Gangs of men

A Nashik family’s nightmare experience speaks to a danger lurking across India’s public spaces

A family picnic represents a refresh button: To enjoy fresh air, sunlight, green grass, and good food, in the good company of one’s loved ones. But the whole thing’s also a risk. Because safety in our public spaces has become so dodgy. As a Nashik family found out firsthand this weekend. They were visiting Bhavli Dam, where the monsoon should only have improved the picnicking. Instead, it all turned into a nightmare. A group of men, police say, first whistled at the women in the family. Afterwards, another group attacked their car and chased it for nearly 15 km. The problem India has is that this wasn’t an all that unusual experience.

Women, of course, are always mentally mapping public spaces for ambient risk. Still, they can never know when a group of men at a park or market, religious or secular festival, will escalate its catcalling into something worse. That’s what keeps women out of the workforce and tourists out of the country. They’re told, always move in company, and then even that doesn’t protect them. Remember what happened near Karnataka’s Sanapur Lake last March? This is also a stunning picnic spot, and the five people for whom it turned into a nightmare, must have felt safe in their numbers. A group of men came along and shattered that notion, with gang-rape and murder.

India’s problem is part of a wider global rise of hostile masculinity. This is a performance primarily for status in the peer group. It isn’t just a law and order mess. Society is failing in some bigger way. What’s breaking outside the home is deeply connected to what’s happening inside.Lazy punditry explains group male aggressions by saying life’s no longer working out as it used to for their fathers. But the sane answer to change cannot be violence. Men need to be developing a broader repertoire of their roles and functions. For example, NSO’s last time use survey tells us that 82% of females above 6 years participate in “unpaid domestic services for household members”, compared to 27% of males. There’s plenty of work to be done at home, instead of ganging up with the boys, destroying the peace of neighbourhoods, beaches and hill stations alike – and frequently, committing terrible crimes.

A healthy society means public spaces filled with families, children, lovers…not fear. The lumpenisation of male leisure has endangered all this. It must be repelled in mission mode. And because the aggression’s being performed mostly for other men, they must call it out as the garbage that it is.

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