national pride! We take pride in becoming a
Rapist Nation- Bande dharshakattom!
We romanticise genitalia- no not the women’s genitalia from which we all
came out, we glorify phallus! Phallus is everywhere in India, phallus is
worshipped by our girls in the name of religion. We “clean” phallus sculptures with
milk [mapping semen] , we make girls drink that milk, in the name of again
religion, we pour that milk on our rivers immediately killing the neo-natal
fishes, we never give that milk to deserving hungry but drain it down the
sewage system, we make our girls worship erect phallus and prostate before
anything erect, we have our monuments imaged as phallus- that makes us Indians.
The 25 year old man who raped the 28 days toddler merely enacted a
divine sanction purifying the baby. Our godmen ceremoniously rape women devotees
and preach them that holy water is poured in, that makes these godmen even
greater godmen, detached with any emotional attachment – that makes our godmen
great and us as great devotees. The divinity ascribed in our phallus culture
has made this man(!) a devoted follower of our traditions! An innovative
performer! What the entire world could never imagine our boy has shown it in
action! That is our Indianness! Why blame a great performer! Why not challenge
ourselves? It is high time we did!
