In Indian traditions of art, we have the wonderful image of the Abhisarika—the woman who braves all sorts of dangers to venture out into the stormy night, through forests full of snakes, to meet her lover. Comparing the women who came out with candles and torches to march against rape in Delhi in December 2012 to Abhisarika, Shuddhabrata Sengupta wrote that Abhisarika was always seen as a source of light:
Her desire is a flame that lights up everything around her. In the folk songs of Punjab, she can be a firefly, a restless, wandering jugni. And women, together, out on the streets, out to claim each hour, each watch of the night, can light up an entire forest of a city with their flickering, blazing fire.6
We need women to be Abhisarika today: with their desires—for lovers, yes, but also for the simple pleasure of a walk on the street or a cup of a chai at a street corner, for reading and research, for adventure, for wanderlust, for andolans, for revolution—to light up everything around them. And when many women become Abhisarika, the streets and the dark nights will be much safer. Imagine a woman alone on the street at night—and we imagine danger; but imagine a street full of women going about their own business and pleasure, and to women, such a street immediately seems safe!
These Abhisarikas can change the ways in which we imagine and shape our relationships, our society, our families, our movements. Instead of worrying about proving they are a ‘good’ (obedient) rather than ‘bad’ (disobedient) daughter, sister, or partner/spouse, they can find ways of feeling comfortable and confident in their autonomous skin without the need to seek permission and validation for that autonomy. Older women can be Abhisarika too—they can respect their own autonomy and that of younger women and girls in their own households.
If you’re a mother or a parent, you may ask, ‘It is all very well to speak of “fearless freedom”, but, of course, my daughter is going to feel fear in a world where sexual violence is so rampant.’ Well, yes, but you do have it in your power as a parent to free your daughter of the fear that speaking up about sexual harassment or violence will mean that you will curtail her education. That in itself would be a huge step towards giving your daughter the gift of fearless freedom. Likewise, you could free your child (of any gender) of the fear that coming out to their parents as lesbian or gay or trans could lose them your love and acceptance.
We can, in fact we must, put women’s autonomy at the centre of our struggles against fascism, against capitalism, against Brahmanism, against patriarchy and against heteronormativity. We can unlearn the habit deeply ingrained even in women of dividing ourselves up into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ women. At home, at work, in our communities and neighbourhoods, we can find ways to enable ourselves and other women to organize, to campaign, to find support and solidarity, and to fight.
Will this book change the world? Perhaps not. But if it can even alter by a millimetre how you and I look at women’s autonomy and autonomous women—if we can begin to admire and cherish women’s bekhauf azaadi, their veera sutantiram, their fearless freedom—perhaps we can change the world!
Afterword
Dear reader,
If you have stayed with me on this journey till here, thank you.
You know that this book is an elaboration of the core slogan of the 2012–13 anti-rape movement in India. This movement demanded unapologetic ‘fearless freedom’ for women and for all those who are oppressed and fearful today.
In 2012, we pointed out that the police, politicians, judges and campus administrators in India tended to understand sexual violence as a loss of ‘honour’ rather than as a violation of consent. This allows consensual inter-caste or interfaith relationships to be characterized as ‘rape’. As a result, ‘honour’ crimes and patriarchal restrictions hide in plain sight, disguised as ‘protecting women from rape’. This creates an upside-down reality, where consensual inter-caste and interfaith relationships are branded as ‘rape’; assaults on women’s autonomy are coded as ‘safety’; and women’s autonomy is used to label them ‘dishonourable’ and thus discredit rape complaints. This book, like the 2012 protests, tries to set reality the right side up.
Just as this book was ready to go into print in December 2019, something happened that forced me, and many of us, to revisit December 2012 and take stock of where we stand today, seven winters later, in India.
One night in late November 2019, a young veterinary doctor in Hyderabad called her sister from a toll station to say she had found a puncture in one of the tyres of her parked scooter.1 She asked her sister to keep speaking to her, because she was wary of the men who had offered to help get the vehicle fixed. Soon after, her phone was found switched off, and her sister and parents, beside themselves with worry, headed out to the toll station. When they failed to find her, they went to the police, who laughed off their concerns, suggesting the woman must have eloped,2 and wasted four precious hours before launching a search for her. The next morning, her charred body was found under a bridge.3
People erupted in protest not only in Telangana but all over India, in grief and rage, much as they had in December 2012 after the gang-rape of a woman on a Delhi bus. In 2019, as in 2012, substantial sections of angry people demanded that the accused be hanged. On both occasions, people were angry with the police’s unwillingness to take complaints of violence against women seriously. On both occasions, many displayed impatience with the protracted processes of the legal system, and instead felt that the accused should simply be ‘handed over to the public’ to be lynched. In spite of the similarities, however, there are significant differences between the two incidents. If 2012 marks the moment that the feminist demand for ‘fearless freedom’ made itself heard over the din for the ‘death penalty’, 2019 is the moment that we see a concerted effort by power and its propagandists to discredit that demand.
The same Hyderabad police that had laughed off the concerns of the victim’s sister and parents when they tried to get the police to find her and save her life issued an ‘advisory’4 for women in the wake of the rape-murder. The advisory was met with anger by women. They pointed out that they did not need the police to tell them what precautions to take—they ‘take a million precautions anyway’. This victim in particular might have been alive and well had the police been patrolling the area where she was attacked, or if they had at least launched a search for her as soon as they were alerted by members of her family that she could be in trouble.
Yet again, women were being told they could avoid rape and violence if only they followed ‘advice’ given to them and restricted their access to public spaces. To women, however, it is crystal clear that what makes streets safer is not fewer but more women. Public spaces bustling with women immediately invite all women to feel less fear. A simple measure that would go a long way in implementing this is 24/7 public transport that is safe, affordable and regular as clockwork. If Priyanka in Hyderabad or Jyoti in Delhi could have been sure of getting a public bus, they would probably have been safe and well today. A public-transport infrastructure with last-mile connectivity promotes fearless freedom.
Instead of being held accountable for their failure to do what is in their power to make women more safe and welcome in public spaces, governments are finding it easier in 2019 to distract us with the mirage of the ‘death penalty’ and other ‘solutions’ that are as counterfeit as they are dangerous.
A Telangana minister, son of Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao, said he understood why people wanted to ‘hang them (the four suspects) in public immediately or shoot them’,5 but that, unfortunately, the laws as they stand today do not allow this. He asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to amend the law to ensure that those who rape women and children ‘are given capital punishment without delay’.6 In the Parliament, Rajya Sabha MP Jaya Bachchan called for the suspects in the Hyderabad case to be lynched in public.7 Days later, the Hyderabad police shot dead the four unarmed rape-murder suspects in the dead of night, in what they claimed was self-defence. All over India, the custodial killing is wi
dely believed to be an execution—and, ominously, is being welcomed and celebrated as ‘justice’. There is a growing clamour for the Modi government to execute the convicts who are on death row in the 2012 rape-murder case.
Such ‘solutions’ do not make women safer—in fact, the opposite is true. In our discussion of Saudi Arabia in Chapter 6, we saw that laws that are in tune with popular patriarchal morality might prescribe cruel punishments for rapists, but are dangerous because they also define rape as ‘dishonour’ and punish the victims. Such laws fail to recognize or address the harm of rape and are, therefore, dangerous and detrimental to women.
If you look closely at the social media handles and television channels that celebrate lynching and custodial killing as ‘justice’ for victims who have been killed, you will most likely find that the same Twitter handles and TV channels also accuse victims who are alive and seeking justice of ‘misusing’ rape, sexual harassment and domestic-violence laws. They are also likely to profile feminists and women students who demand autonomy as ‘anti-nationals’ (left-wing extremists) or proponents of ‘free sex’. Check out the Twitter handles and TV channels that attack the merest suggestion that the guilt of the Hyderabad rape suspects executed by the police was not proven. Did they also run conspiracy theories proclaiming the innocence of the men convicted in the Kathua rape and murder case?
Republic TV, which regularly attacks feminist activists, including me, as ‘anti-national’,8 ran hashtags such as #DeathForRapists on the Hyderabad rape-murder,9 and #HyderabadJustice celebrating the fake encounter.10 When you see such coverage, it is a good time to remember Meena Khalko and Thangjam Manorama, whose stories you have read in the final chapter of this book. Meena and Manorama were gang-raped and killed by the Chhattisgarh police and Assam Rifles personnel, respectively. Their murders were dressed up as ‘encounters’, and despite judicial commissions nailing the lies, their rapists and killers have so far avoided even having to face trial. A police force that can kill with impunity, no questions asked, can also gang-rape and kill women with impunity, confident that no questions will be asked. It is also important to remember what Republic TV did to Sudha Bharadwaj, the courageous lawyer who helped Meena Khalko’s parents seek justice.11 In July 2018, Republic TV used a concocted letter to profile Sudha Bharadwaj as an ‘urban Naxal’, following which she was arrested by the Pune police.12 For the past year, this sterling feminist activist and human rights lawyer has been in jail, while the police have failed to provide an iota of evidence for her involvement in any crime.13
In 2012, feminists could call out the bad faith of governments and politicians in calling for the death penalty instead of answering for their failures—and still be heard and understood. We managed to shift the discourse in the anti-rape movement away from knee-jerk cries for revenge in one particular case towards an uncompromising demand for ‘fearless freedom’ for women, for sexual and gender minorities—and for everyone else. We could stand among thousands of angry protesters in Delhi, and persuade them to give up ‘hang/lynch the rapist’ slogans in favour of ‘women want freedom’ slogans, without risking violence or abuse.14 Demanding accountability and an end to impunity, we could make ourselves heard above the ‘death penalty’ din. We could criticize the prime minister and the ruling party without being deluged by rape threats and death threats. Not so this time.
In an essay in 2013, in which she referred to the anti-rape movement in India that year, American writer Rebecca Solnit observed:
There is . . . a pattern of violence against women that’s broad and deep and horrific and incessantly overlooked. Occasionally, a case involving a celebrity or lurid details in a particular case get a lot of attention in the media, but such cases are treated as anomalies, while the abundance of incidental news items about violence against women in this country, in other countries, on every continent including Antarctica, constitute a kind of background wallpaper for the news . . . We have dots so close they’re splatters melting into a stain, but hardly anyone connects them, or names that stain. In India they did. They said that this is a civil rights issue, it’s a human rights issue, it’s everyone’s problem, it’s not isolated, and it’s never going to be acceptable again. It has to change. It’s your job to change it, and mine, and ours.15
This time, Indian feminists have been besieged by armies of trolls every day, who take their cue from ruling-party politicians and prime-time anchors to label us ‘anti-national’ for daring to assert that feminist and human rights principles are not only compatible but inseparable. The patriarchal propagandists are determined this time to make us believe that instances such as the Hyderabad rape-murder are anomalies that can be avenged by hanging or custodial killing—and that it is feminists and human rights activists who stand in the way of justice. In the face of this organized hostility, feminist movements in India keep working, patiently, to connect the dots between gender-based violence by random strangers; domestic violence and violence against women’s autonomy in households, hostels and factories; custodial violence by the armed forces in conflict areas; and various counterfeit ‘solutions’ for gender-based violence that are actually making the problem worse.
Women’s movements in India do not want a mythical ‘collective conscience’ appeased by the summary execution of men whom the police declares rapists. Instead, we want society’s conscience to change and become more respectful of consent and of women’s autonomy. Because the patriarchal propagandists are trying to drown out our voices, you, the concerned Indian, have to work harder to be able to hear what feminists are saying. You may not get to hear us at all on television. Most television propagandists and powerful politicians would have you believe they are the true anti-rape crusaders while feminists are the villains.
I hope and trust, however, that many of you who strive for real understanding rather than a temporary dopamine hit will reach out for this book, read it, share it and recommend it to your friends. This book is not the end of a journey—it is an invitation to join feminists in hoping and working towards a better India and a better world.
Notes
Introduction: If You Want to Be Safe, Why Do You Demand Freedom?
1. Tarique Anwar, ‘Girl Students Invite Trouble By Stepping Out of Hostels After 8 PM, Says BHU VC’, NewsClick, 28 September 2017.
Chapter 1: Raksha Bandhan: Loving Bondage
1. John Berger, Ways of Seeing (London: Penguin Books, 1972), p. 46.
2. ‘Women don’t get raped if parked at home like cars: Andhra Assembly speaker’, The News Minute, 10 February 2017.
3. Mohammed Iqbal, ‘Married women safer on streets: HC’, The Hindu, September 30, 2014
4. ‘Global and regional estimates of violence against women: Prevalence and health effects of intimate partner violence and non-partner sexual violence’, World Health Organization, Department of Reproductive Health and Research, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, South African Medical Research Council.
5. ‘Behind Closed Doors: 20 years of the Women’s Aid Femicide Monitoring Project, 1996-2016’, Women’s Aid, Ireland, November 2016.
6. Gorakh Pandey, ‘Band Khidkiyon Se Takrakar’, http://mrityubodh.blogspot.com/2011/01/blog-post_29.html, accessed 18 September 2019.
7. L. Subaiya and R. Vanneman, ‘The Multi-dimensionality of Development and Gender Empowerment: Women’s Decision-Making and Mobility in India’, draft, India Human Development Survey, 29 September 2016.
8. Rukmini S., ‘The many shades of rape cases in Delhi’, The Hindu, 29 July 2014.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. Rukmini S., ‘Young love often reported as rape in our “cruel society”’, The Hindu, 31 July 2014.
12. ‘“Unnatural Offences”: Obstacles to Justice in India Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity’, International Commission of Jurists, February 2017, pp. 48–49.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. Uma Chakravarti, Gendering Caste: Through a Feminist
Lens (Calcutta: Stree, 2003), pp. 35–36.
16. Ibid, pp. 152–53.
17. Prem Chowdhry, Contentious Marriages, Eloping Couples: Gender, Caste, and Patriarchy in Northern India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007).
18. Alok Dhanwa, ‘Bhagi Hui Ladkiyan’, भागी_हुई_लड़किया_/_आलोक_धन्वा, http://kavitakosh.org/kk/भागी_हुई_लड़किया_/_आलोक_धन्वा, accessed 7 September 2019, translation by Kavita Krishnan.
19. ‘When the world is upside down, it is the portent of destruction . . . The serfs will say, “Hey you!”, the Brahmins will say, “Pray, sir!” . . .’
Brahmins, barons and commoners will mix marriages and become like serfs, without austerity or truth . . . The women are corrupt and, secretly deceiving their husbands, lasciviously fornicate with slaves and cattle. No father will condone his son, no son his father, and not a wife will be obedient to her husband . . . This world will be totally upside down . . . The serfs will refuse to serve the twice-born . . .’, The Mahabharata, Volume 2: The Book of the Assembly Hall, The Book of the Forest, translated and edited by J.A.B. Buitenen, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), pp. 586–598.
20. Arti Dhand, Woman as Fire, Woman as Sage: Sexual Ideology in the Mahabharata (State University of New York Press, 2008), p. 119.
21. Ibid, p. 120.
22. Ibid, pp. 122–23.
23. The Bhagavad Gita, Twenty-Fifth-Anniversary Edition, translated by Winthrop Sargeant, edited and with a preface by Christopher Key Chapple (State University of New York Press, 2009), pp. 79–81.
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