Stalking Isn't Romantic: A Simple Concept That Indian Men Can't Comprehend

Bollywood's obsession with glorifying problematic behaviour by men is a never-ending story. Stalking and even harassing women is projected in movies as a way for the hero to induce love in his romantic interest's heart, although she might have said “No” to him a million times. What men think to be romantic behaviour as per what they learn from movies is enough to scare a girl to death in reality. Just imagine you are a girl walking your way back home and a boy keeps chasing you, though you clearly mentioned earlier that you are not interested in him, does that sound romantic? Of course not, but scary? Yes! So when will men learn that stalking is not romantic?

Bollywood has brainwashed men into thinking stalking is romantic

According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) cases of stalking in India have risen by 97 percent since 2014. In the year 2021, a total of 9,285 cases of stalking were reported in India with approximately one case being reported every hour. One of the biggest reasons for this is how filmmakers portray crime such as stalking as a cool and normal behaviour which influences young minds to mimic it in real life and thus the crime rate increases. Famous movies such as Toilet: Ek Prem Katha, Badrinath ki Dulhaniya, and Raanjhanaa promote stalking by portraying it as the lead character’s personality trait, but the biggest irony remains is how they show the female character eventually having a change of heart, thus validating her stalker's behaviour.

Suggested Reading: Stalking In DMs: Here's How To Identify Creeps In Your Dating Pool

Stalking is nothing less than a horrendous crime

Men who stalk women never think about the impact it can cause on their mental health and leave them with a trauma that can last for days or weeks or even months. Stalking can be really horrifying for the girls who experience it because not only do they feel helpless at that situation but they also feel scared about what can happen next. Men's tendency to assume it as romantic is nothing less than foolishness because forcing a woman to fall in love can never be okay. Stalking is a criminal offence according to section 354 D of the Indian Penal Code but, yet Bollywood never understands its seriousness thus promoting this frightful crime, through incorrect representation in movies.

Indian men must understand how stalking isn't romantic

How a behaviour that can cause trauma to someone be romantic? Isn't it pretty obvious that it can't be? Yet Indian filmmakers and men never understand such a simple thing and not only they but the whole Indian society, they blame women for being stalked instead of holding men accountable for stalking them. Just as it is not possible to catching bullet with your hands, as shown in many Southern masala films, cultivating love in someone's heart through stalking, is equally impossible. Indian filmmakers need to understand how they are causing a bad impact on people's minds by portraying them in that way. Not only filmmakers but men in general need to realise how stalking is not the way to a woman's heart and neither it is romantic as it is presented in the movies. The difference between movies and reality must be understood.

This article has been published under SheThePeople’s Young Writers Training Program. Views expressed are the author’s own.