Ashim Kumar Paul - November 29th, 2010
As an engulfing social curse, eve teasing has, in recent times, appeared as a deadly phenomenon with its lethal paws at different corners of Bangladesh. Almost everyday newspapers are covered with the shocking news of such dreadful brutality towards the women community.
Today, eve teasing is not confined to the verbal abuse on the women only. They are exposed to physical harassment even while they are on the way to their educational institutions, work-places or other destination. As a matter of fact, no place is completely secure for the women. However, the hands of the teasers have lavishly been so forceful that the members of such vulnerable community even feel insecure at their own house. Thus, extremely insecure at both home and outside, the helpless parents are mostly compelled to either stop their study or get them married off! Besides, those utterly vulnerable girls sometimes are forced to commit suicide to get rid of the torment forever!
There are certain number of reasons behind the viciously expansion of these social diseases. It may be guessed that erosion of religious and moral values, social injustice, laxity of family bonds and norms, reckless growth of cyber world with no assurance of security, socio-economic dwindling culture etc. are vehemently responsible for degenerating the minds of some young people. It is really conspicuous that with the aggression of western satellite culture and thriving development of information technology, our social, moral and religious values are now mostly on the wane. Moreover, some people have chosen the negative flank of tech-benediction instead of the positive one. And the technology based advantages are over and over abused to strangulate the bright prospects as well as luminous dreams of many girls.
Though the victim in few cases comes forward to protest the humiliation she faces, most of the occurrences are hardly focused. Besides, the offended girl can scarcely find the society beside her in the critical moment. Often she is unjustly blamed for the harassment she has to endure. In most cases, she is even coerced into withdrawing the allegations lodged against the felons. Otherwise, the security of her life and her family is at stake. It is obviously notable that most of the gangs of teasers are almost directly or indirectly involved in the native politics. As a result, they also enjoy the privilege from their political godfathers.
“Fair is foul, and foul is fair”, a famous line extracted from Macbeth, one of the masterpieces by the greatest dramatist William Shakespeare, can here be applied to illustrate the spoiled mentality of those people who are incessantly keeping the valuable lives turn into a dark hole and creating hindrance in the way of progress. Their pesky activities or ill-treatment with the opposite community gives them a perverted pleasure. In practice, their sense of morality and humanity has been occupied by the outright abhorrent psyche.
It is concurred by all with the fact that the development of an entire country requires the equal participation of both male and female communities in the developing sectors and hence, to speed up the wheels of progress, their rights, security and evaluation should be maintained in the same manner. But what we see now is nothing but a true reflection of inequality and socially victimisation of the female who can not pace with their male compeers due to eve teasing and other social tyrannies and injustice towards them.
To be a progressive nation, we need to purge the prevailing curses from the society resulting in our retreat from the path of humanity as well as development. Hence, to eliminate the root of this social curse from our society and make a secure place for the womanhood, we need to change ourselves; our perverted attitude to women should be transformed into humanity. I must believe we can do this standing on our head!
Ashim Kumar Paul
4th year student of
Department of English
Govt. Edward College, Pabna.
