boy with blonde hair
girl in mini skirt
men who love men
women who defy

busy market
lonely mill
khap panchayat
supreme court

colonial laws
draconian views
unless you conform
atrocities continue

dare you speak
if you’re weak
“not enough numbers”
“not many members”

largest democracy
highest hypocrisy

Dedicated to Nido Tania, a 20 year old student from Arunachal Pradesh, India who died after being harassed and beaten up for his “blonde hair” at a market place in Delhi, India

Image: Justice for Nido Tania FB page

We at Orinam are heartbroken by the recent Delhi incident. We hope things will change for the better and women in India and across the world will be treated with the respect and dignity they deserve.

Orinam contributor Suri and author Mahesh Natarajan share their thoughts on the incident.

Suri says:

“I think Delhi is a land where everybody is somebody. It’s full of politically powerful people. So to reaffirm one’s feeling of power, or to compensate for one’s lack of it, they resort to overpowering the bodies of cows and five-year-olds. It’s just what I think. This has clearly gotten out-of-hand.

And I hope everyone here knows by now that rape is not about sex but about domination. Power. Control. Hence men also rape with objects, i.e, candles, bottle, rods. Hence, disembowelment, strangulation.

It’s not about orgasm. It’s about owning someone or something and proving you are the boss. To yourself.”

Mahesh Natarajan says:

“We make the vagina, penis and anus such mysterious, taboo subjects for kids, teach them male superiority through our domestic lives, popular culture and religion, show them the system is broken, that people do get away with murder, encourage them to put themselves first at all times, demonstrate that it is okay to dump our garbage in the neighbors or the street, that the other is inferior, celebrate sexual conquests and raw machismo.

We systematically take away any natural empathy, leave space for the cruel explorations of power and curiosity, and then wonder how hormone crazed youth go so completely berserk, question what kind of curiosity will need them to shove injection vials and what not in these body parts, why they treat their penises like gods and vaginas/anuses like garbage chutes, or shove their penises wherever, and we are so outraged, we want to hang them.

We need to wake up to this basic need to develop empathy, both in ourselves and in our kids. Safety does not lie only in teaching the vulnerable to stay away from risk – we need to teach empathy to the more powerful.”

 Related readings:

• “This is about you and me”: RJ Balaji on Men
• Ghosts of things past: a male rape survivor speaks
• Age 7
• No more Raksha Bandhan!
• Tamil Translation of Kavita’s speech on Violence Against Women
• Cartoons on Gender Equality