The report was produced as part of the WEAVE Project, a collective effort by feminist researchers, activists and activist researchers from four countries – Australia, India, Nicaragua and South Africa – to document women’s movements against sexual violence and their impact on policies and legal frameworks in our respective countries.
WEAVE India’s research report traces the history of India’s women’s movements against violence through the voices, stories and viewpoints of those who have found themselves in the midst of some important struggles that mark turning points in the development of a feminist politics of resistance.
The study illuminates these dynamics through a detailed mapping of some seminal struggles, starting from the focal points and backstories, and tracing subsequent actions and events in the courts, on the streets, in movement spaces, the media, the public sphere, state institutions and political spaces. Changes in the larger landscape—the expansion of feminist notions of justice and accountability and the development of movement strategies of mobilization and alliance building—are evident in these storylines.
The India report is a container for a virtual archive of women’s movements against violence. It weaves together multiple sources and strands of inquiry: oral histories and personal accounts from movement actors, commentaries and criticisms from feminist scholars, reports in popular media, campaign materials, court cases, judgments, audiovisual recordings, and a range of formal and informal writings from various sources.
The report highlights the ways in which the experiences and insights of women’s movements and feminist activists have contributed to our understanding of the system that underlies and sustains sexual violence. The picture is like a puzzle to which new pieces are constantly being added and new patterns emerge, urging us to expand, deepen and complicate our analysis.
The feminist understanding of the systemic roots of violence goes far beyond the initial discussions about patriarchy and its embeddedness in social structures and institutions as an undisputed norm. Movement activists and feminist scholars have collectively unraveled the historical connections between caste, patriarchy, economic power, and state power, all of which function through caste endogamy and control of female sexuality, and are legitimized and enforced by the state.
The term “Brahminical patriarchy” reflects this understanding. This analysis was further complicated by queer feminists and their allies, who argued that alongside caste endogamy and the control of female sexuality, compulsory heterosexuality was essential to the survival of the family, caste hierarchies, property relations, and economic hierarchies, as well as to the survival of the state. “Brahmin heteropatriarchy” is therefore a more apt term.
Featured Image Source: Wall Art at JNU, New Delhi
The report takes a feminist look at the network of social institutions involved in the control and surveillance of sexuality, caste endomy and gender identity, which are legitimized and protected by the state and state institutions. The heteronormative patriarchal family is at the heart of this system in which women, girls and queer people are controlled to keep them in their place: as docile and unconditional subjects of care. The legitimacy of the idea of women as constant subjects of care and control is sought in religious texts, fictional stories, and self-serving traditions. Control and custody are referred to as “love,” “care,” and “protection.”
The violence built into these ideas only becomes visible when they are challenged or rejected by “unruly women” – women who marry outside their caste; women and girls who resist or attempt to leave a marriage; women with mental illness or intellectual disability; women being “rescued” from illegal or “immoral” situations; or simply women who threaten the established order through their refusal to conform, through their rejection of prescribed norms and rules, through their insistence on enforcing their rights, or through their habit of confronting and challenging those in power within and outside their families.
Feminist struggles and women’s movements have given us a detailed and accurate picture of the operational mechanisms by which the state enforces existing hierarchies of gender, class, caste and religious identity from which it derives its own power. The report tracks the ways in which birth and marriage families, caste and community institutions, the medical system, the courts, prisons and care facilities cooperate in enforcing this regime of custody and control. Personal stories, case files, official data and independent research are cited to show how sexual violence is normalized and legitimized through the criminalization of women’s autonomy and agency.
March 25, 1980: Members of the National Federation of Indian Women demonstrate outside the Supreme Court in New Delhi, demanding that the Mathura rape case be reopened. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)
The narrative follows the development of women’s movements against rape and sexual violence and their impact on laws and legal frameworks. Starting with that Mathura rape case in 1979 and the subsequent amendments to the Rape Act, the Justice Verma Committee and the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013, the journey is marked with landmark cases that became flashpoints for women’s movements to mobilize and demand justice. Many of the unfinished plans, unresolved questions, and unmet demands that these movements raised continue to affect us today and are still being raised and pursued by feminist lawyers and women’s movements in courts and in public forums.
Women’s movements have demonstrated the extent to which class, caste and community prejudices are expressed in the legal system. These mobilizations and criticisms have led to significant changes in the legal and legislative framework to combat violence against women. At the same time, they have also raised uncomfortable questions about our attitudes toward caste violence, our understanding of intersectional oppression, and our practices of solidarity across identities.
A decade after the Justice Verma Committee report and criminal law changes in 2013, the rape and death of a young Dalit woman in Hathras forced us to look back and ask whether these changes have made the path to justice easier. The questions raised by Dalit feminists in the context of the Hathras case highlighted caste issues within movements and proved that it is easier to theorize intersectionality than to put it into practice. Dalit scholars challenge feminist researchers on questions of authenticity and representation and call for the active participation of Dalit women in the theory of gender and feminism.
Shaheen Bagh
The report takes a feminist look at the discourse of majoritarian nationalism and its instrumentalization of sexual violence. The “otherness” and demonization of those on the margins of the nation has enabled and fueled the cold-blooded incitement of hatred and violence against them. Women’s movements mobilized against sexual violence in Gujarat in 2002 and against AFSPA in Kashmir and the northeastern states and are now facing a wave of violence and hatred that appears to be sweeping the entire country.
Against this bleak backdrop, the report chronicles some of the powerful and transformative movements that have shaped our politics. The land struggle in Bodh Gaya, the anti-nuclear movement in Koodamkulam, feminist publishing and the Women in Print movement, the Shaheen Bagh saga, the women wrestlers’ fight against an abusive strongman, the ASHA workers’ strike for respect and dignity… these are some of the many stories of resistance and resilience that give us the strength to stand our ground and carry on. We heard it in Shaheen Bagh: “We are like grass – we grow everywhere.”
Download the WEAVE India report Here.
Kalyani Menon Sen is a feminist researcher and activist who has worked on women’s rights issues, particularly the impact of neoliberal economic policies on women, for over 25 years. She has contributed to criticism of economic policy and political decision-making processes and has been actively involved in initiatives to develop economic education for women workers and farmers. She has written and campaigned on issues of violence against women, particularly state violence and its connection to economic policy. She has researched and written on issues of women’s safety, dignity and rights in the workplace and has supported a number of organizations in building systems to prevent and address sexual harassment. As a Senior Associate at Gender At Work, she has worked with a number of development organizations, community groups and women’s organizations to design and facilitate action learning initiatives and systems change processes.
