“If you are on your last legs
Learn to crawl!
If you’ve run out of steam
Try alcohol!
Every river knows
That ‘straight to the sea’ means meander
Every bird knows that sauce for the goose
Is good propaganda!”
From Navsari Rhymes by Bachchoo
Oxford professor of theological history, Diarmid MacCulloch, told the Hay Literature Festival that section of the world hate Western culture because it is obsessed with sex. He said the jihadist insurrection worldwide was dedicated to purifying the planet by killing the unbelievers who won’t cover their women and allow them to drive cars. He also quoted the critique from Vladimir Putin’s Russia against the sexualised West and noted that the very name, Boko Haram, means Western culture is forbidden: “The anger that other cultures feel is towards Western sexual openness — so much of the murderous anger which we are seeing in the Islamic State and other revivalist movements of the 20th and 21st century.”
Prof. MacCulloch’s perception of the sexualising of Western culture is as obvious as the fact that the Pope is a Catholic. Though there is no way of proving it, it may be that what the good professor refers to as the sexual obsession of the West is shared by every culture on the planet — but that the countries of Europe and America have allowed sexuality relatively free expression.
The followers of Boko Haram are not known for their restraint when raping captured schoolgirls, or taking hostages as their sex slaves. Any capital in the world, including Mumbai and Dubai has sex industries whose workers are voluntary or trafficked victims from Putin’s Russia. Jihadi brides who run away to Syria are not going there simply to read the Quran. These phenomena don’t prove that Boko Haram or the ISIS are as overtly obsessed with “sex” as the West, but they do indicate that the hatred which Prof. MacCulloch rightly points at is generated against the freedoms that women have won for themselves in the West.
This is not to deny that the West is devoid of trafficking, of sexual crime, of coercion and of obsessively turning women’s bodies into ways of selling things. A report from the British educational establishment says that 60 per cent of children with smartphones routinely access adult pornography. The technology of smartphones and other devices has undoubtedly boosted the audience for pornography, but my guess is that this access is not restricted to underage British citizens. It is perfectly feasible and, I believe, plausible that the jihadis who transmit recruiting videos of horror on their websites have easy access on the same devices to pornography and sneak a look in their off time.
Friends attest to the fact that the young women of Iran and the Gulf who wear the full niqab in public are, beneath the veil, very conscious of their cosmetic make-up, hairstyles and sexy “Western” designed underwear. Surely their fathers, brothers, husbands, uncles, boyfriends etc. know? The sexualisation is hypocritically veiled. We are undoubtedly talking about anecdotal evidence from a small Westernised elite class of Iranian and West Asian women. Are the rest oppressed into their modesty by tradition and a life-long understanding of a woman’s role?
Part of the hatred to which Prof. MacCulloch alludes is generated not by some abstract distaste of Western culture but by the specific phenomenon of the freedom of women to speak, be educated, challenge, dress and demand on an equal social and political basis with men. Part of this freedom that Western women have fought hard for is the freedom to expose sexual abuse. India witnessed the outpouring of protest after the rape and murder of Jyoti, referred to, when the newspapers sought to keep her identity a secret, as “Nirbhaya”. Now the theatrical event — I hesitate to call it a “play” — Nirbhaya is touring the UK. It has already been seen to full houses in India and all over the world and is now back in Britain. The theatrical event was sponsored in part by the Riverside Studios, an arts centre of which I am a trustee — and I’ll tell you why that’s relevant.
First, my reaction to the presentation which I saw for the first time: I hesitate to call it a play because it is not about dramatic interaction. It consists of the harrowing re-enactment of the rape and murder of Jyoti and then the central fact that other women in India have come forward without fear to recall the horror and circumstance of their own sexual and physical abuse — from paedophilia, violent rape, surreptitious body contact in public crowded places to dowry burning. Every story was told by the woman who had suffered it.
The event is an international gesture of liberation, a penetration of the silence that has veiled the abuse of women for centuries — and the penetration is not pianissimo, it’s a scream.
Again, it’s not a “play” because the audience is required to do no work. It is relentlessly and theatrically delivered information of which, perhaps, most of the audience is aware but is all the more powerful because it is delivered — “nirbhaya” — without fear by the victims who have transcended their victimhood by becoming the voice of Indian women. Why do I mention the fact that I am on the board of the sponsoring organisation? Because the Riverside Studios is undergoing a comprehensive building redevelopment and I was asked to invite the great and the good (read “rich”) of the Indian community to see it and possibly forge an association with the Arts Centre. I made the phone calls and sent out the invitations to people who were known to patronise charities, culture and good causes and, of course, to some of my friends in the theatre.
The dominant reaction from the great and the good was “Oh dear, not rape again!” Some of them were more direct. They would much rather support an event which showed off India in a positive light.
