Is This Our 9/11 Moment? Young Men and Gender Violence in India

The December gang rape in Delhi has become India’s 9/11 moment. It galvanised people around the country to come together in mammoth vigils. In Delhi, street protests so completely unnerved the police and the administration that roads to the iconic India Gate, where protestors of all hues had gathered in the heart of the city, were blocked. For once, people said, gender violence became a central concern. Despite the compelling magnitude of the rallies around this specific event, we need to track the political history of outrage and we need to ask if, like 9/11, the 2012 event of the gang rape stigmatised a group.

‘Reform the boys’ has become a battle cry. We also need to step back and ask if collective protest has unfortunately resulted in a form of colonial regulation of young working class men as ‘objects’ of reform emanating from above. The particular instance of the December gang rape is the terrain for discussing issues of larger concern – mainly- the way hegemonic and subaltern masculinities are produced. Popular responses to awaken state responsibility across the globe are linked with the production of regulation and control of young men. It is immigrants, especially young immigrant men, who are first created as ‘outsiders’ and then become the objects of control. The fear of young immigrant men is a global phenomenon which I explore to analyse gender violence in the public sphere. 

This is by no means a way to obliterate the horror of gender violence. I do however see the seeming ‘action’ by the Indian state as subversion of protest. The intention to purge cities of migrants is thinly overlaid with the language of gender reform, high jacking the intention of protest replaced by a fear of male migrants.