Rape and Rakhi – Patriarchal-Communal Narratives

"Even as the communal cauldron in UP is kept on the boil, there is news that the RSS has launched a campaign to tie Rakhis to lakhs of Hindu men, asking them to pledge to protect their sisters from Muslim men and “love jehad.” The VHP has been running a helpline urging Hindus to approach them “if your daughter is being harassed by Muslim boys.” And a khap panchayat in Muzaffarnagar has imposed a ban on mobile phones and jeans for girls, claiming that these result in ‘eve-teasing’.

Woven into the above events is an old, familiar theme – that of patriarchal restrictions packaged as ‘protection’. In the wake of the anti-rape movement that followed December 16 2012, the streets of Delhi and many other parts of India had resounded with the voices of women declaring ‘Don’t take away our freedoms in the name of ‘protection’ – protect our right to fearless, fullest freedom instead’. Those women had raised their voice demanding freedom from sexual violence – and also freedom from rape culture that advices women to dress decently to avoid rape; and freedom from the khap panchayats, freedom even from the restrictions imposed by one’s own fathers and brothers.

The RSS leader S Gurumurthy has just made it very clear what he and his ideology think of such women. He has called them ‘shameless’, as opposed to the ‘shy’ women who, according to him, represent Indian culture. And in a sense, he is right. Those women on the streets were indeed seeking to be ‘shame-less’: they wanted to be free of the special burden of shame, of ‘sharam-haya’, that women are expected to bear in our society. They were declaring that there is no shame in seeking pleasure, risk, adventure, freedom; that there is no shame even in being the victim of rape; and that in fact, shame should be allocated to those who are violent to women and deny women equality..." (Continue reading.)