It was an AC 2-tier compartment of a Delhi-bound Rajdhani from Assam. The passengers were just getting ready for lunch and some had even armed themselves with a fork and spoon. Fork on the left, spoon on the right. Just as it should be, the way it is taught at convents and boarding schools perched on mountain tops.

As the train’s attendants came with a fresh supply of bottled mineral water, the conversation turned to the Guwahati molestation case of July 9 this year when 15 men were caught on TV pouncing on a teenaged girl outside a bar as one of the goons whipped out his camera to record it for titillation and posterity.

“But what was the girl doing so late in the night?” asked the Air Force officer in the traveling group. From Ghaziabad but working in Guwahati, he went on, “Apparently she was drunk and was flirting with some men in the pub. Shouldn’t she be probed for loose character?” Some heads had already begun to nod in agreement when another passenger, by now red with rage, said, “Next time someone grabs your sister’s bottom, the police should first investigate whether she’s morally sound.” No one spoke to each other the rest of the journey as the sullen group waited impatiently to disembark at New Delhi.

And we’re talking here of men who head large teams at fancy offices in Gurgaon and Nariman Point – people who wear suits to office and always stir their coffee clockwise. Now imagine the conversation in the general compartment of a local train filled with those too poor for a good education or exposure, those who have grown up thinking a woman should be behind the veil, in the kitchen and forever pregnant.

Strange theories are floated to explain the depravity of Indian men – from greater access to pornography (that would have made Holland very unsafe for women) to a growing inclination towards noodles (think Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong) – but the truth is that at the root of it all lies a culture built around hierarchies, of gender, faith, colour, caste, region.

We are, quite simply, not used to people being equal – dark versus fair, Mongoloid versus Aryan, ‘chinky’ versus large-eyed are demarcations and rankings that have almost been internalized; in many cases institutionalized. Of course, female versus male continues to be the greatest division of all – and one that cuts across all other borders of the mind.

We at The Times of India in our edition today laid out a 6-point action plan to make India safer for women – harsher punishment, sensitization of the police force, setting up of fast-track courts, better patrolling, cleverer use of technology like GPS and CCTVs and a data base of public transport personnel – but what all these measures will not address is the mindset. A mindset that since the time of that deviant philosopher called Manu has refused to see “the weaker sex” as anything but property and the receptacle of male sperms.

Though many of my north Indian friends react in agonized protest when I say this, but in the end it is also a cultural and civilisational thing. In those societies that do — or have learnt to — respect women, and consider them as equal, incidence of rape, sexual harassment, molestation is very low, if not absent altogether. In Darjeeling, for instance, police stations across the district will tell you that in the last decade they have come across only a couple of cases. That, too, in one an outsider was involved. A cop I spoke to for this article remembered just a single case of “eve teasing” – in 1981.

The Khasis of Meghalaya also score very high on gender parity. So do the Nagas, Mizos, Sikkimese and generally the people of the North-East. Another indication of this equality is the absence of dowry in these communities. And this is because there really is no price on the head – or body – of a woman. This translates itself in many heartwarming ways (though it doesn’t mean much, Aamir Khan mentioned these facts about the North-East in one of his Satyameva Jayate episodes). You will, for instance, never see a woman in any of the Darjeeling buses standing for want of space while men are sitting down. It is quite remarkable actually, now that I have lived, worked and traveled outside the North-East for over a decade. The word, I guess, is ‘un-relatable’.

If what happens to women on the roads of Delhi and Mumbai – other cities, too – is to stop, the change will have to come first at home, from the family. Boys, as they grow up, will have to be taught that their sisters are not there to get the leftovers – the one piece of chocolate that couldn’t be eaten, the tricycle with a broken wheel that couldn’t be driven, the school with expensive fees that couldn’t be afforded. I met a bright 12-year-old girl recently – she sometimes tags along with the woman in my colony who presses clothes – who told me she had to discontinue her education because he father could only afford to send two children to class. So her bhaiyyas got a chance to go ahead in life while she was left to accompany her mother on small errands that usually get rewarded with a 10-rupee note.

A lot of how India will be in the future, how one half of the population will treat the other half, will depend on the lessons from parents and teachers. GPS and CCTVs, after all, cannot track what goes inside homes and the minds of men; they can only make our streets a bit safer. The violence to women within families is many times deadlier. And often it is this violence, the mentality and justification of it, that spirals away and gets carried out in cinema halls, moving auto-rickshaws and crowded malls. It is this that makes well-dressed men in sharp suits and shiny shoes traveling in planes and expensive trains say a woman is responsible for everything bad that happens to her.