Varnika and Vikas: “Sabhi ab Raas Leela Hai”
Our lives in the days of the Internet, are moved through intermittent waves, ridden geo-politically. We see the waves coming, ride through them, see them ebb, to continue again and again — creating new memories with new waves, and learning only how to ride them. Never going into the reasons of what causes them. There is a certain powerlessness inherent in our democratic living that magnifies with population density –we pay money as taxes for our well-being entrusted to popularly selected governments, only to feel alienated out of it. For Indians, a good case in point right now is the Varnika Kundu versus Vikash Barala case.

Was it one of a kind?
Hell, no. But we’d be indeed living in our idealized, fantasy land if it were the first, or one of a kind. Sadly, it isn’t.
Why are we talking about it then?
Because, as was pointed by the victim’s family, they belong to a privileged sector in a democratic country; in spite of belonging to a privileged class, power to act against a crime followed a familiar route of being constrained, through victim-shaming, victim-blaming, shielding the alleged criminal, etc. If privileged position (as established by class, education and status) doesn’t ensure one to an entitled enjoyment of democratic right — of receiving protection as a citizen, then we can easily guess the fate of the lesser powerless ones.
All of this is happening in a country which in recent years, has shown its ambition to be a superpower …
…through the ability to create nuclear fission and GDP growth, without however any ability to create any diffusion of divisive powers and economic imbalances.
Socially, the country has been following divisive lines of behavioural tactics as laid out through religion, gender, caste, class, region, and name-anything-if-you-will. Varnika Kundu is not the first victim to be shamed, neither is she the last. We’d talk about her getting justice, while an even louder group would talk about shaming her and baring open our regressive mindset as is apparent in the comments section below:
https://www.facebook.com/hindustantimes/posts/10155266258923580
Quoting some of the highly liked (and reacted upon) comments to the above-mentioned story that shows our mindset. These are actually the “top comments”:
- “In this pic she is stalking me, I am getting harassed, looks like she is high and tying todo something bad….. Police, I am raising a complaint on her, plz help me.” (sic)
- “Vikas barala should really be put into jail. Bc aur koi nai mila stalk karne ko”. (Vikas Barala should be put into jail. Because he didn’t get anybody else to stalk?)
- “How does urine and blood test even relate to stalking? Kya bakwas hai yaar.” (How does the urine and blood test even relate to stalking? What bullshit is this, bud!)
- “Itna sati savitri ban rahi hai yeha . can she test her verginity to poof I am good girl. What she doing at 12 am night.” (sic)
- “We are living in a county where men are always blamed and that too for Aunties …”
- “She looks like a complete,,, train wreck, abey pagal tha wo kya isko stalk kiya? Literally yahi mili thi usko? Hadd hai bhai. Standards have fallen. The guy looks so smart and this girl. Either this whole thing is a sham or the guy was nuts. I suspect fake harassment. They knew each other from before. I even have a pic of them together.” (Hindi parts mean: Was he mad to stalk her? Literally, only she was available? This is the limit! Standards have fallen…)
There are comments that have been calling down on the victim shaming and the above-mentioned garden variety kind of trolling. Like Salman Khan’s dance moves, these will continue as India aspires to be a superpower, aspires to be a Hindu nation, attempt to maintain its distinctiveness and difference from a particular Abrahamic faith, but ironically, showing the same mindset of other countries where a rape victim has to prove the rape through bringing in witnesses to the rape, and are subject to numbered lashing for being raped.
Physically, India wants to be like the white masters that colonized the country, be the “superpower’, “developed nation”, “first world country” — the countries the Indian citizens always want to immigrate too — with the mentality of being a resident of Saudi Arabia.
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Political parties using available infrastructural leverages to save some of their own kin, is not surprising. Scores of political parties have done it in India. Victim blaming and shaming have been engaged upon, innumerable times before. Our misogynist mindset doesn’t take many nudges to come out.
However, there has been a little change in this whole process, a kind of change we’ve almost got used to, because we have been introduced to it gradually and so consistently, that we have acclimatized ourselves to it.
Previously, when some kin of some political leader would engage in a crime, before it got to the media, the political leaders would try to terrorize the victim (and victim’s family) and hush up the case.
But after it reached the media, there would be a familiar route:
— Disowning of the miscreant from the political party’s umbrella: “He’s not one of us”; “He’s not that important to the party”; “We don’t support what he did”.
— Immense pressure on the miscreant’s family by the political party to do some amount of damage control through any of the available choices of resignation, owning up mistakes, apologizing, etc.
These helped the political party to revive and reinstate their image, through individualizing the miscreant, creating distance from the miscreant so as to get bridge the gap with the alienated public, and trivialize the issue. All of it, because the political party would backhandedly agree that it was a criminal offense.
But now, the above route is not taken up. Silence and the ability of being loud on social media are important arsenals, used judiciously, whereby political parties can trivialize the issue through making the big, great leaders remain silent, lest anything could be used to hold them accountable and responsible, with the foot soldiers of the party being asked to fight for its kin through hurling compounding amounts of hurting abuses towards the victim, so that any potential victim would think thrice before coming forward to ask for justice.
That’s the tactics of silencing, to show how actions matter more than words.
For the moment, the concerned political party wants you to sing and dance with them, as they are singing this Bollywood song — the lyrics being so apt and fitted to the situation, that it would put patanjali a run for its money of being fitted to patriotism (Hear it for yourself, will ya?):
Main Karoon Toh Saala Character Dheela Ha
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