Of Moral Policing and Bans: The Fight Back

Of Moral Policing and Bans:

The Fight Back

By

Sharon Nancy Zachariah

M.A. Women’s Studies, IInd Year

Course name: Civil Societies, New Social

Movements and Public Policy

Under the School of Public Policy and

Governance

Tata Institute of Social Sciences,

Hyderabad

Batch of 2014-16

3rd September, 2015

Roll no.: H2014WS016

Plagiarism 6%

Introduction

They stood united in their purpose, and together in chorus sang,

“Sanghi gundon hosh men aao and “ladh ke lenge azadi” while moving ahead

towards the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) headquarters in

Jhandewala, New Delhi(Anwar, November 8,2014). Here I am talking

about a strong student led social movement against the charged up

concept of moral policing. But before I go into the depth of the

issues I am very briefly going to describe what a social movement

is.

According to John D. McCarthy and Mayor N. Zald, the

defining elements of a social movement are, it is a set of

opinions and beliefs in a population which believes and wants a

change brought together through effective mobilization. It is

very much similar to an interest agitation. (McCarthy & Zald,

1977). There are two basic elements within a social movement, one

preference and second, organized action for change. Now it is

very important to note that a social movement can start and end

in a short period of time or can be a movement which never

formally dies but has infrequent string of events leading to

highs and lows within the timeline of the movement. For instance,

in India, on the one hand we had the Anti-Arrack Movement,1992 in

the erstwhile united Andhra Pradesh and on the other hand you

have what I shall be focusing on in my paper, the consistent and

evergreen incidents of moral policing and protests against it.

A social movement is composed of four types of R’s, Reform,

where it seeks to improve the society by changing a particular

aspect of the social structure; Resistance, where it aims to

prevent or undo a certain kind change(s) that has already taken

place with the society/ social structure; Religion, here it seeks

to produce radical changes within individuals by setting up

religious and/or spiritual systems; and Revolutionary movement,

where it seeks to bring about a total change within the society.

In my paper I shall be extensively tracing the rise and fall

of events in the timeline of the protest against moral policing

in India. First I shall try to articulate the meaning of the term

moral policing, followed by the different forms it has taken in

India, that is the areas or place that have witnessed incidents

of moral policing by referring to documented incidents. Next I

shall look at the perpetrators of such policing, followed by the

strong opposition that has been seen against such policing across

the country, again by referring to several protest incidents and

movements. I shall conclude my paper by analyzing the impact of

such protest movements, whether or not there was any impact in

the first place and what were the responses to these protests

against moral policing.

Unwrapping Moral Policing

As Sudipto Mondal describes in his newspaper article, moral

policing can be understood as a conscious mechanism used by

certain groups or sections of the population whose purpose or aim

is to enforce a certain code of conduct within the society at

large (September 9, 2008). This enforcement could be on what you

can wear and what not, where you go and where you can’t, what can

be show cased for the public eye and what not. This sort of

policing can be imposed on one person, or a small group of

people, a community, or for that matter even on an

organization/industry. However, on what basis should one

understand moral policing? What is it that they target? As the

term itself says, in India particularly, any activity or act

which is deemed as morally wrong or to say immoral, and or

against our Indian culture and tradition, is where you see the

active enforcement of morality policing. Here the main aim of

these vigilant groups or to say the soldiers of Indian culture

and tradition is to protect and keep anything/anyone from

tarnishing the pure, sanctified image of Bharat Mata and the

culture- tradition she brings along with her. These groups oppose

any cultural change and particularly those changes that have come

in through globalization and modernization. These groups seem to

blame the west for any deviance in their understanding of the

pristine Indian culture. One of the most popular examples of this

is the perception that surrounds Valentine’s Day. According to

most of these fundamentalist groups and moral police’s, the

celebration of Valentine’s Day as a western concept and should be

banned since it tarnishes our Indian culture. And how is it that

it does so, by filling young minds with nonsensical immoral

fantasies (Krittivas Mukherjee, May 23, 2007). As they say it in

Hindi, “dimaag meh bhoosa bhardena”.

Moral policing in India has taken place for a very long time

and it has taken many forms, affected different people at

different points of time. But before I go into the innumerable

incidents of morality policing that have been witnessed and

recorded, it is very important to know who these ‘soldiers of

morality’ are that I am referring to. There is no one group of

people here but several groups, some of them having major

political affiliations or being political parties themselves.

These vigilant groups can be broadly captured and termed as

fundamentalists, or rightists. These people could be either

religious fundamentalists or general cultural fundamentalists.

The most prominent groups that come to my mind at the moment is

the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the

Sree Ram Sena, Shiv Sena etc. These were a few political groups, but

apart from them, in India, moral policing is also carried out at

the hands of the state police and even by the Censor Board in the

case of visual moral policing.

As I have already mentioned earlier, there are different

forms that moral policing takes in India, and again, which is

done at various levels or platforms. The most convenient or

outward way used for controlling and keeping a tab on the

morality of the Indian population is through censorships and

bans. On account of immorality there are a number of books,

films, plays television channels, contents aired on All India

Radio and even paintings that have either been banned or censored

in India.

Bandh Karo! Ban Karo!

There have been innumerable incidents of moral policing in India

and as I have already said in several areas. As Vasanth

Kannabiran writes in his article, in today’s times the specter of

cultural policing and street policing has taken over each and

every element of our civil society, and all this is done in the

name of tradition (2000). The first ever reported incident of

moral policing that was carried out by a vigilant group was in

the early 1990s, in Jammu & Kashmir, where a women separatist

group called Dukhtaran-e-Millat threatened local women with acid

attacks if they did not cover or pardah their faces (Bukhari,

September 14, 2001). Followed by this in 1996, there were two

other major events surrounding moral policing, one was the major

uproar around a series of 1975 paintings by world renowned

painter, M.F.Husain. It was said, that he painted images of

Bharat Mata and several other Hindu goddesses naked or in

copulation positions/poses. Following which eight different

lawsuits were filed against him (2008). Apart from this 1996 also

saw major protests against the organization of the Miss World

Pageant in Bangalore, India. Several fundamentalist groups like

the BJP, the Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha and even the CPI

protested against the organization of the event on the grounds

that it demeaned the image of a woman and the Indian culture.

They event was seen as a way of putting India on the world map

and over 10 cores were to be invested in this event. As Shohini

Ghosh has mentioned in her article, when the amount of money

invested and the kind of economic gains that the country and the

state would get was seen the pageant received a green signal but

here again there were conditions that had to be followed. That is

certain events in the beauty pageant were cancelled or to say

banned. That is, the swimsuit rounds among a few others. So here

when we see, the conditions and ideals of these moralists change

according to their need. A famous English saying comes to my

mind, which fits aptly for them. They (the moralists) want to

keep the cake and eat it too! That is, as is seen in this

particular case, they want all the economic benefits and to show

that India is progressive but want to do so on their own

conditions. No wonder post this incident never has been the Miss

World Pageant ever held in India.

But the most famous and fairly recent incidents of moral

policing where imposed on Sania Mirza in 2005 were a fatwa was

issued in her name over the issue of her dress code on the tennis

court; in a pub in 2009 in Mangalore, Karnataka and again in a

coffee shop in 2014, in the otherwise quite city Kozhikode,

Kerala. In the case of Sania Mirza again there was a lot written

both in support and against of her. In the end she had was forced

to increase her personal security.

Next was the Mangalore pub incident of moral policing which

triggered a nationwide protest. In January, 2009, members of the

Shri Ram Sena, barged into a local pub, “Amnesia- The Lounge” and

thrashed a group of boys and girls on the grounds that the pub

culture was immoral and that girls for that matter must not visit

pubs. When this incident came out into the public eye, there was

nationwide protest that was held, about which I shall discuss in

my next section. Following this again in 2014, a coffee shop was

attacked in Kozhikode, Kerala, because it was said that coffee

houses in Kozhikode were place of indecent activities.

Apart from this case of moral policing and censorship has

been widely experienced even by journalists, where either their

works have not seen the light of the day, or their work is

heavily modified, or they get death threats. As Mahima Kaul in

her article quotes, in 2012, a media watchdog website by the name

Hoot had stated that at least 39 journalists had been either

threatened, assaulted or harassed in that particular year and

close to 5 were even killed. This number is not a small number

when we look at the kind of work that they have to do.

This is not it, the most alarming instances of moral

policing have been undertaken by the state police and by the

state government itself. The most evident example being the

impositions and the laws around the banning or censoring of

theatre plays and films, here films not just include mainstream

Bollywood films but even important and off-beat documentaries.

Now there is a long history behind the politics of the

formulation of the Cinematograph Act of 1952 into which I shall

not go. But some of the famous films that were banned by the

Central Board of Film Certification were Bandit Queen, Kama Sutra: A

tale of Love, Fire, Black Friday, Water, India’s Daughts, Muzaffarnagar Baaki Hai etc.

Apart from these, several plays have been banned just

because they portrayed certain events or people in bad light, or

made fun of them. And if not these, merely because they depicted

something against the Indian culture. As A. G. Noorani writes in

her article, censorship of plays is very much a political affair

in India (Noorani, 2004). Plays such as Budhe Bajpayee Ke Love Story;

Hey Ram and Sakharam Binder have been banned in the past. Apart from

plays being banned, a famous theatre personality Safdar Hashmi

was shot dead while performing a street play, Halla Bol due to his

politically charged plays.

Many states use the state police force to impose moral

policing and many a times, the state police take it in their own

hand to be the watchdogs of morality and moral conduct by

arresting couples for indecent behavior, banning kissing on the

Marine Drive, or holding hands. Many a times they even break into

private parties and arrest people, on the grounds that they are

polluting the culture by indulging in such activities.

The fight back and the popular response

There weren’t major protests against the several acts of moral

policing that were carried out by the various vigilant groups

until the January 2009 Mangalore pub attack incident. When the

attack came out in the open, there were major protests that were

undertaken nationwide. And in response to the attack a non-

violent protest campaign was started called the Pink Chaddi

Campaign. This campaign was launched by the Consortium of Pub-Going

Loose and Forward Women (Krishna, 2009, February 14). This campaign

was the idea of Nisha Susan, an employee of ‘Tehelka’, a

political journal and initiated by Nisha Susan, Isha Manchanda,

Mihira Sood and Jasmeen Patheja (Susan, 2009, February 28). This

campaign was in response to and a protest against a threat by

Pramod Muthalik of the Sri Ram Sena that he would marry any boy and

girl seen together on Valentine’s Day. In the Pink Chaddi Campaign,

it was decided that Pink Chaddi’s or pink underwear’s would be sent

to Muthalik’s office on Valentine’s Day (n.d., 2009, February

10). Ironically on Valentine’s Day, pink chaddi’s began to be

couriered to his office from across the country and even after

that, there was a continuous flow of pink chaddis.

The campaign saw widespread response in the form of support from

across the country. It also managed to get widespread media

coverage as it was a one of a kind campaign and protest movement

against morality policing. True it was not like the one where

people come out into the streets but it was powerful in its own

way, completely mobilized through social media. One could use

this as an excellent example of new social media social movement

(n.d. 2009, February 10). Just as there were many who stood up in

support of this movement, there were many who were very critical

of it and called it a publicity stunt, while others were of the

opinion that it made a mockery of the seriousness of the attack

on women which had triggered this campaign in the first place.

Another reaction to the whole attack and mobilization was that in

leu of precaustion and in order to maintain peace and order,

Muthalik and 140 other members of the Sri Ram Sena were kept

under preventive custody on Valentine’s Day, as was reported in

an article in TOI (n.d. 2009, February 14). Apart from this, The

Economic Times in one of its articles quoted the then Home

Minister, P. Chidambaram as saying “Sri Ram Sena is a threat to

the country. The center was watching its activities with great

concerns” and expected the Karnataka government to take firm

action against the group (n.d. 2009, February 9).

Another round of protest against moral policing was seen

when the Kiss of Love Campaign began. This too just like the Pink

Chaddi Campaign began on of the social media platform, ‘Facebook’

where it called for the youth in Kerala to come out in the open

and exercise their freedom to express by kissing their partner or

lover on November 2, 2014 in Cochin’s Marine Drive. This campaign

was in response to the morality police attack on several young

people in a coffee house in Kozhikode, Kerala. The campaign got

immense support and the facebook page by the name, “Kiss of Love”

got over a lakh likes (Mathew, 2014, October 30). the movement

was entirely conducted and organized by the youth in which it was

decided that it would be a peaceful march to the venue. Over 50

activists were picked up by the police under the name ‘violation

of law and order’ and on the other hand several religious groups

joined together to prevent the youth from participating in the

campaign (Koshy, 2014, November 2; Thomas, 2014, November 2).

However, the ‘kiss of love’ protest saw a lot of resistance from a

number of rightist group members who tried to physically stop the

protestors from either kissing or hugging each other and the

police did absolutely nothing to protect the protesters so they

can carry out a peaceful protest.

Post the ‘Kiss of Love’ protest in Cochin, a ‘Hug of Love

protest was undertaken in Ernakulam, Kerala, and eventually this

protest form spread across the country like wild fire, where in

all major cities, like Delhi, Hyderabad, Pondicherry, Mumbai,

Kolkata, and Chennai demonstrated their solidarity in the protest

against moral policing and in favour of the freedom of

expression.

Apart from this another major case of moral policing gone

severe can be seen in the Muzzafarnagar riots, which revolved

around the classic issue of the term ‘love jihad’ by mainstream

political leaders. Uttar Pradesh, as a state has a huge cultural

diversity and has a good number of families from both the Hindu

and Muslim communities and the whole incident began when a Muslim

boy and a Hindu girl fell in love. When their love came to light,

the girl’s brother beat the boy up and eventually killed him.

This lead to the development of communal clashes between the two

communities which eventually took the form of a riot in the

district. The reality of the riots was what was captured in the

documentary, ‘Muzzafarnagar Baaqi Hai’ and because the documentary

showed the Hindu community, in particular, in bad light, and so

it was banned. In protest of this banning, a nationwide screening

of the documentary was done across different cities of the county

on the 25th of August, 2015.

Conclusion

There is no denying the fact that we as a nation must uphold our

culture and tradition, however, it is equally important that in

the purpose of doing so, we don’t infringe over the rights and

freedom of another person, and/or community and no one, no matter

at what position, has the right to take away the fundament right

of another citizen. By saying this I am indicating towards the

moralizing role that the state and the police at times plays and

in my own way am protesting against such acts. As A.G. Noorani

writes in her article, the Supreme Court said it is the duty of

the state to protect the rights of its citizens (1990), because

it the state doesn’t stand up for it people, then who will?

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