Village backs ban on cellphones for girls

AASRA: Six couples in love ran away at a go from this village of over 30,000 a year ago and married in court. Aasra was shocked. That wasn’t the last straw. But when one of them returned to live here, the stink got unbearable. Village elders had to restore order. They issued a firman: No mobile phones for women below 40. They wouldn’t go to the market unescorted.Boys were banned from playing songs on their mobile phones in the streets.
Not just men, Aasra’s women were equally outraged when the couple returned. “How can a brother marry his sister and return to live here,” 20-yr-old Asma asks. And, she has an education, unlike some others here. She has just started her Fiza Public School with her dad’s help.
Just under 100 km from Delhi, this is a village that lives in a time long gone. Straddling the Bagpat-Muzaffarnagar border. Lush cane fields on either side of the highway give way to a dirt road that leads to the village of both mud and concrete houses.
Most houses look similar. The usual portico where the men lounge. Cattle in the yard (and cars) and then the living quarters from where women seldom step out. But in-between are some large dwellings that flaunt washing machines displayed in the centre of the courtyard.
The women and girls are all in salwar kameez and no face is covered in this Muslim village. The firman by the village’s sarpanch-hopeful Muhakkam Pehelwan may make rest of the rest of the country bang their heads against the wall. But on the face of it, most of the village – men and women –favour the strictures. For instance, here’s what Asma has to say: “What do you need a mobile for? You get all sorts of calls. Boys come outside the house and call you out, play songs loudly.”
Movie songs? “No, it’s not that bad yet,” says the father Jilleuddin. “Most households have a single phone kept at home.” Father of five girls, Shah Rukh, insists he expects the media to talk of their village as the upholder of values. “Write about this. Stop wrongdoing. Encourage traditional practices.”
Two things had to be stopped. First, the weekly bazaar of spices and vegetables, says 20-year-old tailor Md Arif. It had become a rendezvous for young couples. Second, boys had to be stopped from taking pictures of girls. “It’s abuse of the mobile phone. It’s not right, is it, for brothers to take photos of their sisters and show them to their friends?” says Shah Rukh.
Baraut, 20 km towards Delhi, is the nearest town where mobile phones are sold. Aasra is not rich enough to afford mobiles for every person anyway, says Shah Rukh, but a titter goes up. “Chinese mobiles are all over,” says a teenager who is quickly hushed.
Voice after voice rallies around the diktat. Mobiles keep you connected, develop relationships. For the village that wears its ‘educated’ status on its sleeves, boy falling in love with girl is just not on. They impress upon you it’s an educated village. Names roll off of persons in government ‘positions’ and the police, even a judge. Every child goes to one of three primary schools and most girls study till Class X, some till Class XII. The married ones join anganwadis, work for monthly polio drives, awareness drives and so on.
Some point to the indulgence of a father giving a daughter a mobile that leads to the problems. But all that, hope the villagers, will be in the past. The new decree is being taken seriously and it’s too bad that the ‘city-types’ don’t agree.
Amid all this, there’s also 30-year-old Md Parvez, who works in a Delhi carpenter shop and lives in Loni. He had come visiting. What does he think of the diktat? “I have to go for my prayers,” he smiles as he fades into the mosque. His eyes wanting to talk.