In the aftermath of the Nirbhaya movement in 2012-13, Narendra Modi’s campaign team invented a reassuring slogan – Bahot hua nari pe war, ab ki bar Modi Sarkar! The slogan captured the minds and hearts of millions of Indians who were outraged by the cruelty of the violence in the December 2012 Delhi gang rape case. From Nirbhaya in 2012 to Hatharas in 2020, we are not only witnessing an increase in the intensity of violence against young women but also a complete loss of discourse on patriarchy and what really causes men to behave in the most brutal way and not to repent for it.

If one is disturbed by the fate of Nirbhaya but not anywhere as much by the equally inhuman treatment suffered by the minor in Jammu and a young woman in Hatharas or Unnao, then he or she is not only a hypocrite but also a communal, casteist and patriarchal person. Responses of many people and leaders, certainly not all, in the country to cases of rape and violence against women post-Nirbhaya led us to believe that the outrage in the 2012 case was more political rather than any real concern to eliminate the scourge of rape and violence against women. How many of them are demanding that the killers of Hatharas should meet the same fate as that of the killers of a techie in Hyderabad? How many protesters in the Nirbhaya movement are willing to pose a question to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his much-celebrated promise of women’s safety in the country? If Nirbhaya happened because of the so called weak Prime Minister of the day and lack of fear of the law in the minds of the perpetrators, why do we have ghastly incidences in Jammu, Hyderabad, Unnao and Hatharas under a Prime Minister who boasts of a metaphoric 56-inch chest? Why is it that the publicized staged encounter of two accused in the Hyderabad case, or the hanging of the four guilty men after due process of law in the Nirbhaya case, or the dozens of planned encounters by the Adityanath government have not deterred the rapists and killers of 19-year old in Uttar Pradesh?? There is much more at stake than the issue of law and order in the violence against women.

In the said essay, Dr. Ambedkar extensively quotes Manu’s opinions and laws on women as follows:

“II. 213. It is the nature of women to seduce man in this (world). For that reason, the wise are never unguarded in (the company of) females.
II. 215.  One should not sit in a lonely place with one’s mother, sister or daughter; for the senses are powerful, and master even a learned man.
VIII. 299. A wife, a son, a slave, a pupil, and a younger brother of the full blood, who have committed faults, may be beaten with a rope or a split bamboo.”
IX. 2. Day and night women must be kept in dependence by the males (of) their (families), and if they attach themselves to sensual enjoyments, they must be kept under one’s control.
IX. 3. Her father protects (her) in childhood, her husband protects (her) in youth, and her sons protect (her) in old age; a woman is never for independence.
IX. 14. Women do not care for beauty, nor is their attention fixed on age; (thinking), ‘(It is enough that) he is a man’, they give themselves to the handsome and to the ugly.
IX. 15.  Through their passion for men, through their mutable temper, through natural heartlessness, they become disloyal towards their husbands, however, carefully they may be guarded in this (world).”

It is this thinking about women that has saturated the minds of men through generations resulting in the brazen and unashamed use of violence against women in our society. The modern idea of law and order would be ineffective as long as this impression about women in the minds of men, as codified by laws of Manu, are not completely eradicated.

In the same essay, Dr. Ambedkar specifically comes down heavily on Manu’s laws on marriage. He wrote,

“It was not to tie up a man to a woman but it was to tie up the woman to a man and to leave the man free. For Manu does not prevent a man from giving up his wife. Indeed, he not only allows him to abandon his wife but he also permits him to sell her. But what he does is to prevent the wife from becoming free. The meaning is that a wife, sold or repudiated by her husband, can never become the legitimate wife of another who may have bought or received her after she was repudiated. If this is not monstrous, nothing can be.”