Opinion Bengaluru mass molestation: A toxic culture, hell bent on casting young women as the root of problem

Following the 2012 Delhi gangrape, India had seen protests across the country demanding action by the government.

And youngsters were almost like Westerners. They tried to copy the Westerners, not only in their mindset but even in their dressing. So some disturbance, some girls are harassed… these kind of things do happen. – G Parameswara

At a textual level, the passive form of speech used by Karnataka Home Minister G Parameswara, is fascinating and not unlike so many politicians, law enforcing officials and even news reporters. The aggressors who harassed the young women not only remain anonymous in the crowd, but also their agency is simply rendered absent from the statements reporting the molestation. If nobody is responsible, how do we treat violence against women as a public safety problem?

It’s understood. We are supposed to know that harassment just “happens” because of the “western ways” of the girls, as naturally as we know what happens to food left uncovered on the table – except that food cannot cover itself but girls can. It wasn’t primarily a failure of the law and order of the city (though they may “see if there are any alternatives for these kind of events”), and it certainly wasn’t because of each and every individual hooligan who partied and partook in the grand molestation revelry at New Year’s Eve on Bengaluru’s MG Road.

WATCH VIDEO | Shocking Remark By Samajwadi Party Leader Abu Azmi’s On Bengaluru Mass Molestation

Partying late night in half attire, blindly following western culture, has never been our culture. Ladies hailing from well-to-do families, be it from Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan or UP, they come out in decent attire and mostly with their family members. – Abu Azmi

By the time Parameswara’s comment sunk in, Abu Azmi from Samajwadi Party had to jump in to score some easy publicity. So he offered a revulsing, trite revision of the code of conduct for decent women — lest anyone forgot. Let’s bash some victim-morality to bond with some regressive strains. Let’s pit “Western culture” and “loose women” against everything conservative masculinity within the vote bank can’t come to terms with.

The foundation of a culture in which eve-teasing, molestation and rape thrive — one that we are witnessing in India – heavily depends on victim blaming.

The misogynistic backlash against women’s ascent and movement in public places states that young women ask for it by passing in front of men’s eyes, crossing the Lakshman Rekha instead of being in their culturally ordained four-walled spaces, guarded by male members of the family. The very act of such a transgression can make a Ravan out of an otherwise full-time Ram.

The foundation of a culture in which eve-teasing, molestation and rape thrive — one that we are witnessing in India – heavily depends on victim blaming. The oft underlined tilt of the story is that it’s not the victims that should receive empathy or sympathy, but the rapists, the molesters, the hooligans because of course, “they cannot help it”. They were drunk, they saw young women in “revealing”, “western” clothes, what could they have done? In a twisted vindication of perverse masculinity, it is gloriously macho to be weak like that.

Women should “keep a respectful distance” instead of rubbing shoulders in selfies with men and not trouble “others” by wearing jeans but it is perfectly alright for the “others” to publicly expose genitals to urinate in any corner or at any wall in this country.

So when a rapist of Jyoti Singh Pandey says that “a girl is far more responsible for rape than a boy,” – he does not speak a different language from what several leaders speak in the aftermath of any high-profiled event of violence against women.

Women should “keep a respectful distance” instead of rubbing shoulders in selfies with men and not trouble “others” by wearing jeans but it is perfectly alright for the “others” to publicly expose genitals to urinate in any corner or at any wall in this country. I suppose precisely because that is culturally “acceptable” – a normal – for opining guardians of culture like K J Yesudas ji. When so called revered people make statements such as “Women’s beauty lies in their modesty. They should not try to become like men. They should not force others to do unnecessary things by wearing jeans, which would give them magnetism”, they are showing what, in their toxic minds, men are licensed to get away with, scot-free. Within this idea, women must either surrender their freedom or their consent to be manhandled, groped and sexually assaulted. They couldn’t possibly have both – they shouldn’t try to be like men that way.

It is sad that apart from the horrific killing in the Istanbul club, a mass molestation incident closer to home, in India’s silicon valley city no less, marred the beginning of 2017. Actually, not sad, it is downright shameful that on one very crucial front that would signal’s India’s social progress, nothing has changed.