The shocking truth of the society we are living in – Varun Pruthi’s experiments
Varun Pruthi, actor, director and producer, wants to arouse attention on social injustices in India by his touching videos. He calls it ‘India’s lack of humanity’ even his social experiments not only affects Indian society but most societies all over the world.
One issue he wants to raise awareness of is the so called ‘bystander effect’. That means the phenomenon that refers to cases in which individuals do not offer any means of help to a victim when other people are present. The most people’s reaction is to just ignore the situation, moving on and not offering help to a victim. There been thousands of examples all over the world for this behaviour like women got raped and murdered, children knocked down by cars and died and so many more different kind of incidents with bystanders just looking and recognizing the situation but not willing to take any responsibility. Maybe it is kind of understanding if one’s own health or life is endangers but with one of his videos Pruthi shows that even if bystanders help without any fear to get injured themselves they are not providing aid to a victim.
His video called ‘Brave Heart Humanity Experiment’ shows the abyss of ignorance and irresponsibility in our society. Varun Pruthi pretends to be a victim dripping in blood on a crowded main street begging for help. Not one single car stops, even not an ambulance passing the way. People stop and cars passing by slowly just to stare seeing this young man dying but not one single person is going to help or is calling for help, at least.
This video is dedicated to the true story of Nirbhaya, a young female student raped in December 2012 and died just two weeks after this crime due to her internal bodily injury. She was travelling on a bus in New Delhi with a male friend and six others. All of the six men attacked the two beat her friend with an iron rod, raped Nirbhaya and afterwards threw them out of the bus assuming both are dead. If that incident were not enough the shocking story is going on. The injured victims lay on the street bleeding, without any clothes in the cold and not one single person passing by helped, not even by calling the police or giving them clothes. They tried to stop the people passing by but no one gave aid, the people who stopped just stared. If anyone just helped them, things would have been different, Nirbhaya’s companion remarked.
By the end of Pruthi’s video it is said: “Stop blaming only the rapist, police or law for the loss of rape and crime victims, we all are equally responsible for every victim’s death, who begs and cries for help on the road but all we do is stand and stare at them until they get raped or die.”
There is so much truth in his words and in general it is shocking and it affects societies all over the world but especially India which has a rate of 1% helping victims which is the lowest humanity rate in the world – just 1 out of 100 may stop to help a dying victim while 99 others are just passing by or standing to stare. And this is not just an appalling rate, it is inhuman, horrifying and it definitely has to be changed!
To reach a change towards a better world all of us should internalize Mahatma Ghandi’s quote: “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”.