Saakhi is a Sunday column from Mrinal Pande, in which she writes of what she sees and also participates in. That has been her burden to bear ever since she embarked on a life as a journalist, writer, editor, author and as chairperson of Prasar Bharti. Her journey of being a witness-participant continues. The reason for writing this piece originally was to give readers an account of events related to the undeniable rise in reported cases of the most heinous rapes of women of all ages in India. But then the reports, both visual and written, of a public shootout in which two allegedly hired killers shot dead an infamous duo of Uttar Pradesh dons, Atiq Ahmed and his brother Ashraf, came in. They soon overtook all other important and debatable issues, such as the opposition uniting against alleged misuse of authority by the government at the Centre or allegations of corruption at the top.Since the G20 sessions and Karnataka state elections are at hand, and the prime minister and his A team of campaigners are readying to launch a blitz against their challengers down south, the godi media (read most media) has gotten busy reporting ‘positive’ stories about India. The messaged from the top are all about peace on Earth and goodwill to all men and women. India, according to the prime minister, has presented the world not with yuddha (war) but the Buddha. That’s all, thank you.Very few in the media played up a hair-raising story about the utter helplessness of a Dalit family in UP in the face of lawless mobs of men. Despite claims of decline in high crime in UP, news comes from Unnao of how a 13-year-old Dalit girl was gang raped by three men from her village. She and her father had shown great courage in reporting the crime and sending the accused to jail. A year later, two of the rapists are out on bail. Meanwhile the now 14 year old is the mother of a six-month-old infant born out of the rape, and is living with her natal family where her mother has also just had a baby. Out of custody, the men who raped the girl sought revenge for their humiliation. Around the same time the Atiq-Ashraf shootout happened in Prayagraj, seven men attacked the girl’s father with hatchets and while he was in the hospital, set fire to the humble hut the family lived in. According to the girl and the doctors in the Kanpur hospital where the injured were rushed, the infant has sustained severe burns and may not survive. The police had a different version. According to them, the father was attacked by his own brother and the crime had domestic origins. The father and daughter deny this. But the police is telling reporters the matter is currently “being looked into”.Illustration: Pariplab ChakrabortySo I have changed my mind. It seems somewhat senseless to waste time on debating what was an unforgivable death of two criminals while in police custody or ask whether a joint parliamentary committee will be formed to look into charges of alleged corruption by a major corporate house. What needs to be acknowledged and discussed urgently is how proudly and quintessentially male India’s system and its entire state apparatus remains on the ground for people other than powerful and well-heeled upper caste men. If this were not true, Dalit women like the raped minor and her mother would have freedom of movement and speech and a right to privacy, and could command some authority and resources to challenge and get their abusers incarcerated without risking their lives. It is notable that while the government in UP is boasting of running the mafiosi into the ground and bulldozing their family homes and assets, neither the political leaders nor the police have taken similar swift and hard action against rapists of a minor Dalit girl.Once upon a time (in 1987, to be precise), a young woman by the name of Roop Kanwar burnt herself on her husband’s pyre despite a law banning Sati. In an interview to a popular English weekly, Kalyan Singh Kalvi, then the state chief of the Janata Party and patron of the Shri Rajput Karni Sena, had stoutly defended the Sati on grounds of self-immolation of Rajput women being a tradition. In an exclusive interview that created waves, and earned him instant fame, Kalvi the senior challenged the interviewer (Sanjiv Srivastav): “How can you change public opinion through acts and ordinances? If we don’t worship a faithful woman, should we revere those who deceive their husbands and murder them?”Later in 2018, India’s the then minister for higher education hotly denied Indians’ genetic linkages with apes. He said that Darwin was wrong and no eyewitness account can say we have descended from apes. We are the descendants of holy sages!In 2023, no matter what species of primates we rose from, Indians indeed seem quite different from the apes. Ape clans, Jane Goodman writes in her book The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behavior, are built and led by the most powerful in the group. It can be a male or a female. To clinch the matter of leadership, they fight. If the male wins, he becomes a polygamous leader. If the female does, the loser male just drifts away and the female is accepted by the clan as a polyandrous leader. Female apes seldom have more than two children.It is also noteworthy that even though they have no police system nor a code of law banning forced sex, male apes do not rape their females to humiliate them or their clans, nor does even the ambitious Aapha male force his females to immolate themselves in case he loses the fight for supremacy to a stronger rival. There are no instances of apes killing their females, win or lose, to protect family and/or clan honour. Period.In the ape-dissociated official India today, there seem to be only two alternative paths for sexual equality for women. One, maintain gender neutrality: become male clones and accept the system as it is. If one does it successfully, a sort of honorary malehood (as in the case of women in the services or in political parties) may be conferred upon her. Or opt for two: raise the long deferred matter of 33% reservations and insist political parties contesting the elections include special benefits/special protection for women. Caution: in case two, debates like those about maternity vs paternity leave or menstrual inconveniences and cheap pads will continue as something of a doctrinal embarrassment .Why such an insistence in digging out the Unnao case instead of being vociferous about the fake encounters, the custody deaths or equal rights for Dalits or the LGBTQ community, some may wonder. Because the sexual objectification of women, not economic disparity, I now realise, has all along been the mother lode to all other hierarchies in India. These abusive practices taken together create for men the template for expressing and using power to dominate and bully all weaker sections, of which the largest part, of course, consists of women, Dalits and various minority groups. Over time all of them have been economically exploited, sexually objectified, physically abused, denied a voice and excluded from representing their own interests in public life. Men as men, unless they are Dalits or gay or from a minority tribe or community, generally do not experience the dehumanising things done to them by other men.An extract from the 1995 judgment of the civil and district courts in the Bhanwari gang rape case given in Jaipur, quoted by Mala Sen in her book Death by Fire, says: “The Court is of the opinion that Indian culture has not fallen to such low depths that someone who is brought up in it; an innocent rustic man; will turn into a man of evil conduct who disregards caste and age differences and becomes animal enough to assault a woman.”Some three decades later, we are where we were then, with similar conflicts emerging out of a caste, class and gender divided nation. Despite a really progressive set of laws tweaked and amended over the years to protect the weak, the state’s relationship with law shows what Michael Wolff once called “a certain looseness with truth”. Such looseness has time and again fractured the history of caste/gender/race based violence and its politico-legal aftermath. and allowed the guilty to get away and silence the accusers. Marveladov’s haunting question from Crime and Punishment comes to mind: “Do you understand dear Sir, do you understand what it means when there is absolutely nowhere to go?”