-Maranatha Wahlang and Tejaswini

Genesis

As people who face sexual harassment, we have been taught that keeping out of certain spaces at certain times is the only way to deal with this issue.  The silence about sexual harassment has been society’s way of propagating this problem. The ethical and moral question has always been on the woman’s freedom and not on the man’s behavior. Hence, we have followed these rules for our safety and because we have been taught to do so. The education, the opportunity, the achievements and the self-confidence dissolves at the moment of such vulnerability. We felt this one night while we walked back towards our office in Barkatpura. It was around 11 pm. An SUV with 3-4 men inside approached us and stopped next to us and lowered their windows. They started the usual hurl of abuses that men employ. Our initial emotions were anger and fear and although we tried to react, we ran away on the deserted road. The feeling of fear and helplessness, which most women feel in this situation was overpowering. However, that night, we decided to fight back the humiliation and silence. We realized that one of the reasons that women are harassed in some spaces and at some times, is that most women don’t naturally occupy these spaces and times. We hoped that a large gathering of women, a normalizing of women being out at night, would perhaps start a change.
The discussion that night crystallized to “find 10-15 people, to gather a few friends and just walk”. Once we discussed the idea with individuals and groups, the idea gathered momentum of its own – a kind of ‘spontaneous planning’. The shock and anger after the Delhi gang-rape incident was the immediate catalyst for the midnight march. Groups, organizations and individuals working in very different fields, volunteered to think through, plan and mobilize for the event and contributed their time and energy over several weeks. Our concept note ‘Night Monologue’ was translated and published in a newspaper by a known feminist journalist Vasanta Lakshmi, along with the pamphlet. A Facebook page for the march which had been created a couple of weeks before the march reached 800+ membership on the day of the march. Even though organizations played a key role in organizing it, we thought it was necessary that the space to be owned by everyone and decided to request organizations not to front their banners. Secondly, we also felt that the march could not be confined to ‘women’ alone as there are several people who are vulnerable due to their gendered identities whose participation is crucial for the march. LGBT community and groups that worked with male sex workers, child rights joined in. Muslim women’s groups in the city and a few Dalit organizations too joined later. The placard writing workshop was held at Anveshi just before the march where over 200 placards were made, in Urdu, Telugu, English and Hindi, discussing gender equality, gendered differences,  vulnerabilities created through combined workings of gender with other inequalities such as caste, minority etc. gave us clarity on the various issues related to the false notions associated with sexual harassment.

The March

On Jan 5th, people started to assemble around 10:00 PM at KomaramBheem statue on Tank Bund. We were expecting a crowd of 500 people and had 15 volunteers to help where required. Several TV channels were present even before the march had started. The crowd was thin at the beginning – around 200 people. The volunteers were requesting women, transgender and children to lead the march and men to walk behind. The slogans charts were distributed and people started with ‘Azadi’ slogans. The March only started at 11:00 PM. This was the first time for several women to walk on the streets of Hyderabad at such an hour and they were visibly moved or elated. The numbers kept soaring as the march progressed. There were over a dozen TV channels who interviewed hundreds of people in the march. When the clock struck midnight, women started to chant “Ardarathri swatantram- Maahakku, Maahakku”(Freedom at midnight is our right). There were singers like Vimalakka, who wrote songs exclusively for this event, singing as the procession kept moving. Around 12:45 a.m there were at least two thousand marchers who crossed the Ambedkar statue and walked to Lumbini Park, where the march concluded at 1:00 a.m. The marchers were very diverse, though middle class Hyderabad seemed to be the majority. There was an interesting tussle over the slogans. We had anticipated and planned to scuttle slogans focusing on punishment, justice, mother-sister-daughter’s honour etc and decided to use the Delhi/JN university women’s students slogans around azaadi in Hindi, Telugu and English. So, whenever the unacceptable slogans came up, a volunteer (one of many dispersed throughout the March) would walk in to raise the slogan around azaadi. The slogans caught on and were then chanted throughout the march.
The march ended with a lot of inspiring speeches by several well-known women’s activists and feminists who recalled different historic moments in women’s movement including protests against the rape of Rameeza Bee. For the scores of young people gathered there it gave an opportunity to connect the Midnight March with the earlier and existing women’s movements in the state/country.

Media and the March

The march got huge media coverage in both print and electronic media, which, we think, enabled a lot of ‘first timers’ to turn up for the March. Many marchers were interviewed by Telugu news channels and the march was given live coverage during ‘prime time’. Some newspapers such as the Hindu and Namaste Telangana gave special coverage to the marchers. While the level of coverage was good, the quality was uneven. Several reporters covering the march had difficulty understanding the concept of the ‘women claiming public spaces’ and continued to harp on laws, punishment and violence. Visual media focus on the individual, or rather the visual media’s proneness for individual symbolizing a larger movement  also created the problem of ‘representing’ this March as a collective activity.
But, more insidious was the problem of co-option. One TV channel brought along a banner with text suggesting that that march was organized under their auspices. They had already called beforehand requesting permission to bring the banner along, which was denied. Organizing committee members dissuaded them each time the employees held the banner up, but this was repeated throughout the march. Later other organizations too brought along their banners.

Follow up

Few months after the march, some of the younger people who took part in the march got together and formed a Facebook-cum-meet up group called Hyderabad for Feminism. This group aims at promoting ideas of feminism and gender equality through discussions and creative action on issues concerning women, queer and other minority communities such as occupying public spaces, local media coverage on, harassment and discrimination in daily life.

Conclusion

After the Delhi gang-rape, everybody is in prescriptive mode. They are primarily engaged with the question of women’s safety. Police & judiciary reforms, enhanced punishment as a deterrent, loss of ancient Indian values, education, depiction of women in popular entertainment etc are the lines on which discussions in media and society are running. Public spaces for women haven’t been adequately addressed, and we hope this march put that to the forefront.
It is important to note that the Midnight March was not just awareness raising alone but an action in itself, to take back spaces from male domination.

Maranatha studies at University of Hyderabad and Tejaswini works at Yuganthar, Hyderabad