'Reclaim the Night': The Strange Parallels Between 'Stree 2' and RG Kar Protests

Sarkata’s character in 'Stree 2' isn’t something as simple as a ‘headless man’ – he IS toxic masculinity.

It’s a dark Wednesday night in August and the streets in India are witness to unusual activity – scores of women, coordinating through messages passed in chat groups or word-of-mouth, gathered on the streets on 14 August to protest the alleged rape and murder of a trainee doctor in Kolkata.

The same night, a movie released in the country – a few hours before its scheduled release on 15 August because the ‘night’ is the time for horror. This film, Stree 2, has a simple premise – a headless monster (aptly named Sarkata) is snatching women off the streets. But there’s a catch. The women he attacks are all ‘modern thinkers’ or, simply put, feminists.

The makers of the film perhaps didn’t anticipate the grim possibility of their timely horror-comedy becoming even more so. But watching the ‘reclaim the night’ protests unfold, even in little pockets across the country, and scrolling through people’s reactions to the brutal crime, unveils the coalescence of art and life.

Sarkata the Influencer & Women’s Safety

At one point in the film, Pankaj Tripathi’s character says, “Sarkata influencer hai. Woh apne followers badhaana chahta hai’ (Sarkata is an influencer, he wants to increase his followers)”.

In the film, Sarkata ‘influences’ the men in Chanderi (the fictional town where ‘Stree’ is set) to become raging misogynists. But his character isn’t something as simple as a ‘headless man’ – he is toxic masculinity; an embodiment of the societal structures that perpetuate and maintain the subjugation of women.

Under Sarkata’s ‘influence’, the men of Chanderi take young girls out of schools and essentially lock the women in their homes under the guise of ‘protecting’ them from a bigger threat.

The film comes a full circle in the climax when the women of Chanderi end up deciding to storm out of their homes and take their emancipation into their own hands.

This mirrors a discussion we have often had in real life – is keeping women out of public spaces the answer to rampant violence against women? Why do people ask women, “What was she doing out so late at night?” and never “Why can’t a woman walk around late at night without fearing for her life?”

The 'reclaim the night' movement is an antithesis to this very idea.

‘Reclaim the night’ marches – an intrinsic part of the Women’s Liberation Movement of the 1970s – demanded that women be able to move through public spaces safely, especially at night.

In 'Stree 2', by the simple act of walking together to a place of worship, the women reclaimed the streets of Chanderi. Ironically, in real life, even the ‘reclaim the night’ protests became an unsafe space for protestors in Kolkata on the night of 14 August after a mob stormed the RG Kar Hospital premises and destroyed the protest site and hospital property.

Policing Women and Their Choices

There’s an interesting difference between Stree and Stree 2. In the predecessor, when a vengeful entity was kidnapping the men of Chanderi, everyone was focused on defeating ‘stree’. However, in Stree 2, when Sarkata starts targeting women, their first response is to go to Vicky (a small-time tailor played by Rajkummar Rao) and get their clothes altered – sleeves are made longer, necklines are tailored higher.

With this simple sequence, the film takes a lot at how often women are policed even for something as basic as their clothes. The women of Chanderi believe that if they dress more ‘traditionally’ or more ‘modestly’, they’ll be safe from Sarkata.

But that's far from the truth. Society has, for years, policed women for their choices instead of addressing the misogyny and glaring faults in the way society itself is structured.

For instance, in November 2023, the Uttar Pradesh government issued a puzzling diktat as part of the ‘Safe City’ project – coaching classes were to not conduct classes for female students in the late evening.

The brunt of our inability to end violence perpetrated against women continued to fall on… women. It’s not that late-evening coaching classes were stopped; women were stopped from attending them.

Even at home, young girls are asked to ‘be back by sunset’ for their own safety. If women ‘not going out late at night’ is the big solve for sexual violence that people assume it to be, that assumption must rise from the fact that they are ‘safe’ inside their homes. But are they?

The 2023 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) global study on homicide noted that ‘homicidal violence has a clear gender dimension’.

“While in 2021, most homicides worldwide were committed against men and boys (81%), women and girls were disproportionately affected by homicidal violence in the home: they represent approximately 54% of all victims of killings in the home and 66% of all victims of intimate partner killings.”

UNODC report

Even without relying on reports, simply talking to women around you will reveal that many have faced sexual assault and misconduct within the confines of their home, from family members or friends of family members. Even during the COVID pandemic, when everyone was locked inside their homes, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned of women’s increased exposure to violence.

After the rape and murder case, followed by the events of 15 August at RG Kar Hospital, several women left their hostel fearing for their safety, The Indian Express reported. “We are just 17 women in our hostel now. It used to house 160 junior women doctors... After 9 August, students started to leave the campus. Some returned a couple of days later. But after the attack on the hospital by miscreants, more students, especially the girls, left,” one MBBS student told the newspaper.

The ‘Perfect Victim’ & Woefully Misplaced Priorities

And how can one forget that we are so hell-bent on not addressing the systemic inequalities that lead to violence against women that we end up victim-blaming, almost every single time.

This rises from the myth of the ‘perfect victim’ – society believes that only a woman 'devoid of any flaws' deserves sympathy.

“Why was she out late at night? What was she wearing? Why was she hanging around with men? Why was she drinking? Why didn’t she say something earlier?” are all questions you’ve probably heard multiple times whenever sexual violence against women is discussed. This is a dangerous trope because it implies that some people deserve the violence they’re subjected to because they didn’t conform to society’s moral standards.

None of these questions ever come from people actually concerned about women’s safety – they’re concerned with painting the woman as a contributor to the crimes committed against her, the imperfect victim.

And 'stree' was an 'imperfect victim'. While 'stree' is first presented as a vengeful spirit out to harm the residents of Chanderi, the film eventually wraps but with the message that the only thing ‘stree’ needed was respect and empathy.

Her real story is darker – she was a courtesan who was killed because she fell in love and decided to get married. Even when the men of Chanderi are being hunted, one asks if it’s true that ‘stree’ sleeps with the men she abducts.

A woman killed for exercising her agency is sexualised even after her death – she is still burdened by the expectations of morality that society has placed upon her.

I bring this up because this is a phrase that often came up when people talked about the RG Kar case – a young woman belonging to a noble professional simply resting after a shift falls into this harmful trope.

But that didn’t mean that she didn’t receive the same brutal victim-blaming that others have.

‘None Of Are Free Till All of Us Are Free’

Another scene that stands out in Stree 2, whether it was intended so or not, is the one where Shraddha Kapoor’s character decides to sacrifice herself so Vicky can free the women Sarkata has held captive. These women are under a trance – devoid, in that moment, of an agency that Kapoor’s character possesses. We learn, soon after, that when Sarkata attacks her, every single woman in the vicinity is affected – they are all connected to each other.

If there is one thing the protests across India have highlighted, it’s the intersection of all inequalities with gendered violence.

People whose identities exist in the intersections of caste, class, gender, and race tend to be more vulnerable to violence. Without this understanding too, true emancipation is impossible – the primary argument intersectional feminists make.

The safety of the women in Chanderi, both in and outside Sarkata’s realm, hinges on each other’s safety. Even when women take a sigh of relief when they find out that only women with 'modern thoughts' are being attacked by Sarkata, a character instantly reminds them that even the simple act of using a cellphone unites them with the 'modern thinkers'.

But this isn’t an omnipresent understanding. Why else would Bahujan women be asked to leave the ‘reclaim the night’ protests otherwise populated by the residents of a posh Mumbai locality?

Several residents from Jai Bhim Nagar slum in Powai, too, had joined the protest in solidarity with the Kolkata victim, but they were asked to leave. The women were raising the issue of their own safety – after their basti was demolished, many of them have had to sleep on the streets.

But one of the protestors said, “Your issues are different from those raised here,” forcing them to leave, as per The Wire.

Isn't their safety intrinsically tied to the safety of every single person in this country, including the protestors who asked them to leave?

Why Are We Back Here?

The trainee doctor’s case is not an anomaly and shouldn’t be treated as such – in the few days that followed, several other cases of sexual assault and rape (some against minors) from more than five states have been reported in Indian media. The problem never lay with women or where they were or what they were doing – the problem is systemic.

And till we don’t actually try to change society from within, we will always be setting our women up for lone, dangerous battles for safety. Over and over again.