Feminist Studies

Critical Perspectives on SlutWalks in India Durba Mitra On July is, 2011, the first SlutWalk in India took place in the city of Bhopal in the state of Madhya Pradesh. The march, retitled the "Pride Stride for Women" (in Hindi, Besharmi Morcha, or Shameless Rally), was spurred by the April 2011 SlutWalk in Toronto protesting a Toronto police officer's statement that "women should avoid dressing like sluts" to prevent rape and sexual harassment. In contrast to other events inspired by the Toronto SlutWalk, media coverage of the Bhopal event declared it a dramatic fail ure.' Reports noted that the organizers were unable to rally large numbers of people to protest in the deeply conservative state of Madhya Pradesh, a state that had witnessed the highest number of reported rapes in the country.2 While up to five thousand people had confirmed on a Facebook page that they planned to attend, only fifty to sixty people showed up, with more attendance by men than women, and all of them dressed in conservative attire.3 The coverage of this event presents an occasion to reflect on what we mean by "failure" in such contexts. Since the Bhopal march, other SlutWalk-inspired marches in India have been organized: one in Delhi, and another that was organized in Bangalore in December 2011 but was banned at the last minute by police. In this article, I consider the chal lenges that organizers face and the limits of their organizing model for transforming cultures of sexual violence in India. Despite these challenges, I argue that the debate created by the marches has opened up an urgent conversation about the culture of sexual violence in India today. The "Pride Stride" in Bhopal spurred a debate about the efficacy of the SlutWalk campaign as a tool against sexual harassment and sexual violence in India. A central question is whether reclaiming the term "slut" is an effective form of opposition to the discourse of "Indian tradition" that Feminist Studies38, no. 1 (Spring 2012). © 2012 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 254 Durba Mitra 255 dictates norms ot social propriety and women's chastity in public spaces. While citing the global SlutWalk movement as their inspiration, it was the Bhopal organizers who changed the name, stating that "slut" was a term that some would find offensive. The organizers of the Besharmi Morcha in Delhi emphasized that they changed the name to make the march more inclusive. Umang Sabharwal, an organizer of the Delhi event, said, "not all people in Delhi will understand the meaning of the word 'slut.' So after a lot of debate and discussion, we zeroed in on Besharmi Morcha. This way, more people in India will understand the real concept."4 Conser vative right-wing organizations and even some women's rights activists exclaimed in newspapers and online that the framing of the project around "shamelessness" was against "Indian values" and that "good" Indian women knew how to dress properly to avoid sexual attention.5 Others criticized the limited appeal of the SlutWalk movement in India because they claimed the provocative attire would draw attention to women's bodies, rather than highlight the sexual violence different women faced.6 These critiques suggest that the movement is exclusionary, only representing middle class, urban, bourgeois values and leaving out lower-class Indian women and women working in the sex industry who deal with sexual violence every day. Organizers of the marches in India moved away from the overt displays and provocative clothing that distinguished the first SlutWalk in Toronto, attempting to translate the movement into the less controversial and more familiar language of empowerment and women's rights. Local law student and Bhopal "Pride Stride" organizer Radhika Shingwekar emphasized that she tried to make the event suitable for the conservative atmosphere ot Bhopal, asking women "not to dress in a way that would grab unnecessary attention." 7 The "Pride Stride" in Bhopal conceded to conventions of social respectability. The marches that followed Bhopal attempted to shift the focus away from provocative dress to a more normative language of women's rights and gender violence. Despite adopt ing moderate dress codes, these marches continued to provoke similar critiques about the ineffectiveness...