{"id":76391,"date":"2013-01-12T01:54:36","date_gmt":"2013-01-11T20:24:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tehelka.com\/?p=76391"},"modified":"2013-01-12T01:54:36","modified_gmt":"2013-01-11T20:24:36","slug":"indian-men-on-women-in-their-own-words-uttar-pradesh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/indian-men-on-women-in-their-own-words-uttar-pradesh\/","title":{"rendered":"Indian men on women: In their own words – Uttar Pradesh"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2018The government should encourage initiatives that empower women\u2019<\/strong><\/span>
\nAjay Poonia, 24, Noida
\n<\/strong>Professional quizmaster; works for a digital marketing company<\/strong>
\nWhy do you think the Delhi bus gangrape case caught such attention?
\n<\/strong>What shocked me what the fact that it happened. And every day since, with the newspapers and news channels covering it, it stills shocks me. It happens every day, everywhere. Why it caught so much attention could be because of two things. One, that it happened in Delhi, in such a prominent posh location. The second factor is the brutality of it.
\nWhy do you think so many rapes and sexual assaults happen in India?
\n<\/strong>Ours is a society of suppression of women kind in general. The freedoms of women are curbed. And since men don\u2019t interact with them much, they don\u2019t understand what it means to be a woman in this country. That is where the mindset stems from.
\nMany people feel women’s freedom is responsible for the rise in sexual crime. Your take?
\n<\/strong>I\u2019d like to believe that women expressing themselves will curb the crime rate. Freedom for women can only be a good thing. Men have to understand what women are like and what they go through in a society like ours.
\nDo you think women are responsible in any way for being assaulted by men?
\n<\/strong>No.
\nWhat are the freedoms you would be comfortable with for your sister\/girlfriend\/wife?
\n<\/strong>If my mother, sister, girlfriend, friend, is roaming at 11 at night in Delhi, I should ideally say I\u2019m ok with it. The fact that there is danger to them, means their freedom is being curbed.
\nDo you think Indian women have enough freedom or should they in fact get more freedom?
\n<\/strong>I think it should be a top-down approach. The government should encourage initiatives that empower women. So that over time it gains acceptance and gets inculcated in the society and the way people think about women. Women deserve equal rights and equal space in this society. So education and upbringing become really important in the way they form social mentality, which is where the government should also focus. There are so many places where women don\u2019t even know they should be and can be more vocal about what they want. They accept the life they have been prescribed.
\nWhat were you taught to think about women in your own family? Do you think women should have equal freedom as men? Has your thinking changed in any way as you have grown up and been exposed to other ways of thinking?
\n<\/strong>My formative years were in a boys\u2019 school. So I, too, was brought up secluded from one half of our society. But, on entering college, I suppose I was lucky with North Campus in Delhi University. It exposed me to a freer atmosphere, where guys and girls coexist without it being a big deal.
\nLots of women today like to enjoy their bodies — wear nice clothes, many of them are comfortable with having relationships before marriage or outside of marriage. Do you think this is good or bad for society?
\n<\/strong>I think it\u2019s good. It supports what I say there shouldn\u2019t be suppression of women. It\u2019s freedom of choice. If they want to express themselves they should be able to, and if they don\u2019t want to that too should be ok.
\nIf any woman\/girl in your family told you she had been molested by someone within the family or outside, how would you react?<\/strong>
\nAn outsider would be immediately reported. But, if it\u2019s a family member I would first involve the people immediately concerned. If it\u2019s an extreme case then file an FIR. If it\u2019s a very mild form of harassment, a collective decision would have to be taken as to what is to be done with the perpetrator and what the best interests of the victim are.
\nWould you like to take up the issue or protect the family or woman’s honour? What do you think makes it difficult to take up issues of sexual abuse?
\n<\/strong>Being quiet is not one of the options for me. The question would be how severe the punishment should be.
\nDo you think pop culture has any role to play in the way society behaves?
\n<\/strong>We are affected by what we see on TV. I think any medium, body, individual that has such influence over a society\u2019s thinking has a responsibility to society. Pop culture and cinema do not own up to this responsibility. That is why they blatantly objectify women.
\nWhat is your concept of an ideal man — in terms of how he deals with women?
\n<\/strong>Such a man would deal with her like he would deal with anyone else. By that I don\u2019t mean be inherently aggressive or anything. He should extend basic human courtesy without gender bias. Don\u2019t\u2019 consider a woman as an \u2018other\u2019. His behaviour shouldn\u2019t reflect special treatment because the woman is not one of his own people.
\nHow do you think this problem of rapes can be fixed?
\n<\/strong>It\u2019s a problem that can be fixed only through long term investment. Maybe we should actually implement a lot of initiatives that the intelligentsia of our country proposes. Caring, which is what we need as a people, is a hard to measure term. It cannot be calculated. What\u2019s the amount we need to care to become a better people? As for sensitization, I suppose it should start from an early age. As soon as children grow aware of the environment around them, and how biased it is. That\u2019s when education and awareness have to take root.
\n
\n\u2018The modern successful woman has to strike a balance between her family and professional obligations\u2019<\/strong><\/span><\/span>
\nVivek Tewari, 25
\n<\/strong>IT Head, Food Processing Unit,\u00a0<\/strong>Barabanki<\/strong>
\nThe Delhi gang rape incident has disturbed me. I am at my wit\u2019s end to understand as to where this society is heading for and is there any light at the end of the tunnel. All my friends were stunned by the incident, how such a thing could happen in national capital.\u00a0I am also unable to figure out the reason behind the incident.\u00a0I think the police and the law and order machinery is to be primarily blamed for this incident. All those blaming the lifestyle of the women and their dress are talking nonsense.\u00a0Drinking is nothing new in India, but everybody does not rape women under the influence of alcohol.
\nI can say from my first hand knowledge that such incidents occur at both big cities and rural areas. For various reasons the incidents in villages do not catch the attention of the media for the simple reason that the people are either scared of the police or reluctant for social reasons.
\nI have seen media reports where some people have blamed modern culture for the incidents of criminal assault against the women. I don\u2019t understand how these people can be so insensitive to a 23 old innocent girl who lost her life in a heinous crime. I cannot agree to the idea that women are to be blamed for crimes against them. It\u2019s ridiculous. Rape happened four decades ago also, when women did not have the kind of freedom and participation in public life as they have today. There is a need to improve the people\u2019s perception about law and order and instill confidence among women, particularly working women, that they are safe and can lead their lives as normal citizens.
\nThe sooner we realise that women are equal members of society and they have every right to exercise their discretion about their career and married life, the better it is for our society.\u00a0Who are men to decide the level of the freedom to be enjoyed by women? It\u2019s a private affair of any individual, which is determined by the profile of her profession and financial background.
\nIt would be incorrect to say that freedom enjoyed by women is enough and that they do not need more. Freedom is dynamic, not a static issue, as our society is fast changing. Hw can the level of freedom be quantified?
\nI am not, however, in favour of live-in relationships. Some may not agree with my opinion, but I think it is bad both for men and women. The persons entering into this kind of relationship should understand that they won\u2019t be eternally young and that with time, the hard questions of real life will stare at them. I don\u2019t think this kind of relationship is not sustainable.
\nThe modern successful woman has to strike a balance between her family and professional obligations. After all, women are the pivot of the family and there can be no family without a loving, happy, satisfied women.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Conversations with Indian men from all walks of life on what do they think about the role of women in the society. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":73,"featured_media":76664,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[7528,340],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76391"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/73"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76391\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}