Much anger and anguish has been expressed after a young girl in Guwahati was publicly beaten and stripped by a group of twenty men. The video of the incident that went viral over the web resulted in the nation's collective outrage, and demands that the guilty be punished. Why have only three of them been arrested? Will the guilty be let off? What kind of punishment do they deserve?Most debate surrounding the incident has dwelt on questions like these.
But what about the girl in question? How many of us are thinking about what she is going through right now? Not only was she physically abused by a mob but now she has to deal with her darkest moment being in the public domain. The incident would have permanently scarred her psyche and she will never be able to go in public without recollecting those few moments. Whenever someone looks at her, she will always be thinking in her head - Does this person know I was the girl publicly stripped and humiliated?
She is not the only one. While what the girl in Guwahati faced was without doubt an extreme case of abuse, it often goes unnoticed that practically every young woman in India has been molested or eve teased at some point of time in her life.
Yes, in most cases, the scale is not to the degree of what the young girl in Guwahati faced, but that in no way makes being the subject of harassment free from trauma.
I can recall the first time I had to deal with such harassment (I'll refrain from calling it 'eve teasing' hereon for I believe the term is more of a euphemism that waters down the seriousness of the issue). I was only eleven at the time and was travelling on my own to the orthodontist in my then hometown - Bombay. After a short train ride I was walking my way towards the clinic, when a group of boys (they seemed to be in their late teens or early twenties) started following me. It was sometime in the late afternoon and the street bore an eerie silence. Soon enough the verbal abuse began. They spoke in Hindi and one of them began to make crude remarks about how he thought I looked and what he found appealing. Another responded stating I was his 'chaavi' (Bombay slang for 'babe'). I remember going cold. I didn't know what exactly was happening but at the same time an intense fear set in. I quickened my pace and my single-minded focus was on getting to the clinic before those guys got to me. They sensed my fear and I could hear them decide amongst themselves to come and accost me as they hurried in on me. All I remember after that was running for my life. I ran and ran as fast as I could and only stopped for breath when I had entered the clinic.
Though I managed to get away without any visible harm being done, the incident shook me up. I was so scared and unsure of myself that I didn't even have the courage to discuss it with anyone. In that one instance I perhaps went from being a carefree child to an adolescent who was always on the guard. Being careful however didn't actually help.
Thereafter such instances of harassment in public spaces became common. Sometimes it was in the form of lewd comments, or the singing of a Hindi film song filled with sexual innuendo as you walked by. There was the groping of your chest while you were in the middle of a crowd and the hand that came out from gap between the backrest and base of a seat during a ride in a public bus. And I was in no way a lone sufferer. Every young woman in India I know has similar stories to tell.
In hindsight, I know I did nothing to encourage those instances. I was very careful about how I dressed in public spaces and while using public transport. But those instances of harassment took place even when I was wearing things like a school uniform, a salwar-kameez-dupatta or a full sleeved shirt with trousers.
When I was younger my only reaction would be to make a dash for it and flee for safer surroundings. Later on, as I grew in age and confidence, I began to shout back in an attempt to scare off the offender. That was about as much courage I could muster up, for being harassed either verbally or physically makes you feel violated and can immediately dent your self-esteem.
Very few of us have the courage to stand up for ourselves - because it takes two types of courage: moral, the determination not to let a wrong go unpunished, and physical, since the abuser is invariably male and, by definition, stronger than the victim. An exception was this friend of mine from college.
A bunch of us students would alight from a train station and then walk to our college - St Xavier's in Mumbai, which was about a 10-15 minute journey by foot. One particular morning, I made my way alongside a few friends while another group of girls was walking a short distance ahead of us. Just then a man on a bicycle went peddling past and as he approached the group ahead of us, out came his hand and he pinched the butt of one of the girls. The young lady in question was a friend and classmate of mine and not one to take things lying down. In a reflex action, she dropped the bag in her hand to the ground (confident that a friend would pick it up) and raced behind the man on the cycle. She managed to get hold of the man and yanked him off his cycle. The rest of us quickly rushed in for support.
Together we then dragged the man to our college reception area where the group swelled in numbers and along with the college security guards we encircled the offender and began questioning him. He begged to be let go and started to apologise. He spoke in English and was afraid that his wife would get to know of the incident. Undeterred and with the help of a professor who had just arrived, my friend who was the victim led the man to a nearby police station.
Looking back at such incidents, I feel that opening up and sharing what we've faced is the only way to bring about a change. It just might help future generations of young girls to be less timid than what I was and ward off future generations of young men from what they might consider to be a lighthearted pastime.
Do share any such instances of molestation or harassment that you've faced or seen, in the comments section below.
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