I love our meme culture. When I say ‘our’, I mean Indian. For the past couple of years, being immersed in the layered ironies and subtexts of the desi lived experience has brought me closer to my cultural and geographical identity. As I went deeper into this niche world of obscure references, the only thing that bothered me was the blatant misogyny. But then I realized, the only reason I come across it so often online is because this is also an inescapable part of the Indian socio-cultural landscape. 

As an only girl child in my family, both me and my parents were used to sexist remarks from the outside world. But inside, I was more surprised by what my mother thought about me than my dad’s occasional jokes about the inferior gender. The comments that came from her cut much deeper; it felt like being betrayed by my own kind. However, as I'm writing this, I see the hypocrisy of excusing my father for the patriarchal remarks that I'm condemning my mother for. And that's partly the point of this article.

When I saw Priyanka Banerjee’s 2020 short film Devi, It was how the women treated each other that triggered me most, than the crime they had been subjected to. Devi is a bottle/chamber short film that takes place within a room shared by multiple women of different ages and social and economic groups. As they converse, we find out that they’re all victims of sexual assault and that they are some kind of metaphorical purgatory.

Unlike the usual depictions of rape, the short film redirects our focus to how we treat own own in the face of a trauma like this. There is victim-blaming in the short film, but by other victims. Just like other patriarchal transgressions that happen against women, the blame and responsibility of sexual assault is also imposed on the oppressed instead of the oppressor. In Devi, the women are all pointing fingers at each other trying to establish who’s had it worse as a way to concur who stays in the room and who leaves. From generational divides to the identity of their perpetrators to their clothing choices to how they dealt with the trauma; the women in Devi at times seem almost perplexed with their displaced anger and pain towards each other, pain that should’ve been directed towards the abuser instead, highlighting how the apparatus of patriarchy turns us against each other. 

There is a series of videos out there of women redoing the headlines of news articles about sexual assault, to correct the passive language used in describing crimes against women. In headlines like “wife killed in a domestic violence dispute” or “college student raped and murdered”, the abuser is totally removed from the equation and all that’s left is the victim as if the crime happened to her in a vacuum. Amending language like this is crucial because this is where we need re-evaluation. That sexual assault is a violation against human rights is well understood but real safety for victims can only be nurtured when we stop justifying the abuse and making them the scapegoats just because it’s easier. This does not mean foisting the responsibility of safety on women alone, because that would again be a displacement of accountability, but instead holding space for solidarity and sisterhood, and giving each other the same grace that we inadvertently end up allowing our oppressors.

Watch Devi below.

Here's more from Homegrown:

Disturbing Search Trends After The Kolkata Rape-Murder Are Symptoms Of A Larger Malaise

Nisha Pahuja’s New Documentary Chronicles A Father’s Fight Against Rape Culture In India

An Indian Documentary Unravels The Horrors Of Patriarchal Violence Against Tribal Women