ACID BURNS HER LIFE TOO

The society at present is replete with violence against women, where there have been

bountiful crimes that are really bizarre and there’s no any need to mention about those
heinous acts. Though the so called civilized society has been always antagonistic towards
them, and have flooded the streets with wild protest whenever needed, snippets of which
we saw in the past few months. However, there are certain issues or more specifically
crimes which are as bizarre as the others, but haven’t managed to grab much of attention.
Even though they managed to float in the media for a while, however as usual they faded
as each penny of time passed. One of such crime against women is the acid attack on
women. Acid attack is considered, infact it is one of the most heinous and bizarre crime
against women. In a society where, we raise slogans of women empowerment and safety
against women, in that society itself these serious crimes take place. The shameful part
of it is that, even after that no one bothers to raise these issues. Can anybody mention
about mass protest initiated against acid attacks on women?? I am pretty sure nobody can
recall about such protests. Even though the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India directed the
Central Government to come up with a comprehensive plan for compensation of victims
of acid attack, yet the government so-called protector of the people is still to wake up
from its sound sleep.

Throwing of acid not only burns down a women’s face, but also her life is turned into
ashes. Personally, I feel that, it’s better for acid victim to die rather than to survive,
because in the aftermath her survival becomes a burden and curse in itself. In the age of
google-lization, simply a click takes us through various incidents of acid attack and gives
us an insight into the victims; however it never gives any account of mass protest against
it, because that is yet to be done.

This gives us reasons to worry and make us feel really very cynical. However, there
has been some people whose initiatives show us certain ray of hope. Among such right
thinking citizens are Aseem Trivedi and Alok Dixit. Though they don’t require any
introduction and perhaps anybody associated with the activism world knows about them,
however speaking briefly Aseem Trivedi and Alok Dixit are crusaders fighting for the
online freedom of speech and scraping of the undemocratic Sec 66 A of the IT Act.
Aseem is the one, whose arrest woke and united the whole nation against the IT Act and
fight for freedom of speech in the online arena.

Speaking in the context of acid attacks, Aseem and Alok along with their other
teammates have decided to raise this issue in the society and make the people aware and
realize the pang of the acid attack victims. For this they initially started off with lunching
of a website ‘http://www.stopacidattacks.org’, they are also running a facebook page to
support the cause. Further on the 8th of March i.e. on Women’s Day, they have planned
a seminar at the Hindi Bhawan, Delhi where the website would be lunched and relevant
points would be discussed.

These initiatives give us a lot of hopes, however without the mass support of the people
it can’t be a success. Also, till now the government has been sitting with tied hands and
until the government intervenes, it would be tough to draw positive outcomes.
At the last, wishing this noble campaign a success, it would be interesting to watch how
things move on.


- Shamim Zakaria