[Note: I was trying to use the “embed video” feature now offered by IBN-CNN in India, but it was taking way too long to load. So here’s a link.]
“This is making the South Asian women’s circles headlines,” advises an anonymous tipster. Thanks for alerting us to the extremely ugly incident that took place during New Year’s Eve at the Gateway of India in Mumbai, where the crowd gathered in the same way it does in Times Square in New York City or similar plazas worldwide. Only here, there was an attack on a young couple in the middle of the crowd in which a mob of about 60 men molested the young woman for ten minutes with no one coming to her and her friend’s aid. A photographer for Mid-Day, Shadab Khan, witnessed it all:
On New YearÂ’s Eve, I was supposed to click pictures of revellers at the Gateway of India, but what I witnessed instead has left me shaken.
A young woman was groped by some 60 perverts in plain public view, while her male friend, who tried to protect her, was pushed aside violently.
The 10 harrowing minutes the helpless woman cried for help as the perverts abused her, shook my faith in the city I have lived in all my life. I thought such things happened only in Delhi. I was clearly wrong.
I was at the place at 11.35 pm with my camera, taking pictures that captured the mood of the New Year celebrations. I was atop the temporary watchtowers erected by the cops.
After a few minutes, as the crowd grew larger, I could vaguely make out a youth aged around 25, surrounded by a mob of around 60 to 70 people.
The perverts tore off her dress in the middle of the teeming crowd When I zoomed in, I saw the girl of about the same age being groped by the crowd.
The girl was screaming for help but her voice was drowned in the commotion. Her companion tried to shield her but found himself helpless.
The presence of 50-odd policemen at the site did not deter them. Even as she cried pitifully, I saw them pull at her dress, leaving it torn from below the waist.
In the middle of this pushing and shoving, the girl fell down. The wild men, taking advantage of her, pounced on her with even more venom. After an agonising 10 minutes, the two managed to extricate themselves from the crowd and leave the venue.
Numerous Indian outlets have now picked up the story. I’m waiting for Mumbai’s strong female bloggers like Uma and Sonia to contribute their thoughts; it seems they are still on vacation. Amit Varma has an item on the incident, and picks up on some idiotic interpretations being distilled by so-called experts:
The Times of India brings us some bizarre reactions on the incident. First, Dr Mahinder Watsa, “an expert in sexual medicine,” says:
This is a rage attitude of devil-may-care.And then, Dr Harish Shetty brings capitalism into it:
[T]here is this global selling of ecstasy pushed forward by a market-driven economy, and so, the line of demarcation between fun and ecstasy is getting blurred. Hence, we find some youngsters indulging in such behaviour.
As disgusting as incidents like this one are, it’s just as repulsive when the (men in the) so-called “responsible media” deploy horseshit such as this from (male) so-called experts to explain away actions that are just plain violent, ignorant, criminal and wrong. How is there ever going to be any progress?
I don’t agree with you on the first point you make. You’ve provided the answer yourself – culture can be dfined as the way of life in a land. I do not think molesting a girl in herds can be termed as part of the cultural fabric of India. What your parents instill in you cannot be termed to be the culture of the land – unless it is the same thing that a majority of the parents in the country instill in their children. For every five such individuals, you would find a hundred who are decent citizens, so I’d hardly term this behaviour part of culture. As for the second point, I’ll give it to you. If the term Indian culture was used for want of a better highest common factor, I guess it doesn’t matter that Indian culture is more of an agglomeration of smaller cultures rather than a widespread phenomenon. My only point was that one shouldn’t be blaming the culture (or sub-cultures)- it’s not the culture which says it’s OK – it’s the inability of people to think for themselves which does so. Blaming the culture for what they do is almost like blaming religion for all the intolerance in the world now.
But don’t you see a difference between an creepy asshole groping a woman on a train and a group of 70 men ripping off a woman’s dress in a public square?
It is probably not as different as it appears. If the trains are really crowded – here I am thinking about my six years of hour-long daily commutes to Howrah, Sealdah and Churchgate at peak hours – after getting cramped into an incredibly small space, one can lose his sense of individual identity quite easily and become a part of a commuter-mob, especially if he is a daily commuter.
hairy_d, I really feel the pain and hope expressed in comments #9 and #140. I too fear that the rising disparity between different segments of the population will lead to violent upheaval.
I have been to India lately…. I also grew up in India.
I did not say that molesting girls in herds is part of indian culture. However, it is not uncommon to find eye-witnesses to this scenario – a woman is surrounded by many guys, often in broad daylight, and heckled. Usually, even if she is not touched, she feels a lot of fear and feels physically threatened. I can see how this can easily escalate to violence and molestation if the group of guys is drunk and the woman is from a different class, allowing the men involved to not think of her as a person.
It is really sad to see this happen in Bombay – I always used to tell everyone that Bombay is the best place in India in terms of how women are treated in public spaces.
Ever since I developed breasts, I have faced this kind of lascivious behaviour from men in buses and trains and parks. If I had to put a number to it, I would estimate that about 70% of the times I stepped out of home/campus without a man next to me, at least one guy tried to physically touch me inappropriately. This is inspite of the fact that I always dressed conservatively in a salwar kameez.
Next time you go to India try this experiment – go to a small time place (not one of the posh new shopping malls) and count how many women walk without hunching their soldiers – you will find that there are very few (I acknowledge that there are exceptions in bombay and bangalore). Why do you think this is? I know why I walked like that for many years – It was because random men would stare more and would “eve-tease” me more if I walked with my shoulders spread out – I internalized at a young age that you have to be apologetic/embarassed about showing your breasts.
If a majority of women get these messages at a young age and act accordingly – would you say that this is a cultural matter?
The way I see it is that we have to acknowledge that this is our problem, before we can solve it. I find it hard to say this, but it is true – Indian culture is fucked up and I for one definitely need to figure out what if anything I want to do about changing it.
There is and has been something seriously wrong with the relationship between the sexes in India. It is not the problem of “the people whose parents did not teach them to respect women”. Do you really think there aren’t guys who go out and harass women on the streets for fun, and whose parents would have taught them that such behaviour is not okay. Guys learn a lot from their friends at school – a lot that is not taught at home. Wouldn’t you call this influence by school friends a cultural influence?
Also, I don’t think that this is a mainly law-and-order issue. I agree that if everyone who harassed a women in public was punished severely, things would change, that that would be an effective detterant.
However, I am arguing that the lack of a social deterrant really exacerbates this problem.
After looking at the video real close, i fail to spot any women in the crowd shots. That couple was very brave to go out and celebrate New Year in a place like that. Next year, thousands of women should flood the place armed with dhakans. Seriously.
Sometimes good does happen in Bombay. The NY subway savior reminds me of a similar incident – where a high school girl jumped onto the tracks to save a fallen baby.
All the post here talk a lot about law and order but none of the women posting above who could identify their attacker took it with the coppers and filed a complanint or registered an FIR, just like the couple at gateway. You can blame the cops all you want but unless the victim takes upon themself to fight it legally the perpetrators will be walk free
JOAT,
Devil’s Advocate time.
No, you’re not Indian. You’re an American who happens to be of Indian ethnicity. Therefore, unless these incidents are also a major problem amongst the Indian community in the US, it’s not actually “your own community” which this thread is discussing. Unless you regard yourself as a literal extension of a society and country located thousands of miles away.
Similarly:
There’s very little “we” can do about it, unless you actually go back to India in order to take some more aggressive action as some commenters here have suggested, or you try to initiate change in your own localised way through personal contacts back in India (friends/family/etc), or you consider that hopefully some of the offending parties currently based in India may stumble across this thread on SM and possibly reconsider their attitudes.
Kurma,
Possibly my mistake — I’d just got the impression from your post that your main point focused on using the threat of “blacklisting” to deter possible offenders, rather than the knock-on cultural ramifications of removing the safety net of the arranged marriage system entirely.
Brilliant post by you in #90, by the way — I agree with it 100%.
Er, except for the following:
Excuse me, mang — getting a leggy 6-foot supermodel-neurosurgeon ain’t that difficult if you got game 😉
This is particularly ironic, because if want a ‘social deterant’ your best chance in India is to call up the Shiv Sena or one of those type of Hindu fundamentalist goons. I’m not joking they will come out and kick your ass without trial. In fact, I think crazy old fascist/nazi/worse than Osama and Saddm combined Hitler Hindus Gujarat has a lot of those mafiasos running around that might have made it safer than some other states.
One more thing, I know this is not gonna go over well, but compare these two statements: 1. I wouldn’t say its a generalizaton to say many Muslims are closeted terrorist ready to bomb you. 2. There’s a problem of terrorism within the Muslim community.
I agree 100% that this does not occur in other countries (except in East Asia as I mentioned) and that it can’t be written off as isolated incident. When people start coming out with #1 thats when folks get reactionary. Just saying.
Yay another one. I wonder if you had noticed, but thousands of North Indians led the protests to get jusitce for Jessica Lal. I’m sure one or two evil North Indian male boogeymen also participated in the activism. Do you ever see folks talk about “whats wrong with lower caste people” when of theirs is involved in something bad? Can we just take any old evil person and make him an “excellent symbol” of whatever we want?
I agree. I’m certainly not against raising awareness but, like I said before, I don’t agree with Anangbhai that it’s a solution to the problem.
Here’s an interesting contrast to this story, one that renews my faith in humanity.
Jai you make it seem like being American and being Indian is mutually exclusive. This is an argument on semantics. The truth of the matter is I’m a first generation Indian, despite being extremely American (whateverthehell that is) I consider myself Indian in my outlook and how I live my daily life. I have family there, my mother lives there, I feel connected to it. Not in some shallow pretentious going on vacation kind of way but it’s part of who I am every single day. I can give my identity fancy names like Asian American or Indian American but the truth of the matter is I’m American and I’m Indian and I choose to be both 🙂
This has been my favorite story all week. What a heartwarming way to start a new year. It’s wonderful. But don’t be so cynical DJP; stories of good human beings are around us all the time. Unfortunately we choose to concentrate on the negative ones because they affect our senses more.
That would have been true a hundred years ago when life spans were short, overseas journeys long and onerous, and international communications non-existent or horrendously expensive. In those days emigration — shit, any travel — tended to be permanent. All or nothing.
But early 21st century globalization permits multiple identities, indeed encourages and for some people even demands it. This all or nothing approach is deeply antiquated and doesn’t reflect today’s reality. So what if JOAT doesn’t get on a plane and go live in Mumbai and become an activist. Maybe she talks to people there every day? Maybe she has financial investments there? Maybe she is close to people here who are doing activism there? Maybe she has cousins there who read SM and are stimulated, encouraged, depressed or annoyed by this conversation among diasporic folk? Come on man, it’s because the world is all mixed up now that we’re even having this conversation, that this space even exists.
JOAT,
Hmmm, no, that’s not what I meant. There’s a difference between having an Indian ethnicity and Indian nationality. Unless you have “dual citizenship”.
Also, it depends on whether you view yourself as Indian (in all senses of the term) first and foremost, and regard the diaspora as being extensions of the subcontinent itself. I don’t see it that way. In fact, that kind of attitude has created a whole bunch of problems within certain quarters of the desi population in Britain from a certain religious background — basically, some of the really negative attitudes and customs from “over there” end up being imported “over here”, exacerbated by global communications and ease of modern international travel. On a secondary level, it’s also contributed to the perpetuation of some nasty “traditional” attitudes amongst older-generation folk addicted to Indian satellite channels — especially if they have relatively little contact with the rest of the mainstream British population (which can occur frequently amongst some desi-dominated locations in the UK) — and people basically start pretending that they’re still living thousands of miles away. Instead of loosening those ties (not necessarily cutting them completely) and adapting more healthily to their environment in the Western hemisphere. Recent technological developments basically give them the excuse and the opportunity not to have to do that.
Maybe it’s a different matter in America (especially considering the far larger proportion of “recent arrivals” compared to Britain), but given the state of play in the UK over the past 35-40 years, you’ll forgive me if I no longer view my own connections with whatever goes on in India as being as strong as I used to.
But, if you regard the following as applicable to you:
…..then that’s of course entirely up to you 🙂
In any case, attempting to constructively deal with this endemic problem (back to the main topic) is definitely a noble aim, if one really can make any difference to it, as I mentioned in my previous post.
Siddhartha,
Relax man, I’m not having a go at JOAT. Hopefully I’m sufficiently good friends with her for her to understand the manner in which I’m saying all this to her 😉
Hopefully.
But early 21st century globalization permits multiple identities, indeed encourages and for some people even demands it. This all or nothing approach is deeply antiquated and doesn’t reflect today’s reality.
Very good point. And once you accept that reality, much of the dissonance about “fitting in” disappears.
Jai you are talking about resistence to assimilation which is not an issue exclusive to folks from the Indian subcontinent. American is such a melting pot of so many different cultures from all over the world of people that have come here 50 years ago, 5 years ago and 5 months ago and the rate of assimilation I’ve learnt has little to do with how long someone has lived outside of where they feel tied to.
Assimilation is not a necessicity (in terms of living somewhere) to be part of any larger group of people. The reason enclaves of Indians not just in UK but even here in the United States have not felt the need to assimilate/mingle outside the culture is simply because there is enough room available for them to maintain their frozen identity.
This is a hairy topic and may not be the right direction to take “how connected to India are you” discussions. The connection is of the heart despite how it might look on paper. And no two people are alike. As for the thing about the negative aspects from over “there”…that’s your perception of what you deem negative. Connotations of negativity or positivity to any cultural aspect are incredibly ambiguous.
This is a hairy topic too and I don’t want to give people yet another opportunity for Muslim-bashing, but I was referring to the fact that many British Pakistanis regard themselves as literal extensions of Pakistan — ie, their first loyalty and points of reference regarding identity is Pakistan, not the UK — and some of them feel excessively detached from British society because of this. So in the most extreme cases you have stuff like forced marriages, domestic violence, honour-killings, excessive conservatism, disgust towards mainstream British society, no desire or need to adopt some of the more moderate liberal ideas of Western culture, etc etc, especially if they keep taking extended trips back to Pakistan which in some cases has included little visits across the western border. The last point in particular has resulted in some, shall we say, fairly explosive consequences.
There are some problems within British Indian society too (sometimes overlapping with the above, although not necessarily on the same scale) but it’s far too off-topic, and in any case it’s already been discussed many times on SM before. Although I doubt you’d agree with the average Indian auntie becoming addicted to Saas-Bahu serials and deciding that such shows provide good role models with regards how one should treat one’s own daughters-in-law as per “traditional Indian culture” and, indeed, what kind of behaviour should be expected from the average UK-born young Indian woman 😉
Sigh, I don’t get this blog sometimes. Half of the posts on this discussion are: “All X’s do Y”. And then 5 posts later, “Well, but I mean, most of the X’s I know don’t do Y, but they’re not real X’s, and anyway everyone knows all the REAL X’s do Y. You must not care about Y!”
All Indian men are perverts, all urban Indians don’t care about morals, all Northern Indians are sexually repressed fundamentalists, etc, etc, etc…
What’s up with the binary thought? It starts way more argument on topics that should be trivial than actual discussion of the issue at hand.
LaughingBudhini:
Having interacted with a lot of girls in school, I can vouch that though this appears pretty bizarre…it is true. Most of my friends (at some point or other) have complained that they faced the exact same situation growing up in India. Believe me, wearing a salwar kameez in place of a mini-skirt doesn’t make any difference. You are sure to come across this kind of behavior in every Indian city (be it North or South).
I was brought up with the advice that, go only to places where
And never go to a place where there’s no central authority to take responsibility.
This applied to men and women alike. Which is why I avoid random gatherings like the plague. You never know what could happen there.
Just imagine: How would SM be without “SM Intern”?
M. Nam
Another piece of advice when I was growing up –
The bigger the crowd at the gathering you’re going to, the larger your posse. If you’re going to a temple festivity where there are 200 people, go at least with a group of 10. If you are going to a wedding where there are a 1000 people, go with a bus of 50 people. If you are going to a political rally of 5000, go in a truck with 100 people.
It does not matter if you’re 6’5″ with a black belt in karate.
M. Nam
Jai you are talking about resistence to assimilation which is not an issue exclusive to folks from the Indian subcontinent. American is such a melting pot of so many different cultures from all over the world of people that have come here 50 years ago, 5 years ago and 5 months ago and the rate of assimilation I’ve learnt has little to do with how long someone has lived outside of where they feel tied to.
JOAT, this is sooo true. I have relatives that have been in the US for almost twenty years and they don’t speak English. They are also still hesitant to call la policia about anything and so wind up being targeted by criminals because of fear of victimization by the police.
My biggest assimilation pet peeve is my male relatives who are in their 30’s and 40’s and still live at home (rent free)because mama lets them and makes excuses for them. I know this is the practice in South and Central America but I have little patience for all the women complaining about cleaning up after these guys and their lack of money, when it’s a choice one makes to allow them to take advantage. This is probably where some of the lack of respect for women starts, us putting up with crap and not fighting back. Not that I’m blaming the victim but when we raise children we need to start the respect for boundaries and being responsible early on.
Yes, those random men happen to all have one thing in common. They’re heterosexual. One of the many things I’m confused about is the term “eve-teasing,” the range it covers seems much too broad. I think a bifurcation needs to take place: on one hand you have 1. touching/verbal taunts/excessive staring 2. general off-the-shelf staring/glances at anything interesing, attractive or out of the ordinary. This could include excessive cleavage or a polar bear riding a bicycle.
It depends on the extent of the “showing” that you had in mind, but a certain level of staring will occur! Do I condone the crude and unchecked behavior of mobs and individual men that physically or verbally assault or threaten women? No. I do not.
But to walk around with breasts pointed forward like two Nazi’s heiling Hitler and not expect any stares is I think a bit unreasonable.
We are way past the Neanderthall stage. I realize men are fascinated by breasts but to imply that somehow women who don’t hunch and hide their breasts (which I was forced to do by my own family in India when I was young) should automatically be subject to uncouth behavior is ridiculous. What happened to demanding people behave civilized in a civilized society? Assuming these same men don’t stare at their mothers, daughters, sisters breasts as well!! How the hell are the breasts of a woman not related to you not subject to the same respect? And the same can be said of all the other poor behavior including groping/touching etc. If they don’t behave that way with their sisters or daughters why the hell is it OK for them to behave that way with someone else? Lack of consequences IMO!!! And statements like yours that put the blame on the victim and continue to give the assholes reasons to be so. WTF!
but you miss out on so much life
If what you call uncouth behavior is in category 1, then I 100% agree with you. If what you call uncouth behavior is category 2, that’s simply not being realistic.
Jane is there anything in any post that has not connected to you personally, from managing a brand at LÂ’oreal, to managing their investment portfolio, to living in the apartment of a murder victim, to seeing all of the hindi film actresses from less than two feet away, to being in a monsoon weddingisque situation, to walking hunched to hide your anatomy, to your uncle owning a private club. The list is endless and your life seems worthy of a novel.
somebody is taking good notes!
wonder, nastiness/pointlessness of your comment apart (do you doubt any of what she has said?), I’d like to state my belief that not just Jane’s but everyone’s life can be worthy of a novel. In a world as complex as ours, it is inevitable that there are a few bizarre coincidences in life that work that way. Some people take note of them, think about them, learn from them, remember and recount them. These people, not coincidentally, often also have a hand in shaping the narrative. Others go through their lives without examining the world and call their lives “boring”.
sorry, there should not have been the words “that work that way” in my last comment.
Including specific personal stories in her comments is what makes her posts interesting. Most people have interesting lives but are not brave enough to share them with the world. Give her credit not scorn for doing that.
HMF, of course I am not saying that no one should look at my breasts when I am wearing a huge cleavage showing dress.
Do you think that all the women in the US who wear t-shirts and do not hunch are, to quote you, “walking around with breasts pointed forward like two Nazi’s heiling Hitler”?
By reading your statement, one could get the impression that what I am talking about is an abnormal situation.
NO – this happens to a large majority of Indian women.
By staring, I, of course, do not mean what one might experience in a bar in LA when dressed sexily – I did not realize that I had to make this more explicit.
I do not understand where you are coming from – I thought I had carefully mentioned in my post that I faced all this even though I was dressed conservatively by Indian standards. WTF is the meaning of “walking around with breasts pointed forward like two Nazi’s heiling Hitler”?
Okay, HMF, this is the tactic you are employing.
By taking an extreme case (you use “This could include excessive cleavage or a polar bear riding a bicycle.”), you are implying, even though you are not explicitly stating it, that I am talking about this type of staring, hence allowing yourself and others to not have to deal with the fact that this wretchedness is a huge part of the life of an Indian woman.
JOAT, thanks for saying that you too have experienced this hunching of the shoulders thing.
That deeply vulgar and distasteful line really doesn’t help the credibility of your argument. Please keep it respectful. Thank you.
If you really want to get technical about it, it depends on the tightness of the shirt, and amount of protrusion in the thoracic region of the spine.
Sorry, the last statement was not a reference to your particular situation. That wasn’t clear. My general point however is, category 2 stares are bound to occur even if they are not intended or expected.
please see comment #183 which addresses your general point
It was really this statement of yours that triggered my initial post :
“It was because random men would stare more and would “eve-tease” me more if I walked with my shoulders spread out”
And it was more my confusion/frustration at the term “eve-tease” being used to encompass a wide range of behavior. Everything else you state in the post I have no issue/contention with.
What’s the point of this debate? @HMF: It didn’t start with stares – it started with 60 people trying to molest a woman in full view of the public. And they would probably gone farther if the two poor souls hadn’t managed to extricate themselves. I don’t see any posts made by any of the women here that relate to stares – the comments were about being groped when wearing a salwar kameez and walking to work/school/tuitions. To reiterate – why do you assume they were talking about “general off-the-shelf” stares when this is what was written: “I would estimate that about 70% of the times I stepped out of home/campus without a man next to me, at least one guy tried to physically touch me inappropriately. This is inspite of the fact that I always dressed conservatively in a salwar kameez” While adding a hundred and eighty seven comments on SM is probably not going to achieve much, let the larger problem get resolved before we start talking about women overreacting.
I didn’t. All I’m saying is I’m somewhat baffled by the term eve-teasing’s inclusion of category-2 (at least as far as I understand it) And there have been a myriad of posts detailing on whether the problem exists, how much it exists, what needs to happen to solve it, whether it’s in India alone, whether it’s a widespread problem, there’s really nothing much more I could add, personally.
Since personal anecdotes are welcome, I’ll share one. In a Bangalore club, I approached 4 women, with another horrible vulgar, distasteful remark:
“Hi”
Within 3 seconds the establishment staff was all over it, asking me, “Who are you, do you know her? is she your friend?” I was pretty much pushed out of there. Imagine what would’ve happened if I said “What’s up?”
Sounds like there’s some confusion here. Would it be removed if it were clarified that “if I walked with my shoulders spread out ” = “if I walked normally without hunching” ? Or, at least, that is how I read it.
Heh,heh. I can guess what would have happened.
That sucks! Women get harassed and guys are always suspected of having ulterior motives, all because of some perverts. But try to teach that perv a lesson and it might become a class/caste war (there is such a threat though it hasn’t been in this one). Got to handle every situation delicately till there is better trust in the society.
I think it is the fear that is being pushed into us. Because I live away from home, my mother is forever telling me to be wary of all guys (and questions all of my guy friends and wonders if they are “decent”). It’s the same story even when I’m visiting India–don’t associate with any guys you don’t know, etc.
Some people forget to keep it in perspective and that there are nice guys around.
Heh. These “protector dudes”–as I used to call them in my youth–have been around for quite a while now. In the converation about sexual harassment over there, there’s certainly an element of India coming to terms with modern courting rituals.
If you check out the Blank Noise Project site, some of the examples of eve-teasing (scroll all the way down, right side, “eve-teaser unwanted”) are…er…ambiguous, to say the least. Like check out this dude, or this poor Sap. The omnipresent issues of caste and colour pop up in the comments too.
rmeinds be of a skit i once say that went something like this: if you wasnt to avoid charges of sexual harrassment, all you have to do is follow these 3 simple rules…
Of course, everything I just wrote has virtually nothing to do with the incident being discussed.
Wonder I’m going to simply assume you don’t mean any malice because I haven’t written anything extraordinary worthy of malice. Remember I’m not some virtual Anonymous so there is zero room for me to lie about anything. I don’t think there is anything interesting in my life worthy of a novel though I know plenty of people who lead lives worthy of a Bollywood film. Those lives I’d like to write a novel about.
HMF regarding all this staring bit at breasts…gentlemen know how to look discreetly. Not asking to look IS unreasonable but there are far more respectable ways of admiring. Gawking threateningly is worthy of a kick in the teeth.
Reminds me of an incident at a Indian Take Away in Sydney where two drunk Irish backpackers took a fork and run it up the legs of some Asian female in a mini-skirt, who had walked in to order something, and said you are tasty. He got away with it coz point # 1 & 3 were at work.
Imagine some Indian guy doing that.
I haven’t read all the ~200 comments above mine, and so I doubt anyone will actually end up reading mine. Here are my thoughts on the shocking incident.
I disagree that psycho/sociological analyses of such incidents are irrelevant or are useless. Proper analyses would help getting at the root of the problem and are likely to help find ways to deal with or prevent them. Whether or not the experts quoted are talking sense is a different matter.
I agree completely with the commenters saying that the Indian society is sexually repressed. In fact I think this is the main cause of such incidents.
a) In other regions of the world, whether it is Europe, the US and North America, Latin America, Australia or even Africa, kids start exploring their sexuality from around the age of 14-16 by actually having sex. All of us know that during the late teens and early-20s one’s sexual hormones are at high levels. But we suppress them and the by the time the average Indian male has sex, he is in his mid-20s or early-30s, and it is often to a girl that his parents have chosen for him, not necessarily to someone he is attracted to. [Incidentally I am ignoring female sexuality here as it is accepted all over the world, and has biological/evolutionary explanations, that men are more “into” sex than women.]
b)Growing up in India, almost all my male peers and even friends have groped women in public transport. I don’t believe it is a socio-economic class thing… that is the only opportunity kids with high hormones have of letting them out. Everybody seemed to indulge in it and even boast about it during boy-talk sessions.
c) India has been sexually repressed for centuries but earlier this wasn’t such a big problem, ironically because of social changes which are otherwise excellent changes: (i) women weren’t socially forward and were not seen on their own outside in crowded public transports, etc; thankfully that has changed now. (ii) the attire of women was extremely conservative; again the change is good. (iii) men didn’t have access to women as friends, colleagues etc; the changes are excellent. (iv) alcohol consumption (and not being able to keep one’s drink) and the partying culture used to be limited to few sections of society; the changes are not bad. (v) rapid westernization; again I am certainly not one of the anti-western culture bigots. (vi) growing economic prowess (and hence independence) of the Indian youth; something that is excellent.
d) I think in many ways the society is moving ahead, but in many other ways it is stagnant. Again, not all sections of society are moving ahead. And this disbalance is the cause of such incidents, where romantic couples are harrassed, probably by the same people who’d grope women in crowds.
Notes: A. There are huge generalizations above, but then when one is talking about a mob of 60 people, one necessarily HAS TO generalize. B. I am gay, so I can safely assure people that groping women, I have never indulged in public transports. As for groping men, I was safely outside India before I got that desparate; but yes, I think that is not unheard of in crowded Indian public transport either.
Kurma:
My god man, I think you’ve hit the nail upon the head. The first phrasing might have the connotation of the earlier comment regarding Germany’s third reich, the second phrasing speaks to a more innocuous, leveled approach.
Been there. Done that. Got the harrassement.
Agreed. Agreed. Agreed.
India has a real problem with this and denying it or saying it happens in other countries too will not solve it. Yeah, it happens elsewhere, to a lesser degree. So now what can we do about it happening left, right and center in India?
You have to realize that in a culture where most men approach women who are not known to them approach them with less than respectable intentions, it will be sometimes assumed that any unknown man who approaches them has the same. For the most part India has not distinguished between a casual, respectful approach and a lecherous one, due to the fact that a casual, respectful approach is rare. I would suggest that you reserve your “hi’s” and “what’s up’s” for cultures in which these casual, respectful approaches are the norm.