Movies Promote Crimes Against Women and Racism in the Society

Whenever any crime against a woman is committed, the first person to be blamed is either the politician or the police. The film industry is hardly mentioned at all. From time to time, women’s right activists voice their concern over nudity/vulgar scenes and item numbers. But these item girls and villains who rape heroine or the protagonist’s sisters are not the role models of the masses.  What the hero does is what that stays long in our mind and that we imitate. Films promote the traditional male characters that are partly responsible for promoting sexual crimes against women. In every Bollywood films, we will see heroes pestering and stalking heroines, forcing unwanted attention to heroines. But they will end up getting the heroines, and the audiences are cheering and happy at that. That is the conventional Bollywood way for heroes to win heroines. Take any examples of blockbuster movies. In Deewana, Sharukh Khan, a spoilt son, was seen stalking the heroine, a widow. In Tere Naam, Salman Khan, a college dropout, was seen harassing and stalking the heroine, a college student. No one reacted and voiced against the heroes’ behavior toward heroines. Everyone was happy when their heroes won the heroines. Worst of all, in the movie Darr, Sharukh Khan was seen stalking and calling up the heroine late night in her home telephone all the time, tormenting the life of heroine, her fiancée, and her family members. At one point, she was suffering from acute depression. In spite of all villainous activities Sharukh portrayed, no one sided the protagonist Sunny Deol. It is the villain and women stalker Sharukh who got all the accolades and sympathy from audiences. Imagine Sharukh and Salman are the heartthrobs of millions of people, will they be able to think what their heroes are doing are wrong? Beware of this, because they are indeed heartthrobs and have huge fans following throughout the country. When the movie Fire was released, there were huge protests against the film demanding either to ban the film from running in theaters or delete the lesbian act between the two lead female protagonists. Ironically, the names of female protagonists in the movie were Radha and Sita, the name of Hindu deities. Imagine, if Sabhana Azmi and Nandita Das were heartthrobs for the country just like Salman and Sharukh, what message would they send and lesson they would teach to their die-hard fans? Our all-time favorite villains Ranjeet, Prem Chopra, and Gulson Grover each had almost hundred rape scenes in their filmi careers, but they failed to motivate the masses since it is heroes not them who are worshiped by the masses. What villains do in the film is not a threat to the society, but what heroes do does. We are not judgmental to what our heroes do. We cheer and glorify whatever they do. We believe whatever they do is right, and start applying in our life.

Imagine what lessons are taught by heroes in other states where heroes are worshiped as deities. I can’t comment much on other regional movies in other states, but I have clearly seen the transition in the behavior of youths and rising crimes in my state Manipur. We grew up watching Hindi films. We saw villains raping heroines, killing brothers for property dispute, killing brides for dowry, villains kidnapping heroines or heroes’ mothers or sisters for ransom. Although we watched these movies all the time, we never imitated or tried to imitate. We always believed that our culture is different from these. So we watched these as just films, and never tried to imitate what Hindi films showed to us nor influenced our mind. However, after the ban of Hindi films in Manipur, regional moves started becoming very popular. Now the erstwhile foreign culture shown in Hindi movies is no longer alien. Now we can relate these acts to our culture and society after seeing the same acts in our own regional films. Killing wives for dowry or other reasons was unknown to Manipuri society, and rape and molestation of women were unknown or happened very rarely. But today, we are not so lagging behind other states for such crimes. I believe the same is true in other states.  One easy way to get this fact right is to compare the crime rates between the U.S. (the home of Hollywood) versus other European countries.

Nirbhaya: A Yet Reminder of Rape Against Women in India

So much has been written and said about the brutal assault and rape of a young 23-year-old medical student Nirbhaya by six men. It is not that this incident is something new to our society. What is new is the solidarity and united voice “Enough is enough, it is time to awake.” Every rape and killing of women has always been a yet reminder of another brutal attack to women. How far can this go? Instead of trying to remember other such horrible instances of the past, let’s straight get into why the rapists are so emboldened to commit such crime over again and again, and how to control such menace from the society. First, let’s find out what is going in the mind of these rapists. Why are they so emboldened to commit such heinous crime? Although today girls perform better than boys in education and many fields, their mobility and socio-economic growth have been hampered by these treats and crimes against them. Now let’s us focus on two institutions that need immediate reforms. First and foremost, we need to have judicial and police reforms.

Judicial Reforms: Slow, low conviction rate, and lighter sentence embolden these criminals. It takes years to convict a rapist. Many rapists are moving freely in the street, uncaring of their conviction thinking there are hundreds of rape cases pending before them. Speedy, impartial, and efficient justice delivery is the need of the time. It is widely known that there are large vacancies of judges in both lower and high courts. Our judges are overstretched due to this. The lack of the number of judges and poor infrastructure such as the lack of computerization make the delivery of justice a snail pace. Until we have enough number of judges, the need of the time is computerization of our courts to achieve quick case disposal. We should seize the opportunities of information technology, such as video conferencing, for faster delivery of case. Considering the increasing number of criminal activities against women, the need of the time is to set up fast-track courts especially to address crimes against women. No any case should lay idle on the file for more than a month.

Police Reforms: Retired IPS officer and social activist Kiran Bedi had rightly stated that the unfortunate gangrape of Nirbhaya was an avoidable one if the basic law and order measures were implemented by the police. She went on to say that the worst is that the police escaped unpunished despite failing to do their duties, because their officers themselves either don’t know whats and whys of policing and governance or misplaced their priorities. What is more appalling is the victim’s male friend revelation that the police wasted more than half an hour over jurisdiction argument. Had the victim been rushed to a nearby hospital, she could have been survived. Before talking further of police reforms, we are better not to forget that just like judges, there are enormous vacancies of police personnel too. Our officers are overstretched. These unfilled posts and VIP security duties make an appalling ratio of 1 policeman for ordinary 760 ordinary citizens and 3 policemen for 1 VIP.  VIP security service is very often the excuse for the police why they can’t provide enough security to stop such crimes against women. Since police reforms are huge and the goals can’t be achieved very soon, let’s us divide our priority into short- and long-term goals.

Short-term goals: Increase the number of women police officers in every police station, register all FIRs to cases against women and prosecute those who don’t do this, install GPRS to all public vehicles and cabs, install CCTVs to public places and roads, issue non-temparable ID to auto and taxi drivers, identify vulnerable areas and conduct random checks on vehicles, and tinted glass should be removed from the vehicles everywhere irrespective of cities and other areas. And most importantly, to augment our meager police personnel we need to use the community resources. Create village defense forces, and utilize NCC cadets, citizen wardens, and special police officers. With proper training, discipline, and guidance, they can deter the incidence of crimes beyond imagination. Cooperation between police force and community will build up better relationship between the two, but they should be under constant review. 

Long-term goals: Here come accountability and transparency in the functioning of police officers. Our police functioning must be insulated from the interference of politics in the recruitment, posting, transfer, arrest, and prosecutions. Finally, the 2006 Supreme Court-mandated police reforms --- in the recruitment of the police chiefs, DGPs, IGPs, senior SPs --- must be implemented.

Besides all the measures and reforms, it is education that can make our society a peaceful and crime-free one. It needs discipline and respect to women to prevent crimes against women. And we get discipline from education. But home is considered children’s first school and parents their first teachers. Hence good parenting and good school education play the most important roles of all. Shutting down metro stations, cordon off streets, and spraying water canons are not the answer. When the whole nation stand up in anger and shout in a common voice, can the government dare to waste more time instead of having an emergency joint sitting and pass a stringent law against rape and crime against women.  Don’t politicize safety of women. Set aside political interests. It is the time to shun off these blame game and selfish political interests.

A tip to Congress!!! The government, which has already long suffered from trust deficit and corruption, must not miss this opportunity to rebuild the lost trust. With the election just one year away, seize this opportunity. Pass a strong rape law and immediately punish the convicts with maximum punishment. This will again boost confidence to people that the government does really care for the people. Don’t forget the real power lies at the hand of the people. The government is formed by the representatives of the people. The people can bring the fall of the government anytime at will. When the whole nation awakes in anger against you, the only thing the government should do is listen to them carefully and do what they want.