Abstract
Violence that is sexual in nature is marked by a very disturbing silence around it, especially in South Asia. This is despite its widespread prevalence in contexts ranging from national wars, civil strife, episodes of targeted community violence to more routine occurrences in the realm of the family and community. The book series by Zubaan addresses this silence by focusing on both the cultural-communal condoning of sexual violence, and the active collusion of the state in providing impunity to its perpetrators. It addresses how these two aspects working together find expression in denial, victim-blaming, dismissal as no big deal, perpetuation/repetition and most importantly, the absence of sufficient resources and mechanisms for healing for the survivors of such violence.
The two volumes under review (out of a total of eight books in the series) address— as the titles suggest—the silences and impunity for sexual violence in the context of India, taking on the intersectionalities of caste, class, religious identity, lifestyle, location and politics. The India Papers I has chapters on impunity, dealing with issues such as the discourse of honour and its uneasiness as a companion to the discourse of justice, medical and psychosocial perspectives on sexual violence, religion based targeted forms of sexual violence, sexual violence against refugees, and sex-workers among others. The India Papers II focuses predominantly on sexual violence in the geographical-political peripheries, marked by exceptional or emergency circumstances be it the northeastern states of India, Jammu and Kashmir, or Chhattisgarh, accompanied by two chapters that are not region-specific but delineate the broad thematic issues of sexual violence as an expression of dominance based on caste-based impunity, and on ‘stripping and parading’ as a specific form of sexual violence.
The first volume has 12 chapters preceded by a Series Introduction, a Volume Introduction and an imaginative telling of the story of a rape in a Naga village by Temsula Ao. The Introduction does the crucial task of developing a genealogy of sexual violence in India and feminist assertions around it. It also dwells upon important epistemological issues such as the reality of sexual violence being categorised at the bottom of a hierarchy of violence, all too often subsumed under larger categories of sectarian strife or army intervention, and that of the varied identities of perpetrators of sexual violence, ranging from state-personnel, dominant-caste men, religious and national ‘others’, to intimate partners.
Kavita Panjabi’s chapter on the rape trial testimony of Communist Party leader Ila Mitra and its aftermath highlights the conundrum between the demands of disclosure necessitated by the justice system and the demands of silence from family, community and the person herself, based on notions of honour and privacy. She draws attention to the larger issue of how seeking justice by talking about the violations inflicted upon the body of the woman implies a loss of honour, resulting in the search for justice being a very painful process for the survivor. This trauma is compounded if and when various parties—in the Ila Mitra episode the Communist Party and the Indian and Bangladeshi states—prioritise their own politics over any real concern for the survivor. Rajashri Dasgupta takes this discussion of contest for political and electoral gains over rapes of women to more contemporary periods in the state of West Bengal, under Communist Party of India (Marxist), Indian National Congress and All India Trinamool Congress leaderships by a reading of three momentous episodes of rape in Bantala, Kamduni and Park Street. Bani Gill has a chapter on sexual violence suffered by Afghan and Burmese refugee women in Delhi where she highlights how silences and selective talking mark the narratives of refugee women who occupy an uncertain space between legality and illegality within an ambiguous legal regime, mediated by their expectations from the United Nations refugee agency, their experiences with the state and society in Delhi, and their understanding of community and family. Discussing how jurisprudence as an ideology—in the context of societal morality permeating through the legal machinery—produces impunity for violence against sex-workers, Meena Seshu and Laxmi Murthy argue in their chapter that legalisation of sex-work and its recognition as a form of economic labour along with collectivisation of these groups, are the ways in which to redress this impunity. Neha Dixit in her chapter on the widespread sexual violence that took place during the Muzaffarnagar violence against Muslims in September 2013, draws attention to how the patriarchal discourse of ‘honour’ that rests on women’s bodies was used to instigate violence against the community. Women’s bodies thus worked as battlegrounds to establish superiority of one community over the other.
On a different note, the chapter on developing protocols for medical examinations points towards the current inadequacies in the medico-legal procedures and suggests ways to work towards a more gender-sensitive and just approach for the survivors of sexual violence in the form of a comprehensive healthcare model. Shobna Sonpar in another chapter outlines three levels at which the psychosocial preparedness for committing sexual violence is developed, namely individual, group or interpersonal, and sociocultural. She argues that a causal relation for sexual violence is multi-factorial, and thus urges feminists to broaden their focus from a structural power and gender-analysis based interpretation alone. A multi-causal understanding not only helps explain the occurrence of sexual violence but also hints towards how to develop forms of masculinity that are not exploitative. Divya Arya writes that the rationale for the media to highlight some cases of sexual violence is based not on the merit of the case but on contingent and whimsical factors such as the appearance of the case as a ‘real rape’ (examples: gang-rape, stranger rape or rape of minors, in contrast to rape by acquaintances where it is assumed that there is more probability that the victim had a ‘role in bringing the assault upon herself’), (non) availability of resources and/or disinterest to use resources to cover incidents of rape in smaller cities and villages unless they become sensational cases. Further, she identifies a model of ‘campaign journalism’ that builds pressure on government, police, judiciary and the general public.
The volume ends with four powerful interviews: two with activists and lawyers and two with survivors of sexual violence. The conversation with Farah Naqvi, while discussing sexual violence in Gujarat, dwells on some crucial conceptual issues such as how words and phrases like ‘communal violence’ and ‘riot’ are misnomers for what actually is a targeting based on one’s identity, and how the conviction of policemen and other state officials serves a purpose which conviction of other accused does not serve, namely, the symbolic or real addressing of the impunity of a complicit state-machinery. Vrinda Grover talks of how the law is a crucial path to justice, but is ridden with cumbersome processes, alienating language and inordinate delays which itself can contribute towards impunity. The interviews with courageous survivors Suzette Jordan and Christine Marrewa Karwoski highlight the importance of truth-telling and a claim to one’s identities instead of a de-personalising identity as a ‘rape-victim’.
The second volume consists of eight chapters preceded by the Series Introduction, a poem by Uzma Falak and a Volume Introduction which, apart from doing the usual job of introducing chapters in the volume, draws attention to the important aspects of an absence of serious and sufficient theorisation of the postcolonial Indian state and its states of exception. Drawing on Nasser Hussain’s work, the editor points out that the exception to the rule of law provided by the AFSPA (Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958)—which was initially offered only as a temporary measure to be used against a ‘small section of hostiles’ (p. 7)—has been continued and justified for more than half a century impacting vast political geographies of the Indian nation-state. The first two chapters of the volume address the issue of sexual violence in the northeastern states of India, the region that has seen the longest application of AFSPA. Roshmi Goswami’s chapter discusses how women bear the brunt of a conflict situation, ranging from violations and hardships coming from a military rule that rapes and tortures women to punish their men, and from rival militant groups. She also comments that widespread sexual and other forms of violence nevertheless remain mostly unrecognized, making justice and peace-building a challenging task. She also argues that to make lasting peace through various ongoing peace negotiations in the region, they would have to include women and their visions. Without that, a lasting and gender-just peace would be impossible. Sanjay Borbora’s chapter, which focuses on the silences around the issue of sexual violence in Assam’s Nellie massacre, points to the difficulties of drawing out a coherent rendition of how women dealt with such violence, amidst complex structures of power and ethnic politics. Dolly Kikon’s excellent chapter, through ethnographic detailing of an incident of rape of a minor girl by her father who is a member of a militant group in Nagaland, tells us how heavy militarisation and impunity for violence in the public sphere slides into impunity for sexual violence in the private sphere of home. Her chapter weaves history and personal memory to show how sexual violence within the Naga community is regularly pushed under the carpet, while the only sexual violence that people talk about openly is from the army, or from an ‘other’. Kikon argues that there is a need to extend the conversation in conflict areas to include a focus on the ‘cultural sovereignty’ that societies claim to legitimise acts of violence against women.
The next two chapters deal with the issue of sexual violence in the context of Jammu and Kashmir. Sahba Hussain’s chapter includes a broad sweep of issues ranging from sexual violence against men and women (Kashmiri Muslim and Pandit) from armed forces and from militants. She also comments that silences around sexual violence have receded, and in recent times there is a more open debate and resistance organised around the issue of sexual violence, even though womens’ organisations such as Dukhtaran-e-Millat and MKM have not been able to go beyond patriarchal tropes of purity, morality and ‘good’ and ‘bad’ women. Gazala Peer’s chapter, following a few cases of sexual violence that went to military courts, deals with the issue of cold responses from the state to people’s resistance and protests against sexual violence which comes in various forms such as denial, by limiting access to justice, by adjudicating cases of sexual violence in military courts which do not follow the requirements of an impartial, free and fearless system of justice.
The chapter on sexual violence and impunity in Chhattisgarh draws attention to the systematic nature of sexual violence over the last decade, where the state not only spearheads such violence but awards perpetrators, and state institutions for protection of human rights remain mere spectators. Such an atmosphere results in non-reporting of cases, non-documentation and impunity, in the process legitimising sexual violence against women.
Jayshree Mangubhai’s incisive chapter on sexual violence in the context of a patriarchal caste culture draws attention to how sexual violence against dalit women is not merely a gendered crime but is also a crime that has the backing of caste-based dominance and impunity. Reflecting on the intersectional angle of sexual violence by following a series of cases in the state of Rajasthan, she analyses how the state fails not only because of societal pressures and its own complicity resulting in disinterest in filing police reports etc., but also due to inadequate application of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, in preference to the regular provisions of the Indian Penal Code. This discussion continues in the brilliant chapter by Pratiksha Baxi, where she argues that impunity is built and emboldened when the crime of ‘stripping and parading’—where the victim is put on public display as a degraded object stripping him or her of all that is social—is considered by the legal system as a crime of ‘divine displeasure’, or when the courts dwell on hyper-technicalities like the absence of a certificate of community identity produced by the police as a ground for non-conviction. She also argues that it is important for the feminist movement to claim the crime of ‘stripping and parading’ as an act of political and structural violence, speaking back to the discourse of robbing women’s ‘honour’.
Both the volumes under review are collections of extremely rich accounts and analysis, foregrounding discussions on sexual violence in the context of impunity. The volumes also portray feminist commitments to changing cultures of impunity by activist scholarship. Dense with chapters that are deeply analytical as well as rich field-based data, the volumes can be considered as resource books for anyone looking at issues of violence and gender, specifically in the South Asian context. What is particularly appreciable is that they not only tell us the sad state of affairs, but also inspire hope by reflecting on the ways forward to end a culture of impunity against sexual violence.