IT WAS AUGUST TWENTY YEARS AGO when Ms Indira Jaising, Tenzing Choesang and I sat in the Parliament gallery, watching the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act (‘PWDVA’) being brought to life. We couldn’t carry anything in with us except the pass, which I wish I had preserved. There were strict standards of conduct for us—at one point we were even told not to breathe too loudly. These rules contrasted sharply with what transpired in the hallowed halls below.
What has stayed with me from the debates that followed is that there was no real disagreement on the need for the PWDVA. Yes, there were apprehensions—about the law legitimising “live-in relationships” or its broad coverage being “misused,” a word in currency then (and still). The consensus was remarkable, especially given that a 2001 draft by the previous government had been deeply regressive—fraught with narrow definitions and even exempting violent conduct “for the respondent’s own protection or for the protection of his or another’s property.”
That consensus was the result of a near decade long campaign for the law, which led to its inclusion in the Common Minimum Programme of the UPA government. The women’s movement had already won important reforms on violence against women, including the Indian Penal Code amendments on dowry-related deaths and cruelty within marriage. However, these were criminal law provisions. Civil remedies for women facing violence at home were limited. And the special criminal law provisions applied only to matrimonial relationships, excluding others. The campaign for a civil law on domestic violence was built on the successes of the women’s movement in law reform and leveraged the groundswell of voices and experiences it had already brought to the fore.
Another feature of the PWDVA that makes it stand out is the way it indigenised international standards and practices to meet the specific requirements of the Indian context. To address what Ms Jaising evocatively termed the “civil death” of women attempting to leave violent relationships, the PWDVA is among the few laws worldwide that is primarily civil in nature, aimed at providing temporary emergency reliefs to give women a safe space to consider long-term decisions. Most significantly, it recognised a woman’s right to reside in a shared household to prevent her dispossession—something that, as the legal aid cases handled by the Lawyers Collective* showed, happened frequently in domestic violence cases, especially when women attempted to file criminal complaints.
Equally important was its attempt to institutionalise the feminist praxis of the women’s movement, particularly the accompaniment provided by women’s centres, special cells, and women’s rights organisations supporting survivors of domestic violence. These practices, along with other “best” practices, were compiled by the Lawyers Collective through extensive consultations with women’s groups, lawyers, judges, counsellors, and others. The idea was to write implementation into the law by creating a mechanism that recognised the barriers women face and actively facilitated their access to justice.
The consultations surfaced debates, agreements and disagreements, and while there was an effort to include all issues raised, some were inevitably left out. For example, covering domestic workers (later addressed partially in the POSH Act) and same-sex relationships. In negotiations with the State, we also lost provisions for designated budgets to implement the PWDVA and for appointing a rapporteur to monitor prevalence and assess responses to domestic violence. For the first five years, the Lawyers Collective took on the role of monitoring the law. But there was no institutional uptake of this initiative.
Twenty years have passed. Unlike many other women-specific laws in the country that remain on paper, one piece of good news is that the PWDVA is being used. Without systematic data collection it is difficult to identify who is using the law or whether the response mechanisms envisaged under the PWDVA are functioning as they should. Still, the growing number of cases filed under the Act is encouraging.
In other countries I have worked in, special laws on domestic violence—particularly provisions for protection orders and other civil remedies—have too often remained on paper. My experience of working on similar laws in Southeast Asia showed that courts were reluctant to apply the special procedures these laws required. The PWDVA, in contrast, succeeded by building on existing procedures, namely under Section 125 of the erstwhile Code of Criminal Procedure.
That said, the challenges have been many: inadequate provisioning for support mechanisms, narrow interpretations by courts and implementing agencies, procedural delays, and the familiar shortcomings of the criminal justice system, all of which have affected implementation.
To mark the anniversary of the law, I take great pleasure in introducing a year-long series in The Leaflet that will trace the journey of the PWDVA through the insights of its drafters, campaigners and implementers, highlight the experiences of women who have used it, and review how it has evolved through litigation and jurisprudence. The series is intended as a living archive of the PWDVA—an ongoing record that gathers the voices, memories, and reflections of those who shaped the law, and links the hopes and aspirations that went into its drafting with how these have been realised in practice. The aim is to ensure that the story of the Act is remembered not only through legal texts, but also through the lived experiences of campaigners, lawyers, judges, Protection Officers, and survivors.
This series is both an act of remembrance and of continuity. It seeks to honour the struggles that made the law possible, while also documenting how it has been taken forward, contested, and reimagined in practice. By bringing together diverse perspectives—from those who drafted and campaigned for the law to those who implemented and relied on it—we hope to create a record that does justice to the complexity of the PWDVA’s legacy. This archive is not an epilogue but an opening: a way to ensure that the debates, experiences, and aspirations around the law remain alive, and continue to inform the unfinished work of addressing domestic violence in all its forms.
* While Lawyer’s Collective provided legal aid since its very inception, systematic legal support to women survivors began in 1998. Majorly, such cases were handled from 1997 to 2004.