Enemy of the State

Dear Madam President,

Last week, a political group called Sri Ram Sene in Mangalore - gathered a group of followers and barged into a pub in Mangalore. They physically threatened and beat up women in the pub, chased them, pulled their hair and tried to remind them that they were "Indian" women and that they should not embrace western culture of clubbing and drinking and smoking.

The court arrested all the activists involved and their leader and subsequently to every Indian woman's agitation and No on'es surprise granted them all conditional bail.

Quoting the leader at a press conference shortly after his release

"What we have done in Mangalore is a big success story in out fight against indecency. We are thankful to our Mangalore cadre for everything that they have done"

I find that appalling and disgusting. Do you ?

We need someone to take charge of the increasing violence against women in India, that everyone decries and no one does a darn thing about.

While we can take any number of harsh stands on cross border terrorists, who is going to do something about the enemy within ?

You need to make a strong statement and take concrete action.

Incase you are wondering what to say, I recommend reading "Lexus and the Olive Tree" by Thomas Friedman.

The Olive Tree represents everything traditional and cultural and ethnic. The Lexus represent the new, the market shaping and market changing and so called western.

Everytime the Olive Tree tries to outwit the Lexus - anarchy usually prevails.

Do a Google search on Taliban if you can. Case in point.

And everytime the Lexus tries to run over the Olive Tree, it fumbles too. Look at the sub prime crisis for example. Fancy new age derivative instruments crushed to their mathematical roots by age old vices and coming back to rely on tranditional lend and borrow.

Are we the Lexus or the Olive Tree ?

What most of us are - is somewhere in between.
Where is this middle ground anyways ? Not in Mangalore for sure.
And who gets to decide where it is ?

I'm adressing this to you, because I feel that you have three things going for you

- You are a woman so I'm banking that you will empathize and agree that NO ONE deserves to be roughed up and abused in any way for doing something that the constitution does not oppose and that does not violate someone else's safety and security. The situation is especially dire when you are female.

- You are the President. I've always thought that the President in India does nothing. This is your chance to prove me wrong.

- You live in Delhi - which is setting a world record in crimes againts women.

Frankly, in my opinion - if we wait long enough - a few more decades going by today's rate of action, there simply wont be any women to save ..because amongst other things India also has shocking statistics of Female infanticide and Maternal Mortality. So the present strategy of our government which can only be labelled as Ostrich in sand ..might actually work.
No women = No crimes against women.
And at that point - we will be one of several countries in the world to have sucessfully deployed this "westernization of women issue through making all of woman kind extinct" strategy.
You can personally invite the Taliban to Rashtrapati Bhavan and celebrate. (Make sure that on that day you wear long sleeved clothes least you not offend them and face their wrath.)

You can rename the country Tali-Bharat in excitement.

But until then, while we still have women in this country - everyday that you sit and not do anything except attend convocations of all the IIT;s in this country (Make sure your pilots know how to land this time though) ..the Enemy of the State runs amock.

Happy Valentine's Day

Yours Sincerely,

Kau