Tuesday, November 8, 2011

WE THE DISHONOURABLE---KEENAN-REUBEN MURDER

B.RAMAN


Shock and shame have greeted the news about an incident which took place in the Amboli area of Mumbai on October 20,2011, in which two honourable young men of Mumbai---Keenan Santos and Reuben Fernandes--- were surrounded and brutally killed by a group of hooligans and their supporters when Keenan and Reuben protested against their misbehaviour towards their girl friends and tried to defend themselves from attacks by the enraged hooligans.


2. We owe a debt of gratitude to Vidyut, a keen Tweeter activist of Mumbai, for her painstaking research into the incident from open source information and for posting the details in her blog titled “Aamjanata” at “ Facts of the Murder of Keenan and Reuben http://aamjanata.com/facts-of-the-murder-of-keenan-and-reuben/


3.Barkha Dutt, the Group Editor and President of the Board of Editors of the NDTV, telecast a special discussion on the incident under her “The Buck Stops Here” programme on November 8,2011.She had invited the families and girl friends of the brave men who were brutally killed, a cross-section of opinion-makers and members of the public for the discussion which was recorded in Mumbai on the night of November 7.


4. The stamp of high quality of Barkha’s programmes was there in this debate too. She needs to be complimented for taking the initiative in producing her unimaginably and unbearably poignant show. At the same time, I would be failing in my duty if I did not record my surprise over Barkha’s omission to invite Vidyut to be a member of the panel. Nobody had shown greater indignation than Vidyut over the murders and nobody has done a more painstaking research into the incident than Vidyut. She should have been the first choice for the panel.


5.The shocking incident highlights how dishonourable many of us are in our attitude to women and behaviour towards them. It has been reported that the people who misbehaved towards the girl friends of Keenan and Reuben come from the under-privileged and uneducated sections of our society, but we find instances of such shocking behaviour in all layers of our society---privileged or under-privileged, educated or uneducated, sophisticated or unsophisticated.


6. In our society, the word behaviour has two meanings. It has one meaning when it comes to behaviour towards men and another in respect of behaviour towards women. Large sections of our society tend to presume that in our behaviour towards women certain extra liberties---in words or action--- are understandable and even permissible. Words and actions which we may look down upon when employed against men, we treat as natural and rationalise them when employed against women.


7. It is this tendency to rationalise misbehaviour towards women and our reluctance to come down heavily on those misbehaving towards women that is responsible not only for the increasing number of incidents of misbehaviour towards them, but also for the shocking insensitivity and callousness of the police in dealing with such incidents.


8. I believe in what I often describe as an honour code in relation to women whom I take out. I consider myself morally responsible for their physical protection and honour. I am in a high state of tension till they reach home and inform me over phone that they have reached home safely. It is evident that Reuben and Keenan had a similar honour code. They considered themselves morally responsible for the protection and honour of their girl friends. They lost their lives in an act of extraordinary bravery after they tried to protect them from attempted misbehaviour by the hooligans.


9. They reacted according to their sense of honour. We should applaud them for their bravery and sense of honour and refrain from analysing whether their actions were wise or advisable. We should also salute the fortitude and sense of honour and pride of their families and girl friends for expressing their pride over the way Keenan and Reuben reacted. We need more such families, more such relatives and more such women.


10. The most shocking aspect of the incident was the utterly shameful and shocking and inhuman inaction of a group of about 40 bystanders, who watched the two boys being surrounded and murdered by the hooligans without the least attempt to go to their rescue. They watched as if they were watching a street play. I can understand --- but will not excuse--- if there were only one or two bystanders and they were afraid of intervening. There were about 40 of them. There was no excuse for their inaction. There were so many things they could have done. They could have raised an alarm and collected more people. They could have intervened physically. But they did nothing. They just watched--- not in horror, not with shock, but just with a sense of disinterested curiosity. They probably saw it as a quarrel between young men over women and as none of their business. Even the use of a knife by one of the hooligans for repeatedly stabbing did not make them intervene.


11. Even more shocking than the passive attitude of the bystanders was the attitude of some of the people in a nearby restaurant as narrated by one of the girl friends to Barkha. According to her, after the hooligans had run away, when she pleaded to the people in the restaurant to help her in taking care of the injured and dying, none of them came forward to help her. Can one imagine anything more inhuman and callous?


12. This inaction of the bystanders and others shows to what extent inhuman traits have seeped into our society. The only way of dealing with it is through education and creation of awareness of our duty as members of the society and citizens of this country. Under the law, watching a person being killed without going to his or her rescue is itself a crime. The police should prosecute not only the perpetrators, but also those bystanders who can be identified.


13. The incident also speaks very poorly of the state of our police. It shows the extent of the lack of fear of the police and the law in many sections of our society. The inability or reluctance of the Police to enforce the law effectively is responsible for the growing number of such incidents. I am myself an ex-police officer and I feel ashamed of myself for the kind of ineffective, shameless and prideless police that we have created. I was surprised by the attitude of a retired police officer in Barkha’s panel. I didn’t discern even the slightest trace of embarrassment, shame and indignation in his interventions during the debate.


14. It is important for our senior police officers to sit up and act to reverse the inexorable process of decay of our police force. How can the police blame the citizenry alone for such shocking incidents when the police itself has become a paragon of inaction? ( 9-11-11)



( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate of the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com . Twitter: @SORBONNE75 )

5 comments:

Krishna Kacker said...

The level of culture achieved by any society is measured by the level of respect and consideration shown towards the female sex.By that yardstick,we are a totally uncultured society, I am ashamed to be a member of.
What a fall in values in our society!!There was a time when women were equal partners in all decisions pertaining to our social mores.No yagna could be performed in Ancient India unless the lady was also associated in all the rituals.
What is most shameful is that India of today is ruled by a women President,woman Speaker of Lok Sabha,woman leader of the UPA, not to speak of at least one woman Chief Minister. Unfortunately, none speaks against the atrocities against females at all levels.
What a fall!!

Tarun Goel said...

Sad state of affairs. Har ek ghar mein change hona jaruri hai

shyam lal said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
shyam lal said...

Hi, I am a regular visitor of your blog.
I totally agree all of your view from the standing point that it can educate and change peoples mind for a good reason… but sir…
This is the real situation in our country ,what we are facing ,lack of reaction at the right direction, because of tottaly fed up with the whole federal system, in all the level …..so thats why people mind their own business …
if someone if going to interfere in this matter ,what would be the result is going to be especially with the police case….? how long they would have to face legal difficulties (cus of our old and stupid lows and the way of cunducting… that tottaly outdated )
In this situation the bystanders could be one of the "aam admi" or business men or NRI or any person who is tying make money to give food for his families …so they don't have to responsible for this…. rather is the police man ,the legal system, the corrupted goverment , all they are responsible …we should file a case against all of them… that even though we pay tax that run the country give salaries to all of these people to give better quality of life , they are not doing their job properly ???police man are responsible not providing security and low and order in a public place …may be they have genuine reason
for that they lack of low ,equpment ..whatever , as a public they don't want to hear this stupid reason……

Prashanth Nair said...

Hi,
Since reading about this incidence some days back, I have have been trying to place myself in the situation of the bystanders,to understand how I would have reacted in those circumstances, gathering information from publicly available resources. Most of the scenario leads to inaction, not because cowardice ,but because how we asses the situation. Let me put some scenarios here,
1)Bystander may assume it to be a gangwar with the limited information available, and with 20 armed men attacking 2 men, so would have preferred staying out of gangwar.
2)Maybe an underworld act who knows, so stay out of it.
3)If these men can pick up arms and freely roam in streets, definitely they are confident "they can get away with it", maybe they have in some previous occasion, indicating they are hardened criminal, so stay out of it.
4)In a crowd, everybody is a individual,it is wrong to assume they will thinks as a cohesive unit, thoughts going through the mind would be if I step in "2 vs 20" will change to "3 vs 20" and then what, "3 bodies instead of 2", so stay out of it.
Crowd is always a group of individual, and they do not think as a group, until a leader raises among them, but even then the question remains, will others support leader?
We as a society do not have the tendency to think and act as a group,that is true for any situation, be it policies of state, national security issues, team sports, anything, it has always been individual performance than group performance, maybe it is a reflection how we are brought up, always telling our kids to compete with all and sundry. I guess that is what is lacking here. We as a society should incorporate more social values in citizens, where people in crowd learn to organise themselves easily and effectively to handle different siutations.
As author has mentioned it is a case breakdown of law & order, where criminals have the confidence to act in a way they did.