Five years later

The end of 2017, an earthquake year in the history of patriarchy in the West, is an apt time to look back at December 16, 2012 and its mixed legacy (File)

Five years ago, this day, a young woman and her friend climbed on to a bus on an unlit stretch of road in Munirka. She never made it home. Her death in a Singapore hospital a few days later brought a surge of women out on to Delhi’s streets. To each of them it had seemed that they had been — or could have been — on that harrowing ride with the 23-year-old, when six men, one an underage teen, raped and savaged her. Me too, they had said. Mothers, friends, daughters, turned up at Jantar Mantar in anguish and anger, or faced the water cannons and a lockdown at India Gate to demand justice. It was a rare political moment — Indian women occupying the streets to demand a reparation for the endemic oppression of their lives.

The end of 2017, an earthquake year in the history of patriarchy in the West, is an apt time to look back at December 16, 2012 and its mixed legacy. That outpouring led to a welcome examination of the sexist underpinnings of many aspects of our life, from the concept of shame and honour to the prejudice seeded into the language we use. It led to the setting up of the Justice Verma Committee, and its recommendations — from a repeal of AFSPA to the criminalisation of marital rape, from the injunction against the two-finger test to a need for a bill of rights for Indian women. In the space of half a decade, much of that progressive charter lies ignored. Instead, the clamour for punishment and harsher law has taken precedence, leading to changes such as the Juvenile Justice Act, 2014, which allows children between the ages of 16 and 18 to be tried in court.

The freedom the women had demanded in 2012 was not just from unsafe and ill-lit streets where strangers might prey on them, but also from the antiquated notions of family honour that stifled them in their homes. That cry was heard in Banaras Hindu University this year, in the several recent shrine-entry movements, and the struggle of Muslim women against triple talaq. But, worryingly, ideas of clan honour are being increasingly weaponised against women and minorities — a path that leads to the shining resistance of Hadiya, but also to the killing field of Rajsamand. This is also the year that India’s rank on the World Economic Forum’s gender equity index has plunged to an alarming low. A substantial part of its female population remains out of the workforce. But the December 2012 protests remain a moral signpost. That giant tide in the affairs of women was an indication of a larger churn: The Indian woman, of all castes and classes and religions, seeks a new deal. Till how long will society and politics let them down?