6th of August, 1996 was an odd day in the city of Chandigarh. Outside the Court of Judicial Magistrate, a band assembled to sing tunes of victory. This was a Police band which is regularly summoned to public functions either to commemorate National Holidays or to pay respects to a high dignitary. But its purpose on this day and at this place was drastically different. It was to play their music and rejoice at a judgement slated to be pronounced that day in favour of the accused acquitting him of all charges. The glaring irony in this spectacle is how the Police Band, which is a part of the Police Department, had gathered to celebrate the failure of the Prosecution.

Things did not go as planned. The accused – Mr Kanwar Pal Singh Gill – was convicted and sentenced to rigorous imprisonment of three months for an offence under Section 354 and of two months for an offence under Section 509. KPS Gill was the ‘supercop’ who had been instrumental in washing away much of the Khalistani separatists by conducting Operation Black Thunder, and it was a setback for this towering ruthless IPS officer to be brought down by Rupan Deol Bajaj, the not-so-powerful IAS officer. The Court held that the allegation that Gill had slapped Bajaj on her bottom in an elite party of civil servants was proved and Gill had to serve his time in the clink. Of course, there were three stages of appeal after this, which went on to reduce the gravity of the sentence, ultimately erasing the imprisonment and leaving only Rs. 700/- as a fine and Rs. 2 Lac as compensation to a women’s rights organisation.

The entire case, which took almost two decades from the incident to the judgement of the Supreme Court, relied on the outrage of ‘modesty’. Modesty. It’s a word that I do not understand. What is it to have modesty and how does one take that modesty away from the other? With what act and after what point do we say that the modesty of a woman has been ‘outraged’? Why is it that only women are blessed (cursed?) with this modesty? Are men so inherently immodest that we must refrain from even ascribing modesty to them?

I am often required to examine the accused and frame charges as a part of my day job. This examination entails questioning the accused as to whether he has committed the offence as alleged or not. Since most are not familiar with English, I do this either in Telugu or Hindi. Unfortunately, I have not found an equivalent phrase for ‘outrage of modesty’ in these languages. I could ask someone to give me the best translation for it. But before I do that, I ask myself if I can explain ‘outrage of modesty’ to describe what it means. If not in any other language, can I, at the very least, do it in English? I fail again.

There are two issues I have with not having any clarity on this. One, I am unsure how and what standard I must use to try the accused who have been charged with such offences. The safer way is to simply stop looking for the line where modesty turns into immodesty, and rather focus on whether an act falls on the wrong side of such line or not. Two, I am uncomfortable with the reality that everyone – the bar, the police, the litigants – is so eased into the use of ‘modesty’ as they throw the word around without knowing the meaning of such a word. What does it say about the legal profession that we use a word to charge, try, and convict the accused without even understanding the meaning of that word? And more importantly, what does it say to the women who are victims of harassment to say that what was done to them is a crime, not because their space was violated without their consent, but because they possess some ‘modesty’ which is ‘outraged’?

It is said that the language that such colonial laws use has Victorian semantics and morality. We have neither tried to replace such language nor attempted to understand it. And for Rupan Deol Bajaj, it proved to vindicate her stand. It was found that her modesty was indeed outraged and the same had to be punished. But the narrative is not all that comforting.

In an interview cited in an article titled ‘The Modesty of Mrs Bajaj’ by Martha Nussbaum, Bajaj said, “I am not a woman from the roadside. I have had 6,000 men working under me.” Similarly, in a different interview with the Tribune, she said, “I just had to carry on. It was essential for the dignity of my office. If I had not protested then who is supposed to, my class IV employee or peon?”

Well, yes, ma’am! You had to carry on. But so should a class IV employee or a peon or a ‘roadside’ woman. Let us not bestow a higher standard of modesty by the office one occupies, but respect them for the human beings they are. While we may struggle to find the meaning of ‘modesty’, we must agree that it is not desirable to prescribe different notions of modesty by the class or caste of a woman. If doing away with Victorian Morality is a bit much, let us at least apply the same morality to everyone equally. Until then, not every Gill will be caught.