Layers of rhetoric surround rape in India, a place where it is easier to perform the action than speak about it with clarity.

The everyday violence and anger that is often seen in large and small incidents across India today should make us pause to think about accountability and consequences: is it that when these fade, the civilisational fabric is loosened and things that were earlier seen as unacceptable become acceptable? 

To ignore historical inequalities because they are unsavoury, or do not fit the narrative we prefer, is to enable the continuity of those inequalities, and to enable those who benefit from those inequalities.

If India is to set up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, should it only limit it to the Northeast? If we are to set its mandate in the past, which past are we considering as apt for such a Commission?

If we are to recognise and acknowledge that lakhs died, then it also becomes necessary to ask difficult questions.

To have the state acknowledge the deaths might well give us the necessary sense of purpose we need to surmount this period in time.

Ours is now a strange world where the roles of victim, perpetrator, bystander and witness are suddenly interchangeable.

What if we do not want to go to another country, but instead choose to exercise our right to criticise our own while living within its borders?