While addressing the nation on the eve of the Republic Day, on January 25, 2002, the then President of India K.R. Narayanan referred to mounting atrocities including the crime of rape committed against women across the country.
Narayanan said, “The experience of Draupadi in the court of the Kauravas has become symbolic of the ill treatment of women in our country”.
Twenty years later, the person who occupied his chair – coincidentally called Droupadi – would bring up crimes against women as well. But she would selectively refer to the rape and murder of a young doctor in a Kolkata hospital and not cite other similar and monstrous crimes committed in other states.
In a hard hitting article, titled ‘Women’s Safety: Enough is Enough,’ Murmu stated “The gruesome incident of rape and murder of a doctor in Kolkata has left the nation shocked”.
She noted that she was dismayed and horrified. While specifically mentioning the Kolkata incident she tangentially referred to similar such crimes in rest of the country without naming the states where women suffered those atrocities. “No civilised society,” she remarked, “can allow daughters and sisters to be subjected to such atrocities”. She fervently pleaded the country to “wake up” to the “perversion” of crimes against women and urged to collectively say “enough is enough.”
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Manipur
Murmu’s deep sense of outrage on account of the rape and murder of the young doctor in Kolkata can be juxtaposed with her deafening silence on similar crimes against women, specifically in Manipur, where women were paraded naked and their bodies were violated with impunity. She has said nothing at all to the claim that the chief minister of that state can purportedly be heard seeking to downplay the incident.
Like in case of Kolkata, the Supreme Court of India took suo motu cognisance of the crimes committed against women and others in Manipur where the spiral of violence is still continuing and hundreds of people including children were killed and more than 60,000 people were left homeless. In fact, the apex court expressed its outrage by saying the state machinery in Manipur has completely collapsed. It is quite perplexing that President Murmu has been quiet over the lingering violence in Manipur.
There is no doubt that the crime committed against the young doctor in Kolkata is horrendous and the nationwide outrage generated by that is justifiable. The President of India addressing it is understandable. But why is she so selective in her outrage against Kolkata and able to maintain a stoic indifference to similar crimes against women and girls? For instance, in UP, two Dalit minor girls were found hanging and in Maharashtra two minor girls were sexually assaulted almost around the same time and people in large numbers assembled in streets to protest against those appalling offences.
Even earlier, the Union home ministry headed by Amit Shah cleared the release of convicted rapists and murderers in the Bilkis Bano case and they were set free and welcomed by BJP leaders. The country was outraged and President Murmu did not utter a word.
In her article Murmu never referred to those frightening incidents which in equal measure disgraced the nation and shook the collective conscience of our society.
It has been interpreted that Murmu in selectively expressing her anger against the Kolkata incident to target the Trinamool Congress which is at crosshairs with the BJP which is in power at the centre. Such perceptions concerning the occupant of the office of the President of India diminishes the dignity and majesty of the highest office of our republic.
Murmu should be mindful of her distinguished predecessors who have sought to adopt a nuanced approach.
In addition to Narayanan’s note above, another former president, Pranab Mukherjee, while responding to the nationwide outrage over the ‘Nirbhaya’ rape and murder case condemned the crime and appealed for adopting measures to prevent occurrence of such incidents.
Narayanan’s responses to the 2002 carnage in Gujarat when Modi was chief minister of the state offers many lessons for the occupant of the highest office of the land. Two months after that carnage when violent incidents continued to occur in that state, he, in a press communique in April 2002 described those tragic happenings as “crisis of our state and society.”
Those shining examples constitute the guiding spirit for those occupying the office of the president of India. Murmu must uphold that legacy.
S.N. Sahu Served as Officer on Special Duty to President of India K.R. Narayanan.
