The ‘Raja Beta’ culture is a heady, intoxicating mix of power and anger, and gives birth to unkind men who think their worth is limited to their conquests.
As India’s #MeToo shows no signs of leaving the news cycle, the conversation needs to involve more stakeholders. Currently, we’re talking about the survivors and the abusers. Here’s the catch: The world is not divided into this binary.
All these stem from, and feed into, a toxic rape culture that is a mix of hyper masculinity and silence. It is the ‘Raja Beta’ syndrome with which Indian men are raised in families. It’s a heady, intoxicating mix of power and anger, and gives birth to unkind men who think their worth is limited to their conquests.
I’m not a parent (thankfully), but I’ve been forced to raise a lot of my male friends into half-decent feminists who believe in equality, empathy, and decency. It’s labour I shouldn’t have had to perform, but it makes me realise one simple thing: We don’t raise our boys to be better. We don’t give them the tools to be better allies and friends. We show them how to enact certain behaviours without meaning them, and we show them how to leverage sensitivity as a reward.
Also Read: #MeToo in India should not forgive women who enable patriarchy and rape culture
The onus of making this better lies on the people who raise these men, and most importantly, on their fathers.
Here are five things that I think might help:
1. Raise soft men: We have ended up creating reward systems for men who express their emotions. The idea is fair and noble — it is, after all, difficult to rally against a large system that benefits you unless it’s incentivised. This, however, leads to men who think that they deserve a cookie every time they’re ‘emotional’. They also end up weaponising their emotions to manipulate and gaslight the people in their lives. We need to show boys that their softness isn’t an anomaly. It’s human and normal. It isn’t unusual behaviour, but just what they should be doing as decent, whole people.
2. Raise men who understand their own anger: We value anger as a masculine virtue, but we rarely, if ever, give them correct avenues for it. What this leads to is a group of young men who know they’re allowed to be angry. They just don’t know what to do with this anger. They need to be given constructive, expressive tools that harness this anger and creativity. Creating safety valves allows for a safer society for everyone.
3. Raise men who understand consent: You have to break out of the ‘Raja Beta’ mould here. You have to teach boys that their entitlement doesn’t extend beyond their own personhood. Think of how you excuse things because ‘boys will be boys’. Think of how many times you allow boys to get away with misbehaviour because it’s normalised. That’s a fundamental step in the right direction — the acknowledgment of, and the dismantling of, entitlement.
4. Raise men who see women as friends and peers: Pop culture and existing conversations force men into believing that women are either mothers/sisters/aunts or lovers. They can only see women in association of themselves, and gauge the worth of a woman’s existence by the men she’s associated with. We need to teach men to see women as friends they can interact with without expecting more. We need to teach them to look at women as people, not as receptacles of honour and value. We need to teach them how to disengage respect from worth.
5. Raise kind men: Kindness isn’t benevolence. It’s not weakness. It’s not a reaction to your surroundings. It is, at its crux, a conscientious way of living. It’s being aware of your privilege and of your social location. It’s about being capable of using those to protect and bolster those who need it more than you. To raise a kind man is to raise one who understands that kindness is not passive allyship. It’s active, engaged work that constantly involves unlearning and recalibration.
Also read: How did you react when people you looked up to were named in India’s #MeToo?
This is just the start. So much of this might not work because we’re too entangled in the systems we’re trying to break out of. But if we don’t start now, we might not be able to salvage what is left of humanity around us. It’s been a few years of losing faith in ourselves. The onus of reclaiming it is on us.
Harnidh Kaur is a poet.
Its only in north india that parents dont discipline male child in young age..as a south indian who has lived in delhi during my formative years, I have seen this brazen support from their parents towards their wayward children…I am sure in hindi heartland disciplining male child is frowned upon..hence these many rapes and brazen way law is broken..no wonder many hindi fellows are migrating to south( people must see official statistics reg. it before, jumping the gun)
Shabby, you are mocking parenthood by being thankful for not being a parent yourself and still giving gyaan on how to raise children. Ironic
Very pertinent. Very nicely summed up. Perhaps, an additional point would be to teach boys to accept rejection and move on. Simple approaches to living, if adopted, will save a lot of people from a lot of trouble.