On the surface, we are supposed to be a religion abiding society, where women are modest and men are protectors of their chastity. That is the image we portray avidly but when a teacher is arrested for reportedly forcing sexual favours from over one hundred women and then releasing intimate moments recorded by secret camera in the market, the very notion of our so called puritan society crumbles.
The teacher, one Helal Uddin Panna of Kushtia, lured students to his quarters ostensibly for private tuition but then forced them to be intimate with him. Shockingly, Panna’s acolytes, officials of the Local Government Engineering Department (LGED), were complicit in his wicked scheme as they were responsible for recording the private moments.
The police have duly arrested Panna, but simply putting him behind bars and handing out punishment to his pals will not solve a problem which is relentlessly pushed aside in the name of maintaining “decency” and a supposedly immaculate social canvas.
Our hypocrisy in trying to ignore sexual abuse will only lead to more diabolical incidents. Today it is rape and the release of videos but tomorrow this may turn out to be rape, followed by the infliction of physical torture. Do not recoil in shock! There was a time when the mere idea of disseminating recorded versions of sexual intercourse was unthinkable.
Panna and his friends are not the first ones to break the barrier - they are just one of many who have taken advantage of a deliberately blind society to increase the parameter of their perversions. Regrettably, in the pre-Eid excitement and cacophony, this news may get lost. One word of caution. If we let this happen, a grave aberration will be permitted to go on. Who can tell what new depths of depravity will be explored by those who want to abuse their power?
In point of fact, we are faced with a deviant form of entertainment which has insidiously crept into our community, and in part this is thanks to our irrational obsession with maintaining the vacuous image of puritanism.
Someone really has to come forward and say – let’s drop the charade, pre-marital sex is very much a feature of life now. Having sexual relations should not in itself be seen as a diabolical transgression. In the case of Panna, it would not be unwise to speculate that a fair number of his victims might have been coerced to yield to his physical demands by promises of marriage, long term relationship or other such inducement.
This means that the teacher had a pre-meditated plan according to which he moved. Wait a minute! The elements that stupefy us do not end there because there is also the part played by his friends, reportedly men working for a government department.
Whether the government wants to take the blame or not, the fact that the friends of Panna are LGED staff will be a talking point. Obviously, the government has no psychological screening process through which selection of staff is made. But then, psychological tests can not necessarily provide reliable information about hidden tendencies within a person.
Be that as it may, this incident has made such a provision, essential. At least, when a psychological assessment is present, the number of people with perverted tendencies can be lowered.
Coming back to the victims of this abhorrent operation, it does not take a sociologist to appreciate that though their tormentors have been arrested, the videos out there will leave a permanent scar on victims’ reputations. The girls may have been duped, but trust me, this society will stigmatise them, whereas if Panna is free, let’s say in five years, his dark past will only be a vague scar, possibly dismissed as mischief. Such is the nature of our hypocrisy.
Since the police now have the culprits there is a possibility that punishment will be handed out as, reportedly, a large section of people in Kushtia have demanded action from the law.
However, this does not reduce the urgent need for us to discard the belief that we live in a perfect society and reach deep within to address the putrefaction. If there is a demand in the market for video clips containing sexual intercourse between men and women where the latter is ignorant of the presence of a camera, then we have a serious anomaly.
Whether the popularity of such recordings is due to the absence of an approved form of adult entertainment is something that should be looked into. Also, in depth analysis is essential as to what impact repressed sexuality has had on a younger generation growing up in a world where the net provides a gateway into explicit adult entertainment.
The incident in Kushtia sends one potent warning – we must shed the layers of pseudo-propriety and discuss sex in the context of a globalised world.
