Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Why is India so bad for women?

In an ashram perched high on a hill above the noisy city of Guwahati in north-east India is a small exhibit commemorating the life of India's most famous son. Alongside an uncomfortable-looking divan where Mahatma Gandhi once slept is a display reminding visitors of something the man himself said in 1921: "Of all the evils for which man has made himself responsible, none is so degrading, so shocking or so brutal as his abuse of the better half of humanity; the female sex (not the weaker sex)."

One evening two weeks ago, just a few miles downhill, a young student left a bar and was set upon by a gang of at least 18 men. They dragged her into the road by her hair, tried to rip off her clothes and smiled at the cameras that filmed it all. It was around 9.30pm on one of Guwahati's busiest streets – a chaotic three-lane thoroughfare soundtracked by constantly beeping horns and chugging tuk-tuks. But for at least 20 minutes, no one called the police. They easily could have. Many of those present had phones: they were using them to film the scene as the men yanked up the girl's vest and tugged at her bra and groped her breasts as she begged for help from passing cars. We know this because a cameraman from the local TV channel was there too, capturing the attack for his viewers' enjoyment. The woman was abused for 45 minutes before the police arrived.

Within half an hour, clips were broadcast on Assam's NewsLive channel. Watching across town, Sheetal Sharma and Bitopi Dutta were horrified. "I was fuming like anything. There was this horrible, brutal assault being shown on screen – and the most disturbing thing was, the blame was being put on the woman, who, the report emphasised, was drunk," says Sharma, a 29-year-old feminist activist from the North-East Network, a women's rights organisation in Guwahati. "The way it was filmed, the camera was panning up and down her body, focusing on her breasts, her thighs," says Dutta, her 22-year-old colleague. Full story...

Related posts:
  1. Schoolgirl in Guwahati, India stripped and molested by 20 scumbags...
  2. Girl in India publicly undressed and humiliated by hoodlums as spectators watch. 
  3. Jealous husband in India kept wife’s private parts locked for four years!!!
  4. Two schoolgirls raped by 15 men in India. WTF!
  5. In India, it's the woman's fault if she gets raped...
  6. School principal in India rapes under-age student with wife's help. WTF!
  7. Tribal girl in India forced to walk naked as crowd molested her and others cheered. 
  8. 17 Indian police and forest officials convicted of gang-raping 18 Dalit women ...
  9. Kidnapped girl in India rescued, and then raped by cops...
  10. The worst places in the world for women: Afghanistan, Congo, Pakistan, India...

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