Recent events threaten to shake our convictions that women can ever be free to live by themselves, but hope is eternal.
Cheerful young woman surrounded by hands with thumbs up. (iStock)
A Bengaluru girl died by suicide on New Year’s Eve. She must have been so unreasonably distraught that her parents disallowed her to attend a photoshoot at a city mall.
What was her age? Twenty-one. Yes, 21. She was no girl. She was an adult. A woman. Three years over the age, when she can vote, have relationships, and demand her rights to privacy, body autonomy, and independent decisions.
We don’t know the circumstances prevailing in her house. Were they an orthodox family? Extremely conservative? Control-freak parents? An extra-sensitive woman? It could be anything.
But we are not getting into that. We are on a matter of principle here. What a travesty that the 21-year-old woman is bound to consent! No, not hers, but her parents.
In this age of growing awareness about stopping to “govern” the lives of girls and women, a girl of legal age has the right to consent to sex, going clubbing, bar-hopping, mind you — all far removed from, and less “innocent” than, attending a photoshoot.
Is there something sinister in a photoshoot other than that the venue may have been far from the woman’s house or the parents were over-protective? However, the woman felt she could not exercise her consent.
There are strong, logical arguments to tell the woman and her parents how they could have approached the situation differently without precipitating things beyond return. But then, she is dead.
In her death, we learn a lesson: The law says a woman’s rights are sacrosanct. But justice does not always believe so.
There are riders, there are arbiters of that justice. It is meted out in Shylockian proportions. The woman has to fight every inch of the way. It is her guardians — parents, partners, children, neighbours, courts, society — who decide how free she is.
A woman cannot exercise her consent even to protect her modesty.
Take the case of that woman from Belagavi, Karnataka, whose villagers beat her up because her son eloped with a girl on the day of her engagement. The retribution ended with the mother being partially stripped, tied to a pole, and thrashed again.
Violating a woman’s modesty apparently costs nothing these days. It need not even be rape. Disrobe her. Parade her. The deed is done.
Section 354 of what was previously the IPC relates to assault or criminal force on a woman with intent to outrage her modesty.
On 12 December, 2023, Judge Anil L Pansare of the Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court acquitted a person found guilty of outraging the modesty of a woman.
The case was about a man on a bicycle pushing a woman on her way to the market. He had earlier followed her a couple of times and “abused her”.
The court observed, “The said act cannot be said to be capable of shocking the sense of decency of a woman. The act may be annoying but definitely would not shock the sense of decency of a woman.”
What is the basis for the court’s reasoning?
“The Supreme Court has noted that the essence of a woman’s modesty is her sex, which she possesses by birth. The Supreme Court has held that the ultimate test for ascertaining whether modesty has been outraged is whether the offender’s action is such as could be perceived as one which is capable of shocking the sense of decency of a woman.”
The patriarchs of that Belagavi village knew all about this. It has been ingrained in the psyche for aeons.
Are we to assume that the woman’s sex is the culprit for her misfortunes? Modesty is a word used more in its breach if this instance is anything to go by. Is it the court’s contention that any act of a man not sexual in nature is not a violation of her modesty?
In which case, what is this bad-touch-good-touch we teach our children? Can any stranger touch a woman anywhere and get away with it? What touch is okay, and what touch is not? Who decides that for the woman? Isn’t it left to the discretion of the judge? Does not this lead to hair-splitting, far from justice?
It is not enough that the woman decides that a touch, any touch, is disagreeable to her, insults her, and outrages her modesty. That is, assuming that modesty is linked to her gender — as the courts have already decreed. Do they stand human and humanitarian scrutiny? No.
How arbitrary are definitions of consent and modesty and sexual assault and the various touches?
In 2021, a woman judge of the Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court did not consider an accused sexually groping a child a sexual assault under POCSO. The judge said it instead constituted the offence of outraging modesty under Section 354 of the IPC.
The judge had her reason: The victim reportedly had her top on and when the accused groped here, there was no “skin to skin contact”; so, it could not be an assault.
Perhaps we now need a glossary on the kinds of touches, degrees of touches, graded definitions of modesties, and the kinds of consents available to women. And it is reasonable to assume the advice of no woman would be sought for compiling such a reprehensible document.
Post Script: In State of Punjab vs. Major Singh, a question arose whether a female child of seven-and-a-half months could be said to be possessed of (sic)“modesty”, which could be outraged.
Go figure.
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