Indian women living in shadows?: Wonder Woman - Who are you today?

Indian women living in shadows?: Wonder Woman - Who are you today?

The Delhi top cop's advice to women to not go out alone late in the night invites their wrath.

Branded as a person with loose morals for the clothes you wear, warned against going to a pub or being seen with a man in a park, you could even be assaulted for celebrating Valentine's Day. It's the 21st century alright, but if you thought you've had enough of moral policing, here's another diktat from Delhi police commissioner B. K. Gupta. The police chief of India's rape capital advises women to stay indoors at night and venture out only with male company.

"You can't travel at 2 o'clock at night and say that Delhi is unsafe. You should take your brother or driver with you," Gupta said. And of course, there's the assumption that only single women need to travel alone at night. The fact that a married woman may be at a party where her husband isn't present may be rather difficult to comprehend.

Khaki gaffe
Feminist scholar Urvashi Butalia doesn't mince words. " All men in high positions have a patriarchal mindset. The commissioner is shirking from his responsibility, it's time he quit," she says. And Mary E John, director, Centre for Women's Development Studies, says such irresponsible statements will only dampen the spirit behind the campaign on crime against women. " The assumption that you are inviting rape when you go out at night is wrong," she says.

Gupta's remarks came soon after five rapes were reported in two days last week.

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