Outlook English - Print Subscribers Copy Outlook English, 26 February 2018 | Page 31

OL FOR WOMEN
woman’s free choice expose society’s anxiety about its property rights
by Pragya Singh in New Delhi
T
HE headlines are relentless, every day bringing fresh
news of society’s revenge upon women. The image is
starkest in parts of India where they were lucky enough
to live in the first place. Where gynocide—a genocide of
newborn/unborn women—is a silent, ongoing routine.
The acts of violence are a way of saying, in incredulity,
‘And then she has the gall to go and develop a free will!’ To
think, act and, most of all, to love. Often the revenge takes
the form of the object of her desire being crushed. The latest
to join the list of young social
martyrs is Ankit Saxena. On a list
lengthening like a dark shadow
over modern Indian life, it’s an
intriguing presence: an inversion
of the normal ‘love jehad’ pattern
of Hindu girl/Muslim boy. Ankit’s
killing is a way of saying: our right
over our women is supreme; even a
minority status won’t change it.
Classic honour killing, in short.
Ins­tead of a regional caste, a nat­ional
community feels the anger of
someone trespassing on property.
Love itself is branded as fake and
women, of course, deemed unfit to
make that choice. So, a father in
Delhi ends his young daughter’s
romance by slashing the throat of her boyfriend. Ankit’s
girlfriend is in hiding, afraid for her life too, a living symbol of
what happens to those who transgress. Before the extra seasoning
in the episode—the fact that the woman’s father is a Muslim,
which both explains the murder and almost became the only way
to decipher it—abates, another middle-aged man masturbates on
a bus next to a woman, again in the heart of the capital. (As if she
was an image, not a living being.) Fresh outrage is triggered, rinse
and repeat. In Bhilwara, Rajasthan, a Jat woman dies of TB, but
The ­community
feels the anger of
someone trespassing
on ­property. Love is
branded as fake and
women deemed unfit
to make that choice.
TRIBHUVAN TIWARI
26 February 2018 OUTLOOK 31