India: the Story You Never Wanted to Hear
Something I noticed while in India myself, which may help explain (not excuse) <i>some</i> of the behavior (please note I am not discounting the author's perspective at all):<p>I'm a little over 6 feet, blond hair and green eyes, and when I and my family were visiting India (Mumbai and a few other areas around Maharashtra), we got stared at really, really hard. Like everyone around us literally stopping on the street and doing nothing but stare.<p>It was unnerving, naturally, and I asked my brother and his (now) wife about it, since they had been living there for about a year. They told me, and I later observed for myself, that this type of looking and curiosity is part of how Indians generally are. It's very honest, very unapologetic, and once you get over the taboo of the stare, very disarming. It's not just visiting Westerners either - they stare at each other, watch each other honestly, will walk across the street to get a better look, and crowd around something interesting. I saw it constantly and eventually understood it as a lack of interpersonal barriers that arise in a highly individualistic society. Everything is shared because in a city of 15-20 million people, there's hardly any space apart. People in major metro areas understand some aspect of this but it's hard to really grasp unless you're there.<p>The problem, of course, arises when this lack of barriers combines with misogyny of the boldest type. Getting used to the constant stares is one thing for me, a man (and taller than most of my observers by a head), but for a woman it must be extra difficult to accept - and that's just the <i>stares</i>. The lack of respect for her space may be part of the collectivism that arises with incredible density, but the lack of respect for her body and humanity is not. It is rank and deep-seated sexism, and insitutionalized assault. There's a culture supporting this (which is not to say that Indians as a people do) and it needs to be dragged into the light of day and shot.