The recent horrific rape-murder of a 23-year old Delhi woman is a stark reminder to all that the shining Indian “democracy” is quintessentially a colonial rule. This incident was utterly inhuman and barbaric. The best news of the week is that the Delhi police have decided to invoke murder charges against the men accused of assaulting & killing the young woman.
Gruesome horrific violence takes place in all countries. Witness the recent terrifying senseless murder of young children in a school in Newton, Connecticut. What matters is how the Police, the Law & Order machinery react to these incidents.
The reaction of the Indian police & the Delhi Government to the rape-murder showed the stark reality of today’s India. That the Indian Police are neither responsive nor responsible to the people of India. Their only purpose is to serve the Political Class that runs the country. This is obvious to anyone who has visited any police station in any Indian city WITHOUT a nod from a powerful politician. The message is you just don’t count.
And Delhi, the seat of political power, is simply the worst offender in this brute exercise of political force. That is Delhi’s colonial heritage. Delhi has been occupied by foreign colonial invaders continuously for 700 years. Read the history of Delhi’s Turko-Afghan regimes. You will see how Indian women of Delhi have been assaulted, raped and bartered continuously under these regimes. The only safe women were those belonging to the ruling clans.
Today’s Delhi doesn’t seem that different. The heinous attack
on a 23-year intern and her male friend in Delhi crystallized this as nothing before it
had. Every woman & man in Delhi felt instinctively that this could have been
their story.
The entire purpose of the Law & Order machinery in those colonial times was to serve the interest of the ruling clans. Unfortunately, that is exactly the purpose of today’s Delhi police. Read what a military veteran of India’s counter-insurgency forces wrote recently:
- Today in Delhi, while there is only one policeman for 364 people, there are 20 policemen per VIP, that is, a force of 8,283 dedicated to 416 VIPs. Deployment of SPG, NSG, ITBP and other para-military forces for Z series category of VIPs is in addition. And in most cases the deployment is not to ward off any security threat (which exists only for a select few), but to add an aura of majesty to the persona of the Neta (“Leader“).
Delhi seems to be unique among major Indian metros in the scale of violence against women. Mumbai is still relatively safe for women. South Indian cities seem relatively unaffected by this disease at least so far. In fact, the farther you are from Delhi, the lesser the violence against women. At least that is what statistics show.
But the basic problem of Indian Police, Indian Law & Order Machinery acting solely as agents of the Political Caste is the reality all over India. Read what the counter-insurgency veteran wrote about this Indian reality:
- Obviously, democracy in India has drifted away from people. Governance is now marred by rampant corruption, inefficiency and callousness with total absence of accountability almost all over the country. Most crimes pass off without evoking concern from politicians, police or judiciary.
- Shopkeepers and small business concerns are buying security by employing private security guards and paying hafta. Victims of loot, molestation, rape, kidnap and perpetual harassment at the hands of outlaws have lost faith in the police and judiciary. They would rather negotiate and buy peace and, if possible, patronage of the hoodlums rather than face disdain and further exploitation at the police station.
This is just slightly better than what Delhi was during the Turko-Afghan rule or the Mughal rule – Indian citizens living under colonial occupation and suffering the daily realization that their lives just don’t count.
Like then, the entire apparatus of today’s state exists solely to serve one family and its coterie of loyalist warlords & bureaucrats. That is why no one feels safe in today’s India.
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