Women’s day, 2021, offers us another opportunity to reflect on how much closer we are to gender parity in the country. But assessing some of the year’s headline moments does not lend hope that women are on that virtuous circle that will take every woman onward and upward.
Women in the vanguard who have stood up for values found themselves stamped down, threatened into silence, jailed, vilified and trolled.
Shaheen Bagh’s women were assailed with manly offers of violence if not careful. Supporters of the farmers protests were jailed for nothing more than being on the wrong side of a public debate. In parliament, Mahua Moitra faced a privilege motion for having the temerity to disapprove of the former Chief Justice of India’s conduct on the bench when faced with an accusation of sexual harassment.
Disha Ravi and Greta Thunberg voicing their views in the virtual world found themselves locked up in the real world or subject to a steady stream of filth and abuse in the coarse cowardly world of social media. The image of what a woman should be and do abounded from men with big platforms available to them. Serious women were regularly belittled: Bengal’s chief minister was told she’d have to return to the kitchen if she lost the elections; the Finance Minister was labelled ‘Nirbala’ – meaning weak like a woman and Deepika Padukone was told to stick to her dancing.
The trolls so organised, vociferous and ready with their range of epithets from ‘bitch’ to ‘naachnewali‘ and worse, assisted in encouraging the building up a misogynistic disempowering environment.
The Tanishq incident was witness enough. Backed by a cacophony of unchecked and unadulterated prejudice coupled with very real threats of violence the like of which one associates with Nazi Germany or the Klu Klux Klan in America’s deep South, hate-filled trolls forced the withdrawal of a woman-centric ad that celebrated tolerance, tradition and family values. The simple joyful act of wishing a safe birth for a child of a mixed marriage was washed away in a sea of unadulterated animosity.
A video screengrab of the Tanishq ad.
This triumph of intolerance has been allowed to grow unchecked from the rabid ideology of a few into a full-blown festival of hatred.
‘Love jihad’, a non-existent phenomenon has been imagined into legislation that positions the state – not the parents or the adult individuals involved – as final arbiter of private passion. Its brazen reduction of individual rights infantilises adult women into creatures subservient to the discretion of a bureaucrat. Although under challenge in various courts, it has encouraged imitation and more kite flying to test the limits of how much authoritarianism is possible. The chief minister in Madhya Pradesh has suggested all women living outside their parental homes be registered at the local police station and keep it informed of their whereabouts.
These optical illusions of deep concern for women’s safety and access to remedies belie the truth experienced in real life. Between May and March, the National Commission of Women, recorded more domestic violence cases than those received in the previous 10 years.
In a country where under reporting is well acknowledged and women will hardly ever approach a police station alone with a complaint of sexual harassment or violence and where the response is documented as being unsympathetic or victim blaming, stories of the difficulties in reaching out to justice abound. Recent reports of the travails of a senior woman police officer in Tamil Nadu having to brave road blocks on her way to register a complaint of sexual harassment against her senior point to how even the most privileged have to brave unbelievable obstacles to reach sanctuary.
Cases of rape excite the public imagination and force leaderships to position themselves as protectors of women. Yet, even horrific rapes of unnatural ferocity have not translated into public empathy or changed response to women’s complaints. Amid nation-wide outrage at the brutal Hathras rape, one leader’s profound solution was to tell parents to “teach their daughters good values.”
Even the National Commission for Women wondered aloud whether another rape victim could not have saved herself if only she had not gone out alone. Clearly the onus of preventing rape remains firmly left at the door of the women.
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Ready exculpation for the perpetrator was also never too far away. When granting bail to an alleged rapist, the Karnataka high court commented that falling asleep after rape is “unbecoming” of an Indian woman and not the way ‘our women react when ravished’. Salvation too was on ready offer. Witness the CJI’s compassionate offer to assist in the happy nuptials of a rapist to his bruised, battered and minor victim. Truly the day foretold in the Holy Book – that one day the lion shall lie down with the lamb – has arrived.
Personal attitudes that trump constitutionally guaranteed women’s rights reflect deeply held institutional biases prompted by the weight of male presence. Successive India Justice Reports point out that the justice system remains a male bastion. Illustratively, what women judges there are, are mostly to be seen on subordinate court benches. At high court level their numbers dwindle to a low 11%. The Supreme Court boasts just two women judges. There has never ever been a woman chief justice of India and the future landscape looks deserted as far as the eye can see.
The IJR calculates it will take some states anywhere from three to 500 years before they go from the national average of 10.3% women in the police to the desired 33% – itself an arbitrary figure. The governing legislation of oversight agencies such as the human rights commissions, too cannot bring themselves to go beyond mandating there must be ‘at least one woman’. Gender parity is a far distant goal even for human rights institutions.
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The truth is, pretentions about protecting women are yet to translate into universal compliance with laws specially made for their protection. For instance there is no official enumeration of whether mandatory sexual harassment committees are actually in place in private enterprises or public institutions. Nor is there reliable public information of administrative or criminal prosecution of officers who refuse to register women’s complaints of sexual violence.
True it is that 2020 hasn’t been kind to humankind, but women have had to bear more than their fair share of insult and injury. The only feminine avatar that found approval is the woman deified as goddess. Real life women who earlier would have been seen as role models of an active citizenry are now seen as uppity objects of scorn.
Bloody but unbowed, they – like the feisty Priya Ramani – have pushed back and will rise with the strength derived from being at the receiving end of incessant adversity. Then perhaps – when March 8 comes around again – it will be worthy of more than a drooping half salute to women on Women’s Day 2022.
Maja Daruwala is senior adviser to the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative.
