Priya Ramani belongs to a growing breed of women who have made headlines for challenging the masochism of the state — and of men such as MJ Akbar
Priya Ramani celebrates after the verdict with her lawyer Rebecca John. Pic/Twitter
Journalist Priya Ramani displayed courage by publicly claiming that she had been sexually harassed by former editor and Rajya Sabha MP MJ Akbar, who chose to file a criminal defamation suit against her than duck the controversy her disclosure generated. Ramani’s triumph in the suit should inspire women to speak out against men who exploit their need, and dream, for a career to sexually prey upon them. Her steely resolve to pursue the case, instead of opting for a compromise with Akbar, is exemplary, as a verdict upholding his complaint could have had her spend maximum two years in prison, or pay a fine, or both.
Ramani belongs to a growing breed of Indian women who risk their liberty to make India a better place for all, not some, by fighting for the equality of citizens. Days before Ramani’s story made headlines, the Delhi Police arrested Disha Ravi and searched the house of lawyer Nikita Jacob for their alleged role in the toolkit conspiracy, which is claimed to have instigated protesting farmers to fly the Sikh religious flag from the Red Fort on January 26. Climate campaigners both, they are in their 20s, as is Nodeep Kaur, the labour activist whose arrest and alleged torture have invited worldwide condemnation.
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Some will perceive the media spotlighting these four women in a short span of time as a coincidence. After all, they would argue, women participated in the national freedom movement, as they also did in the struggle against the Emergency. In subsequent decades, we have seen women clamour and wag fingers at the security forces in Kashmir. In 2004, a group of 12 Manipuri women stripped naked and held a banner declaring, “Indian Army Rape Us.” They were protesting against the gang-rape and killing of Manorama, a 32-year-old woman, by the Assam Rifles. Irom Sharmila endured 16 years of hunger strike to press for withdrawal of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act from Manipur. Women were at forefront of the nationwide protest against the gang-rape and subsequent death of a 23-year-old physiotherapist in 2012.
But what is new about woman protesters is that their activism is no longer confined to the politics of gender, a fact brought into sharp focus as the nation erupted over the Citizenship Amendment Act in December 2019. Perhaps never before did women in such large numbers, from diverse backgrounds, descend on protest sites to vent their anger against the discriminatory citizenship law. The iconic sit-in at Shaheen Bagh was spearheaded by women, of whom 83-year-old Bilkis Bano became the defining image of the protest.
A hyper masculinised state did not dither to scar the body and memory of women protesters. Think of activist Sadaf Jafar, whom the police picked up from a protest site in Lucknow and beat, with baton, all the way to a police station. At night a male constable kicked her in the stomach and knees; her face was clawed, her hair pulled. A senior police officer asked Jafar why Muslims were against Chief Minister Adityanath and Prime Minister Narendra Modi despite everything they had done for “you all” and the country. “That language of us and them pained far worse than their kicks,” Jafar said to me.
Think of Gulfisha Fatima, Ishrat Jahan, Natasha Narwal and Devangana Kalita, all in the vanguard of street protests against the CAA in Northeast Delhi, where were scripted bloody riots in February last. These four women have been jailed under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. Yet their spirit for change remains intact, evident from Narwal and Kalita writing to the Delhi High Court for prison reforms, on which count they are to address the judges in April. It is argued that these four women should not have occupied streets in Northeast Delhi, erroneously cited as a trigger for the riots, but this is precisely the strategy farmers have pursued in their protest against the three new farm laws.
Women’s presence at farmer protests has been robust. They have blocked roads, cooked food, driven tractors and squatted on railway tracks on February 18 in the four-hour stop-train campaign. They have not been brought to protest sites to restrain the state from taking action against male protesters, as the Chief Justice of India seemed to suggest with his remark, “Why are women and elders kept in the protest?” They have agency; their opposition to the state is conscious, an outcome of farmer and labour unions in Punjab consistently mobilising women on the agrarian crisis, which has class, caste and gender dimensions. The farmers’ protest has had women in Haryana and west Uttar Pradesh, infamous for their subjugation, light the flame of dissent.
The assertion of women has come when political parties have taken to pitching social and economic programmes exclusively for women, to garner their votes. But social change is always difficult to control, perhaps the reason Home Minister Amit Shah justified the arrest of Disha Ravi thus: “Will a crime or culpability be decided on the basis of gender, age and profession?” It seems a warning to the wondrous women of India, who have challenged the masochism of the state – and of men such as Akbar.
The writer is a senior journalist. Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com. The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.
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