While scrolling through my Facebook timeline today, I came across some outrage regarding a Bombay High Court ruling that pressing a minor’s breasts was not a sexual offence if there was no disrobing involved (article link: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/sexual-assault-under-pocso-needs-direct-skin-to-skin-contact-bombay-hc/articleshow/80435122.cms).
As disgust, fear, and disbelief knotted inside me, I felt for an instance transported back to my days as a an adolescent and then a young woman in Mumbai, India. The newspapers were inevitably riddled with stories of rape and molestation involving minors, babies, animals, the elderly…there seemed to be no lines left uncrossed by the perverted sections of society. What’s worse, I lived that reality every day of my life – groping incidents, men following, staring, name calling on the streets, the railway station, the bridges, the bars, outside the airport in the wee hours…they were the norm rather than the exception.
Over time, I found ways to minimize such incidents. The patriotism I used to feel as a child was slowly taken over by a deep sense of mistrust and fear. I felt no kinship with a large chunk of my countrymen. And I wasn’t the only woman who felt that way. In 2013, I travelled to London and Paris on my own. There was a moment or two when I did not feel a 100% safe. But other than that, I felt like I was in paradise. I could walk alone in the night and not feel like there was a threat in the air. I didn’t feel the need to jump at shadows, look over my shoulder or hold my handbag close to my chest. Most people barely noticed me and there was no place frequented only by men (which is the case with many shady corners in India after dark).
I was depressed when I returned home. I knew now that the reality I lived was not the reality women had to face all over the world. Perhaps there were places where it was worse. That did not justify the state of affairs in my own country. I didn’t want to hear “it’s not as bad as the Arab countries.” I didn’t want to hear “no country is perfect”. And I most definitely did not want to hear that women had to be careful. Why? Weren’t we a civilized society where women no longer needed anyone’s “protection”? For the sake of my own sanity, I stopped reading the newspapers. I stopped getting into debates I couldn’t win. I stopped reacting to comments by sexist trolls on countless online forums. I simply began to plan my escape.
There was a time when not a single day went by when I didn’t feel smothered by the indignities that women in India have to suffer. And what is their reward for somehow surviving all the abuse and the general denial (from both men and women) and the apathy of the courts? Their reward is a lifetime of servitude under the guise of marriage.
We Indians love to crow about the fact that we take care of our elderly, unlike the “west”. Well, how many married couples do you know who live with the wife’s parents? I don’t know of a single one. It is a part of the esteemed “Indian culture” for women to move into their husband’s parents’ home after marriage. And then they must serve not only their husbands but also their in-laws and at times, even brothers in law. So if you want to avoid spending your old age alone, you better give birth to a son. Alas, nature does not work that way. And it can happen that you keep producing daughter after daughter. And daughters must be married off, the expenses of which you must bear. And daughters cannot take care of you when you are old and unwell. Little wonder then that India has one of the highest female foeticide incidents in the world.
Anyone who doesn’t realize how closely culture and social evils are linked needs to have a reality check. My rant could go on and on but I know there will be those who will find ways to justify and twist every single point I make. One thing is for sure – change is slow and hard. And I don’t see it happening as long as we keep conforming to a societal model where a woman’s parents are somehow less important, where being older somehow entitles you to blind respect and obedience (case in point: after marriage, many women cannot even lift a finger without the approval of their mothers in law), where the suppression of women is openly portrayed in mass media and turned into entertainment, and where a Baghban will touch countless emotional chords but one post like this will fire up all the so-called “proud Indians” to speak up against this anti-national, west-worshipping spawn of the English devil.
Of course, I no longer feel these emotions on a daily basis. But now and then, I still fear for the little girls in India. I hope they wake up to a different reality tomorrow.
