The Gender Glossary and the Institutional Self, When a Chief Justice’s Pen Erases a Court’s Memory

The Gender Glossary and the Institutional Self, When a Chief Justice’s Pen Erases a Court’s Memory

In the long, slow arc of the Supreme Court of India’s journey towards gender justice, there are landmarks and there are detours. There are judgments that expand the horizons of equality and there are those that contract them. But there is also something else: the quieter, less visible work of institutional self-reflection—the practice directions, the guidelines, the glossaries that seek to distil the court’s evolving wisdom into usable tools for judges, lawyers, and litigants. This work is not glamorous. It does not make headlines. But it is the architecture of institutional memory, the means by which a court learns from its past and transmits that learning to its future.

It is precisely this kind of work that Chief Justice of India Surya Kant has now undone. Without public explanation, without consultation with the Bar, without any discernible process, the CJI has discarded the gender glossary published during the tenure of his predecessor, Justice D.Y. Chandrachud. The glossary was a modest but significant document: a compilation of gender-sensitive language, an attempt to eliminate the stereotyping and victim-blaming that have plagued the court since the infamous Mathura rape case of 1972, when a 16-year-old Adivasi girl’s violation was dismissed as consent. It was, in the words of senior advocate Indira Jaising, a “worthy attempt at delivering justice to women.” And now it is gone.

The stated reasons for its discard are, to put it charitably, opaque. We are told the glossary was “too technical” and that “survivors and their families would not understand it.” We are told, in a phrase that has ignited particular concern, that it was “Harvard-oriented”—a cryptic suggestion that its language and concepts were somehow foreign, elitist, or insufficiently Indian. Behind these phrases lies a deeper and more disturbing implication: that the project of gender justice itself is being reframed as a Western import, an alien imposition on an indigenous legal culture that has no need of such refinements.

This is not merely a disagreement over administrative discretion. It is a constitutional moment. It raises fundamental questions about the nature of the Supreme Court as an institution: Is it a collection of individual judges, each entitled to reinvent the wheel on taking office? Or is it a continuing entity, with an institutional memory, a collective identity, and a responsibility to build on the work of its predecessors? It raises questions about the relationship between the Chief Justice and the Bar, between the court and the citizens it serves, between the project of gender justice and the politics of cultural authenticity. And it raises, most urgently, the question of what happens when a single individual, armed with the immense power of the Chief Justiceship, decides that the accumulated wisdom of the court is not wisdom at all but a disposable artefact of a previous administration.

Part I: The Glossary—What It Was and Why It Mattered

The gender glossary was not a judgment. It did not declare any law or overrule any precedent. It was, in the technical language of court administration, a practice guideline—a document intended to guide judges, lawyers, and court staff in the use of language that reflects and reinforces constitutional values of equality and non-discrimination.

Its entries were carefully crafted, each supported by the court’s evolving jurisprudence on gender justice. They sought to replace terms that carry implicit stereotypes with terms that respect the dignity and agency of survivors. “Eve-teasing” became “street sexual harassment.” “Woman of loose character” became “woman.” “Seduced” became “subjected to sexual assault.” These were not mere semantic preferences; they were interventions in a linguistic ecosystem that has, for centuries, normalised violence against women and blamed them for their own victimisation.

The glossary was also a response to a specific, shameful history. The Mathura case, in which the Supreme Court held that a 16-year-old tribal girl’s rape by police constables was not rape because she had not protested loudly enough, became a watershed moment in Indian feminism. It sparked nationwide protests, led to the enactment of the Criminal Law (Second Amendment) Act, 1983, and fundamentally altered the law of rape. But the attitudes that produced the Mathura judgment did not disappear. They persisted in the language of judgments, in the questions asked by lawyers, in the assumptions of judges. The glossary was an attempt to address this persistence—to ensure that the court’s language caught up with its law.

As Indira Jaising notes, “Language is not just about semantics but a carrier of knowledge and values.” The glossary was an audit of language as a carrier of discrimination based on sex, prohibited by Article 15. It was an acknowledgment that the court’s work is not done when it delivers a judgment; it must also attend to the ways in which its own institutional practices perpetuate the very injustices it seeks to remedy.

Part II: The Discard—Process, Reasons, and the Absence of Both

The decision to discard the glossary was made by Chief Justice Surya Kant shortly after he assumed office. No public announcement preceded it. No consultation with the Bar accompanied it. No explanation was offered to the public or to the legal community. The glossary simply disappeared from the court’s website, from its practice directions, from its institutional memory.

When pressed for reasons, the responses have been fragmentary and unsatisfying. The glossary was “too technical,” we are told. Survivors and their families would not understand it. This is a curious objection. The language of law is nothing if not technical. Every legal document, every judgment, every statute is a dense thicket of specialised terminology. The task of the court is not to eliminate this technicality but to interpret it “in the light of constitutional principles.” A glossary that defines terms like “intersectionality” or “gender-based violence” is not an obstacle to understanding; it is a bridge to it.

The reference to “Harvard-oriented” is even more troubling. It evokes a familiar trope in contemporary Indian political discourse: the suspicion of Western ideas, the demand for cultural authenticity, the insistence that Indian institutions must be purged of foreign influences. But what does it mean to call a gender glossary “Harvard-oriented”? Does it mean that it cites international treaties and conventions to which India is a party? Does it mean that it draws on scholarship from foreign universities? Does it mean that its concepts are not sufficiently rooted in Indian experience?

The implication is that gender justice itself is a Western import, an alien imposition on an indigenous culture that has its own, presumably superior, ways of dealing with women. This is a dangerous and historically illiterate position. The struggle for women’s rights in India has its own deep roots—in the social reform movements of the 19th century, in the women’s participation in the freedom struggle, in the constitutional debates that produced Articles 14, 15, and 21, in the feminist movements of the 1970s and 80s that transformed the legal landscape. The glossary was not an import; it was a product of this very Indian history, an attempt to distill the wisdom of Indian courts and Indian activists into a usable tool for Indian judges.

Part III: The Institutional Question—Who Speaks for the Supreme Court?

The discard of the glossary raises a profound question about the nature of the Supreme Court as an institution. Is it a collection of individual judges, each with their own priorities, their own philosophies, their own sense of what matters? Or is it a continuing entity, with an institutional identity that transcends the tenure of any particular Chief Justice?

The Constitution envisions the latter. Article 124 establishes the Supreme Court as a permanent body. Its judges come and go, but the court endures. Its judgments are binding on future benches. Its rules and practice directions are intended to provide continuity and predictability. The Chief Justice is not a sovereign; he is the first among equals, entrusted with administrative responsibilities but not empowered to unilaterally reverse the institutional decisions of his predecessors.

Yet, as Indira Jaising notes, there is an “evolving trend of incoming Chief Justices abandoning guidelines issued by outgoing CJIs.” Each new Chief Justice, it seems, wants to leave their mark, to signal a new direction, to distance themselves from their predecessor. The result is a kind of institutional amnesia—a forgetting of what has been learned, a loss of accumulated wisdom, a perpetual reinvention of wheels.

This is not how great courts are built. The common law tradition is a tradition of continuity, of building on precedent, of respecting the work of those who came before. Practice guidelines are not personal property; they are institutional assets. They represent the distilled wisdom of the court, the collective judgment of its judges over time. To discard them without process, without consultation, without explanation is to treat the court as a personal fiefdom rather than a constitutional institution.

Part IV: The Gender Justice Question—Whose Language, Whose Values?

The glossary’s fate is also a reminder that the project of gender justice is never complete. It is always contested, always vulnerable to reversal, always dependent on the commitment of those in power.

The Mathura case was decided in 1972. It took a decade of activism to amend the law. It took another three decades for the court to begin to reckon with the attitudes that produced that judgment. The glossary was a small part of that reckoning—a tool for ensuring that the language of the court did not betray the values of the Constitution.

Now that tool is gone. And with it goes a certain kind of institutional memory. Future judges will not have the glossary to consult. Future lawyers will not have its guidance. Future survivors will not have its assurance that the court is attentive to the ways in which language can wound.

The justification that the glossary was “too technical” or “Harvard-oriented” is, in this context, not an explanation but an evasion. It suggests that the real objection is not to the glossary’s technicality but to its values—to its insistence that gender justice matters, that language matters, that the court has a role in both.

Part V: The Way Forward—A Conclave, a Conversation, a Commitment

Indira Jaising concludes her powerful critique with a constructive proposal: “A judicial conclave, at won hall with the Bar and concerned citizens, may produce some inputs for stable gender-justice guidelines and a gender audit of the functioning of our courts.”

This is not a radical demand. It is a plea for process, for consultation, for the kind of collective deliberation that any serious institutional decision deserves. The glossary was not perfect. Perhaps it could have been improved. Perhaps its language could have been simplified. Perhaps its concepts could have been more thoroughly grounded in Indian experience. These are legitimate subjects of discussion.

But discussion requires a forum. It requires that those affected—the Bar, civil society, survivors of gender-based violence—have a seat at the table. It requires that the Chief Justice engage with the legal community, not simply issue edicts from on high. It requires that the court’s commitment to gender justice be reaffirmed, not quietly abandoned.

The glossary’s discard is a loss. But it need not be a final loss. The values that animated it—equality, dignity, non-discrimination—remain embedded in the Constitution. The jurisprudence that supported it—the court’s own evolving wisdom on gender justice—remains binding. The need for institutional mechanisms to translate that jurisprudence into practice remains urgent.

The question is whether the court will seize this moment to reaffirm its commitment to gender justice, or whether it will allow the glossary’s quiet disappearance to signal a broader retreat. The answer lies not in the pen of a single Chief Justice but in the collective will of the institution he leads. The glossary may be gone. The conversation must continue.

Q&A: The Supreme Court’s Gender Glossary—What Happened and Why It Matters

Q1: What was the gender glossary, and why was it significant?

A1: The gender glossary was a practice guideline published during the tenure of Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud. It provided a list of gender-sensitive terms intended to replace stereotyping and victim-blaming language in court proceedings and judgments. For example, it recommended replacing “eve-teasing” with “street sexual harassment,” “woman of loose character” with “woman,” and “seduced” with “subjected to sexual assault.”

Its significance:

1. Institutional memory: It distilled the court’s evolving jurisprudence on gender justice into an accessible tool for judges, lawyers, and litigants.

2. Constitutional values: It operationalised Articles 14 (equality), 15 (non-discrimination), and 21 (dignity) in the realm of legal language.

3. Historical reckoning: It was a response to the infamous Mathura rape case (1972), where the court’s language and reasoning reflected deep-seated gender bias.

4. Linguistic justice: It recognised that language is not neutral but a “carrier of knowledge and values,” and that eliminating discriminatory language is essential to delivering justice.

Q2: What happened to the glossary, and how was the decision made?

A2: The glossary was discarded by the current Chief Justice, Surya Kant, shortly after he assumed office. The decision was made without public announcement, without consultation with the Bar, and without any explanation to the legal community or the public. The glossary simply disappeared from the court’s website and official records. When pressed for reasons, fragmentary justifications emerged: that it was “too technical,” that survivors and their families would not understand it, and that it was “Harvard-oriented”—a phrase suggesting it was excessively influenced by Western ideas.

Q3: What is the significance of the “Harvard-oriented” critique, and why is it concerning?

A3: The “Harvard-oriented” critique is concerning because it implies that the glossary’s concepts and language were foreign imports, disconnected from Indian realities and values. This trope is part of a broader political discourse that seeks to delegitimise ideas by labelling them as “Western” or “elitist.” However:

1. The glossary was rooted in Indian jurisprudence: Its entries were supported by the Supreme Court’s own evolving case law on gender justice, not by foreign sources alone.

2. India is party to international treaties: The glossary drew on international conventions that India has ratified, including CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women). This is not “Harvard-oriented”; it is treaty-compliant.

3. Gender justice is not a Western import: The struggle for women’s rights in India has deep indigenous roots—in the social reform movements, the freedom struggle, constitutional debates, and feminist activism of the 1970s-80s.

4. The danger of cultural authenticity arguments: Framing gender justice as “foreign” can be used to dismiss legitimate claims for equality and dignity as alien impositions.

Q4: What does this episode reveal about the Supreme Court as an institution?

A4: The episode reveals several institutional vulnerabilities:

As senior advocate Indira Jaising notes, “The SC is an institution and not a collection of individual judges with no institutional memory. Practice guidelines provide institutional memory and a judicial policy.”

Q5: What does Indira Jaising propose as a constructive way forward?

A5: Jaising proposes three constructive steps:

1. A judicial conclave:
Bring together judges, members of the Bar, and concerned citizens to discuss and refine gender-justice guidelines. This would ensure that any future guidelines are the product of collective deliberation, not unilateral decision-making.

2. Stable gender-justice guidelines:
Develop guidelines that can endure across Chief Justiceships, providing continuity and predictability for litigants and the legal community. These should be based on constitutional principles and the court’s evolving jurisprudence, not on the preferences of any single judge.

3. A gender audit of the courts:
Conduct a systematic audit of how courts function—their language, their procedures, their outcomes—from a gender perspective. This would identify areas where bias persists and inform future reforms.

Underlying principle: The goal is not to restore a particular document but to reaffirm the court’s commitment to gender justice and to establish institutional mechanisms that can sustain that commitment across changes in leadership.

Jaising’s proposal is not a demand for the glossary’s reinstatement but for a process—a way of ensuring that the court’s approach to gender justice is the product of collective wisdom, not individual whim. “It’s not too late,” she writes. The conversation can still be had. The values can still be affirmed. The institution can still learn from its past.