Within hours of the Rohtak sisters rising to fame with their lightning attack on three young men who allegedly misbehaved with them in a bus, came counter-claims that the girls are habitual men-beaters. If it was the national media that catapulted the girls into the status of heroes, sooner than later, the same media went to town with evidence of their alleged misandry.

The construction and deconstruction of the heroes was over within the span of a day. Their brave attack of the men, while other passengers in the bus meekly looked on was an international media story. The second, debunking them, too was an international story. What remains to be seen now is if the Haryana government will still go ahead with the cash price that it has announced to honour the girls.

The analysis that the men in the bus may not have been at fault because the girls had attacked another man in a park earlier is least surprising because it suits the popular stereotype for women that we have created and guarded for years. What is also not surprising is that some of the journalists, who were out to disprove the girls were also women because cultural stereotypes tend to be consensus constructions when the voices of opposition are few and far between.

Here’s where the loaded messages behind the alleged misandry, or the insinuations of misguided anger of the girls against men, may be turned upside down and used as stereotypes that should inspire modern Indian women: daring, unwilling to take the slightest hint of male dominance and physically strong. The belt in the bus video is not a fashion accessory, but a metaphor of girl power and the low kick against the man in the park video is a strategic instrument of protection.

In a country where violence against women is a fact of life (a women gets attacked every three minutes and raped every 29 minutes and 250,000 cases of attack against women get recorded in a year) the Rohtak girls are the icons that the country should celebrate. It doesn’t matter even if the provocation by the men was minimal. The message by these girls is that they tolerate no nonsense by men and that they can handle male muscles themselves.

Arguably, they represent some of the elements of third-wave feminism such as breaking gender role expectations and stereotypes, and girl power - which in itself is a lot about assertiveness, ambition and self-reliance. The words of Rebecca Walker, American author and one of the proponents of third-wave feminism, make a case for new gender roles: “To be a feminist is to integrate an ideology of equality and female empowerment into the very fiber of life. It is to search for personal clarity in the midst of systemic destruction, to join in sisterhood with women when often we are divided, to understand power structures with the intention of challenging them”.

In their simple and spontaneous way, this is what the Rohtak girls did.

Perhaps they are even our Power Puff Girls. An analytical article in the Huffington Post said last year that Power Puff Girls are “feminist super-heroines”. They exhibit strength without compromising their femininity, the article said. Quoting from an earlier Salon article it further said: "Striking as these icons of girlhood may be, it could be argued that their popularity may not reflect a dramatic shift in our society’s view of gender roles, but rather our inability to stomach female anger unless it’s sugarcoated in cuteness and scored with a pervasively chirpy, nonthreatening tone.”

Perhaps, we were quick to run down the girls (on seeing the second video) because we were unable to “stomach female anger unless it’s sugarcoated in cuteness and scored with a pervasively nonthreatening tone”.

For a change, they have provided a new example of expressing female anger. The swing of the belt, the body blows, and the shrill voice (in the second video) that demands the man to “kaan pakad” (to apologise) should be part of a new, positive stereotype for women in India. It’s an eruption of anger arising out of helplessness and loss of patience because the country, even after independence, has cheated them and oppressed them.

They should be celebrated because their anger should warn men. After the Delhi gang-rape, there were promises galore, but nothing stopped men from raping women, not even the threat of death sentence. It’s time men got scared of women’s anger and ability to hit back. It’s time to amplify female anger in its raw form.

(F India)