After the Padil incident, there has been a tendency to consider Mangalore as an unsafe city. An article in IBN-live even goes to the extent of coining a new term called ‘Mangalored’. The term ‘Mangalored’ was unquestionably used in that article to express as to what can happen to you if you dare to party. While such fear about Mangalore is certainly a shame for Mangaloreans, what we need to understand is that the Padil homestay attack was a symptom of a serious problem. Another symptom that we have been noticing is the cocktail of the reactions of certain women groups such as Jagratha Hindu Mahila Vedike, the action taken by the state women commission, and the emotionally disconnected attitude of some of the politicians and the police towards the attack. What ails us is that we are gradually becoming an intolerant and aggressive society. The causes need to be tracked if the ailment needs to be checked. What made those goons do that and why did they dictate? Why did some of the so-called neighbors endorse the attack? Why are certain women groups such as Jagratha Hindu Mahila Vedike so ignorant to be sensitive enough to understand the plight of the victimized students? Why did the police behave so inhumanely towards the students? Why are certain politicians and state women commission treating the incident in ways where they seem to be emotionally disconnected with their own-selves? The most common answers are politics, political pressure, greed for money, and power ambitions. These answers maybe right, but perhaps beyond the greed for money and political interests, there is something deeply rotten! What is rotten may fall within the purview of politics, yet wise political actions and enforcing strict laws may not be the only solutions to treat it.

The big titanic colleges of Mangalore that supported the student protests against the homestay attack have (ironically) been no different in terms of dictating. In addition to frightening laboratory sessions and caustic behavior of teachers in classrooms, lecturers and deans dictated even on what the students should wear. Perhaps, things have changed today (as a result of laws such as corporal punishment ban) than what I had witnessed in the past, where a student was asked by a teacher to stop wearing a hat. What I intend to communicate here is that our schools and colleges themselves have had the culture of beating, dictating what to do and what not to do, and there itself a sample of an aggressive society is shown to us. One common argument that is used by such teachers, schools and colleges for their past dictatorial actions is that it was to promote discipline. The desire to show power over others (for any reasons) is politics. The schools and colleges wanted their students to be disciplined and what does this form of bringing discipline mean? It means that the power to control is in the hands of the schools and colleges. This is also what the alleged vedikes and its goons want to do. They want to control in the name of culture.

Our society’s aggressiveness is also reflected in our inability to give others their individual space. The individual space is the zone surrounding you, which you treat as psychologically yours. Our inability to respect others’ individual space starts from the neighborhood, wherein as neighbors, we are deeply curious about what our neighbors do. Further, it continues to the public transport, where we don’t like queuing up decently and thereby encroach others’ space, and this encroachment goes on throughout the day in one or the other way. We have nicely named this encroachment: struggle. Struggle is good, but an obsession to struggle for everything (even where it is not necessary) is a sickness. We end up asking mischievous questions that we are not supposed to ask others. It is due to this failure of giving individual space to others that corrupt bureaucrats and politicians become shameless enough to demand bribes. The problem that all these ' vedikes ' have with the way people dress/party is primarily related to their inability to give others the required individual space. If we start valuing others’ individual space, we will be hesitant to intrude into others’ lives. Although, this might seem to you completely irrelevant to the Padil homestay incident, the intention here is not to divert from the homestay attack issue.Padil was only symptomatic of an aggressive society. The possibility of our society turning aggressive and intolerant can be attributed to several hidden patterns of thinking and behavior, and we need to identify those if we are to seriously stop incidents such as Padil attack.

As we have been noticing in the past few days, some of our bureaucrats and politicians tactically shifted the focus from the real criminals to the victimized students as well as on the proprietor of the homestay. Besides, they also started discussing topics such as partying and dress codes. The manner in which the focus was shifted makes me wonder where they actually gained this subtleness and dodgy behavior. Is this dodgy attitude embedded in the societal structures that we are raised up in? Is it a post-colonialism problem due to the negative emotions we have practically accumulated from the ones who ruled us?

When I inquired some of the people I know from Mangalore about their opinion on the attack, a few among them quietly endorsed the attack. These are the ones who have their own universe, created either by over-watching of Ekta Kapoor type TV episodes or over-listening to Togadia type speeches, and who are psychologically incompetent to adapt themselves to something that is not so common to them. These are also the ones who naively think that pubs and parties are directly proportional to the amount of rapes and abuses. Locked in a conservative mindset, they hate to look at incidents on a case by case basis. Generalization is their top formula. While such people may apparently seem harmless, they indirectly contribute to the formation of an aggressive society. Also, they are at a risk for themselves, since they stagnate within their conventional atmosphere.

The vision that we need to develop after the Padil incident should be broader, not merely restricted to putting the goons behind bars and giving justice to victims (which undeniably is a priority). The vision should focus on promoting a healthy society, where, first, our schools and colleges need to change themselves, mainly, in the way they behave with students (building up infrastructure comes next). The whole obsolete approach of threatening students and bringing discipline needs to stop. Secondly, we need to shed off the destructive emotions we have practically gathered from politics outside, from the TV episodes and movies we watch, and from a variety of other sources. Thirdly, the goons who attacked the homestay and many more misguided youths of fundamentalist groups need to be rehabilitated. In the context of Mangalore, it has been a special place. People here have been soft-spoken and people who come to Mangalore from other places tend to pick up this soft-spoken behavior from Mangaloreans. That’s what a beautiful city does to you. We need to preserve the respect that we have had, and the term ‘Mangalored’ should start to mean something positive.