Inderjeet Sambyal
In India, on the one hand, we worship our Goddesses and on another hand, we abuse our women. The crime against women is increasing at a frightening rate. No women, no matter whichever age, whichever caste and creed she belongs is not safe in India. Women have to fight for their rights starting from the mother’s womb itself, as the illegal abortion rate is high in our country. Most of the people of our society are obsessed with having a Male child to bear the torch of their pedigree. And if she survives the nine-month and came to this world, most people would avert their eyes and congratulate the parents like committing a crime. Very few people celebrate the birth of their girl child. As soon she starts growing up the list of restrictions on her increase day by day. ‘ Don’t go there’, ‘Don’t stay out till late night’, ‘ Good girls don’t answer back’, ‘ Wear respectable clothes’, these are only a few of examples a girl go through. Most of the time a girl has to give up her dream, her ambitions because of pressure from her parents. In spite of all the precautions and safety measures taken by their parents, a girl has to suffer prying eyes of roadside goons and they are harassed frequently.
Every day the pages of news are filled with news of sexual harassment and rape of women all over the country. And then started the judgment of society, “A girl should not wear short clothes, this is the reason for such an incident “. Like Really? Are you for real? What short clothes a five year and three years old wore when she was raped brutally? This is high time the society changes its way of thinking and starts thinking like an intellectual and rational-minded society it claimes to be one. Try to teach morality and respect for women to your male child. And soon will come the day when no girl will need to cover her body to just stay away from these prying eyes. Teach some humanity to your Male child so they could help some girl when she needed and not just run away. Women are not safe until you change the norms and view of society. What kind of society we are creating for our future generations. It’s time to sit back and think where we are failing as a society and try to rectify ourselves and our way of thinking .It’s always better to view a situation in its totality. Many times when we look at a situation, we tend to view only a part of it because we are already biased in our approach. Safety of girls and women in India is a grave issue. To tackle the problem, a multi-pronged tactics is required. Skewed sex-ratio, ‘commodification’ of the female body through media and other popular means, patriarchal mind-set, lax justice system etc. are some of the reasons why there is apparently an increase in incidents of assault on girls and women. First and foremost, exemplary punishment would be the best method of sending the correct message throughout the society.
Potential criminals will be deterred once they see that justice is done and it is done within a time framework. Secondly, skewed sex ratio is bound to bring crimes into picture. India needs to be educated that girls should be allowed to live. Killing girls in the womb must be stopped. Again, exemplary punishment to the offenders will go a long way in improving the situation. Advertisements, films, television serials need to portray women as human beings and not just as sex-agents. Women and girls, like all other human beings, exist for many things apart from satisfying and fulfilling needs of the body. Presently, female element is being used for ‘peppering’ the show, the advertisement or the film. It settles the female with the concept of ‘masala’ in our minds. These along with patriarchal brining up give a kind of license to the criminal’s mind to venture into the territory of violence. The entire ‘contractor ship’ of feminism in India is also doing great disservice to the cause of women in this regard. The entire feminist strata must understand that safety of an individual is primarily the responsibility of the individual herself. The state agencies have a role but that role comes after the role of the individual. In their pro-feminist paranoia, they start claiming that girls will go out at any time in the night, will definitely go for consensual sex, will put on all revealing dresses and will venture out as and when their instincts desire.
Theoretically, we should have a society that allows and respect such kind of behavior equally for both the genders but in reality it is not so. If an experienced Chief Minister says that the journalist should not have gone out all alone at two in the night or a fatherly figure from Haryana says that cellular phones should be used by girls with discretion, the feminist brigade is all claws out. They fail to see the simple common sense of a well-meaning remark. Why only girls, even boys and men should avoid going out all alone in the dead of the night. If a girl agrees to consensual sex to her boyfriend on phone and goes out in anticipation of the adventure, there are possibilities that the so called ‘boyfriend’ will turn up with two or three extras. This is exactly what has happened in many recent cases. But our discourse tragically remains lop-sided. All elderly men of Haryana are not villains. Most of them want girls and women to be safe.Education, correct representation of women in media, transparency in social interaction of the two genders, liberal and accepting attitudes, and most importantly a speedy and strong justice system will go a long way in ensuring safety of girls in our country. The amount of violence against women has increased by many fold due to the greater exposure of women in every field of life. Women were previously restricted to the four walls of the houses and after globalization they have got the chances and opportunities to stand equally in all sectors at par with male. Women are now-a- days cab drivers and they are also the CEOs of top companies. It is a good sign that the patriarchal mind set of the society has changed to some extent but not to the extent it was supposed to. It is the same mindset that restricts women to go out and work making them as a tool for domestication.
It is the same mindset that treats males as superior than female and always tries to dominate the women folk. There are different kinds of tools that are being used by the male dominated society to prove their domination over the female. Eve teasing, sexual harassment, rape, domestic violence against women are the weapons used by the male to display the male superiority. This is one of the prime reasons violence is increasing in India and women safety is a concern in India. Along with the mindset the slow pace of operation of Indian judiciary is another major reason for the increasing women safety in India. The police of India is not efficient and not neutral and that is the reason why the cases of violence against women take long time in the investigation phase. In the name of social pressure and shame many women do not come out and report the matter to police.
This is one of the many reasons why the number of cases reported are less than the actual number of violence happening against women. It is a shame that rapes take place every day. In order to improve women safety in India the first task is to improve the number of women in every sphere of society. Along with that the change in mind set of people is very essential for the safety of women. From family to educational institutions men should be taught about respecting females. Further, there should be fast-track courts to hear the cases and the cases should be investigated in a time bound manner. Only strict laws cannot solve the problem of women safety in India rather the implementation of these laws in a time bound manner can solve the issue to a large extent.
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