Two to tango….

“Ah, but let her cover the mark as she will, the pang of it will be always in her heart.”

~Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

As a kid growing up in India, I used to come across several stray dogs in the neighbourhood. Most of these dogs, emaciated and bodies covered with sores used to incite feelings of abhorrence and disgust in people who came across them. Paranoia of rabid dogs usually induced people, especially kids in the neighbourhood to chase these unfortunate animals out of the area mainly by throwing stones at them. Sometimes when the stones found their target, you would hear the pitiful cries of the animal while it scurried away, badly limping. The squeals which you would expect to die would later be picked up octaves higher when some other kid would direct his meanness on the ill-fated dog in the neighbouring streets.

Lately reading about the Iranian woman Ashtiani in the news, condemned to a stoning sentence for adultery, I am vividly recollecting these stoning episodes of dogs from my childhood days. It is sad enough to witness such deeds against stray animals, but likening a human to a mere animal and subjecting him/her to such draconian penal codes, it leaves you wondering if humanity is really prevalent in these days. What use is morality when you kill the very seeds of compassion and empathy in a society?

I am struggling to understand the macabre connection of stones and adultery in most cultures. Yes everybody is fully aware of the punishment for adultery in both the Old and New Testament of the Bible, but did not the Lord Himself condemn this barbarous act? In the Indian myths, we have the story of an adulterous woman turned into a stone by the curse of her husband.  Atleast, the Indian race given their gentle disposition and less inclination towards violence, gave the woman a deliverance from her ordeal than an actual punishment – in any case here the woman is not subjected to judgement or ostracism or even traumatic experiences unlike her modern day counterparts.

As much as I would like to write about the grave injustice of the harrowing ordeal this woman and few other females languishing in Iranian prisons are undergoing, I can truly see the futility of my words. The international intervention and scrutiny this case has received has still not seen the liberation of this woman. Nor am I going to rally my sagging spirits and cast my stones against the Sharia Law especially in the holy month of Ramadan. Besides not fully equipped with the knowledge of the Islamic faith and principles, I would merely be seen as someone baying at the full moon. Neither am I going to empathize with these women who are very unfortunate in living in the wrong society and in the wrong culture nor condemn their folly when they ought to have been fully aware of the consequences of their actions living in a non-secular country.

But my curiosity is about the men involved in these acts – where are they in the picture? Why is the media silent about these men? Are they not worth mentioning because they have been acquitted of their guilt or they never were found to be guilty in the first place? Where are the men to catch the “fallen” women as the society labels them? Why does it take two to tango but one to burn at the stakes – in this case the women who are being stoned? The reply, my dear genteel folks, even though stoning is not a gendered punishment, usually the men are allowed to get away with adultery given that polygamy is never frowned upon in the Islamic states.

What words of comfort can one offer these women, who perhaps driven by inexplicable needs have chosen to break the rules of their marriage but are now left to languish and wallow on their own in the aftermath of their passion – bereft even of the solace of the ones they sought earlier? How pitiable is their fate if they are discarded and thrown away even by the very men they chose to violate the sanctity of their marriage for? These women, left alone to face public scrutiny and ostracism and subjected to harsh judgement in the eyes of their loved ones — have they not already died a little – what more are the courts going to achieve by flogging or stoning a lifeless corpse?

Alas, the saga of the Scarlet Letter repeats again……..

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