Ours Are The Streets

MANASI PHADKE , MAYURA JANWALKAR : New Delhi, Sun Oct 06 2013

A little over a month after a photojournalist was gangraped in Mumbai, five women talk of why they won't give up travelling late at night in the city.

Hasina Khan, 43

Researcher and activist

Raised in south Mumbai's Mohammed Ali Road, Hasina Khan is a thoroughbred Mumbaikar, whose job as a women's activist and researcher finds her in unlikely pockets of the city, from where she returns home alone sometimes as late as 3 am. "Sometimes, after midnight, I wonder if I should travel in the general compartment of a train instead of a ladies' compartment. But then I ask myself why should I travel in the general compartment when there is a special compartment for women? It is the responsibility of the state to deploy a policeman in the compartment after 9 pm," she says.

Mumbai, she asserts, has been a city of labourers, of movements and entertainment, but now, moral policing, endorsed by right-wing politicians, is changing the nature of the city. Khan, who has conducted an extensive research on Mumbai's bar dancers, says, "Prior to 2005, when dance bars ran in full swing, it was rare to see a deserted ladies' compartment in a local train even after midnight. The dancers too were working women heading home after their job. The trains were full and there was no reason for anyone to feel unsafe," she says. After the crackdown on bars and pubs, the hawkers disappeared and the shops downed their shutters much earlier. "At 11 pm, the bustling suburb of Santacruz now looks like it is 2 am. Restrictions on mobility and business threaten the city's character," she says.

Khan, who is currently working on a project of Muslim women's leadership in five states in the country, believes that it is up to women to reclaim public spaces. "The nature of everyone's work is peculiar. But by saying that women should avoid working late or going out alone at night, the moral police is trying to fit them into boxes and that is very dangerous for the city's identity. Sometimes, there are no lamps on a road and the dark stretch is termed unsafe. But it is the government's job to arrange lighting and make it safe. The answer is not to tell women to avoid the dark road," she says.

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/ours-are-the-streets/1177449/