Vishnu Madhusudanan, Research Assistant, Centre for Human Sciences, Rishihood University
Recently, a piece of news from my home state, Kerala, left me shattered. A young man, unable to bear the weight of a social media trial, chose to end his life. The anatomy of this tragedy is as terrifying as it is modern: a woman films a video on a crowded bus, labels a man a harasser for “touching” her, and uploads his face to the digital gallows. By the time the truth could lace its shoes, the man was dead.
Is this an isolated incident? Hardly. We are living in an era where the “Woke Vigilante”—armed with a shrewd mind for finding “problematic” behavior in every blink—holds the power to declare anyone “impure” with a single upload.
The New Rules of the Road
Finding a place to sit in a park or a public space is no longer a simple task of physical availability; it is now a calculation of survival. Traveling by bus or train has become a walk through a minefield.
If you are sitting in a side seat you booked weeks in advance, and a young woman with a smartphone approaches you to claim it, give it up. Just give it up. In this new social order, your legal right to a seat is nothing compared to her power to record a 10-second clip of you “refusing to accommodate a woman,” which will be edited with sad music and viewed by millions as proof of your “toxic patriarchy.”
The “Collateral Damage” of the Liberal Elite
While some activists argue that “women need mountains of evidence to prove a rape,” the digital reality is the opposite: a man needs only 15 seconds of footage to be socially erased. I recently saw a “rage-bait” video where a woman tried to frame a man similarly, only to be called out by viewers who asked, “But he isn’t even doing anything?”
When we look at the numbers, the intensity is staggering:
- 8-11% of rape cases are found to be false by the police (NCRB).
- 53.2% of cases in Delhi (2013-14) were flagged as “false” by the Women’s Commission.
- 40% of cases stem from consensual relationships turned sour by family pressure.
To the liberal elite, these men are merely “Collateral Damage.” Even after this man’s death, I was horrified by the comments left by these self-proclaimed “progressives.” Some wrote, “At least now we can travel in peace,” while others performed a post-mortem on his dignity, saying, “For so long it was oppressed women who died; let these ‘evildoers’ die for a change.” This mindset—that a human life is expendable for the “greater good” of an ideology—is nothing but the ghost of our old British masters. It is the same colonial arrogance that looked down upon “impure” locals, reborn in a digital avatar.
The Metro Paradox: Segregation as Progress?
While men are literally dying over bus seats, I came across an activist lamenting the placement of women-only coaches at the end of metro trains. Her grievance? Women have to walk a few extra meters, while the “oppressors” (men) get to board the middle coaches easily.
What is the end goal here? Do they want entirely separate transport systems? We are heading toward a future where “Men Not Allowed” signs will mirror the “Indians and Dogs Not Allowed” signs of the colonial era. Is the solution to women’s struggles really to build a society of total segregation? By separating women entirely from the social fabric, are we fixing the problem or just creating a new form of apartheid?
The New Untouchability
What are we witnessing here? Is this a “New Ideological Untouchability,” where a man’s very presence is seen as a “pollution”?
In the ancient Manusmriti, it was said, “Na stri svatantrayam arhati” (Women do not deserve independence). Today, we have reached a bizarre, inverted mirror of that cruelty. We are building a world where “No man deserves the benefit of the doubt.” We have traded old prejudices for a new, “shrewd” form of social engineering—where the “untouchable” is anyone who accidentally brushes against an activist’s worldview in a crowded bus.
We don’t need a hangman’s noose anymore. We have a narrative, a shrewd mind, and a front-facing camera.
