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-The Economic Times
It is a matter of great regret that West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee's conduct has converted one incident of rape into a series of offences against human dignity and propriety. The rape took place on February 6, a woman being gang-raped inside a car at gunpoint. She had trouble registering a case.
When the police finally obliged, chief minister Mamata Banerjee called it a fabricated case, a political conspiracy to malign her government.
A senior minister questioned the victim's morals, suggesting that she had asked for it by drinking at a nightclub late at night. When the police finally arrested the culprits, apparently, the chief minister hauled the concerned officers over the coals.
Now, reports say that she is blaming the police for botching the entire investigation. Three things have to be noted about the entire sordid episode. One, politicisation of a crime.
Instead of treating the repugnant act of violence against the woman as crime that has to be acted against with dispatch, the head of the government chose to effectively shield the culprits by giving them the relative respectability of hapless pawns in a game of political chess.
Two, in the process and following its logic of finding fault with police officials who disproved the conspiracy theory by actually nabbing the perpetrators of what the chief minister had called a fabricated incident, Ms Banerjee demoralises all honest officials, within and without the state administration.
The third fallout is the most despicable. India is a democracy still in the making, where formal laws and liberal principles underlying the laws are often at variance with traditional values and morals. In this constant tension between modernity and tradition, which way the politician pulls matters a lot.
By suggesting that the victim asked for it, Mamata and her minister have chosen to reinforce the traditional, illiberal urge to keep women's sexuality under tight male control. 'Na stree swatantryamarhati' (women do not deserve freedom), said India's ancient lawgiver, Manu. Ms Banerjee concurs, in the 21st century. Does the rest of Bengal?
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