Strange Fruit

Strange Fruit

Rupa Subramanya 

May 30, 2014

On August 7, 1930, Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, two young African American men, were lynched in the town center of Marion, Indiana. The previous day the two men and a third, James Cameron, just 16 years old, had been arrested and charged with armed robbery and the murder of a white factory owner and of raping his white girlfriend. 

But the “good citizens” of Marion were unwilling to allow justice to take its course. (To this day, the case has not been solved.)

A mob of thousands of white townsfolk descended on the jailhouse, using sledgehammers and crowbars to smash their way in and abducted Shipp and Smith. They were lynched in the town square and hung from a tree. Cameron providentially escaped death and wrote an eye witness account in his book, “A Time of Terror”. 

What made this gruesome act stand out in the history of racism in America is not that it was unique. 

Lynchings were common and even photographed with pride by the perpetrators and sold as postcards, but what made this different was the iconic photograph that it produced. 

A local photographer, Lawrence Beitler, took this picture, of which thousands of copies were produced and sold. A copy of the photograph made its way into the hands of the social activist and poet Abel Meeropol, and he was “haunted” for days. Meeropol was inspired to write the poem, “Strange Fruit”, and set it to music as a protest song. 

The song was immortalised by the legendary jazz vocalist Billie Holiday, who first sang and recorded it in 1939. It was so controversial in its day that Holiday couldn’t record it on her regular label. Decades later, the song became something of an anthem for the civil rights movement in America. 

Both Beitler’s photograph and the song it inspired remain one of the most poignant outcries against racism and bigotry in America. 

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On the evening of May 27, 2014, two teenaged Dalit girls, cousins, stepped out of their home in a small village in the district of Badaun in Uttar Pradesh. Like many Indians with no toilet at home, they had gone out into the fields to relieve themselves.  When there was no sign of them, relatives and neighbours raised the alarm. 

We all know how this tragedy unfolded. The following morning, the two young women were found hanging from a tree and reports suggest they were gang-raped and hanged to death. 

Like the lynchings of African Americans in the Old South, the rape and murder of women and girls, especially Dalits, is a frequent occurrence. A typical headline will say something like, “Two Dalits gang-raped and murdered”, “Two minors raped and left to die”, etc., accompanied by a sketch, not even a photograph, of a fearful woman, crouching, her hands upraised, trying to protect herself. At most such tragedies rate a few tweets, maybe a column, and a short news item if at all. 

What makes the Badaun tragedy different is that someone captured an image of the two young women hanging from the tree with villagers looking on. Unlike, however, photos like Beitler’s where the onlookers are whites and cheering on the lynching, reports suggest that in Badaun, the villagers were protesting at police inaction and alleged complicity in the gang-rape and deaths. 

In spite of the possible illegality of sharing such an image under Indian law, at least one newspaper, Dainik Bhaskar, printed it and it has been widely shared in social media. 

Concerns that the girls’ families have not so far as we know approved of the release of this picture are legitimate. But the fact is the picture is out there and a lot of people are likely to see it, perhaps even inadvertently. 

Could this be the “Strange Fruit” moment for the everyday brutality and violence against women and young girls, especially from underprivileged communities, in India?

If reports are correct, the villagers who silently protested around the tree certainly were aware of the potency of the imagery. They refused to leave the spot until the police took action and in doing so in a sense bore witness to the tragedy. 

And what of the reactions to this incredibly disturbing image? 

Some people were offended by the fact that the image was shared in the first place or shared without a warning tag. Others found it a violation of the privacy and dignity of the girls and their families. 

Yet, some have told me they were haunted by the image and couldn’t sleep. They’d never seen an image like this except in a movie. 

What makes the tragedy in Badaun potentially a catalyst to shake us out of complacency when it comes to the routine nature of violence against women and the rote replies from politicians and law enforcement officials is the horror of this image. 

In this respect, there’s a resonance of the outrage after the December 16 gang-rape and eventual death of a young woman in Delhi. That tragedy became a national and international source of anger, street protests, activism, discussion in our living rooms and online of what had been a taboo subject — and finally an important new rape law.  

There were no photographic images of the Delhi victim but there was a detailed description of what was done to her that was graphic and horrifying beyond belief.

It was our visceral reaction to this graphic detail which I believe allowed what might have otherwise been yet another “routine” case of rape and violence in our cities and neighbourhoods to assume the importance it did. That, of course, and the fact that it happened in a major city and not somewhere in the “remote hinterland”. 

The remote hinterland is where Badaun is. And Uttar Pradesh is widely seen as lawless anyway. So I suppose it’s possible that this tragedy too might fade from memory within a few days. 

But if enough people have been haunted by this illicit image of a tragedy, enough people kept up at night, enough people wondering why this country is so violent and horrific towards its women and young girls and those who are vulnerable, then someone out there might create our “Strange Fruit”. 

And that might become the anthem for our own civil rights movement which once and for all allows India’s women to be equal citizens, with our full measure of dignity and humanity, not just in theory but in our everyday lived reality. 

Correction: According to the latest news reports, the two young women who were raped and murdered were from the lowest rung of OBCs ("other backward caste"), rather than Dalits.

Rupa Subramanya is co-author of "Indianomix: Making Sense of Modern India" (Random House, India, 2012). Follow her on Twitter @rupasubramanya .