The Dikus (Outsider)

In the recently published Kindle Single 13 Men by Sonia Faleiro on the Birbhum gangrape, the author notes how the victim in question had developed “dikus” (outsider) habits. She wore dangling oxidised jewellery, carried a mobile phone and after her stay in Delhi had acquired Hindi-accent to her Santhali. And then  she consorted with a dikus. The issue was not that she had an affair (Santhals have liberal views about sexuality) but that she was a woman who was threatening the cultural identity of the community. She was gangraped by 13 men.

Our selves, irrespective of what we believe, is deeply tied down to certain cultural customs, a way by which we find our social location in this world, a psychic need to know we are and a threat to psychic survival every time that is challenged.


This morning all of you must have read the Nirbhaya rapist saying what he said. Amongst the many words, this: “A decent girl won't roam around at nine o'clock at night” and people "had a right to teach them a lesson."  We have heard versions of this in both public and private spaces when we challenge the status quo.

In Bosnia, intellectual, successful Muslim women were selected for rape camps with notches marked over their beds to denote if they had been raped and how many times.  In Rwanda, the supposedly-more beautiful Tutsi women were marked as Tutsi agents charming Hutus to betray and take over their land. And we know of stories closer home.

The extreme mindset to correct this threat of the “dikus” for women is rape. A “dikus” no longer has the social standing and hence a throw-away object whose rights and life need not be respected. Of course some of us are upset, angry about this dehumanization and the methods used to make us conform. But we must remember the moderate versions of this mindset exist all over, right in our faces. Whether you are conservative or liberal. Even within liberal space—there are levels, each level disliking the other, even in their dress choices (she is flamboyant, lacks elegance, too flashy). Each believing there is a particular way to do things and excluding the dikus from employment, social circles, opportunities and worse excluding by using dehumanizing or mocking language.

The microcosm is the reflection of the larger reality. The punishment for being a dikus is on a continuum in which we already exist.

What are each one of us doing to decrease our own irritation of the dikus? If we are liberals, how can we increase our acceptance of the conservatives and other levels of liberals? In what ways and forms do we use language and social manners to exclude those who do not hold same beliefs as ours? Even outraging is a way by which we are saying we belong to the community that is progressive and you, the rapist are the dikus. It does not bridge. On that side, he will say: “She should just be silent and allow the rape” while we chant “death” here.

We have to co-own shame. We have to co-own responsibility. One of our own is threatened by us and we suffer. In some form that is not violent, that doesn’t scream a person down we have to build bridges. As hard as it is and as disgusting and outright painful, there is sometimes no other way than to hold the voice that threatens in the palm of our hands and keep breathing into it.