Despite over seven decades of law-making and landmark judgments, there remains a gulf, between the constitutional promise of equality and reality on the ground.

Published on: Sep 20, 2026, 06:55:59 IST

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History moves in cycles, and nowhere is this truer than in the movement for women’s rights. Mihira Sood’s debut book, Courting Equality: Landmark cases in the battle for women’s rights (Juggernaut) reminds us that the march has seldom been linear. Periods of activism have followed stretches of a lull and even backlash against rights.

As a 28-year-old, freshly-minted lawyer, Sood joined the protests following the December 16, 2012 gang-rape of a young physiotherapy student in Delhi. Those protests were unprecedented but murmurs of activism had already begun. In colleges, pinjra tod (break the cage) in response to discriminatory hostel rules. In cities, besharmi morchas (loosely, slut walks) to reclaim public space. Sood, then 25, took part in the pink chaddi protest where women sent pink panties to the Sri Ram Sene after its attempted moral policing in Mangalore bars.

In January 2013, Sood was chosen to assist the Justice JS Verma Committee that had been set up to make suggestions on legal and systemic changes. We tend to forget just how path-breaking the 63-page report was: yes to criminalising marital rape, no to the immunity granted to armed forces in civilian conflict. But between the committee and Parliament fell the shadow. The criminal amendments to the rape law were the most sweeping since 1983 but Parliament was not able to bring itself to make marital rape — currently before the Supreme Court — a crime.

Courting Equality is a stark reminder of how, despite over seven decades of law-making and landmark judgments, there remains a gulf, between the constitutional promise of equality and reality on the ground. Older issues like dowry and domestic violence, once seen as belonging to the private domain, are now out in the public. But, shamefully, they persist despite laws and social movements.

Rights once granted are now under threat. Section 377 — sex against the order of nature — is no longer a crime but marriage equality failed to get majority approval in the Supreme Court. Also, back in the Supreme Court is Sabarimala and the right of women to access places of worship with the issue now being heard by a larger bench. Transgender rights granted by Parliament stand amended, with their most basic tenet of self-identification replaced by a bureaucrat’s rubber stamp. The more things change, the greater the threat of a rollback.

A uniform civil code (UCC) with a common law for all religions in matters including inheritance, marriage and divorce, once a feminist utopia with a focus on “egalitarian” rather than “uniform”, is now a Right-wing project. Three BJP-ruled states have passed UCC legislation — and the Union home minister says it will be introduced in all 21 NDA-ruled states. But unlike the feminist dream, this version comes with an added layer of protectionism that infantilises women and protects “family and community honour, of which women are still seen as vessels”, writes Sood. “We seem to be trapped in a cycle of ‘rage, reform, repeat’ — intense outrage followed by some superficial changes…that are intended to defuse the situation rather than cultivate change,” she writes.

In the years since the activism of the 2010s so much has changed, for the better, on the ground — girls are more likely to be in school and more likely to be supported by parents in their pursuit of careers, women have emerged as a powerful vote bank outnumbering men and, in many cases, determining election outcomes. Ultimately, says Sood, it’s the nation’s youth that gives her hope: “They are able to see through political rhetoric and they know what they want. It’s this clarity that gives me hope.”

Namita Bhandare writes on gender. The views expressed are personal

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