A shocking piece of news from Hamirpur in Himachal Pradesh sparked widespread outrage just days ago. A woman aged forty lost her life in a manner too painful to put into words. Her attacker was not a hardened criminal, but a boy of fourteen from Class 8, a child too young to understand the consequences of his own actions. Armed with a sickle and a stick, he inflicted grievous injuries when the woman resisted his brutal sexual assault.
The woman was later found in critical condition and rushed to the nearby hospital, where she succumbed to her injuries. The brutality of the attack has deeply shaken the local community and sparked widespread uproar. What does it mean when a child, still of an age to call her “mother,” turns into her sexual assaulter and killer? I strongly feel that this is not merely a crime, it is a collapse of our moral conscience.
An elderly gentleman commented, “The woman died not just of wounds, but of a society’s silence on the rampant outrageous stuff in mobile phones in the form of reels and videos on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, which our school children are exposed to.” He aptly pointed out how we’ve turned a blind eye to what’s creeping into young minds these days.
Another heartbreaking tale came to light from Ghasera village in Haryana. It was brought to the notice of the local police just over a week ago. A girl of fifteen, now seven months pregnant, was repeatedly raped by a boy of the same age, fourteen. How do we process such incidents in rapid succession? Are they not incidents that should make us more serious and more decisive? Are they not symptoms of a deeper malaise, a moral fever that burns quietly beneath the surface of our modern lives?
We must ask, what are we feeding the minds of our children? Why are parents so complacent these days, quick to hand over cell phones but slow to notice what’s quietly corrupting their children’s minds and hearts? Please note, most entertainment celebrities resort to indecent means to make money. Do Android devices these days not open up gateways to “insane vulgarity,” and do entertainment industries not glorify outrageous aggression and sexualized filth? One wonders how on earth sex education for school students starting from Class 6, as many claim is necessary, can cleanse their minds and thoughts. We should first know how the “mind works” and how it responds to external stimuli. Let’s not be “hypocritical”. Let us not be deluded. It is the question of our younger generation. It is the question of the death of their tenderness and the rise of their bestiality!
(A writer and researcher based in India, Salil Gewali is best known for his research-based work, Great Minds on India, which has earned worldwide appreciation. His book has been translated into fifteen languages – with a preface by a world-acclaimed NASA Chief Scientist, Dr. Kamlesh Lulla of Houston, USA. Gewali is also a member of the International Human Rights Commission, Zürich, Switzerland.)
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