Everything thats wrong with Mr Onkar Date's disgust with India.

Don’t know where to start. Onkar Date’s  letter seems horridly wrong, not only in its idea and execution  but also in its self righteous reproach.

He begins by saying, “usually I wouldn’t have been affected much by what I read in the newspaper. Scandals, murders,explosions etc, So I can usually go back to my study after some time”.

Now what sort of 16yr old boy finds all other “murders, explosions” but for this case, as USUAL?

He goes on to lament on India’s economic progress, trying to render the toils of millions of us useless, just because a certain incident. Where else does an entire nation, it billion plus people or its hardworking population are all painted as criminal, only, and only because a certain gruesome crime happened in one of its cities? He generalizes what rapist say as TRADITION of INDIA. I would want to ask Mr Date parents, is this they have taught their son?  Does he believes in a stray remark of a rapist and understands it as the Tradition of INDIA or has he been taught the same tradition by his parents?

He laments India attaining new heights of economic progress and questions it. Mr Date must understand that economic progress and social progress are not mutually exclusive events and economic progress of a country has nothing to do with a gruesome rape being committed in that country. While no doubt the incident to which Mr Date is referring too, was a barbaric and inhuman act, but it still does not call for suspending all the policies and development work in the country.

Why does he paint our society  backward/orthodox  based on what a rapists says about how the women should dress themselves? Why does Mr Date assume that the view of the rapist about the dressing sense of the women is the general view of men in India, unless he himself believes it? He at multiple instances refers to “the incident” and the remarks by the rapists as Tradition/culture of India. Let me pause here to as Mr Date, why is he so gullible to believe that one incident and one rapist speaking on camera makes up for the tradition and culture of the country and why and who gave Mr Date the right to assume the rapist is representative of all men in India, including his own father. How may rapes has he seen daily in the family he was brought up and how many male members of his family think women as a piece of meat? If not then why, why on earth does he assume it as a tradition of India of which he is a part?

He says politicians want to ban the film, to not show India in a bad light, but he totally misses the point, that the ban was to prevent many unbaked minds like him, who would watch a rapists confession and base their judgment of the entire country, of its billion plus people based on it.

He again goes on to say, the “documentary might expose our country’s beliefs, however backward and heinous” …and I am clueless again. What stretch of imagination or logic prompts him to make a sweeping generalization, to paint the entire country backward and one with heinous belief?

YES the incident was condemnable, YES we need to do better as a society and YES we will. But Mr Date as a student will want better, than his entire future and past be judged on one random class test.