IN November 2018, I wrote an article for Northern Voices with the title ‘The Silent Sisterhood’. It raised the question of why feminist politicians and journalists had so little to say about the plight of Asia Bibi, a poor Christian woman who had fallen foul of Pakistan’s draconian blasphemy laws, had spent eight years in jail, had finally been declared innocent by the Supreme Court, and was still being held in custody so that the court’s decision could be ‘reviewed’ as a sop to the mobs demanding that she be hanged.
As I pointed out at the time there has never been any shortage of white, affluent, western feminists ready to discover examples of ‘misogyny’. Just another case of selective outrage it would seem. Is it going to happen all over again with the Black Lives Matter supporters displaying their own unique brand of selective outrage?
On Tuesday a 22-year-old woman died of severe injuries in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh after being gang raped. The same day another 19-year-old woman died two weeks after she was gang-raped and strangled by upper caste men. Both were Dalits and in India's caste-based hierarchy Dalits are ranked the lowest and have been referred to as ‘untouchables’ in the past. Last month, a 13 year old Dalit girl was raped and murdered in the same state. Last year, two Dalit children were allegedly beaten to death after defecating in the open.
As with religious minorities in Pakistan where Christians like Asia Bibi are persecuted and young Hindu women forcibly converted to Islam before being married to older men, India’s caste system is structural discrimination because although in both cases technically illegal, it is built into the fabric of those societies.
Concern is expressed about Facebook, Instagram and Twitter becoming echo chambers reinforcing the existing attitudes and prejudices of their users. We hear nothing about how the choice of issues by the mainstream media determines what is ‘news’ and what is not; what causes outrage and what does not. We all know and can remember the name of George Floyd because his murder has been extensively covered in the press and on television. Unlike the USA, India and Pakistan are not part of the affluent West where ‘people are just like us’ and those of us who happen to have been born with a white skin can be made to feel guilty about events which happened a long time ago and in which we played no part.
Will anyone be asked if they will ‘take a knee’ in memory of these two young Dalit women; will some ‘Royal’ chip in his four penn’orth? I doubt it; selective outrage is the order of the day!
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