For Quick Alerts
ALLOW NOTIFICATIONS  
For Daily Alerts
Oneindia App Download

What could be more horrific than molestation? Victim shaming of teen Bollywood actor

After Zaira Wasim, popular teen Bollywood actor, posted about her molestation on social media, trolls victim shamed her.

By Oneindia
|
Google Oneindia News

New Delhi, Dec 11: The two separate incidents of sexual violence against minors--one involving the molestation of an award-winning teen actor and second, the gangrape of another teenager, who is a cancer patient--shocked and angered the nation on Sunday.

Obviously, the case of popular teen Bollywood actor , who alleged that she was molested mid-air by a middle-aged man on Saturday, got more media attention which actually helped in the nabbing of the culprit by the police on Sunday.

What could be more horrific than molestation? Victim shaming of Zaira Wasim

Such quick reaction on the part of the police, the National Women Commission (NCW) and the ministry of civil aviation (as the incident took place on Air Vistara flight from Delhi to Mumbai) to nab the molester is something rare to witness in India in regard to cases of sexual violence against women/girls, but nonetheless it is laudable.

The fact that the victim in the case is a popular Bollywood actor, who is known for her acting chops, and the entire horrific episode was mentioned in detail by the Kashmiri teenager on an Instagram post caught the attention of the media which created a lot of buzz forcing authorities to act fast.

Unlike the teen actor, the case of a 14-year-old cancer patient, who was allegedly gang-raped and then raped again within a span of around six hours, in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh on Saturday, did not get much attention from the media, police and administration. Till now, only one person, out of the three rapists, has been arrested by the police.

While it is wrong to make a comparison between cases of sexual violence against women/girls, the visible apathy towards the plight of the Lucknow teenager also can't be missed.

However, that does not mean that the successful and talented teenager is in any way in an advantageous position than the rest of regular girls in the country. To be fair, in India no woman/girl is safe from sexual predators.

Generally, there is a perception that popular and powerful people are safer than aam aadmi (common man). The false perception has been broken after the outspoken actor, who in the past too has been embroiled in a couple of controversies after she became a household name for her powerhouse performance in her debut film, was molested mid-air and the crew of the flight allegedly did not come to her rescue.

Amid all these appalling details pertaining to the case, what is more shocking is the way the young actor was trolled on social media and victim shamed for telling the world about the horrendous episode that happened to her on a flight, generally considered to be safer than a train or a bus.

It is this very reason most often women/girls remain silent even after being eve-teased, molested or raped. The allegation that the lead actor of a recent hit Bollwyood film posted about her ordeal mid-air is a mere publicity stunt reeks of patriarchy.

It is the same chauvinistic attitude of the Indian society which always questions the victim rather than punishing the culprit. If sometimes a victim is blamed for her "dress" for being raped, on another occasion she would be asked not to venture outside her home during the night to evade being attacked by "sick" men.

It is not just society that questions the "character" of a victim, but even politicians, police and judiciary don't promise an impartial probe into the allegations levelled by a sufferer of sexual assault.

In the case of teen actor, social media trolls also targetted her Muslim and Kashmiri identities. In times of hyper-nationalism, anything that is remotely connected to Islam and Kashmir has to be "anti-national" and thus needs to be condemned.

An old report of her mother allegedly hoisting the Pakistani flag was cited by several users of social media as the reason why the teen actor and her allegation should not be believed.

If several tweets against the teen actor horrified the conscience of the country after reports of rape and molestation battered our civility, there are sane voices too that came out in the actor's support.

At a time when the revered American magazine, Time, honoured--the Silence Breakers--a group of men and women as its collective "Person of the year" for blowing the whistle on sexual assault and abuse within the workplace, largely in the industries of film, politics, and media, Indians sitting within the safe confines of their homes and offices are keying verdict on victims of sexual assaults on social media.

If the act of victim shaming is not equally deplorable and frightening like an instance of molestation or rape, then we don't know where we are heading towards as a society.

OneIndia News

For Daily Alerts
Get Instant News Updates
Enable
x
Notification Settings X
Time Settings
Done
Clear Notification X
Do you want to clear all the notifications from your inbox?
Settings X
X