The silent terror in teasing

The other night, the nine o'clock news on Star TV reported an appalling but sadly familiar story: a 16-year-old schoolgirl was brutally m...

The other night, the nine o8217;clock news on Star TV reported an appalling but sadly familiar story: a 16-year-old schoolgirl was brutally molested by four scooter-borne young men. The girl is hospitalised with injuries. The four molesters remain unidentified and free. The brutality is not what I want to address here. I want instead to draw attention to the television report. While reporting the incident, both the news anchor in Delhi and the reporter in Chennai referred to the episode as a case of 8220;teasing8221;.

When I listened to the words in which the report was retailed, I received an image of the incident and the persons involved. Peculiarly that image wasn8217;t a visual one despite the fact that it was coming at me from the TV screen. The girl, quite rightly, wasn8217;t shown; and the young men, as reported, had vanished. In fact, the visuals were of the police commissioner, the girl8217;s mother, a street presumably the site of the incident and the concerned face of the TV reporter. Nevertheless, despite theirvisual absence, the girl and her tormentors had a definite presence in the report and left a sharply etched image in my mind. The image of the girl was created through descriptive words so that she 8220;appeared8221; through reportage. Let me underline for you the key words that acted as 8220;visualizers8221; and painted the images that viewers 8220;saw8221; that night on the nine o8217;clock news. There was, of course, 8220;the girl8221;. She was then made distinctive by the 8220;the injury8221; so that she became marked as 8220;the injured girl8221;. The mark or 8220;the injury8221; was inflicted by 8220;four young men8221;. The action through which the injury was inflicted was also recounted. That action was described as 8220;teasing8221;.

So now we have the complete picture. 8220;The girl8221; became the 8220;injured girl8221; because 8220;four young men8221; 8220;teased8221; her. The word 8220;teasing8221; illuminated every aspect 8212; the girl, the men and the action 8212; in a very specific and precise way.

8220;Teasing8221; configured the abuse as an essentially light-hearted, non-seriousaction. It coloured the action with an element of fun. But the fun, because it was a 8220;teasing8221; kind of fun, implied a mutuality and a sharing. 8220;Teasing8221; as the key descriptive word made me think of this injury in the most Kafkaesque terms as an injury that was inflicted between equals since teasing is essentially a reciprocal, bilateral relation. Injury-as-teasing is not part of a power equation because teasing is a stranger to such bothersome, heavy-duty concepts as 8220;violence8221;.

In my viewer8217;s chair, geographically dislocated from the incident as it was experienced by the girl, the report put me in the privileged position of an interpreter who is enabled to get a picture of the event and think about 8220;the girl8221;, the 8220;young men8221; and 8220;the incident8221;. And while I might pity her because she is in hospital with her injury, I can also dismiss her and get on with the next news item because the girl has merely been 8220;teased8221;.Now it8217;s entirely possible for the news editors to tell me that law enforcementagencies use words like teasing to classify such incidents. The police commissioner in Chennai did in fact describe the incident thus. 8220;Eve teasing8221; is common parlance among those who wish to denote all forms of molestation that happen to women on public streets. If the police are saying 8220;teasing8221;, what8217;s wrong with using it on nightly news bulletins?

The issue is one of words. Words are not neutral, empty of meaning. For years the police ignored incidents of molestation by labelling them 8220;teasing8221;. It8217;s imperative for TV news not to adopt hierarchies integral to policed vocabularies. To mime that vocabulary is a step towards an identity with the police by surrendering a powerful tool 8212; words. It8217;s imperative to maintain the distinctions, to endorse the right to use words that communicate, not erase, the violence inherent in incidents of molestation. It8217;s not enough to expect the viewer to substitute the word 8220;molestation8221; for 8220;teasing8221; as there8217;s a police commissioner attached to it.

Wordsbecome pivotal in masking molestation. Equally they can convey the terror inherent in violent acts. It8217;s a choice we make to conceal and therefore not recognise that violence. Or, we could choose to call this form of 8220;teasing8221; by it8217;s real name. Terrorism.

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The writer teaches at the Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics