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Hanged in the balance

A BURNING ISSUE Fifty-nine years after independence, a wedding veil is no guarantee of domestic bliss Photo: Sandeep Saxena

The auditorium of New Delhi's India International Centre was enveloped in silence one evening this weekas Ghazala Amin, well-known TV anchor, read out excerpts from Syeda S. Hameed's book, "They Hang: Twelve Women In My Portrait Gallery". The title is as poignant as the stories in the collection, based on the author's experiences as a member of the National Commission for Women between 1997 and 2000, when she came across countless cases of horrors perpetrated on women and children. The stories are fiction based on fact, but what comes to mind is that no stretch of imagination could come up with the reality these women faced. In the world's largest democracy, such women, indeed, are hanged. Because those who stand up to violence and injustice are met with indifference at best, and at worst, inhuman vendetta that seems to plumb new depths every day.

It was a dark sort of launch, organised by the book's publishers Women Unlimited. The speakers included well-known women working in the field of women's rights. Some did mention they were hopeful the system is inching slowly towards betterment, especially as high profile cases like the Jessica Lal murder help focus the spotlight on the criminal justice system through the public outrage they engendered. But the audience remained divided between those who are cautiously optimistic and those who have given up on the system.

Powerful yet powerless

As Ritu Menon of Women Unlimited pointed out, this book came about because Syeda turned the `cases' that came to her office back into women, taking their stories, their intense human-ness to heart. The author brought into focus her own and her colleagues' dilemma when she said, "We had a powerful act, we had the powers of a civil court, we could issue summons... But we had no power to prosecute. We were powerful and we were powerless."

Indira Jaisingh, senior advocate, who was involved in trying to bring justice to some of the women who came to Syeda, said, "If a member of the Commission experiences a sense of impotence, we have to ask why. Why women's issues are so low down on the political agenda is a question I would like to ask."

Kalpana Sharma, Bureau Chief, Mumbai, of The Hindu, highlighted this issue from the media perspective. "We need to look at how the stories are reported and what stories are reported. The media does have to introspect. What is it doing to bring attention to issues of violence against women?"The nature of news coverage ensures that some cases get a lot of publicity initially and then disappear from the news headlines. When Jaisingh filed a habeas corpus petition on behalf of a girl who was not being allowed by her fellow villagers to live with the man she married of her own choice, she won the case. Four years after the Supreme Court verdict, a careful newspaper reader would discover a brief news item saying the same girl had been shot by her younger brother for bringing `dishonour' to the family. Incidentally, this is the one `victory' in the book.

Noted activist Farah Naqvi recalled the Bhanwari Devi case, which brought ignominy to the legal system when a judgement set the accused free, decreeing that men belonging to upper castes could not have raped a women from a lower caste. The appeal in that case, said Farah, has not even been listed in the last 10 years. Bhanwari is still fighting her case. Farah mentioned the more recent case of Imrana, criminally assaulted by her father-in-law. Though it grabbed headlines last summer, reports of her deposition that took place this March-end were not nearly as visible. "We have to fight that amnesia," she said.

This book is part of that effort. By factionalising these stories, it is the author's intention to save them from disappearing from public memory, like the files that pertained to them disappeared from government tables.

ANJANA RAJAN

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