Editorial: Lessons From the Televised Assault

The Guwahati monstrosity in which a teenaged girl was molested by a mob of around 25 men on a major thoroughfare was a beamed into living rooms across the country courtesy 24x7 satellite news channels. The incident, now notorious as the “televised assault”, was undoubtedly shocking and served as a reminder on the horrors women in our country are exposed to on a regular basis. The footage was revolting, and the blurring of the victim’s face did nothing to cover the trauma she must have experienced. Although several hands could be seen rising to shoot MMS recordings of the episode, none reached out in help. The abomination, one is told, played out for nearly half an hour, allowing enough time for a TV crew to reach the spot and film, but not enough for humanitarian or even timely police intervention. There is no denying that the episode deserved unanimous condemnation, and it did shriek from every TV news studio. Eventually, when the National Commission for Women flew in a fact-finding team from Delhi to distant Guwahati, it fulminated with righteous outrage, but returned with one of its members not only divulging the name of the teenaged victim at a press briefing, but even claiming that she had done no wrong in giving out the name. The Assam government matched the insensitivity by including a photograph of the victim in a press release on their chief minister’s visit and assurances of help and justice. The disclosure was immediately retracted, but the attitude had already been exposed.
The recap is not just to refresh details of the incident, but to flag attitudes which make public spaces so unsafe for women in India. The macabre incident played out on a busy street [vehicles can be seen slowing down and passing on in the background], but no one bothered to enquire or intervene. We remain a country [and this is not about Guwahati alone] where a mob can turn vicious on the smallest pretext, but a crowd rarely gathers to save a child in obvious distress. What could have held back the passersby from stopping the madness? Disinterest maybe, and in even worse possible scenario, a suspicion that the victim had probably invited the assault. Media coverage of the incident does not get into how the assault began. This overlooked angle needs prying, not because it can justify or condone the attack, but because it will provide important lessons on how the beast [the molesters and onlookers were all undeniably beasts] has grown so strong. For one, the increasing susceptibility of media agencies to respond to tip-offs and film grotesque episodes of moral policing is to blame, but in the Guwahati incident, the role is even more macabre. What is disgusting is that this role is being largely ignored, left unexplained beyond mentions that there are allegations that the journalist in question instigated the mob. Why is no one asking how? No matter how depraved a journalist might be and no matter how desperate he might be for a story, he cannot instigate a mob into molestation for TV. Friends of the victim quoted is some reports coming out of the northeast, reveal that the reporter had been filming them since they were inside the bar outside which the incident transpired. Apparently, the group of girls created a scene inside the bar and were evicted. The reporter began filming them on his mobile phone outside the bar. In his twisted mind, he was probably putting together a sensational story on the moral degeneration of the youth. Outside, one of the girls confronted him and demanded that he stop filming, which is when he revealed that he was journalist and called in a camera crew. As a ‘scene’ broke out, he called out to some bystanders to detain the girls. This is when the group panicked and ran away, but one of them could not escape the paws. Incidentally, this version has reportedly been corroborated by two of the accused, who claim that they were told by the journalist to detain the girls. This perhaps explains why the mob can be seen posing for the camera instead of breaking the camera which a mob so caught in the act would have done. Once in the hands of the mob, the situation deteriorated and the televised mob molestation was served up. Why is it that this sequence of events, which in no way relieves the blame on the molesters, but also shoulders blame [perhaps larger blame] on the role of the media in the incident, not being more widely circulated? The debate over the media’s role is limited at present to whether they should have filmed and aired [initially without blurring the girl’s face] the incident instead of helping her. And then there is the joke that goes by the punch-line – National Commission for Women. An incident which had justifiable caused national uproar was provided a fact-finding team staffed by such poorly groomed and disinterested members as the one who not only revealed the name of the victim at a press briefing, but also saw nothing wrong in it. She was removed from the team, but then the NCW chairperson opened her mouth and said that women should “dress safely”. Coming in the wake of the Guwahati episode, this demoralising comment explains the offensive mindset which looks at incidents such as this and suspects that the victim might have somehow invited the outrage. “Aping the West blindly is eroding our culture and causing such crimes to happen,” she has been quoted as saying! With a Commission dedicated to Women being so insensitive, it is not surprising that government agencies slip up and a society groomed on a popular culture which equates “western” dresses with “loose morals” and sees gender inequalities played out all around them, ends up harming women every time an opportunity presents itself.
Admittedly, this portrays a rather dismal picture, but the shame, all shades of it, needs to be confronted before it can be hounded out. It is important that the story not end with arrest of all the accused molesters. The media needs to investigate its own agent provocateur role. Questions need to asked on why national TV channels accepted edited versions of the episode and not secure the raw footage to ensure that all culprits, including its own, were publicly shamed and exposed? The NCW itself needs to be reinforced with members who understand their roles better and recognise the challenges more clearly. Bored time-servers will not do, and stronger laws will not help as much as stronger members. The Guwahati incident has returned all these issues to the public domain [even if they are still not being recognised as such], and if a lesson is to be learnt, it will have to address all these issues and make amends.