Beyond Policing post-Bengaluru

New Year’s Eve in Bengaluru proved to be a nightmare for women who were out in the streets. The event termed as ‘mass molestation’ involved reports of men groping and assaulting women in large numbers. Following this, the usual series of chapters which follow such horrendous events played out. Few politicians blamed women for being in the ‘wrong place and time’. As expected, ‘western culture’ was blamed as the reason why such incidents happen. Newspaper editorials blossomed with administrative suggestions to tackle such ‘incidents’ if they happen in future.

You would broadly find the recommendations under four major heads: gender-sensitive education, effective changes in police administration, dedicated courts for handling cases against women for speedy disposal, call for legislations with stringent punishments. The above-mentioned measures are indispensable if we are to progress socially but they miss something fundamentally important.

The incident highlights that there is a fundamental flaw in the DNA of the society. All the governance measures stated above are founded on the basis of ‘control’ and for ‘prevention’ you need to change something deeper largely ignored in discussions. I am not finger-pointing Indian cinema which objectifies women as a commodity to be acquired. Rather on the way we live.

First, the difference in bringing up a boy and a girl is starker in the Indian society. There are specific tasks assigned to them. We are taught that a boy is supposed to be masculine and crying doesn’t exist in the so-called ‘manliness’ dictionary. When the boy is unable to do a ‘gender-assigned’ task, he is demeaned as a ‘girl’. The same technique is used conversely for a girl, ponnuna adakka odukkama irukkanum (A girl should be disciplined). A girl is neither supposed to talk loud nor wear clothes of her choice. She should reach home by ‘so-called’ irutrathukkulla (before it gets dark). This is the first line in a lengthy list of do’s and dont's of gender roles in our society.

Second and most important, the society does not give necessary space for most boys and girls to interact and knows each other emotions during the adolescent and young adults phase. Hence the adolescents grow up with wrong assumptions about each gender ignorant of each other’s feelings and needs. The society calls it discipline but it is essentially the actual malaise leading to such incidents. This is aggravated thirdly, by the fact that ‘sex is never discussed with boys and girls of adolescent age’. It is brushed aside as something which should never be discussed because it is ‘not your business’. I still remember the way the ‘reproductive’ section in my tenth standard biology class was handled. The words in the text were quickly read out by the teacher and in few minutes we were off to the next chapter. Well, this was in a boy’s school. Curiosity about the opposite sex is at its peak during the adolescent age owing to hormonal imbalance. If the ‘truth’ about sex is not cultivated in the fertile mind then, wrong weeds take the land whatsoever.

And in most colleges, the two genders are not allowed to interact freely deepening the division and strengthening the wrong assumptions they have cultivated from childhood. Now a simple gaze at the so called ‘man’ we have created reveals the flaw clearly. We have created a male who believes that he is superior to a woman, that woman is good only for specific tasks, a man who does not have the clear idea about a woman, whose understanding of sex is incomplete. If this doesn’t sound like a recipe for disaster I wonder what would.

Actress Revathi in an interview to The Hindu put it wonderfully the irony of the contrasting set of instructions to a woman revealing the futility of social instruction in ‘bringing up’. To quote her: “We raise women by telling them that, Sariyaa okaaru,. Kazuthaa moodu( Sit properly, close your neck). And then we ask them to suddenly go and spend a night with a strange man”.

I still remember the moment in my first tuition class in the eleventh standard when my heart beat deafened my eardrums. The reason was simple: I was sitting in a ‘co-ed’ class my first in seven years. Eight years from then I have definitely changed for the better. I was lucky to be on the right side of this discussion because I joined a college where both genders don’t face any restrictions for interaction (I won’t comment on the standard of the teaching faculty in my college though). Finding the right friends on the opposite gender (most importantly my first friend) shattered all myths. Women are just like men in every other way from having high aspirations in life to ‘sight’- seeing( I didn’t know that before six years).

Photo Courtesy: RichardBH

But the process of treating a woman as a man’s equal is a continuous one because the magnitude of ‘inputs’ the society to gives you is immense to shake off in one day or one year. It is a transformation which possibly goes a long way because I know that I am still in transition.

If such incidents are to be avoided in future we need to change. Not our policies or cinema but ourselves. If you are reading this, the best things you can do is initiate discussion and build trust. As Gandhi said, by changing ourselves for the better we would see the change what we want to see in the world. Who knows it better than him. 

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RichardBH