Gender equality in the dock

Tracing women's struggle for gender equality and safety, this book offers a framework for fighting their battles, in the courtroom and beyond

Courting Equality: Landmark Cases in the Battle for Women’s Rights

 By Mihira Sood

Published by Juggernaut India 

296 pages ₹799

 

 

A younger generation of women took to the streets after Lady Shri Ram College decided to hold classes offline following the gang rape of a minor in a nearby park on September 21, 2026, and the Delhi government curtailed public access to parks in the evening. Despite police brutality, these women also played a leading role in protests demanding the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and were at the forefront of demonstrations calling for the removal of the Chief Election Commissioner.

 

In the last few days, the world has witnessed the heavy deployment of the government’s security apparatus to keep the streets in Delhi safe. Amid this political upheaval, Mihira Sood’s book,Courting Equality: Landmark Cases in the Battle for Women’s Rights offers readers a context to what might otherwise seem like a singular moment, be it the recent protests or the candle-march in 2012, or the #metoo.

 

 

In order to do so, Ms Sood combines the history of national movements, women’s rights movements, the rise of the Hindu Right, liberalisation, workplace harassment and abuse, the rise of cable TV and movies like No One Killed Jessica and Rang De Basanti, the Nirbhaya rape case, and the controversy over women’s entry into the Sabarimala temple. She begins with a brief history of pre-Independence women’s organisations, focusing on nation building in the 1950s-60s, calling these the “dead decades” for Indian feminism.

 

In the 1970s, the law wasn’t really a platform for battle because violence against women was treated as a private, domestic matter for families to handle behind closed doors. A rights-based, confrontational approach came up against economic hardship and political unrest in India, even as feminist currents swirled around the globe. She writes that “[T]here remained significant diversity within the feminist fold, and political allegiances were not at the forefront. While deeply political in its engagement, [the movement] had no party line, no structure, no hierarchy nor even a uniform voice. It was often, but not always, feminist, secular and progressive.”

 

But as she points out, “The women’s movement fundamentally shifted this perception, placing these issues in the public domain and demanding state accountability.” The question was also raised about the law’s treatment of marginalised women, such as Mathura, an Adivasi girl, and Rameeza Bee, a Muslim woman, who were raped in police custody, vis-à-vis the powerful women like Maneka Gandhi and Nandini Satpathy who challenged the arbitrary impounding of passport, and the summons to police station inconnection with corruption, respectively.

 

Ms Sood also traces the rise of Hindu Right. Almost all parties had a women’s wing but today, they are hollowed out. Many Bills that were initially supported by feminist movements, such as the Uniform Civil Code and the Women’s Reservation Bill, have been co-opted to suit the Right wing, as can be seen in cases of Love Jihad, which irrevocably infantilise women and take away their agency.

 

On workplace issues, she recounts the gang-rape of a social worker in Rajasthan, Bhanwari Devi—a case that’s still pending and most of the accused are now dead — but which proved the starting point for the creation of laws against workplace harassment. She moves towards the issues of harassment within the legal systems in the 1990s before citing the recent examples that flooded the internet with #MeToo. Her stance remains that when one is accused, the usual sentiment is victim-blaming and moving the focus to ruining the accused’s career, which hasn’t been the case for anyone. Here, notably, she mentions the divide between older feminists who demand going through the legal route for justice and the younger ones for whom #meToo was about creating solidarity that led to catharsis.

 

Throughout the book

 

Ms Sood questions the legal system in which the accuser has to prove guilt rather than the accused proving innocence. The scenario is grim, but readers should draw hope from the fact that the two-finger test was abolished, the definition of rape was broadened to include oral and digital penetration, and the law recognises the absence of consent as central to the crime. There is also hope in the fact that perpetrators are sometimes punished despite their privilege, as in the case of Jessica Lal.

 

At the outset, Ms Sood mentions two objectives. One, the dilemma of what to include and leave out. Second, writing about law in a way that would appeal to a wider public. Does she achieve both? Some chapters demand more attention than others, and references to older cases might be lost. She highlights the need for slow and long-term changes to the rape culture in India instead of some rushed encounter.

 

All told, Courting Equality leaves readers disheartened by the fact that women continue to be seen as objects, possessions, and mere carriers of culture and the oppressive, paternalistic practices of all religions. The book will certainly anger readers but it also provides a framework for women to fight their battles, legally and otherwise.  

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  The reviewer is an independent writer from Sambalpur.  @geekyliterati