Our Selective Conscience

[JUSTIFY]
Almost a week ago, a five year old was raped, attacked and killed in Lucknow, in an act that was described by the newspapers as “worse than the Delhi gang rape”. The first instinct of the police was to explain it away as an attack by stray dogs and dismiss the demand for a FIR. It was only when the post mortem revealed 80 injuries and a damaged kidney (a doctor conducting the autopsy said it could only have been the work of a psychopath) that a report was grudgingly lodged.

Meanwhile, no candle marches were held, social activists did not heckle the police, Facebook did not explode in horror, no gut wrenching editorials were written, no offers of support were made when the victim’s mother voiced her fears for her other daughter, and no netas made soul stirring speeches. Even the chairperson of the state’s women commission did not deem it fit to visit the victim’s family.

The five year old was after all, a girl of no consequence. She lived on a pavement with her mother and two siblings. She had no school to go to and whiled away her time playing by the pavement where her mother sold stone crushers.

How did it matter if she lived barely 500 metres from the police station of one of the city’s toniest colonies? How did it matter that the owners of two sweetmeat shops in the vicinity of her ‘home’ talked themselves out of sharing CCTV footage as they did not want to get ‘involved’? How did it matter that her unremarkable life was snuffed out by an act of savagery?

Around the same period, a 16 year old in Bijnore was set on fire for resisting rape, the condition of a 20 year old similarly set on fire in Etawah deteriorated, and a 19 year old in Pratapgarh almost had her tongue cut off to prevent her from testifying against her rapist. The city’s police meanwhile announced that it was developing a questionnaire to understand the minds of rapists.

We remained unmoved.

We, who had carried out signature campaigns for Nirbhaya, had staged and applauded street plays, written and recorded our commitments to women’s safety, and publicly disclosed our personal horrors remained unconcerned. It was only when a local newspaper questioned this silence that we made some noises, blocked the car of the women’s commission head to force her to visit the victim’s family while the more political among us took to the streets brandishing bangles which we wanted the police to wear for its ineffectiveness.

And then the silence returned.

What is it that makes some crimes more appalling and thus more appealing to our consciences than others? Do we have a limited reserve of conscience that once expended needs time to replenish? Is our moral character relative to the impulses that we receive at a given time? Are we manipulated into reacting to certain horrors and not to others as part of a larger agenda?

While I do not have the answers to the above, I do know that we betray our humanness every time we choose silence.

Silence is not an option.

Not for us who live in a state helmed by a “youth icon” whose party displays a dismaying apathy to women’s issues in general and women’s safety in particular. Not for us, who have a minister for women’s issues whose public appearances are limited to attending music concerts and inaugurating exhibitions.

But most vitally for us- for ourselves, silence and a selective conscience that is often superseded by convenience is not an option. We owe it to ourselves- to our humanity.
[/JUSTIFY]