10 years after Delhi rape case, we need a new rights blueprint

In the decade since, data has recorded a rise in numbers not just of rape but also of all crimes against women.

We were so angry then but so full of hope. Ten years ago, the gruesome gang rape of a 23-year-old student in Delhi on December 16 brought tens of thousands of people to the streets, undeterred by tear gas, water cannons and the winter chill. The world’s attention. Anger in Parliament. A judicial commission. The legal definition of rape expanded. Death sentence. Fast-track courts. Rape, violence, and gender on prime-time TV. “A tipping point for change,” I wrote.

Ten years ago, we claimed ownership of the 23-year-old as “India’s daughter”, bestowing on her an unasked for martyrdom by calling her Nirbhaya. (File Photo)

In the decade since, data has recorded a rise in numbers not just of rape but also of all crimes against women. There is, of course, merit in the argument that the rising numbers don’t necessarily reflect more crime as much as an increased confidence to report it. But what explains the unspeakable violence? Girls strung up from trees, burned to death or eviscerated. We are now numb to these horrors.

Ten years ago, we claimed ownership of the 23-year-old as “India’s daughter”, bestowing on her an unasked for martyrdom by calling her Nirbhaya. She was no martyr. As she lay dying in hospital, she scribbled a note to her mother. “Mummy I want to live,” it said. “Imagine the contrast from when women used to say, I want to die of shame,” senior advocate Indira Jaising said. Despite what was done to her, she had every reason and right to live.

In our collective shame of failing her, the country passed a slew of legislation. In response to public anger that one of the rapists was a juvenile at 17, we lowered the age of delinquency to 16. Now, with the amplification of social media, 15-year-olds, and younger, commit the most horrendous crimes, and we have no solution.

We raised the age of consent to 18, and today there is judicial concern about the criminalisation of consensual relationships as the irate parents of under-18 girls file statutory rape charges. Yet, nearly 70% of all cases filed under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (Pocso) since 2014 still wait for justice, finds Protsahan, a non-governmental organisation.

More than ever, you have the policing of women’s bodies. Behind the love jihad laws in eight states is the assumption that even adult women are incapable of making judicious choices. So, the Kerala high court tells a 24-year-old Hadiya that she must remain under the protection of her father until she is “properly married”. Women should not have to seek Supreme Court intervention to exercise basic autonomy.

This khap panchayat mindset towards “India’s daughters” finds space in universities where hostel rules are discriminatory in the name of “protecting” women. Unfortunately, the restrictions don’t stop rampaging mobs of entitled men, a nearly annual feature at women’s college festivals in Delhi.

In the years since 2012, infinitesimal mutinies have been born. Abortion. The demand for equal marriage rights for the LGBTQIA+ community. Dignity and rights for trans people. The demand to criminalise marital rape. The banning of triple talaq, a demand first voiced by Muslim women. More girls than ever in higher education. Our most aspirational generation of teenage girls who dream of flying airplanes, playing sport or joining the armed forces. To watch these developments is exhilarating.

But stumbling blocks remain. India’s MeToo movement was startling in its vigour. In 2013, after holding it in abeyance for 16 years, India passed the workplace sexual harassment law. Five years later, hundreds of women used social media to share stories of sexual abuse at work. But it was all too easy to shut it down. A chief justice of India was exonerated by his peers. Others chose the chilling expedience of criminal defamation suits.

In 2012, nobody asked about the religion of the rapists or the victim. Now responses are calibrated on ideology. The 2018 gang rape, torture and murder of an eight-year-old girl in a temple in Kathua saw the local bar association obstruct the police from filing a charge-sheet. Marches were organised not for justice for the child but in support of her rapists. Shraddha Walker was killed and dismembered by her Muslim boyfriend – must be “love jihad”, one side concludes while the other launches a feverish google search for a litany of crimes by Hindu men as a counterview.

Lost in the din of triple exclamation mark headlines are the stories that don’t get told: One in three women is beaten by a spouse or family member, only 14% report it to anyone. This violence is so routine that it makes no news; so accepted that police won’t intervene in a “private matter”; so ingrained that parents counsel their battered daughters to “adjust” rather than face the shame of a broken marriage.

The routine violation of Dalit and Adivasi girls and women causes no great alarm. In Hathras, police take custody of the body of one violated girl and cremate it in the absence of her distraught family, denying them even the most basic decency of saying goodbye.

Far too many battles for justice follow a lonely trajectory. There is no collective support for Bilkis Bano. In 2002, 11 men gang raped her, then five months pregnant, and others in her family, leaving seven dead. A special court convicted the men to life in prison. But 14 years later, for their “good behaviour”, they walk free in an obscene display of triumphalism.

A decade later, we still have to come to terms with the nub of the problem. It is not a lack of laws. It is patriarchy, and none of the actors, including the State, police and judiciary, have demonstrated the willingness to eradicate it.

It’s not rocket science. Change gender stereotypes in textbooks. Talk about consent. Get sons to wash their clothes instead of expecting their sisters to do it. Encourage more girls to play sport. Demand that governments improve infrastructure (more street lighting and bus routes) so that women have the same access to public spaces as men. More women’s desks at police stations. Earmark under-utilised funds for shelter homes. Mandatory sensitisation of teachers, police, legislators and judges.

Nothing changes for us unless our mindsets change. Nothing changes unless men accept and understand that the status quo cannot continue. We don’t require more scaffolding. We need a new blueprint.

Namita Bhandare writes on gender

The views expressed are personal