Justice is a clap away
21-year-olds Ekta and Mugdha launched the Taali Bajao campaign
By : arpitha rao
Update: 2015-09-16 02:21 GMT
Imagine being groped in a bus, and suddenly hearing loud claps behind you, that scare the harasser away. In this country, where many cases of sexual harassment are reported, two 21-year-old students from the city may have paved a new way to ward off girls being harassed in public.
Mugdha Jain and Ekta Kapoor, along with three others, formed the ‘Taali Bajao’ campaign to prevent bystanders from remaining mute witnesses during an eve teasing or molestation incident. The campaign urges people to start clapping loudly when they see a harasser misbehaving with a girl or boy, instead of being mum or taking the law into their hands. When the harasser hears people clapping, he/she will get the message that people are not going to keep quiet or remain passive. The online campaign, targeted at people in the age group of 18-25 years, is predicated on the non-violent act of slow clapping that is used to shame the perpetrator.
Mugdha and Ekta thought of this concept when they were taking lessons on gender violence at college. “The main aim is to urge the bystanders to speak up,” says Mugdha. “We conducted a survey among our classmates to find out the reasons why people don’t stop such incidents from happening — what we found was that either the bystanders are intimidated by the harasser, or that they’re insensitive to the victim. Only if the victim is their relative or friend do they really care,” she adds. The ‘Taali Bajao’ campaign addresses these two issues in one go, by using the non-violent method of clapping to alert the harasser. “Clapping will not physically harm any of the parties involved, but it will still warn them saying the action is unacceptable,” Mugdha explains.
“Many college-goers including us have been in situations where a group of men whistle or pass snide comments at us. It doesn’t stop there — some girls are groped in public places or character-shamed,” shares Ekta Kapoor.
Says Ekta, “In fact when we were researching, we found out that a girl from our college had been groped right outside the campus; there were so many people including her friend who witnessed the incident, yet nobody said a word.” What hope does any girl have, if the people close to her stay silent when she’s in trouble, asks Ekta.
“Imagine if a group of 50 people start clapping at one harasser. He will leave the girl alone. It’s non-violent, but effective,” she says. Indian cinema, especially Bollywood has a strong role in negatively influencing the audience. “In most Hindi movies, the hero tries to woo the heroine either by threatening or stalking her. Seen with a fresh perspective, these are actually cases of eve teasing,” elaborates Ekta. Highlighting such instances, supporters of the campaign have been posting Dubsmash videos of offensive movie dialogues to create awareness.
“We may laugh at these dialogues in theatres, but if a guy actually behaves that way in public, it is eve-teasing, or molesting. Similarly, we’ve started posting pictures called Taali Bajao Tales (similar to Terribly Tiny Tales), where real-life harassment incidents are highlighted in just two or three lines,” says Ekta. This campaign is garnering attention through social media as are these posts and videos, but our society has a long way to go before rape is not seen as a casual misdemeanour but a serious, punishable offense.