Mahatama Gandhi’s Vision Of Women Walking Without Fear

Mahatma Gandhi’s vision for India’s women was not limited to their participation in the freedom movement. He wrote of women as equal citizens, argued for their freedom and encouraged them to enter public life. More than seven decades after Independence, however, the ability of women to move through public spaces without fear remains a live question.

That question has resurfaced sharply in Delhi following the alleged gangrape of a 17-year-old girl at Aastha Kunj Park in South Delhi. The incident has triggered protests by Delhi University students and prompted the Supreme Court to examine whether public authorities are doing enough to keep women and other vulnerable groups safe.

The Supreme Court, taking suo motu cognisance of recent rape cases in Delhi-NCR, said the reports pointed to a “systemic failure” in ensuring basic public safety. It also said that public spaces such as parks, roads, buses, Metro stations, subways and footbridges could not become “zones of high risk” because of inadequate lighting, poor surveillance or weak patrolling.

Official data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) point to a sharp rise in reported rape cases involving minor girls in India. The number of victims under 18 recorded by police increased from 10,934 in 2015 to 43,675 in 2024, with the annual tally rising in most years. The numbers underscore the scale of sexual violence against girls across the country.

Several Delhi University's women students took to the streets, protesting against the increasing crime against women and demanding better safety measures in public spaces.

The debate is strikingly relevant to Gandhi’s own conception of women's place in India. He did not imagine women as people who needed to be kept away from public life. He repeatedly argued that women should have the freedom and opportunity to participate in shaping society.

Gandhi's Vision Of India For Women

In 1931, while describing his vision of an independent India, Gandhi wrote: “Women will enjoy the same rights as men.” He placed this idea alongside his vision of an India where the poorest had an effective voice, communities lived in harmony and untouchability had no place.

Gandhi was also explicit about women's capacity to participate in public affairs. He described woman as “the companion of man” with “equal mental capacities” and said she had an equal right to “freedom and liberty”.

His understanding of women's freedom was closely tied to his philosophy of non-violence. Gandhi argued that women possessed significant moral strength and could play a central role in a movement based on ahimsa.

“If nonviolence is the law of our being, the future is with woman,” he wrote in 1930. In the same passage, he challenged the description of women as the weaker sex, writing: “To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man’s injustice to woman.”

These ideas translated into political action. Women participated in the Non-Cooperation and Civil Disobedience movements through picketing, boycotts, promotion of khadi, demonstrations and civil disobedience. Gandhi's non-violent campaigns provided women with avenues to enter political activity and public spaces at a time when their participation in such activities was still heavily constrained.

Women such as Sarojini Naidu, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay and Kasturba Gandhi became prominent participants, while many others joined campaigns at the local level.

The significance was not only that women participated in the freedom struggle. It was that political action increasingly took them beyond the confines of the home and into streets, markets, public meetings and prisons.

From Freedom To The Right To Move Freely

That history gives a different context to the question being raised by women students in Delhi today.

Following the alleged gangrape in Aastha Kunj Park, students from several Delhi University colleges have taken to the streets to demand better safety measures. In one protest, nearly 200 students marched and subsequently held consultations on their demands.

Students have raised concerns that go beyond a single incident: poorly lit roads, inadequate policing, unreliable public transport and unsafe stretches around campuses. Students at Lady Shri Ram College, located near Aastha Kunj Park, have also flagged the absence of PCR vans, a non-functional Pink Booth, inadequate street lighting and vehicles occupying footpaths.

For many women, therefore, the issue is not simply what happens after a crime is committed. It is whether ordinary activities — travelling home after college, using public transport, walking through a park or returning from work — can be undertaken without having to constantly calculate risk.

The recent protests have brought that distinction into focus. Indian Express reported that women students described being forced to move in groups, remain hypervigilant and alter everyday travel because of safety concerns, taking away the freedom for which women have fought over the years.

What Would Gandhi's Vision Mean Today?

For Gandhi, women's freedom was connected to their ability to participate. He argued that women should not be treated as subordinate to men and should have the freedom to shape their own lives.

If women are to participate fully in public life, access to those spaces becomes part of that participation. A woman who can vote but cannot safely travel to work after dark, attend college events, meet friends or walk home is formally free but still navigating limits on how she can use that freedom.

The Supreme Court's recent proceedings have put the responsibility on institutions to examine those limits. Its interim directions call for vulnerability mapping, lighting and CCTV audits, patrolling and a review of preventive systems across public spaces.

The question confronting India in 2026 is how that principle of equality is experienced on the ground — particularly when a woman steps out of the home and into the street. For women to participate fully in public life, freedom cannot end at the doorstep.