What a wonderful starting to the New Year! Two women were molested outside J W Marriott where they had attended the New Year bash, by a mob of forty to fifty people. Thankfully (and quite surprisingly, considering how apathetic we Indians are in public) someone called the police but by the time they arrived the women had been trapped in crowd of those lousy perverts for about 10-15 minutes! No complaint was lodged until today when a tabloid published pictures of the horrendous incident.
Mind you, this is not the first incident of its kind. Last year, on the New Year’s Eve, a girl was molested by a mob near the Gateway of India. A few boys were later arrested, but that’s about it.
What is this country coming to? Can’t women and girls walk on the roads without the fear of being groped by sick men?
The police has conveniently washed off its hands saying they did all that they could and this was just an isolated event. I wonder how many women were molested and hurt that night but went unnoticed by cameramen.
The moral brigade will probably shout from the rooftops about how the New Year’s celebrations are a part of the ‘western culture’ (and thus necessarily evil) and how it is corrupting our young generation. And, by the way, shouldn’t respectable women be at home at 1.30 pm?
Women’s associations will cry hoarse.
Women will have to think twice before going on a night out.
The papers and the news channels will hash the issue until we’re bored.
And finally, it will be forgotten. At least until the next New Year’s.
What can we do to stop such events? Who is to blame?
Is it the girl herself? Does she invite all the bad attention by dressing ‘skimpily’? I personally do think that one needs to dress carefully to avoid getting into negative situations. But then, one cannot justify a rape or molestation by putting the blame on the girl by saying that she was dressed provocatively or that she was present at the wrong place at the wrong time. Nothing can ever and I repeat, ever give a guy the right to invade a girl’s personal space.
Is it then the influence of the ‘western’ culture? It’s time we got out of the self-congratulatory mode and stopped proclaiming that ours is the greatest culture on the planet. Instead of playing the blame game, we need to identify the problems in our society and do something about it.
Or is it the guy? It’s tempting to say yes. But I think it is the upbringing that is responsible for such behaviour. I mean, if a guy has seen his father beating his mother and friends teasing girls passing by on the road, it is very unlikely that he shall develop respect for women when he grows up. So I think the only solution is to teach little boys to respect women and girls. Not to put them on the pedestal and worship them but, to recognise them as fellow human-beings and their equals. This might sound a little naïve, but sometimes the solutions to big problems are really quite simple. Or are they?
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1 comment:
Hey, thought provoking post indeed. Yes, sometimes we ignore the simple solutions available in search of complex ones which never work! n yes, its time we, as a society, look inwards to see if we really do fit into the so called "Great Culture"! What say?
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