This is the second part of a three-part series. Read part one. The Bombay high court’s judgment in the Tarun Tejpal case is more than just a major decision on rape law. It reflects the tensions of a society that has undergone rapid social, economic and cultural transformation over the past two decades, compelling courts to interpret constitutional principles within multiple and often conflicting social realities.This 3-part series does not seek to revisit the facts of the case or opine upon the correctness of the judgment. Instead, it uses the judgment as a point of departure to examine larger constitutional questions that have received little attention in public discourse.§The Bombay high court’s judgment in the Tejpal case firmly situates Indian rape jurisprudence within an important international constitutional movement. As discussed in the first article of this series, courts across Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and Scandinavia have progressively dismantled the stereotype of the “perfect victim”, replacing assumptions about female behaviour with the constitutional principles of autonomy, dignity and affirmative consent.Yet comparative jurisprudence has one inherent limitation. Law travels more easily than society. Judicial principles may be borrowed, legislative reforms enacted and constitutional doctrines adopted. Social transformation, however, follows its own rhythm. It is shaped by history, economics, culture, education and lived experience. It cannot simply be imported.That distinction is particularly significant for India. Most Western democracies evolved towards contemporary consent jurisprudence after several decades of gradual social change. The sexual revolution, women’s economic participation, changing family structures, public conversations around sexuality and educational reform preceded many legal developments. Law largely consolidated an already evolving social reality.India’s experience has been fundamentally different. Our constitutional vocabulary has evolved with remarkable speed; our social vocabulary has not. This is not because Indian society is resistant to change, but because it is changing simultaneously in several directions. Any meaningful analysis of consent in contemporary India therefore requires a layered sociological lens, one that recognises the intersecting influences of class, caste, gender, religion, region, migration and economic mobility rather than searching for a single explanatory narrative.The last three generations have witnessed transformations unprecedented in Indian history. Economic liberalisation fundamentally altered patterns of employment and migration. Women entered universities and professions in unprecedented numbers. Small towns became connected to metropolitan labour markets. The digital revolution collapsed geographical boundaries. Social media and global entertainment exposed young Indians to ideas about relationships, sexuality and personal autonomy that earlier generations rarely encountered.These developments did not merely change behaviour. They relocated millions of Indians into entirely different social environments. The better description I prefer is not social change but cultural migration. Migration usually refers to movement across geography. Here it refers to movement across behavioural worlds.Also read: ‘Freedom Begum’: The Impact of Gentrification on CultureA young woman may grow up in a household where discussions around sexuality remain deeply uncomfortable, where marriage continues to determine social legitimacy and where parental authority shapes personal decisions. She may simultaneously study in a metropolitan university, work in an international media organisation or multinational corporation, collaborate daily with men as equals, travel independently, socialise after work and consume global digital culture.Neither of these lived worlds are artificial. Both are equally real. The same individual therefore negotiates multiple behavioural expectations every day.A Pinjra Tod rally on International Working Women’s Day. The informal students group was formed in 2015 and demanded equitable rights for women and men on college campuses. The collective is no longer active. Credit: Facebook/Pinjra TodThe same complexity confronts young men. A first-generation professional from a semi-urban background may sincerely embrace constitutional ideals of equality while remaining emotionally shaped by older understandings of masculinity, pursuit and authority. His workplace encourages informality. His family often expects deference. Popular culture sends contradictory messages. Social media celebrates personal freedom while rarely discussing emotional responsibility. And then he is also exposed to the proliferation of free pornographic content.Neither women nor men are necessarily unfamiliar with the law. Most professional institutions today provide workplace orientation, sexual harassment policies and mandatory training on maintaining safe and respectful workplaces. What these programmes rarely offer, however, is a deeper engagement with the complexities of attraction, rejection, power, emotional responsibility and consent within unequal relationships. Young professionals therefore negotiate multiple social languages simultaneously, often without a coherent behavioural framework through which to reconcile them.This is where the Indian experience differs fundamentally from that of many constitutional democracies. The challenge is not merely changing values. It is the coexistence of competing value systems. There is no single Indian social experience. Another India rarely enters constitutional discourse.Millions of migrant workers – construction labourers, security guards, drivers, factory workers and artisans – live for months, often years, away from their families. The digital revolution has given them unprecedented access to sexual imagery through inexpensive smartphones and low-cost data plans, but it has not altered the socio-economic realities that severely limit opportunities for stable, consensual intimate relationships.The result is neither a simple story of technological liberation nor one of inevitable criminality. It is a complex intersection of migration, loneliness, economic inequality, sexual deprivation and the absence of meaningful public conversations about relationships, mental health and responsible sexuality.Also read: Making and Unmaking Colonial Criminal Law: From Macaulay to NowAny serious sociological understanding of contemporary India must recognise this reality alongside the experiences of urban professionals and university campuses. There, class profoundly shapes relationships. Caste continues to regulate marriage and intimacy. Religious traditions influence family structures in different ways. Urban and rural experiences increasingly coexist within the same workplace. Migration continuously redraws these boundaries.A first-generation college student entering an elite university inhabits a different social world from someone raised within an affluent metropolitan household, even though both remain equally subject to the same constitutional guarantees.Consequently, what appears to be one society often contains several overlapping societies. This diversity enriches India. It also complicates the law of consent. The constitution speaks one language. Society speaks many. Perhaps nowhere is this fragmentation more visible than in the institutions that shape everyday behaviour.An event held at Press Club of India, New Delhi, on August 20, 2026, worshipping a cardboard cutout of Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. Photo: X/@@Sheetal2242For generations, families, schools, neighbourhoods and community structures broadly reinforced similar expectations regarding relationships, authority and social conduct. Those expectations frequently restricted women and often denied individual autonomy. Nevertheless, they constituted a relatively coherent behavioural framework.That coherence has steadily weakened. The family often continues to speak the language of reputation. The constitution speaks the language of autonomy. Educational institutions encourage independence but rarely teach the ethics of relationships. Corporate workplaces emphasise equality while functioning within unmistakable hierarchies of power. Popular culture projects competing ideas of intimacy, while digital media accelerates behavioural change without cultivating an equally robust ethic of responsibility.Politics increasingly invokes questions of cultural identity. No single institution now provides a coherent civic education regarding intimacy. Instead, young Indians receive multiple and often contradictory messages. The law enters this conversation only after those contradictions have produced conflict.India’s social transition acquired an additional complexity after 2014. Even as global conversations around bodily autonomy, workplace equality and affirmative consent increasingly influenced universities, professional spaces and digital culture, public life witnessed an assertive political project that sought to recast India’s identity through a more culturally homogeneous civilisational narrative. This represented a departure from India’s historically plural and layered social fabric, where diverse philosophical traditions, faiths, regional cultures and ways of life had long coexisted, often in creative tension.Also read: Pinjra Tod Refuses to Back Down, Holds Night-Long Protest at Lady Shri Ram College After Miranda HouseThe consequences extended beyond electoral politics. The renewed emphasis on cultural conformity inevitably shaped public conversations on gender, sexuality and family. Simultaneously, the constitutional commitment to scientific temper, critical inquiry and individual liberty increasingly encountered a public discourse centred on civilisational revival. That discourse frequently privileged selective readings of tradition as markers of cultural authenticity and national identity. The consequence was not merely a political shift but a constitutional one: the liberal promise of autonomy increasingly coexisted with narratives that reaffirmed inherited hierarchies in questions of family, gender and sexuality.Whether viewed (by Hindutva’s proponents) as cultural renaissance or (by its critics) as ideological retrogression, this divergence also altered the normative landscape within which young Indians negotiate intimacy, hierarchy and personal autonomy. Constitutional law and sections of public discourse were no longer evolving in the same direction.The constitutional significance lies elsewhere. Young Indians are now required to negotiate competing normative frameworks, each claiming legitimacy. The consequence is not the disappearance of older values nor the complete triumph of liberal individualism. It is the multiplication of behavioural expectations. The Nirbhaya case (2012) compelled India to confront the brutal realities of sexual violence and transformed the legal architecture governing such offences.The Tejpal judgment (2026) belongs to the next phase of that constitutional journey. It asks a different set of questions, not about recognising sexual violence, but about understanding consent, authority, workplace hierarchy and credibility within a society whose behavioural norms are in transition. They do not arise in a social vacuum. They arise within institutions marked by hierarchy, ambition, professional dependence and changing gender relationships. Consent is negotiated not merely between two individuals but within structures of authority that simultaneously encourage informality and reproduce unequal power.The law rightly acknowledges these realities. But it cannot itself resolve them. Indeed, this is where the constitutional challenge begins.The law can define consent with increasing sophistication. It can reject stereotypes, recognise structural inequalities and regulate abuses of power. What it cannot do is create the shared civic vocabulary through which women and men learn to negotiate attraction, rejection, intimacy and authority before those questions become matters of criminal litigation.The Bombay high court’s judgment therefore represents something larger than an important decision in rape jurisprudence. It reflects a constitutional democracy confronting a society whose legal understanding of autonomy has evolved more rapidly than its social institutions. Law has become more coherent than society itself. The consequences of that divergence increasingly arrive before the criminal courts.The constitutional challenge of the coming decades will not simply be refining and enforcing the law of consent. It will ensure that society itself develops a language through which freedom and responsibility mature together.Unless that happens, courts will continue to be asked to resolve disputes whose origins lie far beyond the courtroom. Even as we welcome the high court’s verdict in the Tejpal case, we need to remember the wider battle still to be won at the level of Indian society. No constitutional democracy, however enlightened its judges or progressive its laws, can indefinitely expect criminal jurisprudence to perform the work of social transformation.Sandhya Gokhale is a lawyer, writer and film maker. Author’s declaration: I used AI as a research aid while developing this series, particularly for comparative jurisprudence and checking relevant legal sources. The arguments, analysis and conclusions are my own.