Why Western media continues to perpetuate negative stereotypes of India

In recent weeks Salvatore Babones, the American comparative political sociologist who works in Sydney, has acquired a certain notoriety among Indians because he has pointed out that the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes. It is rare for Western academics to clearly say that the Indian intelligentsia, among which one can include academics and journalists, working in their rarefied modules, has been producing negative stories about India which have little to do with the living India but which have a damaging bearing on India’s place in a variety of international rankings. On 5 January 2023, UK’s leading magazine for higher education matters, Times Higher Education (THE) published an article, “Sexual misconduct in Indian higher education: the elephant in the room?” by Pola Lem, who is their Asia reporter. While Lem’s article draws attention to a legitimate problem, i.e., what universities in India are and should be doing about sexual misconduct, one must take issue with the way in which she contextualises the problem and misrepresents sources and their significance. Background assumptions are critical conditions for the treatment of any subject and in assessing the significance of factual observations for the subject. Given that treatment of a subject in a magazine such as THE could have wider implications, the article exemplifies a certain attitude which has the potential to cause damage to people. The article is meant to be about India, which is the message conveyed in the email shots sent on the date of the article’s publication and on the cover of the issue in which it appears. However, somewhat half of the coverage is about Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Despite the coverage of two other countries, it isn’t transparent why the comparison of India with the two other countries has been brought in. While it may result from a lazy lumping together of “South Asian” countries, at least one of the academic interviewees, who is from Pakistan, considers that the comparison may be invalid because of “the different cultural and religious environments” between Pakistan and India. Lem’s article seeks to convey that, somehow, India is exceptional in the harm that its women broadly suffer and in how Indian universities treat the problem of sexual misconduct. Indeed, the former is the explanatory background for the claims about the latter. However, both aspects carry flaws that are fatal to the article’s claims. For the prevalence of sexual misconduct at universities, allegations are made without seeking more than anecdotal evidence. There is the appeal to authority because “many academics say it is particularly pronounced in India”. The Pakistani academic says that “sexual harassment is far less prevalent in his country than in India”. No indication is given on what basis these academics have made these assessments, although the fact that academics are seemingly the main source is a factor to which we will return later. Meanwhile, none of these quoted statements reveals the basis for comparison between India and other countries, giving rise to questions as to their reliability and why they would be included at all. The article points out that for India, “No national figures exist for cases of sexual harassment in higher education.” For comparisons to be valid, data for at least one country in addition to India would have to be present. If these data are unavailable, then no reliable claims about prevalence can be made. In reality, the University Grants Commission (UGC) does compile statistics on sexual harassment and, while not comprehensive, they are capturing data from an increasing number of institutions. Compared to the 188 reporting in 2018-19, 236 institutions reported to the UGC in 2019-20. Lem doesn’t report this and consequently fails to mention that most institutions report zero cases. Perhaps by way of compensation for the lack of any hard data, Lem relies on frequent recourse to some unspecific figures such as “many academics”, “some academics”, “numerous scholars”, “many observers”, “observers suggest” and so on. We have no idea how many people are being referred to, who they are, what research they have done, or what they have observed and whether their claims are disputed. In other words, in the absence of data, an impression is sought to be created by relying on an unspecified sample of persons whose basis for claims, research backgrounds or expertise is not made transparent. Neither is the article embarrassed to place reliance at one point on a report from “one student”. Instead of reporting some solid research or data, or perhaps because of its lack, the article resorts to misleading presentation and information about the background context regarding the treatment of women in India. For example, these two sentences make for a suggestive juxtaposition by confusing different things: “It is important, however, to see the incidents at Indian universities in their wider social context. In recent years, the country has gained something of an international reputation for poor treatment of women.” The first sentence purports to introduce the “wider social context”, which suggests looking at the actual living conditions of women as they are relevant to sexual misconduct at universities. However, the second sentence points to India’s “reputation” for the poor treatment of women. The two are not necessarily related, given that India’s international reputation, as Babones has been pointing out, can depend on the way in which its academics describe it. Indeed, the article feeds India’s negative reputation by using misleading descriptions of the situation of women. In other words, far from describing the actual social context, it misrepresents the situations it purports to describe and thus contributes negatively to India’s international reputation. Take the 2012 case of the physiotherapy student (the Nirbhaya case), which was widely reported worldwide and made the subject of a BBC documentary, India’s Daughter. The projection of this case, horrible though it was, was used to construct an image of India as being exceptionally cruel to women in terms of rape. India got projected as the rape capital of the world. There was even a reported case of a male Indian student being refused admission to a university in Germany because of the reputation this created for India. However, less reported were the correctives which pointed out that the available figures do not justify India’s reputation. India fares not as poorly as some countries in the West, which have not been projected as rape capitals. There is clearly a tension between the actual incidence of rape against women and India’s reputation. Without furnishing any corrective, Lem’s article misleadingly makes claims about the latter, compounding the damage the other coverage has already done. The article continues this pattern by using the terms such as “horrified”, “outraged”, and “scandalised”, as well as “further negative headlines”. It therefore relies on an appeal to emotion (as opposed to evidence) and confuses rather than clarifies the distinction between actual social context and reputation. Another case is the gang rape of a 19-year-old Dalit woman in 2020. This well-publicised case in Hathras became iconic for caste-based violence in India. Indeed, Lem also makes a point of highlighting the caste factor, saying that the woman “was gang raped by four upper-caste men”. The hyperlinks point to a BBC report of the Hathras case. The key difference between Lem’s article and the BBC report is that the latter clarifies that the woman in question was “allegedly gang raped by four upper caste men”. Given that conflicting accounts have been given of the case and the legal case hasn’t been concluded, by adding “allegedly”, the BBC report wisely refrains from making the kind of bold pronouncement which Lem isn’t embarrassed to make. Besides, this is not the first time the same case has been reported by THE as though there is certainty about the perpetrators and their reasons for carrying out the homicide. The article carries at least five references to caste as a factor in violent acts committed by upper-caste men upon lower-caste women. This ties into the frequently projected image of rampant and ever-increasing caste violence, for which India also has an international reputation. Recent research falsifies the assumptions behind this depiction, showing that available figures do not justify the claim that people from Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) in India suffer a higher level of violence than non-SCs and non-STs. Recent research by Nihar Sashittal indicates that over the past few decades, more crimes, including the least serious, have been used to net in official figures of caste atrocities. These are presented as an index of violence against Dalits. This means that the basis for making claims about caste violence is unjustifiably inflated. Taking the most serious crimes, such as rape, the reported official figures show that SCs and STs have less prevalence of exposure to such crimes than the rest of the population. The reference to caste allows the insertion of identities other than sex into the discussion. This means the introduction not only of caste but also of religious background. Caste atrocities are relevant only when Hindu men are the alleged perpetrators. Therefore, without saying so, Lem uses the code language of caste as a proxy to point to Hindus in India. Lem’s article links to the British Medical Journal’s summary of a study on spousal violence in India. However, neither Lem nor BMJ mention that that study lists Muslim religion as having a significant association with spousal violence. Lem thus illicitly suggests Hindu men’s involvement as the likely perpetrators of sexual violence, while expunging evidence of Muslim men’s involvement in it. In the same way that crimes of different seriousness have been used to net in figures for caste atrocities in India, Lem uses different terms to tell the story of sexual misconduct in universities. While rape is legally well defined, harassment is harder to capture, although it does have legal importance in Indian law as in other jurisdictions. The UGC’s national figures also use the term sexual harassment. Sexual misconduct does not have a clear definition or legal significance, although Lem uses various terms as proxies for a phenomenon that remains unspecified. In addition, she refers to “crimes against women” as used in the report from a single police authority. If we assume that crimes against women include all crimes, whether of a sexual or non-sexual character, the relevance of these figures to the article’s immediate concern can be raised. Lem misleadingly uses crime figures. She takes figures of reported crimes from a single police authority, the Mira-Bhayandar Vasai Virar (MBVV) Police Commissionerate, and projects them as though they represent the figures for India as a whole. (In fact, the mentioned study on spousal violence discusses the regional variation in violence suffered by women spouses across India.) The source she relies on to claim that crimes against women are rising cites figures for crimes reported to that one police authority. Reports of crimes cannot be treated as though they provide a picture of the actual prevalence of crimes. One of the reasons given by the Commissionerate representative in the report relied on by the writer (but which her article does not mention) is that reporting of crimes has been made much easier in recent years. This could account for some of the increase in the higher numbers. There are a number of constructive ways in which to make progress on the discussion about sexual misconduct in the university context. The article published by THE does not help progress this discussion. It misleads by skewing the larger context of the abuses suffered by women and the specific issue of sexual misconduct in universities. While one can always lambast THE and Lem for helping perpetuate negative stereotypes of India, some of the responsibility surely lies with Indian academics, whose corrosive role contributes to the problem. The author is a Reader in Culture at Law at Queen Mary, University of London. Views expressed are personal. Read all the Latest News , Trending News , Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.