PM Modi on Rape Cases: Correct Sons, Don’t Question Daughters

http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/pm-modi-on-rape-cases-correct-sons-don-t-question-daughters-576261

Certainly sounds good.  Brings to mind a conversation I had with a friend yesterday.  She has a daughter who studies in a premier professional institute in Bangalore.  The girl lives in a hostel and is doing her post-graduation.  Just as we were sitting and chatting, she received a call from the daughter asking her to call the warden of the hostel immediately and inform her that the girl was coming home for the weekend.

I was shocked.  The girl is 22 – the average age of the hostelites doing post-graduation in the institute.  Legally speaking, she is an adult.  She is well above the age of consent.  It is not as if the hostel would take any tangible responsibility if something “wrong” were to happen to her during day time or within the confines of the hostel.  Nothing they do could change anything in any case.  So how can they curtail her freedom of movement to the extent of her going home to her mother (just a few kms from the hostel btw) over the weekend and insist she be back in the hostel by 9 pm?  

Anyone could call up and inform the warden that her daughter was coming home.  How are they going to check out the veracity each and every time?  It is not as if those girls who are determined to have a “good time” don’t despite all these restrictions.

Shame that we don’t treat our daughters as anything more than a piece of flesh to be kept “protected” from the big bad wolves while we allow those wolves to roam free anytime of day or night.

Mr. Modi, can you do anything to forbid hostels from imprisoning our daughters?

“I Apologize”. Is That Enough?

Very frankly, I am not even sure about what to think about this video which I came across today. Don’t know how this will help reduce the incidence of rape in the country. People who rape are not so sensitive as to get enlightened by a video of this kind.

It surely highlights a problem to people who are not so aware of what goes on in this country. Beyond that I don’t know what else it will achieve. Going by the comments, both positive as well as negative, I get an increasing feeling that just “apologizing” does not accomplish anything. Will these people gang up together next time they see a woman being targeted in any way on the streets, at work, in the home ….. ? Will they beat up the perpetrators in public without “fearing” for their own lives?

Will they stand up against the kind of social injustice meted out to 99% women including their own wives and daughters at home and in society in the name of “culture, traditions, the glorious Indian self-sacrificing women and patriarchy”? If they will, I would say this video has been worth the while; if not, it is just one more video which doles out patronizing words of sympathy to women.