What difference it would make if the girls are poor and from ‘lower’ caste(s)?. Does one has to always think in terms of caste, dalit vs non-dalit in all cases and in all contexts.Is domestic violence against dalit women no issue to be thought about?.V.Geetha brings in essentialism by back door .

Political correctness is just a yard away from comfort – by safely choosing to say nothing that gives us away and taking refuge in antiseptic words that wind us in like cool shrouds, we hope to not risk being hurt by the unknown, by what we ought to perhaps explore, but refrain from doing so. I find this especially relevant when it comes to anti-caste ideologies. It is actually possible to feel for dalit causes without implicating oneself in the caste system. It is as if we seek our own political salvation by this comfortable ghettoisation of issues to do with injustice against dalits – as long as dalits remain their own problem, we’re safe. The caste Hindu conscience can excuse itself that it has done its bit. This is something one routinely encounters in civil society groups that have been ‘schooled’ into accepting the signficance of untouchability as a political issue, but which are not required to integrate this understanding into everything they do – it is like mandatory gender training. A requirement you fulfill. We need not be troubled by the phenomenon of what the African-American philosopher Cornel West referred to as ontological wounding – he was referring to racism, but the phrase works for us as well, and describes fairly accurately what we routinely do in our caste worlds, so easily, effortlessly… and then seek absolution in high falutin’ rights rhetoric.
…I was intrigued by the Jagori advertisement. I haven’t seen it, but I was thinking of something related and yet different. If a drunken working class, lower caste man was to harrass middle class, upper caste girls on a busy crowded road, the politics of the gaze and violence would have the girls rush to file a FIR at the nearest police station – how does one take note of their violation, such as it is, while not forgetting his class/caste status? How do make his status matter, count, before we make that decison to go to the police with this complaint? This is a question that often stares our young spunky urban feminists in the face… Daring to look around also involves this I guess, daring to address the violator on terms, other than that of his admittedly unpleasant encounter with us…

The eye you see is an eye
not because you see it;
it’s an eye because it sees you.

Antonio Machado, Spanish poet, (July 26, 1875 – February 22, 1939)

I was with you in every word you said. The politics of comfort and the vilification of discomfort are probably the most threatening things to the notion of an individual.
and what you say of love and violence is what we all…me, others…feel, but are scared to acknowledge, but is the (an) answer to die unhappy for the sake of living and experiencing things honestly? for the notions of true desire and its unremitting violence are best unleashed in poetry, graffiti and acts of creative distortion, since art is eternal and human relationships, short-lived. its an innocent question, but one that has been bothering me of late.
i want you to read a story, a lived experience, i wrote on the gaze, of an enounter in a train, and want to know what you make of it. i’ll email it to you, and if you have the time, respond.