I’ve been in a cynical, depressed kind of mood today, people.
I keep saying to myself, what’s the point? Look at this Salman Khan thing. The
man goes scot free (yes, yes, suspended sentence of 5 years, boo-hoo for him)
because he’s a famous actor and because the person he killed was a nobody. Now
if Salman Khan had managed to run over Shah Rukh Khan, I’ve a feeling things
would have run a very different course.
Squabbles are erupting online on the rights and wrongs of
it. But bottom line is, he’s been granted bail and is now happily ensconced in
the lap of his family; having thumbed his nose at society and all its rules.
Some people are saying, so many hit and run drivers (the
funny part is, few people dispute that it was Salman Khan behind the wheel;
despite his devious attempts to implicate his own driver) escape prosecution,
why should poor Salman be the scapegoat? Or, why in the world do homeless
people sleep on pavements and make things difficult for drunken drivers?
A person, yes, poor Noor Ullah Khan, died. However much you
argue and excuse and rationalize; shouldn’t there be some kind of
accountability for that? And yes, all the other murderers out there should be
brought to book as well, not only poor ol’ Salman bhai. (Watch where you step
the next time he decides to do a spot of drinking and driving; see how wronged
you think him when you’re being mowed down.)
Similarly, all the loose, simply moronic opinions about rape
bandied about by people who think they are safe from any such attack; all
boiling down to the seductively simple “it’s always the girl’s fault, somehow.”
She shouldn’t have been out so late. Without a man to “protect her”. WITH a man
(what a slut). She shouldn’t have been wearing that. She shouldn’t have been in
that part of town. Or, the best yet – it wasn’t rape.
So many people simply LEAPING to see the rapist’s side of
things, refusing to see that yes, some things are black and white. Simply right
and simply wrong. Some things are that simple. Because the moment we start
seeing grey shades of “mitigating circumstances” everywhere -- where does it
all stop? And though most of the people I know are mercifully schooled in
political correctness; privately everyone believes there are extenuating
circumstances for absolutely everything.
Until it happens to YOU.
The examples I give here are of ‘have-not” victims. So, we
comfortably think, as we settle back on our satin cushions, this could never
happen to us. But in a world where EVERYTHING can be rationalized away, how safe
are we from being the next victims, really?
Tomorrow, You -- tall, strapping, fit upper class male --
are jogging down the street with your earphones in your ears; and someone jumps
you from behind and does unspeakable things to you, simply because he can. What
stand would you like for society and the whole law-enforcement machinery to
take? It was wrong and your perpetrator will be caught and punished? Or, why
were you there? Why were you dressed so expensively? If you weren’t listening
to music couldn’t you have heard him coming? Why did you fight back? Maybe you
did something to tempt your attacker? Let’s FACE it, weren’t you a little bit
culpable?
If you cannot TRUST society to take a firm stand that crime
is crime and victims should be defended, what is the point of being part of
society? Isn’t everything we do, based on this trust? If one cannot trust the
people around you not to attack you every time you step into the street, how is
one to function? Is one an idiot for buying something on the trust that it is
genuine? Can one drop one’s child to school everyday, unless one has a little
bit of faith in human goodness that he will be looked after even though his
parents aren’t watching?
Our whole human existence runs on trust. And it is the state’s function to reinforce
that trust (with the threat that abusing that trust brings punishment, very few
questions asked). If not, all is chaos. And we might as well all disappear into
the woods before we start sneaking into each other’s houses and murdering people
as they sleep, (“she was offensive about my décor yesterday, and it annoyed me.”)
if that is the way we are headed.
This image of an anarchic world may seem alarmist to you.
But in my opinion, it all starts with people shrugging their shoulders and saying
“it was the victim’s fault for being there. He/she was at the wrong place at
the wrong time.”, and ends with -- the law backing such people up.
In such a world, where can you be safe?
