India 'Slutwalk' sex harassment protest held in Delhi
Most of the marchers in Delhi were soberly dressed
A rally has taken place in India's capital inspired by the "Slutwalk" protests held in a number of countries.
The protest is to challenge the notion that the way a woman looks can excuse sexual abuse or taunting - "Eve teasing" as it is known in India.
Hundreds took part in Delhi, though there was little of the skimpy dressing that has marked protests elsewhere.
The protests originated in Canada after a policeman said women could avoid rape by not dressing like "sluts".
'It's our lives'The BBC's Mark Dummett in Delhi says the organisers are trying to challenge the mindset that the victims of sexual violence are to blame for the crimes committed against them.
He says Delhi can be a very difficult city for women, with sexual harassment commonplace, and rapes and abduction all too frequent.
And according to a recent survey, India remains one of the most dangerous countries in the world for women.
One protester told our correspondent: "Every girl has the right to wear whatever she wants, to do whatever she wants to do with her body. It's our lives, our decisions, unless it's harming you, you have no right to say anything."
Another protesters said: "There are a lot of problems for women in Delhi because a lot of women do face sexual harassment and just a couple of weeks ago the chief of police of Delhi said that if a women was out after 0200 she was responsible for what happens to her, and I don't think that's the right attitude."
Most of the marchers in Delhi were soberly dressed in jeans and T-shirts or traditional shalwar kameez.
India recorded almost 22,000 rape cases in 2008, 18% up on 2004, the National Crime Records Bureau says.
Delhi Slutwalk today
The Slutwalk movement, where women have hit the streets worldwide with provocative clothes and slogans against sexual harassment, comes to Delhi on Sunday. The route is shorter than originally planned and the attendance tentative, but supporte
r and organizers of the Slutwalk Arthaat Besharmi Morcha campaign are confident of making a strong statement.
The campaign has earned the support of a few celebrities, some of whom are likely to participate in the walk. “Nafisa Ali and Gul Panag will be there and designers Sanjana Jon and Niket Mishra may also attend,” said Mishika Singh, an organizer.
Participants are expected to assemble outside Free Church on Parliament Street at 10.30am. The walk will proceed to YWCA guesthouse, Jantar Mantar Road and back. The new route is much shorter than the original one, which included Parliament Street police station, Patel Chowk and Asoka Road.
“We were told by Delhi Police that since the monsoon session of Parliament begins on Monday, Section 144 (which prohibits assembly of five or more people at one point) will be imposed in the area till September. That’s why we had to shorten the route,” said Mishika.
They might get lucky, though, as a senior police official said that despite the imposition of Section 144, they might reconsider and allow the campaigners to walk the original route if participants are in controllable numbers.
Organizers say they expect quite a crowd as flyers have been distributed during street plays and weekly debates t o promote the campaign as it unfolded across the world. In the days leading up to the walk, they also flooded Delhi University with campaign posters, and with a team of about 25 volunteers distributed flyers in North Campus.
Delhi all set for its first Slutwalk
The virtual world was Saturday abuzz with last minute invitations, even as preparations were in full swing for the capital’s first Slut Walk or ‘Besharmi Morcha’ Sunday — a campaign to protest the random use of the word ‘slut’ and sexual violence against women.
The official page of the campaign on Facebook, with over 1,450 members, had the message loud and clear: “All set for tomorrow.”
While the route of the walk has been shortened and the event will be a toned-down version of its international counterpart, the organisers have asked supporters to get creative and make their own slogans.
“Make your own slogans, bring colourful placards to the walk. Say what you want,” posted Umang Sabharwal, the organiser.
Slut Walks have become a global phenomenon to protest against sexual violence after a officer in Toronto caused outrage by stating in a speech to university students that women should avoid “dressing like sluts” to avoid being victimised.
“We have shortened our initial route and are now starting the walk from the Free Church to YWCA (Young Women’s Christian Association) all the way to Jantar Mantar (in central Delhi). We have taken permission from the Delhi Police,” Mishika Singh, one of the organisers, told.
Slut Walks across the globe see women dress in skimpy clothing to challenge the mindset that victims of sexual violence should be blamed for the assault on them.
“The name Besharmi Morcha was keeping in mind the Indian target audience,” added Singh.
The supporters seemed excited to make the event a colourful one. The walk starts at 10.30 a.m. and ends at 12.30 p.m.
“Countdown starts! Sunday we will make our point clear. Full support to slut walk,” wrote one of the supporters Alexander Will.
Nandini Ramachandran is a books-writer, lawyer, and editor who graduated from National Law School in 2009. She reads for a living, runs the blog chaosbogey, and writes a weekly books column for mylaw.net. She has been published in online venues like OpenDemocracy, Global Comment, and Popmatters, as well as print magazines and newspapers. One day she hopes to grow up and become a hippie.
A woman’s history of the world (Or why Delhi needs a slutwalk)
Last month, if you remember, Delhi was due to slutwalk. The event was later postponed into oblivion, and most people appeared to have forgotten about it. Not so me. I was skeptical, it is true, but only until I realised how mighty the forces against slutwalk were.
Slutwalk London | Reuters
A few weeks ago, I called Eduardo Galeano’s Mirrors a “masterful capsule-history”. That was, to be honest, understating the wonder of the book.
The blurb gives this away. The Guardian calls is “pure delight”, The Times says it is “endlessly fascinating”, Isabel Allende says Galeano’s prose has a “mysterious power”. Even such relentless gushery, however, understates the genius of Galeano, who has wrestled the entire cosmos down to less than 400 pages. Coming to the book well-disposed to mirrors from all myths and magics, I found myself in instant love. If there were ever a book that deserved to be called a world-history- and there are very few- Mirrors would take the prize. In it there are stories, as the subtitle claims, of almost everyone.
You might remember Galeano from an early controversy in the Obama administration. Hugo Chavez famously gifted his polemic Open Veins in Latin America to the newly minted President in 2009. Back then, there was much dither about Chavez’s derring-do. The right was inflamed while the left claimed that the visit would mark a turn in American foreign policy. Now, as Obama settles into an indefinite occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan and a new war in Libya, one can only look back upon such fond hopes with a wry smirk. Given that Galeano has become our generation’s prophet for doomed (if worthy) causes, I guess it is apt that I’m relying on him to explain why, of all cities, Delhi needs to slutwalk.
Victorious Sun, Moon Vanquished.
The moon lost her first battle against the sun when he spread word that it wasn’t the wind who was impregnating women.
Then history brought more sad news:
the division of labour assigned nearly all tasks to females so that we males could dedicate ourselves to mutual extermination,
the right to property and the right to inheritance allowed women to be owners of nothing,
the organisation of the family enclosed them in the cage of father, husband, and son,
and along came the state, which was like the family, only bigger.The moon shared in her daughters’ downfall.
Left far behind were the times when the Egyptian moon would devour the sun at dusk and sire him at dawn,
when the Irish moon kept the sun in line by threatening him with perpetual night,
and when the kings of Greece and Crete would dress up as queens, with taffeta tits, and in sacred ceremonies would unfurl the moon as their standard.
In the Yucatán, the moon and sun lived in matrimony. When they fought, it caused an eclipse. The moon was lady of the seas and the springs, and goddess of the earth. With the passing of time, she lost her powers. Now she only reigns over birth and illness.
On the coasts of Peru, we can date her humiliation. Shortly before the Spanish invasion, in the year 1463, the moon of the Chimú kingdom, the most powerful of moons, surrendered to the army of the Incan sun.
Before folk get too merrily complacent about the magnanimity of the Hinduism when it comes to female deities, here is “Phoolan” from later in the book:
Phoolan Devi had the terrible idea to be born poor and female and a member of one of India’s lowest castes.
In 1974, at the age of eleven, her parents married her to a man from a caste not quite as low, and gave him a cow for a dowry.
Since Phoolan knew nothing of conjugal duties, her husband taught her by torture and rape. And when she fled, he went to the police, and the police tortured and raped her. And when she returned to the village, the ox, her ox, was the only one who didn’t accuse her of being impure.
And she left. And she met a thief with a long and impressive record. He was the only man who ever asked her if she was cold and if she felt all right.
Her thieving lover was shot down in the village of Behmai and she was dragged through the streets and tortured and raped by a number of landowners. And some time later, Phoolan returned to Behmai at night leading a gang of strongmen and found twenty two of them. And she woke them up, one by one, and killed them.
By then Phoolan was eighteen. Along the entire length of the Yamuna people knew that she was the daughter of the goddess Durga, and as beautiful and violent as her mother.
Is there anyone still arguing that clothing can protect Indian women? Any Indian Woman? The clothes, just to emphasise this one last time, are the least important thing about slutwalk, just as lingerie was hardly the point behind bra-burning. To twist the Rolling Stones into an unlikely feminism, if only we could make a rag-pile of our shiny clothes and ride down the moonlight mile.
Hundreds march in New Delhi’s ‘SlutWalk’ but minus the provocative clothes of earlier marches
NEW DELHI — Hundreds gathered in India’s capital to protest sexual violence against women. New Delhi is the latest city to hold an international series of protests known as “SlutWalk.”
Indi’a protests featured none of the short skirts, fishnet stockings or lingerie typical in other cities. But the marchers’ message was no less adamant.
While millions of women in India now work outside their homes, the country is still largely conservative. Perhaps keeping that in mind, most marchers wore jeans and T-shirts or salwar-kameezes, the Indian tunic paired with loose pants.
The protests originated in Toronto, Canada, sparked by a police officer’s remark that women could avoid being raped by not dressing like “sluts.”
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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