The rise of the angry young woman - TeluguPeople.com News

HYDERABAD: A girls' night out for the outgoing batch of promising young members of judiciary turned into a nightmare on April 12 when a batch of female students were victims of moral-policing and defamation by electronic media.

The final year students of National Academy of Legal Studies and Research (NALSAR) in the city were subjected to a traumatic experience at their farewell party at a city pub on Friday.

Though they are set to graduate in 20 days, the students have decided to stand up and see it through for themselves and for other women. The two online petitions started by these students on the website change.org have reached the 1000 mark with petitioners from the world over signing up for the cause.

'Our first step was to make people aware of the incident through the online petition and use the social made to generate support,' says Prachi Arya, one of the five students who were videographed without consent. She goes on to add that bystanders were reluctant to get 'involved' in the incident.

Of the two petitions, one focuses exclusively on the general victimization, harassment and defamation of women by the electronic media.

The series of videos with titled 'midnight girls' 'drunken ladies' and 'druggist girls' on Youtube portrays the students in a bad light and those responsible seem to be unapologetic about the incident.

'After we reached hostel we made calls to the concerned TV channels and made our friends speak to them to explain the issue. They were rude enough to tell us that we were dressed 'inappropriately' and that they had the right to air our video as and when they like.

Some evil creative genius blurred images and muted out our protests where few of us were trying to say that the person with a camera was taking a video without permission,' says Madhu, one of the four students featured in the video.

'Initially there was a lot of advice pouring in which said that we should let it go. However, my mother herself said that this is your real test where you will be using what you have learned in the past five years,' says Madhu who considers pursuance of the issue her real 'legal test.'

The Executive Council of the university has taken cognizance of the violation and has also constituted a sub-committee to look into the matter. 'The Executive Council was sympathetic to us. There are charges which can be brought up by the sub-committee formed on Sunday to look into this aspect,' says Prachi.

The youngsters are hopeful of pursuing a civil suit for defamation against the channels for airing their videos and have also written to chairman of Press Council of India as well as Justice Verma among others. This is a bunch of very 'angryyoungwomen' as they call themselves on their blog-roll and rightly so.

History of violence

The issue of moral policing has become a sore thumb than an actual civic tool with communal groups taking matters into their own hands, often violently condemning the 'wrong doers'.

The city of Mangalore was in the news as many as four times last year with separate incidents of right-wing Hindu activists from outfits like Hindu Jagarana Vedike and Sri Ram Sene barging into private parties and almost thrashing the women present.

Andhra Pradesh as well, in the past few months, had as many three cases where women were either badgered for their immoral habit of 'dressing in western clothes' and consuming alcohol.

About two months ago, girls at a hostel in Hyderabad popped up on Youtube when a video of them having drinks night in their room was filmed and posted online.

And who can forget the Director General of Police Dinesh Reddy's comments that kicked up a fuss in December 2011 when he commented on how women should not dress inappropriately, like in a salwar kameez, to avoid attracting such attention?

In retaliation to the countless times that unfair moral policing has taken place, there has been an opposite reaction, if not equal in measure.

With the Sri Ram Sene threatening to marry couples found together on Valentine's Day, the Pink Chaddi Campaign was born. A deluge of pink underwear rained on Pramod Muthalik, the chief of Sri Ram Sene who announced the threat.

The Slut Walk also caught on in India all the way from Toronto, Canada, where a police officer's remarks about how women 'should not dress like sluts' led to a rally of women dressed as they pleased. India had it's own version of the slut walk in Delhi and Kolkata in 2011 and 2012 respectively.