Being in Europe, I have heard lots of criticisms on how how there’s more of a skin show than of respect. I haven’t seen boys or men drool on women or x-ray women on the street. Maybe its coz they see it all and have it all. So there is no unknown for them. Given this is the cost for safe travelling without fear even at wee hours in the night, then I’m happier to stay in Austria than in India.
People in my hometown have all civilized as ages passed by. The question is in what aspects… Posh houses, expensive jewelry and comfortable cars… but theirs thoughts are still uncivilized.. Coz even now, when they see a girl in a tight fitting dress, they tend to see through her. Even when they see a girl dressed in skirts above knees, their eyes fiddle their way up through the skirts.
These thoughts, this mental illness, this uncivilized animal like behavior is what results in rape which India is now almost unparalleled in. There must be something terribly wrong somewhere or else how can a country so rich in its cultures and respectful upbringing top the number of rapes in the world.
If a lot of what happens to women on the roads of India is to stop, the change will have to come first at home, from the family. Boys, as they grow up, will have to be taught that their sisters are not there to get the leftovers – the one piece of chocolate that couldn’t be eaten, the tricycle with a broken wheel that couldn’t be driven, the school with expensive fees that couldn’t be afforded. Boys have to be taught how to treat women with respect. Showing the aptitude of his physical strength or sexually assaulting a woman does not prove being a man. It is by taking up responsibilities and living up to it, treating every woman with respect and taking care of your family. One must always remember that one always has a mother if not a sister and wife, who is a woman and could be attacked by this mental irrationality.
A lot of how India will be in the future, how one half of the population will treat the other half, will depend on the lessons from parents and teachers. GPS and CCTVs, after all, cannot track what goes inside homes and the minds of men; they can only make our streets a bit safer. The violence to women within families is many times deadlier. And often it is this violence, the mentality and justification of it, that spirals away and gets carried out in cinema halls, moving auto-rickshaws and crowded malls. It is this that makes well-dressed men in sharp suits and shiny shoes traveling in planes and expensive trains say a woman is responsible for everything bad that happens to her. (sharing a thought of a fellow blogger)
If only half of the spirit of how we cheer India in the Cricket worldcup, could unite us in our voice against RAPE, against this injustice, make noise that we be heard….that a woman never has to go through it again. that we really live up to the best cultural upbringing that we boast of…let us take an oath that we will take part in this righteous war against rape in a hope that we pave path for our daughters to live not in fear.
