IN CHENNAI, the term “moral police” is too often a literal one.
Two relatively high-profile recent incidents cast the city’s police force in a frightening light, as enforcers of a deeply misogynistic worldview who go as far as to violate the law in order to uphold their principles.
In the first case, a married woman who was with a male friend at the Kotturpuram railway station was apprehended by a police officer, who then physically assaulted the friend in question and cast aspersions as to why the duo were together. When told that her husband was fully aware of this friendship, the officer threatened to make bystanders testify against her.
THERE IS A STORY about a Sufi saint who used to wander the city streets and people around him called him a madman. One day, he was wandering the streets near the palace on a donkey. He suddenly got off and walked up to a board in front of the palace. The board said: ‘This palace is built by the king’. The saint erased the word ‘king’ and replaced it with ‘donkeys’ so that it read ‘This palace was built by donkeys’. People were outraged and pounced on him but the saint was trying to make a simple point. The donkeys who had carried stones to build the palace had not been mentioned on the board. 
