A violation

The world is a shocking place to live in and I am reminded of it every so often, when something happens that creates a buzz of major proportions. Like has happened in Mumbai over the past couple of days. Photographers from a newspaper (not ours) took some horrendous pictures of four people being pushed around by a large group of unruly men just outside a multi-star hotel in the western suburbs of the city. There was a married couple and another woman and man, all fairly young, all non-residents from the United States. The men were shoved aside while the women were heckled, then felt up, then their clothes disarrayed. One of the photos - perhaps the most awful of the lot - showed one of the girls on the ground with her skirt pulled up, her underwear on display for all the paper’s readers to see. These images were picked up by various media all over the country and the matter dissected and discussed to the point of boredom.

Today’s headlines announced that the perpetrators had been caught, or at least identified. But the likelihood of them being released and not indicted in any way is high, since the people who were molested have flown back to their own homes. They refused to file an official complaint with the police, since all they wanted to do was forget about it and get on with their own lives. It has been the righteous – sometimes even self-righteous – citizenry of the Mumbai who has followed the whole sorry incident up, mustering up evidence, pushing the police to work on the case, making sure the media relentlessly covered it and doing their best - and worst – to bring the ‘criminals’, as they in a way, to book.

But overall, with all the clamour of the story, the question remains: Whose fault was it? The story goes that these four came out of the hotel and were wandering down the road to where they were staying. They were obviously drunk, say the journalists. A crowd of men, also reportedly rather happily high, started heckling the women, making comments that were of a sexual nature. One of the women retaliated. And there it all began, progressing to utter humiliation and very public pain for the two girls, one newly married, while the men – one of them the husband - could do nothing to help. The public at large took over, with little help from the lone policeman in the vicinity and none from the staff of the hotel, though there should have been some security guards at the entrance, one presumes.

The reaction of readers and watchers – since the story has been on television all through – has been fairly clear. The women feel that they should have the freedom to be what they are and if they are in any way provocative, they should be responsible for their own actions and willing to face the consequences. The men are almost unanimous in their opinion that men are creeps, badly behaved, to say the least, and should learn how to treat women. Both are right, I presume. Or perhaps neither is.

I have my own views on this whole matter, as will anyone who wants to bother to think about it. For me, it does not make sense to behave in a manner that invites trouble, though I have done my share of it. Whether it is dressing provocatively and unsuitably in context or whether it is saying what should not be said in certain circumstances, violating that mandate will only result in unpleasantness. A woman must always remember that she is under a constraint in this country, however modern and liberal a city like Mumbai may be. To wander about on the streets while not completely aware of the situation and yourself is just asking for nastiness. And to attract the attention of a group of people who are ready and willing for a fight is sheer stupidity. I wonder if the young women who went through a traumatic end to a new year’s celebration and a very new set of relationships have understood that yet.