Delhi gangrape: Why we should remember the victim for more than her courage

The Delhi gangrape case of 2012, often dubbed as the ‘Nirbhaya’ case, was one unfortunate incident that brought tens of thousands on the streets in protest and soon turned into a wave against issues of sexual violence. From setting up of the Justice Verma Committee and the rapid enactments of the Criminal Amendment Act (2013) and the Sexual Harassment at Workplace Act (2013) to new youth movements like “Hyderabad for feminism”, “why loiter” groups and Delhi colleges’ Pinjra Tod movement, a lot has happened in the past five years. But how have these affected, if at all, our consciousness about women’s issues? Mary E John explores in this BS Special piece.


It was just five years ago that a young student was gangraped in a moving bus in Delhi. She died within a week, and by then she had become an icon for tens of thousands who spent days and nights on the streets protesting the brutality that had befallen her. Are five years enough time for us to take stock of what difference it has made? Has anything changed in our understanding of sexual violence to make that tragic event and her death somehow more meaningful?

These questions cannot be answered directly. Some would say that what made the rape so eminently newsworthy, and for days on end, was that it came close to being a ‘perfect’ rape. By this is meant that it was the kind of crime that invited the greatest identification with the victim and next to none with the perpetrators. The national and international outcry that followed set many wheels into motion, including the state’s response in instituting the Justice Verma Committee and the rapid enactments of the Criminal Amendment Act (2013) and the Sexual Harassment at Workplace Act (2013). It certainly brought issues of sexual violence into public discourse in a way that prior decades of agitation by women’s groups had not been able to achieve.
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