India: the Story You Never Wanted to Hear

I don't know why people live in that sort of denial.

To me it was obvious as soon as I got there (mumbai, then delhi, jaipur and agra) that there was grinding poverty, little modern infrastructure, little to no sanitation, mass corruption, inequality unlike anything I'd seen before, incredible overcrowding... Quite horrible.

i am sorry but i believe you are in some fantasy world my friend. Most of the educated indians dont respect women and everyone knows how much porn addiction and objectification of women is rampant among educated students and other people. I believe that lower class of society learns from the middle and upper classes. in India the meme of rape and abuse towards women comes from idealogy of middle class and rich misogynist men. I also believe this is a result of large amount of female feoticide that happend in past 25 years and is still going on in large numbers. I see future in a pessimistic way because of all this and it saddnes me that after knowing and understanding politics and history of the country , I dont see any way out of this darkness. I live in europe now and I made many friends with people travelling in india and many women from europe just like the girl from the article. Almost every women was harrassed and abused in some point of their journey in some way by someone and this is not dependent on class. I first hand experienced middle class and rich kids from majot metropolian cities taking picture of western women in beaches of goa without their permission and harrasing them. I know the reasons for it very well one of them being not being able to see most indian women naked while growing up and being exposed to a lot of western adult content makes clear distinction in peoples mind to look and see white women as a mere sex object and nothing more. Also movie industry and what ideas they promote about women and sexuality doesnt help much. dont get me started about billion dollar fairness creams industry.........

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...

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.youtube.com/watch?v=KtPQvhNqNFY

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_newspapers_in_India

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?

Let me offer an anecdote too. I am of Indian origin. I lived in the country for 7 years; I speak multiple Indian languages quite well too. I was there recently. There are several distinctions between the two countries.

1. Things get more real there. You don't get good grades, your life is going to suck with high probability. In America, you can wank off trying to navel gaze whilst doing your degree in some bullshit and then eventually can be comfortable living your life working in a coffee shop. In India, the people who work at coffeeshops have shitty lives.

2. I agree on your perception of Indians vs. Americans on interpersonal relations. Indians have no concept of personal space. I was traveling alone in the Himalayas. I got tired of the questions that started off with casual strangers asking me "Do you have no friends?" to army men asking me suspiciously why I was traveling alone. (To add on to the shit is more real there; if I had a name of the wrong religion, that would have been a dangerous issue.) In America, people create these shells of beautiful people. Everyone is happy, white shining teeth and shining gadgets. Depression and mental issues covered up. Take a pill; go to the therapist is the solution to everything here.

3. People in the U.S. have a sense of community. A simple fucking thing like littering is a big deal. In India, forget about the fact that the government mandated litter bins exist all over the place, no one wants to take the effort to put a piece of plastic in the damn bin. Again, with high probability.

Finally, to get to the subject of the OP. I met a lot of American girls (and guys) whilst traveling there. I was shocked that fucking Delhi, the capital of one of the largest countries in the world, was where most of them reported being harassed. From the innocuous "Are your freckles a sign of skin cancer" to "Hey, you are white, would you like to get raped.". This behavior is revulsive. Yes, it should be brought up to light.