After string of rapes, girls in India seek means to fight back
NEW DELHI — The schoolgirls ran into the auditorium, shouting, “Let’s go, let’s go,” in Hindi as they ushered one another into single-file lines. Some adjusted the big, red bows that held their braids together, part of their school uniform. Then they crouched into defensive postures, fists ready.
“Do not laugh!” Police Constable Renu, who like many Indians goes by one name, called from the stage above them, her white T-shirt emblazoned with “Respect Women” on the back.
“Do you think they will laugh when they attack you?” she asked. “You must strike back with anger.”
The girls stifled their smiles, their fists pummeling the air faster, with more determination. This was their seventh self-defense class, and they were feeling confident enough, many of them said, to do the unthinkable: stand up for themselves.
Renu has been teaching this free, 10-day course hosted by New Delhi police — a combination of karate, taekwondo and judo moves — for the past eight years in the city’s public schools and universities.
The initiative, with classes taught by several female officers, includes summer and winter camps for women and a course called “gender sensitization for boys,” a lawyer-led course that teaches men how to help women in trouble and how to be more respectful to them in public spaces.
Booked solid for the next six months, Renu said she has never been busier, as anxiety among women and girls grows with a stream of news headlines describing brutal assaults across the country, including recent national outrage after an 8-year-old girl was kidnapped, gang raped and murdered.
Since a 23-year-old woman, Jyoti Pandey Singh, was beaten, gang raped and fatally injured while riding a bus in the capital in 2012, women here have been on edge.
On a recent Tuesday morning, at the Navjeevan Sarvodaya Kanya Vidyalaya school, widely known as NSKV, Renu led about 180 girls, ages 11 to 17, through possible scenarios of men grabbing them from behind as they walked down the street, striking a blow to their heads or lunging for their necks. In each case, the girls responded with the moves they had been taught to deflect such attacks — grunting, kicking and punching in unison.
Since her older sister was assaulted while walking alone in their neighborhood last year, Mona Shamsher, a 16-year-old student, said she had not felt safe on the streets until this month, when her school offered the selfdefense course.
“At this time, girls aren’t safe,” she said. “Men treat us like we aren’t human.”
But she added, a clenched fist grinding into the palm of her open hand, “This gives me confidence.”