Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his visit to Varanasi applauded Chief Minister Yogi for making UP a safe haven for girls!
PM Modi said, There is a “rule of law” in UP: “Earlier, parents used to be worried about their daughters but today that situation has changed.” It seemed a strange thing for the Prime Minister to say because UP is anything but safe for women.
Going back over the last few years, a series of heinous sadistic crimes of rape and murder of women followed with body mutilations, slitting of necks, strangulation, and burning women alive after raping them have become perpetual barbarous incidents.
On 27 May 2014, gang rape and murder of two teenage girls were reported in the Katra village of Budaun district, Uttar Pradesh. According to reports, in the evening the girls had gone out into a field used for defecation and did not return. Villagers hunted for the girls throughout the long dark night and eventually, they were found the following morning hanging from a tree and it was later discovered they had been raped and then hanged on that tree.
Just recently, on Friday, August 14, 2020, horrific violent rape and brutal murder by strangulation of a 13-year-old girl occurred in the Lakhimpur Kheri District, Uttar Pradesh by two men. The 13-year-old girl’s body was found in a sugarcane field that belonged to one of the accused, quite close to a police station.
On 4 June 2017, there was the brutal gang rape of a 17-year-old girl in Unnao, Uttar Pradesh. This rocked the country as the Bharatiya Janata Party-led party legislator Kuldeep Singh Sengar was charge-sheeted by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and found to be guilty.
In 2019, on Twitter alone, users witnessed dozens of live videos of violent attacks on women in Uttar Pradesh and some other States in India, circulated wildly, which of course, later were restricted. After that, several attempts were made to muffle revealing these events.
On December 7, 2019, a 23-year-old girl from Unnao in Pradesh, a rape victim was burned alive by five men while on her way to a court in Rae Bareli to attend a hearing in her rape case. On her way, the same men who raped her in December caught her and burned her alive. She dragged her way to the police station and died later. She must have been a real fighter.
The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) published the annual Crime in India Report 2018 recording that Uttar Pradesh topped the list of crimes against with 59,445 cases. We have to keep in mind that thousands of cases are unreported and unrecorded due to the shame factor associated with rape on women.
Why does Uttar Pradesh Have One of The Highest Crimes against Women?
While the Prime Minister applauds the UP CM for his good governance in Uttar Pradesh, making it “safe” for women, the truth is the situation has degenerated. COVID-19 brought down the level of rapes because people were indoors, but even with a few incidents of outdoor travel brought fresh rapes reported.
The culture is very unsafe in Uttar Pradesh basically due to the political and religious structure that enables such crimes.
Empowerment of Goons: If you notice, in most of the cases, it was embroilment of upper-class Hindu young men against Dalit girls. Recently, a young Dalit man was chained to a pole, and sticks were inserted into his private parts. Crimes against the Dalits are inhumanely monstrous and Yogi Adityanath has not achieved any plateau of victory to stop it. It keeps on happening and he is rather mum when it is an upper-lower class crime.
The class caste system dividing the people coupled with a pro-upper caste system allowed these crimes to go unchecked. The Hindutva activity is moving in waves in BJP-led State governments mostly, and is glaringly unchecked and ignored.
The rape and murders were the highest because the BJP youth is strengthened by political leaders, so they rule the roost with impunity knowing they will get away with it.
Violent youth intimidate Dalits and other minorities, authorized by political leaders to establish their political ends. Rioting, vandalism, burning, raping, and murders are on the rise, but cops and political leaders close their eyes. In some cases, after rapists were released from jail, they were garlanded by certain BJP leaders and venerated for their crimes.
This sent a wild flag waving over India that such goons are highly esteemed and could get away with violent rapes and murders. Moving on the waves of such sanctions and promotions, these goons move like mad wolves pouncing on innocent flocks of women and brutalizing them like lambs to the slaughter.
Religiously Politicized Culture: A religiously politicized culture that has a very active prevalent caste system, rape and murders is negatively explosive. As noted in the above incidents, the majority of the rapes and murders were committed by “upper” caste Brahmins and Thakurs on “lower” caste Dalit girls. It seemed a sort of revenge cycle where entitled privileged Brahmins backed by a caste system working in their favor felt they had the right to rape and kill without consequences. Often girls who rebuked their attacks were raped and killed.
A lot of these crimes took place quite close to police stations, so they clearly had no fear of the law for they felt they were the law. As we often say, the Jungle Raj is presently running in Uttar Pradesh where the goons rule the roost.
Unfortunately, if the main focus is communal politics with attacks of lynching Dalits and Muslims and rising rapes with murders, how can any state Government prosper? It never can, because in an atmosphere of fear and hatred, prosperity cannot produce its fruit, and creativity and inventory cannot build its pathway.
On August 5, 2020, in Uttar Pradesh, the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, laid the foundation stone, a symbolic silver brick, for the Ayodhya Ram temple. As they are representing a Ram Rajya, its principles of peace, love, and tolerance have to be inculcated.
The saffron color of OM embodies peace, love, dedication, and tolerance towards all living things God created. Unfortunately, today when we see the saffron flag or saffron, we immediately associate it with lynching, raping, violence and death. Politicized religion has destroyed concepts of peace in Hinduism.
Uttar Pradesh needs to introspect on its climate of hate which is destroying the state, even though they will not admit it. Will the Government work on fresh ways to wash away the communal divides and remove politicized religion to bring in harmony and peace so prosperity, fruitfulness, and productivity can replace the scarred burned ashes?
I leave behind this poem for the Prime Minister, CM Yogi, and the Supreme Court, still praying they will give justice, not blame the women when raped, and instead deal with rapists severely. It was very disturbing to learn that in PM Modi’s new cabinet, 40% are appointed with criminal cases against them including rapists and murderers! Are these going to be ruling our nation?