Recently, in Bihar, an unmarried trainee police constable became pregnant. For this, she was suspended from training. Pregnancy during training — which is physically rigorous — is not advisable because of the strain it may impose on the woman’s body.

In this case, however, the woman’s suspension had nothing to do with concern for her health. Instead, the authorities claimed that she had committed an ‘immoral act’. An ex-officer went so far as to say she was guilty of ‘moral turpitude’ and that she deserved punishment. Several months later — by which time the pregnancy had been medically terminated — the woman was allowed to resume her training. By then of course, everyone knew her story.

No one knows, and nor is it anyone’s business, how the trainee became pregnant. But let us for a moment assume that she was exercising her constitutional right to have consensual sex with her partner. Why should she be punished for this?

Over the past few years such punishments have been growing as have the moral multitudes who mete them out with new actors being added all the time. Much of the ire of the moral brigades is directed, not surprisingly, at women (although sometimes men are not spared either) and in performing what they see as their ‘duty’ to ‘protect’ women, they can and do resort to violence. ‘Protection’ provides a useful cover.

Urban public spaces that have proliferated in the post-globalisation era — the shopping mall, the coffee shop — and others such as the chai stall or the public park which have a longer life, have all become good targets for the moral brigades. All it takes is to turn up in some numbers, perhaps in orange t-shirts or scarves, spot likely targets, and take action.

You may not have the law on your side, but you’ll draw strength from other kinds of legitimising forces. The ‘uniform’, however casual, helps to create an impression of ‘officialdom’, and the tacit support of State forces — even if it is only through their silence or their lack of condemnation — helps to create the impression that an alternative sovereign power is in the making.

And sometimes, as in the case of the anti-Romeo incidents, the law will step in too. They’ll arrive in their uniform, and will ‘protect’ women by taking away any ‘Romeos’ who may be hanging around, and read them the moral code.

All of this is very confusing for women. Should they be grateful that they are being ‘protected’ or should they be concerned? As one college-goer said, “We’re not sure what they are doing, it’s very confusing. They say they are doing it for us but it feels just the opposite.”

The battles are so frequent and on so many fronts that, sometimes, it becomes difficult to connect them. And this is perhaps what the moral multitudes want: To keep people busy fighting many seemingly small battles so that the patterns that underlie these do not become apparent.

And yet, in today’s India, the fact that you cannot eat what you want, you cannot think what you want, you cannot read or publish what you want, you cannot love who you want, you cannot have sex with whom you want, are all part of the same grand and sinister design.

When the overall context changes, things that may not seem to be related, also acquire new meanings.

Take a look at recent developments in Assam: the State’s draft population policy, now up on its website, suggests the imposition of the two-child norm in order to control the population of Assam, which, according to the government, is increasing rapidly (a claim that several researchers have contested).

It’s odd that this should come at a time when many States have repealed or not introduced such a provision, and feminists in particular, fear that the imposition of a two-child norm may skew Assam’s sex ratio, which is better than in other parts of the country. It is common knowledge that the two-child norm or similar restrictions that have been imposed anywhere in the world, have resulted in the disappearance of the girl child.

Here’s where this seemingly unrelated development links to the moral policing that’s happening across India: fewer girl children means less need for moral policing on the streets, undervaluing girls means you can impose greater controls on them and keep them in line, and once such undervaluation becomes deep and entrenched — more than it is at the moment — it becomes much easier to keep women under control.

Why is this not surprising?

Urvashi Butalia is an editor, publisher and director of Zubaan

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