Understanding the male principle

Today Bangalore, yesterday everywhere, tomorrow anywhere. Every few months, yet another incident of sexual harassment or assault somewhere across this vast country grabs the attention of the media and triggers a fresh outpouring of genuine public outrage and anguish, accompanied and intensified by patently absurd, predictably obnoxious comments from politicians, police officers and others in supposedly responsible positions. Most incidents that elicit a nationwide outcry tend to take place in a public space in a big city, even though they are not representative of the over 130,000 cases involving sexual offences documented by the National Crime Records Bureau in 2015—including those that are inappropriately termed “assault on women with intent to outrage her modesty” and “insult to modesty of women”. In the aftermath of high-profile cases of sexual harassment or assault, the primary focus is typically on the specifics of the particular event and what, besides swiftly bringing the guilty to book, can be done to prevent such occurrences in the future: better policing, crowd control, streetlights, public transport, more CCTV cameras, helplines, panic buttons, apps… Public figures and others who question the wisdom of the women under attack being where they were when they were, and what they were wearing and doing, are called out for holding such antiquated, invalid views and attempting to blame and shame the victims instead of condemning the deplorable, criminal behaviour of the perpetrators. The effort to deal with the problem of sexual violence has to extend beyond the expression of feelings and opinions in the media, including social media, and even participation in protest demonstrations—although it would certainly help if more men invested time and energy in such visible action on the ground.