BENGALURU: here was a time when Indian men were known, even abroad, for treating women honourably. Today, India is being branded — in the Congress leader, Rahul Gandhi’s, words — as “Rape Capital of the World”. Questions are raised as to what happened to the Indian male to evolve into brutal predators resorting to heinous acts, like rape, and, almost casusally indulging in violence against woman.
Air Marshal (Retired) Arjun Subramaniam, in his book India’s Wars: A Military History, 1947-1971, narrates an incident in Italy in 1943 that would make any Indian proud of the way the Indian man honoured — and protected — women. In 1967, when Indian Navy’s INS Brahmaputra was forced to dock at the Italian port of Taranto, the Indian Navy personnel were met with an unexpected heartwarming welcome. Almost the entire town was at the port to welcome the Indian sailors who were baffled by it. The sailors were invited to various homes for meals. Responding to one such invitation, INS Brahmaputra’s commander, Captain (now retired) Raj Mohindra, enquired why they were being welcomed with such warmth. They were told that in July 1943, at the height of World War II, Mussolini’s Italy was overrun by British 8th Army comprising British, Australian, Canadian, Indian and other nationalities’ troops. When they captured Taranto, the Allied troops, with the exception of Indian soldiers, indulged in mass rape. The Indian soldiers, reportedly, protected many of the women from the rampaging Allied soldiers, pointing their rifles at the fellow-Allied soldiers, and referring to the helpless women as their “sisters”.
Unfortunately, today, although there is no enemy army occupying India, frequent gangrapes and rape-and-murders have become a trend, targeting their own female fellow-citizens, a common phenomenon.
On December 13, 2005, newly-married Pratibha Srikanthamurthy, a 28-year-old call centre employee in Bengaluru, was found raped and murdered a day after she left home for work. Pratibha’s killer -- driver Shiva Kumar -- had picked her up for the night shift after impersonating as her regular cab driver from work, drove her to a secluded location and raped her, before killing her. The incident had stunned the nation, and especially the IT industry in India, leading to revamping of security for women employees in the private sector. “We had called for a meeting of multiple stakeholders in the aftermath of the tragedy (Pratibha rape and murder case) to elicit their opinions on ensuring a safe Bengaluru for women,” said retired Director General and Inspector General of Police, Ajai Singh, who was the Bengaluru City police commissioner then.“For the first time, the police had taken up a mammoth task of driver verification. There were sweeping changes made in the security of women staff in the private sector. It was brought under the supervision of senior management,” he added.
However, recent studies conducted by experts suggest that revamp should actually happen in the mindset of the Indian male to ensure that women are not perceived as objects. And for such a change to happen, a lot more than mere organisational modifications would be required.
Crisis of masculinity
In 2017, Dr Radhika Govinda, lecturer in Sociology at the University of Edinburgh, U.K., during a visit to Bengaluru, delivered a lecture at the Institute of Social & Economic Change (ISEC). She said, growing incidence of violence against women in urban India had to do with “crisis of masculinity”. “The increasing confidence among women entering higher education, the workplace and in the public arena seems to trigger insecurity among men who are used to being in charge. Political leaders and the media have repeatedly portrayed low-income male migrants as being responsible for such violence,” she said.
To find out how working-class migrant men “constructed” their own masculinity and perceived women’s access to public spaces, Radhika in 2013, soon after the Nirbhaya case, conducted a sample study of 12 working-class migrant men who were “associated with a kin-based taxi stand in affluent South Delhi. The narratives were based on interviews, group discussions and participant observation,” she said.
Danseuse Vani Ganapathy, who first came to Bengaluru in 1987-88, said there has been a sea change for the worse as far as safety of women is concerned over the last four decades. “But let’s not single out Bengaluru and India. Safety is a big concern with people across the world. In mid 70s, I used to drive down at 2 am in Mumbai alone and felt safe. It’s not the same anymore anywhere. Women, be they in skimpy dresses or fully clad, are not safe. It has nothing to do with how you dress. So long as there are men, whose upbringing has not been as it should be, they willcontinue to be a threat to the safety of women,” she said.
Deputy Commissioner of Police (Bengaluru South) Rohini Katoch says, “safety of women is the responsibility of the entire society” and not just the police. “There are security measures, policies and laws to handle crime. But social awareness and responsibility play a much bigger role. All of us have a part to play. As parents we need to see how we bring up our children, our sons. There should be certainty of punishment for any wrong-doing right from the beginning,” said the lady cop, who had cracked the gangrape case of 2015 in Bengaluru, wherein a 22-year-old BPO employee was assaulted by a driver and a cleaner of a Tempo Traveller.
Hypocrisy in films
According to sociologist GK Karanth, so long as society continues to project women as “objects of abuse”, they would remain soft targets of perverts. “The projection of Sati is prohibited in films and TV programmes, but scenes of rape and sexual assault continue to be shown. Projection of women has never been assessed from the point of view of the impact it has on impressionable minds. While there has been attempts to design a cultural policy for India, the culture of treating women appropriately as citizens with equal rights, has never been a subject matter whether at home or outside,” he said.
(With inputs from Tushar Majukar in Belagavi, Shreyas HS in Mangaluru)