The gang-rape and murder of a 23-year-old woman in India has spurred a potentially defining moment to dismantle centuries of entrenched discrimination and violence against women
Over the past two weeks, the streets of India have been calling for change. The outpouring of anger and grief that has followed the rape and murder of a 23-year-old physiotherapy student on a bus in New Delhi just over two weeks ago has resulted in thousands taking to the streets of Delhi and cities, towns and villages across India. It is, says Dr Ranjana Kumari, a women's rights campaigner, an unprecedented moment in India's history.
"Can this grief, this anger at the brutalisation and murder of a young woman result in positive change?" she says. "What we are seeing on our streets is a defining moment of our democracy. For decades, India's endemic violence against women has been a defining issue for women's groups and the rights movement, but for the first time the crime of sexual offence and rape has been taken up by the people themselves."
She says her organisation, The Centre for Social Research (CSR), used to be asked continually why it was failing to mobilise more protesters against the institutional misogyny and violence that makes India one of the worst places in the world to be a woman.
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