As a Bengalurean, I was very saddened when I came to know about the incident that took place in the city on the New Year’s Eve. I was shocked that such an incident could take place in the city of Bengaluru, which has always been among the safest cities in India for women. In Bengaluru, women have always been able to safely work in night shifts in the city’s IT and ITES sectors. To see that such an incident took place in Bengaluru was both shocking and saddening.
However, it was also disappointing to see how the media covered the whole incident. For days, together, they showed the same thing over and over again, and came up with taglines like #BengaluruShame, #Bengalurumolestation, and #ShameOnBengaluru. One particular paper claimed that the city of Bengaluru doesn’t know to celebrate, it knows only hooliganism. Just because of the acts of a few despicable men, the media shamed an entire city of 8.6 million people.
They interviewed politicians; the politicians came up with the usual lame excuses and blamed the “western culture”. It was amusing to see the media interview Abu Azmi on this matter. Everyone in India knows about Abu Azmi and what a chauvinist he is. What was the point of interviewing him? He is neither a national level politician, nor is he a leader from Bengaluru or Karnataka for that matter. His party is a no show and a non-entity in the entire state of Karnataka.
This is not the first time the media has irked the people of Bengaluru. Just a couple of months back, when the Kaveri issue was boiling, it was the media which added fuel to the fire and aired provocative content in both Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, leading to violence in both states. It was the Bengaluru Police’s continuous updates on social media and continuous monitoring and patrolling, which brought the situation under control in the city.
After shaming the city of Bengaluru, the media then went after their second target, the Indian men. One particular paper claimed that Indian men are sexually frustrated louts and unless that is changed, nothing is going to change in India.
Statements like Indian men don’t know how to respect women or Indian men are perverts by nature were ringing everywhere. This is generalization at its worst. The media today has become an entity which always looks for the negativity and exploits it to the full in the name of publicity.
The hooligans, animals, and criminals who molested women on that day neither represented the city of Bengaluru, nor the men in the 1.3 billion Indian societies. They represented perverts, hooligans, criminals, and thugs who are present across the world. They must be condemned, shamed and punished, absolutely no doubt about that. But to shame an entire city or the whole society of Indian men for the incident is ridiculous and here we can say that the media has failed.
Every time a pervert tries to think of raping or molesting a woman, he must think of his mother or sisters before indulging in such an atrocious act. But every time the media or the liberal or the feminazi brigade tries to shame a city or the whole community of men just because of a few perverts, they must think of their father or brothers, who are willing to sacrifice everything for the sake of their daughters or sisters.