Note: In the wake of the Hathras gangrape and murder verdict, Outlook is revisiting its coverage of the Hathras tragedy, complex caste dynamics of gender violence and the erasure of evidence as truth.
I know the title disgusts you, dear reader. I urge you to bear with me for the space that the editor has so generously given to me at the risk of being grossly misunderstood. It is both good and bad that the title of this column disgusts you. It is good because in your imagination of the meaning of ‘politicise’ – where politics is the practice of gaining vote banks by hook or by crook, or rather, at the expense of a victim – it is an absolutely deranged and inhumane thing to do. It is bad because if the preceding is true, then you have limited the meaning of the term ‘politicise’ to the definition that I just mentioned, and it disgusts you, which it should. It means you have a moral conscience and that you comprise a very thin slice of the people left with that virtue in the country today.