Justice, power, and rape. What four decades with survivors have taught me

Recent judicial interpretations in India have reignited an important global debate: how courts define sexual violence influences not only legal outcomes but also public attitudes. When judicial reasoning narrowly interprets acts of sexual violence, it can unintentionally reinforce a culture of impunity by signalling that certain forms of sexual aggression are less serious than survivors experience them to be.

When I read the recent Patna High Court judgment holding that forcibly removing a woman’s salwar, pressing her breasts, and attempting to overpower her did not amount to an attempt to rape, I was deeply disturbed—not only as a gender rights advocate or researcher, but as someone who has spent more than four decades standing beside women whose lives have been shattered by sexual violence.

This was not simply another controversial judgment. It reflected something far more dangerous: how the language of law can inadvertently normalize violence. Courts do more than interpret statutes; they define the moral boundaries of society. 

Every judgment communicates what a society considers serious, what it is willing to tolerate, and whose dignity it chooses to protect. When sexual violence is narrowly interpreted, survivors hear that their suffering is negotiable. Perpetrators hear that there remains room for escape. Law is not only an instrument of punishment; it is also a powerful teacher of social norms. Judicial decisions communicate to society what behaviour is considered acceptable, unacceptable, or insufficiently serious. When survivors perceive that the justice system minimizes sexual violence, reporting declines. When perpetrators believe accountability is uncertain, deterrence weakens. In this way, legal interpretation shapes social behaviour as much as criminal sanctions do.

For me, this was painfully familiar.

What forty years with survivors has taught me

I have spent most of my professional life listening to women whose stories never make headlines. Many women in India experience multiple and overlapping forms of discrimination. Their vulnerability is shaped not only by gender, but also by social hierarchy (caste), economic inequality (class), and, in many cases, religion, ethnicity, disability, or geographic location. These intersecting disadvantages reduce their access to justice, increase their exposure to violence, and make recovery more difficult.

At the Centre for Social Research, through our Rape Crisis Intervention Centre, we have accompanied survivors into police stations where complaints were discouraged, hospitals where dignity was compromised, courtrooms where credibility was questioned, and communities where survivors—not perpetrators—were expected to carry the burden of shame.

These experiences have taught me one uncomfortable truth: rape is rarely only about one individual committing one crime. It is about a society that repeatedly produces the conditions in which violence becomes possible, predictable, and too often, permissible. Across the world, research consistently demonstrates that rape is less about sexual desire than about power, domination, and inequality. In India, these dynamics are often intensified by entrenched social hierarchies, making sexual violence not only an act against an individual woman but, in some cases, a means of reinforcing social control over marginalized communities.

The hope that followed Nirbhaya

I remember the winter of 2012, when a young physiotherapy student—whom the nation came to know as Nirbhaya—was brutally gang-raped in a moving bus in Delhi. We at the Centre for Social Research were among the first civil society organisations to reach the streets. Like millions of Indians, I believed that the unprecedented public outrage would become a turning point. The Justice Verma Committee produced one of the world’s most progressive legal reform agendas. Parliament amended criminal laws. Definitions of rape expanded. Punishments became harsher. Fast-track courts were introduced.

Yet today, more than a decade later, I find myself asking a painful question: What changed, and what did not?

Why legal reform has fallen short

Yes, our laws became stronger. But our institutions did not evolve with the same urgency. Nor did our social attitudes.

Every year, India records tens of thousands of reported rapes and over four lakh crimes against women. Behind every statistic lies a woman whose life has been permanently altered. Yet these figures tell only part of the story. The National Family Health Survey reminds us that nearly one in three ever-married women has experienced domestic violence. Violence against women is therefore not an exception confined to dark streets or isolated incidents. It is embedded in homes, workplaces, educational institutions, public spaces, and increasingly, digital platforms.

That continuum of violence is what we often fail to recognise.

Justice must restore trust, not fear

India does not need harsher laws alone. It needs institutions that survivors trust, judges who understand the gendered nature of violence, police who investigate without prejudice, technology companies that design for safety, and political leadership that treats violence against women as a constitutional crisis rather than an episodic law-and-order problem.

After more than four decades of working with survivors, I am convinced that the real measure of justice is not how severely we punish after violence occurs. It is whether every girl grows up believing that her dignity is non-negotiable, her body belongs to her alone, and the institutions of her country will stand beside her when that dignity is violated.