Once again a case of a western woman being gang-raped (although in this case not killed) in a poorer country is making the rounds in social media, youtube and so on. In this case it happened in India. This got me thinking about something I have noticed.
Having watched numerous travel videos, where a youtuber travels (usually alone) to different parts of the world, I have noticed a particular... peculiarity of the culture in India (or, at least in some parts of it; after all, it's a huge country with a very wide variety of local cultures.) A rather unsavory peculiarity. I have seen this in several such travel videos, and in a couple of them the youtuber has directly commented on it.
And that is that if a clearly westerner (ie. white) person arrives at some city in India, especially if alone, it appears to be extremely common for some local people, especially young adult men, to start following him or her.
Oftentimes someone might start talking to him, perhaps trying to sell him something (like a taxi ride), or trying to get him to go somewhere (like a bar or something), or just to have an "amicable" conversation. Others will just follow. A lone traveler in an Indian city (and, perhaps, even smaller towns) will usually find himself being followed by half a dozen men.
While I don't believe this to be completely unique to India, and similar behavior may happen in some other countries, in my experience it doesn't appear to be extraordinarily common either. Staring (and even trying to sell something) is quite common in many parts of the world, but not outright following. And I'm not here talking about some street vendor persistently trying to sell something to a foreigner and walking with him for some distance while constantly pestering him (which is very common in many countries). I'm talking about random men, like a half a dozen of them, just following from some distance. Not to sell him something or anything like that, just following.
For some reason it appears this kind of "let's follow the foreigner (especially if clearly a white westerner)" culture has formed in many places in India.
What is this all about?
I suspect that it's primarily a sort of curiosity with a degree of opportunism, ie. following the person to see where he's going, what he's going to do, and perhaps if something happens, so that they could maybe opportunistically take some advantage of the situation. Who knows, maybe he'll start distributing money to the poor or something, so they can butt in and get their share. Or, in some cases, even something more nefarious than that, if the opportunity presents itself. After all, you never know with these rich and stupid American tourists, what they will do. Maybe they'll start throwing money around, or start buying them drinks at the local bar. Or fall dead, so they can take his wallet.
It is universally quite agreed, regardless of country and culture, that following someone without asking is, at a very minimum, rude. It can be intimidating and unwelcoming. It's something that's quite rare in the world, because most people understand it's not a proper thing to do. You don't just start following someone, no matter how "curious" you are about that different-looking foreigner.
But, apparently, in India many people don't really care. If they can gain something from it, they'll just do it.
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