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India: the Story You Never Wanted to Hear

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Re: India: the Story You Never Wanted to Hear

#31

Post by sid6376 »

gnufied wrote: post #19
hankcharles wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 com…

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…

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 [2]http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?205638

Re: India: the Story You Never Wanted to Hear

#33

Post by hankcharles »

solistice wrote: post #25
hankcharles wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 com…

I completely agree with you on China. I've had encounters which were completely harmless there, but could have taken a sour turn in Germany. Even the homeless are remarkably civil. There are certain areas you should stay out of as a tourist, but everywhere else seems almost laughably safe.

It is really amazing. Collectively, I have spent over two years in China, and have never been particularly cautious about what sort of situations I work my way into. Never once have I felt threatened or unsafe. It is what I admire most about the country.

Re: India: the Story You Never Wanted to Hear

#34

Post by gnufied »

thisisnotclear wrote: post #24
HoratioWarlock wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read a blame-Indian-poor comment like this on every HN article about India. I recall one guy upbraiding the poor for public defecation. Because of low morals. As if lack of sewage infrastructure had nothing to do with the fact that people s&*# in the street in India. It's poor morals. What makes your comment most remarkable, however, is that the linked article says almost nothing about class, or economic developmen…

well as an indian it saddens me to say that i agree with you. also I believe that middle class and rich are the most misogynist among indians. There is no morality that works in india accept "I can get away with this because I have money and power to do so". I think that world will face a lot of problems integrating india and indians in near future.

Are you implying education has little impact on how a person perceives the world around him/her?

Can we deny that, all rapes that were reported in media were done by people from lower rung of our society? Sure for every poor criminal there is a educated bureaucrat taking bribe and doing as he pleases. But we are specifically talking about street harassment and crime against women here, which is fixable by educating people.

Re: India: the Story You Never Wanted to Hear

#35

Post by toomuchtodo »

devindotcom wrote: post #13

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 doin…

All the upvotes in the world for this:

>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.

Re: India: the Story You Never Wanted to Hear

#36

Post by hankcharles »

solistice wrote: post #28
hankcharles wrote: post #11

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 m…

Wait, were you approached by other men on the street soliciting sex?

mostly people riding after me on motorcycles, and pretending to ask a question and then turning the conversation elsewhere. It only happened a few times, but I also only went running a few times.

Re: India: the Story You Never Wanted to Hear

#37

Post by Sven7 »

devindotcom wrote: post #13

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 doin…

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.

Re: India: the Story You Never Wanted to Hear

#38

Post by rayiner »

Tichy wrote: post #30

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)

Either ignorance, or a healthy dose of youthful, idealistic liberalism.

Re: India: the Story You Never Wanted to Hear

#39

Post by speeder »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #15
kunai wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 gen…

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...

Re: India: the Story You Never Wanted to Hear

#40

Post by sid6376 »

Tichy wrote: post #30

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)

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.

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