"No city for lovers:" anti-Romeo squads, resistance, and the micro-politics of moral policing in an Indian city. Issue 3 (3rd July 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Sen, Atreyee
• Is Part Of: Critical Asian studies. Volume 54:Issue 3(2022)
• Page Start: 307
• Page End: 326
• Publication Date: 2022-07-03
• Subjects: Urban life -- India -- informal policing -- young lovers -- vigilantism; Asia -- Periodicals; 950.05
• DOI: 10.1080/14672715.2022.2078732
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1467-2715

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This article explores the quotidian politics of women's virtue vigilante groups in Mumbai. It illustrates the multiple ways in which lower class "respectable women, " ranging from members of ladies' groups to lone-wolf leaders, actively participate in cleansing the cityscape of what they believe is "sexual vulgarity" by daily surveillance over public displays of love in poor and peripheral localities. This militant scrutiny of urban public conduct is intimately related to daily security anxieties about those they label as perverts, sex addicts, and pedophiles occupying urban areas, which are still safe spaces for less affluent women and children. These women's groups and their resilient/adaptable moral authority in the management of public space offer imperceptible and enduring challenges to the hegemony of police governance over such urban spatial orders.