The worst of sexually frustrated Indian male behaviour was in evidence on New Year’s Eve in Bengaluru. As if groping women who were celebrating the arrival of a New Year was not despicable enough came the reaction of none other than the home minister of the state whose comment was shocking enough to permanently scar the psyche of women in India. Not only did he brush away the incidents in the cosmopolitan heart of the acclaimed IT capital of the country as “just some things” that happen during revelry but also blamed it on the Western culture that the younger generation was adapting. And he wasn’t the only reactionary in the land. Uttar Pradesh’s SP politicians are notorious for their flighty comments on rape and such other crimes that violate the body and soul of women. Abu Asim Azmi was the one who carried the torch for all the male chauvinists of India by blaming women for man’s sexual predatory behaviour. He attributed the male reaction in Bengaluru on that evening to women’s nudity as fashion in the form of short dresses that they tend to wear.
The candid eyes of CCTV cameras may have recorded the gory incidents of sexual abuse in graphic detail. Even so, the police are yet to lay their hands on any of the hundreds of culprits, ostensibly because there have been no complaints from the women who were molested. If this is the attitude of the city police under a new commissioner who took over on January 1, we can well imagine how safe we make Indian women feel by such apathy to their plight in a land of depraved males. The Bengaluru police must crack down on the culprits so that a warning goes out to all men that their animal sexual behaviour will not be tolerated in this society.
