20

Aug

Reclaiming What Already Belongs To Women

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Amitabh Srivastava

A person wearing a blue hat and glasses Description automatically generated

New Delhi | Tuesday | 20 August 2024

While frankly, I don't understand what the country-wide protests against the rape and murder of a doctor in Kolkata mean when the culprit has already been arrested. However, the global attention this has attracted proves that India is not alone in perpetuating atrocities against what some writers call 'half the world'.

There are edits and opinion pieces in leading newspapers lauding the movement and urging that

India’s ‘Reclaim the Night’ Protests Should Go Global to quote just one headline.

The logic behind this movement is that women are as much a part of the universe as men and have every right to go out after evening time for jobs or to places of their personal choice.

Reading about this I came to know that this movement of 'Reclaim the Night' had first surfaced in London in 1977 where a criminal known as Yorkshire Ripper had started mutilating the bodies of women after killing them.

 

 

Article at a Glance
 
The recent protests in India against the rape and murder of a doctor in Kolkata have sparked a global conversation about women's safety and the need to "reclaim the night".
The movement, which originated in London in 1977, argues that women should not be restricted from going out at night due to fear of violence, but rather, men should be held accountable for their actions.
The author reflects on their own experiences post-Nirbhaya, where they encountered men who blamed women's clothing for the violence they faced. The article highlights that violence against women is a global issue, with over 80% of American women experiencing sexual harassment and a third of women worldwide facing intimate partner violence.
The author concludes that women should not be afraid of the night, and that their entire lives, not just daylight hours, belong to them.

 

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And instead of catching the psychopath, the police started telling the women to stay indoors after sunset. The women were outraged and questioned this logic. It was the men who were the culprits and their movement should be restricted not the women, they argued and came out in the streets with placards and slogans  saying “No curfew on women — curfew on men.” Since then, movements to “reclaim” or “take back" the night have been occurring again again.

Writers and activists have been calling to turn India’s recent movement into a global phenomenon because Delhi is NOT the rape capital of the world the title it got in the wake of the brutal rape and violence against Jyoti Singh made popular as Nirbhaya by some TV channels in December 2012. There is also a Nirbhaya Fund instituted in her memory by then Finance Minister P Chidambaram.

I quote an article from the New York Times: According to a 2018 study, more than 80 per cent of American women have experienced sexual harassment; worldwide, about a third of women have been subjected to intimate partner violence, sexual violence by a non-partner or both at least once. Much of that violence happens after dark."

I am reminded of my days post Nirbhaya when I was working with Sahara Time weekly.

While the whole country was praying for her to survive and candle-lights marches were being organised demanding death for the culprits there were Indian men whose thoughts were no different from that of Ram Singh the driver of the DTC bus who along with four others attacked and brutalised Nirbhaya for travelling with a boyfriend at 9 pm.

One of them happened to be a journalist working with us.

One day he was cheerily telling us," Amitabh ji. These girls who are protesting about violence wear provocative dresses. I was standing on my balcony yesterday at 10.30 and I saw girls wearing revealing dresses coming to the Saket Mall with their parents".

I said, "What girls wear when they are out with their parents is not your concern. But what were you doing at 10.30 watching girls coming to the Mall?"

He had no answer.

Then there was an editorial meeting where we discussed stories for the upcoming issue. I said the same thing that women in England said in 1977. Do you think women are committing crimes that you should tell them to remain indoors after dark? Lock up all the men for one day and there would be no crime."

I remember that much Nirbhaya there were huge protests when a Delhi Journalist Soumya Vishwanathan was shot dead on Nelson Mandela Marg while home from work. Then Chief Minister Shieka Dixit appealed to working women not to venture out at night. But people argued that this was like giving a free hand to criminals who could not be controlled and the onus of saving their life and body was on women. The government was abdicating its responsibility.

And I would conclude again with a line from the thought-provoking article from NYT, "One-half of the world’s population shouldn’t be afraid of one-half of each day — which, by some simple math, adds up to one-half of each life. India’s protests, then, are a chance for women around the world to say that their entire lives, not just the daylight hours, belong to them. Nighttime is a fact of life. Violence against women shouldn’t be."

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