Kavita Krishnan - Secretary, All India Progressive Women's Association HARDtalk

on Saturday. Police said a 23-year-old man died at the scene

and a 20-year-old woman died later in hospital. Their families have

been informed. Now it's time for HARDtalk.

Welcome to a special HARDtalk from India. I am in Delhi, the proud

capital of the nation but also a city that over the past year has

been tarnished by an association with sexual violence. You may

remember that over a year ago, young female student died after a brutal

gang rape. That prompted protests across this nation, people demanding

the government take action to end gender violence. At the heart of

that campaign, like guest today - women rights activists, Kavita

Krishnan. What does India need to do to make this country safer and more

equal for women. ? Kavita Krishnan welcome to HARDtalk.

The brutal gang rape of the young woman in Delhi summer 13 months ago

- do you believe it has proved some sort of watershed moment here? In

some senses yes. I think it marked a moment when we became aware of a

shift in people 's perception, at least, in a large section of people

about the sexual violence and the phenomenon of victim blaming. We

have had protest demanding punishment but what was new last

year, there were young voices are especially, raising spontaneous

slogans on the street against victim blaming, against the habit of saying

that women should behave in April pick your way in order to be safe.

-- particular way. Here in India, it was a great moment. It is

interesting that politicians who did not get it at the beginning, and

going back to the fallout and immediate aftermath of the gang

rape, those politicians who did not get it were published like public

opinion. The former Chief Minister talked about women who went out late

at night were, to use words, the very adventurous. They punished her

but the phenomenon of not getting it is much larger. Today, I am standing

at the moment with the Chief Minister who has replaced who is

using terminology... This indicates the politicians, even those who

profess to be interested in human rights, have not really changed? It

is a hard battle and it has brought home to me this moment because we

have a newly properly elected government which has come on the

back of a lot of aspirations of people and people expect change.

They were talking about change. It was a Barack Obama moment. People

were talking about change but that change comes and stops at the door

of poetry are key. You have the same moralising comments that make the

distinction between the start and the good woman. -- slut. This stroke

-- of these slogans were race last year. In other words, you want

equality not just protection. Genuine equality? In fact, that was

the slogan raised last year. It said Felis freedom. The tech that the

Felis freedom of women and also in gay people, transgender people,

people who did not seem so respectable - all those vulnerable

sections which raise buyers and discrimination. We ask for freedom

Felis for them all. It is hard to be Felis when the backlash has been so

extreme. In one online Internet, you were threatened with rape. Yes, and

I realised since then that in social media it has not happened for the

first time it has happened again. I do not fear those people who make

the threat of social media but right now, I am more fearful of how the

very issue of rape is being used to justify violence of women on other

communities, four instant religious minorities - or to stigmatise young

men, of consensual relationships of women with young men. The fear of

rape, let me be clear, the fear of rape with the consensual

relationship with men with oppressed classes, we have seen incredible

violence being handed out to these minorities and religious minorities.

I was seriously fearful to see that the slogans being used to stock up

that violence was to keep our mothers and daughters safe from

them. It is complicated. But there seems to be one truth that is

relatively simple and that is that in India today, this system, I am

thinking of policing, the nature of investigation and the judicial

system, mitigate against women reporting rape and believing they

would ultimately get justice - has that changed at all in the last

year? They have been more people coming forward to report. I still

think it is a rape is terribly unreported -- underreported. 24,000

- only 5000 rapes in India. That figure cannot be credible given the

size of the country and the systematic research that suggests

vast numbers of women, vast numbers of women experience of rape and

sexual assault yet most of them do not believe they can report it. The

experiences of the last few months, of the women who have come forward,

for example is at sexual harassment by powerful people, against Supreme

Court judges and so on... To be clear, that is happening even today.

That is happening and I think what was encouraging was that in a case

of some of these instances, women could come forward, confide in male

colleagues and expect and get support. But even in those

instances, we are seeing this terrible clash of where the women

who have complained of being called stooges of politicians, there

questions are being raised about their character and it is a very,

very hard. What have you actually achieved in the past year after all

the campaign? Undercover interviews with police found 17 said they

believed that the majority of rape claims were false and about

consensual sex. Then we had the former police commissioner saying

90% of rape claims were false. How do you change the police? It has to

start with accountability. There is so little political will towards

that. We have been talking about police reform and saying that police

reform should mean less corruption in the police, freedom from

political control but above all, it must mean that you make them

accountable about what being inner constitution means and stands for.

It means respect the human rights and women's and so on. Has it that

started? Very, very little. Very little willingness to go that way. I

do not just mean the police, the judiciary will stop in the past few

months, we have seen sexist comments, talking about women who

have premarital sex should not cry rape and that kind of thing. You

have policeman displaying the kind of attitudes that unless a woman is

battered to the point of nearly dying, she must be lying about being

raped. This is the assumption that parades. One has to be personal in a

way. You live in Delhi. If you had the terrible misfortune of being

sexually assaulted, would you have sufficient faith in the police to go

to them and expect them to fully investigate and deliver justice on

your behalf? It is not a matter of faith will stop it is a matter of

wanting to hold them accountable. In my case, of course, I would but what

I am saying is that for when it -- for many women it is a hard choice.

What is going to follow is a prolonged kind of humiliation. Even

in order to achieve justice, you would have to approve your

respectability, prove that you had some modesty all respectability,

that was violated, essentially it becomes about York character from

the police station right up to the courtroom. Changing that is a very

hard thing in India. Are you being a little unfair to the authorities in

the centre that because partly of the campaign that you and others

have run the past year, there have been efforts to change particularly

the judicial system whose speed up the process, fast track rape cases

and also toughened up the penalties for a series of sex crimes and of

rape will stop the Vernon commission came up with points and they are

being implemented. They are accepting some of them, in terms of

expanding the definition of rape but in many matters, it has gone against

the spirit of what the commission recommended. The instance, we had to

talk about Richard dies in -- recognising that men can also be

raped, we wanted them to recognise homosexuality, to make the

distinction between consensual homosexual relations and homosexual

rape but they have not done that... Why it to you think, and we will

talk in a moment about perhaps the battle to change Indian mindset,

easy to wisely to insist that would one is talking about gender equality

and sexual violence that one has to put the issues facing homosexuals on

the very same table as those facing women who have been raped four

example? I think absolutely, we must, because I think it is very

important to recognise here that the same laws that relies homosexuality

that talks about unnatural sex... I see that... I am sorry to interrupt

but if you want to win hearts and minds of one particular issue -

daddies the immediate challenge of your complaint of getting India to

address the problem of violence against women - is it wise to run

the campaign in the way... The Supreme Court has come into a bit of

a shock recently. They have overturned the Delhi verdict that

particular allies homosexuality and they assumed they would have a whole

lot of support when I say that has been a shift in public perception,

and I see that as an achievement for the movement, it is that the verdict

of the Supreme Court which wreak relies homosexuality has been

greeted across-the-board with huge protest. And not just on small

struggling gay groups. Are you telling me there had been protesting

India 's most remote villages, demanding a change of law on

homosexuality? Not in remote villages but definitely in cities.

There are elite. Not at all. Large numbers of people in the protests

last year were not elite at all. They think differently which

means... I'll tell you the barometer for this, most politicians relying

on the religious right. The party that will be the next government in

India. All the other parties have had to come out, they were timid

about this, but they have come out and said that they believe it

shouldn't be criminalised. These include political leaders... Even

those that do not clearly something is changing. Let us put this

conversation in the context of Indian tradition and the way India

sees itself and sees its future. It seems to me that you are raising

profound questions, not just about issues specifically to do with

gender and gender-based law, but also about how women are treated in

the home, within the legal system in terms of basic things like

inheritance, and also about what happens inside Indian people 's

hearts and minds when it comes to basic issues of whether men and

women are seen as equal. You are raising all of this, no? I would

like to say we are raising this in India because we are raising it

here. I sense Solidarity. I've been told by activists in other countries

including the UK, US and France and other places, that they feel a sense

of strength when they see our struggle in India. I don't see this

as only about changing Indian culture or Indian ways of looking at

women. But at the Kintyre global sense of fixing women roles in

certain ways. That's happening outside India as well. It's being

reinforced by the economic policies we are seeing now unfortunately. You

are having austerity measures, of course in India and I'll swear, and

they are needing to tell women once again you should subscribe to roles

and if you don't you're about mother will stop Ashmount elsewhere. --

elsewhere. If we stick to the notion that you're challenging India in

profound ways, just how negative your view of India is. Let me quote

you words from Save the Children charity, and in India, girls are

sold, married off from ten, burned alive through Gary disputes and

young girls exploited and abused as domestic slave labour. -- domestic

disputes. Is that the port of what it means to be female in India

today's we need to recognise, of course there are terrible things

happening. Is your view as dark as that? It seems profoundly negative.

I have a dark view of what it means to be female in anywhere in the

world. I don't think it's especially about India. Is not the same being a

woman in the UK as it is in India. It is important to see the

distinction. That's what were fighting to change. It's not so much

women are victims here and not elsewhere, but about the fact that

we are fighting the notion in India that women have to prove

respectability in order to demand dignity, equality and so on. These

are battles that are being fought in different parts of the world in

different ways. In India, our emphasis is on challenging out car

-- our caste system. White how do you get inside people 's heads and

change their very basic views. Let me tell you something encouraging.

There was a god man in India who enjoys a lot of support. He had

heard something odious about the survivor that she should have called

her attacker 's brother and could have taken the name of God and she

could have been saved so something must have been wrong with her

character. You asked about rural India, he visited Peru ruled

character. You asked about rural rural village. 500 women came armed

with rotten tomatoes and they were saying loud and clear, you are

telling women they shouldn't wear certain kinds of. If you are going

to impose those rules on women then we will tell meant either they wear

the traditional garb or else we will beat you up. This is rural women

talking about the right of young girls to wear jeans and use mobile

phones. The encouraging thing to see is women aren't looking to be

rescued in India, they are fighting back. We hope women fighting

patriarchy elsewhere will try to interrogate their patriarchy is,

rather than doing the easy thing of only recognising the patriarchy that

lies here in India or Afghanistan. I see what you're saying but I am

aware that people watching this might think that it's not quite as

bad as it is in India. In recent survey said that India is the worst

country in the world to be female. They look that different

assessments. They claimed it was worse than Saudi Arabia. That seems

very hard to give credibility to you or credence because you have had a

female Prime Minister. In the 1970s, one of the most famous leaders the

world has seen. You have women chief ministers. You have a substantial

number of women politicians in leading positions. You have female

professionals and eight powerful feminist movement. You can have that

in Saudi Arabia. I think you could have some of that. You simply could

not by law have that in Saudi Arabia. That's a different thing.

The law means less to me than what it means about voices that are

resisting patriarchy everywhere. The singling out of India or Saudi

Arabia or Afghanistan isn't helpful in a way. We are fighting in India.

What we need to interrogate is how... The help I would expect is

the global institutions implicated in violence in India, multinational

corporations coming here and women are resisting land grab our our

subject to sexual violence. When you talk of the explication that comes

with global capitalism I'm reminded that you are not just a women

activists but also a senior figure in the Communist Party and I get a

sense of that. Isn't there a contradiction for you, because the

sort of India that you want to see is in some ways a more western or

capitalist society. You focus on gender equality, individual

liberties, in no way suggesting you might want to see India become more

Westernised. I know our opponents on the Right would like to see this in

terms of westernisation and Indianise Asian. I don't think

that's the case. You want to see them become more westernised? When I

see our right wing leaders talking about good rate and bad rape, I

hear... Just answer my question. Do you see India, at your vision for

India 's future becoming more westernised? I don't want to see our

leaders make the remarks that Republican leaders in the US make.

They talk about genuine and fall straight. I am trying to make the

point that this is not about westernisation. They have odious

attitudes also. They are told, if you were drunk, perhaps you aren't

in a position to say yes or no to rape. You have that elsewhere. This

is not about... It is about recognising specifically Indian ways

in which patriarchy is justified. The way patriarchy is embodied here.

We are fighting those ways. I don't see it being about making a backward

India go the Western way. I see this as being a global fight against

patriarchal attitudes and the systems, economic attitudes and so

on that sustain it. A global fight. You could say you are embarking on a

long and difficult journey. I wonder whether you believe, whether you

have faith that the journey will get you to the place you want to be in

terms of gender relations. You asked me at the start, what other changes

you see and the real changes I see and that I appreciate is that I

believe the fight is a long and hard won but the number of fighters here

in India has expanded in the voices fighting have become stronger. We

don't feel as alone as we once might have. The number of people joining

the conversation is encouraging and I hope it happens outside India as

well. Kavita Krishnan we have to end their, thank you. --there.