Something I noticed while in India myself, which may help explain (not excuse) some of the behavior (please note I am not discounting the author's perspective at all):
I'm a little over 6 feet, blond hair and green eyes, and when I and my family were visiting India (Mumbai and a few other areas around Maharashtra), we got stared at really, really hard. Like everyone around us literally stopping on the street and doing nothing but stare.
It was unnerving, naturally, and I asked my brother and his (now) wife about it, since they had been living there for about a year. They told me, and I later observed for myself, that this type of looking and curiosity is part of how Indians generally are. It's very honest, very unapologetic, and once you get over the taboo of the stare, very disarming. It's not just visiting Westerners either - they stare at each other, watch each other honestly, will walk across the street to get a better look, and crowd around something interesting. I saw it constantly and eventually understood it as a lack of interpersonal barriers that arise in a highly individualistic society. Everything is shared because in a city of 15-20 million people, there's hardly any space apart. People in major metro areas understand some aspect of this but it's hard to really grasp unless you're there.
The problem, of course, arises when this lack of barriers combines with misogyny of the boldest type. Getting used to the constant stares is one thing for me, a man (and taller than most of my observers by a head), but for a woman it must be extra difficult to accept - and that's just the stares. The lack of respect for her space may be part of the collectivism that arises with incredible density, but the lack of respect for her body and humanity is not. It is rank and deep-seated sexism, and insitutionalized assault. There's a culture supporting this (which is not to say that Indians as a people do) and it needs to be dragged into the light of day and shot.
I lived once with 6 indians that came to Brazil on a contract.
One wanted to learn portuguese, and knew english really really well, and loved to talk (also he knew like 6 indian dialects, he really liked languages), and he was married.
Talking with him, and later with the others when he was nearby, I learned that this is a kind of new thing, and they are confused...
Seemly the merging of a traditional patriarchal culture with the western materialistic culture led to this weird bizarre culture where women are not seen as human anymore (and the lack of women because of female infanticide do not help either)
EDIT: And yes, they are curious, and are not shy about it, also they loved museums a lot... They visited in 4 months more museums here in Brazil than I ever did in my whole life.
I totally disagree to, "that this type of looking and curiosity is part of how Indians generally are." Indians or for the matter of fact every human being is curious. But the stares described are not of curiosity but of lust, of wanting that body to satisfy a temporarily desire and then to boast about it to the friends. The biggest reason for such behaviour is the lack of respect that is given to a female in the Indian society. For every male god, there is an equally powerful or even more powerful a female god and we (quite a lot) Indians will go every day to the temple to ask the lady god for fulfillment of wishes but as soon as we are home we treat our wife, mother, sister with no respect at all.
Not only the males are to be blamed for turning India into a male society but also women. There are many (hell lot) women in India who want a son (still do not understand the reason). If they have a girl and a boy and no matter how good the girl is when compared to the boy, the boy will always get more love and attention.
I am an Indian and have lived all my life here and in many parts of the wonderful country. But it makes me sad to see the state we are going into.
I agree with most of what you say. There's just one point I want add.
I have been to India and the US multiple times. If I judged the US, just based on my experiences living in downtown Detroit or Newark I would never visit the US ever again. Just thinking about the things I experienced gives me the shivers.
I have seen this culture of misogyny and treating women as sexual objects in almost all places in India I have lived in. Not trying to counter your point, just saying that this observation could have been written by a woman who spent her time in Kolkata/Chennai/Bangalore/Mumbai rather than in Pune. In fact Pune in some respects is much better than some of the cities I mentioned above.
I agree. But just a word of caution, if we are talking about misogyny and treating women as sexual objects, lets also talk about the porn industry(which today is as responsible for the existence of the internet, as advertising is for Google).
Is there a difference when the developed world spends countless hours objectifying women from the safety of their homes through technology?
Looking at pictures and movies of women voluntarily engaged in sex acts is in no way equivalent to groping them in the street, attempting to rape them or depersonalising them and treating them as objects.
Forgeting about the india comparison for a sec, there are degrees of 'voluntary.' There are no girls out there who think that they want to be in porn when they grow up.
A friend of mine did want to go into porn as a young teen. She decided not to one she was old enough, because it did not pay enough. There are a lot of people out there and most of them don't think like you do.
I suspect that few people grow up wanting to be gas station attendants either. I grew up wanting to be a test pilot, that didn't work out but I am certainly in my current field entirely voluntarily.
Maybe that means it doesn't suck to be a gas attendant, or maybe that means everybody knows it sucks to be a gas attendant, or maybe that just means that nobody gives a shit about gas attendants at all.
One of those degrees is definitely "sure, that sounds like a turnon." There is certainly legitimate exploitation, but it's not like Paris Hilton did it to make rent.
Porn is definitely a sensitive subject around here.
I have been down voted into oblivion before for bringing it up. I guess the accepted opinion around here is as long as women get paid to be objectified its all cool. And ofcourse there are no effects of such objectification on any of the minds that make up this enlightened society.
EDIT: Pretty sure everyone arguing for there being a big difference thinks things like Steubenville are just random events too.
Sorry, widespread assault and the experience described in the article are in no way the same as the everyday experiences of women in the western world. If you think they are you're delusional.
Nice. Way to miss the fucking point. Let me break it down for you. The article was an article on sexual harassment and rape in a specific country. Not this country. A different country. Totally different cultural values, objectives. You rambled on about two completely different issues:
1. The "developed world" and objectification of women here.
2. Pornography and the porn industry.
The developed world, its issues are irrelevant here. Every time, a god damn article comes about something wrong in the third world, it is not necessary to bring up this world. It conflates the issue and introduces moral relativism. Sure there is female infanticide and female genital mutilation but HEY, women in tech in the bay area get shafted too. That in essence is the argument being made.
To address the other issues of your muddled argument. Sure pornography might involve objectifying women. Sure it might be a bad thing. Sure someone must do something about it. Guess what? It is fucking irrelevant here. This is about women who go to a country and expect not to get raped.
I think next time, I should just down vote and move on, instead of spending my time arguing online.
A whole lot of comments take the tone, this kind of stuff only happens "over there". I found it relevant to point out this isn't exactly true. Please go look at the Steubenville case and ask yourself is there really a difference.
The problem in practical terms is a semi-slavery view of women in public. Men and women in porn movies are objectified but not coerced into it, whereas assault is coercion.
> or a woman it must be extra difficult to accept - and that's just the stares. The lack of respect for her space may be part of the collectivism that arises with incredible density
I think it is not even close. She was groped and touched. That is sexual assault. It is not rape, but there are cases of Peace Corps volunteers getting raped. Chucking that up to culture is, perhaps trying a little too hard to defend it. If that is is the culture (I imagine it is just "culture" in poor and uneducated parts, much like it would be in a trailer park in Mississippi perhaps) well then fuck that culture it is wrong.
I've traveled all over the world, from South America, India, to China. In all those places, the locals stare and take photos. They stare at me, also a redhead; they stare at my girlfriend, who is from LA and dresses like it. Unlike this sheltered author, when the kids take photos of us, the white ghosts, faragn, or gringos, we don't assume they're going to use it for porn.
We're often the only white couple in the town. Sometimes they've never seen white people. It's what they do.
When my gf was alone in India, she had guys come on to her a few times, but she said it was nothing compared to the aggressive behavior we encountered in Columbia and Cambodia.
People like Rose Chasm, should stay in their small American towns. Someone with such vivid imagination and fragile psyche has no business traveling in 3rd world countries.
I grew up in a poor part of Easter Europe. Alcoholism, poverty, despair was around. It wasn't Africa, and there are lots, lots worse places in the world. We might not have always had enough food to eat, but we were lucky to have what we had.
It is important to recognize when you are not safe and to know how to diffuse the situation and escape. In some of those places it could go from staring to stabbing quickly. Let's just say I had to act "crazy" a couple of times in order to be deemed not worth to bother with (this is a good strategy btw if you are by yourself in a bind)
I can't judge of course for you, I wasn't there. But you perhaps underestimate the danger because you were with her. You are also not a woman. It is different for a single woman.
When I travelled Indua with my wife she would not be touched but it constantly happend to all single women we met. I believe the men just saw her as my property thus expecting me to retaliate. What they did not understand was how a women could not be tied to a man.
Sorry, If you had a bad experience in our country.
Most people stare basically out of uncontrolled curiosity. In fact you get similar stares if you were to look differently than we do like for example say Chinese, African etc. This isn't just limited to white individuals but anybody in general.
Situation in many parts of Bangalore is better. The solution to this problem is to let both our cultures mingle more, than just stay in isolation.
To add to your comment: Even Indians who grow up in cities get the same kind of stares when they visit villages. As an young child every year when my siblings and I visit a tiny village where my parents grew up, there are always people who live around the neighborhood peeping through our doors to see who has arrived and what we were up to. Even when we walk in the muddy roads or ride in an ox-cart to visit the farms,we noticed everyone lines up on the road to watch us.
And of course, this is more pronounced for woman. This is also part of Indian culture(good or bad).
But, this part of mannerism does not discount the extreme harassment the OP has experienced.
>This is also part of Indian culture(good or bad).
How is it good? Btw just because a lot of people practice a gross behavior doesn't make it part of the culture. I hate it when people give excuses for behavior by saying it is "cultural". By the same logic, Bride burning, dowry and female foeticide is also practiced, Do you also consider it a part of the culture?
The main problem is with the level of education and mannerism 90% of the indians posses. These people are always in fear of god and trapped by their religions. They are not enlightened enough to make all the logical decisions themselves which causes the main problem. They try to objectify anything and everything they see. It's like a hungry man stealing food from shop. Without education and knowledge every society is equal to animals.
Even the highly educated in India go around temples and follow all superstitious beliefs. My parents quote examples of Indian scientists at NASA and their superstitious beliefs to make me believe in religion and the super powers. Their reasoning being there are smart people at NASA who follow the astrological calendar when it comes to events at their homes. So, I doubt education alone makes a person better. Character building and rational thinking is whole another ball game where Indian education falls short.
Ok, when I said it is part of culture I did not by any means justify the behavior. Cultural habits have their own downsides and upsides. They also evolve. So, right now that is the state. I wish it got better. If my comment sounded like I supported that behavior, I would like to make it clear that intent of the comment was not that.
As an Indian, this makes me really really ashamed and sad and angry. I would apologize to her as an Indian.
To understand what is going on in Indian society, I recommend this book by Naipaul, written over 20 years ago, but still very relevant: "India, a million mutinies now" http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55676.India
Basically India is in an utterly chaotic transition from an old established hierarchy where your caste and gender fixed your place in society to something that looks very different.
One part of the societal transition is that there is a vast horde of (mostly male) migrants to major cities in India and these men are absolutely not rooted in anything. They are away from their villages, their families, their social networks. For most of these young men, the social system, particularly gender roles, they experienced in the villages is very different from what they see in a big city. You put a lot of young men in that situation, they think anything goes, particularly when they see a foreigner or an urbanized Indian woman. They think of her not as a person, but as an object - but it is a different kind of objectification, where they feel inferior to the object, it is unattainable to them, so they act with cruelty and savagery. That is what is different between this form of objectification and normal patriarchal behavior which would try to be patronizing and protective towards women.
Those very same men, in their own village, would not do the same thing to a foreigner, because normal social restraints would apply. In a vast urban space, they feel the protection of anonymity and feel they can get away with anything.
The only short term solution, being tried in states like Tamil Nadu, is a massive increase in female police presence, both uniformed and plain-clothes police officers in public places in big cities. This does improve security for women where it has been tried (Chennai is an example of such a city). I hope her post serves us a wake-up call for the governments in India to think of measures like this.
I feel bad for what happened to this poor woman, but it just goes to show you the disconnect between academic romanticization ("South Asian Studies" major at U. Chicago) and the cold hard light of reality. And that reality is that people flee these countries for a reason. People don't just decide to uproot their families and leave everything they know 10,000 miles in the rear view mirror for nothing.
What bugs me are people, largely motivated by financial interests, in my opinion, who downplay the massive cultural and social advantages we still enjoy in the west over places like India. We may be dealing with demographic challenges and sometimes sclerotic economics, but I'd take France in decline over any BRIC country on a supposed upswing any day of the week... But the almighty dollar is the most important thing, right? As long as there is money in doing business in India (or the Middle East), we can just chalk all this up to "cultural differences" that we must be "accommodating" of.
>people flee these countries for a reason ... massive cultural and social advantages
Woah, there's some serious ethnocentrism in your comment. I know 100s of people who have moved to the USA from India, including my parents, a lot of their friends, and a large number of friends and colleagues. These people tend to be very progressive for India and still very few think Western culture is objectively better than Indian culture. Almost none moved here for mostly cultural reasons. Cultural preference is subjective, and people tend to prefer what they know and are comfortable with.
While a Westerner may criticize Indians for lacking a sense of personal space, many Indians believe Americans are socially cold and distant to one another. While we may criticize Indians for being misogynistic (edit: wrong word, I meant something more along the lines of patriarchal), many Indians criticize Americans for lacking a solid foundation of traditional values. Like anything else that's subjective, we perceive culture in a relative manner.
Yes, India has serious issues with the way women are treated and I won't defend this, but the West has and still is going through our own social issues.
Let me offer an anecdote too. I am of Indian origin. I lived in the country for 7 years; I speak multiple Indian languages quite well too. I was there recently. There are several distinctions between the two countries.
1. Things get more real there. You don't get good grades, your life is going to suck with high probability. In America, you can wank off trying to navel gaze whilst doing your degree in some bullshit and then eventually can be comfortable living your life working in a coffee shop. In India, the people who work at coffeeshops have shitty lives.
2. I agree on your perception of Indians vs. Americans on interpersonal relations. Indians have no concept of personal space. I was traveling alone in the Himalayas. I got tired of the questions that started off with casual strangers asking me "Do you have no friends?" to army men asking me suspiciously why I was traveling alone. (To add on to the shit is more real there; if I had a name of the wrong religion, that would have been a dangerous issue.) In America, people create these shells of beautiful people. Everyone is happy, white shining teeth and shining gadgets. Depression and mental issues covered up. Take a pill; go to the therapist is the solution to everything here.
3. People in the U.S. have a sense of community. A simple fucking thing like littering is a big deal. In India, forget about the fact that the government mandated litter bins exist all over the place, no one wants to take the effort to put a piece of plastic in the damn bin. Again, with high probability.
Finally, to get to the subject of the OP. I met a lot of American girls (and guys) whilst traveling there. I was shocked that fucking Delhi, the capital of one of the largest countries in the world, was where most of them reported being harassed. From the innocuous "Are your freckles a sign of skin cancer" to "Hey, you are white, would you like to get raped.". This behavior is revulsive. Yes, it should be brought up to light.
>>You don't get good grades, your life is going to suck with high probability.
Very true for some one poor, not some one who has a means to set up a business. Which I'm pretty darn sure is true with the US society too. Or anywhere in the whole world for that matter.
Regarding 2) That has both its positives and negatives. In India if you run into trouble there is a massive extended family to fall back on. In US, you have to deal with it yourself.
Regarding 3) Lack of hygiene or presence is not a cultural thing. West was equally dirty during and before industrial revolution.
Have you talked to the women? My wife is Indian as are many of our friends. The men all think wistfully about moving back to India. None of the women do.
People are skeptical of "American Culture" in large part because even after living here for years, they view it through the lens of how it was portrayed in Indian cinema. Regardless, the women all appreciate that in America they can safely go about their business in public, and in India they can't.
Couldn't have put it better. The men romanticize about life back home. The women don't. They dot want their daughters going back to a place where they're treated as second class citizens. They often know that even their own families would lock them back into a situation where the lost many f the freedoms they learn to appreciate living in America.
I had a good friend tell me one if the key reasons many women stay in abusive marriages back in India is because if they divorce their husbands they genuinely feel they will simply be opened up as fair game for rape by any man who feels like it.
I'm highly offended by the folks in this thread who've even saying things like - yes it's bad for women in India but the us has it's problems. That's not the same as living either a second class status or in constant fear.
One if my favorite movie lines, familiar to many on this site, comes to mind: "how does it feel to live in fear? That's what it is to be a slave".
Are ALL Indian men likely to act this way. No of course not. So let's avoid the straw man of "not everyone behaves this way". This is the cumulative effect of enough people and the culture they live in.
Men in the west are definitely comfortable respecting the cultural values of other countries without a though or care for what those values mean for half the population and that they're often enforced through brutal violence against women or the threat of that violence used to intimidate.
That's not culture so much as it is the side effect of culture merged with their current development state as a country. That is, if India's quality of living and development were advanced to that of the west, there probably wouldn't be anything objectively inferior culture-wise.
It is definitely culture. The US didn't start treating women reasonably on its own. It required a generation of women to protest in the streets until the culture and the law changed. This hasn't happened in India yet, but is hopefully now beginning. I wouldn't draw too many direct parallels between women in the pre-'60s US, and women in India since the respective traditions are so hugely different, but what has to happen to fix it is the same.
What I'm going to describe is a bit of a caricature, but it's true enough that it's the dominant theme of Indian soap operas. Traditionally in north India, women don't even eat with the rest of the family. They are expected to remain in the kitchen cooking and serving food until the meal is finished, when they eat whatever is left, alone. The woman only gains power in the family when she's the oldest person left alive, at which point the veneration for elders supersedes her subjugation. The stereotype is that at this point, she takes out the frustration of her years of abuse by ordering around her daughter-in-law.
But I still think it is societal development. Liberalism is a natural evolution as the quality of life and the society advances, and so the way woman are treated in India I believe is an effect of its development, not an effect of its culture.
Like you said, the US had the same stage. We used to be heavily racist and also oppressed women during an earlier stage of socio-economic development.
I don't think it's a useful model to suppose that there's some underlying "true culture" that doesn't change over time and that will be gradually revealed as their economy improves. Culture changes, and economic development is a catalyst for change. Whatever way people behave today, that is the culture today, and if they behave differently tomorrow, that will be the culture tomorrow. Right now, Indian culture subjugates women. In the future, it hopefully won't.
Liberalism might be an "inevitable" consequence of advancement from one stage to the next, but real people have to fight for it to make it inevitable. When they fight for it, they will be changing the culture, not revealing it in a more true form.
I feel like this is a cop-out. Indian culture is objectively worse than American culture, and this article is pretty solid evidence of this.
"Traditional values" are no excuse for misogyny and barbarism. Tradition is close to the literal opposite of social progress and I don't understand why it is glorified. I'm pretty proud that I have no "solid foundation of traditional values," and that I've incidentally raped a grand total of 0 people.
Edit: I read your clarifying comments on the other sub-threads. What's the difference in this context between a social issue and a cultural one?
All traditions have their spectrum, good and bad. India's a really old civilization and studying a lot of old civilizations, brings to light some unfortunate similarities. I make absolutely no concessions or explanations for barbaric behaviour anywhere, at anytime, but instead of taking a minute to turn a stranger into a person that you can relate to, you too, may be dehumanizing a group that requires effort to learn about.
"All traditions were new once", as we heard in Fiddler on the Roof.
I wanted to write a comment on this topic. But just figured out that every word you wrote is true.
I am happy that i follow no religion, no cast, no nonsense.
>"While we may criticize Indians for being misogynistic, many Indians criticize Americans for lacking a solid foundation of traditional values. Like anything else that's subjective, we perceive culture in a relative manner."
Except misogyny is a legitimate criticism of a society, a lack of "traditional values" is not.
A lot of social issues, like legitimate discrimination of minority groups in America, are legitimate. On the other hand, there's a second class of social issues, the subjective ones. For example, the view that America is too "Puritan" in political forums. A theme like that is subjective - that would be a "traditional value."
I think 'rayiner's point can best be summed up as an answer to your last sentence. Yes, America, like India, isn't perfect. Both have unique "social issues" - but America is still, objectively, a better place to live.
Yeah, it can be argued that people in India might not glare at you the same way people in the NYC subway do, and that India has nicer scenery. These are irrelevant to a discussion of which place is actually better to live in.
Am I expected to be O.K. with misogyny in the service of "traditional values", or are traditional values beside the point here? A lot of "traditional" values turn out to be wrong.
It heavily depends on your definitions of both those terms. However, strictly speaking, patriarchy in itself while still constraining of women (an egalitarian society would be much better), also required heavily duty-bound behavior from men. Something which is not conducive to open or effective misogyny.
I do not know of any societies with strong patriarchal norms and very little misogyny, if they do indeed exist.
Patriarchy in cultures is without fail about the control of women. All niceties around protecting them boil down to treating them as property, as chattel. You fundamentally don't have an equal situation when one gender is rendered property of another.
Yes you are entirely correct, I mixed up those concepts when I was writing my comment. I meant to highlight the cultural patriarchy and distance myself from the misogyny ("I won't defend this").
I do think much of the misogyny in India stems from their patriarchal values, but misogyny is a social issue rather than a cultural concept. I doubt many Indian women are cool with misogyny...
Examples: While Indian culture is patriarchal, its society can be quite misogynistic. While American culture deeply frowns upon racism, racism is a very real and ubiquitous social issue. In the first example the societal behaviors arise from the culture, in the second I show that they can be totally contradictory.
Society is about the way people act among each other, culture is what is passed on and shared among a group of people.
Common sense, if the "traditional value" is that women should be in the house cooking lest they subject themselves to groping and leering. Common sense.
"women in the kitchen" was considered perfectly natural in Europe/america culture some time ago, but when women could choose, they mostly chose not to be in kitchen. That's a quite strong argument that women in other cultures will do the same, if they can.
You need to go back and edit your comment. You mistakenly said billions of people.
You clearly meant billions of men. The idea that the women of the world are crying out to be restricted from opportunity, to be rendered a second class status in society, and that it should all be enforced by cultural or religious traditions and authorities through the implied threat of violence, or often actual violence... yeah that's nonsense.
Well most of those cultures you just said are not objectively worse also have the death penalty, so I'm not sure where you're going with this. This sort of moral relativism is not really helpful to anyone or any society. Enforced gender roles are morally objectionable because they are not compatible with justice, period.
There's a difference between saying a culture is bad because they eat an animal you think it's wrong to eat and that they mistreat an entire sex and if you don't see that, you need to work on your moral system some more.
right - objectification of women in ads is bad - boo West
You have me on that. I'm with you all the way.
Treating women as property of men. Using violence and intimidation against women to maintain the traditional order. The normalization of sexual harassment of women in a culture at large. The institutionalized discrimination against them (try getting a divorce lawyer to take your case as a professional woman in India).
It's not ethnocentrism, it's real. Even from wealthy countries in East Asia where the strict Confucian relationships put huge burdens on women. Obviously, a lot if not most people are inured to those cultures and don't like the Euro/American level of cultural freedom. The ones who moved are the ones who couldn't deal with the oppression.
Ethnocentrism would imply racism, whereas our pluralism is one of the ways our culture is more free. Korea and Japan are wealthy, first-world liberal democracies, but they abhor immigration and remain 99% ethnically homogenous. The weakness of their cultures is (ironically) ethnocentrism. And even though Western Europe is much better, no place really matches America on this one.
I don't think there is anything wrong with a certain amount of ethnocentrism. It is taken for granted that culture matters in say a startup, so I see no reason not to extend that thinking to nations.
While cultural preference might be subjective, culture impacts things that are objectively measurable. How close you stand in lines might be purely subjective, but the woman in the article did not suffer PTSD for purely subjective reasons.
> What bugs me are people, largely motivated by financial interests, in my opinion, who downplay the massive cultural and social advantages we still enjoy in the west over places like India. We may be dealing with demographic challenges and sometimes sclerotic economics, but I'd take France in decline over any BRIC country on a supposed upswing any day of the week... But the almighty dollar is the most important thing, right? As long as there is money in doing business in India (or the Middle East), we can just chalk all this up to "cultural differences" that we must be "accommodating" of.
I don't know whether it is financial. I think there is a "grass is greener across the pacific" type of attitude. I have spent 2/3rds of my life in Africa and India; it is jarring to hear from these rich clueless Americans of how wonderful and peaceful these places are; how any problems they have are all due to the evil white man. It strikes me as a sort of Manic Pixie Dream Girl [1] type approach taken at the nation level. It is especially interesting considering that there is cognitive dissonance amongst immigrants. They claw their way here and then romanticize the old country once they are securely out.
I usually criticize Brazil (the B in BRIC), which is my home country, in comments, but I must correct you here.
Regarding respect for people - be it that they are women, or members of minorities - Brazil doesn't have the issues those other countries face (and I wonder what the situation is like in Russia).
Women in Brazil enjoy the same level of freedom they would enjoy in America or Europe. There is no strong patriarchal culture in place, and there is as little misogyny as there is in America. In fact, a lot of Brazilian girls are sick and tired of Americans and Europeans that go to Brazil and treat them with much less respect than local guys do, because for some reason white foreigners mostly seem to think Brazilian girls are super easy (they are only very, very nice, but that doesn't mean they are nymphomaniacs) and that they all dance naked during Carnival (most of them don't).
Regarding minorities, while there is debate about racism and all, it is much less of an issue than say in America. My wife and I were surprised by how big of deal that kind of thing is here in America. I guess in Brazil we're just used to living with lots of people of varying ethnicities and don't care much about their color or whatever. Of course there is racism, and there is a clear racial aspect in the social divide, but again it's way less of an issue than it is in America.
There is that also, but the financial aspect is separate. India is a major growth zone right now, and lots of American companies are seeking to expand into the Indian marketplace. There is thus a strong desire to play up the culture there and play down the culture here, and paper over things like widespread sexual assault. After all, if you're relocating an entire division to India, the narrative has to be about how you'll not just save money,b but how much better India is than the U.S. in other respects.
>What bugs me are people, largely motivated by financial interests, in my opinion, who downplay the massive cultural and social advantages we still enjoy in the west over places like India.
Most immigrants I know could not care less for those -- they come in the West for the money.
I studied abroad in India in the late '90s as part of a group of undergrads from different universities. Every single woman in my group, and I mean 'every single woman in my group' was groped or innapropriately touched at least once during the one semester we were there. There were 3 Indian-American women in our group and they were not immune either. One instance I will never forget we were standing at a bus stop in the afternoon and someone just walked up and grabbed my friend's breast and disappeared into the crowd. We also had multiple instances of man/men climbing over the wall of our group house and stare into women's rooms.
It sucks. And I think western women travelling to India need to adjust their expectations. When a female friend of mine recently told me she was planning on travelling to India I asked her so many questions and got so up in her business she literally told me to chill out and stop worrying so much. I didn't stop bugging her until she promised to start her stay with some locals until she got better acquainted there.
I had an amazing time studying in India and have been back since. I would never tell someone to not go to India. But western women need to be aware that not everywhere is safe to travel without a male companion. Ideally travel with a husband, boyfriend or male friend and dress like the local women dress. Many western women will mistakenly wear underwear(choli or pavada) not-knowing they're supposed to wear a sari over it. Don't do that if you don't want to be groped.
As some people have pointed out it's not an Indian only problem.
This behavior is the unfortunate effect of modernization and move into cities. India, is predominantly a rural society. Like many traditional socities in asia, morality is enforced by concepts of honor/shame/loss of face. So, you have individuals who behave appropriately with women in their local villages or towns. Your family will loose face if you behave inappropirately and you will be cut off from society. However these guys land in cities far from their local environs and suddendly all sense of morality goes out of the windows. Everyone around you is new so what does it matter, you can do some crime and move somewhere else. It must be noted that most of this criminal behavior is committed by recent entrants to cities.
That in itself is not new. Every society has this problem (of modernization) but India has an additional issue. The state (internal police, law etc.) has historically been very weak and continues to be so. Enforcing any laws is a huge problem so these cases keep getting compounded by the day. Some dude seems his neighbour get away with stuff and he gets emboldned to do the same.
Like most things Indian, all villages in India are not same. Depending upon location and consequently prevalent culture, in some places women call the shots and rampant abuse of women is pretty much not tolerated (typically those in north-eastern states). There are also those where women are treated as cattle, to be used and abused and have no rights whatsoever (example states being Haryana/some parts of UP/Bihar) - families do not lose face in these places if men behave inappropriately towards women, they lose face if the man doesn't beat up the woman "to put her in her rightful place".
So all villagers in the city do not act like boors, like most things people do, it depends on their upbringing and the culture of place/family they hail from.
Weak state is not a unique problem. Some south-east asian countries have far weaker/ineffective state, but this blatant objectification and abuse of women is not rampant there. Unfortunately, culture doesn't change overnight and lack of quality education contributes to lack of introspection/critical thinking.
Your comment captures the ground reality well. Rapid urbanization combined with a weak, ineffectual state is bringing out the worst in young men moving into cities for work.
I grew up in India. In one of the major metros. And deterioration over the years was all too striking. I couldn't really put down finger on what snowballed it to such a state but materialism is definitely a big part of it.
As a 10 year old, I used to walk for kilometres in ridge areas all alone. At 12-13, I have ridden bicycle to the most reclusive parts of the neighbourhood. And thought of something awful happening was in nobody's mind. Any of these activities would be unthinkable now.
More and more people have poured into the cities. With political class elected by force and threats and educated being outnumbered and helpless by democratic disguise, I don't know what can remedy the situation.
There is an India you don't want to know about. This is it.
We, Indians, have seen it. But we choose to ignore it, because, Mera Bharat Mahan (My India is Great)
It makes me hate other Indians though. Admit there's a problem, and work to fix it. Don't just brush it to the side and pretend it's not a big deal if you ignore it. All that's doing is putting a bandage on an open sore which is going to fester and make it harder to fix down the line.
You must be crazy. Its not like you do git pull india --rebase and everything's hunky dory from then on. Its 1.2 billion people. Beyond a certain threshold, systems are essentially unfixable. India has crossed that threshold a long, long time ago. You'd have a better chance if you just ran away & started a new community elsewhere - which is why there are little-indias everywhere - in seattle, silicon valley, new jersey, queens, austin,...
Here's a list of top 20 little-indias:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_American#U.S._metropolit...
All those little-indias are doing fine. Its the Big-india that has issues.
> Beyond a certain threshold, systems are essentially unfixable.
What a sad belief to hold, especially in the light of agents of such great change as Gandhi, Rosa Parks etc. Any system can be changed with the right impetus, although that's unlikely to happen soon in India. But things can't keep going as they are in the long run, it's just not a sustainable pattern for dense urban environments.
"Be the change that you wish to see in the world." - Gandhi
"Whatever action is performed by a great man, common men follow in his footsteps. And whatever standards he sets by exemplary acts, all the world pursues." - Bhagavad Gita
I see a lot of blaming the "poor and uneducated masses" of India, but I see very little introspection about the massive wealth and educational disparities that the supposedly wise and benevolent wealthy and educated minority benefit from.
It's a very difficult problem to solve here in India.
Sure, you can have proper laws to handle it - but what do you do about the lacking enforcement?
If you have proper enforcement - what do you do about the corrupt courts?
Even if corruption is fixed - how do you tackle scaling with dealing with these issues?
If we had all that working - who teaches these people to be respectful of personal rights?
In my opinion, this rape problem isn't THE problem, but merely a symptom of a much larger set of more important problems. I don't like these articles because they hardly do anything to bring to light what I think are huge structural problems that need to be fixed that allow rape to be a non-issue. I truly believe that fixing all the fundamental issues is the correct way to fix the country.
This is the story that you actually WANT to hear if you are currently or might possibly in the future ever wish to travel to India. Having stayed in India until very recently, I can not only believe this but also think that the problem is a bit understated(!) if possible.
There are numerous reasons why but many vested interests have aligned to sweep misogyny & sexism that is deeply rooted in India under the carpet. Being stared at is one of the Least of your problems if you are a Caucasian woman by yourself in India.
As frustrating as it is to say for me - If you are a foreign (non-Indian) woman contemplating travel by yourself (or an all female group) to India - THINK LONG and HARD. All the spiritual retreat, Yoga, Taj Mahal, Lush green forests, Sandy Beaches in the country will fade from memory when something like this happens - and the chances of it are relatively high.
I have so many things to say about this.
I'm glad someone came out and wrote about how violating and disturbing living -- actually living -- in another country can be.
I'm happy this article is getting the attention it is.
I'm impressed and filled with respect for the author that she had the guts to write this out.
I'm depressed that people are shocked to the point of disbelief by the contents.
I am Indian, but grew up in the Middle East. I split my time perhaps 4:1 between the Middle East and India as I grew up -- enough that I knew what life was like there, but not enough that I could feel like I was part of it, or it was part of me.
When I came to college in the US, I had a culture shock of my own, but most of it was in the positive direction. A friend in college told me she was going to study away in India. I was genuinely worried for her safety and mental well-being to the point of trying to almost dissuade her from going. I was torn between trying to tell her she must go because of how amazing and enriching the culture and heritage of India will be - despite being an engineering student she cared deeply for the arts and culture - and that she's better off changing plans because of how terribly violated, discriminated against (in good ways and bad, but discrimination is bad in general), restricted and confused she will be. Especially because she was going to be a (very very, even among familiar culture) attractive, fair-skinned foreigner there.
In my malformed attempt to "prepare" her, I wound up telling her a lot from both sides, and she was a little flabbergasted at my deviations from the tourism industry pitch, but took me seriously. She ended up going, she ended up "having a great time" as she told me and her other friends, and she also told me at some point while she was there "I understand what you meant when you were telling me about this place." That was surprisingly it. She probably wasn't nearly as traumatized by her time there as the author of the essay, and I'm glad for her. But I'm doubly glad that people step outside of their national bubbles, experience culture and society around the world, and realize there's so much to fix that we never hear about, drowned in tourist attractions, exotic food pictures, and stories about politicians.
Globalization, rapid as it is, is miles from bringing about understanding of life in another part of the world from where you live - not tour.
A few years ago while travelling in a sleeper class(the cheapest seats) on a long route train I met two British women hitch-hiking across India. Needless to say I was horrified and scared for them and gave the customary warnings I give to my sisters. They replied that they have already been told the same things before. One of them asked me, "How does the common citizen view them?" Thinking that they were not scared enough travelling across India, I replied, "Like animals in a zoo. They want to touch you. Some will admire and some will harass". A few minutes later, a young village woman sitting on the floor(probably without ticket) with a child in her arms asked me in Hindi to tell the British women, "They look very pretty". I did. In response I was requested to pass the same message back to the young woman(which I did not, her husband was already on to me). I continued my rant about how dangerous India is for woman to instill some fear in those poor devils. I am not sure I was successful.
The problem I think is - The people at lowest rung of our society have very little moral values. The most important thing is to survive. Sure occasionally you meet a auto-rickshaw driver who did not try to charge you more, but by and large every one of them will try to take as much as they can.
I have been with some of the poor people (heck I come from poor background) of this country, took a trip in transport truck from Kolkata to Patna, stayed in cheapest hotels in Varanasi, was part of student group that tried to forcefully occupy a train only to get fired at (one guy got killed) and one thing that is clear as day to me is - the idea that "this is wrong" does not exist when what matters is - "Can I get away with this?"
The gap between middle class and lower class is HUGE. I don't know if there is any other democracy that has such wide gap of income between people. It Us vs Them. Rich and middle class get very little empathy from poor folks. Perhaps it is true other way round too.
I read a blame-Indian-poor comment like this on every HN article about India. I recall one guy upbraiding the poor for public defecation. Because of low morals. As if lack of sewage infrastructure had nothing to do with the fact that people s&*# in the street in India. It's poor morals.
What makes your comment most remarkable, however, is that the linked article says almost nothing about class, or economic development, or anything like that. It's about street harassment of women. And yet, since it's an article about India, someone chimes in with a comment about how low-morals the poor are.
well as an indian it saddens me to say that i agree with you. also I believe that middle class and rich are the most misogynist among indians. There is no morality that works in india accept "I can get away with this because I have money and power to do so". I think that world will face a lot of problems integrating india and indians in near future.
Are you implying education has little impact on how a person perceives the world around him/her?
Can we deny that, all rapes that were reported in media were done by people from lower rung of our society? Sure for every poor criminal there is a educated bureaucrat taking bribe and doing as he pleases. But we are specifically talking about street harassment and crime against women here, which is fixable by educating people.
i am sorry but i believe you are in some fantasy world my friend. Most of the educated indians dont respect women and everyone knows how much porn addiction and objectification of women is rampant among educated students and other people.
I believe that lower class of society learns from the middle and upper classes. in India the meme of rape and abuse towards women comes from idealogy of middle class and rich misogynist men. I also believe this is a result of large amount of female feoticide that happend in past 25 years and is still going on in large numbers. I see future in a pessimistic way because of all this and it saddnes me that after knowing and understanding politics and history of the country , I dont see any way out of this darkness. I live in europe now and I made many friends with people travelling in india and many women from europe just like the girl from the article. Almost every women was harrassed and abused in some point of their journey in some way by someone and this is not dependent on class. I first hand experienced middle class and rich kids from majot metropolian cities taking picture of western women in beaches of goa without their permission and harrasing them.
I know the reasons for it very well one of them being not being able to see most indian women naked while growing up and being exposed to a lot of western adult content makes clear distinction in peoples mind to look and see white women as a mere sex object and nothing more. Also movie industry and what ideas they promote about women and sexuality doesnt help much. dont get me started about billion dollar fairness creams industry.........
Even if that's true, the qualifier "reported in the media" is an important one - are there rapes out there by the wealthy that aren't reported, because no-one would take the word of a poor woman over a wealthy man?
Not only are rape and sexual harrassment quite prevalent in wealthy, modern cities it also has a very real presence in those within the highest income brackets of those cities.
What comes with education and wealth is the sophistication to define the context in which said violence takes place. It can be swept under the rug, it can occur between people who know each other and both want it kept secret, it can occur and then be dealt with by a large sum of money. It is quite ridiculous that being poor inherently makes one more likely to be a rapist when there's no evidence suggesting a causal link.
I don't understand your logic, or what democracy has to do with the matter.
I am no expert on India, but I spent enough time there to observe a clear and disturbing trend in male behavior and I have spent enough time in other - developed and developing - countries to have appropriate context for comparison.
An easy place to start would be China, which exhibits some similar demographic issues, but you really never come across this type of behavior there.
As a brazilian that have lived in India for some time, I could tell you that the form democracy present in both countries today has a lot to do with incidents such as the reported on the post.
The historic distance between poverty and middle-class just grows as the public institutions can't provide basic (or with the minimium required quality) services to the poor: education, healthcare, housing, etc.
I don't agree with the _poor people have a different moral_ argument presented by 'gnufied, but there is an intense feeling of social tension on a daily basis on both countries, which is clearly related to the income gap and the almost tribal mindsets developed by those completely different realities.
Besides the economic factor, India also displays consequences from gender issues liked to its patriarcal society and sexual repression. Unsurprisingly, the lower part of the social pyramid is also the one that suffers more from a conflict between the exarcerbated sexuality pushed by media and the to be said moral values of society. The education system wouldn't reach that part of the population with the same quality as rich or middle-class people, which, as said on other comments, also suffers from that on a lesser degree.
I completely agree with you on China. I've had encounters which were completely harmless there, but could have taken a sour turn in Germany. Even the homeless are remarkably civil. There are certain areas you should stay out of as a tourist, but everywhere else seems almost laughably safe.
It is really amazing. Collectively, I have spent over two years in China, and have never been particularly cautious about what sort of situations I work my way into. Never once have I felt threatened or unsafe. It is what I admire most about the country.
I'm going to assume that you are male. I can assure you China is pretty damn dangerous for women who go drinking and rape is also common. There is a lot of sexual harassment in the workplace which is typified by power imbalances (you need a job and your boss is a sleazebag). Just because you haven't personally seen it doesn't mean it isn't there.
It certainly can be dangerous, as can any country, and I consider myself lucky to not have had any problems, but I can't think of another country I have been in that felt safer to me. And more time there only verified that feeling. There is a certainly a strong chance I would feel otherwise if I was a woman.
Have you visited Japan? It has great civility and safety, applied to people of either gender and even to foreigners. At least to white ones like me. Japanese say the old order is breaking down in the cities, so I can only imagine how it once was. Yet it remains the most civil place I have seen.
But aren't there seperate gender subway wagons precisely because there were widespread problems with sexual harassment?
I'd find it intresting to get the view of someone who grew up in asia and is ethnically asian, because their view will proably be markedly different from ours. I mean I'm half chinese, but I have the benefit of being male and being a hunxuee'r which most likely changes how chinese people treat me.
Yes, there are such wagons for the reasons you state - though limited to rush hour (about 90 minutes per day) and one per train of fourteen wagons or so and, in Tokyo, only used on some lines.
It does seem better here, but I am both male and European so not fully equipped to adjudge.
1. Crime against women is specially high. Why is it high? Because - wheels of justice turn really slowly here and perpetrator has a good chance of escaping without punishment. From what I hear, Justice (or sometimes lack of it) is swift in China. That itself is a great deterrent.
2.If you go through all the recent rape cases reported in media, perpetrators are almost always - mostly uneducated and poor. For some it was just entertainment(The Delhi case) and in others just an idea that they can get away with it. There is also sad fact that for many Indian males - women are objects [of pleasure]. An stereotype often reinforced by B and C grade movies (guess who watches those movies).
What you forget are the rape cases that are not reported in the media or do not get the same attention in the international press - The rape of poor dalit(lower caste) women by upper caste men. In some cases its used as a tool for handing out punishment to the unfortunate girl's husband, brother or father.
India's middle class or upper class cannot be so easily exonerated. There are equally horrific stories of women being exploited by well connected and well educated individuals. Please look at [1] and [2]
A slight detour and some anecdotal evidence. I was once at a party in the Film Institute of India, Pune. Pune is one of the more metropolitan cities in India and the environment and the outlook inside FTII is more progressive than the rest of India or so you would think. A guy kept coming to my female Caucasian friends and offered them drugs. We ignored him for a while and now hurt by this he started calling all white women as whores who destroy the sanctity of the college and the nation. The worst part was the group of people around him who supported him.
The problem is at a much deeper level and its present in all stratas of our society.
Everything you mention in problem 2 is likely true, but these are generally true in most countries around the world, regardless of phase of development: in any country most crime results from the poor or uneducated because they have an impetus for wanting to do it, and ultimately believing they can get away with it.
Regarding problem 1 this might make sense if crime (violent, in particular) was notably higher in India than in other countries with similar income levels, but I do not think that is the case - in fact I would guess it is on the whole on the lower end. Yet women do seem to be heavily objectified ( as pleasure). This is what I found so surprising and upsetting while I was in India.
I am from India and I have lived in one of the major cities of India for most of my life. I agree this is a very real problem that barely gets noticed. In my opinion there are various reasons for such culture -
1. Gender inequality, though there are many women breaking barriers and taking great strides in India, there is a huge population (urban and rural) that still considers women inferior to men.
2.In typical Indian culture, a son in a family is considered as the one that carries the family blood line forward where as a daughter is considered as a burden on the family. They are considered a burden on the family because the family has to pay an exorbitant dowry when the girl is married, this disgusting practice ruins lives but is unfortunately very prevalent even in rich and educated people.
3. A huge population (mostly the poor and illiterate) consider girls to be destined to do be homemakers, so education for girls is a low priority.
4. Societal pressures are enormous, many people/families of victims would wilfully push things such as harassment or rape under the rug to avoid the societal shame brought by being a victim. And, many of the few that make it through and go to the police for help are turned away or discouraged by the police to not lodge an official complaint reasoning that it would just bring about more shame to their family in the society. So, the cases that surface are just a fraction of what is actually going on. I believe these problems have always been there but just surfacing more frequently now.
5. Most Indian marriages are arranged marriages and there is a huge problem of marital harassment and rape that never makes it out.
6. The culture of arranged marriages coupled with the problem of premarital sex being a taboo in most of the country due to societal and religious reasons, mean that most men can be in their 20s or even late 20s have had very less or no interaction with the opposite sex. The lack of respect due to gender inequality adds to this problem.
There is part of the population that is well educated, informed, financially sound; that do not subscribe to this culture but the truth remains that India has a huge population and most of them are very poor, there is a huge urban and rural population that are very poor, illiterate and what I spoke about here are a big part of their belief systems and culture.
having recently traveled in India for three weeks, I heard remarkably similar accounts all too frequently from groups of women travelers.
Even as a man, I was approached for sex several times while out running. It was gross.
Having traveled a fair amount, I have never personally experienced behavior consistently this revolting in other countries. The behavior of Indian men was easily the most dissappointing part of my time there.
Indian gay men will often ask foreigners for sex - it happened to me a number of times. I wasn't particularly disturbed when it happened, but I was curious why it happened so much to me.
I asked a couple of the guys who approached me and I got two answers. One is that I'm about a foot taller and more muscular than the vast majority of indian men, i.e. I'm pretty hot. The other is that if they approach an Indian, he might know people in their community which would result in their family finding out they are gay.
Nothing terribly unusual or that I haven't encountered in the US, but the frequency with which it happened was really alarming.
Twice a guy drove up next to me on more quiet roads and starting asking questions about how to get around or something other general that I can't remember (in English, btw). I always tried to keep running and they just rode along next to me. The topic would quickly change to sex and then I would get angry and sprint back to a busy street and go away. A couple other times guys drive past me in cars and were more direct. It was never violent or particularly scary.
A long time ago, I read the classifieds section of an Indian tabloid that has 1 million readers. These are examples of what I saw:
> Male Gorgeous: Male to Male only. Head to Toe complete relaxation body massage, Hygienic North, South India masseurs anytime.
> Body Massage: Male to Male (Hotels/Doorstep). Complete Relaxation. Good Looking Guys. High Profile. Only Male Service.
Now, I'm not one to judge, but the fact that it's important how good-looking the masseurs are indicates to me that people aren't just getting massages.
mostly people riding after me on motorcycles, and pretending to ask a question and then turning the conversation elsewhere. It only happened a few times, but I also only went running a few times.
I was only in India for a month and I am not joking or exaggerating that the constant threat of sexual violence also gave me what people could call PTSD.
Even making eye contact with men was perceived as an invitation. I could do nothing right. I tried adopting local garb, covering, being a shadow basically. I wasnt even alone; I was with my boyfriend the whole time!
I dont know how to talk to people about my experiences there without sounding like a complete grump. I would never have been able to imagine how brutal India was for everyone, including women, without going. Thank goodness I could leave!
Very much so... I don't think I can describe in words just how horrifying it was to read this. This is a country that my ancestors were from. It's hard to imagine it being so patriarchal and sexist as is described here.
The "patriarchal and sexist" adjectives are presumably necessary but not in and of themselves sufficient. For instance, there have been plenty of sexist, patriarchal regimes in European history where behaviors such as the ones described would be considered gross affronts to basic morality by the Christian church (which was an empowered entity whose opinions carried some import).
(One could theoretically hope that gender-studies departments at various universities should find it productive to scrutinize the differences in these patriarchal, sexist regimes in order to understand the nature of the cultural differences which engendered these disparate results. Theoretically.)
"(One could theoretically hope that gender-studies departments at various universities should find it productive to scrutinize the differences in these patriarchal, sexist regimes in order to understand the nature of the cultural differences which engendered these disparate results. Theoretically.)"
Empirically, this is a core part of what gender studies departments in fact do. Just off the top of a quick Google search:
We could debate whether this is doing it well or adequately, but gender studies, if we're discussing it in practice at decent universities and not just theoretically, has a non-zero amount of rigor as a discipline.
Actually, in strong patriarchal societies, these sort of behaviours are NOT tolerated, mostly because women are assumed to always "belong" to someone else (be it her dad, husband, tutor... whatever), and when people DO try funny stuff, other men will put a end to it.
Societies where people start to feel entitled to have women, are the ones that unite several things at once: materialism, individualism, lack of women to marry, or lack of advantage in having a marriage.
Both sexes will always strive to have sex, that is part of being human, but when the "normal" way of having it get screwed, people find alternative ways...
Be it in a hedonistic society with lots of parties (usually those that have everything I mentioned, PLUS became matriarchal, those societies mimick perfectly matriarchal primates), or in a misoginistic society where women are viewed as prizes (on those that lost classic patriarchalist values, but retained the male dominance, like India since 15 years ago, or Saudi Arabia), and some has a bit of both...
"Actually, in strong patriarchal societies, these sort of behaviours are NOT tolerated, mostly because women are assumed to always "belong" to someone else (be it her dad, husband, tutor... whatever), and when people DO try funny stuff, other men will put a end to it."
This isn't actually true. There will always be women not recognized as "belonging" to a male (prostitutes, menial laborers, travelers, orphans etc.) or whose superintending male figure is not high enough status to enforce his "property rights."
Unless we are going into No True Scotsman territory, "strong patriarchal societies" - however defined - do in fact tolerate these sort of behaviors in a great many contexts.
there have been plenty of sexist, patriarchal regimes in European history where behaviors such as the ones described would be considered gross affronts to basic morality by the Christian church
Really? I'm skeptical. Can you point to any historical evidence that this is true?
For example, consider slaveholders in the US. It was always recognized that they could rape their slaves. No one at the time thought that was wrong. Even the church. But perhaps I'm wrong: again, can you point to any recorded historical cases of slave owners who raped their slaves but were chastised by the church? Anything? Even just one case?
I'm pretty skeptical that the church would have opposed a random lord of the manner raping a peasant woman under his dominion either.
Why don't we hear this more often? I often hear stores about people traveling to India but I've never heard of this level of incessant public abuse.
And what about the people who were warning her to dress conservatively and not make eye contact? Did they know the extent of the abuse she was about to endure? Did they deliberately downplay it for some reason? Or did she experience unusually horrific treatment because of her appearance?
I've heard similar first-hand accounts from women travelling in northern India. One friend in particular was almost raped in a taxi but was able to fight off the attacker and escape. She also was molested on trains on multiple occassions, basically men groping her breasts and groin as described in the article.
Combined with the recent reports of rapes of tourists and local women I think that by now it's fairly well known that India is not particularly safe for women travellers.
There has been a deluge of news reports about Indian rape culture during the past few months. If you haven't noticed, you haven't been paying attention. See, for several horrible examples: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/19/india-bus-gang-rape...
I've heard those reports but I thought it was typical media sensationalism. A bad string of isolated cases overplayed perhaps.
When you talk about traveling you usually hear that kind of story from people. Don't go to [large country] because people get kidnapped there. Well, often it turns out there's one small section of one city in the entire country where that kind of news comes from.
Judging from this woman's story, she went through a multi city trip experiencing the same intense culturally acceptable public abuse everywhere she went. That's extremely different than random occasional problems. And why the fuck would the University of Chicago send her into that shit?!
India is really one of the worst places to be a woman. My coworker told me that the constant stress and vigilance needed when she went out would wear her out.
How does one effect societal change to counter this? Poverty or the poverty gap isn't going away anytime soon in India. I don't necessarily think poverty is the problem in this case. It is an attitude that's all too pervasive among Indian men, even the well-educated ones and most have gotten away with it for decades. It will take an entire generation and perhaps more of education and cultural shift to change misogynistic attitudes and teach basic respect.
What does one do, present day, to start fixing the problem?
As a man who grew up in India but lives in the west now, I'm ashamed of this side of my home country.
The staring thing is uniquely Indian and I'd agree with devindotcom, most of the time, curiosity that is honest and harmless.
What about women in visible positions of power/authority? In Australia, male/female police duos are quite common. Could the same be useful in India? I think someone suggested elsewhere that this is being tried in Southern India.
Swift justice and brutal penalties, with cases being openly reported as a deterrence.
If many (generally poorer, rural) men are moving to cities, is there an issue of them being unable to find sexual partners of a similar status due to an imbalance in gender? Not sure how you would even begin to reasonably solve that problem in a short amount of time.
I write this as an Indian male in his 30s. India sucks for women. And north India especially has got really terrible over the last decade. Thankfully, the South still is relatively better but is also deteriorating.
What's even worse and what I absolutely hate are the Indian men who wear BLINKERS and say nothing is wrong or say that this is the same situation everywhere. (NO ITS NOT). Or they try and beat their chests and say "you aren't patriotic", "you are being too negative about India". Simple statistics shows this. Even taking into account significant under-reporting percentages in the past, there is still a massive increase in rapes, muggings, thefts etc over the last decade.
It was upsetting reading that. I know they are shit places in the world. But reading this made if feel personal. It is hard to imagine how human dignity and lives can be insignificant. But in some places there are. You can get trampled to death easily, you can fall down and have a heart attack and the crowd will just jump over your body and continue on walking. Some will bend down and sift through you pocket as you lay unconscious.
This post just makes me mad. While I am sorry that she had a bitter sweet experience, I also find her extremely unaware and unaccepting of a foreign culture.
It is only human to stare at some thing you don't see that often. May not be pleasant but to assume that her photo was being taken to be used in a pornographic sense is just, utter rubbish.
FYI: I have been stared at in the Midwest, in small town america and at times in the great epicenter of knowledge - that northeastern city called Boston. Look out for me in that next porno. Oh my.
Her imagination runs wild thereafter. I am sorry, I lived in India for 18 years and practically grew up there. I have never ever seen anyone disrespect or "jerk off" at a white person in public. Yes, they hassle you to make a quick buck or two but saying everyone chased her around the place is a wild goose chase around reality.
Sure, the media has done an amazing job of portraying India to be this sexually out of control state, and I agree it has its issues. It is only as bad as any other country in the world, really. Even the so called developed ones.
It's a bit hypocritical to point at another country and say how bad it is over there, when the typical teenage boy in America watches his first porno clip at around 10 or 11 years old.
Granted we do not necessarily have as much of the kind of behavior the girl describes out in the open but it does exist behind closed doors, at frat parties, at high school parties, at office parties...
It's even worse in the fact that it is so hidden in America. The puritanism that this country exhibits publicly (abstinence only sex education strikes me as a prime example) is dramatically offset by the tremendous amount of sexual depravity and lewdness that occurs behind closed doors.
I'm not saying there aren't problems in India, but please don't be quick to draw the conclusion that we are so much more civilized. We are just better at hiding our own problems.
You can't deny that there are a large number of Indians who work in technology and start-ups.
Engineers and others who work in the tech sector (especially in Silicon Valley) almost certainly know and work with more Indian or Indian born people than people in almost any other profession. Learning about the culture they come from and how they treat foreigners and women is absolutely relevant to people who care about and work in technology.
Agreed. I work with, hire, and work with companies that hire many Indian contractors and out sourcing companies. Even the cafeteria where I work just added an Indian food area which always has a huge line. Discussions about outsourcing success or failure and which country to go with are very common.
I also encounter a lot of Indians in business development positions, so you are more often to encounter them when going around talking to other companies than you would just going around your office. I've also read articles that Indians in general are much more widespread in companies than say Asians, who often stick to their own companies, and are steadily moving up the ranks. So you're probably more likely to have an Indian boss or C-level at some point than say an Asian one.
I don't know if I picked up anything useful from the article, being male, but some of the replies have been interesting, like the discussion about the lack of space in the cities and Indians being honest in general about crowding around something interesting, etc.. Might have a useful input or two into how I interact with my Indian peers in the tech sector.
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Wow - what a completely and totally awful experience. Normally I tell people to take any and every opportunity to study abroad, but this makes me rethink that. Perhaps it's gender blinders that make this experience seem so unthinkable.
The issue of women's safety in India has come up several times, and here's how I look at it.
India is a very lawless country, and has always been so, and women have historically lived in seclusion. It's rare for women to walk around in lowly bazaars unescorted. It's certainly not something foreign women should do while in India. A good thumb rule for the safety of a particular location is to look for the presence of large numbers of Indian women. In India, there exists a large population of criminal and vagrant men, who would not think twice before perpetrating some monstrous deed on an innocent woman.
If I'm going to India for 5 weeks with my gf, do you think we'd honestly have anything to worry about? I would assume having the guy alongside would tame things down a bit right?
Yes it would cool-off some of the more more aggressive creeps to some extent. Do not stray from the Known destinations (This is not the country to explore "untouched places" unless you are armed & willing to use violence defensively) and do not drink (alcohol/whatever else) with unknown folks.
India is an amazing country, with some amazingly warm people. Unfortunately everything in the story is also very plausible, so as an Indian who is deeply ashamed that visitors to his country can face such an experience - my apologies.
It is Indian tradition to say that "The guest is akin to God". Hopefully every visitor to the country gets treated with the respect that people give their deities one day.
Its 1/6 of the world population we are talking about. There is no known way to integrate Indian people and modern culture brewing there. Everyone has ideas and realizations but there is no solution to this problem. This is going to be a huge problem in some years and its going to effect every single one of us.
What I don't understand is why anybody would think of India as a traveler's paradise? Because everything is cheap for a western person? Does one need a huge amount of ignorance to enjoy traveling among hordes of poor people? (Real question - I've never done such a thing)
1. India has a lot of beautiful and varied landscapes. There are mountains, lakes, forests , beautiful beaches , backwaters. I cannot do justice to the amazing places I have seen.
2. Almost everyone speaks English. In some places, to make the tourists feel more comfortable people have learned Hebrew, French and German.
3. Things are indeed cheap.
More controversially, I have also been told by travelers that the other reason India remains so popular is that drugs are incredibly easy to score, especially in some tourist spots.
The other thing is that a lot of tourists do not keep travelling among hordes of poor people. If they go to Goa, they hit the beaches directly where they meet other tourists and other people trying to sell exotic crap. If they go to the mountains they live surrounded by other tourists.
Worth mentioning also that India has one of the world's oldest and richest cultures.
It is hard to describe the feeling visiting some of these places, perhaps it's a bit like visiting Delphi or the Acropolis. My favorite was the Red Fort near the Taj Mahal.
It's a lot easier to describe the bad things about India than the good things.
Okay, considering the patronizing and condescending tone of your comment, I couldn't help but bite. Even if this comment is a few days old.
I too have a very low opinion of India like you do. I have often said food and yoga are the only great things to historically come out of India and a few good mathematicians of course. So food alone is one reason to visit!
The others here have mentioned about the geographical beauty of India. Skiing in the Himalayas alone is worth it.
I was born in India but moved away at a very young age. I did go back from time to time. Like you, I too think Indian culture is old and full of ignorance. It is biting them in the ass. My comment history will attest to that. But then again, what developed nation wasn't? At some point the church prevailed in Germania too. But this is changing, albeit at a slow pace. Why? Indian values have been traditionally been placed on peace/ cowardice ;). They never had a deranged lunatic who propelled them into the scientific age with a war based economy killing half of his own population. They never had genetic cleansing of population. So any change into the scientific, modern age is going to happen at a very slow pace. Unless of course they go to war with China and their existence is threatened. I guess you can see what I'm getting at. Spirituality. There's a fundamental divide in east-west spirituality and its a lot more deeper than you think. It's enlightening to visit these places. Please do read autobiography of a yogi or anything by vivekananda if you go on such a trip. It's not just mindless, non-scientific drivel. You'll see a fundamental difference from Nietzsche.
Next, history. India is home to the oldest known civilization in the world, the indus valley civilization. So you can imagine how rich the history is. And needless to say, I'd imagine you know the importance of visting historical sites, especially say Auschwitz in your country. There is some stuff we never want to repeat. Oh and I couldn't help but type this, you can take a train in India without fear! I kid, I kid.
Some go to experience new things where new isn't necessarily good or pleasant. I have traveled to various countries where people live in various states of dereliction and despair and I have lived with them there. I have spent weeks living in slums and living in much the same manner as everyone else there. Being cheap isn't a concern, I have the funds to travel pretty much anywhere. Experiencing something far outside of your regular existence is a humbling and exhilarating feeling. Living in what pretty much everyone would describe as a slum taught me a significant amount about ingenuity, patience, other people's coping strategies, humility and hostility.
I think you're confusing the joy of travel with a vacation. I believe the two to be very different things. India, the Middle East, China offer very different cultural experiences, and most people travel to take a glimpse of those experiences.
The crimes and experiences as highlighted in this article however are completely inexcusable.
I don't know why people live in that sort of denial.
To me it was obvious as soon as I got there (mumbai, then delhi, jaipur and agra) that there was grinding poverty, little modern infrastructure, little to no sanitation, mass corruption, inequality unlike anything I'd seen before, incredible overcrowding... Quite horrible.
What does liberalism mean in that context - the belief that everybody is only responsible for themselves? (Again serious question, I don't know how to interpret this).
Am I the only one who thinks CNN should not be publishing this story.
It's not vetted in any way, which leads to issues with both it's accuracy and the safety of the author who admits to suicidal thoughts and is currently in a bad mental state.
Wow, my sister-in-law lived in India for 6 months training people. She never experienced anything like this, apart from a few men politely asking her out. Is this phenomena a regional thing or something?
I lived in India for awhile and had female friends go though a bit of what is described in the story it brings back situations I was in and I empathize.
The article does mention she covered up. Maybe just as much as an Indian women would generally, though, and not as far as that? That said, Indian women do seem to generally where long dresses that cover everything, compared to here in Cali where we are flooded with short shorts. There was even an article recently about panties on mannequins being against the law in some cities because it offends sensibilities.
This sort of thing, and much worse, happens in all countries where there is a strong ethos of sexual repression.
Let's take a glimpse at the Middle East for a moment.
Specifically Egypt.
And no this is not about the much publicized Lara Logan incident. Nor is it about several other subsequent incidents including other foreign journalists at around at the same time.
(The videos, although free of nudity, are still disturbing. Exercise caution)
How many Western news outlets covered the incident? I'd be surprised if her fellow Dutch men and women ever learnt of the incident. Such is the nature of the phenomenon of self-enforced media blackouts in Western media, circa 2013.
The big difference in India is that the press is free (probably far more free than most places in the West and represents free-market capitalism at its most sharpest best, since the sheer number of media houses in India makes silencing any news story virtually impossible), people are free to express opinions and there is plenty of it, and there is no government authority to stage manage the "image of India" as other Asian and Middle Eastern countries do. Statistically India has something like 1.8 rapes per 100,000 people while peaceful Sweden has 78.
India has 1.2 billion, a size much of the world cannot comprehend. Hence a noisy press combined with a large number of cases due to huge population results in perpetuation of stereotypes about whats really one sixth of humanity.
Yes, lots of work needs to be done in the country but the selective harpooning of countries that enjoy generous press freedoms (there are easily more newspapers and news channels in India than all of the rest of the world combined, by far) just goes to show how we choose to sanitize the stories from countries we want to portray in favorable light and vilify the ones we don't.
i think it's important that it was true for the places the author was in, as well as the other women whose situation was similar with the author's.
yes, it's generalization, but that the experience and the severity of consequences were similar to multiple people should give you more sympathy than 'it's true in some places'.
I know you didn't use the word as I think you used for, and I'm sorry, but the usage of the word some really tipped me off here.
I'm a little over 6 feet, blond hair and green eyes, and when I and my family were visiting India (Mumbai and a few other areas around Maharashtra), we got stared at really, really hard. Like everyone around us literally stopping on the street and doing nothing but stare.
It was unnerving, naturally, and I asked my brother and his (now) wife about it, since they had been living there for about a year. They told me, and I later observed for myself, that this type of looking and curiosity is part of how Indians generally are. It's very honest, very unapologetic, and once you get over the taboo of the stare, very disarming. It's not just visiting Westerners either - they stare at each other, watch each other honestly, will walk across the street to get a better look, and crowd around something interesting. I saw it constantly and eventually understood it as a lack of interpersonal barriers that arise in a highly individualistic society. Everything is shared because in a city of 15-20 million people, there's hardly any space apart. People in major metro areas understand some aspect of this but it's hard to really grasp unless you're there.
The problem, of course, arises when this lack of barriers combines with misogyny of the boldest type. Getting used to the constant stares is one thing for me, a man (and taller than most of my observers by a head), but for a woman it must be extra difficult to accept - and that's just the stares. The lack of respect for her space may be part of the collectivism that arises with incredible density, but the lack of respect for her body and humanity is not. It is rank and deep-seated sexism, and insitutionalized assault. There's a culture supporting this (which is not to say that Indians as a people do) and it needs to be dragged into the light of day and shot.