At some point during the pandemic, I experienced a similar phenomenon in the public space of Delhi that many did: I was stopped for driving my own car, without a mask with a member of my own family. The police officer took a photo of me as evidence. I was venting to a shopkeeper about this incident and in response he said:
‘You know as a female driver, no male policeman has the right to stop you when you are driving. If they do make you stop, you have the right to demand a female police officer.’
One female officer to be present at all times, when reporting rape to the police (instituted post-2012 Nirbhaya case).
This struck me. Famously, Delhi and India as a whole, have many similar policies in place: One separate metro car for women, to prevent “eve-teasing,” (sexual harassment and groping by men). One female officer to be present at all times, when reporting rape to the police (instituted post-2012 Nirbhaya case). At the Delhi airport security, there is a separate curtained frisking booth for women with a female officer, that is one for every two “male” security lines. The Delhi government recently also started an initiative to create pink parks, designated open area spaces for women and children under ten years old.
While the intention behind such spaces is to allow women to venture into public space without the fear of being harassed or assaulted, it also limits where and how women can advocate for themselves and simply exist in space, and inadvertently defines the public sphere as male. Why is this how women get to exist in public space?
The legacy of the partition and the state as the protector
Perhaps tracing back to the Partition, to the foundations of the nation-state, can help us understand how these measures of state-protection of women came to be. Part of the major upheaval and violence of the 1947 India-Pakistan Partition was the sexual assault and abduction of women from “other” (largely religious) communities.
Many women were assaulted and forcibly married off to their abductees. Instances of mass suicides of women among communities to avoid sexual assault and abduction are widely documented, by partition scholars like Urvashi Butalia. Responding this violence and in an effort to do justice, the two new nation-states formed post-Partition made efforts to retrieve these women, and “return” them to their “rightful” communities.
Oftentimes, one would think that women were grateful to return to their communities, but their reception was complicated. Survivors of assault were regarded as sullied by their own communities; meaning, even if it was on mere suspicion, the physical touch or sexual encounter with a different religious community made them impure. Sometimes survivors’ own families would not accept them for this, and other times, they chose not to go back because of this reason. In this case, the state was responsible for forcibly relocating them through a process called repatriation. Occasionally, the state would also perform forced abortions to avoid the “mixed” religious background of a potential child.
Where did women belong if the state was controlling their bodies, return and migration?
Where did women belong if the state was controlling their bodies, return and migration? Feminist scholars sought to theorise answers to such questions in the process of collecting women’s narratives and experience of Partition. Kamla Bhasin and Ritu Menon concluded in essence, women belonged to the patriarchs – their communities, and the state, acting as a patriarch.
Urvashi Butalia gathered too that community honour and purity was displaced onto women’s bodies, which therefore became the basis of their killing or suicide. Veena Das’ work took this a step further. Das argues the state took the horror of the figure of the violated woman – and created a mobilising point for the state, as the patriarch to be the rational guarantor of order by protecting women, and placing them under the “right” kinds of men.
Women’s belonging in public space: fear instituted by community?
Fast forward to today: the state continues to “protect” women through policies that control their bodies and actually limit their freedom. The Partition exemplifies how women’s belonging is tied to community and the state, where the state was the protector of women’s honor from those of other communities. This is why I had a right to request a female police officer; in the pink parks, the metro cars for women, in public university hostels with curfew times for women, this legacy allows the state to sanction space and act as the rational patriarch.
Alongside this, the general culture of contempt and control around women’s bodies has let harassment prevail: a 2024 reddit post went viral on how a woman was groped by an elderly man on the Delhi metro for giving her seat up for him – on the same r/Delhi subreddit, there’s another post on how women should only use the women’s car when travelling alone – when in fact, men have entered these “women-only” cars with the specific intention to harass. These policies then serve as a veneer of the state exercising its role as the patriarch, and provide surface-level protections but in reality fail to address the deeper issues that enable such violence.
In urban India now, many of women’s concerns for safety revolve around the fear of spontaneous assault from “other” men – not men of their own communities.
In urban India now, many of women’s concerns for safety revolve around the fear of spontaneous assault from “other” men – not men of their own communities. This is in contrast with studies that have shown that women are more likely to be assaulted by someone within their own networks. These fears around women’s safety from other men the same ones looming since Partition, and can be seen in the way the state enacts policies for women’s safety – to put women into a space, “away” from the wrong kinds of men.
With this long history of women’s bodies being exploited – by the state, by their communities, and by men, the consolation women get is one metro car, one female police officer, and one frisking booth. So how can women fully stake their claims to belonging, on their own terms?
Loitering to reclaim space beyond patriarchal limits
This takes us back to my run in with the police. There were many worse instances documented of men (from more vulnerable communities, driving motorcycles) being beaten up for not wearing masks. These were captured on video, but by whom?
Those who just happen to be there, casually in public space. The men who loiter.
Sociologist Shilpa Phadke argues that women should loiter. She argues that we can learn from the men who loiter – the ones elite urban society frowns upon (often labourers, or middle-class gundas). But how does loitering actively challenge the states control over women’s bodies?
It’s simple: the act of doing nothing and claiming the city as your own, with your own body, by being present in space with no reason, without designation or purpose, can challenge these constrictions.
It’s simple: the act of doing nothing and claiming the city as your own, with your own body, by being present in space with no reason, without designation or purpose, can challenge these constrictions. In a society where legacies of Partition, the state’s protector role, limit public space for women – the one metro car for instance – women can stake their belonging by being purposeless, in space.
