Just Saying | Yes, India has a rape problem but is it really a no-go for women?
Yonden Lhatoo questions the perception that India is the most dangerous country in the world for women, while acknowledging it needs serious soul-searching and reform to improve its track record on protecting them
“I don’t think I’m ever going to India – I don’t want to end up getting raped,” a young, well-heeled local woman told me at a recent social gathering in Hong Kong when the subject of travelling to the subcontinent came up.
Having often come across this kind of phobia before, my ready reply was constructed along the lines of, “Yes, India has a rape problem. But you do realise, don’t you, that the vast majority of women there are living normal lives, and they’re not being sexually assaulted as we speak? In fact, millions of women visit India every year and return to their home countries unmolested.”
I have to say such paranoid perceptions about India, though grossly exaggerated and borderline xenophobic, are not entirely unjustified, given the sensational social and mainstream media coverage of some truly horrific rape cases in the country.
