India – loved it, but I came back feeling so violated.

[LondonLass40]

Just back from the Golden Triangle with my husband (43) and 12yr daughter. Stunning forts, incredible food ( lucky no Delhi belly 😀) amazing history is genuinely breathtaking.

But I’m struggling to process the darker side.

One afternoon in Delhi, my husband stayed at the hotel. I took my daughter to a busy market near cannaught place in broad daylight, crowded. A man walked past and grabbed my breast. Right in front of my daughter. He just kept walking. I froze. My poor girl kept asking why he touched Mummy.

Then there was the constant selfie nonsense when my husband was there and men lining up, putting their arms around me, getting too close while my husband stood there awkwardly not knowing what to do.

And the worst part was at the Red Fort queue. This guy kept pushing into me from behind – clearly not an accident. I turned around and shouted at him. He didn't run, didn't even look embarrassed , he just walked away ignoring me like I was invisible. I spoke to a security guard who just pretend to do something and did absolutely nothing.

I know these issues aren't isolated to India and this could happen in London too. But this was so blatant, so frequent, so relentless that I simply cannot ignore it. I've been to so many tourist destinations around the world and have never experienced harassment on this scale. It felt inescapable.

I don't know – does this only happen to Western women? I'm sure men like this do the same to Indian women too. How on earth do they deal with this every single day? I honestly don't think I'd go back.

There are places in the world where some men believe that women who dress a certain way can be treated as sexual objects. Or deserve to be arrested, even physically punished.

It's really not helping anyone to pretend that's not true.

Yes. There seems to be a bit of a narrative that stranger attacks are somehow worse.

We shouldn't have a hierarchy here, all of this is horrific. I think being raped repeatedly by your husband which happens in many houses up and down the UK as well as in other countries is horrific too.

I would only go as part of a very well managed group tour. But although interesting there are so many things to put you off. Hygiene. The clipped lawns of the rich but outside their gates utter squalor they do nothing to improve. Although supposedly banned a group of people they call untouchable still prevails. Dreadful.
There will be people seeking to do good things. Just not enough of them.
Do I want to prop up and by visiting give a sort of thumbs up to such a country? No.

I would say this is a huge issue. It's the same in Canada where I live. Previously, most immigration Besides refugees was fairly well educated, urban people. They integrated well, and maybe this created a sense for some that everyone from those countries was similar.

I think many people miss this in their fairly simplistic reference to “culture”. As if culture is defined by geography and every country has one culture. It’s why when Vivek Ramaswarmy was widely ridiculed when tried to claim a superiority of Indian culture to US culture is why Indians immigrants to the US historically have done well.

Most countries have “cultures” and generally the culture surrounding a nation’s better educated and highest socio-economic groups means they tend to integrate well as immigrants no matter where they are from.

Yes, and soft touch Britain gives aid to India. A country with its own space programme where the expanding middle class cannot be bothered to ensure a really basic standard of living for all. Pathetic of us to give aid and pathetic of them that they can progress technologically and still have pre-medieval standards of living for many.

Everywhere in the world are people who believe that the way a woman dresses, or behaves, means that she deserves to be sexually harassed or assaulted. Asking what a woman was wearing places responsibility on her rather than where is wholly belongs, with the perpetrator. I'm not clear why you think I'm pretending that this issue doesn't exist.

I think some asylum seekers are actually criminals evading justice in their own countries. It also means for those countries they don't have all the expense of arresting and imprisoning them, win/win for them.

Then when they get here they pick up on the narrative that British culture is worthless and we won't act robustly to defend our own.

It's really not the same everywhere.

And not talking about things doesn't change the realities. It only "puts the responsibility on the woman" if your 6 rather than an adult who knows not every place is the same.

Oh my word, not asking a woman what she was wearing and not talking about the issue are two ENTIRELY different things. And yes, evidently there are places that are more dangerous and where women are extremely vulnerable but your reference to "some places" suggests that it isn't an issue everywhere, when it is. Or is that something that you don't want to talk about? Your obtuseness is the reason I don't normally engage. I shall leave you to it.

I went to India several years ago as an older lady. I had a lot of groping, men just touching my hair on long journeys.(I have blond hair), men asking me for sex as well as general scam artists. i loved the place but hated the men.

i don’t know what it is about the country that makes them so sexist and misogynistic. I went to Nepal as well and the men were respectful, kind, generous and even though they were poorer invited me to meet family and share a meagre meal of dhal (lentils) and rice and refused payment.

I also went to Sri Lanka two years ago and was walking back to my hotel late at night when a young f man stopped his car and offered me a ride. I usually would resist but I went with my instincts. He dropped me to my hotel, opened the door for me like a gentleman and insisted that I come swimming and for dinner with his family. The next day he was true to his work and picked me up, drove me to his home and they put on an amazing spread and his family and friends drove out to the beach and I had a wonderful time. I asked to contribute and they said they would be insulted. All the younger people called me “Aunty”. It was chalk and cheese to India. I have done India and would think twice about going again. I would go to Sri Lanka or Nepal in a heartbeat.

It is the same everywhere.

What is not the same everywhere is the level of coverage and the type of behaviour people think leads to a woman “asking for it”.

But no country has escaped the notion that some people feel women (depending in the situation) bear some degree of responsibility for attacks against her.

It's not the same everywhere, fgs. The number of rapes per population is far higher in some countries than in others. The degree of violence seems to differ too. There's a difference between a rape and a sexual torture/rape/murder. It wouldn't surprise me if there was a difference in the ratio of women to children raped as well. It would be instructive to see some research on this. I think the argument about when a woman is deemed to be "asking for it" is more relevant in some societies than in others. We hear of a lot of rapes in India in which nobody could possibly suggest that the woman or child was asking for it. They are just violent attacks on someone walking down the street, or across the fields. I remember the most horrific sexual torture and gang rape of a woman on a bus, by a group of men. She was with her boyfriend and he was attacked and prevented from defending her. She died of her injuries. I also read about the rape of a very young baby. The situation is completely out of control there. Hence the demonstrations and riots when some of the most horrific rape-murders happen.

Read what I wrote again.

Read the post I was responding to.

I recently listened a BBC Sounds podcast where they were talking to groups of asylum seekers awaiting passage on small boats and quite a number admitted they were evading punishment for various serious crimes in their own countries. I think it was called To Catch a King and was about tracking down the traffickers.

So you would stop adhering to our international obligations and stop people fleeing persecution because of a few bad eggs? This is why the asylum system exists, to process people and see whether they are genuine asylum seekers and genuinely fleeing persecution. 86% succeed. Even though this has been tightened.

When we were part of the EU, an asylum application could be processed anywheee in the EU and a failure meant that you could not apply anywhere else. Whereas now we need to have a separate processing system. This is what taking back control means. So if someone failed in the EU they could try again in the UK.

Informarion sharing has also become difficult after Brexit.

I think people are quite naive to the risks of these countries. This is how it is, not acceptable to us because we're lucky to be born somewhere different, it is inevitable if you choose to visit.

We are all influenced by our up bringing, family, school, social attitudes and media

We are lucky in the west that social attitudes can be openly questioned without fear, that the state does not have control over the media, that education is not entrenched in religious ideology and cultural beliefs, that we have laws that support equality

If we grew up in countries like Saudi, Afghanistan we would have a very different opinion on the world, our roles, societal attitudes

Why do people think that all that suddenly disappears just because they step foot in a western democracy.

Yes, surprised to hear that was on the BBC, good that they're finally waking up to the world around them.

I heard there was an Egyptian minister saying that this is happening and that the Egyptian govt are quite pleased about it.

Women in Nepal & Sri Lanka still have problems.

I think the way many Indian men behave towards women in streets etc is due to the youth bulge. Countries with large numbers of uneducated, often unemployed young men (many with less hope of marrying due to shortage of girls due to female infanticide) tend to breed public sexual harassment & assault.

It's worth noting hospitality to tourists in 2 heavily tourism-dependent doesn't necessarily say that much about how female citizens are treated.

Sri Lanka:

https://www.ecchr.eu/en/case/sexual-violence-in-sri-lanka/

https://www.omct.org/en/resources/urgent-interventions/sri-lanka-rape-of-a-10-year-old-girl-by-six-persons-for-over-a-year

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11987662/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_violence_against_Tamils_in_Sri_Lanka

https://www.tamilguardian.com/content/harassment-female-tourists-sri-lanka-sparks-online-uproar-and-two-arrests

https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/sexual-harassment-in-sri-lanka-stop-telling-everyone-its-hunky-dory-5bbd53154daa

Nepal:
https://news.un.org/en/audio/2025/03/1161371

https://www.icj.org/resource/break-the-cycle-of-impunity-for-rape-in-nepal/

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/26330024251324526

A lot of Indians are generous and give what they can to charity. But this is more likely to be ordinary people rather than the ultra wealthy pp described.

https://www.alliancemagazine.org/blog/indian-philanthropy-driven-by-the-ordinary-masses-and-not-the-elite-major-findings-show/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2lrjlkpw2eo

From what I've read, a lot of middle class Indians do care but endemic government corruption make it very hard to change the situation. Understandably many give up & try to move abroad, which of course worsens the situation.

I often think this about Thailand. Quite a few people seem to fall for the tourist image presented- there indeed is lots to see there, but it's also a politically unstable country with a history of military coups and a repressive monarchy who can jail you for criticising them. During the latest coup I saw quite a few MN posts by people who had been there & were unaware of any risk until it broke out.

I think the super wealthy Indian elites are part of a global class anyway. I don't think "Indianness" means much if you have 20 billion dollars, but then I don't think "Englishness" or "Britishness" means much either..it's not just an India problem basically, although I do think they are on the sharp edge particularly with regards to the slow degradation of the middle class. But it's happening here as well.

I'd agree with that. Very wealthy people often feel more solidarity with each other than with poor or even perhaps ordinary people in their own country. Many may live quite a transient lifestyle often in multiple places etc, which reminds me of this article I read about Bollywood billionaires causing housing disputes in Notting Hill.

https://www.londoncentric.media/p/sonam-kapoor-anand-ahuja-bollywood-notting-hill-redevelopment

Yes. Just refuse to allow them to stay. Leave the international treaties. Detain. Deport.

Become a pariah state like North Korea? Too much daily Heil.