Sach Ka Saamna: Confronting the Truth on Women’s Plight

As a requirement of our Masters degree programme, my friends and I had to do some research on the coverage of violence against women in local newspapers in the past ten years. Because it was a pre-requisite to getting our degree, we started off treating the research paper as just that.

Nonetheless, the paper led us into women’s shelters, NGO offices and even the female division of the Central Prison. We spoke to both the victims of the violence and those who gave them shelter and support, and heard sordid tales of tribal (in)justice, and economic and sexual crimes – things that made for many a sleepless night thinking of how weak and helpless women become in a patriarchal society.

By the last two weeks before the submission deadline, we had all become hardcore feminists albeit for the time being. We worked day and night, making charts and bar graphs, co-relating illiteracy and violence against women, and finally completing our research with a truly heartfelt research report and presentation.

But even so, once the project was done and high marks awarded, that was it. We went our separate ways, some managing families, and others earning big bucks as writers, directors and television anchors.

I had long forgotten about the research but that was before I laid hands on Mukhtaran Mai’s In the Name of Honour. Critics might call her an opportunist, or hungry for fame, but for me it was like revisiting my research, for I had met countless Mukhtaran Mais in the course of that study.

They might not have been brave (or connected) enough to go public with their stories of the atrocities committed against women in the name of tradition, culture and even religion, but they too had suffered at the hands of the same society.

Around the time was I reading In the Name of Honour, the popularity ratings of an Indian reality show called Sach Ka Saamna had shot sky-high. Aimlessly surfing channels one night, I happened to come across one of its riveting episodes. I watched spellbound as a young woman faced the show’s host, placing her personal life on a very public pedestal, without ever losing face.

As the sole breadwinner of her family, the 20-plus girl was brimming with the (over)confidence of ten women put together, and the sassy smartness of someone who had faced and come to terms with much in this world. The girl might not have seemed desperate, and not many from the audience could have empathised with her, so brazen was she in replying to the questions put to her. But because I was already in that mellowed state of mind in which I was ready to cry over the plight of women, it was not difficult to imagine how she must have struggled (and suffered) in a man’s world to make ends meet. Not that anything in her demeanour gave that away. I sat there thinking of reasons that brought her to this show. It could not have been an urge to own up to her failings and faults, because she sounded like a woman who always spoke her mind. So for those for whom her answers mattered, it was apparent that they knew full well the extent of the realities that she had come to confront at the talk show.

And her parents, sister and fiancé were all there to cheer her on, even as she admitted to lies and betrayals linked to them in one way or the other.

Did she brave this indignity for fame, I wondered. In our part of the world, so little has changed over the years that even today, a girl stepping out to do little more than give her family a better life is labelled with all sorts of not-very-pleasant names. In fact, she spends half the time justifying her movements.

In such a hostile set-up, this was exactly the kind of popularity that the girl was better off without.

The truth was that this girl was sitting in the ‘hot seat’ to seek what seemed like a novel way to earn the much-needed money for her family.

She said as much in her initial conversation with the host, by declaring that she always did her best to provide what her family needed without caring about herself.

But, frankly speaking, I could see little difference between those women I had been reading and thinking about who underwent the violence of all kinds over some petty issues, and this woman, whose character was battered and torn to shreds while she sat with a pretty smile pasted on her face.

This too was torture, albeit of a different kind. As judgmental as I may sound, the whole episode was nothing more than an exercise in massive exploitation – an assault on her character and a test of her nerves – and she braved this indignity only to make some big and fast bucks for her loved ones.

Every day should be International Women’s Day for the women of this world, I thought as I watched her, for women struggle to be recognised as nothing more than human beings day in, day out. There I was, all depressed about the plight of women who had survived rapes, burns and acid attacks. None of them had been willing to undergo the torture that they’d faced, mostly for no fault of their own.

But here was a woman who had willingly placed herself in the line of fire. The presenter, writer and director of the talk show, were all part of the girl’s character assassination. And what was even sadder was the thought that ten million viewers sat glued to their television screens while this happened.

So sadistic has the world become that they enjoy other people’s disgrace and suffering. In fact, they even justify their liking of this show by saying it is good for the society to “speak and confront the truth.” In the long run, they argue, this would be good for all of them. But for me, this episode was the last straw. All I could do was cry. And I thought the more we tell ourselves that things have changed, the more they remain the same. At least, for women.