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Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Rape is only nominally a gender issue. It is substantially an impunity issue.

We pass laws. We imagine and sometimes create leviathan bureaucracies. We scream on television. Yet India and the world keeps rotting.

Why ?

Because of our casual attitude to pervasive corruption.

Because of pervasive corruption or the culture of buying impunity for a price, an entire syndrome of malevolence has materialised, an aspect of which is the worship of the monied and the powerful and a corresponding suspicion and contempt of the powerless, a manifestation of which is the casual abuse of women and children.

Corruption is the domination and control, rape, of the very idea of rule of law and makes a mockery of and cripples the authentic psychological evolution of the human race.

Corruption is fascist. And that is why, even in the 21st century, “the more things remain the same.”

Democracies have frittered away their immense moral advantage due to corruption and the people from top to bottom have all but given up on making the system function.

The problem is as humongous as the stash of illicit money reportedly circulating in India and in the planet.

This, by all credible accounts, gargantuan supply of illicit money, is the premium that helpless citizens pay for crime and insanity.

It is an awful reminder of how societies have stopped to function for you and me.

A relevant question is, can a Non Privileged Indian rely on any institution of governance, not to sell her to the highest bidder ?

How are we going to rein in this monster of impunity ?

How do we make India and the planet safe for civility and sanity ?

How can ordinary citizens demand and achieve transparency and accountability on tap, as it were ?

Only by understanding the depth, dimensions and ramifications of pervasive corruption in India and in the world.

If we are resigned to corruption as part of our DNA, then we must resign ourselves to inequality and injustice.

To a society of a few fat predators and the rest as bakras; prey.

A society in which the powerless will be reviled, hounded, starved, enslaved and consumed.

 Rape is only nominally a gender issue. It is substantially an impunity issue .

As a grateful father of a wonderful girl child - now a thriving professional woman - I have to exhort all lovers of life to not tolerate any encroachment of their right to equality under the rule of law.

There can be no question that even so called advanced countries are shot through with an almost comical patriarchial bias. But the gender is incidental.

The real issue that all humanity and all life on the planet is groaning under is the collusive impunity of the powerful.

Some of them may even be caring, charitable people. But that is cold comfort.

And hence my stand against corruption, which is now a “no excuses”, ultra peaceful, non partisan, individual sathyagraha against corruption and for the idea of the rule of law in India.

In its 25th year. 

I request your solidarity and support.

Any struggle against a predatory authority is humanity’s struggle to honour the gift of life.

You may also look in on me on @divakarssathya on @twitter.