Women and military and paramilitary forces in our country are treated the same way – respected, but only from afar. Put on a pedestal, they are then neglected and forgotten. Recently, a CRPF jawan was travelling via train to his posting. Having seen many a sunsets, he was aware that no one on this Duronto would offer up their seat even for the one hour or so that his journey entailed.
After all, they had bought tickets and why should they share their seat with anybody. He quietly went ahead and sat down near the door despite having arthritis. His knees may have been hurting, but it was better on the sidelines. On being offered a seat by a youngster, the jawan was surprised since in all his years of travelling he had never been offered one.
A few days later the passengers of that Duronto were back home and pouring out their grief, anger and anguish over the suicide bombing attack on a CRPF convoy in Pulwama region of Jammu and Kashmir which killed 40 paramilitary troopers. They went on social media to vent their emotions and celebrated the Indian Air Force (IAF) troops pounding terror camps of Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM).
But that CRPF jawan who was sitting by the door is still there, waiting for someone to offer him a seat. Women, too, are waiting…waiting for hashtags like Respect, MeToo, Equality, TimesUp, HeForShe, ToTheGirls, YouOkSis…to become redundant.
Women topped men in 11 of 12 emotional intelligence measures in a study. And it wasn’t conducted by women. Wouldn’t you want your CEO or even political leaders to have higher EQ to take a more balanced view of things (even if there is provocation from neighbours)?
It is said, ‘When you educate a man, you educate an individual and when you educate a woman, you educate an entire family.’ I say, when you have women leaders, you affect the entire community, for she thinks of society before taking decisions (generally, that is). There is a correlation between women and peace, and men and war. Women are peace-builders and men… (I don’t think I need to spell it out, do I?). But that isn’t the reality. Our goddesses live on only in mythology books.
There once lived in this country a woman, let us call her Mita, whose husband, Bablu, was in that nation’s paramilitary forces. Unfortunately, Bablu, along with many of his brave colleagues, was killed in a terrorist attack. Following the death of her husband, Mita made a strong anti-war pitch. The reason for her stance: A war would lead to the loss of many more lives on both sides of the border, leaving women widowed, mothers without sons and children without fathers. And what of the response from her countrymen to this? Attacking her on social media…
An Olympic athlete gets bombarded with pornography by online trolls and offers to star in sex films for simply having sex with a fellow athlete in the Olympic village. And what about the man? He gets comments like: ‘Congratulations, what a star!’
Taking to the streets—the asphalt or digital one and lighting candles for causes close to your heart ain’t going to do it. Make sure that ‘truth’ and ‘respect’ seeps into your corporate offices, buildings and bones to the point that even Dr Fixit can’t fix it. And only then celebrate Army Day or Women’s Day… okay?
