“He among you who is without sin, let him first cast a stone upon her.” John 8:7
If not comforting, it is less distressful to view the brutal rape of the young woman battling for life, in isolation: the work of “psychopaths”. The demons are out there! The fury aroused in the perpetrators who did the horrific acts causing such internal damage to the woman is at one end of the spectrum. However, can it be completely disassociated from angers and fury within crouching just below our “civilized” self ready to lash out? The merits of the external circumstance seem of less import with the fury at times triggered by a totally trivial incident as is evident in a number of cases of road rage.
The fury, devaluation of women and misogyny of the perpetrators is there for all to see. Everyone is on the same side, as per reports even the accused are pleading to be hanged, yet effectively translating the outpouring of moral outrage requires looking at inter-connections with the devaluation of the girl child, the state of relations between the sexes in society, the psychological processes at play and the law. Facts apart, in the context of the Indian societal norm with regard to the girl child, a man with three daughters generally gives rise to the suspicion of the pursuit of a son. In the arena of matrimonial relations, marital rape is not an offense and is not even counted as physical and/or mental cruelty for getting a divorce. The exercise of teasing apart the links can offer pointers for concrete interventions in several fields like child rearing and education as well as areas like training of police and judiciary. The insights would also help in much needed gender-sensitive changes in law.
Inconvenient as it might be but the perpetrators in addition to ‘accused’ are also ‘brothers’, ‘sons’ and ‘husbands’… Nishtha Gautam, a protester at Raisina Hill in her blog ‘Arrogance vs angst’ uploaded at ND TV recounts “Many young boys were shouting expletives, the usual maa-behen. Police ki maa …, Sarkar ki behen …- a bizarre sense of support”. In the words of Tanya Sharma, a Delhi University student who injured her ankle in the lathi-charge, “What was most shocking was that the police were abusing us in horrid language even as they were beating us. It wasn’t just about clearing us out, it was almost like revenge”.
In fact, interventions in incidents of harassment of women in public spaces often takes the shape of abusing the perpetrator as “Sister ***”, “Mother ***” while simultaneously trying to make him feel ashamed by enquiring whether he does not have mothers and sisters at home. This in a way encapsulates the contradictory feelings of Indian males towards women in their family. The rigid incest taboo is indicative of the need to prohibit sexual feelings towards family members which are regarded as “unbrotherly” and “non-son-like” vis-à-vis mothers and sisters. These feelings for the “pure” mother and “virgin” sister evoke strong feelings of guilt and remorse in the boy/man. Sexual fantasies involving close family members’ fuels further frustration accompanied by feelings of guilt and perversion.
These distressful feelings get suppressed and emerge as projections on the “dirty other” making us feel moral and righteous. Acknowledging feelings we consider “shameful” and “dirty” gives an opportunity to process and initiates owning up of our “bad” selves. Splitting of and suppression leads to projection on the other. In addition there is part identification with the recipient of the projections. The Austrian-born British psychoanalyst Melanie Klein conceptualised the intra-psychic processes of splitting, projection and projective identification at play as defences against anxieties and distress.
The accounts about the events on Sunday describe escalation, burning of barricades and use phrases like the police went “berserk” and “went on a rampage” hitting out at anyone in sight to describe the evening. In a strange turn of events the phrases are similar to those used to describe the conduct of the perpetrators, and we find that the police and protesters too can be prey to feelings from the spectrum of “berserkers”. The acceptance of the limits set by the prescribed protocol of using the minimum force necessary by the police for dispersing gets thrown to the winds and a fury takes over chasing and beating fleeing people.
All of us have seen babies shaking with rage almost going purple reflected in the commonly used phrase “infantile rage”, which offers us some pointers to the process at play. D.W. Winnicott, the British psychoanalyst describes how a baby cries, and a breast appears to nourish him creating feelings of omnipotence. The baby feels the breast has been created by his will and perceives the mother as an extension of himself. Fury is evoked as the baby begins to understand the objective reality of the independent existence of objects including the mother and that he does not control objects. The crucial primary parental function is of “holding” the baby in the sense of containing the feelings the infant seems to find intolerable until the child gradually learns to understand and contain his own feelings. Vital to the development of the ability to cope with anger and frustration is giving the baby small doses of “optimal frustration” – that is enough create to create an environment where the child learns the acceptance of limits. The approach of parents not denying the child anything as an expression of love, and in the Indian context particularly the male child, is in sharp contrast to this approach and leaves the child ill- equipped to deal with frustrations in life with little ability to cope with angers and furies. It is this un-processed infantile rage which gets tapped into and triggered resulting in volcanic eruptions totally disproportionate to situations.
The devising of processes to initiate acknowledgment and owning up split “bad” parts rather than projection on the “other”, equipping individuals to deal with negative emotions of like anger and the acceptance of limits are crucial areas of intervention in child rearing, education, police and judicial training.
