Choosing the Margins over the Mainstreams: A Woman Lawyer’s Revamp..

By Adv Archana Casmir

Practicing law as a woman in a small town in Karnataka was not merely a professional choice, it was a negotiation with power. Courtrooms remain deeply male spaces, structured as much by habit as by hierarchy. We were around 10 women lawyers out of 150 lawyers, so you very well can imagine our plight and the fight. For women, entry is permitted, but ease is not. Credibility is not assumed, it is earned repeatedly.

My early years in litigation were marked by this constant friction of being heard, being taken seriously, being allowed space. It was frustrating, often exhausting. And yet, there were moments that disrupted this pattern. Judges and other well-wishers who recognised the substance of my work, who offered quiet but meaningful encouragement to persist in practice. Those acknowledgements did not dismantle the structural barriers but they made resistance possible.

Still recognition does not resolve precarity, vulnerability, insecurity whatever one might name it. The financial instability that shadows early litigation, especially outside cities like Bangalore, is not gender neutral. It demands difficult choices. I had to step away from practice. Stepping away was not a retreat but a Revamp, realignment I would say. Along with the acknowledgement that the idea of success in law cannot be divorced from the question of sustainability and access.

Fortunately, I was born into a family rooted in social work, activism and one that went head on against caste, class and gender discrimination. Questions of inequality were not abstract ideas, they were part of everyday conversation. Justice was not a distant ideal but something that had to be fought for and lived. The journey from looking at Power as Dominance to understanding Power as Participation has been profound.

With this foundation working with Dhwani Legal Trust has reoriented my understanding of legal practice itself. Moving beyond courtrooms into spaces of legal awareness and community engagement has been satisfying. Dhwani has allowed me to align my profession with the values I was raised with.

And yet, there is an unfinished impulse, a desire to move closer to the grassroots. Bangalore does offer visibility, networks and resources but if the law is to mean anything, if access to justice is to reach anybody, it must be for those where inequity is most visible and lived.

But for now, I am guided not just by what the profession expects but by what my values demand.