Dear Amit Shah, We Don't Need Anti-Romeo Squads

 As the campaigning for the Uttar Pradesh election was underway, Bharatiya Janata Party supremo Amit Shah was quoted during an election rally in Meerut, saying that the BJP will form "anti-romeo squads to protect girls  in Uttar Pradesh"

The statement underlines a total disregard of the state's law and order apparatus whose job it is to tackle cases of sexual assault. How will the police respond once groups of random men are vested with extra-Constitutional authority?

As activists have pointed out, because of the terrible manner in which their concerns are addressed, many women prefer not to report sexual assault.

That the "protection" and safety of women always trumps all other considerations is well established. Our media and discourse are rife with stories and articles alluding to the lack of women's "safety". The latent, unstated fear is that women will be sexually harassed or assaulted when out and about in public spaces and it is from this that they must be kept safe.

Why protection only of women, dear sir, and from whom?
At the core of this mindset lies the assumption that women need "protection" because, they need to defended from attacks by the strange men on the streets, mostly the indication being that "lower caste" men and men from the minority communities would be lurking in public places. This assumption totally ignores the fact that women face greater violence in their homes than they do outside it. The real reason behind this is, what if, god forbid, they exercise their right to choose their own partners for marriage? The horror! It is only reasonable to assume an adult should be able to take care of herself. But calling an Indian woman "a girl" is nothing short of an insult. Till the time she's married, a woman continues to be addressed as "girl".

This statement of Amit Shah's is nothing but dog whistle politics, signaling to his supporters the bogus  "love jihad" claims of his party. A phenomenon which exists only in name, cooked up by the Rashtriya Sevak Sangh and its affiliate bodies, is yet another stick to beat minority men with, specially Muslims. This propaganda has been around since the days before Indian Independence. Charu Gupta has written in the Economic and Political Weekly in detail about the unproven allegations that Muslim men were abducting Hindu girls in the 1920s. Yet it is a bogey that refuses to die down.

Good Hindu upper caste girls are expected to remain virgins till they are married to men of their parents' choice. This custom underpins the caste system. Caste is built and maintained through purity of the bloodline. Ensuring the paternity of the offspring to whom property will be passed on, is crucial. It is paramount to ascertain the virginity of the bride.

The worst form of dishonor that a Hindu man can imagine is that his daughter chooses a partner of her choice. Had it been really women's rights or their safety that our political leaders or elected representatives cared about, hundreds of crores of money allotted to the Nirbhaya Fund wouldn't lie unused, year  after year.

Besides, once the genie of vigilantism is unleashed with groups of men taking the law into their own hands, who knows where this will lead? It's a slippery slope best avoided. Besides, violence or its threat as a solutions to social ills have never worked.  It's high time we call out our politcians on their attempts to curtail women's autonomy in the name of safety. We are adults and we are free! Get used to it, uncleji!

(This piece was first published in Feminism In India )