The Fall of Humanity
Ashim Kumar Paul
As an engulfing social
curse, eve teasing or sexual harassment has, in recent times, become a deadly
phenomenon that is occurring more and more every day all over the country.
Alongside the social, economic and cultural differences, girls fall prey to eve
teasing – an inhumanely odium deed committed by morally degenerate people.
Almost every day, via the mass media, we are being informed of the dreadful
violence that our girls are subjected to. It would not be exaggeration if we
say that those victims are destined to be persecuted, given our socio-economic
scenario.
In today’s world, eve
teasing is not only confined to verbal abuse. Women are subject to physical
harassment in almost every sphere of life – when they are on the way to their
school/college/university, workplaces or any other destination. As a matter of
fact, nowadays, no place can be deemed ‘safe’ or ‘secure’ for women. The evil
of eve teasing is so rampant that women do not even feel safe in their own
houses. As a result, helpless parents feel extremely insecure about allowing
their daughters to step outside their homes. At times, parents even feel
compelled to either stop their daughters’ education or marry them off.
Sometimes, the victims are even driven to committing suicide to forever rid
themselves from the torment of eve teasing.
There are certain
reasons behind this viciously expanding social disease. The erosion of
religious and moral values, social injustice, laxity of family bonds and norms,
reckless exposure to the cyber world with no assurance of security, and the
dwindling state of our culture are vehemently responsible for the degradation
of people’s collective morality, especially the younger generation. With the
aggression of western culture and thriving information technology, our social,
moral and religious values are waning away. Moreover, most people have chosen
the negative sides of tech-benediction instead of the positive side. The
advantages of technology are abused over and over again to strangulate the
bright prospects as well as luminous dreams of many girls.
Although victims, in a
few cases, come forward to protest the humiliation they face, they hardly find
justice, especially because in times of need, these victims are scarcely
supported by the society. They are often unjustly blamed for the harassment
they have to endure. In most cases, they are even coerced into withdrawing the
impeachment filed against the felons. Otherwise, the security of their life and
their family is put at stake. Most of the times, eve-teasers are directly or
indirectly involved in native politics. As a result, they “enjoy” the privilege
of being a part of their affiliated political wings.
“Fair is foul, and
foul is fair” – this famous line from Macbeth, one of William Shakespeare’s
masterpieces, can be applied here to illustrate the contaminated mentality of
those people who are incessantly eroding the valuable lives and creating
hindrance in the way of progress. More specifically speaking, what is a fair
attitude to the women is supposedly an unfair job to those aberrant people. On
the contrary, some men derive a perverted pleasure from publicly harassing
women. In practice, their sense of morality and humanity has been occupied by
the outright abhorrent psyche.
The development of an
entire country requires equal participation of both male and female citizens in
all the developing sectors. Hence, to speed up the wheels of progress, the
rights, security and evaluation should be maintained by giving both parties
equal attention. Sadly, what we now witness is nothing but a true reflection of
inequality and social victimisation of the female populace. Due to eve teasing
and other social tyrannies that women are subject to, they are unable to be at
par with their male counterparts. In fact, the tumour of eve teasing has become
such a deadly threat that it is hampering women’s overall advancement. The 21st
century is a mark of progress; progress in the ground of education, science and technology, business
and society. Hence, to progress with the light of knowledge and evolution, we
need to purge ourselves from the prevailing social prejudices that make us
retreat from the path of development. We must begin by changing ourselves.
