The Aurat March ushers in a radical feminist movement in Pakistan

Karachi, Pakistan — On the morning of March 8, 2020, hundreds of women gathered across the lawn at Karachi’s Frere Hall, the designated meeting site for the Aurat March (Urdu for “Women’s March”) since its inception two years ago. The atmosphere was electric: women donning headscarves and burqas stood shoulder to shoulder with women in Western attire, hoisting signs that read,“Khud khana garam karo” (“Warm your food yourself”); “Tu karey to stud, me karun to slut”(“If you do it then you’re a stud, but if I do it then I’m a slut”); and, perhaps the most controversial,“Mera jism meri marzi” (“My body, my choice”).

This year’s theme was “Khud Mukhtari” (“autonomy”) in economic, legal, health, and social matters — including bodily autonomy. Led by organizers Hum Aurtain (“We the Women”), a feminist collective, marchers took to the streets to challenge Pakistan’s patriarchal society, from the policing of their clothing and movement within society to the acute gendered violence that women face, such as honor killings and acid attacks.

That same day, sister marches were taking place all over Pakistan, including in Peshawar, Islamabad, Quetta, and Lahore.

The march’s manifesto, which is updated yearly to reflect the current socio-political moment, was launched at the Lahore Press Club on March 5, and called for reproductive and sexual liberties, transgender representation in the political process, equal healthcare access, protection for the informal sector, religious minority rights, and an end to forced religious conversions. In the past few years, the administration has remained silent about the exponential increase in sexual violence against women and children across Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province. And despite the increase in transgender representation through the introduction of the Transgender Persons, Protection of Rights Bill (2018) in Pakistan’s National Assembly, transgender people still remain one of the most marginalized communities in Pakistan. By including these issues to this year’s manifesto, the Aurat March team aimed to make addressing them inescapable.

Now in its third year, the Aurat March is more formidable than ever, even having managed to secure political backing from major political parties, including the left-leaning Pakistan’s People Party (PPP). The movement has also received formal support from the progressive Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) and the conservative Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-n).

A history of feminist protest

In the years following Partition of the subcontinent in August 1947, when Pakistan gained independence, women were preoccupied with the recovery and establishment of refugees who had migrated from India to the newly-created Pakistan. During the ’60s, the movement invested in the growth of educational institutions and job opportunities for young women across the country, focusing primarily on welfare issues, but it largely ignored the political sphere.

It wasn’t until the ‘Hudood Ordinance’ was implemented in 1979 by Zia-ul-Haq — then-president and military dictator — that feminism in the country became more politically assertive. The Hudood Ordinance was a doctrine created to align Pakistani laws with a strict interpretation of Islamic values, but the tenets proved to be largely discriminatory against Pakistani women. The zina law under this ordinance was perhaps the most controversial: The law stated that if a woman was raped, she was to prove her case by producing four Muslim adult male witnesses — a rule so stringent that no victim could ever step forward.

On February 12, 1983, Pakistani women took to the streets for the first time to overturn the biased Hudood Ordinance and protest the misuse of Islam in politics. Protests and rallies at that time were banned under Pakistan’s Criminal Code, but around 200 women protesters in Lahore openly challenged the military regime and were met with tear gas, shelling, stoning, and beating by the police. As a result of the courageous efforts of these women, Pakistan now observes a ‘National Women’s Day’ on February 12 to commemorate the events of that day and to serve as a reminder of the power women have as agents of change.

The ’80s continued to see a more politicized feminist movement engage in protests for the restoration of democratic and human rights, laying the foundation for today’s progressive movements in the country.

“From the ’80s till now, the women’s movement has been relatively more radical in its agenda,” Dr. Nida Kirmani, associate professor of sociology at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), told Women Under Siege. “The language has shifted with ideas about intersectionality and bodily autonomy foregrounded in particular ways. There is more awareness of the fluidity of gender boundaries and the inclusion, to some extent, of issues related to sexuality.”

Under the Aurat March, taboo subjects like sexuality and sexual health have been brought out into the streets, marking a sweeping change in the direction of the women’s movement within the nation. The Aurat Marchers used their posters and slogans to address and make stigmatized issues more accessible in language.

“We, as a society, have become numb to the traditional ways of talking about gender violence,” said Shehzil Malik, a designer who created some of the posters for this year’s Aurat March challenging patriarchal norms and sexual harassment. “Honor killings, acid attacks, [and] child rape simply became words we heard our whole lives. But the Aurat March uses art, humor, and colloquial language to refer [to] such taboo topics in Pakistani culture. It has made the political personal.”

Gendered violence, like those examples enumerated by Malik, remains prevalent in Pakistan’s society. From its World Report 2020 for Pakistan, Human Rights Watch noted that very few honor killings were prosecuted, and child sexual abuse remains common. Sahil, a child protection organization that focuses on child sexual abuse, reported that, on average, eight children were abused per day in Pakistan in 2019. And in August of last year, the National Assembly’s standing committee on law and justice struck down a bill that would have set the minimum age of marriage of girls at 18. Given that these issues are especially pronounced in smaller, rural towns, where the patriarchal structure is stronger, many cases go unreported.

A progressive movement in a conservative landscape

Over recent years, the Aurat March has managed to become the torchbearer of the feminist movement by providing an established platform to communally acknowledge and rebel against discriminative norms. The conversations surrounding child abuse, underage and forced marriages, inequal career opportunities, and women’s restricted movement in Pakistani society have all become fair game and open topics for discussion by women of all backgrounds. This has primarily been instigated through the growing space provided by the Aurat March.

However, in a country like Pakistan, where dogma is largely influenced by religion, progressive movements like the Aurat March are not particularly well received by religious scholars and politically conservative groups, who decry the March’s demands and civil disobedience as “un-Islamic.” In the midst of receiving full support from the PPP, the movement has received considerable backlash from religious political parties, like the Jamiat Ulema Islam-F (JUI-F).

A week before the march, JUI-F party leader Maulana Fazal-ur-Rehman rebuked the march for its “vulgarity” and “obscenity,” inciting party workers to, “stop them [the marchers] by force.” A petition was also filed in the Lahore High Court by Azhar Siddique, a lawyer and chairman of the right-wing Judicial Activism Council, to ban the Aurat March on the grounds that it defied Islamic morals. The petition was rejected within the week; Chief Justice Mamoom Rashid Sheikh ruled that the court cannot ban freedom of expression and permitted participants to exercise their constitutional right to free speech in accordance with the “norms of decency.”

But the ruling didn’t prevent others from intervening.

On the day of the march in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, a group called the Haya March (Urdu for “Modesty March”) organized a counter-protest against the Aurat March across the street. Violence erupted when Haya March participants began throwing stones and shoes at the Aurat Marchers. Despite the police intervention to create a stronger barrier between the two rallies, many of the Aurat Marchers were injured.

There were consequences after the march as well: Some participants reported online harassment, including rape threats and hate speech, after being identified as attendees of the march. Others found photos of themselves shared online, taken at the march without their consent.

“The slogans at the [Aurat] March were purely vile,” said Naseema,* who believes the Aurat March will negatively influence the younger female generation. “‘Mera jism meri marzi’ (‘My body, my choice’) — that practically allows women to do whatever they want with their bodies [sexually]. If you live in a country like Pakistan, which is an Islamic Republic, you have to respect the cultural norms and traditions that come with it.”

But, despite appearances, opposition to the march and its manifesto is not solely rooted in an extreme, conservative interpretation of Islam. Nor can it be wholly blamed for the subjugation of women for which predominantly Muslim countries are made so infamous to the West. “Islam cannot be held responsible for the oppression of women, gender and sexual minorities,” a spokesperson from the Aurat March Lahore team told Women Under Siege via email. The principal foe, they explained, is more universally recognizable to women: “For example, honor killings or revenged-based sexual crimes are deeply rooted in tribal, revenge and family-centric misogyny rather than Islamic doctrines. These crimes based on kinship and male control are part of the issues we march against.”

Opposition to the march has also been framed as a clash of cultures; one of the principal accusations against Hum Aurtein and other organizers is that their ideology is rooted in Western ideals, particularly with the slogan,“Mera jism meri marzi.”

“You can’t expect the older generations to adapt to your Western values,” said Naseema. “It’s you who has to adapt to the societal norms.”

In addition to purportedly imposing Western ideals, the Aurat March has also been accused of being Western-funded. “[It] comes from this suspicion of foreign-funded reform, even though the Aurat March agitates for workers’ rights and wealth redistribution,” the Aurat March Lahore team said. “Religious leaders also use the battle-cry of ‘Western funds’ to paint all progressive and left-leaning initiatives, including Aurat March, in one stroke.”

A determined future for the Aurat March

There was valid criticism of the march, too. Muzzammil Ali Tariq, a finance student from Karachi, expressed his apprehensions about the ideology of the march. “Yes, I do believe that women get fewer opportunities as compared to men, career and education-wise,” he said. “But I don’t see any such representation of these important issues. Instead, the marchers were focused on less important matters, like ‘Khud khana garam karo’ (‘Warm your food yourself’).”

Noting a lack of representation of working-class women in the march, Tariq said, “The people who needed it [the Aurat March] the most were not involved at all.” While there were a few marchers hailing from marginalized communities — including laborers, domestic workers, women from slums, and farmers — the majority of the marchers came from middle and upper-middle class backgrounds.

The organizers must ensure that the different facets of feminism are highlighted within Pakistan. For instance, the debate around a woman’s clothing is a clear non-issue to the woman who was married off at a young age. However, there has been a vigorous attempt by the Aurat March organizers to mobilize groups from the rural areas and inner-provincial villages in order to increase the representation of the working-class. The organizers have visited villages and small towns like Kahtore, Lyari city, Hijrat Colony and Korangi to invite women to the Aurat March. Women Under Siege was unable to reach the Hum Aurtein collective for comment about their efforts to increase representation of all classes in the march.

Despite the attempts to taint this movement, Pakistan’s women remain steadfast in their call to abolish systems built on hegemony, patriarchy, and neo-colonialism.

To unlearn decades of misogynistic behavior and dismantle patriarchal mentality will take time for some of Pakistan’s citizens. But given the unwavering resilience to the cause by the organizers and participants of the Aurat March, it seems that this movement is here to stay and will become a regular fixture in the years to come.

* Naseema’s name has been changed to protect her identity.