Click to play videoIt was India's new year shame: two women molested by over 60 men in the heart of Mumbai, a 15-year-old Swedish tourist groped in Kochi and girl students inside a Patna hostel not spared either.
From North to west to South, are women safe in our country? Are Indians sex starved? That was the question discussed on Face The Nation on CNN-IBN, hosted by Bhupendra Chaubey.
On the panel to debate the issue was ad guru Alyque Padamsee, along with Assistant Inspector-General with Punjab Police Amrit Brar and corporate MC and television anchor Geetika Ganjoo.
So how does this maddening behaviour reflect on our society? “It is absolutely disgraceful. When I was in college this kind of thing was unheard of. It was Bombay then, and Bombay had a certain civic sense. People queued up for buses. Today, due to the influx into Mumbai, the whole cultural ethos of good manners, good breeding has totally broken down. People coming in from across the country, particularly from the north, have the idea of treating women like property. Given that 48 per cent of marriages have wife beating, you can imagine at what level men treat women. I’m disgusted that the Mumbai police did not even file a suo motu case,” said Alyque Padamsee.
Molesters on the prowl
But the case in Mumbai is not in isolation. It seems to be happening across the country. Where is such behaviour coming from? Is it just a group of rowdy men getting carried away in what we could call mob frenzy?
“This is the complete failure of the police and judiciary because men seem to think they can get away with it. They need to come down very severely on such elements,” insisted Geetika Ganjoo.
On the part of the police, Commissioner D N Jadhav on Wednesday accused the media of making "mountain out of molehill" in the case, completely downplaying the issue and dismissing it as a "minor issue". So is the protection of women at all a priority for the police? “The police cannot be looked at in isolation. There were 60 people at the spot. What were the rest of them doing? The police cannot reach out to every single citizen. The police is supposed to respond to certain things but this is not terrorism we are talking about,” said Amrit Brar.
Who's to blame
But have women now lost the freedom to be out on their own and have a good time? “If you go back in history, a 1000 years ago, it was all marvelous and there was sexual emancipation. Now sex is a taboo like in the Victorian era. We don’t even allow sex education in schools. How many schools have co-education? When men do not have the cultural background about respecting women, when they are in a mob, after a few drinks, they get rowdy and they think women are an amusement. I think the people to blame are the politicians,” said Alyque Padamsee.
If there was a comparison to be made, we see moral police coming out in full force the moment a couple is holding or kissing and in the same country, there are cases of such molestation. Is there not a sense of hypocrisy in our attitude towards sex?
“The politicians allow goonda elements to do anything they like,” put in Alyque Padamsee.
But a lot of people, at the end of the day, put the blame squarely on the women and say they were dressed provocatively. “The world doesn’t belong to men. If they can wear what they want so can the women. I don’t believe this is so much a problem about sex-starvation, I think it’s more about lawlessness. Hang 10-15 of these men or cut them off and we’ll see how many of them have the guts to do it again,” said Geetika Ganjoo.
Taking off from her point, Alyque Padamsee said that it was disgraceful for any man to think any women is pray. “The rapes in this country happen to lots of women wearing saris or those covered from head to toe. There is basically no sex education to treat women equal to men,” he said.
Challenging Alyque Padamsee’s argument, Geetika Ganjoo said that men tend to target women in western attire because they were still not used to it. “But the point is the cops not coming down heavily on such men. Nab them and punish them,” she said.
So has the time now come for our law enforcement agencies to think of with exemplary punishments?
“The law enforcement agency is not the punishing authority. There are courts involved. Has the media said one positive thing about the police the whole day? It’s the courts that are responsible for punishment, not the police,” said Amrit Brar.
Concluding the debate, Alyque Padamsee said if people could be locked up for one to three days for drunk driving why could the police not take similar action for molestation?
SMS Poll
Are Indians sex starved?
Yes: 94 per cent
No: 6 per cent
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