Women’s safety calls for a new democratic culture, not new laws

Democratic norms of interaction must replace norms based on traditional views of women as being powerless, not in charge of their sexuality, and inviting predation when not visibly protected by men

For new democratic gender norms

Among the many things that the Prime Minister proclaimed from the ramparts of the Red Fort on the 77th anniversary of India’s Independence, the proposed solution to crimes against women was particularly egregious. Get tough on offenders, said the PM, make sure rapists are given the maximum punishment prescribed under the law, the death penalty – and fast.

Such pronouncements are doubly misleading: it offers the illusion that a solution is on the table, and avoids discussing the real problem underlying the predation of women.

Of course, those who commit sexual violence, including rape, and lower-grade sexual offences should be punished, and with speed. The death penalty for rape has been on the table since the legal change in the wake of the Nirbhaya rape and murder in Delhi in 2012. That has not discouraged rape and other crimes against women.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau, a total of 4,45,256 cases of crime against women were registered in India during 2022, the latest year for which data has been released, showing an increase of 4.0% over 2021 (4,28,278 cases). In 19 metropolitan cities, each with a population larger than 2 million, crimes against women rose by 12.3% in 2022 over the number in 2021. The conviction rate for rape is just 27.4% nationally. The rate is even more grotesquely small for the metros: 17.9%. And sexual crimes are notoriously under-reported. Should we continue to put faith in the notion that tougher laws and enforcement would make women safer?

One consequence of instituting the death penalty for rape is to build in an incentive for the rapist to proceed to murder, so as to eliminate the prime witness who could testify against him. For those who consider a woman who has been raped to be defiled beyond redemption, rendering her, in the words of a senior BJP politician, a zinda lash (walking cadaver), this might be no big deal. But for the rest of us, this is a major concern.

If tougher laws do not, in practice, deter crimes against women, what is the solution? The real solution is to change society’s attitude towards women, put an end to the notion women who place themselves outside recognized safe zones – clothes that are deemed decent, during the day, when outside the home, and escorted by men, when outside the house at night -- are fair game for sexual predation, that they are asking for it.

The problem is implicit in the very reference to women as mothers, sisters and daughters. These are kinship terms that prohibit and inhibit evocation of sexuality. But most women are, in reality, outside such kinship ties for real people. To admit that they are not sex-proscribed kin is to admit they are sexual beings. Sexuality is an inherent part of anyone’s being, but it is only one part. The trouble is the cultural training to see women who are not kin primarily as sexual beings, to the occlusion of other aspects of their persona. The culture also says that women do not deserve to control their own sexuality, as their family will do that job for them, and, further, are weak -- abalaa (one devoid of bal or strength) is a synonym for woman.

These three cultural stereotypes are not, of course, unique to India. All patriarchal societies, which is to say most societies, have inherited this tradition, and have had patchy success in discarding it for new democratic norms.

What would the democratic norms be? People should interact respecting their totality as individuals. It would be out of place to sexualize most interactions. When the occasion does arise for the interaction to turn sexual, it is governed by three factors: one, mutual consent, two, respect for the integrity of an existing romantic relationship for either party, and, three, the restraint responsible conduct would demand when the individuals are at different levels on a power gradient.

Tradition holds female beauty to be irresistible: ‘ravishingly beautiful’ might seem just hype, but carries the literal undertone, beautiful enough to be ravished. Hindi film songs wonder how the man can keep control of himself, faced with alluring beauty (kaboo mein kaise rakhoon?). Democratic norms reject such notions of feral, uncontrollable passion, and call for impulse control, to observe consent and integrity of a prior relationship, and to guard against misuse of power.

To privilege the democratic norms of sexual interaction over the traditional, patriarchal ones, is to upset a whole lot of people. To accept that women should have the freedom to choose their life partners, for example, is to render the purity of caste lines vulnerable. Politicians who woo caste leaders and promote ideas such as love jihad implicitly deny women sexual agency, and reinforce the ideology that holds woman to be weak, and vulnerable outside male companionship and control.

It is not possible to both glorify patriarchal tradition and uphold values that secure women, whatever the tradition. And patriarchal tradition has the sanction and legitimacy of religion. To question that tradition is also question the authority of religion. For a politician to reform religious practice to introduce democratic norms is to exhibit real courage.

When such courage is lacking, the expedient thing to do is, of course, to call for tougher laws and stricter policing.