India’s high court draws a line for equality

Critics of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi worry that he has cowed the judiciary during his near decade in power, enabling an agenda that has favored India’s Hindu majority and stoked violence against religious and ethnic minorities.

The Supreme Court would like a word.

Last Friday, the high bench struck down a defamation conviction against opposition leader Rahul Gandhi. The decision vacated a March sentence by a lower court in Mr. Modi’s home state that would have prevented Mr. Gandhi from challenging the prime minister in next year’s elections.

Today, the Supreme Court went further. It created a commission of three retired female justices to monitor efforts to restore peace in the northeastern state of Manipur, following months of ethnic violence punctuated by the public gang rape of two women. The new panel reflects the court’s belief that equality is a central pillar of security and stability. “Our efforts are to restore a sense of confidence in the rule of law,” the court said today. 

By linking judicial independence and gender equality, the court amplified a gradual shift in how Indian society values women and girls. As a result of strong public and community initiatives, gender selection – the practice of aborting female fetuses – has decreased over the past decade. A Pew Research Center study last year found that 55% of Indians – male and female – think women and men make equally good political leaders. Some 73% say men and women should share in making family financial decisions. 

Since his swearing in as chief justice last November, Dhananjaya Yeshwant Chandrachud has made balancing judicial appointments a priority. Seven women were appointed to high courts during his first 100 days. Such reforms still face head winds. “Chambers are skeptical about recruiting young women advocates,” he said at a ceremony in March to lay the cornerstone of a new regional courthouse. “The reason for that is not a lack of young talented women. ... But ... rather because of our actions being a product of our stereotypes that we hold against women.” 

Since May, violence in Manipur has claimed the lives of at least 150 people and displaced more than 50,000. The assault on the two women there and similar recent incidents in other states have provoked public protests across India. Earlier today, a coalition of opposition parties introduced a motion of no confidence in Parliament against the prime minister. Mr. Modi had remained mostly silent about the incident for nearly two months, until a grisly video was posted on social media last month. The rebuke is likely to fail, as Mr. Modi’s party retains a large enough majority to defeat it. But it raises the profile of gender-based violence just a few weeks before Delhi is set to host an economic summit of G20 world leaders.

The court’s new panel in Manipur, meanwhile, offers an opportunity to demonstrate what India and other countries striving to uproot violence against women are getting right. A case study on women and peace building from Jordan, published in the journal Daedalus in June, found that when “women are able to participate equally, humanitarian responses ... are also more effective and inclusive.”

For India, rejecting violence for equality is a vote of confidence for the rule of law.