'Small rape': Let's cut Kiran Bedi some slack, please!

Anyone who follows Kiran Bedi’s public pronouncements - on television and on Twitter - will know that while her heart may be in the right place, her foot is often misplaced, frequently ending up in her wide-open mouth. Bedi’s inadequate grasp of the niceties of the English language, and a callous disregard for the particularities of grammar and syntax, make for a curious hodge-podge of mangled thoughts and metaphors and a stream-of-consciousness narrative style that would do James Joyce proud. Like Yossarian in Catch-22_,_ there are days when she whimsically dispenses with the definite article; on other days, she does away with prepositions in their entirety. In most cases, one gets a broad sense of what she’s saying, but when you try to parse her precise words, your head reels from the effort of unscrambling the torrent of words she releases. On Sunday, Bedi misspoke: she meant to say something, but in the convoluted process of converting thoughts to words, she made a complete hash of it. But since the subject on which she misspoke is an extremely sensitive one, her words came out sounding horrendously off-base. And she’s been getting enormous flak all around. But what exactly did Bedi say, and is the outrage against her merited? [caption id=“attachment_407562” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Kiran Bedi’s motormouth has landed her in trouble, but the outrage against her in this case seems a little over the top. Reuters[/caption] According to PTI, these were her precise words: “Media does not discuss it (allegations made by Team Anna against the 15 UPA Ministers) a single time. Ask yourself: on a small rape case or assault which a low-ranking police official commit, how you would discuss it?” “But against 15 ministers, Prashant Bhushan and Arvind Kejriwal had given the evidence but nobody from among you media hold any debate or discussion over the issue,” Bedi said. “Tell me, why you haven’t done that? Do you fear them?” she said. It’s manifestly clear that Bedi was looking to point to the disproportionate nature of the media coverage in two kinds of crimes: one involving big names in the UPA ministry (where there has been virtually no coverage at all, in her opinion), and the other involving lower-rung officials (where, she suggests, there has been extensive coverage). But in that tumble of words while in the excitable frame of mind that she gets into whenever a microphone is thrust in her face, she evidently got her syntax all wrong, and misplaced the word ‘small’:  it appears that she intended to say “rape by a … small, low-ranking police official” but ended up saying “small rape… by a low-ranking police official.” Sure, it grates. But it seems unfair to suggest that someone of Kiran Bedi’s standing would actually establish a hierarchy of rape cases - and dismiss some of them as “small rape” cases. But the National Commission for Women - and countless others on Twitter - have pounced on her remarks to suggest that she was condoning rape. The NCW has demanded an apology from Bedi, saying that her remarks were “distressing”. NCW member Nirmala Samant Prabhavalkar said: “Ms Bedi is a woman and a former police officer. She should have shown extreme sensitivity while talking about a serious crime like rape. There is nothing like a ‘small rape’. A rape is a rape and should be viewed as a crime against humanity.” “It is distressing that Ms Bedi showed utter lack of sensitivity on a serious issue. It shows her feudal mentality. I demand an immediate apology from her.” Prabhavalkar added that the NCW had decided to take suo motu cognisance of Bedi’s statement, and would serve notice on  her on Monday. Mind you, this bit of moral grandstanding comes from the self-same NCW that made public the Guwahati molestation victim’s name and whose chief said just last month - again in the context of the Guwahati molestation case - that women should be careful about the way they dressed. (It’s what prompted commentators to suggest that the NCW should be scrapped , because it had failed to protect women.) After Bedi’s remarks created a furore, Bedi tweeted that “deliberate wrong news” was being circulated to distract people from knowing what she said. “I never said rape is small crime. I said when small ranked person commits rape crime he is hung while big ones go scotfree. It was about comparative punishment. Small officer (not small rape) involved in rape is hung while big ones go scotfree!” Bedi said. Bedi is perhaps being more than a little disingenuous here in suggesting that she didn’t say what she’s been quoted as saying. If PTI has quoted her accurately, a literal reading of her words does render itself to horrendous interpretations. Far better would it have been for her to admit that she misspoke, and convey the real message that she wanted to to convey. But, in equal measure, the outrage against Bedi’s remarks and the suggestion that she is condoning rape seems a little over-the top. However insensitive a literal reading of her words come across as - and it does  - there is a case for cutting her some slack on the grounds of her record of repeated criminal assaults on the English language. For Bedi too, this probably marks a “teachable moment”: when it comes to making public statements, sometimes less is more, particularly when anti-corruption activists are being subjected to intense scrutiny, and their smallest failings are magnified a thousand fold. But this episode is entirely of a piece with the larger narrative on the anti-corruption debate. Contrast the torrent of rants against Bedi with the deafening silence on the corruption allegations that Team Anna levelled against the 15 Ministers, and the message is very clear. If you dare to speak out against corruption, you’d better be very careful of what you say. Your smallest mis-statement will be amplified and your mangled words twisted even further to drown out the larger message. The case for a zero-tolerance approach to gender-insensitivity is well taken, but it shouldn’t stoop to picking on someone’s failure to communicate effectively in Queen’s English. In any case, the case for a zero-tolerance approach to monumental corruption is no less important.