Two years after the anti-rape movement that followed December 16th 2012 in India, the hardest and most urgent challenge remains to change the conversation from that of ‘safety from rape’ to that of women’s autonomy.

Why Autonomy Is a Priority

In her article ‘Rape, Rhetoric and Reality’, (The Hindu, December 19, 2014), Rukmini S points out that while sexual violence is indeed a serious concern, the problem of truly epidemic proportions in India is not rape, but the “restriction on women’s autonomy, across caste, class and religious groups.”

This means that instead of finding ways to lock women away more ‘safety’, our priority must be to expand women’s autonomy and mobility. The top finding of a ‘safety audit’ conducted by women’s organizations in Delhi on December 16th this year is that “the single biggest factor that would make women feel safer is the presence of other women in public spaces.” In other words, it is women’s freedom to wander public spaces, rather than the presence of CCTV cameras, that actually makes those spaces safer for all women. It is this understanding that underpins the ongoing ‘Why Loiter’ campaign that has women sharing experiences of ‘loitering’ for the sheer pleasure of being in public spaces, and demanding that the State provide infrastructure that enables and encourages such a presence of women in public space.

Rukmini S has also pointed out that no less than 40% of “what is classified as rape is actually parental criminalisation of consensual sexual relationships, often when it comes to inter-caste and inter-religious couples.”Each of the women in these ‘rape’ cases, then, are victims not of rape, but of coercion and violence by their own parents and families, in their own homes. But this violence remains an open secret, surrounded by a complicit silence.

The movementthat followed December 16th 2012 broke that secretive silence with the full-throated cry for ‘azaadi’ – freedom - not only from the fear of rape, but from the khaps and the parental and social restrictions on the freedom to dress, love and live as they choose.

Violence Against Women’s Autonomy

In the two years since then, it seems that there is a powerful political offensive seeking to drown out that cry for freedom. ‘Women’s safety’ becomes the pretext to justify political riots in Muzaffarnagar and racist mob violence against African women and men in Delhi. Such rhetoric allows the perpetrators of actual violence against women – the khaps in Muzaffarnagar that commit ‘honour’ crimes and those who raped Muslim women, or the mobs in Delhi that victimize alleged sex workers and transgenders – to pose as ‘saviours’ of mothers, daughters, sisters and morality.

But the ‘love jehad’ campaign does violence, not only to peaceful coexistence of communities, but also to women’s own autonomy and choice. Sample the boast of a ‘Hindu Samhati’ activist Tapan Ghosh (@hstapanghosh), made openly on Twitter: “Today we rescued 1 victim of Love Jihad of Baruipur of South 24 Pgs. Now challenge before me is 2 change her mind. It takes a lot of energy.” An adult woman makes up her own mind about whom she would like to love and marry. But political men with a political agenda, make it their job to coerce her to ‘change her mind’! This is an open declaration – by foot soldiers of outfits that work for India’s ruling party - of criminal abduction, forceful restraint, and a violation of the woman’s fundamental right to privacy and autonomy.

From the new Haryana Chief Minister, to the Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS student outfit ABVP, to police in various states, there has been an exponential rise in organized moral policing, attacking the right of women to dress in jeans, have mobile phones, or marry according to choice. Prominent leaders of most parties have indulged in victim blaming of rape victims.

Moral Policing And Women Workers

The khaps and moral policing Hindutva outfits are exposed and ridiculed by the media, which usually assumes that these are remnants of ‘backwardness’ and a ‘medieval mindset’. What is less acknowledged is the use of the same moral policing to control women workers in modern, globalized industry. The Prime Minister is now exhorting MNCs to come and ‘Make in India.’ Under what conditions do women currently ‘make’ for MNCs in India? ‘Flawed Fabrics’, a recent report on women workers in Tamilnadu’s textile industry that produces for a variety of top American and European brands, reveals the extremely exploitative conditions there. Women workers are admonished and penalized for going to the toilet, for speaking to male co-workers, and are denied the right to form unions. They live in hostels they describe as ‘semi-prisons’, where they are denied mobile phones andallowed phone calls to parents only in presence of wardens. These conditions, predictably, are defended by managements in terms of ‘safety and security’ concerns of the workers’ parents, and ‘our Tamilnadu culture.’

Therefore, it is not just Indian families or khaps that are implicated in moral policing – the multinationals and global capital are equally implicated. And working class women as much as college girls, feel the need to fight for the right to have mobile phones, befriend male and female co-workers, ‘loiter’ freely outside tightly-controlled hostel premises, and join organizations and unions.

Why are our ruling parties, Governments and mainstream media silent on such work conditions for women? If these conditions are not rectified, ‘Make in India’ can only mean that India is offering cheap labour, cheap health and lives, and unfreedom of women and oppressed castes, as the USP to attract global capital.

The Chhattisgarh sterilization massacre underlined how women are denied reproductive autonomy, not just inside their homes but by the State and the international funding agencies that pursue ‘population control’ rather than women’s control over their bodies and reproductive decisions.

Freedom From Repression

Around December 16th this year, one heard many in the media demanding why the Supreme Court has not yet disposed of the appeals of the convicts of the 2012 gangrape who are sentenced to death.The same week, the Supreme Court directed Rs 10 lakh compensation to be paid to the mother of Thangjam Manorama, raped and murdered by Indian Army personnel in 2004. An enquiry report revealed the ‘brutal and merciless torture’ to which Manorama had been subjected – was this any less brutal and merciless than the torture suffered by ‘Nirbhaya’? Hardly any in the media were heard asking why Manorama’s rapists and murderers are yet to be brought to trial! Manorama’s torment is a brutal reminder of the AFSPA that emboldens and shields the perpetrators of such torture, and is a tool to suppress and deny the autonomy of the people of North East and Kashmir.

What women need and demand above all in India today is ‘azaadi’ – freedom – from the regime of surveillance and control to which they are subjected by families, communities, schools and colleges, factories as well as security forces in conflict areas. Are the political parties, Governments, and global funding agencies listening?

Box matter

Rape Culture and Victim-Blaming

On December 16th 2012, a woman was raped in a bus that was plying illegally. In December 2014, again, a woman in Delhi was raped in a taxi – one she had got through the American company Uber. Uber and various other companies evade Motor Vehicles laws of the land by calling themselves ‘software companies’ rather than taxi services. Why did the Governments – including the Modi Government – allow such companies to operate without any regulations in Delhi? Uber had received a complaint from another woman passenger about the same driver ten days before the rape – but took no action to verify the driver’s credentials. Had they done so they would have found that the man had been charged with rape by another passenger earlier. In that case, the man was acquitted – it seems because the police did not take the complaint made by a bar dancer seriously.

After the rape in the Uber taxi, there has been a loud chorus of victim-blaming. A Congress MP Ranjeet Ranjan asked on TV, “Why did the woman have a drink? Why did she fall asleep in the cab?”

Such remarks make excuses for rape. A woman has as much right as a man to enjoy a drink, to feel tired, to travel at night. To ask ‘Why did she fall asleep’ suggests that women are permanently on military duty guarding the borders of their body, and have no right to fall asleep on this job!

Firmly rejecting such victim-blaming, women all over the country have asserted their right to take risks, to travel alone, to enjoy themselves, to loiter. They have demanded that the Government be accountable to provide safe, accessible, affordable public transport, public toilets, street lights and so on to make it possible for women to be out safely.