RoseChasm - India: the Story You Never Wanted to Hear
'What, may I ask, is the cure for seeing reality, of feeling for three months what its like for one's humanity to be taken away?'
NB - RoseChasm has summed up the reality of India's social situation in her question: whats the cure for having ones humanity taken away? This is the reality faced by millions of Indian women every day. There's no point blaming colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, etc. This is our culture, in all its beauty and ugliness. We have to answer for it. Thank you, Rose. We hang our heads in shame - as we did last December, and as we shall have reason to do, alas for a long time hence. Dilip
CNN PRODUCER NOTE Please note that CNN cannot independently verify the events described in this post. You can read more about this story on CNN.com. RoseChasm says she shared her account of studying abroad in India and experiencing repeated sexual harassment in hopes of spreading 'international exposure about what women travelers and residents experience in India.' The South Asian Studies student says she is currently on a mental leave of absence from the University of Chicago, but expects to return to classes in the fall.
The University of Chicago issued the following statement: 'Nothing is more important to us at the University of Chicago than caring for the safety and well-being of our students, here in Chicago and wherever they go around the world in the course of their studies. The University offers extensive support and advice to students before, during and after their trips abroad, and we are constantly assessing and updating that preparation in light of events and our students' experiences. We also place extremely high value on the knowledge our students seek by traveling and studying other civilizations and cultures, and we are committed to ensuring they can do so in safety while enriching their intellectual lives.'
Dipesh Chakrabarty, a University of Chicago professor who was in India for the first three weeks of the session, told CNN that he was unaware of RoseChasm’s situation. He noted, though, that the university tries to prepare students for what they might encounter while abroad. 'Both faculty and staff in Chicago and our local Indian staff counsel students before and during the trip about precautions they need to take in a place like India,' Chakrabarty said in an e-mail. 'Ensuring student safety and well-being is the top priority of both the College and staff and faculty associated with the program.' 'Every year about 25 students enroll in it and several have gone on to become India-specialists by doing PhDs on the country and its past and present. This is the first time that I personally have come across such a serious problem,' he said.
I covered up, but I did not hide. And so I was taken, by eye
after eye, picture after picture. India ,
or on the internet: photos of me walking, cursing, flipping people off. Who
knows how many strangers have used my image as pornography, and those of my
friends. I deleted my fair share, but it was a drop in the ocean-- I had no
chance of taking back everything they took
NB - RoseChasm has summed up the reality of India's social situation in her question: whats the cure for having ones humanity taken away? This is the reality faced by millions of Indian women every day. There's no point blaming colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, etc. This is our culture, in all its beauty and ugliness. We have to answer for it. Thank you, Rose. We hang our heads in shame - as we did last December, and as we shall have reason to do, alas for a long time hence. Dilip
The University of Chicago issued the following statement: 'Nothing is more important to us at the University of Chicago than caring for the safety and well-being of our students, here in Chicago and wherever they go around the world in the course of their studies. The University offers extensive support and advice to students before, during and after their trips abroad, and we are constantly assessing and updating that preparation in light of events and our students' experiences. We also place extremely high value on the knowledge our students seek by traveling and studying other civilizations and cultures, and we are committed to ensuring they can do so in safety while enriching their intellectual lives.'
Dipesh Chakrabarty, a University of Chicago professor who was in India for the first three weeks of the session, told CNN that he was unaware of RoseChasm’s situation. He noted, though, that the university tries to prepare students for what they might encounter while abroad. 'Both faculty and staff in Chicago and our local Indian staff counsel students before and during the trip about precautions they need to take in a place like India,' Chakrabarty said in an e-mail. 'Ensuring student safety and well-being is the top priority of both the College and staff and faculty associated with the program.' 'Every year about 25 students enroll in it and several have gone on to become India-specialists by doing PhDs on the country and its past and present. This is the first time that I personally have come across such a serious problem,' he said.
When people ask me about my experience studying abroad in India ,
I always face the same dilemma. How does one convey the contradiction that over
the past few months has torn my life apart, and convey it in a single succinct
sentence?
“India
was wonderful," I go with, "but extremely dangerous for women.” Part
of me dreads the follow-up questions, and part of me hopes for more. I'm torn
between believing in the efficacy of truth, and being wary of how much truth
people want. Because, how do I describe my three months in the University
of Chicago Indian
Do I tell them about our first night in the city of Pune ,
when we danced in the Ganesha festival, and leave it at that? Or do I go on and
tell them how the festival actually stopped when the American women started
dancing, so that we looked around to see a circle of men filming our every
move? Do I tell them about bargaining at the bazaar for beautiful saris
costing a few dollars a piece, and not mention the men who stood watching us,
who would push by us, clawing at our breasts and groins?
When people compliment me on my Indian sandals, do I talk
about the man who stalked me for forty-five minutes after I purchased them,
until I yelled in his face in a busy crowd? Do I describe the lovely hotel in Goa
when my strongest memory of it was lying hunched in a fetal position, holding a
pair of scissors with the door bolted shut, while the staff member of the hotel
who had tried to rape my roommate called me over and over, and breathing into
the phone? How, I ask, was I supposed to tell these stories at a Christmas
party? But how could I talk about anything else when the image of the smiling
man who masturbated at me on a bus was more real to me than my friends, my
family, or our Christmas tree? All those nice people were asking the questions
that demanded answers for which they just weren't prepared.
When I went to India ,
nearly a year ago, I thought I was prepared. I had been to India
before; I was a South Asian Studies major; I spoke some Hindi. I knew that as a
white woman I would be seen as a promiscuous being and a sexual prize. I was
prepared to follow the University of Chicago
But I wasn't prepared.
There was no way to prepare for the eyes, the eyes that
every day stared with such entitlement at my body, with no change of expression
whether I met their gaze or not. Walking to the fruit seller's or the tailer's
I got stares so sharp that they sliced away bits of me piece by piece. I was
prepared for my actions to be taken as sex signals; I was not prepared to
understand that there were no sex signals, only women's bodies to be taken, or
hidden away.
For three months I lived this way, in a traveler's heaven
and a woman's hell. I was stalked, groped, masturbated at; and yet I had
adventures beyond my imagination. I hoped that my nightmare would end at the
tarmac, but that was just the beginning. Back home Christmas red seemed faded
after vermillion, and food tasted spiceless and bland. Friends, and family, and
classes, and therapy, and everything at all was so much less real than the
pain, the rage that was coursing through my blood, screaming so loud it
deafened me to all other sounds. And after months of elation at living in
freedom, months of running from the memories breathing down my neck, I woke up
on April Fool's Day and found I wanted to be dead.
The student counselors diagnosed me with a personality
disorder and prescribed me pills I wouldn't take. After a public breakdown I
ended up in a psych ward for two days held against my will, and was released on
the condition that I took a "mental leave of absence" from school and
went to live with my mother. I thought I had lost my mind; I didn't connect any
of it to India--
I had moved on. But then a therapist diagnosed me with PTSD and I realized I
hadn't moved a single inch. I had frozen in time. And I’d fallen. And I’d
shattered.
But I wasn't the only one, the only woman from my trip to be
diagnosed with PTSD, to be forced into a psych ward, to wake up wanting to be
dead. And I am not the only woman who is on a mental leave of absence from the University
of Chicago India , and for
my disillusionment. Truth is a gift, a burden, and a responsibility. And I mean
to share it.
This is the story you don't want to hear when you ask me
about India .
But this is the story you need.
