How much is too much? Sexual violence against women goes
unabated. The recent Mumbai rape of a photo journalist, gang-rape of a ladyconstable at the hands of dacoits in Jharkhand are stark reminders that nothing
has changed since the Nirbhaya’s case in Delhi. And rape is not the only kind
of sexual violence that women face in our country. Another growing menace is
acid attacks. The BBC documentary below is nerve-racking as it shows the acid
attack victims and their unimaginable sufferings. Most of such attacks have happened against young women who refuse the
advances of unsolicited males.
Why had India seen a spurt in cases of sexual violence in
India? What’s behind this growing brutality? Is there anything wrong with the men
and boys in our country? There is everything wrong in
the way they are brought-up in our society. We seldom teach our sons to be
respectful of girls and women. And most of them see how mothers and sisters are
treated in the household. There is scant respect for them and they are subject
to humiliation, many a times physical violence and treated as second-class citizens
in the same household. These boys grow-up and do the same to their girlfriends
and wives.
In an average Indian household that has a son and a daughter;
differential treatments are meted to both of them. Although it is the men who institutionalize these differential treatments at home, surprisingly many a times
such treatments are meted out by the women themselves. A friend of mine
narrated to me of an incident that he witnessed while travelling in a train. A
family of four - husband, wife and their two kids (one son and one daughter),
almost of the same age, were his co-passengers. The mother was after the son to
make him eat his lunch while the boy did his tantrums. She begged her son to
eat, affectionately fed him and it took a long time for her to make her son
eat. All this while, the daughter quietly sat in a corner of a berth, finished
her meals on her own and then kept reading a book. After the lunch was over,
the lady made her son to lay on one of the berths, put him to sleep and then
wrapped a blanked on him to keep him warm. After the mother went off to sleep,
the daughter got up and wrapped a blanket around her mother and then quietly
retired in her berth. This is the reality of how daughters are treated in most Indian households, although outliers are there but in extreme minority.
Till we teach our sons how to treat women, to respect women, our society will keep producing scoundrels who will treat women as objects of
desire and as foot mats, and then lecture them that they should wear better
clothes or should beg respectful treatment from men if they want lesser
subjugation.
