Why it is easy to molest a woman in India?

In the last few months, we have seen hundreds of incidents where a woman in India was molested, teased, sexually harassed, and stripped in public, sometimes in the view of cameras and bystanders.  One woman was thrown out of a moving train, another was attacked by acid, and others were physically molested.  

One of the immediate reactions from the media is that it is a 'law and order' problem. What they mean is that we don’t give strong punishment to the offenders, that the law is vague on these offences, or that the police officers are not very keen on registering the cases or following up on the case.  

I, on the other hand, don’t think 'law and order' is the main problem.  While 'law and order' is  one of the problems, it is not the primary one.  There are few countries, like Saudi Arabia, where the law is extremely strict, so much so that a convicted thief’s hand may be cut, and yet there is rampant mistreatment and abuse of women in that country. 

Also, I tend to think that most of these offenders, in countries like India, take a high moral ground because many people tend to sympathize with the offenders.  In the recent past, many administrative officers, police officers, organization heads and elected political leaders have all blamed the woman when such harassments happened.  They blamed the woman for inviting the man to molest her by dressing provocatively. 

Khap the crap

Most Indians believe that their civilization is the greatest on the planet.  They think it is the greatest civilization because of their unmatched and unsurpassed supreme moral values.  They believe they derive these values from their religion which is not just any religion but a way of life - that gives answers to all the questions and problems you pose, and to even those which you have not posed. 

These Indians also believe that it is extremely important for them protect this greatest civilization and their supreme morals against onslaught of impure alien civilizations that are hell bent on polluting its great culture.  

Hinduism has at its roots the dreadful casteism; and casteism cannot thrive without terming certain things and people as pure or impure.  It has whole set of rules on what is right and what is wrong.  If you keep doing things that are right you keep getting purer and if you do things that are wrong you keep getting impure. When you do things that are impure you are born as low caste; you have to do a whole lot of pure things to improve your caste in the next incarnation. 

Women’s Bill in the Parliament

Usually I refrain from writing about topics on which I have not made up my mind.  Here’s one topic where I have not made up my mind but still decided to write about.  It is about Women’s Bill in the Parliament.  With passing of this bill, India is going to reserve 33% of the seats in Parliament and State Assemblies to women. 

At the outset, I am happy that such a bill is coming into existence.  We are going to set a great example in the world if we have many women parliamentarians and ministers. India has emancipated some of its women through series of steps, started during British Empire where sati was banned and women were allowed into schools through Independence Movement where we saw women standing shoulder to shoulder with men. 

Women in India

I have seen lot of blogs where there is a tendency to blame the man for what the woman suffers. Yes, the man is to take some amount of blame for what women suffers, but by putting the entire blame only on the man I don’t think we are defining the problem completely. I would like to take another look at this blame game.

When a daughter-in-law does not beget a son, the person who indulges in harassing that woman is usually another woman- her mother-in-law. The person who, while raising the girl, tells the girl that it is her duty to be servile to parents-in-law and the husband, and that she becomes a ‘pariah’ after the wedding, is another woman- her mother. The person who tells her that she is inferior and that she cannot compete with a man is also another woman- a mother or an aunt. The people who make sure a widow feels she has lost everything are other women. Also, the people who bitch about a successful or independent woman with a high-growth career are usually other women.

The woman is discriminated against, harassed, insulted, berated, and discouraged, by both men and women. By singly focusing on one enemy, that is the man, we are defining the problem statement wrongly. It is not ‘man vs. woman’, it is rather ‘society vs. woman’ and the society consists of both men and women.

The wrong perceptions, the false notions, the misconceptions, about women and their status, cannot be addressed by targeting individual men or women. It cannot be solved by targeting the elusive society either. No matter how much you teach and preach, unless those words are backed by concrete actions, which include certain mandatory provisions, supported by law, enacts and bills, we will not see any change in the belief systems of this society. Mere lip-service, indignation, anger, feel of hurt would not bring about change.

I am a strong believer in ‘enforcing’ certain actions through ‘mandatory provisions’. India does not give freedom for free. Our freedoms come with responsibilities. We pay taxes, whether we like it or not. We are supposed to obey traffic rules, whether we like it or not. We can’t hope to bypass them saying we have the freedom to do so.

I am a strong proponent of mandatory reservations. I know that many educated and elite Indians see it as anathema. They do not see it as serving their best interests, of course.

I come from a backward region, where one can see many of our belief systems in action. People openly discuss certain things about women; that she is a burden- that once the girl goes to her husband’s place their ‘bhoj utar jaayega’, etc. People openly want a baby boy. If they beget a baby girl, they actually feel sad. Some families do not even want to celebrate and will write it off as if they are going to mourn now. Comments and insults are thrown at women freely.

While no text book, no speech, no exhortation or no leader could bring any change in the perceptions of these people, one single act from the state government (of Andhra Pradesh) brought in a fresh outlook. The state government imposed 33% reservations to girl students. Whether it had any immediate effect in enrollment of women (or not) is not important to me. What it brought as a change in the perception of the people from the small towns is quite a welcome. Families now look forward to seeing their girl kid become an engineer or a doctor. They are ready to sponsor the girl’s education and encourage her in her pursuits. There are many families who see this as an opportunity for their girl kid. She is no longer considered ‘absolute burden’; she is now seen as ‘lesser burden’.

Recently, India has also passed certain laws to protect women from domestic violence. I welcome such concrete actions backed by legislation, law, enactments and bills. I do not expect our society to ‘wake up’ on its own to change its perceptions. Unless our government makes it a law against throwing garbage on the streets, our roads and neighborhoods will never become clean. To expect that our people will ‘wake up’ and ‘realize’ on their own to keep their streets clean is a chimera, which I am not going to pursue.

Our people will not change their perceptions towards women. In almost all small towns and rural areas of India, eve teasing is rampant. It’s insulting to any person’s dignity and has an everlasting effect on the morale and confidence of a woman. Indian women grow up developing a way of tolerating such harassment, which is quite unhealthy, because it becomes tough later on in life to stand up and protest at bigger harassments. Sexual harassment is also very rampant, though almost all cases go unreported. Just because there are no cases reported does not mean it doesn’t happen. India has to come up with more provisions to make a woman’s life better in this country. We have a long way to go. I look forward to more provisions that empower women, forcefully if necessary.