Never ending exploitation of 'weaker sex'

 Hi friends, 

          My blog page 'Light of the Lamp' has many travelogues. While travelogues are always pleasant to read and revisit, life is not just about traveling.  Unpleasant incidents around which are 'man-made ' that keeps happening repetitively not only breaks our hearts, but keeps pricking our conscience. 

             The horrible rape and murder of a doctor in Kolkata, rape of 4 year old girls in Maharashtra a couple of days after Kolkata horror are just a few. Along with the regular news of sexual harassments in newspapers and other media of which some of them are almost published like footnotes,  no one actually cares for those victims. The release of Hema commitee which exposed sexual harassments of women  artists and casting couch in Malayalam movie industry are just a tip of an ugly iceberg. Though these crimes are worse than first degree murders, punishments rarely match the depth of the atrocities.

                  Gang rapes and murders are actually the symptom of a sick society. The Indian society is grossly uneven and patriarchal when it comes on the rights and freedom of women!! Just some reactions in the social media and people around us are enough to prove that. I will just cite few instances. When an Indian lady travel influencer posted in instagram advising foreign women not to come to India as it is not safe, the fellow indians failed to recognize the problem. Instead, they trolled her, sent her death threats, verbally abused her to leave the country! This is the reaction of immature and insensitive people to a woman who is sending out a distress message. Another insensitive reaction from medical professor in that college is Kolkata is that 'she should not have got out that time in the night.' She did not get out to party at midnight after long and tiresome days of internship! The other reactions were ' these are only stray cases, rest of the places are ok' , ' countries like 'Sweden , South Africa have higher crimes on women than in India' . 

             The convicts of Nirbhaya case (2012) who were hanged to death expressed no regret in their crime. Instead , one of them was like 'why was she roaming with her boyfriend late at night that day'. Obviously,  hanging those culprits to death has not reduced the problem a wee bit. Most of these crimes committed don't become cases for the fear of dignity and to avoid long drawn embarrassing ordeal for the women. If men belong to powerful political parties, they are not even punished.

           I took a break from writing this piece and now want to go ahead to finish this. Of course, more harassment incidents have happened during this short break out of which very few have been reported with majority of them lying in the dark. Almost all of us women have faced some form of trouble in our lifetime even when we wore 'decent ' attires. Who can be blamed here? Girls or women only right? Why did she get out of the house? The public space belongs to boys and men, correct!! Iam a long time runner, but I avoid lonely lanes and bylanes, when it is dark or make sure some male runner or some runners are around. We keep dealing with stray dogs , but they are less dangerous than those men who justify their shameless actions. I have not talked about cyber bullying because I do not know much about that.

             While these crimes will not stop completely, there are methods to reduce them. A secure family environment along with the upbringing of boys plays a very important role in shaping the character of boys and men. Because of over population, poor infrastructure, societal pressure to perform,  the public has less options and time to release their pent up energy in a positive way that will reduce the tendency to commit crimes on women. Otherwise, we will keep seeing more Nirbhayas and Abhayas.

Deepa.