Men and Women both are Responsible for the Plight of Women in India and the World

Something very shameful happened in Bengaluru during the New Year eve of 2016, the coverage of which was as awful as the felony itself. The youngsters of the ‘metropolitan’ decided to go out to celebrate the upcoming year of 2017 during the midnight of December 31, 2016, which is nothing special as anyone would think of doing so with their friends and family. Given that you a are female living, learning, and earning in a metropolitan like Bengaluru, you would feel at least a little safe to go out with your friends, men and women, and not to mention you would whatever you wanted to.

But the destiny had planned something else for the entire city that night. Shaming all the Indian values of tolerance and sensitivity, the so-called ‘moral police’ of the city attacked each and every woman they could lay their hands on, molested them, assaulted them- all in the name of teaching them a lesson! No woman could have ever imagined in her life that she would be attacked in such a way in front of all the police standing like a slapstick spectator.

There are a few places in the city that were considered relatively safe, but even those regions witnessed some of the horrific incidents of kissing, pulling, groping, and touching women in all the inappropriate parts of their body. While each and every moment of this incident deserves to be condemned, ironically it was not, at least not by the so called politicians of Bengaluru. Many legislators have once again come out to blame women for wearing short dresses in the parties, which tingled the men below the waist and they could not resist themselves. But what about those women who were simply going home from work dressed in kurtis and business suits? Were they also to blame? No, the blame is be borne by both men and women. How? 

Who should be blamed?

A boy and a girl, both are born of parents of opposite genders. Mothers, as well as the fathers, teach their daughters to stay ‘in their limits’, but they never teach their sons to respect the women in the house and outside. The only woman a man truly respects in India is his mother, even which is not true in many cases as well. The sons are often encouraged by their mothers to dominate their sisters and hardly reprimanded if they misbehave with other women of the society. On the other hand, the daughters are given the strictest punishment possible by both, her parents for even talking to a guy. I am not saying that this happens in every household, but even the most modern and sophisticated family of the country sees their daughter with suspicion if she dares to go close to a man. It is both genders of this country who are to be blamed for nurturing our kids in the wrong manner.

We have always taught our daughters to live in fear of men, but we never taught our sons to help a woman in need. A girl walking alone on the dark street after 9 pm is seen as an opportunity rather than a responsibility. If she reaches home safe, it is her lucky day. If she doesn’t, she is the only one who would be blamed for innumerable reasons.

Education and the genders

Yes, our current education system is definitely the problem; not just the education of boys, but of girls as well. When the female teachers of the schools teach the young girls to maintain ‘distance’ from young boys, they alienate both sexes from each other and perturb their natural curiosity to get to know each other. The girls and boys are made to sit separately in the classroom, stand in separate lines in the school assembly, walk through different staircases, and have different seats on the school bus. As a result, they are brought up thinking that there are fundamental differences in the social ranking of boys and girls, and that is why; they are treated differently at home and outside.

When the daughters are sent to a girls’ college and the boys are sent to the boys’ school/ college, they are robbed of their opportunity to blend with the opposite sexes. You would often see that people who come from such gender-based school/ colleges have much lower confidence talking to people than people who come from co-educational institutions. Presently, there is a dire need to educate boys and girls together about the topics they are going to face in future, including menstrual periods of females. When the natural curiosity of any gender is curtailed, they adopt their own ways to know about these things and it often gives birth to wrong information. For instance, Bollywood has often taught men that ‘hassee to fassee’, or ‘uski to naa me bhi haan hai’. A girl smiling at a guy does not mean that she will definitely get laid with him some day. Or a girl refusing for a coffee does not mean to say yes; she just simply means to say refuse. The movie Pink recently taught the Indian society that ‘a No is a No’.

All such statements from Hindi movies have instilled all the wrong impressions in the minds of Indian men and they assume to own any women they like. This leads to crime, misogyny, and misandry later in their lives of men as well as women. Women are also seen indulging in crimes against women. In the real life, there are no gender-based workstations or footpaths, which often makes people uncomfortable for a greater part of their life. Men and women have to work together to earn money, run the country, give birth to children and raise them, and educate the coming generation of our country. That is why; we cannot solve a problem by alienating the sexes, but by letting them socialize comfortably.

Is Bengaluru the only city that faced it?

Just because the incident of Bengaluru came to limelight, it does not mean that this monstrous crime can happen only in this city in India. In fact, this metropolitan has become a great example to the problems of the sexes. Being the fastest growing metropolitan, Bengaluru hosts Indians from all backgrounds and cultures. People often differ significantly in their mindset in dealing with things, but they learn how to look at things from a unified perspective. Women, who have never seen the light of the day in the real terms, come here to support their families back home and make them proud. Even though Bengaluru has achieved a lot to blend different cultures, a lot more still needs to be done.

As an Indian, the current confusion in the minds of Indian men and women makes me angry. However, there are several people in the current generation who give a hope to raise their kids in the right manner and teach them how to learn about each other rather than curb their curiosity. The incident of Bengaluru, in my opinion, happened because of the failure of the governing class to mend the deep-rooted problems in the genders. The generation gap of the politicians in the country and the regular people has given birth to opinions that are poles apart. Probably, we need more youngsters from both sexes in the system who can take the much-needed actions to heal this gap.