'Khud khana garam karlo' Why some Aurat March posters touched a nerve.

On March 8, 2018, a day designated for the celebration of women internationally, hundreds of people took to the streets of Karachi to participate in, what would be, the first Aurat March in Pakistan.

The participants had united under the loosely defined banner of 'unity', 'empowerment', and 'reclaiming public spaces'. In successive Marches, organisers circulated a formal manifesto along with setting a different theme for the event every year. This year's slogan, 'riyasat jawaab do, bhook ka hisaab do' [The state must give answers, give accountability for our hunger], draws our attention to the state's failure to provide and protect its populace.

These themes, however, serve more as an organising strategy than a formal dictum. One observes a variety of messages, concerns, and experiences shared at the event, both in the form of staged performances as well as the raised banners and posters.

What is fascinating is that the mainstream understanding of the nature and demands of the Aurat March is overwhelmingly informed by the popularity of a select few posters that are vehemently debated on social media sites and national television. The anger towards the posters and the overall movement has over the years escalated into the organising members receiving threats of sexual and physical violence.

In fact, participants of the Aurat March 2020 organised in Islamabad were physically attacked during the rally by members of a counter protest, leaving several people injured. This year too, protesters were charged with batons by the police in Islamabad.

Much of the vitriol can, to this day, be witnessed online on Facebook and Twitter-ranging from elaborate critiques of the posters, doctored images of the Aurat March protesters holding posters with sexual messages, to the launching of an online counter movement called 'Mard March' [Men's March] that concerns itself with responding to popular Aurat March posters with their own version of the same.

Among the posters that raised a social media storm was the 'khud khana garam karlo' [heat your own food] poster that was spotted at the first Aurat March. The poster, along with many other similar ones that sprouted in subsequent Marches, was heavily criticised for its frivolity and triviality - it was accused of dampening the seriousness of the March by highlighting matters that qualified as 'non-issues' in a country where women were still being murdered in the name of honour.

What often gets lost in these debates is the creative and radical potential of the everyday and the frivolous in unsettling accepted discourse on gender and political action - a dialogue that the posters in the Aurat March movement initiate.

Revisiting khud khana garam karlo and other posters

No poster in the first Aurat March attracted as much media attention, analysis, and ultimately a thread of justifications from local feminists as much as the 'khud khana garam karlo' poster.

In a way, the poster's popularity on social media was for many their very first introduction to the Aurat March, and for others, the sole takeaway point that simply authenticated their pre-existing doubts about the morally corrupt nature of a March that called for women to depart from the sanctity of their homes and subject themselves to the dirty streets and dirty gazes that they have for long been taught to fear and avoid.

Compelled by the overwhelming social media activity the poster generated - from articles and interviews, to countless Facebook memes and tweets debating the validity of the message - the creator of the poster, Asna Hussain, went on record to explain the motivation behind the poster:

'Too many a time, I have heard the defenders of the patriarchy argue, 'Wo chai kyun banaega? Wo larka hai!' [Why would he make tea? He is a boy!] and 'Uski khair hai? Wo larka hai!' [He's fine, he's a boy!]. When I got sick and tired of being told this and demanded khud khana garam karlo [Warm your food yourself] at the recent Aurat March in Karachi, our entire community burst out in anger.'

In detailing her personal experience, Hussain sketches the...

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