O all-mighty Indian man, save us damsels-in-distress: Shenaz Treasury's letter to Modi, SRK is misguided

We’ve known this deep scalding anger, the kind that makes the morning coffee taste unusually bad in your mouth and lowers your threshold of patience for Twitter mudslinging and the IRCTC website alike. We’ve known throwing our hands up in utter disgust and exclaiming, ‘Nothing good can ever happen in this country!’. Some of us, perhaps, have also known the feeling of wanting to beat up a person accused of committing a crime, like rape. So you can perhaps see where Shenaz Treasurywala’s outrage is coming from. The actor has recently penned an article for a website and called it an ‘Open letter to Dear Narendra Modi, Amitabh Bachchan, Sachin Tendulkar, Shahrukh Khan, Salman Khan, Aamir Khan and Anil Ambani’ , asking them to ‘HELP’ (caps intentional) her and Indian women in general.

Do we, Indian women, need help? It will be completely unrealistic and perhaps, a little class-myopic to say no. In a country with inadequate policing, slow legal institutions and a dominantly patriarchal society, we could do with every voice that talks about women’s rights and women’s safety. So you can still understand why Treasurywala is shouting for ‘HELP’ in capital letters.

But it goes downhill from here. What’s the help Treasurywala is seeking? The assurance from those she thinks are ‘powerful’ men in the country that women will be safe here. “I am writing to YOU specifically because you are the most powerful and influential MEN in our country. I am writing to you as a woman who grew up in a middle class family in Mumbai. I am writing to YOU for HELP!” she says in her article. Several people in the country seem to have agreed to her ideas of making women safe in India, given that the article has got close to 38,000 Facebook shares.

Now for the uncomfortable bit: is it ragingly popular because it enthusiastically endorses the popular belief that men, indeed, are the ‘powerful’ sex and the custodians of women’s safety? She seems to be asking, if men don’t care for us and keep us safe, who will? While the rest of us are crying ourselves hoarse seeking equality and the same social and economic privileges as men, she loudly smacks us down and orders us to run back into the ring of safety that is a man’s embrace.

Here, she spells it out for you. “Not just the rapists and the sexual offenders and gropers but also our Fathers (sorry dad) and Uncles and Brothers and MOVIE STARS AND CRICKETERS AND POLITICIANS for not SAVING US or PROTECTING US by insisting and protesting for the LAWS TO CHANGE and Rapists and Gropers to BE PUNISHED SEVERELY!”

Note how she puts ‘saving’ and ‘protecting’ in capital letters and makes them sound like the cardinal responsibility of a man. Obviously, while it has left some of us absolutely angry for making us women seem like Basanti in the clutches of evil Gabbar Singh and who need a Dharmendra to come and save us, it has caught the fancy of many, many others if Facebook timelines and Twitter are anything to go by. Understandably so, since it’s actually a beaming tribute to the ‘power’ of a man in the guise of outrage. It’s as if the actor took 1500 words to say what she could have in just a tweet : “Dear, knights, put on your shining armours and come save us.”

If her motive was, like she mentions, to get famous people like Bachchan and Modi to campaign for women’s rights, where are the prominent women in our country in her list of people she addresses? “Superstars I beg you, please take a stand. Use your Superstardom and Power and MONEY and save the women of our country. SAVE US!” she writes.

Aren’t there women whom men and women alike in India idolise? Are there no powerful women in the country or is she suggesting that until the big men speak up, women demanding their rights won’t be of any use? Our external affairs minister and HRD minister are women, we have chief ministers in the country who are women, we have hugely popular sportswomen like Mary Kom, Saina Nehwal, Sania Mirza, we have corporate bigwigs like Chanda Kochar, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw and we have a endless line-up of popular female actresses in India. For example, call it a PR stunt or whatever, a Deepika Padukone did manage to get India’s biggest daily to its knees and had an otherwise patronizing film industry rallying behind her with the rest of the country.

Honestly, if there is anything that Shah Rukh Khan can do for women’s safety in terms of reach, a Priyanka Chopra can do as much - such is our country’s obsession with Bollywood. However, in her entire article, where she cries ‘save us’to the ‘powerful’ men, Treasurywala seems to only feed the prejudice that men, after all, are superior creatures. By keeping the women out in the list, she seems to be telling the world, they, poor things, can’t protect themselves.

Then again, denying a man the right to seek bail because there is a complaint of sexual assault against him, as Treasurywala suggests is not only against the ideals of democracy, it is almost unjust.

The only ‘help’ a woman in a democracy should get is that of a government that functions properly, a police system that is alert and a judicial system that allows her to address her grievances fast. The only ‘help’ that a woman should need in a democratic country is the same as what a man should as well.

Honestly, every time you start mulling ways of ending sexual assault in the country, you come to a screeching halt: it’s as if, there is no solution. It is true that there is no quick fix for sexual violence in a society where it seems to have gotten normalised. In a scenario as such, asking men “Don’t sleep till you- SAVE YOUR WOMEN!” and telling them that it is still within their power to ‘save’ women or break them, is a huge leap backwards. You know what we should ask for, and thankfully some of us, men included, have asked for too? A society where a woman needs no ‘saving’ by anyone.