In the wake of the recent rape of a foreign student of Tata Institute of Social Sciences, a blogger has decided to encourage women to take matter into their own hands when faced with such kind of trouble. Harish Iyer, who set up a blog called Sita-Sena.blogspot.com on the eve of Women’s Day this year to encourage women to raise their voices for their own protection, now advocates that women should wear whistles as fashion accessories, which could be used in emergencies to call out for help. “In my opinion, there is no way that a rape or molestation can be prevented fully,” says Iyer. “Therefore, if a girl is alone and finds herself accosted by goons, she can call out for help by blowing the whistle,” said Iyer.

Asked if calling the police made more sense, he replied, “Most people still don’t trust the police, and more importantly if you have an an emergency, it is much easier to blow a whistle than to call up any helpline number. This way, the act can be stopped before the police get involved. We want to make it a reflex action to attempted molestations and therefore are urging women to wear the whistle but only blow it when needed so that its message isn’t diluted. I call this campaign ‘WhistleDhaar Naari’.”

Iyer intends to promote this novel way of self-defense through his blog and its Facebook group, “I am also going to ask people to put this up on their blog and Facebook pages and try to spread the movement. Since the Pink Chaddi Campaign is off Facebook, I have asked other group moderators to promote this. I am also trying to promote it as some sort of a fashion statement as this seems to be easiest way to popularise it,” says Iyer. Asked how he got the idea, he said, “I’m an avid blogger and have Shobhaa De as what I call my ‘Blog Dost’. She and I always comment on each other’s blogs and it was she who said that I should come up with such a blog and the use of a whistle.”

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