It took fifty retired civil servants, many of them now civil society activists like Harsh Mandar, to converge and dash off a letter to Prime Minister Modi, on the deteriorating law and order in the country. Stating that the Modi Government failed in the ‘Darkest Hour,’ the bureaucrats criticized in strongest terms what they dubbed as the government’s failure to perform the most basic responsibilities given to it by the people in 2014. The letter expressed concern over the decline in secular, democratic and liberal values enshrined in the Constitution. This letter was in protest against the two incidents of heinous rape crimes – an eight year old girl in Kathua, Jammu in January this year and a 16-year old girl in Unnao, Uttar Pradesh in June last year. What precipitated the protests was the obstruction of justice in the Kathua rape and murder case and the death of the 16-year old’s father while in jail. The man was arrested when he went to lodge a complaint about the rape of his daughter by an MLA of the BJP.
Prime Minister Modi, remained silent all throughout and it was only three days ago at the Ambedkar Jayanti observance that he came down heavily and vowed punishment on the rapists in both cases, stating that the law should be allowed to take its course and the accused would not go unpunished.
The question that cries out for an answer is why Modi chooses to remain silent in the face of growing atrocities against women and girl-children, the latest in his home state of Gujarat in Surat. His silence is taken by his own party people as endorsement of the crimes they commit. It is difficult to understand Modi’s silence. He either does not wish to step into the jurisdiction of the respective state governments where such crimes have occurred, since law and order are state subjects. But the state governments of Uttar Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir have both failed to act hastily to punish the guilty. On the contrary the incidents have been politicised and have also taken on a communal colour. Now that the Prime Minister has spoken, swift action has followed. But the question is why wait for things to reach a conflagration point before handling an imminent crisis. India today has gone down many rungs in terms of safety for women and girls. This has put paid to the slogan “beti bachao, beti parhao.” It sounds hollow and fake.