What are we independent of?

Medical professionals and activists during a protest to condemn the rape and murder of a young doctor in Kolkata on the eve of Independence Day celebrations. Pic/AFP

Outrage. It's the only word that comes to mind at this moment in time. I already see how the gruesome murder of a 31-year-old trainee doctor in Kolkata's RG Kar Medical College and Hospital will get scripted in the future as the plot of a true crime series, joining the ranks of innumerable such episodes centred around the sexual assault and murder of women. Such is the level of normalcy when it comes to femicide, it is a movie genre.

It makes me furious to read about the various levels of mismanagement and the tampering of evidence and I can't help but think that when it comes to any form of police procedural, India is a thug state. While I celebrate the protests by the medical community, I feel wary that the cruel circumstances of this woman's death are being erased to enable a larger discourse around work safety, which is urgent and necessary, but perhaps not at the expense of this specific case. I am already afraid that our rage and protests might be one-tone. I've seen numerous posters asking for the death penalty for rapists, which is not only ineffective, but also a waste of time in terms of advocacy. Instead, we should be asking for better working conditions, for more accountability from hospital management systems, from institutions, particularly if they are government bodies or institutes of learning. We should also simultaneously advocate for better environments so that people are not forced to be cramped in hospital rooms. We deserve better.

I feel outrage that we even continue to celebrate our ‘independence', because I am unsure what exactly we are independent from. Every day there are reports of Muslims being lynched. People who have actively rioted against minorities remain unscathed while innocent people like Umar Khalid are wasting away in jail cells. The rates of unemployment across cities are staggering, even as we continue to over-invest in infrastructure that collapses upon its first contact with intense rain. I'm feeling jaded because there are so many brilliant people who call India home who deserve to have the opportunities they need to shine. Instead, we're all utterly reliant on class and caste privileges to move forward. In doing so, we inevitably continue to uphold the status quo. Brahmanical patriarchy becomes completely normalised. What a pity, to be citizens of a country with such a finely sculpted constitution; to be, in whatever capacity we can call ourselves, a functioning democracy, and to still have to continue to fight for rights that we are in fact entitled to.

Last night, as protests were underway, a mob entered the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital premises and potentially destroyed sites that could have borne evidence. It is unclear who this mob answers to. Autopsy results suggest that the female doctor was most likely gang raped. I feel horror every time I hear that word. As if rape by a single person was not horrifying enough. It seems to have become a norm in India, which says so much about the sickness of patriarchy and misogyny. I'm still processing the reports about Palestinians being subject to such forms of assault and the international community, including journalists and newspapers, staying silent on the subject, despite the presence of damning footage. Instead, one reads reports of right-wingers in Israel rushing to defend soldiers' ‘right' to sexual assault. No one has the ‘right' to rape. I grieve to think we live in a world where this can even be considered a possibility, because it attests to not only the extent to which we have dehumanised non-white bodies, but to the dehumanisation of even the aggressors. What does it profit anyone, to gain the whole world but lose their soul?

We deserve better. As Indian women, we have every right to equality and justice. We ought to have the right to go about our daily lives without the fear of being molested, raped and/or killed. We ought to have the right to feel safe wherever we go. Some of us have been lucky to feel safe at home. Not everyone is so privileged. All of us know instances of abuse within the home, where the perpetrator is not a stranger but a relative. We have never known true justice. We have never known what it is like to not be gaslit, for our bodies to be honoured and respected, even by the people we hold dear, or for our autonomy to be privileged. We've just grown accustomed to constantly fighting the odds, sharpening our resilience, going against our family's wishes in order to pursue our dreams, in order to live our truest lives.

We deserve better.

Deliberating on the life and times of every woman, Rosalyn D'Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She tweets @RosaParx
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