Something I posted in another thread:
I woke up on the early morning of 29th December, 2012 at around 4 am. The TV was on, I actually fell asleep while switching between the news channels following our Nirbhaya's story, something I was doing for the last two weeks. The TV was showing a breaking news, that she was no more. My heart sank, I somehow had a very bad feeling since the evening that day, but I was hoping against the inevitable, but it ended with her death. It was like I lost someone very close to me, I am sure many Indians felt the same that day. But the horrific incident did something amazing, it started a series of protests by the common people of India, spontaneous, massive, and an apolitical protest all over India. The protest is still on, it never died, and hopefully it will bring the change we are so desperately looking for in our country.
Then, a couple of months ago I was having some evening snacks at the food stalls near Tollygunge, a large group of foreigners, mostly women, were checking the foods, they approached me to explain the foods to them, while talking to them I found that they were students from foreign universities of different countries like Italy, France, Holland, etc. visiting IIMC on a student exchange program, and they had big plans to travel across India also. I studied in the same institution, so they became comfortable and started asking me many questions about the places to visit, what to see, where to eat, hygiene, etc. etc. and then they asked me about safety, safety of women to be specific. They had very bad impression about India from the media and they were actually very concerned about the 'safety' part of their travel plan. I just told them to follow the safety norms they generally follow in their own countries, and they are likely to be about as safe as they are in their own countries. But I also understood that our vehement protests against crime against women in India has sent very wrong and inaccurate kind of messages about India around the world. We are NOT among the worst countries in the world in this matter, we never were.
In short, while we were doing something very positive with our spirited protests (which is the best thing to happen in a long time), it was largely taken very negatively around the world and caused serious damage to the perception & image of India in the world, and it matters. Every single rape in India finds a prime space in the foreign media, while similar incidents in their own country will never be highlighted, even when their own country might have a more serious situation in this regard. I also suspect that a part of this vile propaganda was out of inferiority or superiority complex (depending upon the countries, like our neighbour or the UK), and some vested interests, I mean there are countries who stand to gain if India's image goes down, it has its political and economic implications. Here we are cleaning our house with our windows open, and some people are pointing fingers at us and saying; 'hey look, how dirty they are'.
This realization has made many of us (including me) and the government defensive, we need the protests and social reforms to go on within our country, we certainly do, but probably we also need to find a balance somewhere, like the way we sometimes scold our children for their own good, but would not want just anybody to come and scold them or make fun of them. Maybe we need some control on the current situation, maybe we need to put curtains over the windows while cleaning our house. Just my opinion.
.......... shoo. ........... chuta nahi hai.... age bado.
