New Delhi is still
reeling under the horrific rape of the physiotherapist girl student in a bus.
What was most dreadful was the manner in which she had been beaten by an iron
rod that destroyed her intestines and the fact that she is still battling for life,
and may not recover at all. And all this done by total strangers. This should
be booked as a case of murder and the penalty for murder meted out to the
rapists, who had left the girl for dead anyway.
Crowds are coming out
in the thousands before the government representatives to protest. Girls are
narrating dreadful episodes of their own - how it has become unsafe for them to
be out alone or even with a friend on the streets of New Delhi or any other
metropolis or even small towns for that matter. Girls are narrating how they
are harassed and teased, verbally abused and pinched and pushed by strangers
making obscene remarks, strangers that include not only young men but also
dirty old men.
What has happened to
the society at large to set hordes of demented men as predators after girls and
women? Girls had been afraid of going to the police for fear of their leering
glances and lewd comments. There were reports all the time of rape of girls by
demented policemen, cases reported as "custodial rapes", rapes in
police custody. After all the policemen were also men.
People often blame
the Hindi cinemas for scenes in which girls are teased by the heroes at large,
and with whom they ultimately fall in love and marry, meaning thereby that the
"eve teasing" was successful for the boys. Even today whenever a
group of boys spots a girl or girls walking alone, they break out into songs
from Hindi films and pretend to be heroes. But along with the film songs there
is also a spate of abusive and obscene comments and attempts to touch, hold,
molest and even rape.
People blame the rape
scenes in Hindi films, which, though cut by the censors or aborted by the
heroes who arrive to the rescue in time, are still titillating to the demented
minds of predators and juvenile delinquents.
And lastly people
blame the revealing dresses of the heroines in Hindi films and the manner in
which these are copied by the young girls in real life. But no matter how a
person dresses this does not give a license to any demented predator to commit
the heinous crime of rape. But who will teach the predator that?
All having said and
done-- who are the people who are provoked to attack girls whatever be the
reason? You have this large number of demented movie goers watching all these
scenes on the cinema screen and finding their desires and obsessions going out
of control.
They can be amongst
either the "rahees zadaas" the spoilt children of the rich, or the
workmen and mechanics, tough and violent characters, like bus drivers, amongst
the proletariat and middle class.
But one must look
deeper than that. One must look into the psyche that the men have, the attitude
towards girls and women.
Some marriages are
conducted on the basis of "good looks" alone, and there is the sexual
undertone behind the selections. Women are increasingly being thought of as sex
targets.
Even during the days
of old, when some men married all kinds of fat and ugly women, the number of
children were huge - anywhere up to 10 to 12 children. What inspired the sexual
impulse to produce so many children? Would we therefore say that these men were
all "over sexed"? Many women who bore so many children often died in
the midst of childbirth. This was true in rich as well as poor households, the
"huge families" inspired by -what? Have we ever thought of it? Was it
love or simply lust?
This attitude towards
women and sex has been going on since decades. The very abuses that men use,
center around sisters and mothers. Who started this obscene form of abuse? Who
are the people who are really responsible for this dreadful Frankenstein let
loose on women today?
What we are watching
today is an explosion and expression of a malaise that has been going on since
years, something which had come to be "accepted as part of society"
in an unspoken manner.
I still recall
hearing two middle-aged professors talking to each other on the Mall Road, one
of them saying to the other:
"I still have
the habit of teasing a girl or two, on the Mall!!"
The situation has
been so grim that generally some men cannot be trusted around women, whatever
their age or calling in life, whether sober or addicted to drugs or the cinema.
And all this is
happening in a land which has a religion that is dedicated to worshiping women
as goddesses, a religion which widely speaks of God as existing in two forms -
man as well as woman. Where respect to the female form is even greater than the
respect to the male form of God.
Perhaps we need a
different kind of "sex education" in schools-- where children have to
be taught that it is the first and foremost duty of every citizen of the land
to respect and honor women and to afford them protection. It is only when
society is re-formulated through a new education of the children that a true
reform will come about in the attitude of men towards women.
Maybe this should be
inscribed in the Constitution of the Land as a mandatory provision for every
school as part of basic education.
No comments:
Post a Comment