
India: the Story You Never Wanted to Hear - Brajeshwar
http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-1023053
======
devindotcom
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.

~~~
Sven7
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.

~~~
sid6376
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.

~~~
Sven7
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?

~~~
Nursie
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.

It's just not.

~~~
kenster07
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.

~~~
jlgreco
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.

~~~
kenster07
As far as I know, there are no documentaries made about how it sucks to be a
gas attendant.

~~~
jlgreco
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.

------
sridharvembu
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](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.

~~~
dman
Pretty spot on from my perspective.

------
rayiner
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.

~~~
rm999
>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.

~~~
moultano
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.

~~~
chrischen
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.

~~~
moultano
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.

~~~
chrischen
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.

~~~
moultano
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.

------
smutticus
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.

------
npalli
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.

~~~
noisy_boy
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.

------
negamax
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.

------
nish1500
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)

~~~
supergauntlet
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.

~~~
dxbydt
> Admit there's a problem, and work to fix it.

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...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_American#U.S._metropolitan_areas_with_large_Indian_American_populations)

All those little-indias are doing fine. Its the Big-india that has issues.

~~~
dsuth
> 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.

------
suprgeek
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.

------
keerthiko
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.

------
realrocker
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.

------
gnufied
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.

~~~
hankcharles
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.

~~~
gnufied
There are two problems:

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).

~~~
sid6376
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.

[1][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suryanelli_rape_case](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suryanelli_rape_case)
[2][http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?205638](http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?205638)

~~~
jpatokal
Thanks for posting -- that second link is considerably more depressing than
the original article.

------
pavanred
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.

------
hankcharles
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.

~~~
dhruvarora
This is slightly disturbing. If you're comfortable with it, could you
elaborate on what happened to you? I have never heard of cases involving men.

~~~
yummyfajitas
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.

------
PencilAndPaper
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!

------
guybrushT
It is stomach-churning, terrifying, and maddening to read this ...

~~~
kunai
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.

But, as we see from the news, it is. It's hell.

And it's not going to change.

~~~
fennecfoxen
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.)

~~~
speeder
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...

~~~
slurry
"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.

------
angelohuang
It reminds me of a news about a western woman who hitchiked across China. I
hope women's security in India will get better in the future.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/rachel-katz-hitchhiked-
across...](http://www.businessinsider.com/rachel-katz-hitchhiked-across-
china-2012-3)

~~~
D9u
Thank you so much for that link. It was the perfect antidote to the disturbing
story of India's misogyny.

------
grannyg00se
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?

~~~
ordinary
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...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/19/india-bus-gang-
rape_n_2329002.html)

~~~
grannyg00se
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?!

------
circuiter
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.

------
blizkreeg
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.

~~~
prawn
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.

------
lenkite
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.

------
rdtsc
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.

------
sricola
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.

------
imperio59
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.

~~~
richardjordan
underage porn viewing is hardly the same as widespread acceptance of rape and
sexual abuse

------
mathattack
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.

~~~
camus
It's not like you need to go there... want to study abroad ? go to Europe, or
China.

India is a sh*t hole , sorry ,there is no other word. ( and i've been there
with my gf, she felt safer in Bangladesh...)

------
jalayir
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.

------
droopyEyelids
Thinking about India really made me grow up in some ways. Mostly by disputing
the idea that the whole world is progressing and 'getting better'.

Not saying India is particularly bad, but maybe the foreignness shocked me
into noticing it.

~~~
jpatokal
India _is_ getting better -- it's just doing so slowly, unevenly, and from a
low baseline.

------
bobbles
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?

~~~
suprgeek
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.

------
alphakappa
This is truly sad.

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.

------
thisisnotclear
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.

------
Tichy
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)

~~~
sid6376
Let me take a shot at answering this.

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.

~~~
waveman2
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.

------
socrates1998
This is crazy. I have traveled a lot and I have never even been close to
having any of those things happening to me.

I hope this gets published and circulated widely because women need to realize
how dangerous traveling can be.

I have known a few women who have not taken proper precautions.

It's sad, but reality.

------
aaron695
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.

------
codereflection
This is just indescribably terrible, I feel awful for women who have endured
this torture.

As I was reading the article I couldn't help but think, "This woman is going
to end up with PTSD", and sure enough she did. :(

------
leke
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?

------
RoyceFullerton
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.

But why is this on the front page of Hacker News?

------
jjoe
Could the controversial head scarf (or even the full on attire) be the only
way women can preemptively protect themselves in such a "raw" environment?

~~~
lnanek2
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.

------
snambi
Indian government is useless. Somehow the country and people work, in-spite of
non-functional government.

------
wozniacki
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.

[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/05/egypt-women-
rap...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/05/egypt-women-rape-sexual-
assault-tahrir-square)

Did you even so much as hear about the rape of a 22 year old Dutch journalist,
just last month, in full public view, in the middle of Tahrir Square?

[http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2013/jul/02/jour...](http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2013/jul/02/journalist-
safety-egypt)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtPQvhNqNFY](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtPQvhNqNFY)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yua66_tlBG8](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yua66_tlBG8)

 __ __(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.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_news_channels_in_India](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_news_channels_in_India)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_in_India](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_in_India)

------
nutanc
Why is this on Hacker news?

------
mknits
As if such things never happens in US or other countries.

------
altero
At least they did not try to kidnap her as is common in some muslim countries.

------
logn
Now imagine a creative and free-thinking person on today's Internet and
replace the men groping this woman with NSA agents prodding at our thoughts.

Edit: NSA, don't downvote this. lol :P

