This is the BBC World Service. The following episode of Hard Talk contains references to rape and sexual assault.

Welcome to Hard Talk from the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sackett. My guest in this interview recorded on Thursday the 15th of August isn't a woman looking to take the easy option?

Karuna Nundi studied law at Cambridge University. She could have

stayed in the UK and become a successful barrister. Instead, she chose to return to India and devote

herself to a legal career which she knew would make her plenty of powerful enemies. She is a human rights

lawyer and a vocal campaigner for change in India.

She sees her country in the grip of a patriarchal system, which she describes as a cancer.

She is currently leading the fight to have the Supreme Court recognized that rape can be

committed within marriage. In the last decade or so, action has been

taken to toughen sentences for rape to make policing more accountable, but still, India sees

shocking levels of sexual violence, with the authorities seemingly unable or unwilling to stop it.

Nandi is also a prominent advocate for the legalization of gay marriage in India,

something the BJP government continues to oppose.

Inevitably, her portfolio of campaigns, which also includes extensive work defending freedom of speech,

in an increasingly repressive political climate has made her plenty of

enemies inside the ruling party. At the beginning of her career, she returned to India, convinced

she could make a difference. Has that conviction begun to fade? Well, Karunanundi joins me now on

the line from Delhi. Welcome to Hard Talk. Thank you for having me.

It's a great pleasure to have you on the program. Let me start by taking you back quite a few years.

You studied law at Cambridge University. You had the opportunity to stay in the UK, trained to be a

barrister. I dare say you would have been very successful, but you decided to return

home to India saying that that's where you felt you were needed, where you could make a difference.

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