A 14-year-old boy was arrested in Bagalkot, Karnataka for raping a 12-year-old girl. Three other boys, all of them class 9 students who filmed the crime, have also been arrested.
In southwest Delhi, a 17-year-old boy was stabbed to death. His 15-year-old friend was injured, by four other boys in daylight, the crime captured on CCTV.
There’s the 20-year-old who learned that his parents were disinheriting him in favour of his elder sister, and so he killed all three of them.
If the headlines of the past month—and this is just a tiny sample—don’t convince you of the crisis amongst India’s young men and boys, then look at data: 37,780 juveniles were arrested for various crimes in 2022. Of these, 7,844 were for cognisable (serious) offences. The juvenile crime rate rose from 0.9% in 2000 to 6.9% in 2022, notes an article by Pushkarni Panchamukhi, an associate professor at the Bengaluru’s School of Economics and Prahlad Nimalan, a law student at NALSAR.
Indian law defines a juvenile as someone who is younger than 18 years in age. In the wake of public outrage following the gang-rape and subsequent death of a physiotherapy student in Delhi in 2012, one of the perpetrators turned out to be 17-years-old. The law was subsequently tweaked: those aged between 16 and 18 found guilty of particularly horrific crimes would be tried as adults.
That’s not been enough to deter rising crime among young boys and men. “Masculinity and violence have become embedded in our language, reflecting how deeply we have internalized them,” said Satish Singh, senior advisor, Azad Foundation.
Speaking at a national conference, Unpacking Patriarchy, Gender Stereotypes and the Shaping of Indian Masculinities organized by the NGO Cequin in New Delhi on Wednesday, Singh called for structural changes and strategies for engaging men and boys in gender transformation.
“Young men today face rising insecurity, alongside hope and aspiration, but also anxiety,” added philanthropist Rohini Nilekani. “We need spaces to listen, learn and engage—without noise or judgment.”
Pressing reset
It’s wrong for a woman to work and earn.
If a husband doesn’t get angry with his wife, she will dominate him.
These are voices from the street. They are not criminals; just young men explaining on camera what it means to be young men.
Mardangi Reloaded is a 15 minute short film that is a part of Cequin’s campaign to redefine masculinity. It looks at 46 micro-influencers from Lucknow to Chandigarh to New Delhi, who are challenging traditional ideas of masculinity and what the word means in contemporary India.
Saurabh Julum, a mechanical engineer turned content creator from Mumbai with 116,000 followers on Instagram, says being a part of the campaign has been a “journey of growth, self-reflection, and challenging old beliefs”.
Lucknow-based Irfan Khan (111,000 followers on Instagram) says, “I read a lot of articles about women’s safety, sexual violence. It’s people around us who are committing these despicable acts. How can we change this and what role can we play?”
The campaign, explains Cequin co-founder and managing director Lora Krishnamurthy Prabhu is a, “part of the effort where we are talking to men and boys and helping them to self-reflect, see what masculinity means for themselves, making them aware that it’s ok to be vulnerable, it’s ok to have self-doubt, it’s ok to challenge gender stereotypes.”
Watch Mardangi Reloaded here.
Cequin is not alone in trying to reset the conversation. Manish, a science graduate from Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh who uses only one name, tells me why he started Gaali Band Abhiyaan, a campaign to stop boys from using abusive language.
Back in 2005, he says, when he was working on women’s reproductive health, he noticed how freely boys abused each other—nearly all of it gendered and centered around mothers and sisters. “I decided I have to talk to schoolboys about how using these words did not make them macho,” he says. Manish estimates he’s worked with 40,000 boys so far. “Many of them are now fathers,” he says.
“I realised that you have to involve the men. If you’re going to talk about violence against women, then you have to talk to the source of that violence,” he says.
Global call to action
In the discourse on the need for gender equity, we have been talking about inclusion, the right to public space, the rising crime rate, the aspiration of teenage girls, female labour force participation, unpaid care work, legal protections, maternal and child health, reservation in Parliament and the assemblies.
Left out, by and large, is the urgent need to speak to boys. If one in three women and girls globally are subjected to violence, then one in three men and boys are committing that violence.
“When we talk about gender equality, gender inclusion, we are not just talking about girls,” says Sara Abdullah Pilot, Cequin co-founder and chairperson. “We wanted this conversation to be broadened which would include the men and the boys.”
Globally too there seems to be a renewed sense of urgency on the need to root out toxic ideas of masculinity. This urgency coincides with the astounding success of Netflix’s four-part show, Adolescence, which has in two weeks since its launch on March 13 become the #1 show in 71 countries.
In the UK, the murder of three women, a former partner, her sister and their mother, by Kyle Clifford after listening to hours of toxic content by misogynist influencer Andrew Tate has led to some soul-searching. In a public lecture this week, former England manager Gareth Southgate said men like Clifford are “searching for direction” and fill the void with a “new kind of role model who does not have their best interest at heart.”
London mayor Sadiq Khan agreed. “There are far too many toxic influencers who push misogyny and dominance online,” he tweeted. “That’s why I’m funding educational toolkits…to help educate young Londoners about healthy and respectful relationships with women and girls.” Earlier this week, Spotify took down a podcast by Tate called Pimping Hoes reportedly after an online petition by 92,000 people made the demand. Other content by Tate, however, still remains available on the streaming service.
[I had earlier written on why we need to talk to boys. Read here.]
