Four days ago, when Jasleen Kaur snapped a picture of the guy who was allegedly abusing her and got him arrested, quite a few of us felt proud. Here’s a woman who knows to stand up for herself, who knows her rights. We even secretly wished most of us were like her – brave.
Her ‘courageous act’ became a talking point on social media. She was appreciated and given a cash prize of Rs 50,000 by Delhi Chief Minister and AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal.
But many others were also uneasy over the affair. There were all these accusations-
“She is an AAP supporter,” said Sarvjeet Singh.
“She is doing it for political mileage, she just wants to be famous.”
“If not me, she would have accused someone else, she just wants to be famous.”
As the pile of accusations grew, her credibility dipped, as did her blustery demeanor. The clincher or better yet, the cringer was when an eyewitness at the scene backed the ‘harasser’. According to him, it was the girl who made the obscene gestures.
The Jasleen Kaur incident now feels like an embarrassing slip and a slap in the face of the feminists – we all know of it, but we can’t meet each other in the eye and talk about it. I have even begun to wonder, have we been too harsh in judging men.
These days, every time an issue of eve-teasing or molestation emerges, we are all quick to condemn it, as we should. But we have stopped verifying the facts of the case, for that matter any case.
Our neo-feminist minds find it hard to embrace the idea that a woman may be in the wrong this one particular time. We are quick to jump in defense of the woman, in order to protect her from accusations like ‘this is all her fault’. And it is because each one of us probably see ourselves in the woman.
Consequently, we have stopped viewing these cases objectively. We have stopped considering the fact that for every ten cases of molestation where the woman deserves justice, there may be a 11th one where she is really at fault (and this is not a misogynist society speaking). Social media seems to be the new court of justice where we hold the trials for the accused men, condemn them and move on to the next episode that emerges.
We all felt very proud of ourselves when women marched and protested after the Nirbhaya rape episode. The next two years saw episodes of courage, bravery, determination and glory. We were standing up for our rights, we were finally moving ahead – progressing.
The first cracks in the ceiling came with the Rohtak sisters. We all crowned them as heroes, when we first saw the video of them beating up their alleged molesters, fighting back. When the video was traced back to its source and the girls failed a lie detector test, we were all left feeling red-faced, especially the Haryana government, which had even announced a bravery award. Nobody said anything after that. Not a word of apology tendered to the two boys whose careers in the army were permanently shelved.
And this is what makes us vulnerable to the kind of hate speech men spout at the feminist movement. It makes my blood boil every time men taunt women about feminism, make jokes about it, label us as aggressive, bitter and unmarried women who hate men.
I felt outraged when somebody recently posted a series of photo messages as a counter to feminism – they called it meninism. And it felt like a knee-jerk reaction by men, it felt like venom spewing forth as a response to our growing emancipation.
But when they bring up episodes like the Rohtak sisters and now the Jasleen Kaur incident, when they sneer at us about those fake dowry harassment cases where several good men were wrongly jailed, none of us have anything to say. I certainly don’t.
At best, we can call it teething problems of a movement that is still in its nascent stages. As a movement, we Indian women are still so much on the defensive about ourselves, that admitting to an episode like this hurts our self-esteem.
Today this feminist movement, in whatever form it exists in India today, stands in real danger. And it’s not from the men or the society we are trying to fight. It’s cases like the Rohtak sisters and Jasleen Kaur, who crack our newborn shields. It’s we who pose a danger to it every time we ignore or fail to objectively view situations in the society when the need arises for it.
Because then, we arm the society with even more reasons to hate us – like REALLY HATE us.
It’s time we accepted that there are good men as there are bad and there are good women as there are bad. There is no one gender that may alone be favoured at any point in history. Or else we will be doing the same thing that men have been doing to us for centuries – discrimination.
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