Saurabh Sugandh 
A very popular question that intellectuals constantly post or throw at us “Where are we heading as a society?” is not relevant anymore. The insecurity of Indian men and their constant proof of masculinity in public is enough to make our Indian society shameful and that popular question as irrelevant.
Protectors of our culture constantly argue that only few incidents does not show the real naive India and its naive Indian men. I would really like to agree with them at some point in my life. But this would take generations of social reforms and brain-washing of mothers and sisters who cover their sons and brothers with a protective blanket. The animal Indian men (not the average Indian men) are at fault but they grow inside a culture to which we Indians boast of so much.
We take advantage of every moment to criticise the western openness and praise ours. Some of the regular comments that I get is that “It’s good that at least our culture is not that much open otherwise it would have become a wild west”. Despite this, we never lose an opportunity to go and settle abroad. Even few trips to the wild west make us the elite in the Indian society.
Let us not judge or blame the sickness of Indian men entirely but just make a note of the following incidents from the last month:
The first incident took place on August 14th in Dehradun. The rape ambience was the celebration preparations for the Independence Day at a school. The victim was a 16 year-old school girl living in a hostel. Rapists were three-to-four boys of Class 12th. Victim was rewarded with a threat and rustication from the school if she goes public.
The second incident happened on September 2nd in New Delhi. The rape ambience was a call centre in Uttam Nagar, Delhi. The victim was some unknown girl. Rapist was Rohit Tomar, son of assistant sub-inspector Ashok Kumar Tomar. Not sure what happened to the girl. But the accused threatened another girl with a video clip where he claimed that he thrashed and beaten the first victim. The video was shot by the peon, Rajesh, of that call centre to publicise the boy’s masculinity.
The third incident is still fresh in media that happened on September 13th in Haryana. The rape ambience was a room near a tube well in a farm land in Jajjhar. The victim was a 19-year old college girl (a former Class 10 CBSE topper). A dozen of naive Indian men raped her. Three of them have been identified as – Pankaj Fauzi (a defence personnel), Manish, and Nishu Phogat (friend of the victim). The victim was abducted from a bus stop in Kanina, Mahendragarh and was drugged with the aide of a doctor. The naive friend of the victim called the doctor again when the condition of the girl worsened. She was then dumped back to the bus stop. This incident was rewarded by the Chief minister of Haryana. He rewarded the girl with the compensation of two lakh Indian rupees.
Of course, there are number of rape incidents in India and only few of them gets shortlisted by the news media for public. But what caught my attention too was this recent incident in Haryana. I decided to write about it when I saw the news that a compensation amount has been paid to the victim and those rapists are still at large.
I would have too just ignored the incident (like many of us) but the experiences that I had with my wife on Indian streets, shopping malls, airport, and some elite restaurants; drove me. The constant stare of these naive Indian men at my wife and taking pictures of her when I’m looking the other way still say a lot of things about Indian culture. In fact, my wife is yet to experience any culture in India. She believes that this is the real culture and the real India. And I couldn’t argue with her anymore.
