At age three, her father named her Jyoti, the girl who lit up their
lives. Neighbours called her Shilpi, for her bonny, bright eyes. For her
friends at the Sai Institute of Paramedical & Allied Sciences,
Dehradun, she was Jeet, Ms Victory, a girl who never let anything get in
her way to be her best. To the nation, she is the Fearless One: A young
victim of brutal gang rape on December 16, 2012, who has become a
metaphor of hope in imagining a nation that's free of fear for women.
The
world has changed since we woke up the morning after December 16. A
year after Jyoti's death, a new reality is sinking in: The nation has to
contend with its new fearless women. Instead of keeping their heads
down, they are marching through the streets chanting 'Bekhauf Azaadi'
(freedom without fear), agitating for a new definition of violence
against women, shaking up the male status quo, speaking out against
abuse and bringing errant men to book, however powerful they might be.
The message is clear: "We are not afraid anymore. Don't mess with us."
"Apka matlab kya hai (What exactly do you mean)?" was Jyoti's pet
phrase. She had a habit of speaking out against what she felt was wrong,
says her mother Asha Devi. Born on May 10, 1989, to humble parents,
Jyoti had grown up in a little tenement in Mahavir Enclave near Dwarka.
She did not have too many friends or hobbies, always had her nose in her
books and dreamt of becoming a doctor.
The mindlessness of her suffering and death snapped something in the
nation's psyche. It was long overdue though in a country where
constitutional equality was never fought for but given away to women.
Despite The feminist movement since the 1970s, insidious violence had
made women's personal lives full of fear and dread-be it on the streets,
at home or at work. A brutal gang rape in a bus plying through the
buzzing streets of the Capital could have spread fear further about an
ever-present and extreme threat. But instead, it brought women out on to
the streets in droves.
The state tried to silence its fearless women: Sometimes with bamboo
sticks, water hoses and tear gas; sometimes with indifference, ridicule
and rancour. The Delhi Police commissioner mocked that men were also
unsafe-they got pick-pocketed. Former chief minister of Delhi, Sheila
Dikshit, who had warned women not to be too adventurous four years ago
when a young journalist was shot dead while returning home, had little
time for the demonstrators. But the pitch and extent of protest across
Indian cities finally forced the state to back off. It also prompted
reforms that expanded the law and imposed harsher penalties on rapists.
On September 13, when a judge sentenced four men to death for the Delhi
gang rape, chants, songs and cheers broke out here and there.
The protests made Suzette Jordan come out of hiding. For 15 long
months since February 12, 2012, when she was gang-raped and thrown out
of a car half-naked, the 37-year-old woman from Kolkata was known simply
as the 'Park Street rape victim'. It was in June this year that she did
the unimaginable: She revealed herself during an anti-rape protest
march. "They were saying
Halla Bol, raise a slogan, and something
clicked in me," she says. Her family was shocked when they saw her on
tv but her daughters were very proud of her. She is now once again
Suzette Jordan, a rape survivor who does not hide her name or use a
scarf to mask her face and tells her story with her head held high.
"When they see that you won't break, no matter what they do, they will
be afraid," she says.
The chorus for change reached a high pitch in August, when a 16-year-old accused a mighty self-styled godman, with assets worth
Rs.5,000
crore, of rape. Allegations of sexual abuse of female followers have
dogged the 72-year-old Asaram for long. But when the girl told the
police that he had raped her in his Jodhpur ashram on August 15 in the
name of 'exorcising' evil spirits, the swami was finally put behind bars
under dramatic circumstances. She lodged the complaint despite being
told he would get her father killed if she spoke out. And she refused to
succumb though Asaram's irate army of followers cast aspersions on her
mental state and character and threatened her family.
"The protests were the backdrop of my own experience," wrote lawyer
Stella James, 22, in her post in the Indian Journal of Law and Society, a
student-run blog hosted by the Kolkata-based National University of
Juridical Sciences, in November. During the winter vacations of her
final year in 2012, she had taken part in the protests against the
December 16 gang rape while assisting a "highly reputed, recently
retired" Supreme Court judge as an intern. "For my supposed diligence, I
was rewarded with sexual assault," she wrote. Her account caught the
nation's attention, prompting the Supreme Court to begin an inquiry
against Justice A.K. Ganguly.
Four months after Jyoti's death, India's rape laws were made more stringent by Parliament. And within a year, in December 2013,
Tehelka
editor Tarun Tejpal became the first powerful man to be arrested under
the new laws. Tejpal was accused by a junior colleague of forcing
himself on her despite her protest in an elevator at a conference on
November 7 and 8. It has become a test case for sexual harassment in the
workplace and a new definition of rape.
If every fear has a name, every fear also has an antidote. "I fear
this may be the beginning of a period of further intimidation and
harassment," the young journalist had written before Tejpal got
arrested. Asaram's lawyers have claimed that the girl who accused him of
rape had a disease which compulsively drew a woman to a man. Despite
Stella James' post, Justice Ganguly has refused to step down from his
post as the chairman of West Bengal Human Rights Commission. A Union
Cabinet minister and a few senior judges have sent out the warning that
women might not get jobs if they complain against sexual harassment.
Yet, the freedom song of '
Bekhauf Azaadi' has unleashed powerful
words that echo through urban India and empower women: Strength,
courage, resilience, confronting and overcoming fear, imagining a world
where it seems possible to break through to the other side-to
fearlessness.
"Come and see her," says Asha Devi. In one corner of a small room, of
a small flat in Dwarka, West Delhi, prayer lamps, flowers, incense and
images of gods line up shelves built into the wall. One photograph
dominates all: A girl in a pink dress, staring intently into the camera,
unsmiling and serious, with waves of hair falling around her face and
cascading over one eye. "Here is my Jyoti," the mother quivers for a
moment between tears and smiles. "Don't forget her... don't forget
December 16."
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