From The Times of India

Asaram Bapu symbolizes the rot in masculine India

Shirish Koyal
08 January 2013, 02:15 AM IST

With no election in sight, it seems competitive populism has taken a break, making way for competitive male chauvinism. Interestingly, most of the latter has emanated from the benefactors of a political outfit that vies with others in showering promises of safety, justice and prosperity. These assaults on sensibility began after the death of Nirbhaya, the 23-year-old woman who became victim of a gang of depraved sex marauders in Delhi.
RSS head Mohan Bhagwat started it all by saying crimes against women happen in urban India, not Bharat (read villages and forests). He blamed “western culture” for atrocities against women. By doing so, he brought back memory of Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini attribution of all evil to “American crotch culture”. Bhagwat topped up his misplaced remark by advising women, at another event, to obey the “theory of social contract” by confining themselves to doing household chores and leaving the earning of money to their husbands.
As if on cue from his ideological guru, Kailash Vijayvargiya, a minister in BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh, told women they would be punished if they crossed their limits. The example of Sita, one of the worst sufferers in Hindu mythology, was ready on Vijayvargiya’s lips. Because she crossed the Laxman Rekha, he told us, Ravan abducted her.
Then VHP leader Ashok Singhal and the Jamaat-e-Islami, both important entities feeding the vicious circle of communalism and fundamentalism, pontificated on the virtues of virginity (that of women, who else?), the evil western culture, dignified clothing (for girls, of course) and the undesirability of co-education.
The utterances of Bhagwat, Singhal and Vijayvargiya have caused consternation, but are unsurprising. Brought up in a feudal and patriarchal set-up, they have deep-rooted prejudices and no desire to acknowledge the change society has undergone organically. Their mindset, authoritarian and very masculine (and anti-woman), is pickled in dogma. These people, as also the Jamaat, can’t be expected to think or talk better.
But what has left one stunned is a statement by Asaram Bapu, a popular religious figure operating out of Gujarat. This is his take on the rape of Nirbhaya:
“Only 5-6 people are not the culprits. The victim is as guilty as her rapists. She should have called the culprits brothers and begged them to stop. This could have saved her dignity and life. Can one hand clap? I don't think so.”
He said he disfavours harsh punishment for the rapists because he feels the law could be misused, as it is in the case of dowry harassment cases.
In one stroke, Asaram Bapu has made himself the symbol of all that is wrong with hollow Indian masculinity. Let’s not call him a male chauvinist. Perhaps a modern-day Ravan would be a more apt description. But then Ravan was supposed to possess some virtues too, didn't he?
In the smiling bearded visage of Asaram Bapu one sees the six faces that stared down on Nirbhaya on the night of December 16, 2012.