I write this on August 15, India’s independence day – a day to celebrate a freedom that is so elusive for so many. I write this on the heels of ongoing collective outrage across the country, in Kolkata, New Delhi, Chandigarh, Lucknow, Prayagraj, Patna, and Goa, after a 31-year-old trainee doctor was violently and brutally raped and murdered while resting after a 36-hour shift. I write this as a far-too familiar pattern repeats, again: a girl is raped and murdered, people take to the streets in outrage, and a statement, law, or criminal amendment is published, a woman is gang raped…
This pattern shows that outrage followed by post-mortem legislation is far too little, far too late. And though India’s amended laws may have contributed to an increased reporting of sexual violence (over 31,000 reported cases in 2022) and a new Central Protection Act for Doctors can help standardize protections for healthcare workers, without their effective and timely implementation from the law enforcement level to the sentencing level, without a holistic, survivor-centered and community-led approach to addressing gender-based violence, and without truly confronting the dehumanization of women, particularly marginalized Dalit, Adivasi, and transgender women, the law alone is a broken facade.
In fact, while India’s laws have been submitted to international bodies as evidence of India’s compliance with its international human rights obligations, women have been killed by their assaulters on the way to attend Court hearings for their rape cases. Law enforcement has been involved in the destruction of evidence, the silencing of victims and their families, and in pressuring victims to drop their cases or change their testimonies. Forensic evidence collection by medical practitioners is nonstandard at best – invasive at worst – and survivors largely do not receive adequate counseling or legal services. “Fast-track” courts are still slow.
When those same international bodies raise concerns about the continued sexual violence against women and girls in India, they are immediately admonished for their “unwarranted” and “unnecessary” comments as government leaders again hold up India’s laws: “the Constitution guarantees equality to all citizens of India. As a democracy we have a time-tested record of providing justice to all sections of our society.” Where there are 90 reported cases of rape a day, and considering there are likely many more unreported cases of sexual violence, it’s clear that those laws are not enough.
And even when an internal government committee, which consulted with women’s groups, survivors, civil society, experts, and other stakeholders, compiled a 644-page report (the “Verma Committee report”) with concrete recommendations for legal, police, educational, and social reforms to effectively and holistically address gender-based violence, its recommendations have too gone largely unimplemented.
Why? Do India’s leaders simply fail to see the depths to which women are dehumanized and overlooked in systems not set up to protect them, or is it easier just not to look? New or amended laws cannot be a substitute for cultural reckoning – they alone do not, as the Verma Committee report writes, “make transformative processes in society which will not only make society more secure, but give equality to women, respect them, give them secure spaces.”
Perhaps this is the problem. Truly transformative processes must confront tradition; they must confront the way things have always been. A transformed society for women requires a hard look at accepted cultural and social contexts, including embedded caste, religious, and gender discrimination. But even where a woman is 17 times more likely to face sexual violence from her husband than others, marital rape is still legal, and the government has argued that criminalizing marital rape would violate the “sanctity of marriage.” In other words, tradition is not for changing. And so the law must be enough.
It seems to me that the path to a true and full freedom first requires an unfiltered and honest look in the mirror from India’s leaders. A willingness to engage with difficult truths. Like: it is not freedom to hold back social transformation by being unquestioningly chained to tradition. It is not freedom to uphold the purported “sanctity of marriage” over the right of a woman to live in her own body without fear of violation. It is not freedom when a woman cannot take a nap in her place of work without fear of sexual violence. It is not freedom when a girl is raped while attempting to report a rape. It is not freedom when rape and murder is covered up and instead called suicide. It is not freedom when a woman’s voice is ignored and her story disbelieved. It is not freedom to be told to drop a case because a woman’s rapist has power.
This is not freedom. And the law is not enough.
Anjali Mehta is a human rights and law of war lawyer, speaker, and founder of the nonprofit organization What is the Power of We?, dedicated to harnessing the power of the collective to combat gender-based violence.
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