Trigger Warning: This article contains mentions of rape, sexual assault, violence against women, sexual assault of children, and religiously motivated acts of violence.
12 years ago, just as the world was eagerly awaiting Christmas and New Year’s Day, one of the most violent misogynistic acts of violence in recent memory flooded global headlines. This event eventually came to be known as the Delhi Bus Gang Rape. On the 16th of December 2012, medical student Jyoti Singh was raped violently by 5 men on a bus in New Delhi, the capital of India. Jyoti sustained injuries from her rapists that eventually would claim her life days later in a hospital in Singapore. She was later referred to as Nirbhaya (meaning fearless one) as her story forced everyone to look at the realities of rape in India. The world was shaken by such an egregious act of sexual violence, sparking a wave of protests across India and elsewhere in South Asia asking for justice and rape to stop. Watching this happen at the time, it would be easy to feel that from such a painful story and a collective sense of anger, change would sweep across Indian society.
Now as we sit over a decade on from Jyoti Singh’s murder, India is once again in the headlines for another fatal and extreme rape case. This time, a 31-year-old trainee doctor was brutally raped and murdered in her place of work. Named as Moumita Debnath, upon discovery of her body, the news rippled across India, sparking up the latest chapter in a long conversation about sexual violence in the world’s most populous country. In West Bengal, the state where the offence took place, women have taken to the streets in their masses to protest once again for their basic safety.
What are the realities of rape in India?
After Jyoti’s story shook the world, many journalists and commentators dubbed India ‘the rape capital of the world’ and frequently tossed around statistics such as the fact a woman reports a rape every 15 minutes in India. The world was looking at India and asking why the nation has such a violent rape problem. While it is true that India has a long way to go regarding gender equality and ending violence against women, it is somewhat Orientalist to pose violence against women as a decidedly Indian issue. Sexual violence is not a uniquely Indian issue, rape and the social culture that facilitates it is a problem in every country in the world. India does indeed have a rape problem, but all cultures do. One case is too many.
Within the Indian context, women face several significant barriers, one of the greatest being that rape is common and often considered taboo to speak about. This means many women in India do not come forward. The social taboo around speaking out is further compounded in some regions and families where being a victim of rape presents a major threat to your social standing and ability to marry.
Rape is also used as a tool of sectarian violence which occurs between different religious communities in India. Particularly in contentious regions such as Kashmir, women are raped by men from outside their communities as a way of damaging their reputation and to destabilise their community. This has been the case since as long as the nation’s independence when in the partition of India and Pakistan, thousands of women were abducted, killed, and raped from both the Muslim and Hindu communities. Women’s bodies are the site of the continued social divisions between Hindu and Muslim groups in South Asia, and they pay the price for violence furthered by men.
What does the law say about rape in India?
Following the 2012 protests around India, the government passed a collection of new sexual assault legislation. But even with these new deterrents in place, the issue has only prevailed. This has been demonstrated by the continued protests in 2024 across Kolkata, Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Pune and elsewhere in India.
Concerning Jyoti Singh’s case, the Indian justice system was harsh and swift in its verdict, sentencing all but one (who was underage at the time) of the rapists to death by hanging. This was a rare decision at the time as India while maintaining capital punishment is legal, rarely enforces this extent of the law. In the ongoing case in West Bengal, no such verdicts have yet been reached and many of the doctor’s attackers are believed to remain at large. One suspected individual is in police custody. Tensions also grow with frustrations over the length of time it has taken the police to make decisive moves to pursue justice for the doctor.
The Indian penal code recognises rape as a crime and recommends a minimum of 10 years incarceration with hard labour for those found guilty of the offence. It is key however to note that the law states that in cases where a victim is the rapist’s wife and at least 12 years of age the sentence be reduced to a minimum of two years. This exposes a consistent issue with marital rape that presents itself across many countries’ legal systems. In the UK for example spousal rape was not a criminal offense until 1991.
What are the main themes of the protests?
The current protests, much like those of the past, are predominantly centred around opening up a dialogue about sexual violence in India. Doctors across India have declared a national strike in solidarity, marking one of history’s largest-scale medical strikes. This decision was no doubt exacerbated by attacks from mobs on the hospital where the doctor’s body was found. The Indian Medical Association recently described the rape and murder of Debnath in West Bengal as a “crime of barbaric scale due to the lack of safe spaces for women”.
Along these lines many in India are particularly outraged that this attack took place in a medical college, indicating that women who want to serve India as doctors or nurses cannot expect safety to do so in their places of work. Thematically, the majority of protests are out of sheer frustration that once again the safety of India’s women is under question. Women across the country are asking where they can expect to be safe when a woman is brutally raped in her place of work.
Amidst the protests, political jabs have been made between India’s ruling BJP party and the Trinamool Congress Party (TCP) who currently hold power in West Bengal. Those within the BJP have claimed that the TCP orchestrated the attack while those within the TCP claim that the BJP have stroked the flames of violence in West Bengal during a time of particular regional tension.
Overarching, despite political strongarming, the majority of protests across India have remained peaceful and a focus has remained on justice for the victim and her family.
Will anything change?
While it is impossible to say what impact this case will have in the long run for India and the safety of its women, it has continued and furthered the conversation about sexual violence in South Asia. Sexual violence is an entrenched issue in India, it compounds social divisions and is still not taken as seriously as it should be in many communities. Women are once again having an important conversation about what a safe society looks like in India, and are protesting in record numbers to demonstrate the necessity for safety against rape.
Women now outnumber men in India’s voting population and are believed to have the power to sway election results. This was a common theme in the Indian general election earlier this year. Their voice is that of the king-maker in Indian politics, so it is highly likely that all of the main political parties will be leapfrogging off the current dialogue that women are spearheading. As details continue to unfold in the doctor’s case, it is likely that further reforms to Indian law will at least be entertained.
In the grand scheme of things, however, many believed that following the 2012 protests following Jyoti Singh’s rape that we would see greater shifts in the culture than we have. Since then India’s divisions have grown wider and it’s clear that violent rape is still a problem facing every woman and girl in India. It is untold if this latest case will be the one to finally tip the scale and usher in a social overhaul, though it is clear that the women of India are hungry for a lasting and meaningful change.
