Bangalore - New Year's Eve mass molestation of women in Bengaluru streets resulted in no official reports made said the police after witnesses saw women being groped and disrespected in the streets.
According to the Bangalore Mirror, the city is becoming no better than Delhi, which has a growing reputation for disrespecting women. A growing 'rape culture' in the cities of India has been blamed on the westernization of many women.
The Daily O - opinion piece said, "sadly, lack of respect for women is deeply ingrained in the Indian mindset." Possibly this does account for some of the abuse of women that happened on New Year's Eve when witnesses saw dozens of drunken men openly groping women and talking to them in a lewd manner.
But, while many feel the response of G. Parmeshwara, home minister for Karnataka state was brushing aside the incidents when he said,"They tried to copy the westerners, not only in their mindset but even in their dressing.... some girls are harassed, these kinds of things do happen,” he may have a point, if not any quick solutions to a rising cultural problem.
India is a country with thousands of years of culture and as he pointed out, they cannot these days force people to live and dress according to the Kannada cultural group that dominates the state. The Kannadiga culture is known to provide shelter and self-respect to people by owning them and their culture, but the problem is that over the years there has been a lot of migration into Bangalore and this is where traditions tend to fall down.
Throw in the looser lifestyle that Indian women see in the movies and the modern non-traditional dress, and women will face social pressure.
Not enough just to blame rape culture on western dress
It is not enough to just say that if women dress like westerners they are "asking" for a "rape culture" to grow. it would seem that India has some serious social issues to address.
One of them is the fact that women often fail to report molestation. The Guardian pointed out that Bangalore records the third-highest number of attacks intended “to outrage the modesty” of women. Think how Amnesty International report only one percent of molestations are reported and it becomes obvious there is a big problem beneath the waves of female abuse.
NDTV covered the story which quoted the journalist from the Bangalore Mirror who "alleged that he had seen several distraught women approaching policewomen and complaining that hooligans had molested them and made lewd remarks during the New Year's celebrations." Since the media covered the story the Director General of Police for the area said they will be looking at CCTV footage to try and identify the culprits.
Comments on the NDTV site show that some Indians think that the women also need to be more discerning about where they party on New Year's Eve. One person said, "There are spots people need to avoid on New Year Eve .. in Bangalore .....once during 1989 I went to MG had a bad experience never went to MG Road for New Year's Eve celebrations since. People of Bangalore learn to discipline yourselves don't blame the cops who are stretched." Others have entered into a scathing attack on different Indian ethnic groups.