Consent and the politics around Holi

Bura na maano.
Don't feel bad.
A seemingly innocuous phrase, but one often used as a justification, an excuse for something.
Don't feel bad. It's just a joke.
It's just 'locker room talk'.
It's just harmless banter.
It's just...

Schbang, a media agency, did a campaign this year to bring light to how men use Holi often as an excuse to ignore consent, and the comments were full of people calling it 'an attack on Hindu festivals'.
It got me thinking.
How do people always so severely miss the point?
When I was in what's known as the country's best college for women interested in liberal arts, Holi was a lot of things. It was joyous celebration within a space where we could just...be. It was the hostel girls arriving to class covered in shades of blue, red, yellow, pink. It was us greeting the sev puri bhaiya (who had an Orkut group dedicated to him) with gulaal, and decorating the lower foyer of college.
But...it was also street plays, talking about consent, of safety, of women swapping stories of being waylaid by holi revellers on their way home. Where subtle and not so subtle strangers, colleagues, family members thought a fistful of colours makes it acceptable to touch, brush, and sometimes outright grope. Of travelling in a rickshaw or auto and being hit in the chest by water balloons, some not necessarily filled with water...
Bura na maano, Holi hai.
Boys will be boys.
The similarity in these two statements is that they both put the onus of responsibility on the victim and not the aggressor.
Consent is a very basic concept at its core. If you think about it - you wouldn't like people to take your things without your permission. Why then, should your body and person be any different?
The issue lies in the fact that historically, women have never really had bodily autonomy. It's a process, ingrained in all the little things society makes us do.
'Don't be a bad girl, go hug uncle.'
'Give aunty a kiss.'
We 'lose our virginity' to someone and are judged constantly for the sexual choices we may make.
We are 'given away' during wedding ceremonies, passed on like property from father to new husband.
When a woman gets pregnant, it's not upto her to decide if she wants to go through with it or not.
And if someone violates us, it's almost always our fault.

All of these concepts are ingrained in us since birth - boys are taught entitlement to everything in the world including us, and girls are taught to make their whole lives revolve around boys and how to please them, right from the start.
And so when our bodies aren't really ours, it's easy for men to do what they want with them and then blame us.
But in reality, it's so easy.

If it's not your body - you can't touch it unless the person tells you that it's ok. Nothing can 'ask' for it unless it's the person whose body it is. Clothes, situations, and external factors, none of it matters.

Just don't touch someone without them saying it's ok to! Simple.
I remember being very impressed on a date when someone once asked me first if it was okay before things got heated up since I hadn't said anything about it so far. Until I realised that it's the bare minimum and should be the default.
Let's be better, all of us. Let's unlearn all the toxic bs, and remember that just like we shouldn't take someone's belongings without permission, we shouldn't do anything else to them either.
And maybe someday, phrases like 'bura na maano, Holi hai' will be a thing of the past.

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