Singapore: Tara John is a freelance journalist who has written for The Times of London and The Straits Times. She currently works in Singapore as a photo sub-editor at a news agency and has a keen interest in identity politics.
On Sunday the 27th of January, a vigil was held in Singapore during the early evening to honor the memory of 'Amanat' (NOT her real name) ; a young woman whose brutal attack in Delhi and eventual passing not only appalled the nation of India but stimulated soul-searching across the world regarding the misogyny and violence countless women face.
The organizers of the event were expecting a modest turnout. However, within the green and peaceful confines of Hong Lim Park, a considerable crowd of over 300 people gathered. The event consisted of live music interspersed with speeches, providing a positive yet visceral message of progress and equality.
Aman Narain, who is both a banker and blogger, made a speech that struck a chord with me as he attributed a lack of education and respect to the violence against women. He called for a dialogue, and a change in people's attitude, by learning how to treat everyone, men and women, with an equal amount of dignity and respect.
As his speech ended, over a dozen men wearing skirts and sarongs gathered to the right of the podium. Their spokesperson Manish Melwani, 26, told the crowd that a similar gathering of men in skirts happened in Bangalore a couple of weeks earlier, and like their predecessors they wanted to show that a particular dress was not the cause of sexual violence; instead it was a gross misrepresentation of the wider and more serious issues at stake. Melwani went on to explain that they "hope that policy-makers in India will start to look and change the deeper structures in society that lead to violence against women".
Visual artist Ketna Patel questioned in her speech "how de-sensitisation can happen to anyone, and how our complex, multi-faceted society is hugely responsible [for it]". Stressing that the elaborate web of humanity was sensitive, and quite like quantum physics, "one person's thoughts on one side of the world can affect many, thousands of miles away".
The last speaker, Dr Shirin Jacob, a gynecologist, touched upon gender roles as a cause for violence, and postulated that the resolution lay in the creation of "safe spaces", in which individuals learnt to express their discomfort with the "unsafe people" of the world. Like Narain, she too was calling for a dialogue, where a fundamental shift was needed in the attitudes and cultural norms of women and men alike.
Following a pledge led by the organizers, the audience solemnly lit candles in Amanat's memory, marking the end of the vigil.
A shared sense of Amanat's tragedy is what brought everyone to the park that day, and as people drifted back into the humdrum of their normal routines, it seemed that they took away with them a similar purpose; to change to the attitudes towards women.
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