Originally Posted by
stickyfingers85
I would say that treatment off women is better in the South than the North, just from my experience.
In the north we had the following issues (western guy with chinese girlfriend)
> Not realising the Metro had separate coaches for women, she was touched in very bad places. In the end she had to stand in the corner with me blocking access to her. It wasn't a nice situation to be in
> She was stared at all the time, anywhere we went.
> Constantly being asked to have her picture taken. We got so fed up of it we started asking for a 100 rupee fee, which soon got rid of them
> At one point we were in a very large mall. I went to the toilet, she waited outside for me, and when i came out I found a large group of young guys standing around her pointing, laughing, and trying to get each other to touch her.
The above was the same in Delhi, Varanasi, Jaipur and Agra. As you can imagine she isn't keen to return to the North any time soon.
We didn't have the same problem in Tamil Nadu or Goa
South India has been frequently considered safer and more polite than North India, for men and women. However, South India -- especially around Goa -- has been closing that gap. Growing drug and alcohol use -- especially in Goa but also elsewhere -- hasn't helped.
A lot of Indians seem to want to touch or have a picture taken with a foreigner, and the more "exotic looking", the greater the interest. And they aren't all shy about it. That may explain some of what you observed. It may not have all been sexual harassment of her.
I am not sure if you are aware of this or not, but a disproportionate number of women in the prostitution trade in India are from NE India (which includes the states of India that border what is today China). And there has been a growing amount of foreigners locally hiring prostitutes (including Indian ethnic Chinese prostitutes, NE Indian prostitutes and Chinese migrant prostitutes) than used to be the case even in the early 1990s. The prejudice related to that is a problem in and of itself -- in other words, South Asia has a racism problem too.