– Tejaswini Madabhushi
Hyderabad for Feminism (HfF)was formed in June 2013, six months after Midnight March, Hyderabad. Midnight March was organized with an aim to claim the night spaces for women and make them safe for all genders. Though the idea to organise this walk was conceived by Natha and me a few months ago (based on an experience we had while walking at night), we found the momentum to do it after the brutal gang rape in Delhi, 2012.
The idea of women marching in the middle of the night pulled a lot of people and groups together and it was collectively organized by all of us. The numbers soared to few thousands on Jan 5th, 2013, much to surprise of the organizers. A lot of participants in the march had come to protest against the Delhi rape and were not necessarily invested in the idea of occupying night spaces. There were even a few men there who were upset when they were asked to march behind the women and called it ‘reverse sexism’. Their argument was that they were equally hurt by the rapes in the country, but clearly, they failed to understand that walking in the middle of the night meant something really significant for the women.
Though the success left us thrilled and enthused, the numbers and energy from this march did not result in anything tangible immediately after. Despite a wide coverage in the press and live telecast by almost all the Telugu TV channels, the discussions were limited to punishment for the rapists. The proposition of making public spaces accessible to all as a way to curb sexual violence did not gain the prominence we had hoped for. We also realized that it is not easy for a lot of young women to meet feminist groups or become a part of the feminist movement and there is a need for a space of discussion about and action on this problem.
Hyderabad for Feminism was formed to address the above issues. It was formed as a Facebook group and we also met on weekends in parks and public spaces. The meetings were a place for new people to meet each other and share their experiences and thoughts on current issues. A lot of these conversations involved women sharing their experiences of sexual harassment in public places. It emerged that sexual assault by known people was too personal for most people to share in such a setting.
Given these discussions, and the limits to what was possible through them, the first few events organised by HfF were centered around occupying public places. Apart from occupying public places, we also held street plays to raise awareness on street harassment and organised cultural events to challenge existing patriarchal cultural norms.
In the current moment we are interested in the issue of sexual harassment at the workplace and we are holding discussions and organizing events on the same. The Telugu actor Sri Reddy and others who started campaign against sexual harassment and exploitation in the Telugu film industry and India’s #metoo movement continue to have a great influence on us.
I would like to focus here on HfF’s engagement with public spaces and how we evolved through this engagement. Our first big event Taboo Trail took us to Irani Cafes and low cost “bar and restaurants” where women were unwelcome, though there was no explicit policy that forbids women. Some of the places have a “family section” where women were allowed, irrespective of whether one came in a group with family or with friends. The large number of women entering these places as part of this event caused some shock to both owners and existing customers. A friend who participated later expressed her deep discomfort in this event. She observed how the working-class men present there were intimidated by the middle-class women entering this space, causing some of them to leave. Some of us engaged with this phenomenon in order to reflect on our class and caste privilege and how our acts of occupying public spaces could be problematic. However, these places were also visited by middle class men with caste privilege, without causing the same discomfort to the customers and owners. This also can’t be reduced simplistically to sexism and involves the ways in which the presence of privileged women may sometimes cause unease to working class men in places they hang out. The reasons for this anxiety need to be explored in more detail and our political interventions would have to be devised based on that. HfF did not conduct any more Taboo Trail events after that, at least not in an organised way with several women occupying the public space.
Another event that caused a similar need for reflection was a trek up the Moula Ali Dargah hillock. The event was organised by an individual in Hyderabad and attended by a few members of HfF. This was organised as an all women (cis and transwomen) event that involved trekking up Moula Ali and spending the night there. The Dargah as well the hill are a revered place for many, especially of the Shia community. The event meant different things to different members who went there together. For some it was to occupy public space, for some, to explore the historic site and the rest just wanted a bunch of women to spend time together, while watching the beautiful view from the top of the hill. We ended up eating food and playing antakshari while star gazing. The event was reported in a leading newspaper the next day as girls having a fun night on the hill. This report has caused pain and hurt in the local Shia community and they voiced their concern against Moula Ali turning into a picnic spot for the city’s youth. We meant no disrespect to any religious beliefs or to any group of people, but our understanding of the importance of this place was limited and we inadvertently hurt people. We did not foresee the implications of ‘occupying’ a space that had such great significance for the local community and this needed a radical review of our feminist activism. We tried making reparations to the community by offering our apology to the Principal Secretary, Minority Welfare in this regard.
Since Hyderabad for Feminism is a city-based group and focuses on the city issues, our engagement with the local groups is more prominent than other movements to occupy urban space. Some of us took part in the “Why Loiter?” campaign and posted pictures of us loitering on social media. We also marched with “I will go out”, one of the groups working for reclaiming spaces for women, in January 2016 and collaborated with them later in organizing an event in Hyderabad.
Hyderabad for Feminism has collaborated with groups and communities in the city over the years. We co-organised several events with Savitribai Phule Adhyayan Vedika, a dalit women’s group from Osmania University, Anveshi Research Centre for Women’s Studies, and worked with the queer community in the city. From the time of the formation, several key members of HfF are queer identifying. Members of HfF took part in various queer events including the annual ‘Queer Swabhimana Yatra’.
I am not aware of public spaces being inaccessible to cis gender people from various sexualities, but am certainly aware of many spaces, especially elite spaces being inaccessible to transgender friends. While most of the transgender people are too intimidated to enter spaces like malls out of fear of humiliation, the few times they did try, they were treated disparagingly. In one such instance, a transwoman Vyjayanti Vasanta Mogli, was not allowed to enter a mall even when she went with a group of friends to watch a movie promoting queer rights. She was only able to enter after a long argument with security personnel and switching to English at the end of this exchange. This makes it evident that there is a lot of work that needs to be done in sensitizing employers and employees in public spaces like malls. While they want to be avant garde by screening queer themed
movies, they have no real engagement with the community nor do they have mechanisms in place to make their spaces queer friendly. I wonder what reception the transgender people would receive if they came in large numbers to occupy a fancy mall. Will they get the same support from mainstream society that cis-women get when we try to occupy urban spaces where we feel unwelcome?
Our experiences of occupying public spaces have been both thrilling and thought provoking. The feeling of liberation and satisfaction to be in a place where we are not supposed to be is inexplicable and I don’t want to discount that experience. We are more cautious now and reflexive about the kind of spaces we want to occupy and about the effects it has on the existing people in those spaces. I think we have also realized that more diversity in the group in terms of class, caste, gender of people trying to occupy public spaces is also an important factor to ensure that our actions cause least discomfort to marginalized people in the society and lead to more meaningful intervention in making public spaces more equal and democratic.
Tejaswini Madabhushi works at Yugantar, Hyderabad.
mtejaswini@gmail.com