India's top court issues handbook for judges on avoiding sexist language

India's Supreme Court has asked judges to shun words like "whore", "hooker" and other offensive terms for women in its first ever handbook for the judiciary on gender stereotypes.

Indian lawyers call for more institutional awareness of gender-based crimes during a protest outside Saket District Court in New Delhi on January 3, 2013. © SAJJAD HUSSAIN / AFP

The 30-page glossary by Chief Justice Dhananjaya Chandrachud hopes to help rid courtrooms of sexist language that can tarnish verdicts, experts said.

“If harmful stereotypes are relied on by judges, it can lead to a distortion of the objective and impartial application of law,” Chandrachud wrote in the handbook.

Launching the new guide on 16 August, the judge referred to instances of courts suggesting rapists marry their victims in the skewed belief matrimony restores the dignity of assaulted women.

“Marriage is not a remedy to the violence of rape,” he said.

Glossary of gender-appropriate terms in the newly-launched handbook by the Supreme Court on combating gender stereotypes#SupremeCourt #SupremeCourtofIndia #Gender pic.twitter.com/FXaC3FqwAp

— Bar & Bench (@barandbench) August 16, 2023

In 2021, then Supreme Court Chief Justice Sharad Bobde faced calls to step down after he asked an alleged rapist if he would marry his schoolgirl victim to avoid prison.

Four years earlier, Delhi High Court overturned another man's rape conviction on the argument that “a feeble no may mean a yes”.

Tackling stereotypes

The Handbook on Combating Gender Stereotypes will ensure “legal reasoning and writing is free of harmful notions about women”, the top court said.

It said terms like “wanton”, “easy”, “fallen” or “slut” conveyed a “misplaced sense of moral censure”, and that “it is vital judges not only avoid relying on stereotypes in their decision-making… but also actively challenge and dispel harmful stereotypes”.

Such stereotypes include labels such as “career woman”, “housewife”, “mistress”, “unwed mother” or “adulteress”, it said.

• Why are Indian women increasingly taking their own lives?

The guide also advises against judging victims by their smoking or drinking habits or choice of clothes, and that absence of physical struggle does not mean consent.

Judges may not insist that transgender people cannot be the victims of rape, it said, and should not use stigmatising language to describe the vulnerable community.

The handbook prescribed alternative terms such as “relationship outside marriage” for “affair”, and said “ravished” or “violated” should be replaced with terms like “sexually harassed” or simply “raped”.

Welcomed by activists

Activists welcomed the rules as a step towards confronting gender-based violence in India, where police received reports of 86 rapes a day in 2021.

Guides “can be a great starting point for lawyers and judges who are interested in using the right language but working on a lot of issues”, journalist and communications expert Ragamalika Karthikeyan told India's Supreme Court Observer.

Gay activist Meghna Kulkarni hoped the handbook would help teach Indians to use “neutral language”, while women's rights campaigner Brinda Adige told NDTV it would remind courts to apply the law fairly.

“It has been too long that we allowed this kind of language to be used in judgements and arguments in courts when the courts are supposed to be upholding constitutional guarantees of not just equality but also dignity,” Adige said.

• India arrests 2,000 men in crackdown on illegal child marriages

But communications specialist Karthikeyan argued that the handbook should not be considered a set of hard-and-fast rules.

“Some things can be enforced as rules, but some should remain a suggestion,” Karthikeyan said.

“Language is evolving and even the terms we use today may not be the terms used ten years later so what should and shouldn’t be codified is still a conversation.”