Cops turn molesters, we are not surprised
I am not surprised by these two news items at all:
Delhi Police commissioner Y S Dadwal on Wednesday suspended the three cops who had allegedly refused to come to the aid of girl students, after they were molested by aspiring policemen at North Campus on Saturday night. A separate FIR in another case, where a girl was pulled inside a lift outside the Vishwavidyalaya Metro station and molested by seven-eight men on Sunday, has also been lodged.
Delhi cop arrested for molesting woman
A Delhi Police constable was arrested on Saturday on the charges of sexually harassing a young woman after she alleged a police station in south Delhi initially refused to even register her complaint.
There is nothing surprising about them - you know it, and I know it.
Why? Because the cops are also part of this society, and this society condones rape except when it happens to someone they know and care about. How many times have you heard about men who grope women in buses and trains fuming when they hear someone did it to their sister or cousin? This is standard behavior for Indian men, and their own families or friends will call them on it.
There is the mob mentality. If you look back, you will remember how gangs of male college students whistled and hooted at girls walking by. You will remember tales of how your own classmates, managed to touch up someone in a crowded bus or train. Girls, who are honest or mentally strong enough will describe instances that happened to them in lonely alleyways. We are all part of this, to some extent or the other.
There is the class conflict. Men, who have historically been the more powerful gender, see that it is not the case anymore with some classes of the society. Examples are the auto rickshaw driver who would refuse to follow the instructions of the female passenger, or the sulky gardener who doesn’t like the lady of the house ordering him about. These are just the tip of the iceberg. The resentment of the males of lower economic classes towards females of the upper classes who - in their eyes - have broken free of the shackles is much higher than most of us can imagine. In the case of the IP College molestation attempts, both these factors came together.
Who in the end, are the cops, socially? Policing is not the first profession that comes to the mind of even a lower-middle class student. Like it or not, our cops belong at the low end of the economic and cultural ladder. This is a class for whom things have not changed much for a long time. Not their fault. People, for whom life is a battle for day-to-day survival, operate by ancient laws of power. From the perspective of a cop aspirant - like the ones who turned up at IP College - the women he sees around are an insult to his manliness. They belong to a class which he can’t aspire to, and by God, if he can’t get what he wants, he will take it.
That is all the men who were there did. That is exactly what they would do once they become cops. Rule of law, discipline, and a sense of right and wrong does not come to him just because he wears khaki.
What are we going to do about this? Pretty much nothing. Because some of us do not accept the seriousness of the problem. And because a large number of us would behave like those molesters given a chance and the motivation.
I am sorry, but we are animals still.
