In this world, nothing is certain, except death, taxes and the alarming regularity with which the Crass Indian Tourist goes viral.
They are found dancing topless atop Rohtang Pass one week, getting pummeled by trans sex workers in Thailand the next, and blasting music in the London subway the week after. Unfailingly, Goa punctuates these viral moments every so often, becoming a reliable setting for these performances. But finally, this past week, there was a spot of good news.
On 5 February, the Goa Police—possibly at the end of its tether—announced they would detain anyone caught taking forced selfies with tourists for up to 24 hours. Two men from Tamil Nadu were promptly arrested at Baga Beach, under section 170 of Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, which empowers police officers to arrest without a warrant.
This followed months of viral videos where Goans have had it. Last Thursday, a man was booked for shooting a video of a foreign tourist swimming at Calangute beach and circulating it on social media. An FIR was registered under section 79 (outraging woman’s modesty) and 356 (2) (defamation) of Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. Two tourists from Odisha were also detained for harassing a Russian national last week.
These are just the ones that have caught the authorities’ eye. It’s frighteningly common to see gangs of men in co-ord sets approach white women tourists, their selfie cameras already pointed. Most women feel compelled to oblige, either out of politeness or a desire to extricate themselves from the situation—but the picture is often just a pretext to touch the woman inappropriately.
Last week, a herd of men surrounded a visibly uncomfortable woman at Calangute Beach, putting their arms around her shoulders and touching her bottom. One of the men even dropped his child into the sand in his eagerness to be photographed. In another incident, a man filmed himself approaching foreign women on the beach, shaking their hands without invitation, and attempting to twirl them around. He kept filming even though many of the women ignored him.
Groups of these men, who treat women like carnival attractions, feel emboldened to go a step further when their behaviour goes unchecked. A few weeks ago, a man was filmed drunkenly blocking a woman’s path, with a note in his mouth. When the woman retaliated, he proceeded to angrily make obscene gestures at her. In November, a 19-year-old Mumbai influencer, mistaken for a foreigner, was harassed at Baga Beach. Several men approached her to ask that quintessentially Indian question, “How much?”
This behaviour is often branded as the Dillification of Goa, and while Delhi men deserve every mote of contempt that comes their way, men from other states fare no better. Male tourists from Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Rajasthan, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh land up in the state to harass women like it’s going out of fashion—but it’s Goa that ends up with the reputation. Goa shows up in travel advisories. And it’s Goa’s beaches that foreign women will learn to avoid.
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Put them behind bars
But Goa isn’t where this story ends. It’s where the nightmare begins. The state has become a rehearsal ground for a certain kind of Indian man who wants to practice “foreignness” at home before exporting it internationally. And export it they do.
Indian tourists have achieved such a remarkable global reach that Thai spas have begun blacklisting them for “perverse behaviour” and beach clubs in Greece have started refusing us entry. Whether it’s Calangute or Koh Pha Ngan: Foreign women and foreign spaces are treated not as entities that deserve respect, but as props in a performance of worldliness to be documented and displayed back home.
Thanks to this, the rest of us—respectful Indian travellers who understand consent and personal space—walk with second-hand shame. We’re the ones getting side-eyed at immigration and judged at hotels, because men who look like us have proven, repeatedly, that they cannot behave.
Appeals to basic decency have failed, and shame has stopped registering. The Indian government once spent crores on the “Atithi Devo Bhava” campaign, teaching us to be good hosts, but those lessons clearly didn’t take. And policing can only be reactive, because the harassment has already happened by the time complaints are lodged.
So here we are. The “gentle parenting” approach has failed to reform Indian men. What we now need is a systematic approach to contain them. Since conventional methods have proven ineffective, more creative interventions are clearly warranted. What could a modest proposal to manage the problem look like?
Let’s start with mandatory glass cages on all tourist spots frequented by foreign tourists. Ventilated, of course. Indian male tourists can take in the sights from within these enclosures, preventing any unfortunate “accidental” approaches. Of course, that might feel too restrictive, so how about an invisible electric fence set at a three-metre radius around women? Think of the progressive shocks when you violate the perimeter as a learning opportunity.
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Surveillance for men
Still, technology can only achieve so much without proper certification. All tourist sites in India should institute a basic consent exam with multiple choice questions. For instance: A woman is walking the grounds of the palace. Do you:
- Interrupt her for a selfie
- Ask her her ‘daily rate’
- Leave her the hell alone?
Passing score is set at 100 per cent, no exceptions. And maybe then, you can get your hotel room key.
This has to be a 360-degree exercise to work, so we must leverage surveillance. Mandatory bodycams for all male tourists, with footage livestreamed directly to the local police. And their wives. Geofencing technology that automatically disables your phone’s camera function within ten feet of any woman. AI-enabled sentiment analysis can trigger alerts if you’re moving toward an unwilling participant. The possibilities are endless.
Of course, all of this requires funding. A harassment tax of Rs 50,000, collected in advance at the airport, seems reasonable. It’s only an insurance deposit against the inevitable bad behaviour of Indian men. Surge pricing could apply during peak foreign tourist hours, and Indian men’s proximity to any space where foreign women exist can be automatically calculated and billed. All of this data could be shared in an international “Do Not Admit” blacklist.
For the truly incorrigible, there’s always the chaperone programme. Maybe the only way to truly police Indian men’s behaviour is to have their mothers accompany them on every trip. Should they want to approach a stranger, they must ask mummy first.
None of these solutions is half as absurd as the actual, documented behaviour of Indian men. Decades have passed, and the penny still hasn’t dropped: Women—foreign or otherwise—are not part of the scenery you paid to access. Your right to enjoy your vacation ends at someone else’s right to exist unmolested.
There’s only one other demographic that cannot self-regulate. Toddlers. At least they have the decency to stay at home.
Karanjeet Kaur is a journalist, former editor of Arré, and a partner at TWO Design. She tweets @Kaju_Katri. Views are personal.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)