To whom it may concern !

Dear Young Male protestors,

It is with considerable respect for you guys that I am writing this. Quite stunned with the compassion that you show you are having for the girl victims whose lives have almost or in the present scenario has been brought to an end.  Because, unless you have thought about it you would not have pushed yourself into a huge puddle of bewilderment and would have allowed yourself to be found torn between your-self and your commitment as I would explain in a short while.

A girl gets up in the morning, finishes up all the chores that she has signed up for just because she’s a girl and without a streak of impatience or restlessness or any hesitation  has assumed  it to be her fundamental duty other than the ones led down by the Indian constitution. She runs numerous errands for herself and for her family, does don’t know how many other work that she has taken up just on the account that who else will if not she. And then, if she’s a working girl, after being done with all these, she leaves for job mostly to supplement his husband’s earning or to supplement her family income and in ‘better’ cases to prove she has none of the lesser capabilities to compete with her male counterparts, the supposedly much more evolved lot of humankind.  Since the moment she puts a step out of her home, she faces awful, derogatory comments all along – on the roads, inside her office, then again while returning back, on bus stands, on auto stands, she falls victim to groping, obscene comments, and sometimes the heinous  advances that aren’t even mentionable.  These are just the bare minimum considering she has a happy household which as most of us are aware is rare realization of a Utopian Scheme where she has a family that celebrates her birth, adores her, respects her existence, loves her equally as her brother, protects her against the bias of the world. But even writing this seethes me considering the kind of prejudiced life most of our women live. This has nothing to do with you guys because this was never your fault that your family put your demand above your sisters; she was punished for all your mistakes;  the moment you were born your dad started thinking of you as soon-to-be 21 year old who will inherit his wholesome property; just so you could be brought in this world your mother had to go through a series of abortions and kill your sisters.  Just so you were brought up with so much of arrogance and vanity that you probably developed a world of your own where you became the masters and everything else made you feel like you owned them and they were your servants and you could toy around with anything. This forced you to forget or obliterate the difference between a real toy and a human being. 

 Since antiquity, our country has been inhabited by a male-dominated society, a patriarch to paraphrase. A society which has been led by, supported by, groomed by men where women were just in auxiliary support or made to feel like one. In the early Vedic era, the women were taken up in high dignity. They were the highly respected section of the society. No ‘sanskaar’ was possible without the lady of the household present in the ceremony. They were literates. Some even composed hymns. This was the scene of the womanhood from the society’s perspective, your perspective. So, what happened in the coming years rather what changed that you had to bring this whole change in your outlook and start treating women the way where you yourself can’t differentiate between your humanity and savagery. How could you forget if they are not your mother, sister, or cousin or wife; they are mother, sister or cousin or wife of another member of your own species. Just to reiterate the fact that if you consider yourselves belonging to some super-class  like those Anglos who ruled the feeble Indian saying they were God-send missionaries sent to help them, the dark-coloured Indians to become civilized, just because they were whites. 

So, if you are actually participating in the protests, clamouring for women’s protection, I really hope you have made up your mind for letting go of all the favours that the society granted you since the moment you were conceived. 

Nevertheless, are you ready to identify ‘her’ by her name, by her achievements and not by the tag of her being a sister, a mother or wives of one of you. Do you think you, any time soon would be able to take her surname and make it your very own?  Why do you think before even she is married she is excited to take up your name and instantly falls in love with it? So, you think you would be able to not force her to take your name and let her live with her own for all the times to come if she wants. Could you possibly not trash her around, and would be able to make her happy, maintain her dignity, and give her a life full of love and commitment. Because, what may just seem to be a tiny gesture of  selflessness from your side could just be able to bring up a gigantic change in the society overall where women would be able to exercise the ‘right of freedom’ in real senses.

Not just you, it’s the whole society that is acting up against the womenfolk.  Asking her to beg for mercy, call the offender ‘Bhaiya’, not dress the way she wants to. Because, let’s be true, frankly, even you too can feel how deliberate infringement of human rights it is! Don’t you think an easier way out of all this would be a lock-proof house-arrest for the ones the world is 'caring' so much about? Can you imagine the world where the life behind the bars is better than the world outside? Well, who would say this is the tale of a democratic, social, republic and what-not country in the 21^st century.

Why do you have to be reminded of the pious Rakhi, a string that binds a sister and brother and nominates brother to take up the responsibility of protecting his sister in every adversity, in every situation? Or maybe this is the fault of the girl to even think of relying on her brother to protect her. It’s a basic lacuna in the law promulgation itself because this kind of relationship has led men to think of themselves as the saviours and the women to be the subjugated lot who can’t survive without the shield of a man around them. Would it be the same, you think, if this changes to the other way round. The brother tying Rakhi on sister’s wrist and hoping her to protect him from all the worse that could rain on him. Even if you were clear in your minds about saving your sisters, where do you think such distort idea of abusing them stemmed from?

Now, the question that comes to my mind is: are you scared of women’s growing stature? Do you think in some ways you are emasculated by these women who are constantly competing (and performing better than you too in some cases) in most fields that at some point you thought could only be landed by you. If your body structure can evolve over years, why can’t your mindset? Can’t you accept it? Don’t you have the balls to accept the challenge or you just don’t want to believe the fact that the hands that  raised to pamper or fondle you could also be raised to slap your face. No need to turn red, metaphorically speaking!  Because, if you think that a woman just is a progeniture machine, you need to re-educate yourself.

The ability of a woman to simultaneously take care of the family and then stand for the same, support it whenever needed, the courage, the fortitude, her endurance level, it is worth revering and is not a subject of malediction. Are they getting punished for being may be better than you people where on one hand they manage their family, a responsibility that comes associated with them just because they bear a stamp of being a ‘she’ on their forehead and then simultaneously manage their outer lives where they work, deal with the lackadaisical world full of you.

So, it’s a generous request that unless you have taken all this in account, please don’t go out there with a placard saying “Protect our Women” just so while getting back from Jantar Mantar, on your way back to your home you start leering at other girls. Because if that’s so, it is something that reeks of ‘hypocrisy’.