Editorial Communication
Dear comrades, friends and well-wishers,
We seem to be living in a strange country where our daily life has come to be governed by the theatre of the absurd. Living in the full blast of the Corona Pandemic and hampered in our usual activities, the limits of our belief are undergoing considerable strain as a result of this.
A 400-year old mosque in Ayodhya had been razed to the ground 28 years back and a case has been going on in a special CBI court in Lucknow to determine who were responsible for bringing it down. Now the Honourable Court has come up at long last with its final verdict that no one was responsible for it; it was a miraculous event achieved by a few devoted karsevaks unarmed except by the passion of their indignation-- which some even call justified--- against that medieval structure!
Behold! Another miracle in UP under Yogi’s rule! A 19-year old girl is found by her mother bleeding and naked in the fields, with other terrible injuries in her spine and neck, and with her tongue almost sliced off! Are you thinking that the heinous attack was carried out by some so-called ‘upper’ caste men from her village whom she had named in her dying statement? Forget it. A high police official in the state has already come public with a statement that nobody raped her, nobody touched her! Perhaps we are being told that this is another miracle, a punishment from heaven for a dalit girl who had the temerity to stray a little behind other women of her family while she was working in the fields! Anyway, as some ‘Hindu’ leaders in the state say, why do women go outside instead of being occupied with their housework like good sanskari women?
The arrogance of our rulers has reached such unimaginable heights that they believe that we can be kept at bay with the absurd stories they are trying to foist on us even as during Lockdown they had expected us to take it for granted that the coronavirus can be frightened away by beating pots and pans. Let us tell them once and for all that it is they who are ultimately responsible for these atrocious incidents and that is why they find it necessary to shield rapists and murderers and destroyers of our Constitution who misuse the name of Rama! Let them be judged by the women and men of our country and brought to book!
[Some of our readers have been telling us that there are articles of importance in our newsletters which they need to read and discuss more closely and to circulate among more people. Time is needed for this which a monthly publication hardly allows. We ourselves at the publication end feel that we need to go a little more slowly in order to review what we are doing and to find more active contributors. For this purpose we are for the time being, going to come out once in two months, which means our next issue will be for 1 January, 2021. Do please let us know if you feel we are getting to be too easy-going.]
Malini Bhattacharya, President, All India Democratic Women’s Association
