My mom and I love to disagree with each other which means we’re debating almost all the time that i’m at home.
Anyways, at dinner last night, we were watching the news and one of the issues that was hitting the headlines was the molestation of the 2 women by a mob of about 60-70 men.
Now, my mum, like any other self respecting and traditional Indian stated categorically “This is all the result of girls of your age taking too much liberty”.
This started off a heated between my mum and me…
I was trying to put my point across that if men had the right to party, let their hair on new years eve, why shouldnt women… i mean, for many Indian men, whenever its convenient, a woman is the mother, sister, wife and most of all, a very respected entity… but why the hell doesn’t all this apply when it comes to women who are not related to them.
Mom was like, “If women want to party, wear skimpy clothes, etc they should be ready to defend themselves” but, defend they will, if it is a couple of people but about 70 drunk ruffians?!? Heck, even a grown up man can’t save himself from molestation, let alone a couple of women.
Then discussing the root of the problem, I realised that it has got a lot to do with Education… As a student studying in CBSE, we had 2 full chapters on Sex Education in 9th Standard biology… but my bio teacher, a stuck up ‘traditional’ Indian woman,being the bane to the teaching community that she was, was never too happy about teaching those chapter and just skimmed the ‘clean’ parts of the chapters and said that we’d not need to study the entire 2 chapters for our exams. At that time, being only concerned about our exams, we were more than happy.
Of course, the education that we received about it from home and later in higher classes more than made up for it but think about it, guys not educated or educated in Boys only schools or studied with teachers like mine who refused to teach them what is right and what is wrong, exposed to porn, hormones raging and of course, senses lowered by the alcohol, now see a couple of hot women, skimpily dressed and the cogs in their pea sized brains are working over time about how to get their hands on the women. Now, take about 70-80 of such people, put them in a mob and thats all you need for mob hysteria to take over and results in such occurences.
Couple that with indifferent cops, the victimised women who are scared of ‘social backlash’ and the perpetrators of the crime who’ve got a lot of political clout, rest assured that this issue will be buried deep in the judicial system of the country, never to be raked up until the opposition party comes into power.
When a woman author writes ‘religiously unacceptable’ books, she’s banished from her country, cities erupt in flames and cause the author to flee from her home. But when such a crime occurs, the guilty are just let off with a fine a warning, etc.
* Why arent the politicians not doing anything about bringing these people to the book? Isnt their crime more henious than that committed by the woman author?
* Did any religion ever tell that men can grope women if they’re skimpily dressed?
* Shouldnt the politicians take up the cause of these women for the greater good of the society?
Of course, i’m asking for too much. Why? Because the criminals here are the very people whom the politicians hire to do their bidding during elections… without them, there would be no tampering, no false ballots, etc which helps these politicians win their ‘kursi’.
Anyways, point made, i ended the debate on a winning note 🙂
Just waiting to see how this entire episode unfolds… I just hope that all the men involved in the crime are brought to the book and Mumbai doesnt score a dubious hat-trick of having molestation cases on new years eve.