The harm three monkeys can do

Certain words are best left unsaid Certain events are best left unnamed Certain actions are best not acknowledged Gandhirsquos three monkeys with eyes ears mouth covered teach us this Routinely men and women in powerful positions teach us thisWe learnt it in Rwanda in 1994 The unspeakable word was genocideWe learnt it during the pandemic when certain words were deliberately dismissed from public view The price of that is only becoming clearer nowWe learnt it in Kolkata on August 9 There was one word no one wanted to say until there was no choice but to say it It was rapeGiving something a name has consequences not always benign That was a common predicament during the pandemic They said the virus spread through fomites rather than aerosols wrong For a year people cleaned surfaces rather than wear masks and practice social distancing How many died because they were given the wrong precautionsIt happened again when Moderna announced its innovative new vaccine against COVID19 using mRNA Unlike traditional vaccines which include a protein from the virusrsquos surface mRNA carries genetic material called RNA with instructions to help a human cell manufacture that proteinThere was a small hitch mRNArsquos composition and mode of action qualify it as a gene therapy product GTP Even Moderna knew that However the US Federal Drug Administration and the European Medicine Agency decided to go with vaccine without offering technical or ethical reasons Was it because the clinical tests for vaccine approval take only weeks and only require proof that it eliminates a diseasersquos symptoms A GTP on the other hand requires years of testing for longterm safety and side effectsWersquore living with the aftermath COVID is behind us but the world is haunted by antivaccine sentiment and the fear of pernicious and unknown effects from the vaccine such as myocarditis thrombocytopenia GuillainBarreacute Syndrome myelitis and othersLittle information is available no one looked for it in the first placeIn Rwanda in 1994 information was not the issue Everyone could see exactly what was going on and there was a word for it Genocide But the USA was not interested in stopping itBill Clinton understood the three monkeys perfectly In 1994 when Rwanda was drowning in rivers of the blood of Tutsis massacred by Hutus the USA like the shady Dr Sandip Ghosh in Kolkata knew that the word genocide must never be uttered or else the US would be bound to get involved and prevent it according to the Geneva Convention agreement it had signed on toThe American desire according to a politician there was for ldquozero degree of involvement and zero degree of risk and zero degree of pain and confusionrdquoWhile Tutsi bodies hacked to pieces piled up outside churches and schools the US government played with words A government spokeswoman equivocated gingerly saying that ldquothe types of actionsrdquo and the ldquokind of brutalityrdquo under way needed to be examined ldquoextremely carefullyrdquo and whether the perpetrators were trying to eliminate a group in whole or in partThe conclusion was Orwellian and inevitable It could not be called a genocide until the entire community had been wiped out Therefore the USA could only get involved in preventing genocide once all the Tutsis had been killed and it could properly be called genocideIn Kolkata only one person had been killed The word that could not be uttered there was rapeThe previous night August 8 a 31yearold doctor only daughter of her parents had been brutally raped savaged and murdered in the seminar room of RG Kar Medical College Her body was found the next morning around 9 The autopsy noted that she had been raped and sexually assaulted before being strangled to deathDr Sandip Ghosh the hospitalrsquos principal at that time now comfortable in jail understood that this was a threemonkey moment The First Information Report is the first step in any case You cannot start an investigationuntil there is an FIRAn FIR tells the investigators what to investigate If there is anything that is best left alone not filing an FIR is the perfect way to do itThe Supreme Court noted that in this case the first step took almost 14 hoursSandip Ghosh called the chief cop at the police station Abhijit Mondol to discuss how best to prevent the incident from turning into a police case They hatched a planRushing to the scene Mondol quickly registered a case of ldquodeath by unnatural causesrdquo Donrsquot say rapeThe parents were first told that their daughter was unwell and later that she had committed suicide Donrsquot say rapeMondol bulldozed the stricken couple through the cremation of their daughter although they had been asking for a second autopsyIt was 6 pm by the time they registered a complaint But Mondol delayed filing the FIR till almost midnightIt did not mention the word rapeYou can reach C Y Gopinath at cygopigmailcomSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper