Last year, the news about the rape and murder of a girl in Mumbai of India got mass attention and was heard and discussed in every corner of the world. The girl was travelling in a public bus that she was first raped and then murdered by a group of young men who had kept her under constant observation before undertaking their wicked plan. Different NGOs working for women and representatives of women’s rights arranged well-organized protests against this heinous and inhuman act on such a large scale that the international media poured in to cover this news and government was forced to act out of the normal. Under immense pressure from public and media, government machinery came into action and soon the culprits were caught and a court of justice tried and punished them on emergency basis. With this, laws against sexual abuse and violence were made more strict and even the death penalty was also included for any severe incident.
Anyhow, similar news got the attention of media last week when a five-year old innocent girl was raped by a group of young men. The girl was recovered from a place where she was raped for many days and taken to the hospital where her condition is reported to be critical. The criminals had also tried to strangle her in which they had failed but they left behind the prints of their hands on the neck of the frail child. Such a shameful act with such a small girl was so alarming that mass protest broke out and once again, government machinery had to take immediate action in order to repel the public grief. It is sad that the girl will have to live with the sad memories of this brutal incident for the rest of her life and it would definitely keep her tormenting till her last breath.
The case was unique in a sense that it got the attention of media; otherwise, thousands of such tragic events occur on daily basis in almost all parts of the world. Even the developed countries of Europe and America are suffering a lot from such problems. Similarly, the developed countries are all suffering with this problem and their advanced knowledge, technology and facilities have failed to cope up with the problem. This is also a reality that some of the Muslim countries where the open interaction of male and female are discouraged, have found to be doing very well in this regard and there, the graph of sexual abuse and rape is very low.
On many platforms, these sad events were discussed and experts of social and behavioral sciences tried to bring out the true elements responsible for these sexual abuse and harassment. Majority of the experts agreed that the present setup of media, including of television programs, movies and even books, have adopted strategies to increase their revenues that they have included sex in each and every thing and thus minds of the people are very much ignited with the sex. Independent research figures also prove that present generation is very much aware of the issues related to the sex and children of present age get sexually mature or become adults far early as compared to the past and now a child of merely 9 or 10 year knows a lot about sexual affairs and relevant things.
In this regard, very recent example is the broadcast of the IPL (Indian Cricket League) in which beautiful and tempting girls dance whenever any important action happens during the match. In the same way, all the advertisements like juices, corn flakes, clothing, diapers, cosmetics and even the advertisements about books and other things also contain girls without sufficient cloth and thus they are responsible for polluting the minds of viewers especially of small children.
Very recently, serious and concerning news was also in the media that internet users search for porn sites and resources and their count is increasing. It was also concerning that every passing day increases the number of children and youngsters looking for such materials on the net. Similarly, increased use of sex-tempting videos and pictures on some social networking sites was also alarming.
We are also aware of the reality that one can easily get access to porn movies or materials and this has become a profitable business for many companies to distribute such immoral movies. Even in our country, one can easily get access to such movies on very cheap price.
All these factors have resulted in a generation which is fully ignited with the desire of sex and thus we see two outcomes of this. First, the increased interaction between male and female usually resulting in the sexual relations. This may not be the case in our and other similar rigid societies but in almost all the democratic and flexible societies, this is the trend. On the other hand, when people don’t find any mean of getting contented with sex, they turn into illegal and immoral solutions and thus such incidents of rape and sexual abuse occur and this trend is also on a sharp rise.
It was the reason why students of a girls college in India were banned from wearing jeans because after the girls had started wearing such tight jeans, there had been many problems for the girls, the college administration and the parents.
When we glance at our society, conditions are also not much different. Here, the easy and cheap access to internet (in majority of the cities), cheap mobile phones with memory cards, CD and DVD players and cassettes, increasing number of cable television networks and many other factors combine to do the same damage to our youth that has been done to the youth in all over the world. It is the reason why, our youngsters and even children know well about different issues about sex and thus we have seen soaring trend of sexual interactions or crimes related to it.
While talking of the solutions to this problem, it would be better to keep in mind the saying that, ‘prevention is better than cure’. It is necessary that we should save ourselves and the children from such continuous and increased exposure to the things that might ignite the sex-related thoughts and ideas. Usually, when one’s mind is free, it is occupied by things which may be harmful so we should try to keep ourselves busy in useful activities like book reading, sports, and other similar activities.
We are lucky that our religious teachings can be very useful in tackling with this problem. When a person offers his prayers five times a day with full concentration, he clears his mind of the useless ideas and makes it clean five times a day. It is said that prayers work to alienate you from the evils and bad works.
Similarly, parents should also check how their children use internet or what are the things they are watching on television. When any such problem is diagnosed, immediate remedial action can be started with all the care and delicacy because the issue is very fragile and sensitive.
But most importantly, changing the minds of people and making them educated about living a decent life can be the best solution to this problem. We need to educate the minds of people and children by our traditional stories, fables, sayings of saints and prophets and many more and this would be the only sustainable solution for this problem.