Kajal Chatterjee
The suicidal mindset of attaining “modernity” by sporting “bold” dresses and displaying of “assets”, films bordering on pornography, brute culture of lewd dancing and drinking at night clubs are some of the main reasons behind invocation of the beast in man resulting in increasing incidents of rape and violence against women. With each passing day India is briskly marching towards the unenviable status of being the worst place for women in the world. The society which mercilessly exploits the female body in the commercial mainstream films and also accords social sanction to those dirty pictures in the name of “art”, treats sexually-explicit dialogues in films and every day vocabulary as a matter of attaining “maturity”, glamorises eveteasing and molestation in the name of “romance” or “wooing” the lady love, religiously uses barely clothed female figures to advertise even a gent’s shoe or shaving cream, projects shedding of clothes as harbinger of “women empowerment”, encourages and glamorises pre-marital sex, extra-marital relationships and one-night stands and certifies those individuals as “progressive” who regularly watch pornography — all in the name of “modernity”; are bound to get morally corrupted to the worst extent possible, thereby endangering the security and dignity of women who have been relegated to nothing but mere “sex objects”. No civilized person can dare to go through the “mainstream” and “enlightened” newspapers and magazines in front of their children or senior members, thanks to the deluge of semi-clad heroines, party animals and models in almost all pages. During the commercial breaks between cartoon programmes or cricket matches, innocent children are made to view the sexually-titillating advertisements, including that of condoms also! Inboxes of mobile to personal website are continuously being bombarded with offers and pictures of “fun” and “hot” women! Are we marching towards “progress” or retarding towards the dark age! Are the vested interests aware of the fact that the development of the knowledge of making and wearing clothes, to get rid of nakedness, marked one of the essential features of the dawn of civilization? And now the unscrupulous lot, “inspired” by commercial interests, are trying to brainwash the masses to disrobe themselves and retreat to the early ages so as attain “progress”! In such a hypocrite, crude and pseudo-progressive environment, sexual atrocities on fairer sex are bound to erupt.
Thanks to the lumpenisation of Indian society by large section of the media, Bollywood and advertising agencies; the whole country has got fully degraded morally. Suburbs to city centres, urban to rural, New Delhi to Bangalore, Mumbai to Guwahati — the whole country is equally dangerous for women as all parts are equally being administered “shock therapy” through overdose of all things sex and female body.
And all norms of double standards should also be immediately made to an end. India protests only when a para-medical student or a photojournalist of middle class educated background gets sexually assaulted in New Delhi or Mumbai! The “collective conscience” of the nation also gets “shakened” only when girls of upper-middle class and elite vintage get mass molested in Bangalore night club on New Year eve. But when the same crime gets committed on a villager, illiterate, tribal possessing no “social status” or on a resident of other parts of India just like in Williamnagar(Meghalaya) or Barasat(West Bengal); urban Indians, far from protesting, remain engaged in blatant consumerism, Bollywood, Kohli, IPL and philistine culture of night clubs, pubs and discos! The politicians, Bollywood superstars, intellectuals and common citizens of India simply don’t care to protest or feel ashamed unless the incident of rape or molestation happens in “glamorous” cities and the victim happens to be of privileged background ! Thus protests which occur by taking into account the class or geographical status of the victims possess no moral strength and sincerity.
Instead of engaging in “fashion parades” by organising candle-light vigils, common people should learn to protest against all raped or molested victims irrespective of their social status, economic strength or geographical location. The citizens, specially women, should unitedly protest against the “rapists” who continue to “rape” women 24×365 hours annually through sexually denigrating them in films, TV reality shows, fashion parades and advertisements. And the Government of India and that of the states, apart from taking administrative measures to render security to women and nab the rapists or molesters promptly; should not only ban the films and advertisements promoting voyeurism, but also punish its producers, directors and sponsors for commercialising the female bodies and morally corrupting the society as a whole. Else brutalities on women would continue to occur again and again.
Also life imprisonment should necessarily be implemented in the case of rape as well as molestation. And if she is also murdered or the victim succumbs to injuries, death penalty is the only answer. Else it would get proved that only if a poor caretaker of rural background gets accused of raping and murdering an upper-middle-class girl, does the society find merit in hanging the culprit! This blatant hypocrisy should immediately be brought to an end and all culprits of rape and murder should be hanged till death so as to deter the potential violators of future. The sanctity of the lives of the rapists are certainly not more than that of the hapless victims of rape and murder!
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