President’s rule in WB? Droupadi Murmu's musings fuel speculation

President Droupadi Murmu’s signed piece, uploaded on the President’s website, gladdened many and dismayed some, who felt that the President was unfairly targeting West Bengal to the exclusion of similar rapes-and-murder cases elsewhere.

The President’s silence in the past about similar crimes in BJP-ruled states had created the impression of a pliant and partisan incumbent occupying the office. The piece appearing on a day when the BJP had called for a Bengal bandh to demand chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s resignation has strengthened such suspicions.

While public memory is short, the massive protests in Delhi following the rape and murder of ‘Nirbhaya’ in 2012 did shake up both the Sheila Dikshit-led Delhi government and the UPA government at the Centre. The protests were led by the BJP and the RSS then, and both governments lost the next election. In West Bengal, the BJP has been demanding imposition of President’s rule, complaining of a breakdown in law and order in the state and allegedly increasing crimes against women.

The perception that President Murmu may be sympathetic to such demands also gathered strength thanks to the conduct of West Bengal governor C.V. Ananda Bose. The governor was in New Delhi on 19 August and called on the President and the Union home ministry. He had already met the striking junior doctors at the R.G. Kar Medical College & Hospital, where the rape and murder, allegedly committed by a civic police volunteer, took place on 9 August.

However, a plain reading of the President’s anguished piece does not seem to support such apprehensions. In the interest of brevity, the President’s heartfelt article is broken up into 10 points. The 1,000-word piece can be accessed here.

1. The gruesome incident of rape and murder of a doctor in Kolkata has left the nation shocked. I was dismayed and horrified when I came to hear of it. What is more depressing is the fact that it was not the only incident of its kind; it is part of a series of crimes against women. Even as students, doctors and citizens were protesting in Kolkata, criminals remained on the prowl elsewhere. The victims include even kindergarten girls.

2. No civilised society can allow daughters and sisters to be subjected to such atrocities. The nation is bound to be outraged, and so am I.

3. More recently, I was in a unique predicament when some schoolchildren who had come to celebrate rakhi at Rashtrapati Bhavan asked me innocently if they could be assured that there would be no recurrence of the Nirbhaya type incident in future. I told them that though the State is committed to protect every citizen, training in self-defence and martial arts is essential for all, particularly girls, to make them stronger. But that’s not a guarantee for their security as women’s vulnerability is influenced by many factors.

4. Obviously, the full answer to that question can come only from our society. Where have we erred? And what can we do to remove the errors? Without finding out the answer to that question, half of our population cannot live as freely as the other half.

5. Our Constitution granted equality to all, including women, when it was only an ideal in many parts of the world. The State then created institutions to establish this equality, wherever needed, and promoted it with a series of schemes and initiatives. Civil society came forward and supplemented the State’s outreach in this regard. Visionary leaders in all spheres of society pushed for gender equality.

6. Women have had to fight for every inch of ground they have won. Social prejudices as well as some customs and practices have always opposed the expansion of women’s rights. This is a rather deplorable mindset. I won’t call it a male mindset, because it has little to do with the gender of the person: there are many, many men who don’t have it. This mindset sees the female as a lesser human being, less powerful, less capable, less intelligent. Those who share such views see the female as an object.

7. In December 2012, we had come face to face with that element when a young woman was gang-raped and murdered. There was shock and rage. We were determined not to let another Nirbhaya meet the same fate. In the twelve years since that tragedy in the national capital, there have been countless tragedies of similar nature, though only a few drew nationwide attention. Even these were soon forgotten. Did we learn our lessons?

8. As social protests petered out, these incidents got buried into a deep and inaccessible recess of social memory, to be recalled only when another heinous crime takes place. This collective amnesia, I am afraid, is as much obnoxious as that mindset I spoke of. Now the time has come not only to face history squarely but also to search within our souls and probe the pathology of crime against women.

9. I am of the firm belief that we should not let amnesia prevail over the memory of such criminality. Let us deal with this perversion in a comprehensive manner so as to curb it right at the beginning. We can do this only if we honour the memory of the victims by cultivating a social culture of remembering them to remind us of our failures in the past and prepare us to be more vigilant in future.

10. We owe it to our daughters to remove the hurdles from their path of winning the freedom from fear. Then we can collectively give a firm answer to the innocent query of those children in the next Raksha Bandhan. Let us collectively say enough is enough.