Summary
On October 7, 2026, Justice Lalitha Kanneganti of the Karnataka High Court directed family courts to use "parenting time" instead of "visitation" in custody cases, reasoning that no parent is a visitor in a child's life.
The order came as the Supreme Court revised its guidance on gender-sensitive judicial language, publishing a Handbook on Judgments and Gender in August 2026 to replace the original 2023 handbook. An opinion piece in The Hindu argued that such reform works only when it confronts the social assumptions behind words - for instance, that mothers parent and fathers merely visit - rather than when judges simply memorise approved terms.
WHY IT MATTERS FOR UPSC & STATE PCS
Earlier efforts at gender-sensitive judicial language have not prevented insensitive judgments, including a 2025 Allahabad High Court ruling in a POCSO case that the Supreme Court stayed and condemned. The revised handbook, according to The Hindu's account, studied 125 trial court judgments and found outdated terms such as "real victim" still in use.
The debate asks whether vocabulary reform can deliver substantive equality on its own.
Standard News
Words Change Outcomes Only When People Change With Them
Every reform movement eventually reaches the dictionary. Activists ask institutions to stop using certain words and institutions comply. The harder question comes afterwards: did the reality change or only its label? This month's Karnataka High Court order and a public-health shift that began decades earlier, offer two answers that make sense only when read together.
The courtroom:
a word that carried a verdict "Visitation" sounds neutral. It is not. It treats the non-custodial parent - usually the father - as a visitor and quietly confirms the assumption that mothers parent while fathers drop by. When Justice Lalitha Kanneganti directed family courts on October 7 to use "parenting time" instead, the point was not politeness.
It was to name an assumption that pushes caregiving burdens onto women, in a country where women remain overwhelmingly the primary caregivers. But the Supreme Court's own experience shows the limits of vocabulary alone. Its 2023 handbook listed stereotypical terms and their replacements.
Yet in 2025, an Allahabad High Court judgment in a POCSO case drew the Supreme Court's sharp criticism for insensitive remarks. And the revised 2026 handbook, according to The Hindu's account, still found outdated terms such as "real victim" in trial court judgments.
Judges had been trained at judicial academies and had the Bangkok General Guidance of 2022. The list of approved words did not, on its own, change how cases were heard.
The clinic:
a word that carried a crime Public health went through a similar shift. For generations, people "committed" suicide - the verb borrowed from crime and sin. Health advocates replaced it with "died by suicide", framing the death as the outcome of illness and distress rather than a moral failure.
Research indicates that removing stigmatising language reduces judgement and encourages people to seek help. Yet the shift worked because it was not only about a word. In India, it came alongside the Mental Healthcare Act, 2017, which presumes that a person who attempts suicide is under severe stress and obliges the State to provide care.
The new phrase arrived with a new practice: treatment instead of prosecution.
Synthesis
Placed side by side, the two cases suggest a rule. A new word changes outcomes when it travels with a changed practice - a new law, a new duty, a new way of treating people. Without that, it becomes a euphemism and the old attitude simply attaches itself to the new term. "Parenting time" has a chance precisely because it comes with an obligation: courts must now treat both parents as carers.
Approved vocabulary lists struggle because they change what judges write without changing what judges assume. The Hindu's essayist draws the institutional conclusion: diverse representation on the Bench, so that assumptions hidden in neutral-sounding language get noticed.
For the Essay paper, the lesson is a usable claim: language reform is necessary but never sufficient. It succeeds when it names an assumption and changes a practice and fails when it merely renames what remains unchanged.
Quick Facts
Key numbers & takeaways — revise these first
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Karnataka High Court order replacing "visitation" with "parenting time": October 7, 2026, by Justice Lalitha Kanneganti.
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The Supreme Court's original Handbook on Combating Gender Stereotypes was released in August 2023.
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The revised Handbook on Judgments and Gender was published in August 2026.
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The 2023 handbook replaced terms such as "seductress" with "woman" and "spinster" with "unmarried woman".
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In March 2025, the Supreme Court stayed an Allahabad High Court POCSO ruling and criticised its remarks as insensitive.
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The Bangkok General Guidance for Judges on Applying a Gender Perspective was issued in 2022.
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The Feminist Judgments Project began with the Women's Court of Canada in 2006; an Indian project emerged around 2018.
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Women make up about 14% of High Court judges in India.
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Public health guidance now prefers "died by suicide" over "committed suicide", which carries criminal and moral stigma.
Connect the dots for your UPSC preparation.
Standard news covers the event. Log in to read our comprehensive analysis and uncover the hidden constitutional, structural, and ethical dimensions of this topic:
The courtroom domain in full: why "visitation" carried a verdict and why the 2023 handbook's term list fell short.
The public-health domain in full: how "died by suicide" worked because it arrived with a change in law.
The synthesis no single example makes: words change outcomes only when they travel with a changed practice.
How to turn this into your own UPSC essay, with examples from law, medicine and representation on the Bench.
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