TWTWTW July 23

3871 DAYS ago today, a 22-year-old girl was brutally gang-raped in a Delhi bus by six savages.

Contemporary events led me to revisit my journals, and my memory, from that time. And some events stand out, even after the passage of over a decade:

#1. Within 24 hours the police had arrested the perpetrators. No one had to tell them to act; no one had to force them to file an FIR. A heinous crime occurred and was solved, within 24 hours — by the Delhi police, note.

#2. The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs met to discuss the crime. Union Home Secretary RK Singh and Delhi Police Commissioner Neeraj Kumar were summoned and explanations were sought. The committee was then headed by Venkaiah Naidu of the BJP. No attempt was made to prevent the discussion; there was no pushback that Naidu was “politicizing” the issue.

#3: Despite the swiftness of the police action, the Delhi High Court took it upon itself to monitor developments. It demanded names and details of police officials who were on duty in the area that day; it hauled up the police for not having acted swiftly in the case of a robbery that had occurred in the same bus earlier in the day. It sanctioned the setting up of fast-track courts to try such heinous offenses (the first such court was inaugurated by then CJI Altamas Kabir on January 2, just 16 days after the crime). No one had to tell the court to take suo moto cognizance and ensure that the law and order machinery functioned effectively.

#4. By 21 December, the victim had undergone five surgeries but remained critical. The government appointed a committee of doctors to attend on her. When her condition showed no sign of improvement, then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh chaired a cabinet meeting on 16 December where it was decided to fly her to Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore for further care. The victim died in Singapore in the early hours of 29 December, and her body was cremated on 30 December. The BJP, the main opposition party, criticized the high security around the cremation and likened it to the Emergency (No one accused the BJP of playing politics — which in fact it was doing; the BJP knew, as did everyone else, that security had been heightened in view of the nationwide protests and the heightened anger of the public).

#5. In less than a year, on 10 September 2013, the fast-track court of Delhi found the four adult defendants guilty of rape, murder, unnatural offenses and destruction of evidence. (After four different appeals to the Supreme Court, and a mercy petition to the President, all four were duly executed on 20 March 2020.)

#6. Public protests broke out in the immediate aftermath and rapidly spread to cities and metros across the country. On 21 December, thousands of protestors clashed with the police at India Gate. Among them were ‘Baba’ Ramdev of Patanjali and former Army chief Vijay Kumar Singh, now MoS for Road Transport and Highways in the Union cabinet and studiously silent on Manipur. Efforts by the police and the government to discourage protestors resulted in the protests escalating further as thousands more joined in to defy the state and demand answers.

Following the death of the victim, protests and candlelight vigils continued across the country. The BJP took active part and also demanded a special session of Parliament to discuss the case. The armed forces canceled its New Year celebrations. Sympathetic protests were held in Nepal, in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka — and no one thought these countries were interfering in India’s internal affairs. Major foreign publications carried multiple articles covering the rape and its aftermath, without their possible connections to George Soros being dragged into the discussion or their motivations being questioned.

#7. Sonia Gandhi, chairperson of the then-ruling coalition UPA, visited the victim in Safdarjung Hospital. PM Manmohan Singh made a televised address to the nation on 24 December. Leader of the Opposition Sushma Swaraj demanded death by hanging for the rapists; BSP chief Mayawati asked for action so strict that none would ever dare act in such a heinous manner again; then Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar asked that a new law be passed to ensure the safety of women; Sheila Dixit, then chief minister of Delhi, herself described the national capital as becoming the rape capital of the world. And that is just a shortlist of prominent leaders who spoke out in the moment.

#8. On 22 December, former CJI JS Verma was named to head a judicial commission to suggest, within 30 days, amendments to the criminal laws aimed to deal with rape. And on 26 December, former Delhi High Court judge Usha Mehra headed a commission of inquiry to identify lapses and fix responsibility for the crime and suggest measures to make Delhi safer for women. As a result, on 3 February 2013 the Criminal Law (Amendment) Ordinance 2013 was promulgated, providing for amendments to the IPC, the Indian Evidence Act and related other acts. The ordinance provided for, among other things, the death penalty in cases of rape.

This is not a comprehensive account of the events surrounding the Nirbhaya rape case, merely a quick summation of some key points from the past that cast some light on our present.

WHY bring up all this? Why now?

Because this past week, as the horrific crime in Manipur unfolded and ramified, I have been sitting here thinking of the country we used to be, just a decade or so ago.

It was not a safe country for women then (and I doubt it will ever be one). It was not a country where governments took responsibility and quit (and I doubt if it will ever be one). It was not a country where police handled outpourings of public anger with sensitivity rather than lathis and tear gas (and I doubt it will ever be one).

But it was a country, a people, with a semblance at least of conscience. We were a people who were slow to be aroused to anger — but when some more than ordinarily gruesome crime shook us out of our apathy, we were a people who would stand up to the might of the state and not back down in the face of water canons and teargas shells; a people who would demand accountability and be satisfied with nothing less.

We were a people who would take to the streets in our numbers to make our voices heard. And we were a people who remembered and, when the time came, used our votes to convey our anger.

(Such events in fact became political faultlines — during his 2014 campaign, Modi exhorted people to ‘Remember Nirbhaya when you go to vote’.)

How did we get from that to this?

How did we become a people so thoroughly inured to high crimes and misdemeanors that even a chilling, graphic video of women being stripped and paraded in public prior to their being gang-raped did not merit a single placard, a solitary candle lit in sympathy?

How did we become a people so anesthetized that our instinct in the face of heinous crime is to stand not with the victim but with the political party of our preference?

To misapply a quote: Gradually, then suddenly.

We took a baby step in 2018 when, following the gang rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl in Kathua, “Hindu groups” were emboldened enough to stage, with impunity, protests against the arrest of the perpetrators and to frame the arrests as an attack on the Hindu religion; when two serving ministers of the Modi government — Minister for Forests Lal Singh Chaudhary and Minister for Industries Chander Prakash — actually attended the protests; when lawyers protested in front of the office of the Chief Judicial Magistrate of Kathua where Crime Branch officials had arrived to file charges against the perpetrators.

That same year we took another baby step when a minister — Jayant Sinha — garlanded and felicitated eight men convicted of lynching a man on the mere suspicion that he was transporting beef.

We took a baby step in September 2020 when a 19-year-old was gangraped in Hathras, Uttar Pradesh and the police initially dismissed it as fake news and forcibly cremated the body against the objections of the family; when the state government hired a PR firm to publicize the line that no rape had occurred; when Adityanath’s government said the story was fabricated as part of an “international conspiracy” to malign the state; when an ex-MLA belonging to the BJP held a rally in support of the four accused that was attended by hundreds including members of the RSS; when journalists traveling to Hathras to report from the ground were arrested and when, finally, the Hathras district court exonerated three of the four accused.

We took a giant stride in August 2022 when eleven men convicted for the vicious rape of Bilkis Bano and the murder of her family were greeted with garlands and sweets during a ‘felicitation function’ at the office of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad after they were released on grounds so dubious the Gujarat government has been resisting Supreme Court orders to produce the concerned documentation.

Gradually, then suddenly, we have gotten to a place where the prime minister of the country can remain stubbornly silent about a state ruled by his party ripping itself apart — and when he finally spoke after the Supreme Court took suo moto notice and threatened to act, it was to deliver a meandering, mealy-mouthed word salad in the midst of which he devoted a sum total of 36 seconds to a mention of the gut-churning crime in Manipur, managing in the process to sneak in some political whataboutery.

Note that he spoke outside Parliament, where he could not be questioned, and then skipped proceedings inside Parliament, where the Opposition wanted to question him. (Supriya Sharma on why the PM’s speech was worse than his silence).

We have a Union Minister specifically charged with developing the North East. When Kishan Reddy was asked to comment on what was going on in the state, he said “I am not related to it and I will not speak on Manipur”.

We have taken steps, small and large, all mostly unnoticed and unremarked, every month, every year over these past nine years. And the process continues: On the same day that one of the accused in the Manipur crime was arrested, BJP “strongman” and former WFI chief Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh was granted bail by the Delhi High Court on multiple charges of prolonged sexual abuse with the government “neither supporting nor opposing” bail, and Dera Sacha Sauda chief Ram Rahim, convicted for rape and murder and sentenced to 20 years imprisonment, received his 5th parole in two years — this one for 30 days so he could “celebrate his birthday”. This makes a total of 140 days of parole in that span of time.

And while on that, in a stupefyingly brazen fuck-you to the country at large, the BJP fielded Brij Bhushan to address a press conference on the Manipur atrocity, which he called “reprehensible”.

We have gotten to a place where the chief minister of the state on whose watch the crime occurred could, when asked why no action had been taken over a 70-day period, casually state that this was just one of “hundreds” of such FIRs filed in the state and this was why the internet had been banned — admitting, without a qualm, that the ban was not to maintain peace and security but to prevent news of systematic atrocities from leaking out. (While on this, read Makepeace Silthou on why internet bans help the spread of misinformation rather than curb it.)

He then gilded the lily when he announced, this week, that his party would carry out statewide protests condemning the leak of a video that “tarnished the image” of the state.

Read that again slowly: Chief Minister N Biren Singh is leading a protest against the outing of evidence of a horrendous crime that happened on his watch; that he knew about; that he did nothing about until his hand was forced — and he thinks it was the evidence, not the crime itself and the fact that Manipur is in a state of total anarchy on his watch, that “tarnishes” the image of Manipur.

This is the man who says he took “suo moto” notice of the crime when the video leaked and ordered the police to act. Note: the legal term suo moto means ‘on its (his) own accord’. You can’t take suo moto notice of a crime that had already come to the attention of the police, and resulted in an FIR, two months before you woke up.

The Parliamentary Standing Committee for Home — a successor to the one BJP veteran Venkaiah Naidu once headed, remember? — was this month prevented from discussing the state of civil war in Manipur.

The very first act of this government after the Manipur story broke was to order social media companies to take down all videos relating to the crime. These, mind you, are the same videos the Manipur police subsequently said had helped them to identify some of the accused.

A day before the ongoing session of Parliament, the Centre stated that it was ready to discuss Manipur — and then the PM absented himself, as did the Home Minister; Parliament was adjourned for two days in succession with no discussion, and the BJP then accused the Opposition of not being interested in discussing the issue.

Minister for Women’s Affairs Smriti Irani finds a national security issue in the Manipur video before she segues into whataboutery. Quite revealing that she finds “national security” in the public airing of the sorry tale of women — one of them the wife of a veteran of the Kargil war — being stripped, paraded by hundreds of men in front of thousands more, and raped, but no such national security issue in the thousands of weapons and hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition looted from the police and the armed forces, and now in unknown hands.

(BTW, since Irani is so concerned about the recent gang rape in Rajasthan, which is ruled by the Congress and which goes to polls later this year, it might interest her to know that the police acted without being told to, and the accused have been arrested. Whether the three accused are, as the police allege, linked to the BJP’s youth wing is actually neither here nor there. As for her reference to a horror story out of West Bengal, the police have an update. Himanta Sarma meanwhile adopted the same red herring of a brutal gang rape in Jodhpur, Rajasthan, only for it to turn out that not only were the culprits already in custody, one of them was a member of the BJP’s own student wing.)

BJP leader Dilip Ghosh suggests that the video was deliberately leaked just ahead of the Parliament session so the Opposition would have a “baseless issue” to discuss.

Remember those words: “Baseless issue”.

It is worth remembering, in context of Ghosh’s remarks, that Hoineilhing Sitlhou reported on the atrocity as far back as 1 June, and even pointed out that it was an outcome of a fake story that had been widely circulated. Sonal Matharu reported on the case on 12 June. Makepeace Sitlhou makes the point: In other times, such breaking stories would have attracted swarms of reporters; here, no one noticed, no one cared.

The National Commission of Women, whose mission includes the redressal of grievances, was informed of the Manipur atrocity and other instances of similar nature, as far back as June 12. It said nothing, did nothing. (Or not “nothing”, exactly). Now that the story is out, its chief Rekha Sharma says the NCW forwarded complaints as and when received to the concerned officials.

A postman could have done that.

The question is, when you forwarded complaints of heinous crimes and received no response, what did you then do? Did the NCW bump it up to the chief minister of the state? To the Union minister for women’s affairs? To the minister for north-east affairs? To the home minister?

(The media knows better than to ask such inconvenient questions. This is textbook: when an institution is accused, with considerable justice, of ignoring high crimes, stick a microphone in someone’s face, get a self-exonerating statement on record, and we are done.)

The electronic media highlighted various high-profile visits to the state. Such as that of Chief of Army Staff Manoj Pande on 27 May. Of Home Minister Amit Shah who made a four-day visit to the state beginning 29 May for meetings with security officials and other stakeholders — and we are to believe that over that long stay, no word reached him of these atrocities. Of Himanta Biswa Sarma who, besides being chief minister of Assam is also the leader of the North East Democratic Alliance, on 10 June.

The government, on 4 June, even constituted a Commission of Inquiry under former chief justice of the Guwahati high court Ajai Lamba.

Besides these visits and inquiries, Shah presided over an all-party meeting on 24 June in Delhi; two days later PM Modi chaired a “high-level meeting” to review the situation in Manipur.

Through all this, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men — not to mention the king himself — had no idea the police were filing “hundreds of FIRs” relating to heinous crimes? The best interpretation you can put on this is that it indicates abject incompetence across all levels of the party and various institutions; the worst interpretation is that they are all complicit.

While the television channels did their utmost to distract, purported “news” agency ANI went fishing in Manipur’s troubled waters and twice put out incendiary stories that later proved to be false. First, it put out a story that a forum of Manipur tribal leaders had apologized to the Kuki-Zo people, only to retract when the forum pointed out that it was based on a fake press release. It then put out a story naming a Muslim among those arrested for the Manipur crime; sundry BJP leaders picked it up and gave it oxygen and then, 24 hours later, the agency put out an “apology“, saying its original story was based on an “erroneous reading” of some tweets.

India’s premier news agency, with reporters and stringers all over the country including in Manipur, could not even verify stories based on fake press releases and “tweets” before putting it out — particularly in a situation as volatile as this? Who is in charge of editorial operations and why does (s)he continue to hold that job?

Assume, for argument, that these mistakes were in good faith — considering how endemic they have been, has there been any internal review? Any attempt to fix accountability? Any institution of processes designed to prevent such mistakes in the future? Any concrete action, other than ANI editor Smita Prakash and her son challenging fact checkers to verbal duels in their studios?

If these were genuine mistakes, I have a bridge…

So how did we get here? This is how: The ruling party, for its own obscure purposes, stood by and deliberately let a state burn. Once caught out, its ministers and fellow travelers mounted a flat-out attempt to distract, to obfuscate, to deflect, to launch ad hominem attacks. Captive media, particularly electronic media, aided and abetted these efforts while its captive news agency threw more fuel on the raging fires. And through it all, we — civil society — stood by and watched, and continue to watch.

Time, and/or the ballot box, will eventually see the end of this government. But the harm it has done to society, by gradually then suddenly deadening its collective conscience, will live on as the regime’s legacy.

And ours.

Reading Material:

#1. One of the Manipur atrocity survivors recounts how the police watched the horror and made no move to help; another speaks to her ordeal. Another account suggests that the police deliberately drove the women into the arms of the mob. And more stories of unspeakable atrocities have begun to surface, including the story of an 80-year-old woman, wife of a freedom fighter, who was burnt alive, and this story of an 18-year-old who was handed over by a group of women to four masked men who gang-raped her.

#2. Meanwhile, now Meiteis have begun to flee out of neighboring Mizoram, and the Manipur government says it is willing to arrange aircraft to facilitate the exodus.

#3. Splainer has a round-up of the most recent events from Manipur, with copious links

#4. Makepeace Sitlhou on the indigenous politics that have paved the way for the current clashes

#5. Apar Gupta on why internet bans will not help restore peace

#6. Dushyant Dave on why the Supreme Court needs to be more proactive on Manipur

#7. Pratap Bhanu Mehta’s scathing oped on the latest developments and what it says about us as a society

#8. Samar Halarnkar on Manipur and the BJP’s manipulations

#9. Sreemoy Talukdar unpacks the complexities underlying the current conflagration in Manipur

Archival: A 2019 longform story in Caravan on the RSS push into the north-east

In passing, have you considered the mystery of the missing home minister? Keep an eye open, something doesn’t smell right.

Image and story by The News Minute of a protest in Bangalore, 21 July, against the atrocities in Manipur.