#dnaEdit: Let us not forget

December 16 2012: the day that, even if temporarily, changed mainstream national discourse in India. The brutal gang-rape of a medical student in the national capital and her subsequent death in a Singapore hospital brought the city to its knees. Thousands of women and men hit the streets. While the then-ruling Congress party’s top leadership walled themselves in silence, the protesters breached the barricades and defied police batons and water cannons. Unprecedented scenes of defiance unravelled in Delhi’s streets, right in the heart of the capital’s VVIP areas.

Under intense pressure from these militant streets protests, the political class — for the first time in India’s history — began to talk about gender-based violence in a serious manner. The theme dominated media discussions on television and in print, goading politicians to take a stand on violence against women, an issue they had sidestepped for so many decades.

The air was filled with a rare optimism during those days. The new-found hope soared even higher when a group of three dedicated jurists headed by former Chief Justice JS Verma burnt the midnight oil in putting together a radical report to combat violence against women. Many of its proposals endorsed the arguments voiced by women’s rights activists, and the report squarely laid the blame for sexual crimes at the doors of the government, the police and even the public, for its indifference to issues related to gender. Not just that, but even in the face of raucous demands, the Verma Commission did not propose the death penalty for rapists.

The deep roots of patriarchy in the political class became evident yet again when the commission’s proposals to make stalking and voyeurism punishable crimes set off a huge debate with male legislators like Sharad Yadav (an MP from Janata Dal United) making outright sexist statements on the floor of Parliament. During the debate on stalking in Parliament Sharad Yadav quipped: “Who amongst us have not followed girls?” His colleagues broke out into laughter. Referring to the provisions of stalking and voyeurism in the Criminal Law (Amendment) Bill, 2013, Yadav said such changes were prone to being misused against men.

Two years later as we mark December 16, the sexist remarks made by our legislators and the continued spate of violence against women should make us pause: What did we achieve? The discourse on gender has retreated into the background once more, surfacing only when confronted with fresh incidents of crimes against women. These two years have been dotted by such incidents. The juggernaut of gender-based violence has spared no one — not children, not adults, not even old women. Just to take one incident, the recent rape case of a woman financial executive by an Uber cab driver, revealed the rapist to have been a serial offender who had successfully escaped the police and judicial dragnet despite multiple cases of rape and molestation stacked against him. Undoubtedly, the system in 2014 is as rotten as it was back in 2012.

Habitually indifferent to gender violence and jolted by the 2012 spontaneous mass protests to take temporary note of it, the political class has returned to its customary nonchalance. Gender violence has slipped from the top of the political agenda. Barely implemented, the recommendations of the significant Verma Commission are gathering dust. We have gone back to business as usual. In the meanwhile, women continue to be attacked in public and private spaces. Discussions around safety and gendered cities are no longer audible in the corridors of policymaking. Unless we break the oppressive stillness in every forum and at every opportunity, India will continue to carry its burden of shame.