'THE TIMES OF INDIA'- CRIME AGAINST WOMEN IN INDIA
INSTRUCTIONS
Press the mouse and drag it to uncover the secret message from the newspaper. Respect women around you and never be biased against the caste, colour,nationality or gender. Decode by
ABOUT THE HATHRAS RAPE CASE IN UTTAR PRADESH, INDIA
For this project I wanted to pick up an important topic which at present has startled many Indians to come out on the streets and protest. Sexual harassment and physical abuse faced by many women in India has reached the zenith of unethical activities. I come from the land of farmers and artisans – India, where a girl safety hasn’t ever been the utmost priority for everyone. I wanted to share this message and spread awareness in the society, to revolt against the power of corrupt mind of the people. My project is based on the latest incident that happened in the last week of September’2020. In a town called Hathras situated in the state of Uttar Pradesh, India; a young 19 years old girl was raped by group of evil men and then murdered by the authorities. She was a from a ‘Dalit’ community which is considered the lowest of the castes in India, sometimes referred to as untouchables or scheduled castes. The traditional caste system in India which follows certain norms and criticism is still prevalent in the society. After the gruesome act that took place, it was found out that her tongue was mutilated and some injuries were found on her body. Woman was forcefully cremated by the police authorities in the midnight, without her family’s consent. The family of the victim were barred from the scene due to the political matters and the joint agreement with the rapists and the police. The news spread that the rapists were members of the BJP (Social communist party of India) ruling party of India and the police were involved to remove the spatter of BJP fame. There are lot of sexual violence reports which comes through the police to head offices but many cases doesn’t get resolved at all.
There was a similar incident which occurred in 2012, the case was called Nirbhaya. A 23 years old woman was gang raped by a group of men while she was travelling in a local bus with her boyfriend in Delhi, India. Her boyfriend was murdered and the woman was dumped at the road side. There were many protests around the country and the news was spread around the globe. In India, there were average 87 rapes cases everyday in 2019 and 405861 cases of crimes against women during 2019 with a rise of over 7% from 2018. This information was recorded by the National Crime Records Bureau.
I want to propagate the message of injustice in the political society and participate for women safety movement in India. The horrific and ghastly feelings left inside the victim stays with them throughout their life. In respect to the life of the victims, as a youth and united community we could support the life and force the corrupt political system to change. The nightmare faced by many women who has been a victim of sexual assault, rape, murder, abduction, acid throwing and domestic violence, requires support for justice and their life.
DESIGN PROCESS
1. I started off with the idea of feminism and caste system in India, then happened this incidence recently drew my attention towards women safety in India. These being the social topics in India, I shortlisted the keywords I had to include as my secret message. I had a rough idea to implement for this project about spreading the message of injustice and Dalit lives matter. I used the technique of Stenography to code and decode the message to specific audience by using the invisible ink and anaglyph. My inspiration for the design application came from the tutorial by my lecturer Xin Xin for critical computation course and the blog by Phil Thomas based on secret decoder on illustrator.
2. Further, I jotted down my research on a rough paper where I wrote keywords. Essentially, I wanted to create an interface of the application of ‘The Times of India’which is the number one newspaper in India. I made the layout of the interface with information of social issues existent in India. Then, my idea changed when I looked at the headline of the Rape case happened in Uttar Pradesh. I chose to communicate through this topic because it has become a political debate along with the female safety issues. I looked at the news on this case, gathered the screenshots of the news on rape, murder and politics involved in the case. I wanted to highlight the quote – “Justice for the Victims” and “Dalit Lives Matter” which were the focal statements of the protests around the cities in India. DALIT LIVES MATTER started with the Hathras case where a Dalit women was abducted and raped (mentioned above).
3. The headlines from the newspapers were very powerful, it had strong words which I intended to put so I identified the code words from within the headlines itself. I didn’t have to change the headlines to my own language, rather I managed to address the secret messages hidden under the text. I started the coding process after finalising what outcome I want a viewer to see. The top most image which says the newspaper’s name – The Times of India has the faces of politicians including the Prime Minister – Narendra Modi (BJP), Chief Minister of Delhi – Arvind Kejrival and Congress Party leader – Rahul Gandhi, Kiran Bedi – Female police officer and Governor, Amit Shah –Minister of Home Affairs of India.
4. Coding process : I used the functions to load my screenshots on the canvas. After collaging the news images onto the canvas. I started to write down the original headlines from the respective news with black colour text and similar font style in order to make it look like an original newspaper. I hid the text beneath the headlines with blue colour with very less transparency which becomes hidden underneath the black text. Major functions used : - function preload(), image()
5. When the mouse is pressed, the color of the headlines turns pink – highlighting the coded texts on the canvas. Then if you drag the mouse around the canvas – you can see the color of the text blending and highlighting only the keywords from the headlines. This activity decodes the secret messages underlying beneath it.
Highlighted keywords from – News Headlines
a. I wanted to live. Reflects what the victim must be going through and wanting to express in her last moments of life.
b. BJP EVIL LEADERS – this signifies the feeling of what victim’s family must have thought and the public considers BJP to be unsupportive and disrespectful to victim. The police has been involved in many crimes, where they hide under the power of dirty politics and guns.
c. Discrimination – the caste system discriminates the communities and leaves the obscure intention towards the unprivileged families. People protests that this caste system should be removed and this atrocity lead the Dalit women become the victim of the offenders.
d. Take Justice, Never Revenge or Justice Never, Take Revenge : It’s a diplomatic statement which I have put together in secret message for the youth to decide whether they want to revenge against the justice or consider getting the justice for the deplorable incident than taking revenge. This wholly depends on the viewer how they look at it.
e. Another Delhi Horror – this news tells another horror story of rape and murder where woman becomes the victims in Delhi and Public demands the death and torture of the rapists because that’s what they deserve.
f. Dalit Caste Women – defines the caste system of India where Dalits are considered lower class people.
g. The circular form highlights the keywords from the newspaper. Major functions used : if else statements, mouseIsPressed.
h. Some keywords in red color relates to the context and replaces with the text when the mouse is pressed.
6. You can see a flag in the middle of the newspaper. This is the flag of India, which says – Justice for Victims and Dalit Lives Matter. These phrases are very recent, can be seen in many pictures where people hold the banners in protests. I have put the flag in the middle because the society viewing this remembers what’s happening to the Indian society. India has become the most dangerous place for women safety and crime which leaves the public terrified and frightful.
Indian flag has four colours, orange/ saffron colour which represents – the strength, courage of the country to fight back, white represents – Peace and truth with the navy blue wheel called Dharma Chakra – depicting the wheel of the law, justice and intends to show that there is life in movement and death in stagnation. Lastly, the green colour represents the – culture, fertility and growth.
India is known for its culture and unity. Woman is considered a goddess of the land, the disrespect of a woman is the disregard of the goddess. India needs to be remined of the tradition, values and authenticity of goodness. Major functions used : if else statements, user defined functions, rotate, translate.
7. When you drag the mouse, you’ll see the red colour – showing the blood of the victims who have faced the atrocities of murder and domestic abuse. I chose the red colour on purpose to reflect this notion of blood with fear and abuse of the victims. The flag wheel stops when the user drags the mouse indicating that the life of a person stops when something bad is happening to the victim. Major Functions used : mouseX, mouseY
REFLECTION
The Anti Surveillance Tool assignment made me think critically of how I can use the method of coding and decoding to deliver my context of the topic. The assignment was thought provoking and required critical thinking to some extent. In my childhood, I used to play the game with my mom where I was told to underline the same words in the paragraphs on one page or circle a particular letter from the newspaper. While travelling in train we used to enjoy playing and learning from newspaper. This reminded me of how I can connect the use of digital newspaper in my assignment to hide the keywords. The process was time taking, but my idea worked and the outcome looks better than the one I thought initially. The reflection of ide through visuals and text makes the message seem more understandable and readable. The use of keywords empowers the message propagated digitally on this visual Time of India newspaper. Digital media is a great platform to share secret messages or to spread the social awareness of issues like this in the society. This sort of tool is engaging and excites the viewer to pursue reading and promoting it. I have learnt a smart way to convey the social message of women safety through the platform of coding.