In early August 2021, the hashtag #arrestlucknowgirl was trending in India. In a viral video dated July 30, one can see a lady in a white t-shirt and denims thrashing a cab driver on the Kesari Kheda visitors crossing in Lucknow’s Krishna Nagar. A First Info Report (FIR) was registered in opposition to this girl as outrage sparked on social media. Whereas the girl stated the cab driver was at fault, the driving force threatened suicide urging the police to take motion. Feminists won’t deny the apparent violence within the video. Violence isn’t okay and the girl is clearly at fault. However I ponder if this righteous on-line rage in opposition to the “Lucknow woman” functioned from a deep-seated misogynist urge for food of punishing girls. The place is that this outrage when girls/ladies are gang-raped, killed in broad daylight, and forcefully cremated? The place are such so-called calls for of justice understanding that no less than ten Dalit girls are raped daily? Such a line of questioning isn’t whataboutism. Consideration should be referred to as to misguided requires justice.
For instance, within the case of Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput’s dying final 12 months, cries of “justice for SSR” had been acted out by way of brazen misogyny in opposition to Sushant’s girlfriend, Rhea Chakraborty. In identify of justice, girls had been categorized pretty much as good and evil. Sushant’s ex-girlfriend was forged because the prior whereas Chakraborty was the latter. This in flip gave rise to shameless on-line abuses hurled at her and her household.
Inside this fictional world of excellent versus evil, anybody sympathizing with Rhea Chakraborty was thought-about a nasty girl, unhealthy particular person, unhealthy Hindu, and in extension a nasty Indian. Reality and fiction merged as masculine-nationalist calls for for justice started normalizing violence and imprisonment as correctional instruments. The sample continued within the Lucknow case. Violence and state-sanctioned controlling of ladies seem fascinating with the intention to restore digressing girls to the so-called best of right-wing Hindu goodness. That’s the reason imprisoned feminine Indian activists don’t discover public help. Their imprisonment is seen as one thing they deserve since they protested the Hindu state. Of their need to hunt equity, these misguided calls of justice find yourself demanding extra violence, extra gendered state management.
In postcolonial India, girls have been a potent web site to assemble distinctive Indian nationalism and best femininity. Nationalist masculine violence and state-sanctioned repression have traditionally been the specified solution to restore digressing girls to the tenets of best femininity. Gender theorists and historians like Urvashi Butalia, Ania Loomba, and lots of extra have prolifically engaged with the intersection of nationalism and native patriarchy in creating beliefs of Indian womanhood. As a substitute of benefitting India and its girls, such intersections solely strengthened conventional casteist Hindu gender codes. These students have additionally illuminated the function violence performs in developing beliefs of Hindu womanhood in post-partition India.
For instance, After partition, Hindu girls had been forcibly retrieved from Pakistan in India’s determined try to solidify its nationwide id; consent didn’t matter. The Indian state recruited its girls to hold out such pressured retrieval. Households separated. Lovers died by suicide. In the course of the Sati period, many Hindu women and men argued that self-immolation was a widow’s selection. They wished to limit colonial state interference of their affairs. Within the ideological battles of colonizer vs native, overseas vs Indian, girls confronted repercussions, generally violent, and at all times epistemological. With hashtags like #arrestlucknowgirl, one can see residues of anxious nationalist masculinity appearing out. These anxieties are extra inclined on penalizing girls.
One should not overlook that the Lucknow case was additionally a class-based assault. It’s not merely a lady beating a person, however a lady with extra class privilege assaulting a person who she considers much less human than her. Such violence mimics patriarchy and emerges from varied intersections. Historic and cultural subjugation of ladies has left girls with unresolved trauma and frustration. A tradition the place gender-based violence turns into as regular because the day leaves survivors of such violence with no different selection than to search out recourse in additional violence. In different phrases, the abused turns abuser.
Violence is seen because the seductive crucial to feeling highly effective in a closely capitalist-patriarchal society. Inept police system has left pissed off, traumatized individuals throughout. The lady within the Lucknow case has claimed that she was being harassed for the previous 12 months and had gone to the police for a similar, however no motion had been taken but. Authorized lethargy frustrates girls attempting to hunt justice in a patriarchal society. Therefore, violent outbursts grow to be a solution to make sense of a repeatedly mindless actuality. This doesn’t imply that the “Lucknow woman” isn’t improper. It solely implies that the difficulty isn’t so simple as we would favor it to be.
Moreover, rising world capitalist ideology renders sure individuals just like the cab driver on this case weak to violence from many sides. He’s as weak to a person’s assault as a lady’s assault as police brutality. Sadly, when these frustrations collide, chaos takes a large type, and penalizing girls seem a simple answer. The lady within the Lucknow case deserves authorized motion for her outright dehumanizing habits. However would punishing her remedy deeper cultural issues? Did vicious assaults on Rhea Chakraborty remedy the problems of psychological well being, pandemic despair, and drug abuse? No.
Hashtags calling to punish girls are momentary reliefs. Performative holier than thou attitudes on social media should not options. The basis causes of such points are gender insensitivity, class disparity, systemic casteism, and structural patriarchy to call a number of. We’re on this collectively and calls to punish some girls are by no means going to make the world safer for all girls. Neither such calls are going to profit defenseless males. They’re merely going to widen the chasm between women and men, giving rise to uncontrolled brutalism. We should always start participating with postcolonial Indian feminist consciousness by denouncing violence strongly with out universalizing a stand-alone situation.