It's caste policing, not plain 'moral' policing

An article in The Times of India a couple of days ago, titled 'Missing the point on policing the moral police' expresses anger over the fact that instead of commiserating with the victims of the recent attack by Hindutva goons on a private party in a resort in Mangalore 'a section of society is delivering homilies on women and culture'. The writer adds:

 All this was evident at a seminar in Bangalore on Monday when some prominent women writers and activists articulated concerns on the need for modest dressing and preserving traditional values. Karnataka's State Women's commission chairperson C Manjula added fuel to fire saying: "We shouldn't ignore the other side of the attack on girls in Mangalore which is about immodest dressing, illegal and immoral activities." Advocate and former women's commission chairperson Pramila Nesargi made it too obvious: "The perpetrators of the attack were only trying to prevent young people going astray." Scholar M Chidananda Murthy said: "There were reasons to look beyond the attack, as there is a serious threat to the culture" 

 In other words, there were too many prominent voices in 'civil' society who were as eager, perhaps, to blame the victims as the attackers. If the attackers had adopted less violent means to express their displeasure then it seems very likely that most of civil society would have backed their actions. The 'moral' values the attackers seem to believe in so passionately seem to be shared by too many sections of our society, not just one or two. Why is it so? Why is it that the victims in Mangalore, and elsewhere, are more widely seen as 'disrupters' of order than are the attackers?

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please read the rest of the article at round table india.