Women’s Rights are Human Right’s’, a slogan was officially raised in the Vienna Conference on Human Rights, where India stood as one of the member states to ratify the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). It reaffirmed that women were “an inalienable, integral and indivisible part of universal human rights”, bringing to the fore the worth of the lives and dignity of women. For ages in India, there have been abuses done to women in the name of culture or religion, which are hidden by the sanctity of the so-called private sphere. Especially, the practice of cultural relativism by the Indian legislature does neither venerate nor embolden the universality of human rights. However, subsequent to the Vishaka’s landmark judgment, judicial activism is holding accountable the perpetrators of such human rights violations, who had enjoyed the immunity for ages, by inserting the rights of women and gender equality at a higher pedestal and by questioning the validity and legitimacy of certain rampant patriarchal personal laws, with the help of both domestic and international laws. Henceforth, in this paper, the author aims to elucidate that though cultural relativism impedes the advancement of women’s rights, the judgement in the case of and similar cases to the Vishaka evidently prove that the Indian judiciary goes the other way around by proactively using international law to strengthen women’s rights through the harmonious application of CEDAW and the domestic fundamental laws.
