'The Same Old Objectification Of Women': Will The New Bill Help?

The article critiques society’s desensitization to rape and the reactionary nature of legislative changes that follow high-profile cases of sexual violence. It highlights West Bengal’s “Aparajita Woman and Child Bill 2024,” which introduces the death penalty for rapists, as an example of this approach. The author argues that new laws aren’t the solution, pointing to the ineffectiveness of existing legislation due to poor enforcement and deeper societal issues like patriarchy and the objectification of women. The article calls for a shift from creating more laws to ensuring the proper implementation of existing ones, while addressing underlying misogyny to bring about real change.

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'The Same Old Objectification of Women': Will The New Bill Help?

G.K. Chesterton, in his brilliant essay “The Mad Official”, analyzes how a society goes mad. The rot begins, he says, when wild actions are received calmly by society.

“These are people that have lost the power of astonishment at their own actions. When they give birth to a fantastic passion or foolish law, they do not start or stare at the monster they have brought forth… These nations are really in danger of going off their heads en masse, of becoming one vast vision of imbecility.”

And that is how I feel whenever there is a new rape incident being highlighted in the news. The new gruesome ways people find to make a woman suffer, stripping her of more than her fundamental rights but also her dignity. But sadly, these news are calmly read by some people who dismiss it by saying this is our new reality now.

But the point is, it shouldn’t be.

If we do look at the laws and the way judiciary has handled these rape cases, is there any change detectable at all?

Are we really trying our best and giving our best to the women of this country?

The answer falls short.

It was a change enough when the Union government came with the brilliant solution of revamping old age criminal laws that sounded and felt too colonial, and then came this state bill named ‘Aparajita Woman and Child Bill (West Bengal Criminal Laws and Amendment) Bill 2024’ that quite shocked us all claiming that they will award death penalty to the rapists.

I guess the West Bengal state government forgot that we have an Article 21 which deals with right to life and liberty that also, in fact, applies to convicts. Moreover, the death penalty is only awarded in the rarest of the cases which finds its origin in the 1980 judgment of Bachan Singh v. State of Punjab.

But the question that the advocates and legal scholars are asking-

Is the new anti-rape law really needed?

Is it only the fear of punishment that drives people to not commit a ghastly sin as rape?

Is it all that is needed then why have we not had the death penalty as punishment since the beginning of times or at least since the infamous Nirbhaya case?

This bill consists of all the same demands and desires the previous two bills of other states consist of, death penalty and less time for investigation for fast action. The situation is also very similar to the passing of the bills, something vile has happened with one of the women and the government is taking fast action to appease the public.

With a jibe at the central government, Mamata Banerjee stated that-

“We wanted the Centre to amend its existing laws and include stricter clauses to ensure exemplary punishment for perpetrators and quicker justice for victims. They showed no enthusiasm for it. That’s why we made the move first. This Bill, once enacted, can serve as a model for the rest of the country.”

But where she falls short is probably not the laws, but the implementation of them. This case has highlighted the poor administration in Bengal state. Although it’s not just one state’s problem but all of them in general.

Most of them have made a drastic change after such an incident and my question here is-

Why do we wait for something severe to happen and then only act on it?

Consider Andhra Pradesh’s Disha bills, passed by the state assembly in December 2019. These bills amended the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), introducing the death penalty for rapists.

They were enacted following the gang rape and murder of a 26-year-old veterinary doctor in Shamshabad, Hyderabad, in the previous month. All four accused were killed in a police encounter on December 6 that year. While some in the police and government may have viewed the case as swiftly resolved, it stirred the nation enough for the then ruling party to pass the Disha bills.

Two years later, Maharashtra’s legislature took a similar approach by introducing the Shakti Criminal Laws (Maharashtra Amendment) Bill, which also included the death penalty for rape and set shorter timelines for investigations and trials.

This legislation followed the 2016 gang rape and murder of a 15-year-old Maratha girl in Kopardi village, Ahmednagar district. The brutal crime had outraged the Maratha community, and although the Shakti bill was introduced over five years later, it aimed to address that collective anger. The push for Maratha quota demands also gained momentum as a result of the community’s growing frustration.

And now this Aprajita bill did the same thing with the new criminal laws that were implemented in the july of this year only.

Now the question in front of us is how is it different from the central law- Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita?

So the answer lies in the death penalty provision which is awarded in almost all of the provisions of the anti-rape bill. The Aparajita Bill not only introduces capital punishment for rape and sexual offences but also mandates that investigations into rape cases be completed within 21 days of the initial report, compared to the current two-month deadline.

It further proposes penalties, including imprisonment for three to five years and a fine, for printing or publishing any material related to court proceedings without permission. Additionally, the bill allows for life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for those convicted of rape.

But this bill has to face another obstacle and that is the process of becoming law, since we already have one on the center level.

The State government has the authority to amend criminal laws since they are part of the Concurrent List under the Seventh Schedule of the Indian Constitution. However, the Constitution grants Parliament ultimate authority over items in the Concurrent List in case of a conflict.

This means that if there is a disagreement between a Central and State law, the Central law will take precedence. And as we know that political parties at both the levels are different so it is kind of easy to understand when the President would be giving her assent for this bill.

But we all know a law is useless if it is not implemented properly and hence there feels no need to bring any more laws then we already have.

So the answer according to me of the earlier question if these laws are necessary is a big NO.

Justice must not only be done but must be seen to be done. In the context of rape laws, it is not the sheer number of legislations that will bring about change, but their proper and effective implementation. A society can enact countless laws, but without diligent enforcement, they remain mere words on paper.

The focus should shift from creating more laws to ensuring that the existing ones are applied consistently and swiftly. Investigations must be thorough, trials fair, and punishments just, to restore faith in the legal system.

If we dive deeper we can find that maybe implementing laws also barely scratches the surface, and the major root cause of such heinous crime against women is the belief that they are an object. No thanks to patriarchy, a major part of our society feels the same and does not treat them as equals. One of the classic examples of such objectification is the marital rape concept, where one assumes that since the wife is the property of a husband, nothing like rape could ever happen.

However human rights groups, led by the All India Democratic Women’s Association, have been pressing the Supreme Court to classify marital rape as a criminal offence.

The court, in response, has summoned the government to justify its stance and at the head of all this is a woman senior advocate herself, i.e. Indira Jaising. Hopefully the judiciary takes such steps to remove these ill-advised thoughts from the society and provide justice as Benjamin Franklin once said,