From Asaram Bapu to India Inc, all hail the rakhi, India's magic amulet

I thought rakhi was a piece of colourful string that sisters tied on their brothers’ wrists on Raksha Bandhan. Some condemn it as yet another example of a patriarchal culture which celebrates brothers and not sisters. Others complain, that’s overreacting to a sweet familial tradition. But these are all ghisa pita arguments from an old India. Somewhere along the way the humble rakhi has metamorphosed into the magical amulet of the new India. Indian women should be advised to stock up on a year’s worth of rakhis, hopefully available for cheap now that the actual festival is over. They will need them because it turns out a simple rakhi can protect you from eve teasing and worse. It can coax a policeman into doing his job. Perhaps, judicially used, it can even get you a gas cylinder faster. [caption id=“attachment_1052781” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Indian women should be advised to stock up on a year’s worth of rakhis. They will need them because it turns out a simple rakhi can protect you from eve teasing and worse. Reuters[/caption] Godman Asaram Bapu, infamously said the Delhi gang rape victim could have saved herself had she only summoned up her sisterly feelings for the drunk men attacking her. “She should have taken God’s name and could have held the hand of one of the men and said I consider you as my brother and should have said to the other two, brother I am helpless, you are my brother, my religious brother… then the misconduct wouldn’t have happened.” If only poor “Nirbhaya” had a rakhi, or six, handy. Asaram Bapu was roundly mocked for his “wisdom”, his pearls of wisdom sounding especially fake these days given that he is being grilled by the cops after a 16-year-old in his gurukul accused him of sexual assault. But India Inc. isn’t lagging that far behind when it comes to leap of logic. The new Idea! mobile phone ad from the Aditya Birla group shows a young woman on a scooter asking a gruff cop for directions. Then she notices he doesn’t have a rakhi. It turns out the poor guy has been on duty since early morning. She promptly fishes one out and ties it on him. Instant heart-warming melting ensues. The guy gives her his number and tells her to just call him if she ever has any problems. Idea! should get some kind of social service award. (Incidentally Mamata Banerjee, Bengal’s Didi did the same to a cop on her way to work on Rakhi day. It’s not clear whether he gave her his number though.) Too bad the ad was not around when Suzette Jordan who was picked up at a nightclub in Park Street in Kolkata and raped went to file an FIR. At that time, she says the cops just made suggestive comments about going out on dates to discos and drinking beer. Right now there’s a case going on at the Calcutta High Court where an 18-year-old girl says she was raped by a man from the neighbourhood but the police would not accept her complaint because he was an informer for the cops. Eventually another youth from the neighbourhood immolated himself outside the police station to force them to act. Clearly these poor souls could have saved themselves much heartburn and grief if the Aditya Birla group had shown them the light. They would have known to just rakhi the officer-in-charge. Instead in their delusion, they were thinking that as ordinary citizens they could expect to walk into the police station and get the cop to do his job. Imagine instead a cop who refuses to file an FIR loses his job. Better still as lawyer Vrinda Grover said at a debate about rape laws and capital punishment once, 20 cops who refuse to file FIRs lose their jobs. Now that might be an idea that could make a real difference. The folks behind these ad campaigns no doubt want to twist the rakhi string into a little Livestrong bracelet of female empowerment. Surely that’s the intent behind the latest ad for the new Bengali quiz show Dadagiri hosted by cricketer Sourav Ganguly. Two neighbourhood dadas roar up on bikes blocking the way of two young women in a rickshaw. What about going to a night show leers one suggestively. Luckily the young women are carrying rakhis. They hop off the rickshaw and quickly tie them onto the roadside Romeos wrists instantly shaming them into dadas of a tamer kind. These are just ads. They sell mobile phones and game shows. It’s silly to read deep sociological import into them. But in reality they are only a few degrees of separation from the Asaram Bapu fulminations which we are so quick to sneer at. It’s the same mindset that always puts the onus of protection on the women, not the behaviour of the men. The men just have to be tamed, tricked, and cajoled into revealing the good brother lurking inside them. And women’s safety is always about establishing that sacrosanct familial relationship – think of her as your sister, mother, daughter. So women shouldn’t carry that pepper spray or think about getting a firearm licence (as more women are doing). Those are just too unpleasant and noone wants to pepper spray their brother anyway. They should carry a bagload of rakhis because nothing soothes a group of drunken savage beasts better than a bit of colourful string with some gaudy tinsel. Cue “phoolon ka taaron ka” and everyone can just go back home together. Happy ending. Kya idea hain indeed! Is the National Commission for Women paying attention?