IN FOCUS
July 10, 2025
  • Read Ecopy
  • Circulation
  • Advertise
  • Careers
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
Organiser
  • ‌
  • Bharat
    • Assam
    • Bihar
    • Chhattisgarh
    • Jharkhand
    • Maharashtra
    • View All States
  • World
    • Asia
    • Europe
    • North America
    • South America
    • Africa
    • Australia
    • Global Commons
  • Editorial
  • International
  • Opinion
  • Op Sindoor
  • More
    • Analysis
    • Sports
    • Defence
    • RSS in News
    • Politics
    • Business
    • Economy
    • Culture
    • Special Report
    • Sci & Tech
    • Entertainment
    • G20
    • Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav
    • Vocal4Local
    • Web Stories
    • Education
    • Employment
    • Books
    • Interviews
    • Travel
    • Law
    • Health
    • Obituary
    • Podcast
MAGAZINE
  • ‌
  • Bharat
    • Assam
    • Bihar
    • Chhattisgarh
    • Jharkhand
    • Maharashtra
    • View All States
  • World
    • Asia
    • Europe
    • North America
    • South America
    • Africa
    • Australia
    • Global Commons
  • Editorial
  • International
  • Opinion
  • Op Sindoor
  • More
    • Analysis
    • Sports
    • Defence
    • RSS in News
    • Politics
    • Business
    • Economy
    • Culture
    • Special Report
    • Sci & Tech
    • Entertainment
    • G20
    • Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav
    • Vocal4Local
    • Web Stories
    • Education
    • Employment
    • Books
    • Interviews
    • Travel
    • Law
    • Health
    • Obituary
    • Podcast
Organiser
  • Home
  • Bharat
  • World
  • Operation Sindoor
  • Editorial
  • Analysis
  • Opinion
  • Culture
  • Defence
  • International Edition
  • RSS in News
  • Magazine
  • Read Ecopy
Home Bharat

IN FOCUS

An ordinary college girl and her extraordinary binge?

by Archive Manager
Jan 1, 2012, 11:27 am IST
in Bharat
FacebookTwitterWhatsAppTelegramEmail

The real issues?

An ordinary college girl and her extraordinary binge?

By Shaina NC?


$img_titleUmang Sabharwal is an ordinary Delhi college girl, but is attempting something quite extraordinary. She plans to replicate the global ‘Walk?’ in our national capital. While her attempt is creditable, I intuitively feel it’s an idea that merely skirts the real issues.

The so-called ‘Walk’ has been successfully organised in cities such as Sydney, Toronto, London, and so forth. Young women there have shed sartorial inhibitions to march on the streets and make an emphatic statement against crimes against women. They deploy shock-and-awe tactics to highlight such crimes and the society’s general insouciance towards tackling them. Such marches have brought a serious issue into the limelight. Whether there will be a decline in sex-crimes, remains to be seen.

The word ‘slut’ is difficult to translate into Hindi. So the nomenclature chosen for the march in Delhi is – ‘Besharmi Morcha’. The real question that screams to be addressed is whether such a street march will have any impact at all. First, young women in Delhi cannot be expected to shed their inhibitions as their counterparts in other cities have. We are culturally different, and a Morcha with women shedding their clothes to make a serious statement is likely to be construed as an unbridled ‘ogle-session’ precisely by those against whom such a statement is sought to be made. We also witnessed a novel form of ‘underwear’ protest some years back against obscurantist parties, but that faded out from public memory too before you could say ‘slut’.

Second, it seems based on a fallacious assumption that only those women that wear ‘inappropriate’ clothes are subjected to crimes of rape, molestation, violence, etc. In a land where women are treated as commodities by vast chunks of the population, it’s naive to believe that crimes against women are committed only when they dress to provoke. Have fully-clad woman never been molested on the streets in our country? Have elderly women not been groped inside Delhi buses for decades? Have college girls and young professionals not been picked up, violated, and then dropped back by the perpetrators who operate without an iota of guilt in their devilish consciences? Has honour killing of young women got anything to do with how they dress? Have all dowry deaths been of women who chose to strut around in bikinis? We know the answer to those questions. It can be summed up in one word – ‘No’.  In our society, it’s the paternalistic, fossilised mindset of men that has resulted in unchecked crimes against women. The way these women dress up is irrelevant to this mindset. Crimes against women are largely not about sex, even in a sex-starved society such as ours. They are about dominance, a raw manifestation of power, where sex is a tool deployed to physically and emotionally devastate. They are about resisting the global clamour for gender equality, as men feel threatened that their centuries-old control over women is slipping incessantly. It is this strident sense of insecurity that is fueling more crimes against women in all sections of the society. A ‘Besharmi-Morcha’ will generate good sound-bytes for news-starved news channels, but that’s just about it.

Third, in a society where hypocrisy is widespread, the emphasis will shift away from the germane points to those bordering on absurdity. We worship the Mother Goddess in all her manifestations, while not hesitating to kill unborn or young girls. We ruthlessly set young married women afire for a motorcycle or a few thousands of rupees. We rape women, young and old, as an expression of interpersonal vendetta. Domestic violence against women is the worst kept secret in our country, prevalent even among those who live in posh localities like Malabar Hill, Cuffe Parade, Jor Bagh and Greater Kailash. These real issues will not be discussed. Instead, the police will allege that the Morcha has created a law-and-order problem in sanitised Lutyens’ Delhi.

Umang’s parents are likely to face uncomfortable questions on their inability to bring up their daughter in an appropriate manner. Some channels are also likely to comment that this Morcha is incomplete, as most participants are well clad. The fact is that many of us are a hopelessly duplicitous bunch of people, with voices of sanity getting routinely silenced in the midst of this gender pogrom. It is indeed refreshing to see young people picking up the cudgels to raise issues in the midst of an all-pervasive ostrich mindset, but the relevance of ‘slut-walks’ and ‘Besharmi-Morchas’ in a country beset with far more serious reasons for the problem is, I’m afraid, not very much.

(You like this article? Please respond to gtshaina@yahoo.com; The writer is a Social Activist and Fashion Designer)

ShareTweetSendShareSend
✮ Subscribe Organiser YouTube Channel. ✮
✮ Join Organiser's WhatsApp channel for Nationalist views beyond the news. ✮
Previous News

TogadiaSpeak

Next News

REPORT-2

Related News

Representative Image of Maoists

Chhattisgarh: Major success for security forces as 12 Maoists surrender before police in Dantewada

From Campus to Cabinet: How ABVP groomed Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh, Rekha Gupta, Yogi Adityanath & other such leaders

A representative image: courtesy NDTV

Amid electoral roll revision in Bihar, ECI reaffirms commitment to universal adult suffrage

ABVP Foundation Day celebrations

Inspiring Journey of 77 Years of ABVP: The slogan of ‘Students’ Power, Nation’s Power’ resonated all across the country

2025 tour marks the first visit of Prime Minister Modi to Namibia and the third-ever by an Indian PM to the country

Five Nation Tour: Modi begins Namibia state visit, gets highest honour, signs four key bilateral agreements

11 Years of Modi Government: A decade of Viksit Bharat journey

Load More

Comments

The comments posted here/below/in the given space are not on behalf of Organiser. The person posting the comment will be in sole ownership of its responsibility. According to the central government's IT rules, obscene or offensive statement made against a person, religion, community or nation is a punishable offense, and legal action would be taken against people who indulge in such activities.

Latest News

Representative Image of Maoists

Chhattisgarh: Major success for security forces as 12 Maoists surrender before police in Dantewada

From Campus to Cabinet: How ABVP groomed Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh, Rekha Gupta, Yogi Adityanath & other such leaders

A representative image: courtesy NDTV

Amid electoral roll revision in Bihar, ECI reaffirms commitment to universal adult suffrage

ABVP Foundation Day celebrations

Inspiring Journey of 77 Years of ABVP: The slogan of ‘Students’ Power, Nation’s Power’ resonated all across the country

2025 tour marks the first visit of Prime Minister Modi to Namibia and the third-ever by an Indian PM to the country

Five Nation Tour: Modi begins Namibia state visit, gets highest honour, signs four key bilateral agreements

11 Years of Modi Government: A decade of Viksit Bharat journey

Telangana: Bhadrachalam temple EO attacked by villagers while inspecting illegal encroachments on temple lands

Telangana: Bhadrachalam temple EO attacked by villagers while inspecting illegal encroachments on temple lands

A balak ashram school at Chhindar in Dantewada

“No school without a teacher”: Chhattisgarh govt achieves 80 percent reduction in single-teacher schools

Representative Image

Critical theory: A New Division of Cultural Marxism

Representative Image

From Sanskar to Character and Nation Building; Fulfilling duties & responsibilities

  • Privacy
  • Terms
  • Cookie Policy
  • Refund and Cancellation
  • Delivery and Shipping

© Bharat Prakashan (Delhi) Limited.
Tech-enabled by Ananthapuri Technologies

  • Home
  • Search Organiser
  • Bharat
    • Assam
    • Bihar
    • Chhattisgarh
    • Jharkhand
    • Maharashtra
    • View All States
  • World
    • Asia
    • Africa
    • North America
    • South America
    • Europe
    • Australia
    • Global Commons
  • Editorial
  • Operation Sindoor
  • Opinion
  • Analysis
  • Defence
  • Culture
  • Sports
  • Business
  • RSS in News
  • Entertainment
  • More ..
    • Sci & Tech
    • Vocal4Local
    • Special Report
    • Education
    • Employment
    • Books
    • Interviews
    • Travel
    • Health
    • Politics
    • Law
    • Economy
    • Obituary
    • Podcast
  • Subscribe Magazine
  • Read Ecopy
  • Advertise
  • Circulation
  • Careers
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Policies & Terms
    • Privacy Policy
    • Cookie Policy
    • Refund and Cancellation
    • Terms of Use

© Bharat Prakashan (Delhi) Limited.
Tech-enabled by Ananthapuri Technologies