Public spaces often feel restricted in Pakistan. It isn’t just the bad infrastructure or mountains of trash-those things might have been easier to bear if it weren’t for the unrelenting fear of being under male scrutiny, being watched and harassed, assaulted and raped and pushed to the fringes as though you don’t exist at all. That’s where Aurat March comes in, a day for women by women to celebrate women.
Today marks the sixth anniversary of the Aurat March-what began in 2018 as a single march for International Women’s Day has now become an annual event. Each year has seen a different kind of backlash. Organisers and participants have come to expect threats of violence and intense conservative opposition, with little to no oversight from authorities. These are not idle threats. In 2020, religious conservatives threw stones at participants right in the heart of Islamabad, only a few hundred yards away from the prime minister’s highly patrolled office. The police did not intervene. Last year, the march was confronted with a highly coordinated online disinformation campaign by conservative hardliners that aimed to distort the march’s message. This year, police personnel in Islamabad charged at women with batons.
Opponents of the Aurat March accuse organisers of promoting Western values at the expense of Islamic social norms. They go as far as to claim that the march is funded by foreign organisations whose sole objective is to destabilise Pakistan. A cursory glance at the Aurat March manifesto, with its emphasis on basic civil liberties reveals that this is not the case.
The women’s rights movement is growing every year in Pakistan, even crossing class barriers that were previously assumed impenetrable, signalling an increase in civic consciousness. While participants of the Aurat March are mainly women, its primary message of basic human dignity appeals to many people in the country. Indeed, the biggest challenge to Pakistani democracy comes from a lack of civil liberties-no freedom of the press and assembly, no rule of law. Pakistani society is still deeply entrenched in parochial tribalism Through their slogans and messaging, Marchers are creating a new vocabulary to describe the world beyond the binaries that the state and mainstream society impose. *