# Moral policing and the price of freedom A recent incident in Jamui, Bihar, and why a woman having to negotiate her own safety is not a private problem but a national one. - Section: General - Published: 2026-09-25 - Tags: society, india, gender - HTML: https://www.atharvakanherkar.com/blog/moral-policing-and-the-price-of-freedom A recent incident from Jamui, Bihar, disturbed me for a reason beyond the violence visible in the video. Two teenagers returning from coaching classes were reportedly surrounded by a group of men, questioned, assaulted, and molested. She was, in slang-ish terms, "moral policed." The larger problem is the idea that a woman's ordinary choices are somehow public property, that society gets a vote on where she goes, what she wears, whom she meets, and how she lives. You would think this is just with some patriarchal men, and you'd be wrong. Sadly, women contribute to this in a very similar way to how men do. If a woman has to calculate whether a particular road is safe, whether travelling after dark is worth the risk, whether talking to a male friend will attract attention, or whether taking a job far from home will create problems for her family, those restrictions eventually affect education, employment, relationships, and economic independence. This would cause wreckage to a country's economics. If somewhat 50%-ish of the population just fears to study, work, or go out, how are you supposed to cultivate the country? If half the population modifies its education, employment, transportation, and social life around the possibility of harassment, the entire society pays for it. ## The West was not always "liberal" Whenever conversations about women's autonomy happen in India, Western societies are often brought up as if they simply became liberal one day. They did not. Take France, a country now strongly associated with individual liberty. French women received the right to vote only in 1944. Until 1965, a married woman could not freely pursue a profession without her husband's consent. Contraception was legalized in 1967, joint parental authority followed in 1970, and abortion was legalized in 1975. In other words, many rights that feel completely ordinary in modern France are historically very recent. Thinking about this, it's recent as under a hundred years. Some even under fifty. So it's quite recent, and it has so much to learn. How did it happen? People protested. Activists wrote, voted, and challenged existing institutions. Women entered universities and workplaces in larger numbers. Economic structures changed. Families changed. Laws changed, and then social expectations changed alongside them. Sometimes the law moved ahead of society. Sometimes society pushed the law forward. ## India already promises equality on paper India does not need to import the idea of equality from France or America. Our own Constitution establishes equality before the law, prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, and guarantees equality of opportunity in public employment through Articles 14, 15, and 16. Do we give daughters the freedom we automatically give sons? Can a woman return home late without her character being questioned? Not even this. Even if parents, or the male partner, believe she can go out, he will most probably fear that she might not feel safe. Do you know what this is? It's a loop. Even people who genuinely think equality matters can't really step into it, because they love their women and they just don't want to risk it. Can she have male friends without the neighbourhood treating it as public business? Can she reject someone without fearing retaliation? Can she choose not to marry? Can she marry someone her community dislikes? Can she dress differently without strangers believing that her clothes somehow reduce her right to safety? Can she dress however she wants just because it's comfortable? Can she let go of the stereotypical image of what a woman should look like, not cut her body hair, and just be comfortable with herself? These small questions tell us much more about everyday freedom than grand speeches do. A mother may restrict her daughter because that was how she herself was raised. A neighbour may shame another woman because she genuinely believes respectable women should behave a certain way. Families may place restrictions on daughters not because they consciously hate them, but because generations of social conditioning have taught them that controlling women is protection. ## I don't have the solution I am just disappointed, and talking about problems I'm tired of encountering every day. I am done with how it works, and I hate it. Society has to look into this. But I think the direction should be obvious. Freedom cannot mean that men are free while women are free only when their families, neighbours, and strangers approve of their decisions. The real test of a free society is not how it treats people whose choices everyone agrees with. It is whether it protects someone's freedom even when the rest of us would have chosen differently.