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print versionThe Observer, 15 February 2009
A week ago, when my friends and I formed a Facebook group, the Consortium of Pub-going, Loose and Forward Women, it was a delayed reaction. Earlier in the month, the Sri Ram Sena, a Hindu, right-wing group based in Karnataka state, attacked some young women in a pub in Mangalore. The men were proud of defending Indian culture from cocktail-drinking floozies.
The attack had been caught by a news crew, discussed, dissected, and was ready to be forgotten. It was considered natural that the attackers got out on bail and the girls were afraid to press charges. It was the aftermath which caught our attention.
The SRS was stepping up its efforts. Its leader Pramod Muthalik announced that his group would ensure that no couples were seen together in Karnataka on Valentine’s Day. Any couple who defied them would be married off immediately. One would imagine this would have been the cue for the arrival of the men in white coats. But no. All the spectators understood that SRS, a new and unwelcome franchise of India’s favourite corporation, the moral police, was announcing a play for greater power. Karnataka’s government watched to see what would happen next. Could Muthalik pull off what he boasted?
Our first step was the Pink Chaddi campaign. Chaddi is a childish word for underwear and slang for right-wing hardliner. We invited people who disagreed with Muthalik’s plans to send him pink chaddis. Indian women are aware of our tenuous grip on our rights. We worry that our next move will condemn us: running, sitting in a park, hugging a man, whistling, consensual sex, writing, buying a condom, asking for a share in property, getting a demanding job, leaving a husband.
It could be any of these. The rules keep changing. Anger is never permitted because friends, on any point of the political spectrum, will say that you are lucky: what about the woman who walks 15 kilometres for water? So it amused us to embrace the worst slurs, to send pretty packages of intimate garments to men who say they hate us. One day, the campaign had 500 members; a week later, it had 30,000. A 75-year-old woman from Delhi sent us panties. A Bollywood lyricist wrote a poem in honour of the rose-coloured chaddi. Amul, India’s best-known brand of butter, put up a billboard featuring a pink chaddi. More than 2,000 chaddis arrived at the SRS office.
The SRS accused us of being from bad families. They still imagined that we were all party girls. Yet for many of those who signed up, neither Valentine’s Day nor pub-going meant anything. What we agreed on is the need to end violence in the name of somebody’s idea of Indian culture. Later, a better-informed SRS hoping to shame us into modesty said that it would send us pink saris. We announced that we would wear them with pride because for 15 minutes in Muthalik’s life we had freed his rhetoric from violence. Supporters across the world fell about laughing.
Three days ago, Muthalik retracted his threat of Valentine’s Day violence. On Friday, he and his supporters were placed in preventive custody by an embarrassed Karnataka government. It is difficult to cheer. This is not the jail sentence and obscurity we wish for him. Last week, a Hindu girl in Mangalore, who had been harassed by right-wingers for talking to a Muslim boy, committed suicide. Even the supportive media flinch when we talk about such things. Whatever happened to the cute story of Indian girls sending pink panties to save Valentine’s Day from the clutches of evil?
