‘How can she slap?’ If you’re familiar with the Indian internet and desi memes, you would have heard this line a minimum of one. Part of a video, the line went viral on desi Internet and was then shared via YouTube links and Bluetooth forwards. Over 12 years later, it has resurfaced on the Internet. While clips go viral for becoming iconic, and resurface when a different angle is reshared, the 2009 clip resurfaced as people remembered it from nostalgia, owing to a recent incident that triggered memory of the clip. For those unfamiliar, the iconic ‘How can she slap?’ clip is actually from an exchange from an Indian reality show called ‘Dadagiri: Beat The Bullies’ – in which contestants had to withstand hazing and verbal abuse to win a cash prize of Rs 50,000.
While the show never aired, the scene was leaked by someone who might’ve been on the sets when it occurred. The 55-second clip, starts with the woman host screaming “Why don’t you go and f*** off then?" after two men told her they didn’t want to talk to her. “You go,” one of the men she was talking to with cheekily responded, with a smirk. Then things get nasty. The woman responded to it with a slap. There’s a pause, and then almost instinctively, he slapped her in return, along with his shock and confusion and the iconic line that has gone to define the video. “How can she slap?"
While over the years the video has surfaced many times, sometimes to exemplify a tit-for-tat response, another to show you should always give it back to your bullies, and sometimes, in a very problematic manner, to justify “gender equality." Yep. This time too, it is the third reason why its back, which starts from another viral video: The Lucknow woman slapping an Uber driver.
The Lucknow woman who was seen slapping a cab driver in a video that went viral recently led to a lot of speculations about whether her actions were justified. The woman had an FIR lodged against her after she drew social media ire for thrashing a cab driver and misbehaving with a bystander. The video of the incident had gone viral, with #ArrestLucknowGirl trending on Twitter. An FIR was registered against the woman for allegedly robbing Rs 6,000 from the cab driver and breaking his mobile. The victim Saadat Ali Siddiqui had lodged an FIR. The video of the woman beating the young man had gone viral. The CCTV footage of the same case had also surfaced - which allegedly pointed to the driver being in the clear.
Following the alleged CCTV footage verdict, many comments on the YouTube clip, which has over 1.2 million views, mentioned that this is perhaps the justice, or the ‘correct response’ they expected in the Lucknow incident.
While the general sentiment behind the comments is the girl should have had retaliation from the driver, it does send a wrong message. Violence, especially one of physical altercation isn’t something we should encourage, or even justify. Even if the girl was allegedly in the wrong, and the cab driver did retaliate and slap her, his situation would have ended the same way it ended for the contestant, Ravi Bhatia - with a thrashing from all bystanders.
That being said, there is no need to advocate for perpetuating violence against women. Data from the National Commission for Women reveals that 1,463 complaints of domestic violence against women were received from January, 2021 to March 25, 2021. The NCW received a total of 19,730 complaints of crimes against women in 2019 as compared to 23,722 in 2020. A year after the lockdown, the NCW continues to receive over 2,000 complaints every month of crimes against women with nearly one-fourth of them related to domestic violence, reported Tehelka.
While the sentiment is what perhaps should be held: of accountability of the woman for her actions, advocating for someone to respond to violence with more violence is perhaps a poor example of how we think people’s wrongdoings should be dealt with.
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