Why collective care is a need to enable safe spaces!

Intervening is not a neutral act. To step in, name harm, or disrupt violence is to challenge power, especially when that violence is normalised, trivialised, or dismissed as ‘just how things are’. Silence is often mistaken for neutrality, but as feminist thinkers remind us, silence almost always sides with power (Ahmed, 2017). Bystanders, then, are never just witnesses. They are potential agents of social change.

Bystander intervention challenges a deeply embedded idea: that safety is an individual responsibility. We are told to protect ourselves, manage risk, and stay out of harm’s way. In contrast, bystander action reframes safety as collective, relational, and political. When people intervene, through de-escalation, distraction, accompaniment, or support, they disrupt the conditions that allow harm to continue. This disruption matters because it directly contests hierarchies of gender, caste, class, religion, and sexuality that determine whose bodies are protected and whose are left exposed.

For too long, the burden of safety has been placed on those most at risk. Women, queer people, marginalised caste and religion people, working-class communities and people with disabilities are taught to adjust rather than resist: dress differently, avoid certain spaces, speak carefully, don’t provoke. Violence is framed as a consequence of individual behaviour rather than a product of unequal systems (Crenshaw, 1991). Bystander intervention attempts to flip this script. It insists that responsibility does not lie with those experiencing harm alone, it belongs to everyone present.

What this looks like in practice is often unspectacular yet deeply powerful.

One evening around 8 pm in Bangalore, Krishnamma, a pourakarmika (wastepicker), noticed a young girl lying near a parked car. The girl had consumed alcohol and appeared disoriented. A group of five or six boys stood around her, saying they would take her to the hospital. Nothing overtly violent was happening but something felt wrong.

Krishnamma trusted her instinct. She woke the girl, took her phone, and called her roommate. Within thirty minutes, the roommate arrived with friends and safely took the girl home. Enabling safety, she realised, is not about authority or strength; it’s about attention and care.

Research backs this up. Studies on active bystander approaches show that when people are equipped to recognise risk and intervene safely, harassment decreases and collective accountability grows (Banyard, 2011). More importantly, intervention shifts how we understand violence. It is no longer a “private matter” between individuals, but a public concern that demands collective response.

Safety, then, is not simply the absence of harm. It is a democratic practice. Justice requires shared responsibility, especially in the face of structural violence (Young, 2000). This is particularly urgent in public spaces, where power operates through visibility and control. Who can move freely without fear? Who is watched, policed, or threatened? Intervening in everyday moments—catcalling, moral policing, communal harassment, intimidation—is a way of reclaiming public space as shared, rather than dominated.

Suresh, a street vendor who runs a medical store, experienced this one evening when he noticed a man verbally abusing a woman in a dark, unlit corner of the street. What alarmed him was not only the aggression, but the isolation. He hesitated, recognising a familiar pattern: people intervene quickly when two men argue, but look away when a man and a woman are involved, calling it “private.”

Despite his hesitation, Suresh stepped in. He approached the pair, and both insisted that it was a “private matter.” Suresh responded that even if it was private, there was no need for it to take place in the dark—especially when the woman was crying and sitting in a corner of the pavement. When the man became increasingly aggressive and attempted to physically harm both the woman and Suresh, he acted decisively. Suresh immediately sought support from nearby bystanders and the situation de-escalated, not because someone used force, but because care became collective.

Care is often dismissed as soft or apolitical. In reality, care is disruptive. It is a political ethic that exposes interdependence and the failures of institutions to protect those most vulnerable (Tronto, 1993). When practiced collectively, care breaks the isolation that violence depends on.

De-escalation is not passive. It requires awareness, emotional intelligence, and strategic action. Collective responses calling out harm together, accompanying someone home, offering support after, show that violence will not be met with silence.

References:

● Ahmed, S. (2017). Living a Feminist Life. Duke University Press.
● Banyard, V. L. (2011). Who will help prevent sexual violence? Psychology of Violence, 1(3).
● Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the margins. Stanford Law Review, 43(6).
● Herman, J. (1992). Trauma and Recovery. Basic Books.
● Kelly, L. (1988). Surviving Sexual Violence. Polity Press.
● Lorde, A. (1981). The uses of anger.
● Tronto, J. (1993). Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care.
● Young, I. M. (2000). Justice and the Politics of Difference.