In India, women are held responsible for their own safety. Especially when they are not accompanied by their brother, father or husband.
After mass molestation on New Year's Eve, Bengaluru women call for harsh punishments
On especially 'dangerous' occasions, like the New Year's eve celebrations on Brigade and MG roads in Bengaluru, even the men in the family would not dare escort women out.
The molestation of several women on New Year's Eve night in a public place marked specially for the occasion has thankfully evoked the right condemnation from all quarters.
Except perhaps Karnataka Home Minister G Parameswara, who has been criticised for saying: "Events like New Year's or events like Christmas day, or many other events similar to that, there are women who are harassed or treated badly. These kinds of things do happen."
Yes, they do. Unfortunately.
Which is why our mothers, and before them, theirs, never failed to repeat to their daughters, "Come back before it gets dark."
Parameswara couldn't have been more wrong when he blamed the incident on the women's Western attire. "... youngsters were almost like westerners. They tried to copy the westerners, not only in their mindset but even in their dressing. So some disturbance, some girls are harassed, these kinds of things do happen," he said.
No, Mr Minister, the problem does not lie with what women wear. If that were the case, rural India would have been the safest place for women. But few mothers in Indian villages allow their girls to head into the fields, especially when the crop is standing; or attend school in the nearest town if she has no female friends to travel with; or go to school at all if there are no other girls — or a female teacher — in the class.
So yes, in India, women are supposed to build their own safety nets. And when you don't take your safety into your own hands, few come to your defence.
The women who were out partying are more likely to get reactions like, "Who asked you to venture out at that hour?" or "Don't you know what it's like on such occasions, so why risk it?"
Unfair as that may be to women, it's the sad truth. Women have a right to roam about freely anywhere, at any hour, with anyone they want to. But is India ready for them to exercise this freedom yet? Not by a long shot.
Not when the 1,500 policemen deployed to maintain law and order on the night of the 31st are said to have done little as mobs of drunk men went on a groping spree.
Not when according to the statistics from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), 94 women were raped every day in the country in 2015.
Not when parents still tell their daughters travelling alone to book the train berth in Second Class AC and not the First Class coupe.
Until that happens, when parents are confidently able to sleep while their daughter is on her own — anytime, anywhere — women will have to continue to double-lock the door at night, and hope they don't have to tell their daughters to get back home before it gets dark.
