A recent long essay suggested that hating Prime Minister Modi has become a bit of an industry, where journalists of a certain disposition are said to be going out of their way to manufacture grievances against the present government. It’s important to point out that it’s not just journalists who are guilty of this. I think the entire nation is in cahoots to discredit Mr Modi in one of those eerily well-coordinated and complex operations straight out of Hollywood. You could ask how a country that can’t get 100 car drivers to behave at a traffic signal manages to synchronize such an intricate nation-wide mission, but I wouldn’t if I were you. If you don’t believe me, I can always send this out as a Whatsapp forward.
Take the controversy at Banaras Hindu University. Prime Minister Modi’s plans to visit Varanasi had just been announced. Instead of feeling happy and distributing ladoos , what did the girl students do? They got one of their classmates to dress up immodestly in a salwar-kameez and get molested by some men. This, in turn, led to a student protest. The university called the cops, apparently the first thing one does these days when students raise any protest. And an entire battalion attacked the girls with lathis to gently dissuade them from protesting against anything.
In her FIR, the student has written, “I was wearing a salwar suit. Suddenly, two motorcycle-borne youth came and inserted their hands inside my suit. They then sped away.” This statement is obviously too factual to please anyone. The post-truth version is better (and so much more dramatic). BHU vice-chancellor Girish Chandra Tripathi explained: “The Prime Minister was to visit. The molestation was done to trigger this fiasco.”
See? Now, it becomes clear. It’s all part of the Modi-hating conspiracy. People will stop at nothing. Being molested, getting bankrupted by demonetisation, even lynching themselves — their callousness is terrible.
Meanwhile, Tripathi has gone on long leave, not because of the ruckus but because he wants to read The Feminine Mystique . He has grown up believing that when strange men put their hands inside a woman’s dress it’s merely a “simple case of eve-teasing” and all this nonsense of calling it molestation has upset him. He is even more upset that the girl should have complained. In a videotaped meeting with students at Triveni Hostel, he asked them why they were talking about sexual harassment openly. You have “put your modesty on the market,” he told them. He then huffed off on leave, but apparently his job may now be on the market.
I wonder what happens when men flash their genitals in a park or grope a woman on a bus? Does that put them on the market? I am waiting for Tripathi to return and clear all my doubts. He is clearly an expert on men, women and all things in between.
But even he has stiff (no pun intended) competition in the shape of that dear old Tamil chartered accountant named S Gurumurthy, him of Swadeshi Jagaran Manch fame. This most superior man has a photo of a Shankaracharya as his Twitter display image, so one wonders if he sees himself as almost an avatar of the holy man when he makes his many pronouncements.
Upon learning that BHU’s new chief proctor Royona Singh has declared there will be no restriction on dress and alcohol for female students, that valiant upholder of sanskari female modesty, S Gurumurthy, declared with much bitterness: “Yes, unless girls drink, gender equality is incomplete. Unless they dress scantily, they aren’t modern. Unless they have freedom of sex, they are backward.”
I appreciate his bitterness. Clearly, someone forgot to send him the Modi-hating memo. Don’t you see, Mr Gurumurthy? Women wear skimpy clothes and drink alcohol in order to be molested just before the Prime Minister or any government big shot arrives on a visit.
Only, women got another memo too, a long time ago, called the men-hating memo — we do a whole bunch of things including get raped just to discredit men.
But it’ll take till doomsday to explain to the Tripathis and the Gurumurthys about being a woman in a man’s world. Grow a pair of breasts and walk down the street, gentlemen, you’ll find out real fast.
Where the writer tries to make sense of society with seven hundred words and a bit of snark.
