Why Aruna Shanbaug Still Matters
The 1973 rape of a Bombay nurse reminds us that, in India, sexual violence and systemic injustice often go hand in hand.
“Gender violence, as exemplified by the Aruna Shanbaug case, starkly illustrates the systemic lack of safety for women,” said India’s Supreme Court Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud on August 21. A three-member bench of India’s highest court was taking up the case of the rape and murder of a doctor at Kolkata’s R.G. Kar Medical College.
Chandrachud was speaking of the woman whose story shocked the nation decades ago and lingered in imaginations since. In 1973, a ward boy at Mumbai’s King Edward Memorial Hospital assaulted and raped the 25-year-old nurse, leaving her in a vegetative state. Shanbaug’s predicament would lead India to enact its first euthanasia laws. But it offers a glimpse into a country where much has changed, but a lot remains the same.