Protectors

Update: I had to edit the ending of the post after reading (actually finding it again, I read the news 5 days ago but couldn’t locate it for the link) the recent ruling of high court.)

The other day while walking towards my terminal in an airport, I noticed a family ahead of me. Mom-dad and their daughter. The airport was a bit crowded and a lot of military officer in their uniforms were there (with their luggage, so they were either boarding the planes or landing). Anyway, so this family comes to a moving halt and the girl a bit shyly, a bit tentatively approached an army office approaching from the other side. She said a quick ‘Thank You’ to him before dashing off behind her mother.

Sweet, right?

Now compare it to image of an Indian army soldier in our public. A very good example is this footage shown on NDTV a while ago where a young lady retaliated bravely against the molestation attempt by an army soldier.

I am not sure if my experience is shared by everyone but I think the army soldiers are the creepiest fellow passengers I ever had misfortune to travel with. They constantly stare at female passengers in a very sinister way. It doesn’t matter, if you stare back or you ignore them. They will continue to make you uncomfortable. That’s the worst I have experienced but then I wasn’t not in a disturbed area with heavy military presence.

Due to these encounter with them, I was never surprised by the stories of soldiers molesting/raping women in disturbed areas neither was I surprised when that footage came out. I understood that girl’s reaction perfectly.

Every time I spot an Indian soldier in any public place, my first reaction would be to get away from them as much as possible, minimize my interaction with them and while doing all that I feel a bit revolted, a bit nauseated as I consider them the worst of all the predators roaming on our streets. Whatever I feel, one thing is certain that I don’t feel any gratitude towards them.

Watching that little girl saying thanks made me wonder is there something wrong with me? or, is something wrong with our culture that we don’t feel gratitude for our soldiers? or, is there something wrong with our army and their culture? I wonder with all the discipline we impose in army, why can’t we impose a zero tolerance policy against all army soldier who attempt anything like that? But then may be like police, army don’t consider such issues important. How does it matter how they treat women, after all, women are, or rather, should be used to treatments like these. Right?

The bigoted attitude of army towards women is obvious by the fact they treat the women officer. Did you know that until 5 days ago, women officers were forced to retire after 14 years in service, irrespective of their record. Male officers were allowed a full tenure after just five years in service. Women officers were not eligible for any pension or financial benefits as men. Talk about discrimination. And you know the worst? The affidavit that Army filed in High court for this case actually said:

The background of our troops who hail from rural areas with fixed concepts of women had to be considered at the time of induction of women as officers into the Army. Grant of Permanent Commission would result in placing women officers as Commanding Officers of units, which was considered inappropriate.

Now let me get this straight. The rural population that  migrate to cities, and work as servants, gardeners etc, don’t have a problem taking orders from women but army soldiers do? Why is this different? And even if it is so, the solution army has to offer is not to put women in commanding position. How does keeping women away from commanding positions going to help in changing that?

If we have to follow that logic, no engineering college should have opened their gates for female students as engineering has been male dominant field, and before 1970s, men (even urban men) weren’t used to having women in their engineering classes. And again any construction site or foundry or manufacturing industry, is male dominant and surprise, surprise, most of the workers hail from rural areas. How could they have learnt to take orders from, oh my God, a woman? And yet they did.

So how come our dearest Army is still living in the 1950s? When will they change and get in the 21st century? And when and if, they decide to join us I hope they introduce a zero tolerance policy against any act of eve teasing/molestation/rape by soldiers and instead of covering for them, they make an example of anyone who dares to violate this policy. And then, we might be able to feel the well deserved gratitude towards them for putting their life in line for us.

P.S.: I wrote the original post  for International Women’s day and in response to PsychBabbler’s Tag. but as this post didn’t fall in any of the categories mentioned on Indusladies (the tag) and I wasn’t sure if it’s really a woman’s right issue, so I didn’t post it then. I still needed to get this one out of my system before I loose my steam so here it is.