Why Women Leading Protests is the Need of the Hour?

Women-led or women-driven protests is a phenomenon worth talking about since women don’t have the option of approaching really anything from a place of privilege.

It all started on a Wednesday in January. A junior I knew from law school came asking if I could help with some anti-CAA/NRC protestors who had been detained at the Jahangirpuri Police Station. I looked down at my watch. It was 10.30 at night, well beyond the normal curfew time for a hostel girl in Delhi, and Jahangirpuri was over an hour-long drive away. It had been a hotspot for protestor-police clashes for weeks.

The idea of going there was crazy. But I had volunteered to help in any way I could and this was the first time I was called to act on that. There was no way I was going to back down now.

With other-worldly effort, I shoved off my warm blanket, put on my jacket, threw myself into the car and hit the road. When G-maps showed me that I was 5 minutes away from the Jahangirpuri Police Station, I found a parking space and exited. Putting on my lawyer face and trusted robe, I walked with purpose towards the station, my ID flashing in one of them.

There was a small crowd of about fifty people that had gathered just outside the station gate. Past them were the media personnel with cameras and mikes in hand to capture the action.

Right in front of the scene playing out, with their faces and hands pressed against the iron bars of the station gates were ten to twelve lawyers, largely women and a couple of men, demanding that the cops open up the gates and give them access to the detained persons. I smiled to myself when I saw my junior among them. So, this is where the messages came from.

As the night grew, the women seemed to naturally take charge. It was a woman lawyer who persistently browbeat the gathered cops into granting access to the detainees, another woman who inspected the detainees when the cops relented just enough to let anyone lawyer in, a woman who was pacifying the relatives of those detained on the side, a woman who expertly facilitated the release of certain detained minors back to their families and a woman who offered to take some families to their homes in the wee hours of the morning.

They stood tall, they stood together, they stood unafraid from 8:00 p.m. on a cold Wednesday night until 6:00 a.m. on a misty Thursday morning, in the trouble-ridden heart of Delhi’s restless veins, to ensure the safety of a few hapless strangers whose lives were of no personal consequence to them.

On any other occasion, I would simply have written this off as a chance occurrence, borne from emotions running high. But then Nishika Singh went and organized a lawyers collective action group to provide pro-bono legal and other services to the protesting millions on the street. Activist Rebecca John went and represented the detainees en-masse before magisterial and district courts, day after day to seek their release.

And lawyer extraordinaire Indira Jaising went and led the charge against police violence on protestors before the High Court and the Supreme Court. For every woman I have mentioned here, there are countless others I am thinking of whose efforts cannot be adequately described in this short piece.

What option do I have but to proudly conclude that the world rests on the delicate shoulders of the girl-tribe?

Why This Is A Big Deal

Now here’s why this is noteworthy. Take any statistical study and you will find that the legal profession is heavily skewed in favour of male lawyers; in fact, there is a substantial margin between the number of men and women who are senior counsel, judges as well.

I can safely say that women advocates constitute less than one-third of the country’s bar. And yet, today we are four times more present and vocal about protecting the man on the street, his human rights and his fundamental liberties.

Why? The question has been niggling at me for a while now.

Maybe there is something about the constant victimization of college students, poor people, minority groups that brings out the inherent protective instinct in women.

Throughout the animal kingdom, the female is known to be fiercer when it comes to protecting its litter. Maybe we can sense instinctively that whatever is going on here, in the now will end up defining our country forever? It could also be that somewhere deep in our conscience we identify with the plight of the harassed, the vulnerable and the ones without a voice in Indian society. After all, we have been or are one of them.

Women Are Less Likely to Act From a Point of Privilege

What difference does this make, one may very well ask? Well, all the difference really. Women don’t meet anything from a position of privilege. They rarely give orders, they instead help out. They don’t expect to gain anything oftentimes, they just want to get the job done. They don’t lead, they strive to build consensus. Like I said, all the difference in the end.

The continuing contribution of India’s legal fraternity towards protecting the life and liberty of its citizens will forever be remembered for its extraordinary selflessness and humanity. A humanity that is reflected throughout the anti-CAA protests or the advocacy for improved health infrastructure in the aftermath of COVID-19.

With each passing day, I am becoming convinced that the identification of India with the Mother Goddess in the words ‘Bharat Mata’ is not merely a token throw-back to our historical past but a prophecy for our prosperous future.