How is freedom defined? When it comes to women, it is always presented as a favour, a conditional bonus that can be withdrawn at any time. Women should not “misuse their freedom” they are told over and over again. Twenty years ago, while shooting my film Unlimited Girls, I encountered some women at a college in Haryana who talked about how the men in the college molested them routinely, more so if they had performed in a dance or felt free to go drink water. Yet no one in the administration did anything and nor did the women complain because they said they would be told “you’re the one who wanted to go to a co-ed college and now see what’s happened? Stay home and do a correspondence course.” The violation of women is seen as the consequence of their freedom—in this case simply the freedom to go to college. And if women cannot somehow perform the fear of being free without encountering any gender-based violence, then they have proven that they are not deserving of freedom. 

Freedom was not made for them and now, they should accept this and retreat from its open spaces.