While NCW chairperson Mamta Sharma had advised girls earlier this year to not view sexy as a negative term, yesterday she asked women to 'dress carefully because blindly aping the West leads to Guwahati-like incidents'
After the NCW sacked its member Alka Lamba for revealing the victim’s identity in the Guwahati molestation case, NCW chairperson Mamta Sharma yesterday said that women should be “careful about the way they dress because such incidents are a result of blindly aping the West”.
“After 64 years of freedom, it is not right to give blanket directions… and say don’t wear this or don’t wear that. Be comfortable, but at the same time, be careful about how you dress... Aping the West blindly is eroding our culture and causing such crimes to happen,” said Mamta Sharma.
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Lesson to be learnt: Sharma said Westernisation has afflicted Indian cities the worst, and there are no values left. File pic
She said the biggest challenge before the NCW today is changing the social mindset of discrimination against women.u00a0“Westernisation has afflicted our cities the worst. There are no values left. In places like Delhi there is no culture of giving up seats for women. It is unfortunate that while the West is learning from our culture, we are giving ourselves up completely to western ways,” she said.
Earlier this year, Sharma had sparked a row when she said that the word “sexy” should not be taken in a negative context. “Boys pass comments on girls terming them sexy, but sexy means beautiful and charming. We should not see it in negative sense,” she had said.
While stating that Lamba’s action was “indefensible”, she added that the issue was played up too much. “We are thankful to the media for highlighting the incident but at times the asides get more importance than the actual work,” she said.
“All reports have clearly shown that police reached the spot 40 minutes later, which is not acceptable. I will talk about the contents of the report only when it comes back from the ministry but this is one aspect which clearly stands out,” she said.
On Monday, NCW removed member Alka Lamba from its probe team that investigated the Guwahati molestation case for naming the victim. “Alka Lamba, social activist who was the member of the NCW inquiry committee to inquire into the incident where a girl was allegedly attacked and molested after she came out of the bar in Dispur, Assam, is removed from the inquiry committee constituted by the Commission,” a NCW statement issued said. “The views given by her to the press are her personal views and not of NCW,” it added.
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