I vividly remember my mother telling me that no matter how right a woman is, she will be wronged by the society. Being born as a woman is a challenge in itself and that she will have to strive hard to sustain in this “big bad world”.
With time, I realised how right my mother is, and can only feel miserable on seeing the plight of women in India, a nation that boasts of religiously following Shakti, mother goddess.
Womanhood has been victimised since ages and might continue to suffer the brunt for no fault of hers even in future, if societal perspective doesn’t change. It might be a man’s world, but the role of the one who is responsible for creation of life on earth cannot be undermined.
Alas, the “fairer sex” is held responsible for all the wrongs that happen to her, even if she has least to contribute to the crime! The rapist is not at fault but the rape victim; the molester is innocent and the girl subjected to molestation is the culprit.
In the last one week or so, shaming issues concerning women have been in news. A girl in Gujarat was sedated and raped by her neighbour. The whole act was videotaped and copied on CDs and circulated. Doctors raped a teen n
urse in Chennai and a 5-year old girl fell pray to a 20-year old rapist in the capital. And of course the infamous and scandalous Guwahati molestation case has been making waves all over the country. These few cases are the ones that have come to light, wonder how many went unrecorded in the last few days!
Our National Commission for Women (NCW) chairperson Mamta Sharma’s statement on Tuesday offended me deeply.
She said, “After 64 years of freedom, it is not right to give blanket directions... and say don’t wear this or don’t wear that. Be comfortable, but at the same time, be careful about how you dress.... Aping the west blindly is eroding our culture and causing such crimes to happen.”
Will dressing “carefully” guarantee safety and respect to a woman’s integrity? And what has “aping the west” got to do with a man’s psyche that thinks of women as mere sex objects? Why should a woman be blamed for being abused?
Sadly, when the plight of women in the national capital is appallingly horrible, how could one expect women across the nation to feel safe and secure?
It would be more appropriate to refer to the National Capital Region (NCR) as the National Crime Region and India as a nation that is growing intolerant towards women. Aren’t Indian men getting ‘Talibanised’?
Looks like…because the kind of reactions I have been reading on most websites on stories about rape and crime against women are incredible! Most men are of the opinion that women are responsible for inciting men. Even in person, most people I have had a discussion feel the same. Well if it is really so, what did the 5-year old girl child do the 20-year old man? How could she have provoked him?
Some say, a woman’s clothing has a lot to do with a man’s behavior towards her. Does that mean women covered from head to toe haven’t been molested, raped and abused ever?
It’s high time women in the country get due respect. There is no point faking devotion for goddesses when one cannot honour her manifestations on earth.
