By Deepa Majumdar
This essay is dedicated to Abhaya’s grieving parents – who are admirable for their dignity, resilience, and integrity. May the world’s prayers console them in their hour of grief.
Autumn is usually a festive season for Bengal and India. From Ganesh Chaturthi, Dussehra and Durga Puja, to Lakshmi Puja, Kali Puja, and Diwali – autumn is usually a mart of joy that culminates in Christmas. For the Yuletide of December is a crescendo that completes our felicity. Nature herself rejoices, as the searing heat of summer crosses the bridge of autumn, to give way to the cool of winter. So do we, when we gather together to worship, make merry, and enjoy the autumnal abundance of life.
Given this background, it seems normal that the West Bengal Chief Minister (CM), Mamata Banerjee would attempt to move public focus away from protests – towards the upcoming Durga Puja festivities. But is it? Or, is it a heartless ploy to preserve power – sugar-coated as benevolent advice for the protesting public? Given the recent gruesome rape and murder of a junior medical trainee (now renamed Abhaya) at R. G. Kar hospital on Aug 9, 2024, and the disgusting details of conspiracy and neglect that have enshrouded this harrowing case – there is little to be festive about. If anything, this is a season of sorrow. For many, this is the CM’s attempt to distract an irate public. She comes across as insensitive – as Abhaya’s sorrowing mother has said. Here are her words of anguish:
“Durga Puja is celebrated in my house too; my daughter used to handle it herself. But Durga Puja will never be celebrated in my house again. The light in my home is out … How can I ask people to return to the festival? Let her [CM] return our daughter first. If such an incident had happened in the Chief Minister’s family, would she have said this?”
The horror of rape lies, not in numbers, although numbers add to this horror. It lies in the very act itself. Lest we become complacent, let us not forget that even a single case of rape is one too many. To the person raped, the statistical gaze is cold and clinical. It treats victims as numbers.
August 2024 has been a sinister month for India. It has witnessed one too many cases of rape. The gruesome death of Abhaya has shaken the nation. A promising young doctor, and a gift to her parents, neighbors, colleagues, and patients – she was an angel who fed stray animals and shared her tiffin with colleagues. We shudder at the torment she suffered. But she was not the only victim. She was one of several, of whom, some have died. This does not diminish the excruciating horror of her pain and untimely death, but merely highlights the intensity of India’s rape crisis. Before Abhaya’s death, a nurse in Uttarakhand was raped and killed, her face mutilated beyond recognition, and her body recovered on Aug 8.th After this, on August 12th, a teenaged girl in Muzaffarpur was gang-raped and murdered. On August 12-13th, another teenaged girl was gang-raped in Dehradun, by a bus driver and his four associates. Within ten days of Abhaya’s tragic death, four cases of rape were reported in India. August, therefore, should be observed as a “Stop Rape” month.
Not just women and girls – but even minors and elderly ladies have been subjected to rape in contemporary India. Many victims have been infant girls, of whom, some have died as a result of rape. Indeed, what kind of a monster rapes an infant girl? I have no answer, except to cite Aristotle, who says – man, when perfected, is the best of all animals, but the worst, when severed from law and justice. In Feb 2024, a trans-identified male was sentenced to death by a Mumbai court for raping and tormenting a three-months old infant girl. In July 2024, a five-month old baby girl was allegedly raped by a forty-year old male in Andhra Pradesh. Not even the elderly have been spared India’s sadistic masculinity. In August 2024, a seventy-year old woman was raped during an attempted robbery in Kerala.
If this sounds nightmarish, imagine how much worse the reality must be. For, rape in India is hugely underreported. Of those reported, conviction rates are abysmally low. The true figures, therefore, must be far worse.
All nations are self-contradictory. But the internal contradictions of the Indian civilization are extreme. In this same civilization, where the Eternal Feminine is worshipped annually, and the pantheon of Hindu Goddesses propitiated and welcomed to shower their benediction upon Earth – the same Eternal Feminine, which incarnates itself in every feminine form, is also assaulted in that same bodily form. Objectified, vilified, and humiliated simply for being physically female – the living Goddess is desecrated daily – through rape, sexual assault, molestation, “Eve-teasing,” female feticide, domestic violence, acid attacks, dowry deaths, etc. In this same nation, where little girls are worshipped by monks during Kumari Puja – infant girls are also raped, tormented, and killed with impunity.
Given these contradictions, what is the meaning and purpose of Mother Durga? A leonine Goddess astride a lion – She is mesmerizing. Her ten arms, a grand deca-symbol of Shakti – She evokes awe with every nuance of her visage. The opposite of worldly power, Her strength (Shakti ) exceeds the sum total of all moral virtues put together. Born from the luminous sphere of divine Incandescence – or the combined energies of the gods, including the trinitarian Brahma-Vishnu-Shiva – Durga incarnated in this phenomenal world in order to redeem it. Described in the Chandi (1-81) as “most beautiful among all beautiful things in the world,” Durga is the “Redeemer of Sorrow.” As the infusion of the eternal into the temporal, omnipresent-omnipotent Durga comes to unify. Cowering at her feet is the buffalo-demon, Mahisasura, who conquered the gods and ruled them. When I was a child, Mahisasura was, for me, far more menacing than Durga’s lion with its flashing teeth.
But still more menacing is the patriarchal Mahisasura of contemporary India. Where is this buffalo-demon? In all who engage in sadistic cruelty – especially those who abuse women and children – an ominous omnibus of pimps, rapists (especially gang-rapists), violent in-laws, those who beat women, and other abusers abhorred by virtuous men and women alike. Where is the supernal might of Durga? In the virginal, cosmic-acosmic strength of righteous forms of feminism (not all feminism is righteous) – a dispassionate strength, full of might because it is non-violent and free of hatred. Indeed, Durga’s visage expresses a regal might – the kind of effortless strength that can never arise from anger or hatred.
On Aug 9, 2024, it was this living Durga who was tormented, raped, and murdered in the body of Abhaya. The same may be said of every case of rape in India and elsewhere. Given these tragedies, what would Mother Durga expect of us in 2024? Chances are, She would expect us to mourn Abhaya and others, instead of celebrating Durga Puja. She would ask us to propitiate Her through introspection, mass penance, collective mourning, and the resolve to remove the stain of India’s rape crisis, and its main cause – an intransigent patriarchal mindset that expresses itself individually, collectively, and systemically.
For all its negative verses on women, the Manusmriti has a few positive ones, like 3.56-58:
The deities delight in places where women are revered, but where women are not revered, all rights are fruitless. Where the women of the family are miserable, the family is soon destroyed, but it always thrives where the women are not miserable. Homes that are cursed by women of the family who have not been treated with due reverence are completely destroyed, as if struck down by witchcraft.
To this, I would add – where women are abused and dishonored, auspiciousness fades, paving the way for rack and ruin. India is aiming at becoming the third largest economy in the world. But if the current abuse against women continues, it will bring in its trail grave inauspiciousness that includes economic rack and ruin. I would say the same of America, where the rape rate is higher than in India.
If we want to please the great Goddess, we should spend this puja season engaging in introspection, self-purification, service of rape survivors, and collective penance on behalf of remorseless rapists who are incapable of penance. We should spend it mourning all who have died through sexual violence and rape – especially infant girls and those like Abhaya and Nirbhaya, who have suffered extreme sadism, on top of the sadism of rape. We should spend this puja season excoriating and exorcizing the patriarchal Mahisasura from within ourselves and from India. Above all, we should spend it serving rape survivors and victims, and their sorrowing families.