In search of justice

People convicted for rape and murder in the Bilkis Bano case, are welcomed as they come out of the Godhra sub-jail after the Gujarat government allowed their release under its remission policy on August 15. (Photo Credit: PTI) Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh are ruled by the same political party. It is also ruling at the Centre. So, the party was supposed to take a uniform stand vis-a-vis the violation of the dignity of women. Alas, the two states acted in shockingly different ways. The Uttar Pradesh government came down hammer and tongs against a BJP leader who was seen in a viral video brazenly insulting a woman on the campus of a posh colony of NOIDA. While after 11 convicts in the Bilkis Bano rape case were released from jail on August 15 there is no apparent national outrage over the gross injustice to the victim. The script: The appalling disparity in the societal response to the two matters betrays our blatant majoritarian bias. For us, it is the religion of the victim that counts most, unmindful of the heinousness of the crime she was subjected to. Sure enough, this is not the first instance when the religion of the majority took precedence over societal outrage. A similarly shocking apathy characterised the society's dubious morality when an eight-year-old girl was brutally raped and murdered in 2018 in the Jammu region. The twist In the NOIDA case, the TV channels repeatedly showed the viral video and the spirited chase of the UP police for the accused Shrikant Tyagi who was finally caught. The media described the arrest as a very admirable sensitivity of the Yogi government to the woman's respect. The woman in question is a middle-class urban Hindu, the main reason for the majoritarian outrage nationwide over her humiliation. However, barely a fortnight after the NOIDA drama came a report that the Gujarat government has prematurely released 11 convicts who were handed over life sentences 14 years ago for gang-rape of a pregnant woman and the murder of the seven members of her family during the 2002 Gujarat communal riot. There is no apparent national outrage over the gross injustice to the victim Bilkis Bano. Compared to Bilkis Bano's constant suffering for 20 years since she was subjected to extreme cruelty, the verbal humiliation of the NOIDA woman was nothing. Yet, the riot victim has failed to prick the collective conscience of Indian society the way it was manifest in the Shrikant Tyagi incident. YDMM! Please explain more Like Bilkis Bano, the minor gang-rape victim Asifa Bano was a Muslim. In both gang rape and murder cases, the perpetrators are Hindus. More shockingly, the rapist murderers were feted by fellow Hindus in both cases. A demonstration was organised in favour of the accused in the Asifa murder in Jammu in which lawyers owing allegiance to the BJP had participated. As soon as the convicts in the Bilkis Bano case were released, visuals emerged of relatives greeting them with sweets and charan-sparsh, (touching their feet for blessings) outside the Godhra jail. Why is this big? While deciding to commute the life sentence of the convicts, the Gujarat government must have anticipated this kind of scene. Its intention to reap the electoral harvest of the communal hatred in the coming assembly election in the state hardly needs emphasis. However, more than the state's ruling party it is the moral decadence of the society which is responsible for allowing the majoritarian sentiment to come to such a horrible pass that a political party smugly manipulates it to win elections.