Priya Tripathi
Confident women in India are not welcome. Sometimes, when
they ask uncomfortable questions, the hurt male ego even results in murder, as
the case of Monika Ghurde shows.
In the past few days, the murder of 39 year old celebrity
perfumer Monika Ghurde has been in the news. The accused, a young man,
committed the heinous crime as he nursed grudges against Monica for filing a
complaint against him. While there were more than 20 complaints against the
security guard, Monika’s complaint filled the 21 year old man with such angst
that he decided to take revenge. The brutal torture of nine hours which she
went through before death is very disturbing.
Just a month back, it was in the news as to how the man who
murdered Pallavi Purkayastha had escaped from parole. To refresh your memory,
Pallavi was a young, successful 25 year old lawyer living in Mumbai. Pallavi
had scolded the security guard after she noticed his lewd gestures towards her.
Back in 1990, a 14 year old girl was murdered and raped in Calcutta after she
refused to give in to his obscene comments at her. He crept into her flat,
raped and murdered her.
All these women were bright, confident and independent. They
questioned the wrongdoings of these men and it was too much for the fragile
male ego to handle. The accused in all the cases admitted that their intention
was to ‘only’ rape the women and not commit murder. We must notice the usage of
‘only’ before ‘rape’ with so much ease. All these men had a psyche that a rape
or sexual assault is the way you teach outspoken women a lesson. They ended up
murdering these women because they fought fiercely and scared the shit out of
these men. It was risky to keep them alive because they would have fought for
justice. So they were overpowered by these men who reverted to their most
primitive instincts.
Confident women in India? Not welcome!
Why is it so difficult in India to be a smart, confident,
attractive and single woman? While Bollywood reaffirms that akeli ladki ek
khuli tijori ki tereh hai (a single woman is like an open locker), it is up to
us to think beyond the laughter around these sexist jokes. How do we accept it
do candidly that men have the tendency to revert to their beastly behavior if
women deviate from the norms set aside for them?
There is so much protection needed for women to live as
human beings. If you put a gender neutral lens in all these cases, a man would
have done the same thing as the women in these cases did. Filing a complaint
against the incompetence of a security guard is no big deal but it became a big
deal here because the complainants were women. These cases remind us that the
repercussions faced by a woman when she objects to the behavior of a man are
graver in nature than vice versa.
So while people don’t bother to know what their son is up
to, they want to monitor every activity of their daughters. Being a man, you
may say that you want to protect the women for their own safety. However it is
a matter of shame that we live in a country where first we have to save the
girl child from getting killed, and then have to protect her through her life.
If she ends up living a life any human being deserves, it must be the game of
her lucky stars. A woman does not need a man’s protection but behavioral change
which patriarchal values may not allow him to do.
Being a woman, if you walk on the street alone in any Indian
city, it is so easy to hear the abuses loaded with words against women. While
you use these abuses and talk about f&#%ing someone’s sister or mother, be
sure that your dear friend is intending to do the same to women in your family.
That is where the ‘protection’ psyche starts. For the male fraternity, the competition
starts from talking about f&#%ing each other’s sisters and mothers. In the
process you produce such dysfunctional men whose mind patriarchy has f&^ked
for ages. These men consider it a matter of pride to belittle everything
related to womanhood.
The hidden cost of being an Indian woman
One has to pay a huge hidden cost for being a woman in this
country. She compromises on the time she should walk on the roads, the clothes
she wears, the way she expresses her sexuality and how much she should fight in
her defense. She has to keep male chaperones around her to remind her that she
has no escape without the opposite sex. While we proudly talk about our soaring
GDPs, we can’t afford to ignore this issue – please look around to see the
plight of woman starting from your own homes.
If the workforce participation rate for women in India was
the same as for men, roughly 217 million women would join the labor force. At
53 percentage points, India has one of the worst gender gaps (disproportionate
difference between the sexes) in the world. In a scenario where women are bound
to earn more for ensuring their safety, it is surprising that they do not go
out and work for various social and cultural reasons. As per the culture, they
have to be ‘protected’ and a strong woman wants anything but protection. Thus
the absence of strong and independent woman should not come as a surprise to
us. Against all odds and with support from friends and family, if a woman
reflects radiance and confidence in her personality, it hurts the fragile ego
of many men. Some of them end up losing their lives to keep the masculinity of
these men intact.
The other day I happened to see Pallavi Purkayastha’s mother
from a distance when I was rushing towards a neighboring hall for a meeting. I
wondered what must she would have gone through in these four years. A shooting
pain ran through my spine – the pain of these women’s families is unimaginable.
The hidden cost of being a woman in this country is remarkably high.
A version of this post first published here
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