TW: This article references acts of sexual violence
As the nation lets forth a clarion call for justice surrounding a raped, mutilated and desecrated body, governments deflect blame while remaining complacently paralysed. The question that reverberates – to politicise the raped body, or not to politicise?
West Bengal, and the nation as a whole, sports an odious record of mercilessly politicised cases – Nandigram, Amta, Sandeshkhali, Nirbhaya, Hathras, Unnao and recently, R.G. Ka are now exempting the last, hollow, intangible apparitions of the distant past. We gather in armies for a few breaths, armed with candles and rage. Then, we forget. We forgot. The serving memory summons two images: First, that justice was and is a thing of the legends, wished for yet having no practical manifestation. Second, that the raped body has turned into a battleground for the state powers to rub clean their own slates with, and to use as a conduit through which to inundate the others’ with ad hominems and catastrophic, yet priorly known failures. In simple words, we do not remember justice as an object or idea served and we do not remember the raped body that has been spared the indignity of apathetic opining by the unimaginative and fortunate. We do not remember the raped body that has been spared the opprobrium of having been transformed into a political agenda.
Is this to say that we must depoliticise cases of rape? To answer this, we must follow a pattern of thought based upon irrefutable evidence. Let us take the recent offer of sex workers in Kolkata to perform as the means to a man’s sexual ends. There are three particularly macabre consequences of such an act of what may be called none other than self-immolation, and certainly not for a benevolent cause, as a pathetic majority is making it out to be. The three understandings of the rapist and the figure of the raped betrayed in such an admission are that 1) most understand rape to be a direct consequence of intractable desire; 2) it is tacitly understood that for men to repress their bestial inclinations in civilised company is inconceivable; 3) the inherent recourse to self-effacement in the face of such a crime is glaring; the identity of the victim, as it would to a murderer, hardly matters to a rapist.
The psychology of a rapist has seldom been satisfied at the cost of carnal access to a non-consenting, struggling body. The rapist has, time and again, gone above and beyond to inflict pain upon, mutilate and deform the body. Therein it must be understood that gratification of sexual desire is not the object of rape. Hence, we cannot deny that rape has been, is and possibly shall continue to be a political weapon. Rape behaves as an act of asserting and imposing a condition of control that is an axillary of the patriarchy. The patriarchy is fed by and perpetuates itself through the political machinery of a civilisation. Rape is and must be conceded to be a political weapon; one that is used to establish a statement of subjugation and one that materialises in the brutal encroachment upon an individual’s bodily autonomy.
The same weapon manifests in the form of hasty judgements of rape cases, their disproportionately protracted trials, which even parade such rapists, garlanded and paunched, on national television – comfortably absolved of all crimes. The patriarchy protects rapists for rape protects the patriarchy by ensuring its survival.
This is a fairly simple argument to understand. It is not so fairly simple to accept it as universal truth. Given this argument were true, the existence of men that do not rape, or that do not succumb to such “natural biological desires” would be tantamount to the admission of biological anomalies and there is no evidence that points to that fact. There exists a fair proportion of men that exhibit perfectly healthy levels of sexual desire and are not brought to such violent outlets. Research has yielded a plethora of results pursuant to the popular positive correlation between the levels of testosterone and the degree of sexual desire experienced – such evidence remains inconclusive. Therefore, it is no more than an excuse to extenuate the rapist by ascribing the act to a biological compulsion. Once again, rape appears to be the satisfaction of a political security; the assurance that is begotten through renewed acts of rape, that subjugation is possible and that the man is still cushioned at the top of the ‘social chain’ as it were.
One of the chief premises of ecofeminism and deep ecology has been that environmental disregard in the face of a rampant incipient urbanisation, industrialisation and colonisation is only a reflection of patriarchal tendencies. The ego-centric man, modelled in the image of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and the Romantics, must control all that is not themselves; the forests, the resources of the earth, the decision as to whether an animal survives or is slaughtered, the women, the children and ultimately, by extension, the earth. There are incidents where men have raped dogs, goats, and even komodo dragons. We might take the instance of where men have raped pre-pubescent children and senile old women. To think that these figures could excite sexual arousal in a man is admittance of either of two facts, or both: All men that rape are veritably paraphilic and unfit to inhabit civilised society or, that the identity of the raped is of no consequence to a man. While the former is a possibility and indeed, I am fairly certain, is the reality in several cases, the latter furnishes the argument I have explored throughout this article. Rape, being a tool to exercise control and assert dominance, obviates the need for the identity of the individual that is raped to be known. The individual’s body therein becomes a faceless vessel through which the rapist wields a political weapon, a political assertion of position and power, and a political consequence of supremacy.
The kernel of the argument must now be clear. It is impossible to depoliticise the raped body or the intentions of the rapist. To say that it is a humanitarian issue is mere sophistry. While it happens at the cost of the raped body, one cannot deny that every single case of rape ultimately reflects upon the government and its ineptitude. Every single case of rape is an immediate exposé of the inner, corroded workings of the judiciary. Every single case of rape carries on its back the heavy history of raped bodies that haven’t been produced to the legal system, let alone been prepared with justice. Every act of rape is political as is every raped body. We must identify the culprits that draw us away from this recognition. Governments have contrived for themselves and popular understanding, a meaning of their own that serves to deconstruct the acknowledgment of a crucial face of rape; they have effectively discouraged the political consciousness of the event of rape through textbook whataboutery. But we must construe the idea of a political weapon as it is, and so rape is a political weapon, whether it be yielded by the rapist or the state, and it stands to the same effect. Given this, we must also understand that it is necessary to deal with it as such. Approaches to counter a political weapon cannot be apolitical. Names must be dragged and the authorities universally questioned, however ruthlessly, however politically, but it must be done by the multitudes of whom, by whom and for whom the government(s) exists.
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Featured Image Credits : Sandeep Adhwaryu for TOI
Aayudh Pramanik
