This guest blog post is by Manak Matiyani, who is involved with the Delhi-based group in India called The Youth Collective. This is about an impromptu rally he helped organize in Delhi earlier in March in response to the gang rape of a woman who was heading home from work at night. Their actions around safe spaces continued throughout International Anti-Street Harassment Week.

How does one feel living in a city where rape, molestation and eve teasing have become regular news.., so much so that the newspapers are advised not to print about them on the front page as people might get upset. Where well meaning reporters have to compete with well paying socialites for space in the city supplements and a human interest angle must be made interesting to get eyeballs. A city were development has never been for every class, caste and gender and walking on the streets without fear or being self conscious is a luxury not available to half the population.

Scared? Helpless? Frustrated?

I felt all of these when I read about the case of a young woman who was dragged out of a taxi, abducted and gang raped by 7 men. Her 15 year old brother who was with her tried to get the cops to act fast, but didn’t succeed. “Another working woman gangraped in Gurgaon” said the headline.

“Another” was qualified by highlighting many other similar cases that had happened in the same area in the last six months.

“Another” was what made me feel angry about the fact that we as residents of a city have resigned ourselves to reading such news stories and not be bothered beyond feeling sympathy for the victim and telling the women we know to be more careful and not go out late alone. What frustrated me was the fact that the woman worked at a pub, was out late at night, and was apparently an escort to allow stags (single men) to enter the couples-only pub made it into the news as significant details!

It was with all the same frustration and anger that I circulated a facebook note asking others who were angry and wanted to do something.. anything…to come out and join a protest demonstration at the place where the kidnapping happened.

A few of my friends were prepared to stand there with placards even if no one else showed up. But as the note got shared by those friends, and more and more people began reading, it was clear that there were at least some others who were angry. Some friends took it on themselves to get their organisations involved and others contacted the press. Organisations involved included Jagori, Center for Social Research, Halabol and Pravah, and, of course, Must Bol and The Youth Collective, where it started. All the people at Lets Walk Gurgaon took it up as their own personal cause and are continuing the public efforts. All my friends who were in this with me and all the others who have come together to ask difficult questions to the authorities and to themselves and play their part in starting this process of change.

By the next day I had had phone and email conversations with many strangers who felt equally angry. The media captures the slick posters and the catch phrases but sometimes leaves out the very grounded fear of parents whose children are out by themselves. The nervousness of brothers and others who as men are given the duty to accompany their women friends out late in the night. Many of them came out the night of the demonstration.

They came out to demand safety and justice not just for their own loved ones, but for all women. Women came and spoke about their own experiences and how they dealt with fear. Men came and exhorted other men who were passing by to join.

What started as a small group of 5 grew to over 200. Many passers by stopped, heard us out and joined in, talking about their own anger at the situation our city was in. We ended the demonstration by taking a silent march through the mall outside which many of these incidents including the most recent one had taken place. Shoppers, staff, pub managers and patrons all joined in the march, expressing their solidarity with the cause. We all hoped that the fervour wouldn’t die down after that day…thankfully it didn’t.

Citizens groups and residents of some areas are taking this protest further. They have organised more demonstrations and kept up the pressure on the authorities to take preventive and punitive action. They have even started an online group to bring more people together on the ground.  A group of organisations that work for women’s rights and some others that don’t have got together to create a charter of demands.

Two leading newspapers have started small campaigns on women’s safety and continuously supported all of us in creating awareness and public action.  The policemen on duty that night who were approached by the victim’s brother have been suspended and action against them and the rapists initiated. One of them as young as 18 have been apprehended.

But that’s not all. That, should not be all. This has been a time to question how we’ve come to a situation where women are afraid to seek justice and errant men are not afraid of justice being served. Why we blame clothes, alcohol, pubs, malls, new money, bad education, the women themselves and never blame the men and the feeling of entitlement and invincibility that a patriarchal society gives them.

It is nice to see in the subsequent gatherings that people are beginning to think, “what have I done to create this situation and what I can do to change it.” How what we tell our little girls and boys creates the men and women who we call society and that “society” must change from inside before it changes outside.