For Kolkatans, A Man Masturbating In Bus Is Okay But A Couple Embracing In Metro Is Not

Here are two contrasting scenarios that emerged out of Kolkata within a matter of days.

Scenario 1
On May 13, in a public bus in Kolkata a man was filmed masturbating at a woman. Her plea for protection was dismissed by the bus conductor and her co-passengers.

Here’s how NDTV reported the matter:

“My friend and I were heading home from Hedua around noon today on bus number 30B/1,” she wrote. “Suddenly, I saw this man staring at me and ‘misbehaving’ in front of everyone and nobody said a word,” she said.

“When I complained to the bus conductor, he laughed and said, ‘what can I do, you tell me, who knows what is on his mind’. I shouted loudly, ‘catch him, he is misbehaving with me’. But no one protested, no one said a word.

Luckily for her she had recorded the incident and posted it on her facebook page tagging the Kolkata Police. The was culprit tracked down and arrested.

Scenario 2
In the last week of April a couple was pushed out of metro at Dum Dum station. A group of men attacked them with kicks and punches for indulging in PDA.

What do these two different scenarios tell us about the character of Kolkata – a city that till recently was deemed as one of the most progressive cities. The Bengali bhadralok/ bhadromohila gets agitated at the slightest hint of intimacy between couples, yet couldn’t be more callous about incidents of sexual assault.

This is not the first time Kolkata has seen an incident of moral policing. In fact, such incidents are on the rise.  Earlier this year Inuth had reported about an incident in which a 20-year old Jadavpur University Student was assaulted for hugging her friend. The incident left the girl, who was already suffering from depression and anxiety issue, into a state of shock for days. One is reminded of Khap Panchayat like patriarchal diktats in these incidents. Only that Khaps don’t claim to be progressive unlike the genteel crowd of Kolkata who continue to believe what Bengal thinks today, India does tomorrow.

There is more proof of the latent toxic masculinity in the city’s middle-class household.  Perhaps it is because of the hidden misogynist ways of  the Kolkata bhadralok that the city figures right at the top of list of cities with highest number of domestic violence cases.

A Hindustan Times report throws some startling statistics:

“The highest numbers of cases of domestic violence against women were recorded from West Bengal in 2016. Of the 1,10,378 such cases recorded across the country, as many as 19,302 (or 17.48%) are from West Bengal, followed by 13,811 cases in Rajasthan.

West Bengal was in the second position (9.6%) in overall cases of crime against women in the country largely because of the high percentage of cases of domestic violence, only after Uttar Pradesh (14.5%).

Of the total 32,513 cases of crime against women registered in West Bengal, 59.36% were that of cruelty by husband and in-laws.

It has also recorded a substantially high number of cases of gang rape – 130 cases – ranking fifth after Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Haryana. However, in case of the total number of cases of rape, Bengal ranks 12th.”

These facts are a scathing indictment of the toxic masculinity one encounters in the state of West Bengal.

In an article aptly titled, “Pussy cat at home, Bengal tiger in a mob: There’s little genteel about the bhadralok” columnist Sandip Roy says, “When a mob decides to enforce their idea of what is seemly, it shows that the middle-aged bhadralok in Kolkata is just as frustrated at the sight of carefree young love as their khap counterparts elsewhere.” That sums up the dynamics at play in Kolkata, where new money has given more muscle to a new middle class, which has far left behind the cosmopolitan beliefs of its great men like that of Raja Rajmohan Roy and Tagore.