Traditional acupuncture charts show the human body as a network of pressure points: to these, the healer will apply force, hoping to bring about change.
Vrinda Grover’s work as a human-rights lawyer and advocate for women’s rights has meant that she presses down pretty hard. Justice, she believes, must reach everyone — not just privileged Indians on the top rungs but those in insurgency-torn areas, those unjustly tortured, jailed or executed, those who slip through the many cracks in the system.
Her determination to force an often recalcitrant political and legal system to change was evident in these past few heated months, as a particularly tragic rape in Delhi brought women’s rights center stage. In the conservative backlash that followed the waves of women’s protests, Grover’s voice — loud, uncompromising — was raised again and again in the rambunctious theater of Indian TV. Justice and equality, however distant, are the goal; she is there to remind politicians that nothing less will do.
Roy writes on gender and is the author of The Wildings