What’s wrong with American, Scottish, and Australian men?

In her regular weekly piece Ms. Kalpana Sharma asks, “What’s wrong with Indian men?” [1] From the title, I expected an analysis. What did I get? I will let you be the judge, down the line.

In the context of recent spate of sexual crimes in Mumbai, the Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime), Himanshu Roy said in Mumbai, “The most obvious method of preventing such crimes is that women should be aware of their environment. This does not mean that they should be suspicious of all (my emphasis) their male relatives, friends or colleagues, but it would be wrong to assume that none (my emphasis) of these will ever harm them.”

Now, that did not sound all that awful to me. Of course, I am a man and what would I know about crimes against women. Another reason it sounded OK was an article I had referred to in an earlier post, by one Nilanjana S. Roy [2] Executing the neighbor in which the author, taking support of statistics, argued that rapes by acquaintances, relatives are far more numerous as compared to by strangers. The environment contains strangers as well as people you know. Further, in a series of articles in a newspaper on how unsafe women feel in Delhi, one writer mentioned that she crosses the road when she espies a group of men ahead [3]. I thought this is what the policeman must have referred to in his comment about women being “aware of the environment.”

But, no I got it all wrong. The policeman was “suggesting that the onus of preventing the crimes is really on women,” Ms. Kalpana Sharma says [1]. Unless Himanshu Roy had said more about women’s responsibility and for some mysterious reasons the writer failed to include it – after all, it would have helped her case to no end – she had gone way wrong; particularly when she throws this gem of a sentence: “Roy needs to be reminded that the job of the police and law enforcement is not (my emphasis) to tell women what they should do, but to do their own job more effectively.”  Sorry, both are the tasks of policemen. Police must tell both men and women, and children too, what they should do in the interest of their own safety, while discharging its other duties effectively.

It is more than likely that the writer has been swept away by the current hysteria. No, I am not discounting the horror visited upon the lady, and I as a male citizen of Delhi feel ashamed. But, unthinking finger-pointing does no one any good. And, hysteria carries a negative premium in charting out a path out of the mess through discussions and debates.

The irony of the whole article is in the conclusion that for the many troubling questions, including why men are this way, “There are no easy answers. We can begin by debating and discussing this issue much more than we do, in our schools and colleges, in the columns of our newspapers, and in our families,” after doing everything she could have done to undermine debates and discussions!

What I have got by reading the article is that I should title my post in the interrogative and proceed to give no answer. And, that gets me to American, Australian, Scottish men. Parallel to the Delhi gang-rape, the other unspeakable crime on the world stage is the massacre of 20 children aged six or seven in the US.

Bill Moyers, a left-leaning doyen of the American press, starts an article in the Huffington Post [4] naming the 20 children and six adults who were shot dead in Sandy Hook, Newtown, Connecticut, USA – the full address and you can locate it on your iPad. If he had wanted he could have likewise listed the most recent dozen are so such massacres. Indeed, he lists four: Newtown, Columbine, Arora and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Why he missed Norway, I am curious. What is common to all of the above and the other unlisted massacres? All were carried out by men. Now, you get why I titled this What’s wrong with …men?

Bill Moyers took care of American men. What about Scottish and Australian men? For that I have to take you to an article in The Economist of December 22, 2012, their annual double number [5], a nice Christmas gift this massacre was. In the piece, we read that after a similar massacre in Scotland, Britain banned private ownership of most handguns. That is, Britons do not trust their men. Likewise in Australia, after a massacre in Tasmania. Australians don’t trust their “Mates”!

But, in the US, apparently the distrust of men is not quite so severe. Charlton Heston, aka Moses, you remember, don’t you? He had come down from the mountain carrying, instead of the stone tablets, a couple of assault rifles. This is what his God, the National Rifle Association, had given him. But, NRA got the rifles as a gift from the US Constitution, its Second Amendment, the right to bear arms. You may challenge God, but how do you challenge God’s donor? You cannot. Hence, gun laws remain porous, as porous as the villain in any of the Dirty Harry movies will be after Clint Eastwood riddles them. There is no solution.

One thing to note though. Both articles with the Newtown massacre as their backdrop are not titled in the form of a question. Yet, they too failed to offer any solutions, except suggesting that the impossible must be tried!

So, it all comes to whether I like the title in the form of a question or not! I am never going to give any answer anyway.

Raghuram Ekambaram

 References

1.    http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-sundaymagazine/whats-wrong-with-indian-men/article4230617.ece

2.    http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/executing-the-neighbour/article4218247.ece

3.    http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/go-home-wear-a-pair-of-shorts-and-stare-at-your-own-legs/article4075959.ece

4.    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-moyers/watch-remember-the-victim_b_2341949.html

5.    http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21568764-if-even-slaughter-20-small-children-cannot-end-americas-infatuation-guns (This article is likely to get behind a pay wall, the Scrooge that The Economist is!)

Australians are afraid

Australians have been declared by the International Tennis Federation (ITF) as the loser in their Davis Cup Asia/Oceania Group I tie with India scheduled for May 8-10 at Chennai, says this news report. You must read the full report, even perhaps source additional material from other media outlets to understand the paranoia of Australians.

Australians are hesitant to come to Chennai, Tennis Australia (TA) says, on account of the security concerns. TA president Geoff Pollard said, “… we have major security concerns for the players, particularly during the election.” India is “an area of such high risk.”

Mr Pollard has been joined by John Fitzgerald, the Davis Cup captain in detailing and elaborating the risk. Mr Fitzgerald believes that ITF should have “followed the move to switch the Indian Premier League to South Africa due to security concerns.” Dismissing the assurance from various sources, including the positive reports of the security review, Mr Fitzgerald lists the recent events that have drip fed his concerns – “… dozens of people are killed along the campaign trail of the event … [a] train was hijacked.” He discounted the safe conduct of the ATP tour event in Chennai in January. He asks, if all the safety assurances are satisfactory, why did IPL move to South Africa?

Now, come to Todd Woodbridge, the most capped Australian Davis Cupper. He characterized the Indian situation as a “very, very difficult predicament with the way their social system’s running.” Suddenly, a tennis player has become the sociology professor!

My replies, which of course, Messrs Pollard, Fitzgerald and Woodbridge shall remain obviously oblivious to. IPL is a sustained campaign involving at least eight venues in eight cities with fifty nine matches to be played over a span of about a little more than a month. Davis Cup tie is a three day affair, at one location. The minimum seating capacity in an IPL arena is about 25,000 and that is at least twice as large as the capacity of the stadium for the tennis tie. The size of any one IPL contingent should be at least thrice as big as that for the Davis Cup.

That is, there is at least an order of difference between the security efforts required at the IPL campaign vis-à-vis the Davis Cup tie. It is really surprising that no one hit the three Australian Musketeers with this feature of their anomalous comparison.

Let me teach a few points of Indian sociology to the good Australian professor and his compatriots! India adds to its population nearly an Australian population every year (India’s eighteen million to Australia’s twenty one million). Our society is functional even under this ever increasing burden. What is a mere dozens of deaths in a surcharged atmosphere where 714 million people (thirty five times the population of Australia!) are exercising their rights? Will the Australian players be walking along the campaign trail, which is where such violence is encountered? I, as much as any Indian, would like to play out the ideal scenario - violence-free elections. But, when there are deviations from the idyll, we need to bring in the context. When we do, we see that India during elections is a model to emulate. Indeed, India is a country of low risk.

Pray tell how many of the Australian Davis Cuppers are going to travel by train, to cite as a concern the brief hijacking drama of a train in a place far from Chennai where the match is to be played. Please do not play up the fear factor because you end up undermining your arguments. That is my advice to Mr Fitzgerald et al.

By the time, the matches roll around, the election fever will be on the down side, having completed more than 80% of it. Chennai goes to poll on May 13th, the last of the five phases, three days after the Davis Cup tie. By then, the Australians would be ensconced quite comfortably in their native land, if not with a warm feeling of having entered the World Group (that is my prognosis for the event that is now not to be).

Now, I want to ask the Australians a few questions. Aren’t Australians going on vacation to Bali? Did the English team not come back after the Mumbai event to play out the test series? Was the English team not protected during the event and evacuated safely to their country? Will you refuse to go to the US to play a Davis Cup tie, because, after all the terror-defining 9/11 happened there? Did the Australian players not take part in Wimbledon when the IRA was active? You must remember that Louis Mountbatten was assassinated by the IRA. Japan has had terror attacks and so has China and not to talk of Russia, Israel, South Africa, Spain, Germany. Where will you play, please tell us. Iceland? Or, perhaps Antarctica? If I had the choice, I will send you off to Afghanistan. If you want to hide behind the reason of safety from terror attacks, you really have no place to hide.

Now, to conclude, I know why the Australians are not coming. They are afraid. They are not afraid for their safety but for their performance against India. It is better to lick the wounds before they are inflicted.

Raghuram Ekambaram