The recent rash of sexual assaults and atrocities against women and teenage girl children in the state of Haryana (pop. 25.3 million) which has shocked the nation, is a severe indictment of the education system in this north Indian state. The outcome of decades of neglect of civic, gender and liberal arts education in K-12 curriculums is rampant lawlessness and domination of society by primeval and patriarchal khaps (village councils), comprising illiterate and quasi-literate elders. It’s patently obvious that progressive values such as respect for the autonomy of women and gender egalitarianism are conspicuously absent in school curriculums of this benighted state which ironically borders Delhi, the national capital.

And if further proof of the deep illiteracy malaise afflicting Haryana — and the BIMARU (Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh) states of the Hindi belt which host an aggregate population of 443 million — is needed, it is provided by khap leaders who propose lowering the legal age for marriage of women to 16 as the antidote to the rising incidence of sexual assaults and rape of women in Haryana, already bedeviled by the country’s lowest gender ratio (833 women per thousand males).

Complex issues such as the impact of lowering the marriage age upon the education and personal freedoms of women, population control etc, are too difficult for their under-developed minds to grasp. The easy option is to sentence women to purdah, because according to a Congress party leader, women who step out of their homes are inviting sexual misconduct. It’s a bitter truth that Haryana and arguably the BIMARU states, are illiterate societies ruled by leaders with little or limited learning.

Although radical reform of school education countrywide is a necessary condition of abating the tide of crimes against women, it’s insufficient. Modernisation of school syllabuses and curriculums needs to be complemented with rigorous implementation of law and order and gender justice in particular. Therefore reform of the nation’s over-hyped justice system which curiously seems unwilling to mete out speedy exemplary punishment for gender crimes as a deterrent to potential offenders, as also to policemen who aid and abet these life-scarring crimes by their sloth and ineptitude, is also an urgent national priority.

Yet the plain truth which needs to be highlighted is that ill-designed K-12 education compounded by early streaming and archaic higher education study programmes have ensured that the establishment is dominated by narrowly-educated technocrats with not more than cursory acquaintance with the liberal arts and humanities which teach human rights, gender equality, their historical evolution and philosophic foundations.

In sum, while the indignation of television anchors and editorial writers over under-reported atrocities visited upon women citizens on a daily basis provides the country’s middle class some catharsis, the rising incidence of gender crimes is unlikely to abate unless the nation’s outdated education system is radically reformed and overhauled.

Resurgent fundamentalism spectre

The murderous but abortive attack on Lt. General (Retd.) Kuldip Singh Brar in London by four suspected Sikh terrorists, viewed in the context of a proposal of the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) government in Punjab to erect a “martyrs’ memorial” to honour secessionist terrorists killed in Operation Blue Star — the army’s code name for its assault on Amritsar’s Golden Temple 28 years ago — has raised the spectre of Sikh fundamentalism once again. Gen. Brar had led the armed assault on the Golden Temple on June 6, 1984, to flush out several hundred armed Sikh fundamentalists led by the notorious Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, who had been holed up in this holiest of Sikh shrines for over four days, with a large number of pilgrims taken hostage.

With Bhindranwale’s militants threatening to kill one hostage per day until their demand for an independent state for the Sikhs — Khalistan — was met, Operation Blue Star became a national necessity. Therefore the Indian Army was called in to re-take the Golden Temple.

Operation Blue Star lasted two days and nights, in which hundreds of soldiers, militants and innocent pilgrims caught in the crossfire, died (the exact number of casualties has never been disclosed by the Union government or the Indian Army). Shortly thereafter, prime minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by two of her Sikh bodyguards. The Congress party reacted furiously to the assassination of their leader, and some members of the party orchestrated the horrific anti-Sikh riots of 1984 in Delhi, and other parts of north India which further fuelled Sikh militancy. The insurgency in Punjab lasted close to 15 years and took a dreadful toll of life. But with the Central government fighting it “bullet for bullet”, peace was won in Punjab and the Sikh community returned to the national mainstream.

Meanwhile, unmindful of the murder, mayhem and rash of extra-judicial executions in Punjab during the early 1980s, the state’s ruling SAD party led by chief minister Parkash Singh Badal is once again fanning the fires of Sikh fundamentalism and separatism. They are giving tacit support to the Shiromani Gurudwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) of the Golden Temple which has given the green light to a “martyrs’ memorial” within the temple premises. Most of the Indian Army top brass and Gen. Brar believe this proposal will reopen old wounds, and could well provoke a resurgence of separatist militancy in Punjab.

These apprehensions are justified. The incumbent SAD government and SGPC, which played a passive and inglorious role in the events leading up to Operation Blue Star, need to fall in line with the secular ethos of the nation, and desist from mixing politics with religion for short-term electoral gains. They should bear in mind that not only militants and pilgrims but brave Indian Army soldiers also lost their lives during Operation Blue Star. Nobody wants a return to the bad old days of the 1980s and early 90s, when the anarchy unleashed almost destabilised and destroyed decades of effort invested by the people of Punjab to transform it into India’s granary, and arguably most prosperous state.