Normal Joe next door : The 'disguised' predators
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: October 06, 2012 -

The normal, average Joe next door. The family man, with a normal job, with the same tastes and distastes as everyone elses in society.

This is the emerging profile of some men who turn predators at the given opportunity or hunt for the opportunity to turn predators.

And the faces of these predators take the ugliest turn when the hunt starts within the family or when trust is worn as the mask to cover up their baser instincts which defy acceptable behaviour in human society.

A few repugnant stories have recently hit the pages of the State newspapers to underline this. It appears to be aberrations, but in the absence of any data based studies, nothing can be said for certain.

Some time back, a young housewife went to town crying hoarse on how her father-in-law had outraged her modesty inside a hotel.

Allegations of a young girl being sexually molested by her uncle or a relative was another story that must have jolted the sensibilities of the people.

In both cases, trust was the mask worn by the accused to carry out their acts, acts which we find hard to describe for poverty of ideas or vocabulary.

Not exactly on the scale of Josef Fritzl, the Austrian man convicted of sexually abusing his own daughter for years, but this is of little comfort.

Manipur is certainly not an exception to such deviant behaviours from the people, especially the male species, but this points to a gradual erosion on which rest the very foundation of the smallest and most universal unit of human society, the family including the extended family.

It is this which should worry all the conscientious members of society. Something, somewhere has gone wrong.

The demented minds are products of this society and while medical terms and diagnosis may be able to explain individual cases, what mechanisms or methodology will explain the gradual erosion of the values and ethos which define a society, the society in Manipur ?

A breakdown in family values, a twisted under- standing of trust, material influence which may prove detrimental to the morales of the people etc may be mentioned, but do these answer everything ?

In many ways it is also a reflection of where women come in the pecking order of the social ladder.

Manipur may be the home of Nupi/Ima Keithel, it may have given the world the meira paibi movement and the Nupi Lans, Manipuri women may have scripted history courtesy the nude protest at Kangla and succeeded in bringing the Armed Forces Special Powers Act to the notice of the international community, a woman, Irom Sharmila Chanu may have given a new edge to determination and what commitment is all about to one's belief in a cause, but at the end of the day the reality tells a different story.

It is this which society as a whole should sincerely introspect and study. What happened to the young housewife and the girl child are in many ways a result of where women are placed in society.

This is a crying shame.