Fearless Freedom

Book excerpt: Safety' for women in India is, more often than not, coded as curtailment of autonomy. To be 'safe', women are told they must allow themselves to be kept under constant surveillance. Their movement is restricted to specific spaces, often homes and hostels. Extreme levels of control are exercised to confine their mobility. But is freedom really incompatible with safety? In this ground-breaking and radical book, Kavita Krishnan locates the personal and political repercussions of erasing women from public spaces. She argues that many real and violent threats to female autonomy are, in fact, hidden in plain sight. Often challenging conventional wisdom, this is a blazing, fiery manifesto for greater equality, political and economic independence, and, most of all, personal freedom.