The best parameter to judge any organization, be it a state or a party, is to scrutinize their behaviour towards women. The recent rape case of a minor in Jammu has been a rude awakening for the masses as huge crowds took to the streets and turned to social media to demand justice and assurance from the authorities about safety of women in India. In the shadows, however, there lay political opportunists who first went ahead and showed that they have no faith or respect for the Indian judiciary and made information of sub-judice nature public. The name and the face of this little girl were circulated throughout social media and in the mainstream media as if none were aware of how unethical doing so is. That being said, a more sinister plot was in the making as people from different political parties started playing politics over the dead 8-year-old and brought in a communal angle to aid their political objectives.
One such political party who has stooped to a new low with this politicization of rape of a minor girl is Congress. Congress first started pointing out that the girl was of a Muslim background and that the rapist was a Hindu, and further continued to propagate this divisive narrative further just so they can maintain relevancy in the Indian political scene which seems to be a tougher task for them day by day.
This desperation and lack of morality on part of the Congress led to marches across the country demanding justice for the little girl, the 8-year-old victim. It would have been fine if their anger and concern was genuine but a majority of the protests were politically motivated, with the presence of generic posters attacking Hindu gods and equating Hinduism as the cause of the rape.
The sheer shamelessness of this party and the manner in which their cadres conducted themselves while protesting against the violation of a girl child’s dignity reeks of irony and hypocrisy. The Mumbai city unit had organized a protest march in Juhu, Mumbai. It is there that a woman who is a district level party worker of Congress was molested by her own colleagues. She wrote to the chief of the Congress Mumbai city unit Sanjay Nirupam stating that her dignity was compromised by her own pupil. The woman in her message stated –
“ The workers of Youth Congress and NSUI (party’s students’ wing) stooped to such low level that they touched, pushed and shoved women workers in an inappropriate manner, making us feel unsafe among our very own party’s male colleagues.”
Source: Deccan Chronicle
As strange and outraging as it is, it is the truth, as the chief concurred that there are party workers who often would push and shove in order to get ahead only because that gives them the opportunity to show their faces to the television cameras. What this points out is the glaring insensitivity prevalent in Congress workers and the lack of respect for their women colleagues. A political party which is filled with people giving primacy to air time than dignity of women has no right preaching to the nation about gender justice and women’s safety, when their own party workers are being groped by their male colleagues from NSUI and the Congress party.
The hypocrisy doesn’t end here, though. During the midnight candle light vigil led by Rahul Gandhi to protest the little girl’s rape, several women leaders got pushed and groped, while Priyanka Gandhi almost ran away from the frenzied crowd. An Aaj Tak journalist was groped and Congress leader Sharmistha Mukherjee got a sprained ankle. The celebrity-politician Nafisa Ali fell to the ground and was almost trampled by the crowd. All this was happening in a protest march to seek justice for an 8 year-old-girl. Congress’ hypocrisy stands exposed.