It's December 23. India Gate is a sea of about a 2,000 sloganeers. Deep in the midst of a large group of students who hold aloft the banner of All India Students Association (AISA), their former president, the slender Kavita Krishnan, is in full flow. It is an echo of her speech outside Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit's house that went viral: "We cannot disregard politics as insignificant, we do need to talk about politics. There is a culture in our country that justifies rape, that defends the act. If we are to change any of this, we need to politicise the issue. The Government has to listen." There is an applause, and some students shout "raise your voice against Sheila Dikshit" or "fight for women to be free".
Krishnan, a former leader of the radical students' organisation AISA, is now secretary of All India Progressive Women's Association (AIPWA), a group affiliated to the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation (CPIML). In a well-appointed home in Lutyens' Delhi, Meira Kumar, speaker of the Lok Sabha, can hear the gathering storm. She was one of the first to visit Safdarjung Hospital to meet the Delhi gang rape victim's family. She went to their one-bedroom home in suburban Delhi too, and her voice breaks as she recalls the mother saying, "Hamari haisiyat hi kya hai? Namak aur roti khate hain bachchon ko padhana ke liye (What financial standing do we have? We eat roti with salt so that our children can study)." She knows that something changed forever this December. "Women's issues will no longer be brushed aside to be handled by women. They have come centrestage and will remain there."
Whether it is the unstoppable rage against the gang rape, the rising resentment against male politicians with loose tongues and sexist minds, or the zero tolerance for entertainment that incites violence, women have decided that personal is no longer private. It is public, and political. In 2013, the Government will no longer be able to turn away from reform of women's laws, many of which are pending, such as Protection of Women from Sexual Harassment at Workplace Bill, 2010, and the Criminal Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2012, which relate to acid attacks and sexual assault. The Delhi gang rape protests were not entirely led by women's groups, but they formed a large part. Clearly, protests need to be politicised. Women's voting has declined. In 2009, of the total 58 per cent who voted, 45 per cent were women. In 2004, of the 58 per cent who voted, 53 per cent were women. Yet the number of women being elected to the Lok Sabha is on the rise. The 15th Lok Sabha has the highest ever percentage of women MPs, 58, at 11 per cent.
Women have shown the power of their anger before. Mothers who lost their daughters to dowry deaths came out on the streets of Delhi to protests against dowry. The result was the amendment to the Indian Penal Code, to include Sections 304B and 498A, which acknowledge harassment and cruelty by husbands and his relatives for dowry.
This time, the movement is demanding not just a revision to rape laws. It is asking for the onus to be on society to keep its women safe. As one of the many slogans out there on the cold December nights said: 'Don't tell us how to dress. Tell your sons not to rape.' This time, the women's movement, disparate though it may be, has learnt to give it back in the same coin in which it is attacked, using the language of offence. Thus, Slut Walk Delhi, a Facebook group with 15,982 likes and 28,000 shares started by Delhi University students Trishla Singh and Umang Sabarwal, or Dented and Painted, created after Abhijit Mukherjee's ill-advised comment, with a picture of a faceless woman wearing a tank-top emblazoned with the legend, 'Dented and Painted'. Or the Ban Honey Singh petition started by writer Kalpana Misra, 52, from Delhi, to the general manager of the Bristol Hotel in Gurgaon to cancel the singer's performance on New Year's Eve. It collected 2,500 signatures in less than 12 hours after Misra posted it late on the night of December 30 in protest against his deeply misogynistic lyrics.
Suddenly the cry is: Save Women, Save India. There are many who see this awakening as temporary, or even limited. Activist and novelist Arundhati Roy went on BBC'S Radio 4 to say that the reason this crime is creating so much outrage is "because it plays into the idea of the criminal poor, like the vegetable vendor, gym instructor or bus driver actually assaulting a middle class girl" (which is not strictly true). And that rape is seen as a "matter of feudal entitlement" in many parts of the country (which is true).
She also said that attitudes towards women need to change in India, because a change in the law alone will protect middle class women, but "the violence against other women who are not entitled will continue". Indeed, preventing violence against all women, and all kinds of violence, is the ambitious long-term goal of this movement. As Ayesha Kidwai, JNU professor and member of its JNU'S gender sensitisation committee against sexual harassment, points out, young women on the street have broadened the debate on rape. Instead of just speaking about sexual assault, they have tried to establish that there is a chain-sexual harassment, an institutional and public tolerance of sexual harassment, and an incitement to sexual violence.
The demand for such sweeping reform is a challenge for governance. Governments are used to dealing with vote banks, not issue banks. Doles are easy, details are not. What if women do form vote banks? BJP spokesperson Nirmala Sitharaman doesn't see it happening. Women belong to various religions and castes. They are yet to unite for the sole reason that they are women. Can it happen that they will look beyond their birth markers?
Perhaps. For the first time, issues considered marginal or even taboo are being discussed and debated: A woman's right to her body, security in public spaces, young people's right to aspire to a life beyond their dreams. One of the most moving aspects of the gang rape victim's family was that her father had sold a piece of land in their village to finance her education-not her marriage, as would be commonly expected. Only such family reform can create change-after all, 94 per cent of rapists are known to the victims. Beyond a point, governments cannot alter mindsets that allow female foeticide or dowry demands. Historically, despite embarrassing blips like CPI(M) MLA Anisur Rahman's comments on Mamata Banerjee, the Left has tried to be progressive in its attitude towards women. Leftist students' organisations, most with strong women leaders in Delhi, have no intention of allowing this movement to peter out. On New Year's Eve, AISA organised a protest in the central park at New Delhi's Connaught Place, aimed at "reclaiming spaces" for women. There will be more such public acts of assertion in 2013, posing a challenge for conventional policing.
In a political environment in which men try hard but fail to disguise their innate scorn for women in public life, and women try hard to fit in, will women's issues remain national concerns to be relegated to the margins again? Cynics point to the Women's Reservation Bill and the 16 years it has spent in cold storage despite the blessings of the most powerful woman leader in India. But the protests against corruption in 2011, and the rage against the gang rape of 2012, have created a new empowered citizen. He or she is led by conscience, not straitjacketed by any ideology, is connected to the world, and is armed with technology. Organising a protest is no longer a matter of hiring trucks, printing posters and buying food. It can be a group on Facebook which trends on Twitter and then gathers momentum through BlackBerry Messenger. Today's youth demand day-to-day democracy, not once in five years.
Women were at the centre of the recent US presidential battle between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney in November 2012. About 55 million unmarried women were eligible to vote in this election, and Romney's rigid views on abortion made them flock to the Obama camp. More women than men turned out to vote (53 per cent turnout for women and 47 per cent for men). Fifty-five per cent of the women voted for Obama, while only 44 per cent voted for Romney. Not surprising, because he wanted to take back the hardfought control over their bodies with his outdated views on abortion. And not surprising when his Republican colleagues Todd Akin of Missouri and Richard Mourdock of Indiana shocked everyone with their views on rape, saying pregnancy from rape was "something God intended". Both lost the elections to the US Senate.
There's a moral there for the Indian politician who dismisses the dentedand-painteds and the thumke walis. They don't just have a voice but also a vote.
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