A Naked Protest

There’s a term called the ‘casting-couch’ – in simpler words, I will give you a good opportunity for success, but you have to sleep with me in exchange. The term may have emerged from the film industry but the casting-couch is omnipresent in the patriarchal society we inhabit. Married or unmarried, young or old, it has become normalised, almost commonplace, that the male employers will try and take advantage of a young job applicant.

Sri Reddy, a rising young Telugu actress, has launched a naked protest against leading directors and producers of the Telugu film industry about her experiences with this casting-couch. In response, Shivaji Raja, the president of the Movie Artists Association, threatened the strictest action against any other artist thinking of working with Sri. It is fairly obvious that under such circumstances no producer or director is going to be willing to work with her. Sri’s landlord too has handed her an eviction notice. She had wished to fight against discrimination only to be further discriminated against. Her stripping in public had most angered the same people who had stripped her in private. She has dared to speak out against rich and influential men; there’s no way they are going to let her be in peace!

Naked protests are nothing new. Of course, such a protest presumes certain physical and psychological risks since it is possible for anyone to retaliate with hatred or physically hurt the protestor at will. But nakedness is also strength. Even without any weapons it can make one feel powerful. Nakedness itself is a weapon. In the 80s Bangladesh, Noor Hossain, a poor auto-driver had taken off his shirt and painted in white ‘Let Democracy Be Free’ across his back and ‘Down with autocracy’ across his chest to march against the despotic Ershad government. The police had shot Noor Hossain through his chest and he had crumbled to the ground – a death that had shocked Bangladesh into silence. Noor Hossain was a symbol of the movement against tyranny in Bangladesh, a symbol of freedom. Many poems, songs, play were composed in his name. So many young lives have often been lost to police bullets while marching for freedom. But since martyrs of the Language Movement of 1952 no other death had devastated Bangladesh more than his.

A naked protest is not nudity, it is the act of taking off one’s clothes in public. It is the act of becoming utterly and completely vulnerable – a vulnerability that makes the protest against the oppressors much stronger. It also serves to bring into stark contrast the differences between the vulnerable and their persecutors. In such cases since it becomes immediately obvious who the oppressors are and who are the oppressed, a naked protest against discrimination is far more symbolic than most other forms of dissent. You have everything while I have nothing; you are powerful while I am not; you are huge while I am small – this is what a naked protest stands for. Is there anything more extraordinary than the sight of a bare chest pressed against the barrel of a loaded cannon? Don’t we remember that young Chinese man from 1989 standing in front of an advancing tank? When the tanks were reentering Tiananmen Square after having crushed to death nearly 10000 students the night before, all of whom had been protesting to save democracy, a lone unarmed youth had stopped the advancing machine of death with his own body. At that moment hadn’t the body been stronger than the tank? Of course it had. People across the world had expressed solidarity with that lone body back then. Then again in 1969 John Lennon of the iconic group The Beatles had stripped with his wife Yoko Ono in their hotel room in protest against the Vietnam War. He had called for peace instead of war, naming their protest Bed-Ins for Peace. He had asked people to make love, not war.

A naked protest attracts the attention of the people and the media. It sparks sympathy because the one who strips naked does so to stand by the dispossessed. Take the instances of rape committed by the army in Manipur for example. Driven to desperation by the sexual violence and the extra-judicial killings, a group of elderly Manipuri women had stripped down to nothing in 2004 and marched to the Kangla Fort division of the Assam Rifles with a banner that read ‘Indian Army, Come Rape Us’. Before this no other protest movement against rape had managed to strike a more lethal blow to the collective conscience in such a manner.

There have been naked protests the world over against various discriminatory practices. Last year nearly a hundred women in Argentina stripped in front of the court in Plaza de Mayo to protest against the various injustices and acts of violence being committed upon women, against the number of women being killed on a daily basis. Naked women lay down on the footpaths, many bodies intertwined together. Instead of causing sexual arousal such a scene could only make one tighten one’s jaws against the injustices being committed against women. At least that is what should happen. The same thing had happened in Argentina a couple of years ago too when women had stripped in front of the parliament to protest against the treatment of women as sex objects.

Women fighting for animal rights on behalf of PETA too have resorted to naked protests against the fashion industry and use of animal fur. They have put on animal masks and stripped to lie down on the roads amidst chants of ‘It’s better to go naked than wear fur’. FEMEN, a Ukrainian radical feminist activist group, has been holding naked protests across the world to campaign against oppression of women. Their protests are directed against religion, patriarchy, despotism, corruption and rape and torture of women. The women of FEMEN write their protest slogans on their own bare backs and bodies and turn up at various places to stage protests, to shock and disconcert people. The other day when Bill Cosby was being taken to court the entourage faced the women of FEMEN with slogans written on their bodies – ‘Women’s Lives Matter’. The Bill Cosbys of the world have always treated women as merely sex objects and FEMEN’s primary focus is to fight this sort of misogyny.

When women take off their tops during such protest all eyes are usually drawn to their breasts. Since they had breasts the police was quite prompt is dragging/carrying the activists of FEMEN away. However the police never displace the protesting men. Breasts are the most natural thing in the world and yet they are treated as the most unnatural. Breasts are utterly normal but when bared they are immediately treated as the most abnormal. Women protest against weapons and power using the gifts given to them by nature. Naked protests are less about the nakedness and much more about a revolutionary spirit. A woman’s nudity makes a man uncomfortable because men have always treated women’s bodies as their personal property and seeing this body bared in public makes them uneasy. The fact that women are the true custodians of their own bodies, the fact that they have a right to do whatever they want with their own bodies, there are not many who are willing to come to terms with this. Whether people are willing to accept it or not nudity is a sign of resistance.

Sri Reddy had been protesting against the casting-couch for quite some time. The protest only gained ground when she chose to strip. What she had wanted to say, no one had had time to hear it before. It was only after she decided to take off her clothes that people stopped to listen. Perhaps the only way to combat injustices being committed against one’s body is by using the body itself. The police were prompt in rushing Sri away from the site of her naked vigil while the powerful and the influential paid scant heed to her protest. Perhaps because patriarchy is so strong there that Sri Reddy’s act of rebellion did not manage to make any dents on its perpetuity. Perhaps if other women like Sri had protested they could have catapulted some visible change. Like how thousands had taken to the streets in Delhi to protest against the Nirbhaya rape.

Sri Reddy has confessed to have been a victim to the casting-couch. She has mentioned names of famous producers and directors who have used her for sexual favours and who wanted to sleep with her in exchange of giving her a break. Just like this, in Bollywood and other film industries, if masks begin to come off the faces of all the rapists pretending to be divine and holy in order to earn the adoration of people and who sexually exploit young girls in secret, then perhaps some good can be done for the betterment of society.

Despite having requisite qualifications many women fall prey to sexual exploitation by their male overlords who cannot see beyond women as sex objects. Most people assume that artists and writers are much more progressive and open-minded than other people, that they believe in the equality of the sexes much more than other men. However they too can be rapists just like other uneducated, insensitive and inhuman men. They too can take advantage of a woman’s helplessness and exploit her for sexual gains.

In Hollywood the masks are gradually coming off the faces of serial sexual abusers – Harvey Weinstein, Bryan Singer, Matt Lauer, Garrison Keillor, Kevin Spacey. Bollywood, Tollywood, Kollywood, Dhallywood – in the numerous Woods that are there in the world, it won’t be enough if the sexual predators are only publicly exposed. Just as how the ground has been snatched away from under the feet of such men in Hollywood the same should happen to all others of their ilk. Men who continue to occupy positions of power and influence despite exploiting, harassing, insulting and torturing women just because they are women cannot be allowed to continue any longer. Let their reputations be swept away into oblivion by a tidal wave of comeuppance.

The Rapes at Kathua and Unnao

From the Europe and America the news has come that Christian priests have raped young boys inside Catholic churches. I haven’t investigated how prevalent it is in other Muslim countries, but I have often read in the newspapers of Bangladesh about Imams raping children in mosques, of a teacher at a Madrasa raping a four-, five- or six-year-old girl student inside the Madrasa. Now I’ve been told that some people brought an eight-year-old girl into a temple in Jammu and Kashmir and gangraped her. One of the rapists is Sanji Ram, who had the responsibility for looking after the temple. Sanji Ram’s relatives as well as two police officers, their friends, kept the eight-year-old girl imprisoned inside the temple and raped her. The girl used to take horses out to graze in Jammu. When one of her horses was lost, she went looking for it in the jungle, which is when the gang of rapists captured her and imprisoned her in the temple. After raping her for several days in succession, the valiant heroes smashed the girl’s head in with a rock and murdered her.

Had the girl been a Hindu and not a Muslim, perhaps those men would have captured, imprisoned, raped, and finally killed her in exactly the same way. Both the poor and the rich know that killing the poor usually reduces the chances of trouble. I don’t believe that those men would have allowed the girl to walk on unscathed in the jungle had she been a Hindu. A rape takes place in India every 14 minutes. Hindu men rape Hindu women every day. They don’t spare anyone, from old women to one-year-old children. Muslim men rape in the same way. They don’t spare any women of any age. Rapes are continuing. Murders, too. Those who rape are usually not interested in the name, address and religion of those they are raping. They’re only concerned with the body. The more tender it is, the more delicious. Or they only consider the ‘valiance’. There is no lack of people in the world who think barbarity is bravery.

Raping the women of the enemy is nothing new. Since, like the elephants and horses and land and houses of the enemy, their women too are considered property, the visors take away the elephants and horses, occupy the land and houses, burning and pillaging them, and rape the women. This is how it was been since ancient times. Subjugating the adversary by raping his mother, his sister, his wife, his daughter, is an age-old practice. After killing jews in Arab lands, the prophet Mohammad had distributed the Jewish women amongst his militant companions for their pleasure. Pakistani soldiers raped two hundred thousand women in the Liberation War of Bangladesh. Although the troops were Muslims, and so were the majority of the women they raped, resistance had been a bigger factor than religion. The Pakistanis looted and pillaged the homes of Bengalis and set them on fire, and raped Bengali women. They raped the women because the war provided an opportunity. Whenever there’s an opportunity men rape women all the time, irrespective of caste and creed, it doesn’t even need a war.

To tell the truth, there is no ongoing war between Hindus and Muslims in India. It is true that some people are trying to provoke a conflict, but the conflict has not reached the proportion where Hindus will rape Muslim women in droves, or vice versa. Hindu men have raped a hundred times more Hindu women than they have raped Muslim women. It’s the same story with Muslim men. It is not as though either of them has vowed to rape women of the other religion alone. They do it when they get the opportunity. Muslim men rape more of Muslim women because they’re the ones who are near at hand. It’s the same with Hindu men.

Was it merely the attraction of raping a Muslim that made seven people rape an eight-year-old girl for seven days, that even made a man travel all the way from Meerut to Jammu? Or was it the opportunity to rape a female child? The rapist from Meerut would have travelled to Jammu even if the eight-year-old had been a Hindu. Child rape is on the rise today. Whether they’re Hindus or Muslims, Buddhists or Christians, no one gives up the chance to rape a child these days. Perhaps rape of children has always existed, and it is just the increase in the number of news reports about it that makes it seem it is on the rise.

Had Hindu men never raped Hindu women, I would have assumed the Hindu males of Kathua raped the eight-year-old girl because she was a Muslim. Had Muslim men not raped anyone other than Hindu women, maybe it would have become clear that the conflict between Hindus and Muslims is increasing or that the war between them is becoming more intense. But society still has Muslims like Imdadul Rashidi, who do not want to start a riot by attacking his son’s Hindu murderers as an act of revenge. There are still Hindus like Yashpal Saxena who prefer to forgive the Muslim murderers of his son rather than avenge his death. The Indian subcontinent needs Hindus like Yashpal Saxena and Muslims like Imdadul Rashidi.

Over in Uttar Pradesh, an 18-year-old woman has accused an MLA named Kuldip Singh Singer and his brother of raping her. The alleged rapists are Rajputs, and the young woman, a Dalit. Some people are saying that upper-caste men have a tendency to rape lower-caste women. Because hatred is one of the factors causing rape, it is entirely possible that the upper caste rapes the lower caste out of hatred. But it isn’t as though upper caste men are not raping upper caste women. And lower caste men are raping lower caste women. So it is not caste but hatred for women, the notion that women are of a lower class, that they are maids and slaves, that they are brainless creatures, that is responsible. As many of us know, rape is not sexual intercourse, whatever else it might be. Rape is muscle power, male power, penis power. The bottomline: the act of putting a crown on, or flying the flag of victory from, the bald head of the male organ is also known as rape.

It has not yet been proven whether MLA Kuldip Sengar has raped the women from Unnao. But there will be nothing to be surprised at if it is proven. He did not rape the woman because he is a BJP MLA. A male MLA of the Congress or the SP or the CPM or Trinamool or any other political party could have raped her too. Because he is a man. It is the powerful who commit the most rapes. Because the powerful have arrangements to cover their tracks. And it is not a custom to punish the powerful. They are the ones who can commit crimes and get away untouched far more often than others.

The Kathua rape is being called communal, and it is being said that the rape in Unnao took place only because it was a BJP MLA. I believe that the rapists in both cases did what they did because they are men. They raped the women because they had the opportunity to do it. A patriarchal society has taught men that women are nothing but sex objects. Therefore there is no crime in gratifying themselves with women’s bodies in any way they please. A patriarchal society has taught men that women are helpless and powerless – no matter what their religion or age, what their caste or their lineage, whether they’re rich of poor, they belong to the lower classes. And men have the right to humiliate them, to torture them, to crush them. Which is why men rape them. One rape every 14 minutes.

Until this patriarchy is not abolished, until men do not dismiss equal rights for women, until men stop thinking of themselves as lords and of women as sex-slaves, all men – Hindu or Muslim, Christian, Buddhist or Jew, poor or rich, upper caste or lower caste, legislator or minister, Imam or priest – will keep raping women.

Rapes will continue unhindered in temples, mosques, churches and pagodas because the custodians of these ‘holy’ places are all God-fearing men. God-fearing men do not consider rape a sin as they are well-aware that everything – notwithstanding Ishwar or Allah or Bhagaban or their respective religions – is undeniably misogynous.

The Global Route

Day before yesterday, I came to New York from Delhi. Surprisingly, I feel more at home in New York than in Delhi although it is very far from my country. What can be the reason for feeling so much at home? Is it because some of my relatives are here, or that I have been coming to New York for many years, lived here for many years, or is it because my permanent resident permit of New York is of longer duration than that of Delhi? Or is it because people remind me that I am a foreigner more often in Delhi than in New York? I don’t really know. I started feeling happy from the New York airport itself. I asked a man in the moving crowd, “Can you please tell me where the payphone is?” The man said, “You need a phone? Here, take mine. You can call from my phone while I go to the restroom.” The middle-aged African-American man put an expensive smartphone in my hand and left. After waiting there for fifteen minutes I saw the man coming back. Does anyone believe in others like this nowadays? I haven’t seen anything like this for a long time. Everywhere I look, I see the sting of suspicion, the arrow of distrust. There are still some good people on this earth who make life worth living.
In the part of New York I am now, most of the residents are from Asia. From India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, Korea. At one time this area belonged to the Jews. When they became wealthy, they moved to better areas, and Asians who were less well-off moved in to make their homes. I used to see shops of Indians here before, but now all those have been taken over by the Chinese. It seems that the Chinatown of Manhattan will slowly become the town of Caucasian Americans and Flushing, Queens will become the future Chinatown. In all the big cities of the world there is inevitably a small Chinatown. When I was living in Manhattan a few years ago, I would often go to Chinatown to buy live fish, and sometimes eat in the Chinese restaurants. I love Chinese food. But it’s somewhat difficult for me in those Manhattan and Flushing restaurants because most of the waiters and the owners do not know English, nor is the menu in English. I have to order what I want by showing them the pictures on the menu. The Chinese are happily living in the USA for generations, doing business or working at jobs, without knowing a word of English.
I quite like Flushing. Whenever I come here, I feel that I am in a city inside China. I’m not sure how long the Chinese will stay on here.
When they come into some money they will either buy a house in Long Island or an apartment in Manhattan. The poor follows the middle-class, the middle-class follows the rich, and the rich follows the super-rich. My life does not follow this trajectory though. I had an apartment on the twenty-third floor in Manhattan where the East River meets the Hudson; I left that apartment to go and live in congested Delhi which has the world’s highest air pollution. I left as I couldn’t afford to maintain the standard of living here, and also to live right next to my country. Although what is the use of being next door when my country is not opening its doors!
I will go to Virginia from New York where our conference ‘Women in Secularism’ is taking place. Famous atheistic American feminists like Barbara Ehrenreich, Susan Jacoby, Rebecca Goldstein and Ophelia Benson are going to speak in this conference. The subject of my lecture is ‘Why is Secularism necessary for Women’. I am going to talk about the importance of separating religion from the state, society, law and education system to truly and effectively bring about equal rights for women. I will say that religion is personal to an individual and that externalizing it beyond the boundaries of one’s personal matter is not at all safe. I am not the first to say this; free-thinkers have been saying them for a long, long time. The Western countries have changed slowly after going through hundreds of years of women’s movements. But someone from the Muslim countries has to speak on this. The problem is one has to go to jail, die or be exiled like I am to talk about it. Despite all that some protest by risking their lives. After all, it is only a few who try to change society. And in the end, society does change, due to those few people.

I was preparing my lecture and thinking deeply on religion, secularism, etc. when I got a bunch of films on Jesus suddenly. A new documentary called ‘The Bible’. An old film by Martin Scorsese: ‘The Last Temptation of Christ’, Monty Python’s ‘Life of Brian’, the BBC documentary ‘Did Jesus Die on the Cross?’, Richard Carrier’s research lecture ‘Did Jesus Even Exist?’. Watching them, I got completely immersed in Jesus. I acquired some amusing information such as – Jesus fled from the Roman tortures and took refuge in Kashmir, he died there, the Roza Bal shrine is Jesus’ tomb.
This tomb was even shown on BBC. If Jesus does not rise up from the dead after three days and flies off in the sky, then there does not remain anything called Christianity. It seems that Jesus came to Kashmir to join a Buddhist conference. Others say that there is no account of Jesus’ from 14 years to 29 years of his age, no one knows where he was or what he did during that time, that he must have come to India then and become initiated into Buddhism. What was absent in Judaism and entered into Christianity – that tolerance and humanism – came from Buddhism. That is the reason why Jesus has to be brought into Indian by hook or by crook. In his film, Martin Scorsese has revealed unpleasant truths about Christ. The Christian doctrinaires were not able to tolerate such unpalatable facts, so the film is still banned in many countries. The film shows that at one time Jesus spoke about love, and that he picked up the sword and the axe to kill his enemies. Not only that, after his lover Mary Magdalene’s death, he indulged in the company of several women. He ran a great deal after worldly pleasures. Since these events embarrass the Christians, they are not mentioned in the documentary called ‘The Bible’. There we only see plenty of miracles – Jesus walking on water, changing water into wine, transforming three fishes into three thousand with a snap of his fingers, healing the leper by just a touch. I am not of the opinion that, just because a lot of people will not accept the subject-matter of ‘The Last Temptation of Christ’, that film should be banned. However, it has been banned in those countries where the right to freedom of expression is not highly valued.
People of the Islamic states do not have much freedom of speech. One of the Saudi princesses who are under house arrest in the city of Jeddah – Sahar Al Saud – has called on the Saudi people to revolt against the Saudi government. She must be talking about democratic rights and human rights for everyone; she must be wanting freedom of thought, freedom of speech, Independence of women. Even in the misogynistic societies like that of Saudi Arabia, some women are conscious of their own rights. The Saudi princesses are not exempting their father either from criticism. These brave women are interned, banished. Women suffer the most from fundamentalism; therefore it is women who have to revolt the most against fundamentalism. I feel extremely helpless when I hear that women themselves are becoming fundamentalists. I heard that thirty to forty thousand women from the Jamaat-e-Islami squad are helping the anti-woman Jamaat-e-Islami.
No one else does a better job than women of digging one’s own grave. I feel really sad at the thought of how fast Bangladesh has changed! When I was studying at the medical college in the ’80s, none of my Muslim friends spoke excessively about Islam, none of them did roza1 or namaz2, kept beards or wore the hijab3. After thirty years, most of these renowned doctors who were at one time my classmates have become ultra-conservative fundamentalists. The whole country changed so drastically in such a short time. Society becomes good progressively. But our society is increasingly becoming bad, bigoted, intolerant, misogynistic, illiterate. It amazes me to think that the people of a country who had one day risen up in revolt to preserve their Bengali language and culture, mounted agitations to bring in democracy through language movements, fought in the War of Liberation, today, in that same country, there is no place for an authoress who writes in support of that War; that the person who talks in favor human rights and equal rights of women is banned.
The other day, a group of Hindus, Buddhists and Christians from Bangladesh, after meeting with the President of India, came to meet me in the evening. I told them, “A secular party is now in power, you shouldn’t be having any problems.”
The leader of the group asked me, “Who’s secular?”
I said, “Hasina”.
The group leader, with a roar of laughter, said, “What are you saying? Hasina is secular? If she was secular then she would have accepted you back into the country!”

Why are Countries in favor of Capital Punishment Criticizing the Hanging of Bangladeshi war criminals?

I am not in favor of capital punishment. I think that every human being has a right to live. Every war criminal should get a fair trial. That instead of hanging they are given any other punishment. Life term, maybe? Why not? Nowadays though, I object even to life term. I do not like the idea of jails. Jails can be correctional centres. Criminals can stay in those centres until their brains get debugged and freed from malice. A person once suggested, “The jail rooms can be classrooms, and the each jail a university.” Sometime ago, some jails in Sweden were shut down because they had no inmates. The number of crimes is less, so the number of criminals is few. The more society is rid of inequality, the more uniformity there is amongst people, the more there is reduction in crime. Well, that is Sweden. Bangladesh is still not civilized, so we cannot dream about doing away with our jails yet. I’ll talk about something else.
The human rights organizations of the world are animadverting about the death penalty in Bangladesh. Let them. They always say, “Revoke the capital punishment law,” to all the countries of the world which has this law. But my question is, those countries which continue to maintain this law, and frequently mete out death sentence themselves, why are they shedding tears about this law in Bangladesh? Do they pounce on other countries in this manner, or beat their chests crying, when those countries happen to give death sentences? Do they go and sit in obstinate protest at the doors of China or Saudi Arabia or Iran or the US or South Korea? You don’t see them at all when others in Bangladesh are hanged. Then am I to understand that they wailing because this is related to Quader Molla’s or Mir Quasem’s hanging? Is it because Quader Molla or Mir Quasem are radicals? You can kill whoever you like, but you can’t touch Islamic fundamentalists! Why don’t they say Molla or Quasem are war criminals? The grief that various countries express when murderers of the 1971 Liberation War are put on trial really astounds me. The pernicious forces of Islamic fundamentalism have many allies in today’s world.
The Western countries which we thought were enemies of Islam; they also display extraordinary sympathy towards these radicals. I really don’t want to think what the political reasons are behind supporting fundamentalism. The group of Western countries which do so, do not want to accept the ’71 Liberation War as a war at all. As if war in a poor country is no war at all, the death of 30 lakh people is no death at all, the rape of two lakh women is no rape at all. As if our famines, our hunger, our poverty and illiteracy are the only things real. Our language, our songs, our love, our personalities, our struggles, our valor, our desires and expectations, dreams, are not real, not valuable.
I’ll say why I do not believe in the death sentence. No creature or human being is born a criminal or a terrorist. If a child is not given a healthy, beautiful, educated environment, if a lot of garbage is incessantly poured into his brain while he is growing up, then such a child will involve himself in criminality and terrorism as an adult. Is it his fault? Or is it the fault of those who pour that garbage, keep alive that custom of pouring garbage in society! Living in the same society I am against fundamentalism, Quader Molla and Mir Quasem and Delwar Hossain Sayeedi are fundamentalists, some are murderers, rapists, thieves; others are honest, virtuous. Although we live in the same society, this happens because of difference in education. One section of the population is acquiring education in science, obtaining knowledge about human rights, getting enlightened. Another section is being created as religious fanatics, illiterates, bigots and barbarians who are left plunged in extreme darkness. If the education system was equal for everyone, if the education was a healthy one, if it was an equal rights education, then instead of being bad, people would have been good. Despite small instances of incivility, discourtesy and minor crimes, the society would not have gone into the hands of rotten elements, and lakhs and lakhs of people would not have been dancing in the streets mad with murderous intent. I start with fright when a few people from foreign countries cry for Quader Molla and Mir Quasem but what about the people of my country who have gone absolutely crazy with love for Quader and Quasem? Every one of them is a Quader Molla or Mir Quasem. One Quader or one Quasem has been hanged for war crimes, but then thousands and thousands of other Quaders or Quasems are beheading scientific-minded anti-radical people —what are we going to do about them? These lakhs and lakhs of Islamic fundamentalists are undoubtedly much more dangerous than a handful of decrepit, old war criminals already at their death’s door. Each of these fundamentalists is a soldier who wants to turn war criminal Molla’s dream into reality.
A country where food, clothing, shelter, education is not available for everyone, there is bound to be anarchy. Like every other system, the judicial system is also is defective. That is why, whenever there is a crime, the reason for the crime is not investigated; and without giving any thought to why those mistakes were committed, without making any effort to rectify those mistakes, people are thrown into prison and killed. The government wants prompt solution to many problems by quick hanging.
But this does not provide genuine solution to problems. I think of the future, we need an end to the malignant forces of fundamentalism. It cannot be terminated by hangings; it has to be terminated by good education.
To free society from religious fanaticism, superstition and misogyny, we have to educate people from childhood on science, humanism, equal rights. If children get this kind of education, then there is no fear of them turning into bigots, rapists and murderers.
I am not surprised to see the hideous barbarism that the members of Jamaat-e-Islami are perpetrating in Bangladesh. I know for a long time that although Jamaat-e-Islami is recognized as a political party, it is nothing more than a terrorist outfit. They practice the politics of hatred, discrimination, blindness, misery, crippling and killing. If this kind of politics is allowed to enter into society, it will destroy the people, the nation, and future of the nation. Jamaat-e-Islami should be banned for the right reasons. Terrorist outfits are outlawed in all countries. But a lot of people will generally rush in lamenting and try to stop it if you try to do such a thing in Bangladesh. The party which does not believe in democracy, we will keep that party alive in the name of democracy, and they will gleefully cut your nose and slit my throat — we all know that. Despite knowing it, others pretend not to be aware of it, but I do not do that. Within the country and abroad, there is enough desire among people to render Bangladesh into an undeveloped, illiterate, radicalized nation crammed with religious fundamentalists. And although I believe totally in the freedom of expression, I want to ban a political party, because Jamaat-e-Islami does not deserve to be recognized as one.
Almost all the war criminals are Muslim fundamentalists. I am a great enemy of radical war criminals and radical Islamists. For twenty years they have been keeping on sharpening their knives for me. They will kill me the moment they find me anywhere near them. In spite of this knowledge, I do not want them to be hanged. I want them to be good individuals. I want their children to be on the side of progress. I want the children of their children to not know what narrow religious fundamentalism is. I want everyone to live in a classless, equal, unsuperstitious, beautiful environment. I wish all the people and all the children of my country to have that. My struggle is for that dream. I will not be able to see that society where equality reigns within my lifespan. But I want to leave a small role for myself in the construction of a healthy society. That is why I am risking my life to write and inspire people to take up that fight. The country which does not feel like my country anymore, the country which I am ashamed of today — I want future generations to be proud of that country. Not proud of having blood on the streets, but proud of having a safe and secure nation.

Dowry Pains

The practice of marriage was started to establish the certainty of fatherhood. This is what was required — a virgin body untouched by man, a body which can only sleep with the husband and no one else, a body which only the husband will touch and no one else, a female body which only the husband can impregnate to carry his child and give birth to his child — his male child. His male child will continue his line of descent, will inherit his wealth. It is women who help men to keep alive their androcratic system by marrying them. If they did not help in this way, androcracy and patriarchy would have been buried long ago.
To make sure that women’s bodies do not come in close contact with other men, a process was followed to imprison them and use them as personal possessions. The name of this was marriage. Marriage was the license from the family and society to establish a sexual relationship.
I have seen in Bengali society that after marriage it is the women’s wings which are clipped, not the men’s. Most women have to go live in their in-law’s home. Attach the husband’s surname to her name. They have to leave their own homes, families, relatives, friends, environs, neighbors, cities, towns, villages — everything. Even if the woman is an adult, even if she is educated, where she will go and what she will do, who she will mix with or won’t, whether she will work or not, those decisions are taken by the husband and his family. It was common practice before, and still is now that women cannot work in an office after marriage. It is better to stay at home and be faithful to your husband. Do domestic labor, serve the in-laws, bring up children.
Times have changed. Women are not literally imprisoned at home. But they have an invisible chain around their ankles. They are allowed to go out to work. But their earnings are taken away to finance the family. Polishing your shoes, serving you food, washing your clothes — any old illiterate girl can do such work. But if your beautiful, educated, sexual partner does that, then you feel mighty pleased.
The salaried domestic help will spout venom and leave if everything doesn’t go to her liking. But the unsalaried domestic help, your wife — you can do whatever you want, but she won’t leave her job. The job of being a wife. Back-breaking labor. No salary. No holidays. No pension. She will give you dowry money, and she will also become your slave. People buy things with money. Women give money to sell themselves.
Let me talk about the dowry system today. This is no recent phenomenon; it is a few thousand years old. This practice was there in many countries, it still exists in many parts of the world today, albeit illegally. This practice is rampant in the entire Sub-Continent. It cannot be stopped despite formulating anti-dowry laws, despite meting out punishment. Thousands of wives are being killed, thousand others are committing suicide for being dishonored and insulted for it. As far as I know, this custom has been in practice from ancient times in this region. But some ancient travelers have written in their books that they have not seen anyone giving dowry for marriage in India. Maybe the system of dowry was not as terrible then as it is today, or maybe they never saw such an exchange actually taking place. The king of ancient Greece Alexander the Great never saw dowry in Indian marriages. The Persian intellectual Al-Beruni came to India in 1017 and lived here for sixteen years. In his autobiography he has described Indian marriages, but there is no sign of dowry there either.
The system of dowry in ancient times was not a one-sided affair. It was given from the bride’s side to the groom, and from the groom’s side to the bride. Dowry from the groom’s side was given to the bride’s family as compensation for reduction of a working member in her family, while what was given from the bride’s side to the groom’s family was the inheritance she was entitled to. Women were deprived by law from direct inheritance in those days.
The inheritance laws of the modern age do not deprive women. Daughters get a share of their parents’ property. In all the countries within the Sub-Continent, dowry is prohibited. But these prohibitory laws cannot stop the practice of dowry. The more women descend, the more dowries ascend. To put it exactly, the more women’s position is lowered in society, the more the dowry amount gets higher. This increase and decrease remains in the hands of patriarchs.
Bride-torturing and bride-burning have assumed dreadful proportions in India. It is the same in Bangladesh. Most bride-killings are passed off as suicide. Most bride-tortures are reported as quarrels between husband and wife attributable to the latter’s extra-marital affairs.
In Bengali Muslim marriages, there is a custom of giving den mohor¹ from the groom to the bride, but I have grave doubts whether it is at all given. But from the bride’s side the groom and his family has to be given dowry money, houses, cars, furniture etc. etc. If these are not given, or if there is delay in giving them, then the bride has to endure unspeakable torture. The relationship between a husband and wife has to be one of love and trust. But dowry has destroyed this relationship. For men this relationship is now of money and selfishness, for women it is of sacrifice and working without wages. In India the brides are burnt alive, in Bangladesh that practice is not there — brides are either axed or poisoned to death.
Women have to stop marrying those vile, selfish, small men who are greedy for dowry. It is better to live alone than stay in the households of such men. Some women think that if they give more dowries the husband’s torture will be less. This has been proved to be wrong. More dowries you give, more the greed gets inflamed, resulting in more torture. Men of all sections are dowry-greedy. From the penniless to the croprepatis². The men are not yet thinking of women as fellow-passengers and colleagues with equal rights. They are still thinking that women are not completely human, and even if they are, they are ‘less human’. Until this wicked thought is abolished, women will have to suffer on earth. There is no such discrimination between the male and female genders of any species other than that of the human being. When will the time ever come that the human race will feel ashamed?

If I were to be hacked

Last Friday, I got a death threat again. It came from Ansar Khilafah, an ISIS-oriented militant group, in Kerala. If a group has the name of ISIS attached to it, or has an ISIS touch to it, I fear, they must be experts in hacking.
I often gently touch my neck, also put my hand behind my head, trying to understand what would be the feeling when they stab me from behind, or hack me. Maybe it would be better if they shot me in my head. I have suffered a lot in life, don’t want to suffer in death. Death should be quick. But will they listen to me? I can’t imagine requesting them, begging for life. Instead, I should think I would close my eyes and sing some of my favorite Rabindra sangeets to lessen the pain while being hacked. I don’t know if you can lessen any pain like that, but I don’t have any other option.
I was trying to understand what those 19-20-year-olds were doing when they were being hacked. Were they trying to save their lives, screaming? Did they try to snatch the weapons? There were so many people inside the cafe, I don’t know why all of them together could not attack, defeat the militants? Maybe they thought a rescue team would come to save them, police would come, Army would come. Maybe they were waiting. If I were to wait for someone who would save me from the killers, how would be those minutes, hours — the six hours, the 12 hours? The pistol-gun-dagger-knife-toting killers are parading in front of me and I am waiting. They can behead, shoot me any time, and I am waiting. I shiver to think, my throat goes dry. At the Dhaka cafe, nobody came to their rescue even after 12 hours. Those who were supposed to were waiting outside. Why were they just waiting outside? I don’t know. After three hours had passed, Tarishi Jain’s father was speaking on a local television channel. He was anxious, was saying his daughter was inside the cafe. He was wondering why rescue operation hadn’t started. If those who were supposed to rescue the people really knew how and when to carry out the job, many lives could have been saved.
Also Read: At Tarishi’s funeral, a photograph tells the story
I was thinking about Faraaz Hossain. He had been allowed to go, but he didn’t want to leave without his friends. He wanted his friends to be freed too. And since his friends weren’t freed, he didn’t accept the freedom for himself. I am such a sensitive person, I think about people’s welfare all the time, can say I have dedicated my life for this cause, but even I believe if a herd of murderers gave me a safe passage I would escape from the mayhem, without looking back; I would run without waiting for anybody. Everybody would run (in such a situation). Only Faraaz didn’t. Faraazs are perhaps born only once in a century.

The militants got what they wanted. They wanted to shake the world, they did. They wanted to earn Punya (virtuousness) by killing non-Muslims, maybe they succeeded in that too. How were they able to hack so many people, so many young boys and girls? They hadn’t hacked anyone before, how could they hack not one or two but 20 people? In reality, a belief can make people do many impossible things. I don’t know who brainwashed the militants, but whatever was fed into their brains, they believed without asking any question. A lot like the two Boston bomber brothers from Chechenia. They looked smart but didn’t have the ability to intellectually and rationally (logically) consider anything. Religion is truth, the religious book is truth. The religious book was written by the creator himself, so whatever is written there needs to be blindly followed. No questions, just acceptance. As a result, they have literally accepted everything written in the religious text from the beginning to end (without paying heed to any sensory perception). They didn’t try to interpret the ancient text in contemporary context. If it said non-believers should be killed, they just understood non-believers should be killed, they didn’t try to interpret the meaning in any other way.
In a society blinded by religion, brainwashing starts right after birth. These people have been hearing the praise of their religion since birth, at home, in schools, colleges, at playgrounds, in trains, buses, on television, radio and in movies and plays. They have been told following religion takes you to heaven, and if you don’t follow religion you face the extreme punishment of hell. (They have been told) your religious book has the solution to all problems of the world, religion is knowledge, religion is science and religion is peace. If you hear something all the time, it becomes part of your subconscious. The base (foundation) remains prepared, you can easily build a palace of belief on it.
Man has always preferred the easy solutions found in religion to science’s continuous research and complicated equations (mathematics). Religion, hence, attracts every one — from illiterate daily-wagers to university scholars. Because understanding science is not as easier as understanding religion.

Terrorists have been for a long time now hacking to death atheists, seculars, rational writer-bloggers, homosexuals, progressive students and teachers, Hindus, Buddhists and Christians. Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has never expressed grief for any such deaths. She has let the killers safely exit the country. She did not bring to justice any of the murderers. She never arrested any of the killers. She did not punish anyone. On the contrary, (she) punished atheist bloggers, sending them behind the bars. She has spoken against freethinking. She has made rules against the right to freedom of expression. For the murder of freethinkers, she has blamed the freethinkers alone. Why did she feel like expressing grief for those who died at the Dhaka cafe? There must be a big politics behind this. Those who were hacked to death at the Dhaka cafe were children of the rich and influential. Was that the reason? Or was it because the world was watching what Hasina would do after a terrorist attack in the city?
Actually, politicians are hypocrites. Will accept what is convenient in the religion, not the rest — it is the Muslims with this mentality who are hypocrites. In fact, those militants were not hypocrites. Whatever they were brainwashed to say, they uttered like mechanised puppets. They didn’t think about their life, they had come that night knowing they would die, believed they were going to heaven. Somebody told them, taught them they would get the reward of jihad, a place in the highest heaven if they killed non-Muslims. After hacking to death the foreigners, displaying the height of atrocity, they told their Muslim countrymen in the morning, ‘we are here only to kill the non-Muslims. We won’t kill you. You all (the Muslims) can leave. We are going to heaven anyways’.
You cannot uproot terrorism by killing terrorists. You need to uproot terrorism at source to end terrorism.