Editorial: Our celibate men at the Eiffel Tower

For a country that covets a high ‘international image’ and claims to be vishwaguru to the world, India is receiving no help from some of its citizens travelling abroad. Videos of Indians behaving poorly in other countries regularly go viral on social media, sparking adverse comments on our supposed lack of civic sense, but also, in some cases, triggering a racist backlash against the diaspora in general.

Most such incidents can be put down to individual behaviour and left at that. Indian tourists blasting music on public transport, doing the Garba in airport lounges, having an impromptu communal feast on a passenger aeroplane, and loading up doggie bags at buffet breakfasts are some of the common nuisances reported of Indians travelling abroad. They invite passing ridicule from bystanders but not a lot more than that.

The more wanton acts of vandalism or cultural insensitivity might inflame broader public opinion in the host country and lead to wider consequences for Indian tourists in general. For example, Indians caught inscribing their names on temple walls in Bali or misbehaving with women at nightclubs in Bangkok have sometimes resulted in denial of service or even entry to their compatriots. In Bali, Indian men are often subjected to stricter profiling at clubs because of the bad reputation earned by earlier visitors from the sub-continent. If particularly serious, affronts to local sensibilities could prompt host nations to tighten visa regulations for all Indians.

The most egregious of such incidents took place in Paris earlier this week. A large delegation of monks belonging to the Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS) from Gujarat allegedly asked authorities at the Eiffel Tower to remove all female personnel when they visited the tourist attraction because any proximity to women would impugn their vow of celibacy. Strangely, the tower management decided to indulge the monks and ordered female employees to make themselves scarce while the holy men took in the sights of Paris from the tower. The incident triggered a huge controversy in France with women rightly outraged that their very presence would be an affront to a band of foreign and celibate men. The tower was closed on Monday (Sept. 7) as staff, both men and women, went on strike to protest the management's decision to comply with a misogynous demand, and French lawmakers labelled the incident as shocking and unacceptable.

Critics in India who are disappointed that their country’s ‘image’ has been tarnished by an order of monks practising their celibacy in a foreign land are missing the point, however. A nation of 1.5 billion is hardly likely to be taken seriously when it makes a case for abstinence. The issue is not only that Indian misogyny has been paraded on the world stage, or even that offence has been caused to French women. The issue ought also to be that India practices its misogyny, casually and in plain sight with the approval of all society, towards any women at all, and that it remains enshrined in all religious orders and social institutions at home. The women of the Eiffel Tower are right to protest about being asked to make themselves invisible to chaste men, but what of Indian women who have historically and forever been made to hide in the cloisters while men ruled from the temple?