So in this section, we're going to be talking about violence against women. And what I'm going to do is illustrate the section by talking about a few landmark cases around which the feminist movement has mobilized at various periods. The first case that we can be talking about is the case of Mathura, who was a young 16-year old girl from a tribal family, who was who had eloped with a young man, and her brother made a complaint against her for having eloped at the police station. The police brought her in to the police station and she was then raped by the police officers in the police station which was a case of custodial rape. Now when the case was taken to court and it went through the various levels of courts from the Sessional to the Bombay High Court and then the Supreme Court, and ultimately the Supreme Court acquitted the policemen. And it acquitted the policemen on the grounds that Mathura was supposedly of loose moral character because she had a boyfriend and she had eloped with him. And that therefore her word was not to be trusted, and that she had fabricated the story of being raped by the policemen. And the policemen, therefore, were acquitted. Now, this case led to nationwide protest against the patriarchal bias of the judiciary. In Bombay, in Mumbai, at that point it was Bombay, a feminist advocacy group was mobilized the form against the depression of women. And they took up a signature campaign to reopen and build up pressure to reopen the case. There were several other campaigns, protests, public meetings, rallies and delegations to the government to reopen the case. The issue of rape then made national headlines for the first time in the country. And united women across the board, clearly indicating two things. First, that issue of rape cuts across class, caste, and community lines. And the issue was, second, seen as one of state repression. Now, this case stimulated much advocacy from the women's movement on that demanded amendments in laws on the various forms of violence that women in India are subjected to. So the laws on rape, but also the laws on female infanticide, female feticide, the laws on domestic violence. The laws on dowry debts. The laws on widow immolation. All of these amendments in the various relevant sections of the criminal procedure code were made in the decades of the 1980s and the 1990s. Now, subsequent to many of these amendments however, an analysis by the feminist lawyer, Flavia Agnes, indicates that paradoxically, what we were seeing was declining rates of convictions. So for instance if we're talking about rape you had an amendment to the rape law that made the punishment for rape more severe. So from five to seven years, it went up to seven to ten years as the punishment for rape. But what was happening was that although the number of rape cases being reported was increasing. The numbers of cases that were actually being taken to conclusion in the courts and concluding with convictions for the rapist was actually declining. And this she argues was was again, and related to the fact that a legislative change on its own is insufficient without changing the social environment around the kinds of patriarchal attitudes and values that are inherent within the institutions, but also within families and within communities. And, so this parallels in a sense the kind of phenomenon that we observed earlier when I was talking about the, the legislation on sex selective abortion and not really making a difference in the kinds of attitudes for son preference. Now, the Mathura case was one of the key, sort of starting points of agitation around violence against women. Another landmark case that that that we can refer to is the case of Bhanwari Devi. Now, Bhanwari Devi was a saathin in the Rajasthan Women's Development Program. If you remember in the first section, I talked about the Women's Development Program as one of those key programs that the the government initiated in the 1990s. Now this was a program where the saathin was a community level worker. A woman who would go from village to village and form groups collectives of women. And support those collectives in in their their struggles for women's rights. Now, one of the key issues that in her capacity as a worker of this program, an employee of this program, one of her jobs was to raise awareness about child child marriage in Rajasthan. Which was then and is still today a prevalent practice in Rajasthan. Now, in the course of this work Bhanwari Devi came up against severe resistance from several men in the villages where she was working. And she was raped by two men. Now and she was raped as a punishment for campaigning against child marriage. Now, the Rajasthan high court acquitted the rapists, again on grounds that on very suspicious grounds. And the case then went to the Supreme Court. Now, the Supreme Court in this case made a favorable ruling in favor of, of Bhanwari Devi, and recognizing that, that she had been raped. But it went a step further and it, proclaimed what was known as the Vishaka judgement on sexual harassment, which basically led to the later enactment of the protection of women against sexual harassment in the workplace bill in 2010. Now, this bill for the first time well the Vishaka judgement in 1997 was also considered to be, in effect the law until the bill was enacted, so in 1997 for the first time we see sexual harassment being, being legally defined. And it recognizes that women should be able to work or be employed without fear of what was called a hostile work environment. And it explicitly seeks to prohibit sexual harassment. The bill provides for the constitution of committees within workplaces and mandates that these committees should, should act when there are cases of sexual harassment are brought to the attention. And that sexual harassment could be could be experienced by a woman who is an employee but who a woman who also enters the workplace as a client, as a customer, even as a student, for instance if you take the University as a workplace. And employers who fails to constitute such committees and constitute such complaints mechanisms could be liable for fines and further further inquiry. Now, since these are some significant safeguards that that this legislation has brought into place and indeed many organizations now have set up these kinds of committees and you see these complaint mechanisms being used. However sexual harassment is still not something that women speak out about very easily, and there's a huge amount of stigma that's attached to any woman who would actually go take, take the step of, of making a complaint or initiating such, such processes of complaints. I'm going to turn now to look at another key moment, which again was initiated by another case of violence against women and this time, the case came to international attention in December 2012. Where there was another case of gang rape. This time of a young woman, who was also a student in Deli. Who boarded a bus with her boyfriend and was gang raped by a group of men on the bus. The outrage and protests that followed that particular case of very brutal gang rape was phenomenal. Young men and women were on the streets of Delhi, and other cities in India protesting and basically stopping everything in the city, traffic from moving or or work from proceeding. For a couple of weeks and it made international headlines. Now the government constituted in response to the kind of, outpouring of protest, the government constituted the Justice Verma Commission, Justice Verma was a former Chief Justice of India and he headed a commission that made inquiries into that it had a mandate to made inquiries into a range of issues of violence against women. So not specifically only rape but looking at a broad spectrum. So looking at childhood sexual abuse, looking at the, the dowry related debts, et cetera. All issues of violence against women. And it had very wide consultations with many groups from civil society. So women's groups, NGOs activist groups were all invited to make depositions at the commission hearings. These were held in January 2013. And the recommendations of the commission were quite, quite progressive on many counts. They took into consideration many of the very nuanced observations of the various groups that were being consulted on the range of issues facing women and you can have a look at the full text at this link over here. Some of the key changes in which the Home Ministry adopted the recommendations of the Verma Commission were first that the Verma Commission had introduced the term sexual assault which was a wider definition and not restricted to just rape, as a form of penetrative sexual assault. So a wider spectrum of acts could come under the, the term sexual assault. And importantly, the use of sexual assault also allowed for the kinds of sexual assault that, for instance, transgender people face to be considered within the rape laws. Within the rape laws that existed previously, it was difficult to to bring transgender people, the sexual assault that transgender people faced under that provision. The Home ministry restricted the definition to rape. The Verma Commission also recommended marital rape be included as a criminal offense. But the government of India, the Home ministry, argued that this would weaken traditional family values in India, and that marriage presumes consent, a point that many women, and would certainly object to. The third point that the ministry rejected was the Verma Commission's suggestion that those in the armed forces accused of rape be brought under the ambit of criminal law. Currently, under the Armed Forces Special Provisions Act. People, employees, men working within the Armed Forces are brought to trial, by army courts, basically. And very often they get scot-free from when, when there are cases of of, of rape or violence against women. However, the Home Ministry, again reversed this this decision. And finally, and also quite, quite importantly, the Verma Commission had recommended that life imprisonment be used for cases when women die as a result of sexual assault. Now, the government in contrast has decided to introduce the death penalty for these extreme rape cases. Now, and this has to be viewed in the light of that of the deadly gang rape, where the young girl in question died as a result of the rape. And there was much public demand for the introduction of the death penalty in such cases. However the position of women's movement activists was much more nuanced. And there were many who objected to the idea of the introduction of, of the death penalty. And this was going on his understanding, this analysis that I referred to earlier where the introduction of more stringent penalties actually have a reverse effect where they don't actually act as a deterrent, rather the culprits, those who are guilty, get off get, are treated more leniently by the judiciary and, and the police, in fact. And that the feminist advocates, pointed to the need for changing social values and social attitudes and made the suggestion that life imprisonment should be the maximum sentence that be imposed. And this was something that was taken on by the Verma Commission. However, the home ministry was responding to the kind of popular public demand in its sort of move to institute the death penalty for cases in which women a dies result of rape. So to round up this section, violence against women is one of those continuing concerns. It's not, you know, I wouldn't want to put across the idea that it's something that's specific to India. Violence against women is a concern in all countries, and there's nothing particularly worse or more horrific about the kind of violence that occurs in India. Women are vulnerable, because of the kinds of patriarchal societies we live in. And when we think about, the kinds of legislative changes that are made, while those changes are necessary, they're not sufficient. And that we need to simultaneously be working on education and awareness and changing the attitudes of men around the issue of violence against women. And I think one of the most promising aspects of the December 2012 protest against violence against women was that you did see many groups of young men who were beginning to think about what this meant. And what does it mean to be a young man in today's India and what does it mean to think about the kinds of relationships that these young men want with young women. And that then and thinking about issues of gender equality. Thinking about these issues in a broader frame rather than just in terms of that this violence is perpetrated by some evil young men out there. It's something that's very much part of how society views women. It's linked to the devaluing of women within within Indian society. And that needs to be changed as well. So with that, I'll close the section. And in our next section, we are going to be talking about poor women in India.
