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The rape and murder of Scarlett Keeling in Goa highlights the threats tourists face in the Third World. But her mother's decision to leave her alone while travelling elsewhere displayed the selfishness, ignorance and dangerous sense of superiority that is typical of the hippy dropouts I've met while travelling.
No sane Indian would leave their child with strangers in an environment saturated with drugs and sex, but hippies think their comparative wealth and white skins will protect them from everything. Scarlett's death could have been avoided if her parents hadn't regarded Goa as a crèche peopled with servile darkies who pose no threat.
Goa's indigenous culture is conservative and deeply Catholic. At six in the morning its churches are crammed with people taking Mass. But many Westerners think India's poverty and tolerance of outsiders frees them to behave in a way that would be tasteless in London, let alone the developing world, flaunting their drug use and sexuality.
Living on a pittance in the cheapest accommodation, haggling over every penny, they contribute little to the local population, spending their money on getting high instead. Goa was once almost crime-free but has been corrupted by gangs who have grown rich meeting the tourists' demands for drugs. The alleged attempt by the police to cover up Scarlett's murder signifies this dark criminal underside of the hippy trail.
Regarding the grins of the locals as an expression of love rather than professional obligation, Westerners don't recognise how offensive they are.
One young woman I met strutted around in hot pants to entice Western men, but when I upbraided her she claimed she did it to show Indian women they can wear what they want - as if looking like a hooker was a mark of emancipation.
Such travellers wilfully ignore the dangers around them. Visiting Egypt in 2002, I was amazed that despite Egyptian Islamists having massacred 60 tourists in Luxor five years previously, the hippy Red Sea resort of Dahab was still full of people out to get loaded and laid.
Western hedonists treat the Third World as a post-colonial playground. Their money is vital to destitute locals so they are at once tolerated and resented. Unless they learn to respect the countries that they are in, others will inevitably suffer the same miserable fate as Scarlett Keeling.
Reader views (3)
Right on! That poor girl is dead, but her mother has some fault, and she calls herself naive, she is stupid if not negligent. A family of 10 on welfare can afford a 6-month trip, must be a time of feeling quite pleased with themselves for getting the tax payer to pay for that, until tragedy stroke.
- Sam J, London, 25/03/2008 02:23
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I am floored by your columns totally floored. How can you be so bang on your words? I feel you've been reading my mind whenever I go through any of your columns. You are so amazingly true every thought of mine is your word. You have been there, seen everything and now you floor everybody like me by your magical thoughts in black and blue. You are an out of this world writer. I am totally totally impressed by your columns. You got an ardent fan in me. Wish I could meet you ever ever in person?!
- Chintuboy, London, UK, 19/03/2008 23:35
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You are 100% right in what you have written and its high time the Indian government put a restriction on what is worn there. Thongs and hot pants should definitely be outlawed...not because I am a prude but because Indian men have not been exposed to all this nudity and it is bound to have a repercussions on the young and innocent there. As it is the Indian teenager tries to ape Western society and because of this India is losing its identity and the Indian girls their modesty.
- Mrs Yolanda Kalvani., London England., 16/03/2008 13:24
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