Chandigarh stalking case should leave Modi and BJP red-faced

The stalking of Varnika Kundu post midnight past Friday, August 4/5, by Vikas Barala, son of Haryana BJP chief Subhash Barala, and his friend, Ashish Kumar, and the subsequent bail which has resulted in the two being let off – is a composite episode that exposes the many hypocrisies of a patriarchal polity.

In addition to the pervasive rape culture that permeates each and every sphere of Indian existence, there's the added garnish of doublespeak now thoroughly laid bare - whether it's the prime minister sending the message of saving the girl child, or of ending VVIP culture of entitlements, there's no justice if a BJP beneficiary isn't getting it.

Part 1: Predators on the streets

Let's break this composite episode down one by one. The midnight stalking itself is a harrowing tale. Recounted by Varnika Kundu herself – she has decided to not hide behind the ubiquitous and defenceless tag "victim" and instead come forward to demand justice on behalf of all women - and her senior IAS officer father, the accounts depict the sheer monstrosity that accompanies women everywhere, particularly if she happens to be a single, working woman, out there on her own, behind the wheels, driving and plying on the roads that the men, particularly related to the ruling regime, think belong to them.

Kundu and her father have both spoken out and said that "someone has to stand up to goons from influential families". Vikas Barala and his friend followed Kundu's vehicle for almost seven to eight kilometres, while she frantically called for help, asked Chandigarh police to come immediately and kept driving skillfully amidst rising panic, fear and anxiety that she might just be raped and murdered like thousands of women who suffer the fate in India.

Kundu, nevertheless, kept her nerve: thanks to a solid education, awareness on women's security measures and existing laws, and her ability as a car driver. But of course, she was lucky that the cops reached just in the nick of time, exactly as one of the men was trying to force open the door of her car.

Stalking and harassing a solitary mobile woman is easily the national pastime as much as it's the national malaise. So not only was Kundu stalked and harassed, upon being caught, the alleged stalkers, who were arrested under Section 354D of the Indian Penal Code, and Section 185 of the Motor Vehicle Act, were quickly let off on bail, as the non-bailable offences - such as Section 341 (wrongful restraint), 365 (kidnapping with intent to confine) and others - were not included in the FIR.

Of course, this happened only after calls were made and kept coming from powers that be, to drop charges, not press non-bailable charges, and according to Kundu:"BJP leaders from Haryana started coming to the station, sources said. Desperate calls to various senior police officials with 'Dekh lo' ('please see') requests started forcing many of the officers to either put their phones on silent mode or switch them off… Before the accused duo got bail, many Haryana leaders were there at the police station throughout Saturday."

Part 2: Victim-shaming

The very reasons why stalking, harassment as well as the physically more violent counterparts in molestation and rape, occur, are also the same which are used to justify post assault victim-shaming. The powerful Barala family, now cornered over their son's alleged crime, resorted to posting pictures of Kundu holding a glass of alcohol, insinuating that a woman who drinks must be asking for it.

Screenshots of a family member Kuldeep Barala resorting to an outrageous Facebook post, which has since been deleted, have gone viral on social media, shared among those who want to shame Varnika Kundu, presupposing her crime of being a single and independent woman of 29 years, who makes her living as a DJ, can hold a drink and can drive around the streets at nights. Of course, the interesting bit to note is that Kuldeep Barala too has "worked with the BJP", in addition to being a member of the family.

But that's not all. While Haryana chief minister ML Khattar has decided to distance the state BJP chief Subhash Barala from the alleged crime carried out by his son and accomplice, a BJP leader from the state, Ramveer Bhatti, has in fact openly declared that "the girl shouldn't have gone out at 12 in the night". So, of course, the responsibility of being stalked is also on the woman herself, simply because she wants to drive herself back home at nights.

No wonder then that as many as five CCTV camera footages have conveniently gone missing because the Chandigarh police say they were "not working". Pure coincidence that the alleged perpetrator is intimately connected to the ruling party, the chief minister of which had once said, "if women want freedom, why don't they roam around naked?"

But is victim-shaming anything out of ordinary in the case of the ruling BJP and its toxic ecosystem of organised lynching, rumour-mongering and now stalking and harassment by a BJP leader's son? Not really, this is the most routine of responses. Whether it's lynching of Akhlaq or Pehlu Khan or Junaid, we saw how the dead were maligned and retrospective legislations and rulings were brought in to give the murders legitimacy.

Similarly, when it comes to sexual harassment, stalking and perpetuating rape culture, what transpired in Chandigarh on the intervening night of August 4 and 5, was absolutely ordinary.

Part 3: Sangh wants to Beti satao

This brings to the pressing question: what about the Prime Minister's promise and slogan - Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao? What about his pledge to end VVIP culture?

While the PM makes gargantuan promises on national television, the ground reality stinks. Last month, a video of a BJP leader kissing a woman forcibly on a moving bus went viral. Ravindra Bawanthade was absconding and subsequently arrested after a rape case was filed against him.

In February this year, four BJP leaders were among the accused in a Gujarat gang-rape case, and charges of the men running a prostitution and sex trafficking racket were also pressed.

Moreover, as many as 31 per cent of ministers in the Modi government have criminal cases against them.

BJP's Bengal women's head Roopa Ganguly has been linked to a child sex trafficking racket. There have been allegations of RSS engaged in trafficking of 31 tribal girls in Assam and bringing them into their shakhas in Gujarat and Punjab order to "Hinduise" them and breed swayamsevikas.

In addition, sexist comments, rank misogyny and espousing the most regressive of views are how the leaders hog public attention and contaminate the imagination of the young. Exactly as they bring out anti-Romeo squads to police how and whom the young people are loving and hanging out with, reports of absolute sexual and moral perversity, rape and molestation from those affiliated with the BJP keep coming in.

And even though nothing came of investigative reports that linked the two most powerful men in the country today to a case of prolonged stalking, illegal surveillance and snooping, the echoes of an institutional malpractice just refuse to fade away. It's significant that the BJP top brass hasn't condemned the stalking incident; in fact, it has dispatched its social media army to discredit and shame Varnika Kundu and her father themselves.

Can you imagine what the implications of this culture of bodily surveillance - the physical stalking and the online snooping - will be when the state and its agents of violation are armed with something as intrusive as the Aadhaar? Are we going to allow the legalisation of permanent stalking by a government that's losing credibility every single day, the elected and governing members if which are on record saying the most regressive things, in and outside Parliament, on and off social media? 

Little wonder then that the hashtag #बेटी_बचाओ_भाजपा_से has been trending all day today.It's important to see that women are wearing cow masks to register their protest against the vitiated culture of toxic misogyny fused with an unimaginable violence on the vulnerable bodies. 

As the government mulls setting up a cow ministry, laws that once protected women and their access to laws and rights, are now being systematically pushed back. Whether it's diluting the impact of the Section 498A of the IPC that held domestic violence as a non-bailable, cognisable crime, to ensuring that the Sangh worldview that ranks women below men becomes the new normal, the women (as well as religious minorities, caste Others, sexual Others, language Others) are increasingly caught in an adversarial relationship with the Modi-fied State.

Also read: Lynching is a lynching: The next Junaid Khan could be anyone