Eve teasing an evil act
Fighting eve-teasing: rights and remedy
Irrespective of the dress they wear, or, their ages, their looks, their educational, professional and marital status, never mind the time or place, women in Kolkata and elsewhere are being subjected to all kinds of harassment, including eve-teasing.
Eve teasing violates a woman’s basic right to live in dignity. Will women forever remain targets and victims of eve teasing? Will their rescuers continue to be unwilling martyrs to a dead cause? Before these questions are addressed, one needs to explore and analyze why, irrespective of the dress they wear, or, their ages, their looks, their educational, professional and marital status, never mind the time or place, women in Kolkata and elsewhere are being subjected to all kinds of harassment from obscene telephone calls, stalking, and last but not the least eve-teasing.
On July 30 this year, Tabassum (name changed), a student of Class VII, studying in Cartauche Public School in Park Circus, was returning home in a bus on route 45. Unable to bear with the advances of a middle-aged man standing behind her in the crowded bus, she raised an alarm. Her co-passengers remained mute spectators. The bus driver stopped the bus when he saw an on-duty sergeant. Some bus passengers came forward to back Tabassum only when the police began to question her. Singh was later released because the girl and her parents withdrew their complaint. Almost all Kolkata newspapers reported both these incidents.
Sometime in 2005, Reema Bose (name changed), was returning from the hospital at the end of the day from Deshpriya Park. As she walked along Motilal Nehru Road, an auto rickshaw suddenly appeared by her side. A few young men inside were guzzling beer. They began to throw bargains, whistled, teased and threw obscene comments at her. When nothing seemed to work, one of them got off the rick and tried to pull her into the vehicle. A mobile police van arrived in the nick of time and saved Reema. It was eight in the evening. (Reema narrated this incident to me.)
Kolkata is not unique. Women in Bangalore constantly face leers from passers-by, and taxi and rickshaw drivers. In buses, groping is common and on one occasion, when a woman yelled at the person touching her, she was thrown off the bus! The Mehrauli-Gurgaon road in Delhi has a lot of liquor shops and often, men get back into their cars and begin to drink after which eve-teasing is a nice and easy way to have fun and go on an ego trip at one and the same time.
Remedies?
Women constables in Calcutta’s Salt Lake area sometimes function as undercover agents from the Bidhan Nagar (north) police station by acting as decoys. Three young woman constables were able to round up a total of 60 offenders within the first month of their operation in 2005. All offenders, say the policewomen, were aged between 18 and 28. This strategy was probably the outcome of the sudden spate of obscene calls hounding wives of high officials and ministers who live in Salt Lake, Calcutta. Film personalities like Moonmoon Sen, Indrani Haldar and Indrani Dutta, Dolly Roy, wife of Congress MLA Sougata Roy, Renuka Biswas, wife of CBI joint director Upen Biswas, Deepika Nanda, wife of state fisheries minister Kiranmoy Nanda are among those who were hounded by obscene calls at any time of day or night. But immediate deterrent action is often linked if the victim is a celebrity or has high connections. Democracy here is conspicuous by its absence.
