Soumya
On 28th May, the Delhi police cracked down on protestors peacefully marching towards the New Parliament building for the ‘Mahila Samman Mahapanchayat’. Merely a few metres away from the pomp and show of the inauguration of the New Parliament building that saw the participation of the accused, WFI Chief Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, these protestors, including the wrestlers Vinesh Phogat, Sakshi Malik, and Bajrang Punia, were violently detained and booked for rioting and obstruction of public servants by the police.
The juxtaposition of the images of the inauguration and the detention of the protesting wrestlers has since invited major backlash from the Indian polity. It must be noted that the inauguration of this new building took place despite a boycott by 19 opposition parties who have accused the PM of ‘hollowing out’ the Constitutional values that the building must symbolise, by deciding to inaugurate the building himself completely sidelining President Murmu. However, for all of its many many faults, the ruling party, at the very least, cannot be accused of being inconsistent.
Since 2014, they have consistently and often simultaneously, characterised their term with laws and policies that have been fundamentally brahmanical and patriarchal. Protests against sexual harassment in the past decade have been met with brutal state repression and apathy. We need to go back only as far as 2020 to see the complicity with which the state acted in the Hathras rape case, oing as far as charging journalists such as Siddique Kappan with Unlawful Activities Prevention Act for reporting on the ganrape, murder and the forceful burning of the corpse of a 19 year old Dalit woman.
The recent allegations against the BJP MP are spread out over the last decade accusing him of groping, sexually assaulting and intimidating women wrestlers who resisted his advances. The wrestlers have also allegedly received death threats and promises of bribes if they dropped their allegations. However, despite several allegations of harassment and FIRs with the Delhi Police, Singh has not seen the face of a jail yet. The lack of an arrest in the case even with charges under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, can only be attributed to an arrogant and authoritarian government. The government is not guilty of inaction here but rather of a vulgar display of power, strongmanship, apathy and an utter disregard for democratic values, both inside and outside the Parliament. The wrestler’s protest has been successful in mobilising people against this authoritarianism regime and holds promise for sustaining it until Brij Bhushan is adequately punished for his atrocities against these women. The wrestlers have constantly reiterated that this protest is not just for the Olympic medalists or the athletes representing India on an international platform but for all of those girls in India who dream of growing up to make a career in sports and all those who have been made to give up on these dreams by men like Brij Bhushan.
