India for a Girl

    Time:- 12 a.m.

    Venue:- An empty street, India.

    Scene:- A young girl and a less-than-innocent looking stranger(a man), walking down the road. In what  way is the girl expected to act in such a situation? She has no idea who the person is, whether he’s drunk, depressed, pissed with the world or just some random guy with no bad intension.

Something really unfortunate and disturbing happened in Guwahati last week, which was nothing less than a catastrophe. This made me think, “What is India for a girl?” or “What a girl should expect from a stranger constantly staring at her?” These questions do have answers. And these answers will put India in the dark shadow of hypocrisy yet again. A certain part of an Indian will still say, “It was the girl’s mistake.. She shouldn’t have been there at that time”, while overlooking the 30 odd people who molested her. Why is that, people first talk about ‘the way she was dressed’ or ‘where she was’ or ‘what was the time’? Shouldn't it be her decision? The reason why all these things happen in India is the inexplicable rules of the Indian society. Just like legalising betting would reduce corruption in cricket, a more liberal society would reduce such activities.   

While this ain’t the first time happening in India, this is definitely not the last. This will keep on happening, today in Guwahati, tomorrow in Mangalore. Protesting on social networking sites or coming down on streets would never change the mentality of these people. Some random girl in some corner of the country goes to a pub in the night and some random regional parties in some other corner start protesting. Some believe that women should have equal rights, some believe there should be limits to that. I’m sure there are millions of other important things these “politicians” have, to worry about. Some deplorable thing just happened in the country, and a cricket match makes up for that. All Australians are racists because Indians were killed there. So, are all Indians rapists by that logic? Because tourists are raped or molested here. I’m sure people(including me) never read about this. We’re more interested in, “Who’s going to be the president” or “Who should play with Bhupati”.

 Indians are obsessed with the Indian culture. When questioned, their answers are ready, “We’re just following the path of our ancestors and the society rules they believed in”. India believes in a male dominant society. While it’s normal for a man to go to a pub at midnight, it’s a taboo for a girl to do so. A girl does something wrong, she’s criticized severely. A man does something ghoulish and no one will ever notice it.

Some statistics I found on the net:

 As far as gender-equality is considered, India is one of the worst countries in the world for women, ranking 129. Considering only Asia, there’s no country worse than India in this category except Afghanistan. More than 2,00,000 instances of crime against women are recorded every year in India. 

Dowry, discrimination, sexual harassement, torture, kidnapping.. How did these things find its way on this planet..? Pandora's Box ?