Anti-Romeo Squads: As a Woman from India, I’m Thrilled!
- In Current Affairs
- 05:26 PM, Mar 26, 2017
- Dr. Bhuvana Narayanmurthy
This actually happened to me in Chennai, where I grew up:
As I finished my unexciting breakfast in the dining room of the women’s hostel, I suddenly remembered that I forgot an important set of notes required for one of my college classes that day. If I went back upstairs to my room to fetch it I’d miss the 7:50 AM bus, the less crowded one. I dreaded the crowd in the next bus but I dreaded my instructor even more, so I ran upstairs to get my notes.
I hoped and prayed that I wouldn’t have to hear lewd comments from “roadside Romeos” (as we called them in Chennai) as I walked to the bus stop. I prayed more fervently that I’d be spared the misfortune of such comments inside the bus, as I’d have to endure that experience until I got off or the abuser got off. These comments came mostly from rowdy college-going guys - technically my peers, juniors or seniors by a year or two. But there were older men too, who abused; they were quieter, more sinister, with practiced looks of lust and a wide library of lewd gestures, secretly displayed in crowded buses, often implanting a certain grotesqueness about sex in the minds of their young targets. But they were also fewer in number and didn’t travel in groups.
The bus arrived soon enough. Seats filled up fast and I found myself standing. A young man, either in his late teens or early 20s, came close to where I was standing. My fears started to come true. He began to issue a string of lewd comments at me, audible to anyone standing close enough. I was embarrassed, stressed out and angry.
Trapped by my education and good upbringing I was unable to utter a bad word to save myself. I moved away from him toward the front of the bus. He followed. Fortunately for me, there was a flower seller, a woman, a street vendor, seated along with her load of flowers, expertly making garlands on her way to work. From her vantage point she saw clearly what was going on between my abuser and I. She looked at my troubled face and helpless eyes and sprang to action.
Without getting up, she yelled at him so loudly that no one could have missed it. From her mouth sprang the choicest of bad words, condemning his lineage, his upbringing, his manhood and his sexuality, or more precisely the lack of it! Every word dripped with contempt and disgust, the foulness of her language superbly outmatching his rotten behavior.
As I watched her issue forth a torrential stream of impassioned tirade, a wave of relief washed over me, deepening into glee and eventually giggles! To me, she was Mother Kali incarnate, sitting there with her bright red sari and big red bindi! Her words were the celestial weapons that killed the offender’s demonic psyche. I will never forget that day and that woman.
The Social Epidemic of Eve-Teasing
My experience is by no means an isolated event. This was such a daily occurrence that afflicted all my friends at the hostel, that our favorite dinner time topic was to talk about who was harassed that day and what she did to protect herself.
I remember one story where one of my friends said that she was on her morning walk that day and a car slowed down beside her, its speed matching her pace on the sidewalk. The driver, a man, rolled down his window, opened his zip and began flashing at her. I couldn’t imagine what I might have done in that situation. “You know what I did?”, my friend continued, “I picked up a good-sized stone from the ground and began playing tossup-catch the way athletes prep their movements before deploying a move. The guy didn’t understand what I was doing and was still exposed. I looked at him, gave a grin, stopped the tossup-catch, pulled back my arm to take aim. The minute he realized what I was going to do he fled!” The adoring crowd around her broke into peals of laughter, gave her gifts of snacks and other goodies to eat, etc.
This was a couple of decades ago.
Back then this problem was called Eve-Teasing - boys and men teasing girls and women, for having different body parts. Every girl and woman had to endure the stench of sexually perverted thoughts vomited in public by guys who had no concept of self-control. They were only encouraged by a lack of punishment for such acts.
Effective But Insufficient Measures
Although Eve-Teasing rarely resulted in rape in the 1990s in Chennai, it created a social atmosphere that did not promote the healthy growth and development of women. Adolescents and young adult men would flock near the bus stops of women’s colleges, get on the buses with them and keep teasing them until the women got off. I knew of men who would get on routes that were so far away from their homes, just to get a chance to tease women. Eventually, the parents of the women complained to college authorities and Chennai Police decided to take action.
A highly-trained squad of women police, about 6 of them, all black-belts, was deployed by the Chennai Police to tackle this issue. These policewomen, close to the age of college-going women, dressed in white Salwar Kameez. They chose different college bus stops to monitor on any given day. No prior word was sent out to anyone.
They would get in the bus like other college women. The minute the guys began teasing they would execute a few Karate chops on them right there in the bus, immobilize them, drag them out of the bus, call for a police van, get them in and parade them around publicly before taking them to the Police Station. These offenders were generally kept overnight in a police cell and released the next morning after their parents came to get them. Chennai Police called this “Operation Flower Power”. It was one of the most effective measures against Eve-Teasing. White Salwar sets became so synonymous with this action that several regular college students took to wearing them to feel safe. Unfortunately, such effective measures were discontinued.
Anti-Romeo Squads & Indian Media’s Bizarre Disdain
I bring up the Chennai scenario because Chennai used to be considered a relatively safe city in India, free of several social problems that afflicted cities of the North. So, if in Chennai, a couple of decades ago this was the scenario, I can only imagine how much worse life is for women in parts of the country today, where such misbehavior and eventual violence are social norms. News reports inform us with alarming regularity, of horrifying cases of rape (Uttar Pradesh included), where women are brutalized beyond belief and the perpetrators go scot free.
For the first time in India, we are seeing an elected representative in the country take this issue seriously. What began as Eve-Teasing has deepened into problem of serious proportions leading to physical harm and social displacement of women; Love Jihad is but a later version of this old problem.
The lack of support in the Indian Media for this important women’s issue, is dismaying. NDTV explains how men who are not part of this epidemic are affected by Yogi Adityanath’s Anti-Romeo squads (http://bit.ly/2ngo2I8). Times of India accuses that this effort is morphing into a moral policing of sorts (http://bit.ly/2ngwF5T). First Post dumbs down the effort as “Old Wine In A New Bottle” (http://bit.ly/2nKPUYj), not giving credit to the fact that this is the first time an elected head is taking the issue seriously. Interestingly all three of the above articles are written by men!
I did find an article written by a woman, in the Washington Post (http://wapo.st/2mB1xAS). However, instead of focusing on the seriousness of this women’s issue the author rambles on about Yogi Adityanath being controversial, illegal slaughterhouses, Modi’s background as a right-wing politician and a repetition of all key points that paint the current Indian leadership in a negative light. This article does not contain a single interview with any of the beneficiaries of the effort and does not shed any light on the root causes of the issue. Despite being the Post’s India Bureau Chief, the author is not Indian and perhaps that’s the reason for the callousness of the article; however, there is no excuse for such a reputed news organization to display such a lack of basic research!
It is likely that the term Anti-Romeo is misunderstood as being against love; that’s not true. The terms Romeo and Majnu (a Romeo from local cultural history) are used sarcastically to denote those to harass women. So, the Anti-Romeo squad is really an anti-harassment squad. Perhaps the effort needs a different name.
Like every effort taken in the name of security the Anti-Romeo initiative will also involve inconveniences at least in the short term. Have we not gotten used to tightened airport security measures and given up so much of our privacy for the sake of social security? The proportion of terrorists is negligible compared to the size of the population that is required to give up their conveniences. But do we not do it? Why is there such little support for an effort designed to protect 50% of the state’s population from the other 50%?
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