VIDEO: TEDx talk about why Indians are shitting on our beaches

Agent 3 has a friend who has a rather posh cottage property on the shore of Lake Erie, not far from the US-Canada border. The friend has been complaining to the local council for years now about visitors from south Asia shitting on the beach. 

In spite of being shown not just photos but videos of brown people depositing their calling cards in the golden sand, council refuses to act, for fear of being called racist. Some liberal-minded folk (read: idiots) have even played the DEI card, arguing that open defecation is part of the culture of the shitters, and their culture must be respected. After all, "diversity is our strength", right?

In this TEDx Talk, given in 2015, Sangita Vyas, a grarduate of the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton, shares the little understood reality of open defecation in India. Most of the open defecation in the world happens in India, yet social scientists and the government claim not to understand why.

Ms Vyas did a country-wide survey and came up with some answers to the eternal question of "WHY?" Spoiler alert: It's because of their culture and their heathen religion. Can you say "caste", boys and girls? I knew you could. But good on Ms Vyas for saying the quiet part out loud.

In her talk, given just over 10 years ago., Ms Vyas expresses the hope that as the modern generation becomes better-educated (and richer!) things will change. They have not. 

And the millions of Indians who come to Canada and the USA on the invitation of our liberal governments bring their millennia-old cultural and religious practices with them. As they say themselves, "You can take the Indian out of India, but you can't take Indis out of the Indian." 

Thanks to an anonymous member of the BCF community for showing us this video.

Raped, hanged girls committed suicide, Indian police claim

Last May, in "Shitting in fields leads to gang rape, hanging of Indian girls", Walt told you the sad story of two teenage Indian girls found hanging from a mango tree in May, apparently following gang rapes by persons unknown. Like millions of Indians who have no toilet of any kind in or near their homes, the girls had gone to a nearby field to relieve themselves, when they were fallen on and brutally attacked.

Such events are common enough in south Asia. What was unusual about this story was that the girls' families raised enough of a fuss to catch the attention and outrage of the international media. That led to an investigation by India's Central Bureau of Investigation, which has just released its findings.

What did Inspector Singh and his colleagues conclude? Wait for it... The girls, they announced yesterday, were not gang-raped and murdered, but, errr, took their own lives.

But why would they do that? On this point, the investigators were less than clear. Perhaps, it was suggested, they were chagrined at being dalits -- members of the lowest of the Hindu castes, formerly called "untouchables". Or perhaps, as the CBI chief stated, the girls took their own lives "because of family pressure" over their friendship with a villager.

Ah yes, "family pressure". Or we could say "family honour", as in "honour killing". Perhaps it was the girls' own relatives who killed them, "pour encourager les autres", as the French say. [How do the Indians say it? Ed.] The identities of the men standing around in the grainy photo above are unknown, but Walt thinks they are more likely to be relatives than the actual perps.

Sohan Lal, the father of one of the girls, told the BBC, "CBI has tried to fudge the case and save the accused from the very beginning. I am very angry with their decision. The team did not show any promptness while investigating the case."

Further details of the CBI investigation, and how they arrived at their verdict of suicide, were expected to be released today. In just six months, there have been three different theories about how the teenagers died and each theory has raised more questions than it has answered. Indians are now beginning to wonder whether they will ever know the truth of what occurred on the night the two girls died so horribly. All that can be said is, "This is India. Anything could have happened."

Shitting in fields leads to gang rape, hanging of Indian girls

This week's posts about the "honour killing" of a 25-year-old Pakistani woman -- by her father and 20 other family members -- may have left the impression that abuse of women is endemic in Muslim (and Sikh) communities. And so it is. But you find the same barbarism in all over south Asia.

In mainly Hindu India, rape is an everyday occurrence, and is rarely reported, even more rarely punished. Not infrequent gang rapes do make the news, but the perps often get off scot-free, for reasons of culture and religion, notably the caste system with which Hinduism has burdened billions of Indians for thousands of years.

A particularly egregious case occurred this week in the village of Katra, in the impoverished northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Two teenage cousins -- members of the lowest harijan (untouchable) caste -- went to a field to relieve themselves, since there was no toilet in their home. ("Open defecation", as Indians call it, is still the norm for almost half of India's billion people.) They were caught with their pants down, literally, by a gang of men who gang-raped them, killed them, and then hanged them from a mango tree. Here's a picture.

The "strange fruit" was still hanging from the tree when the picture was taken because angry villagers refused to allow the bodies to be cut down, as a protest over the inaction of the police, who they said had done nothing to search for the girls when they were reported missing Tuesday evening. Quite understandable in light of what happened next.

The villagers allowed authorities to take down the corpses after the first arrests were made on Wednesday. Police arrested two men from the village and... wait for it... two police officers! Three more suspects are still being sought, or so the police say.

Meanwhile -- yes, there's more! -- police in the nearby town of Etawah have arrested three men for brutally attacking the mother of a rape victim after she refused to withdraw her complaint. The attack followed the May 11th rape of the victim's teenage daughter. A local man was arrested after the mother filed a complaint with authorities, but since the victims were of the lowest caste, the culprit's community felt that they were wrong to have complained.

So five men -- including the father, a brother and a cousin of the accused rapist -- followed the victim's mother away from her house and beat her relentlessly, demanding she drop the accusation. Police arrested three men on Thursday and are looking for two others... so they say. The mother is in critical condition in a local hospital, with numerous broken bones and internal injuries. The whereabouts of the raped girl is unknown, but at least she wasn't left hanging from a tree.

Footnote (31/5/14): If you doubt Walt's figure that nearly half of India's people practise "open defecation", and if you doubt that this poses dangers to women and girls, read "Why India's sanitation crisis kills women" on the BBC News India page. How fortunate for India that it freed itself from the evils of British rule two-thirds of a century ago and no longer has to tolerate such evils as proper toilets and sewers.

10 reasons behind sexual violence in India

In the spirit of peace on earth, goodwill to men... errr, men and women... errr, people [OK. Ed.] Walt has tried to lay off the Indians and Muslims during this holiday season. However, the rape of a 23-year-old medical student on a bus in New Delhi cannot pass unnoticed.

Sadly, rape is all too common in South Asia, not least because women are regarded in Hindu and Muslim societies as second-class citizens in every sense of the word. In India, "Eve-teasing" has existed for centuries. In the civilized world this "sport" would be called what it is -- sexual harassment.

The only thing surprising about this particular case is the severity of the attack. The victim has now died, turning the matter into a murder case. The Indian government promises that the trial of the 6 (yes, six) accused will be fast-tracked. In India that means they might appear before a judge before they die of old age. Or not. It's India, so no-one can say.

Olga Khazan and Rama Lakshmi of the Washington Post put together a list of ten reasons why India has a sexual violence problem. Walt has reversed their numbering, in the Letterman style, to put the most important reason at the end. Here's the list.

10. Few female police

9. Not enough police in general

8. Blaming provocative clothing

7. Acceptance of domestic violence

6. A lack of public safety

5. Stigmatizing the victim

4. Encouraging rape victims to compromise

3. A sluggish court system

2. Few convictions

1. Low status of women

Walt's experience of India is admittedly limited. But I have been there and have reason to believe the list is accurate. I knew about "Eve-teasing", for example, long before this week and know someone who was victimized in this way back in the 1980s.

And I heard a women's rights advocate interviewed on the CBC this week. She said a woman who goes to an Indian police station to report being raped is not unlikely to be assaulted again (especially if she is of a lower caste) by the police men.

We have a new agent -- hereinafter known as Agent 93 -- who contends that this problem is, if not unique, at least worse amongst "Indians in India" than amongst Indians in America, Britain or Canada. Maybe so, but even in the ABC countries at least half of the ten reasons given still obtain. The fight for justice for women is a long way from being won.

Further reading: Click here to read the post by Olga Khazan and Rama Lakshmi, with full explanations of all ten points.

Elderly Sikhs face extradition to India for arranging killing of bride

Honour killings are not exclusive to Muslims or Afghans. Indians and Pakistanis of the Hindu and Sikh persuasions are known to kill brides who turn out to be bad choices, for instance by failing to provide sufficiently large dowries. "Kitchen accidents" resulting in fiery deaths are not unknown even in the west.

This is Sheila Allan's drawing, published in the Globe and Mail, of Malkit Singh Sidhu and Surjit Badesha. (All Sikhs are Singhs... but not all Singhs are Sikhs.) They are in the dock of the British Columbia Supreme Court, facing extradition to India for allegedly having ordered the brutal slaying of Ms. Sidhu’s daughter, Jassi, after the young woman married a man of whom her wealthy family didn’t approve.

Jassi Sidhu was from the Vancouver BC suburb of Maple Ridge and worked as a beautician. The 25-year-old met her eventual husband on a trip to India. Sikhs are not included in Hinduism's elaborate caste system, but they certainly believe in class. Jassi's family is said to have opposed the marriage because the groom was only a humble rickshaw driver.

In June 2000, Jassi was found with her throat slashed, in an irrigation ditch in the Indian state of Punjab, the Sikh heartland. Her husband was seriously injured in the attack.

The Mounties say Indian authorities have uncovered evidence Ms. Sidhu’s family was involved in her killing from Canada. A number of family members have been arrested and prosecuted in India.

RCMP and other Canadian government officials have travelled to India on a number of occasions to work on the case and the extradition process, and have just now -- more than 11 years later -- issued arrest warrants. Ah yes, the Mounties always get their man. [Errr, "person". Be politically correct, please! Ed.] They just don't say how long it's going to take.