Home > 2005 Issues > May 15, 05

Media Watch Concern for Mumbai culture Narad THE rape of a 17-year old girl by an allegedly drunken constable inside the Marine Drive police outpost has raised many questions of dress, social behaviour, police irresponsibility and general ethics that need to be honestly confronted. Understandably upset, some seventy college students staged a demonstration, raising slogans such as ?goonda-police murdabad? and there were also demands that the offending constable be hanged. The law, no doubt, will takes its course. But the issues raised by the incident need careful analysis. Why, in the first place, do youngsters choose public places to cuddle up or hug each other? The answer is simple: They have no privacy in their homes. But why do so in public places? Because they have nowhere else to go. But do they have to wear skimpy clothes or wear trousers slipping below the navel? Why not? That is the fashion. What one must remember is that Mumbai is a city of various cultures and what is acceptable to one culture is not necessarily acceptable to another. Sociologists will speak of nine classes of people: lower lower, middle lower, upper lower, lower middle, middle middle, upper middle, lower upper, middle upper and upper upper. That is on the economic level. One has also to remember that even among the rich, the so-called upper upper, there are very conservative homes that have their own standards. Parents, therefore, have to be extra careful that their teenaged daughters know what to wear on different occasions instead of saying that women's dress code is not the issue at all. In some cases it is. Both our leading newspapers and parents of teenaged girls must be held responsible for the increasing sex crimes reported these days. The irresponsibility shown by some of our largest-selling English newspapers is to be seen to be believed. Saamna speaks for one class of people and its views should be respected. But what did Saamna say that has offended some of our liberals? Hardly any paper gave a full text for readers to make their own judgement. But, interestingly enough, the Kolkata-based Telegraph gave excerpts of the Saamna edit. And this is what it wrote: ?Under the garb of below-waist (sic) fashion, young girls are competing with each other in public display of their undergarments. To see young girls smoking away is worrisome. Who is to blame when women wear loose clothes which provoke men? When young girls wear skimpy clothes and cross the threshold of their homes, why don't elders stop them? Why isn't the young generation, which wears modern clothes, not modern in their thinking? More than rape, the lusty male gaze provoked by skimpy clothes is dangerous. The whole generation is being corrupted by sex appeal under the garb of remixes. If vulgar films and disgusting film posters create perversion in a teenaged boy and if an innocent girl falls victim, who should be blamed? The boy's perversion or the societal set-up?? Saamna has raised some important questions. What is perfectly acceptable to high-class society is not acceptable to the lower Parel society. The latter has different standards. The Times of India (April 28) ran a story under the heading: ?What's Dress got to Do with It?? Plenty, my good friends. To sell itself, four leading English-language newspapers in Mumbai, one in Hyderabad and two in Delhi have been competing in publishing the most revolting pictures of underclad women and no one has called their editors to order. They may argue that Constable Sunil More, the alleged rapist would not have read the local English paper. It should know better. Both our leading newspapers and parents of teenaged girls must be held responsible for the increasing sex crimes reported these days. The irresponsibility shown by some of our largest-selling English newspapers is to be seen to be believed. Does one have to name these shameless anti-social journals? Only the other day, the Supreme Court felt compelled to ask the media to exercise restraint, though in another connection. The Nagpur-based Hitavada had published an interview with a trade union leader that was very critical of a Madhya Pradesh High Court judgement. The reporter, printer and publisher of Hitavada wisely accepted a warning, but the court came down heavily on the media, even after an apology was made. According to The Hindu (April 26) which reported the Supreme Court judgement, the court held that the freedom enjoyed by the media was no licence to indulge in sensationalism and a mechanism should be devised to check the criticism from crossing the limits. Why should there not be some mechanism to check on what sort of nudity in the print media is permissible in these days of sexual crimes? The trouble is that the so-called upper classes hold that their values have to be accepted by one and all. That is asking for too much. The lower-middle classes have their own values. A heavy responsibility rests on parents?and, of course, the media. In some newspapers, editors have become mere figureheads. They take their orders from business managers meekly. They have no voice. So we have a system under which business managers dictate what goes into the daily paper and what?in their language??sells?. The wretched constable who faces a court sentence would deserve what he gets. But shouldn't the public call to order some of the men who run our newspapers to the larger detriment of society? It is about time the society wakes up to the criminals in our media who care a damn for public opinion. It is the public which should shape the media, not the other way round. Presently some of our newspapers are getting away with murder. The truth is that no one any longer cares. We have the Editors Guild of India. We have the All India Newspaper Editors Conference (AINEC). We have the All India Federation of Working Journalists. What, may one ask, are they doing? Why have we become prisoners of half a dozen newspaper proprietors who have become supersalesmen of soft pornography? One may or may not like Saamna or the Shiv Sena, but what the journal said about recent sex crimes merits deep introspection in editorial offices as in private homes. We would be failing in our responsibility if criticism is aimed solely against the cops. That is an easy way out. One hopes that the latest daily yet to make the grade in Mumbai?Daily News Analysis under any other name?will bring a refereshingly more responsible outlook in its columns. We need a decent newspaper and not a newspaper which sells its news space for a fortune, and sincerely believes that there is nothing wrong in that. Some of our newspapers?fortunately they still are only a few?are taking the nation for a ride. The only eye they have is for the bottom line and morality be damned. In many ways the bar girls who have now been thrown out on the streets are more respectable than some of our journalists who care more for their personal perks than for public morals. How deeply one yearns for those old days when editors had a vision and were willing to face imprisonment rather than give up their values!

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