Gender justice not served

Ratna Raman 

IN the 13th century, ‘gender’ (n, Latin) described family, species and race, while in Olde French it indicated kind, type. Gender highlighted the distinctions between male and female on a sexual basis only around the 20th century. Feminist movements in the 1960s ‘deployed’ (utilised effectively) the term gender to highlight the ‘attenuation’ (reduction) of women’s rights all over the world, because of social attributes that were attached to biological difference.

Gender today is about male and femaleidentities, structured around social and cultural differences and is no longer confined to biology. However cultural practices reiterate stereotypes for men and women.  Recent discussions around the film Padmavati, showed how self-immolation was the prescribed code of honour for women. Similarly, heroic death on the battlefield, as the Mahabharata argues, grants men great stature. 

‘Gender justice’, a term recently used by the CJI, guarantees equal rights and ensures equal access to all men and women in modern societies.  The recent Hadiya case allows us to examine the health of  gender justice   in contemporary India. Twentyfour-year-old Akhila converted to Islam, changed her name to Hadiya, and chose  to get married to Shefin Jehan.   Unwilling to accept the marriage, her parents moved the Kerala High Court which annulled the marriage, terming it a ‘love jihad’, a right-wing coined expression.

Was the High Court ‘complicit’  (involved with others in activity that is unlawful or morally wrong) in its denial of autonomy to Hadiya to pursue her choices in education and marriage? Complicit  has  been identified as the word most researched  online in 2017, in the wake of women’s protests against male double standards.

Her husband petitioned the SC for an ‘adjudication’ (legal process of reviewing evidence and argumentation) over the High Court’s verdict.

In fact, the Chief Justice’s query as to why his  attorney was trying to make this a case about gender justice remains troubling. The subsequent pronouncement seems to engage with extraneous factors looming large over the case. The SC directed her to complete her education under state protection while residing in the college hostel. Hadiya’s parents no longer control her but her right to conjugality has been denied. Confining her to a life within the college premises when she desires to live with her husband  does not serve the interests of gender justice. 

Adult men and women are entitled by law to adopt a religion of their choice and to marry irrespective of faith, class and caste. Yet, the NIA has been asked to investigate the conspiracy of Hindu women in Kerala who are being forcibly converted to Islam. 

Authorising the NIA, which monitors terrorist activity, to assess her conversion and marriage, placing her under protection to complete her education and refusing to hear her out in court, gives ‘short-shrift’ (curt treatment) to Hadiya and Jehan’s  autonomy.

When courts of law remain unsympathetic to the constitutional rights of all Indian citizens, such ‘judicial overreach’ (exceeding authority in law) can only pulverise all possibilities  of gender justice for the ‘dimunitive’(extremely small) individual.