How We Talk About Violence: The Bengaluru PG Murder
‘Woman from Bihar brutally murdered in Bengaluru PG’ screams the article headline while TV news anchor hosts experts who opinie on the finance minister’s statement about more women in the workforce, question the safety of PGs, articulate the lack of empathy shown by the victim’s roommates as they watch Kriti Kumari die. Look for the latest news on violence against a woman and you might miss it because it’s drowned in the deluge. Just another woman murdered, big city life, hai hai duniya buri hain. How about instead,
“MP man enters his ex girlfriend’s PG, murders her roommate; it’s all visible on CCTV.”
Well, that’s a different story altogether isn’t it? It wouldn’t do to bring up the background of the man when the North Indians are already complaining that Bengaluru doesn’t speak Hindi. And who cares if he’s visible on the camera when it’s much easier to nab the women who are still living there? And lest you make the mistake of thinking women have enough agency to be ascribed traits like empathy, cowardice, bravery or self-preservation, let’s pinpoint the owner of the PG hostel. The trail will go well and truly cold there because who even cares after that? Just another woman lying dead after all.
What About The Man? – how stories victim blame
I’m interested in knowing about the man. After all, India is full of wails that the law is against men and that nobody cares about men. Also, I actually face danger and threat every day of my life. So I know that it’s important to know more about those who wish me harm, not less. Blocking is not a luxury that I have. We learn so much about the female victims. What she wore, who she met, where she worked, how late she stayed out, when she left home. These days we use words like ‘independent professional’ even if our interest in the case is centered around details that say “She asked for it.”
Bangalore is full of linguistic fault lines crackling with unspoken cultural conflict. The Kannadiga ‘locals’ resent the invasion of the North Indians, the proliferation of boistrous chana masala and Punjabi hip-hop in idli country. The echoes of the Kaveri water dispute with Tamil Nadu haven’t yet died down. NCR transfers are arriving with the full might of Delhi aggression. Bihar and UP pour in hungry for employment and guttrally brushing away ‘do as Romans do’ as they demand Hindi.
We know the victim was an ‘outsider’ as the details of women’s PGs unravel with as little decorum as drying underwear. But presumably the murderer had a place to run back to. A place that has let him believe there are no consequences to his acts of violence against women. And with no attention paid to his arc, Bangalore you align with that mentality. There is no them and us.
I want to know who he was, where he came from, when he came to Bangalore. I want to understand his trajectory from a male baby born to an Indian family to stabbing a woman to death on camera. I want to find out who taught him how to kill, who showed him where to hit, who he learnt about weaponry from, where & when he bought the knife, how often he keeps it on his person, why he had it on him that day and what was going on in his mind in the hours leading to this murder.
With so many mutilated, violated and dead women’s bodies around, why do we never have information of the men who are responsible? We know the victims as intimately as our favorite stars and we know about nothing about the main characters of these stories – the male perpetrators.
Romanticising male violence against women
LiveMint opines that there is ‘a romantic angle’ to the crime while later stories reveal that the murderer was the ex-boyfriend of the victim’s roommate. Look at the way we think about these stories. A man attacking a woman is a violent action, not a romantic one. Is an acid attack less violent than a stabbing? Isn’t that what we suggest when we ascribe a romantic angle to the first as opposed to a financial motive for the second? Yet the story has taken on the flavour of a tragic love story, not a brutal murder.
It could have been me: The reality of gender-based violence
Two days before this murder happened, I was in the same city. The day the victim was moving to the PG she would be murdered in, I was checking out of a place I stayed in alone. At least Bengaluru isn’t bloody Gurgaon, I had thought while planning this solo trip. I had a male friend staying at the same place but I barely saw him during my entire trip. I had assured him that I did not need babysitting and clearly he took that seriously. Now I can’t help but think bitterly that men always take it seriously when they are absolved of responsibility. I have to fight with myself in assessing his friendship, his worth as a good man, in the light of this incident. But I cannot separate the two. Neither I nor my relationships exist in isolation to the realities of my society.
It is only a fight because if I judge my friend for not being more protective, I’d have to acquise to other men who control, curb & dictate to me in the name of protection. I reunited with my long ago rakhi brother on this trip. On my ride to the airport, I reflected on the nature of our relationship now, how I would label the photographs I would post online. We played at being ‘real’ siblings when I was 2 and he was 1, our families guiding us through the rituals of raksha-bandhan. He picked me up from the metro station and dropped me back to where I was staying at 2 in the morning. It didn’t feel awkward at the time, just a plan of mutual convenience, maximising the time we spent together. But now we must both question how much of raksha has be there in this bandhan. Raksha is poison to affection and makes the bandhan an unwelcome shackle.
Reframing the narrative of men’s violence
Our movies are full of glorious tales of men’s valour, their journeys to define themselves in terms of how they are with relation to women. And with this, when we appeal to a man’s better nature, we say, “She’s someone’s daughter, somebody’s sister”. We ask him to think about how another man would feel. We don’t point out that there is a human being right in front of him, being hurt by his actions. The consequences of hurting a woman are only relevant when the actions affect a man. And even now, I think of how bad my brothers will feel for hyping up Bangalore, how guilty my male friends will feel for not being more ‘protective’. I have had no time to process the fact that this victim could have been me. All because of how we think about violence by men against women.