Slutwalk Schmutwalk

A few months ago some copper in Toronto, Canada, in the finest traditions of police spokesmen all around the world, carefully inserted his duty boots firmly into his mouth: at a campus safety session, he suggested that women could save themselves from being raped by avoiding dressing like ‘sluts’. Ooh.

As expected, Canada and the Emancipated World reacted with anger and soon we had hordes of concerned citizen up in arms and foaming at the mouth at this, terming it thinking of the most primitive level, casting blame on to the victim. Soon, in the spirit of the new age of creative activism, some women got together to organize the Slut Walk, where women dress in a decidedly lascivious manner – which I guess means garters and stocking and that stuff; I could never understand the sex appeal of wearing a lot of underwear – expressing their right to dress the way they want without having to fear the repercussions. Fair point. I should be free to live the way I want to without having to be blamed for getting assaulted by someone who doesn’t like my lifestyle.

Now, the Slut Walk, expectedly, became a rage across the world, and as with such things, eventually sank to the bottom and settled in Delhi. The India of Jessica Lall’s Candlelight Vigil had its interest piqued again: here was another meaningful issue take strolls on public roads for. And it's about women. After the tremendous success of the campaigns on breast cancer awareness (the one about women’s Facebook statuses being the colour of the their brassiere and the one that starts with “I like it on…” – which excreta-brained idiot came up with those? They’re not even intelligent.), another chance to strike a blow for Women’s Equality in India. Yabba Dabba and all.

India has one of the worst records of female abuse in the world – we treat our women like shit, we really do. So it stands to reason that there should be various attempts to lift the lives of these women from the deep dungeons we have flung them into. Again, a fair point.

My issue is, a Slut Walk is utterly useless and irrelevant to this process and does nothing for the real woman of India. It is a process espoused by and indulged in by a handful of already emancipated women living in the upper echelons of India’s Tier 1 metros. It exists at a superficial level and makes no sense to most of India – the large part of India where most of the excesses against women occur. The whole thing is directed at the wrong people. The clever people who came up with the idea also assume that most of our country has a well-developed sense of irony, as well as a moral compass that points at the same North as theirs does. The dudes who actually commit most of the rapes in the country don't get all this - the Slutwalk, the colour of bra, "I like it on...", the whole shebang - and therefore will never realise the shame of it. The guys who will understand this, who will get the irony, are those who are already educated, liberal and forward thinking. I'd like these dames to do this walk in Etawah. Or Patna. Or Madurai. Or any other town in India outside Delhi/Bombay/Bangalore. It's all very cool to do Facebook campaigns and send pink chaddis to bigots. But most people - those outside the purview of our stratum of society - don't get it, and never will.

Even the women in most of the country wouldn't take this sort of nonsense seriously. These are women who themselves have different ideas of morality and chastity – a lot of them prescribe to the way things are just as much as the men do. For them being a 'slut' is not cool; it goes against the grain of everything they have been conditioned to understand. This sort of behaviour would only make them more uncomfortable. There are thousands of Sheilas and Munnis out there who are mortified by the effect of the item numbers on them. Both the songs idolise slut-ness - how many women in B-town India and lower would be fine with that? This is just posturing by the so-called 'emancipated woman' of India. They're like people in the zoo who make faces at the gorilla through the bars. Let's see all these 'brave' women get into that cage and do the same. Bloody idiots - they think they're making a difference. They're only preaching to the converted.

This thing isn’t going to be fixed in a hurry. We need to think of processes that will last, that will make sense at an underlying level. We need to make sure we’re around for the long run, not for silly circuses like Slut Walks.