the critical issue . What women want — or don’t

As I write this, the winter chill has set in, and fog and pollution have taken over our lives. Perhaps this is a signal that it is time to reflect, both on the year gone by and on what is to come.

The year 2018 has been an eventful one. Much has happened on the political scene; there have been plenty of scams; banks have lost money; important people have resigned from their posts; election results have surprised, and so much more. But let me turn to some of the ‘other’ stories of the year, stories that touch on the lives of women.

It was the year of the #MeToo movement in India, which occupied much space in the media and dominated conversations. Important men lost their jobs as women spoke out. Beyond the necessary public clamour, though, lay much more: The sharing of stories, the creation of safe spaces where women could be free to speak out, the recognition of the need for support, both psychological and material, and a number of important questions about how to deal with the allegations that were being made.

The year also saw a slew of legislations, each more problematic than the other. Most recently, the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) 2018 Bill came in for much self-congratulation from the ruling party, but was — and continues to be — fiercely opposed by the community it’s meant for.

Typically, as with legislation that professes to bring about positive change for minorities and marginalised communities, the Bill infantilises transpeople, making it necessary for them to ‘prove’ their trans identity to a committee before they can be recognised as ‘legitimate’, and pushes them back into the fold of families (natal, heterosexual and usually hostile).

Meanwhile, all the positive provisions suggested by the Private Member’s Bill that first brought this issue to Parliament (job reservations, education, among others) have disappeared.

There’s no doubt that when the State draws up its tally for the year, it will count the Transgender Bill among its major achievements, just as it will the legislation criminalising triple talaq, or curbing trafficking, or surrogacy.

But there are many questions about each of these. Commercial surrogacy is now not allowed, but a woman can birth children for “close” relatives. She must, however, be a mother herself, and the relatives must be married. The basic assumption is that if everything happens within the fold of the (heterosexual) family, it’s all right. A woman does not have the right to sell her body but it can be appropriated by the family. That is the real assumption.

Similarly, trafficked women are to be detained, and kept in protective detention in homes and shelters, no matter that the year and many past years have provided ample evidence that such homes are dens of sexual abuse and exploitation. But the law considers them safe because, in the absence of the family, they are the only recourse.

In each of these legislations, concern for preserving the family is clear. Not so, oddly enough, in the criminalising of instant triple talaq, where the whisking off of the man to prison if he pronounces the triple talaq (already declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, so there is really no need for this legislation), will surely break up the family. Perhaps Muslim families are different.

Legislation apart, there hasn’t been much else to report that’s positive. Violence continued unabated: In a village near Salem in Tamil Nadu, a 13-year-old Dalit girl was raped and beheaded in full public view and in front of her mother, by an upper caste neighbour whose advances she did not like. In Amritsar, a bishop who had sexually assaulted nuns in his care returned to a riotous welcome in his home, impunity writ large upon his face.

Women now have the right to visit the Haji Ali shrine and Sabarimala temple where two women have defied all barriers and entered. This is only the beginning.

What, then, will 2019 bring?

While the past is easy to look back on, the future is more difficult to project. But despite the somewhat dismal state of affairs that I’ve described, the future does hold out hope. And much of that comes from the active ways in which women in India have engaged with the harsh realities of the year that has gone by.

Not one of the legislative changes has been passed without protest, and women activists have not given up hope. They continue to register their protest and lobby the State to follow due process and at least refer the problematic laws to a Select Committee.

Nor have groups been silent on violence against women. This, at least, is clear; the silence around the subject has been effectively broken.

No one is fooling themselves that the problems will miraculously go away, everyone knows that situations will only become more complex, but they know too that even though the horizon will constantly shift, this is a battle well worth fighting.

Urvashi Butalia is an editor, publisher and director of Zubaan

E-mail: blink@thehindu.co.in

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