Not Our Fault, Not Our Curfew: Why This Protest Is Bigger Than One Night, One Campus, One Case

I finished Mother Mary Comes to Me today, and I haven't been able to shake a strange heaviness since. On the surface, Arundhati Roy's memoir is about a daughter and her formidable, difficult mother. But between the lines runs something else, the ground reality of being a woman: staying vigilant on the way to study, keeping your guard up while talking to a man, and letting the world call you a "bad woman" if that's what keeps you safe.

What unsettled me most is that these were the central questions of the conversation once. Today, the moment women raise the issue, the room fills with a different noise: "But what about false cases?" "What about alimony?" Whataboutery has become the national sport of avoiding the subject. That is exactly why this protest matters.

We Are Not Shocked by the Crime. We Are Shocked by the Shrug

What happened at DU and what happened in UP did not shock the women I know. For us, this is the weather we live in. We plan routes, share live locations, hold keys between our fingers, and text "reached home" at midnight. We didn't need a headline to learn that danger exists.

What shocked us was the response: the muted outrage, the quick change of topic, the institutional shrug. Crime against women is being normalised, and normalisation is far more dangerous than any single crime.

Think about how we have made peace with politicians facing criminal charges. It no longer makes us flinch, not because it became acceptable, but because we were taught that nothing can be done. That is how normalisation works. A thing that happens daily and draws no consequence stops being news and starts being scenery.

The world is trying to turn rape culture, domestic abuse, patriarchy and victim-blaming into scenery. This protest refuses to let that happen. And it is no longer only an Indian feminist movement: from Delhi to Kolkata to cities across the world, women are saying the same thing in different languages.

Some of it arrives as wit, like "Thandi chai garam karo, mard jaat sharam karo." But the questioning goes deeper:

"Na Sati ko Shiv bacha sake, na Sita ko Ram samman dila sake, na hi Draupadi ka cheer haran Pandav rok paaye, phir pati ko parmeshwar kisne kaha?"

If not even gods could protect their wives, who decided a husband is a god, and that a woman's safety is his to grant?

It Was Never About Love. It Is About Respect

A man does not need to love a woman to respect her. He does not need to know her, be related to her, or be afraid of her father. Respect is the baseline, the default setting. Yet so much violence flows from its absence: from the need to dominate, to assert power, to remind a woman of her "place."

And after the crime, the script is always the same, and it is always aimed at her:

"Why was she out at that hour?" "What was she wearing?" "Why was she travelling alone?"

Almost never: "Why did he do it?"

Will cancelling evening lectures for women save us? Will curfews, will blaming the victim, will locking ourselves indoors? Restriction is not safety. It is the same injustice dressed up as protection. Every rule that confines women to keep them safe quietly admits that the world will not be made safe for them.

The Devi Paradox

We are a country that worships goddesses. We garland them, fast for them, parade them through streets. Yet by the National Crime Records Bureau's own figures, over 31,000 rapes were reported in 2022, which works out to roughly one every 16 to 18 minutes. Those are only the reported ones, in a country where fear, stigma and indifferent police stations keep countless survivors silent.

Does the rule of law ever deliver justice to a victim? Partly, in some cases, and usually after years. But has it ever set a standard that makes a man think twice before attempting such a crime? Rarely. Deterrence comes from the certainty of consequences, not from their severity. In India the conviction rate in rape cases has hovered at only about a quarter of cases that reach a verdict. A law that is rarely enforced is a suggestion.

So What Do We Actually Do?

Anger without a roadmap fades. These are the places where change can be measured:

1. Fix enforcement before adding punishment

After 2012, the Justice Verma Committee delivered a landmark report in just 30 days, and the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act 2013 widened definitions and tightened penalties. Many of its deeper recommendations on police reform and accountability were never fully adopted. Implementing what was already recommended is a good place to start.

2. Make fast-track courts real Special courts already exist on paper. They need dedicated judges, adequate staff and strict timelines, with chargesheets filed and trials completed within fixed limits. A verdict a decade late is justice denied.

3. Reform the police station experience

Mandatory zero FIRs, women officers at help desks, trained and sensitised staff, and genuine penalties for officers who refuse to register complaints or pressure survivors into "compromise."

4. Spend the money meant for safety

The Nirbhaya Fund was set up in 2013 with ₹1,000 crore. Audits and parliamentary reports have repeatedly flagged poor utilisation by states. Public dashboards tracking every rupee, by state and by project, would turn a promise into accountability.

5. Close the legal gaps

Marital rape is still protected by an exception in the law, carried over from the old IPC into the new Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. That exception tells married women their consent has an expiry date. It deserves a serious, urgent legislative and judicial review.

6. Protect survivors and witnesses

Strong witness protection, victim compensation that arrives without a fight, and free legal and psychological support. Survivors should not have to become full-time litigants to receive justice.

7. Make campuses and workplaces accountable

Functional Internal Complaints Committees under the POSH Act, regular safety audits, better lighting, reliable transport, CCTV that works, and clear public reporting of complaints and outcomes. Institutions that curb women's hours instead of fixing their own security should be called out.

8. Teach consent early

Schools need age-appropriate education on consent, boundaries and gender equality, for boys especially. Prevention starts in classrooms and living rooms long before it reaches courtrooms.

9. Address the whataboutery honestly

False cases exist, as false claims exist in every area of law, and courts already have mechanisms to deal with them. But using the rare exception to silence the common reality isn't a concern for justice. It's a way to change the subject.

The normalisation must stop, and it can only stop when respect becomes the baseline, taught at home, enforced by law, and modelled by the men around us.

I am told to be hopeful. Some days I am. But I'll be honest: a part of me suspects I'll be writing about this again fifty years from now. Not because change is impossible, but because it has so far depended on women shouting louder than the people who would rather look away.

So let's keep shouting, with the chants, the placards and the laws. And this time, let's keep going until the slogans become history.