Every society reveals something about itself through the lives it mourns. In the last few weeks the Death of Twisha Sharma has led to widespread grief, unrelenting media attention and calls for justice. When allegations of dowry harassment and domestic violence emerged during ongoing criminal investigations, the case attracted national attention and sparked public debate. But what makes this particular case so significant is not the violence itself, but the intensity of the public reaction it provoked.
The case offers an opportunity to ask a deeper question: Why do certain moments of extraordinary violence against women become immediately recognizable as tragedies for the country, while countless other incidents remain socially invisible?
The case offers an opportunity to ask a deeper question: Why do certain moments of extraordinary violence against women become immediately recognizable as tragedies for the country, while countless other incidents remain socially invisible? Because there are women in this country for whom violence is not an exceptional rupture; it exists as an everyday fact of life. This is hardly a revelation for women whose life experiences are shaped by the intersections of caste, class, gender and religion. Dalit, Adivasi and Muslim women have long lived with forms of violence that rarely achieve the status of extraordinary tragedies.
The question we must therefore ask ourselves is not why India mourns Twisha Sharma, but why India does not mourn in this way all the time. Violence against women is widespread and normalized. But this language of universality hides more than it reveals. Not all women experience the same social realities or occupy the same social spaces, and not all women experience violence from the same structures of power, hierarchy and oppression. Nor are all women given equal access to public sympathy when violence occurs.
Not all women experience the same social realities or occupy the same social spaces, and not all women experience violence from the same structures of power, hierarchy and oppression. Nor are all women given equal access to public sympathy when violence occurs.
Long before contemporary feminist and human rights scholarship questioned the universality of the category “woman,” BR Ambedkar in 1916 had shown how caste survives through the regulation of women’s sexuality, marriage and reproduction. In his 1916 essay, Ambedkar explains endogamy and argues that the regulation of female sexuality is the very process through which caste reproduces itself. Decades later, feminist scholar Uma Chakraborty deepened this insight through her theory of Brahminical patriarchy and explained how caste hierarchy and patriarchal control constitute each other.
The public response to the Twisha Sharma case lies in this precise theory. The shock it caused reveals less about the exceptionality of the violence than about its vulnerability, recognized as a national crisis. While Ambedkar made the diagnosis, Chakravarti presented it verbally.
Confrontation with the Brahminical patriarchy
The question is why Indian society continues to eradicate both. Brahminical patriarchy does not produce a single category of “Indian femininity”. Rather, it leads to a graded femininity (a phrase borrowed from Ambedkar’s idea of graded inequality). Brahminical patriarchy therefore does not produce a shared lived experience of femininity. Instead, femininity is distributed and differentiated through hierarchies of dignity, protection, vulnerability, and social value.
Brahminical patriarchy therefore does not produce a shared lived experience of femininity. Instead, femininity is distributed and differentiated through hierarchies of dignity, protection, vulnerability, and social value.
Some women are positioned as bearers of caste honor, whose “protection” is central to maintaining family and community honor. Others find themselves outside these structures, where respectability is not a given and where violence can be more easily normalized, anchored and erased. The category “woman” therefore excludes the hierarchies that Brahminical patriarchy insidiously maintains.
Dalit women, historically and currently, continue to find themselves outside the protection afforded by the honor and respectability of the “upper” caste. Their work sustains everyday social life while their bodies remain exposed to the violence of this violence. Sexual violence against Dalit women is not simply gender-based violence; it is often an achievement and a result of caste power itself. It functions as punishment, discipline and social control.
When violence is perpetrated against a woman who belongs to the dominant social class; Media institutions, public discourse and the national narrative recognize each other in their suffering. However, when violence against women is committed on the margins, recognition is uncertain.
This particular difference is important because it captures something disturbing about public outrage. When violence is perpetrated against a woman who belongs to the dominant social class; Media institutions, public discourse and the national narrative recognize each other in their suffering. However, when violence against women is committed on the margins, recognition is uncertain.
The crucial question is who is actually recognized as a victim. Whose suffering is seen as an extraordinary moment of violence that can provoke national anger, and whose pain can become a unified event rather than remain confined to the realm of the ordinary? The politics of recognition not only determines whose violence becomes visible, but also whose bodies and lives become publicly mournable.
The interface between caste and patriarchy
Dalit feminist theory has long argued that the lived experiences of Dalit women not only expand feminist analysis; rather, they restructure it. Sharmila Rege argues that the experiences of Dalit women reveal the limitations of the dominant feminist framework itself. The universal category of “woman” in India is too often constructed through and for upper-caste experiences while simultaneously positioning itself as politically universal or neutral.
From a Dalit woman’s perspective, what dominant feminist practice calls patriarchy is instead the complex structure of Brahminical patriarchy, a structure in which caste and gender hierarchies are intertwined. The distinction is not just semantic. It changes the way violence is understood and even experienced, and it changes ideas about victimhood.
From a Dalit woman’s perspective, what dominant feminist practice calls patriarchy is instead the complex structure of Brahminical patriarchy, a structure in which caste and gender hierarchies are intertwined. The distinction is not just semantic. It changes the way violence is understood and even experienced, and it changes ideas about victimhood.
The violence experienced by Dalit women is documented in government records and data, but is rarely mourned across the country. It appears in NCRB data, investigative reports, court cases and activist interventions. Yet it rarely achieves the status of a national disaster. Its repetition and consistency are normalized. Women who find themselves at the intersection of caste, religion, tribe and economic marginalization are excluded from the confines of the national imagination. For this reason, the response to Twisha Sharma’s case deserves self-reflection as a social process, not because her suffering is any less important. Rather, the public reaction to the case reveals a deeper structural dysfunction. It reveals our inability to recognize the social order that produces such violence.
The shock surrounding the case is telling not because the violence has entered the family, but because it exposes the enduring belief that caste, family, marriage, kinship, honor and reputation are institutions that protect women. However, it is through these intimate spaces that violence is reproduced.
The shock surrounding the case is telling not because the violence has entered the family, but because it exposes the enduring belief that caste, family, marriage, kinship, honor and reputation are institutions that protect women. However, it is through these intimate spaces that violence is reproduced.
The violence experienced by an “upper” caste woman in an “upper” caste household and the violence experienced by a Dalit woman at the intersection of caste, gender, work and social exclusion are not the same lived experiences of patriarchy. They come from different social locations within the same social structures and hierarchies. One of these is often viewed as a tragedy because it disrupts the fantasy of “protection.” The other is normalized because vulnerability itself has been assigned to a caste. This is why the national conversation cannot end with Twisha Sharma. If all we produce from this moment on is another cycle of outrage, we have learned nothing. The task is not only to condemn violence, but also to understand the architecture that makes such violence possible, permissible and predictable.
Brahminical patriarchy continues to dominate our everyday lives. It shapes the very terms under which we imagine protection, family, honor and violence. It’s hard for us to even see it because it has become so commonplace. Unless this idea of everydayness is disrupted, justice will remain episodic and violence will remain structurally inevitable.
Until Brahminical patriarchy is understood, recognized and recognized as a living social order and not just a mere academic theory, there will be more Twishas and Dalit, Adivasi and Muslim women will continue to be denied justice, not because their suffering is invisible, but because the structures that produce it have been normalized.
Brahminical patriarchy continues to dominate our everyday lives. It shapes the very terms under which we imagine protection, family, honor and violence. It’s hard for us to even see it because it has become so commonplace. Unless this idea of everydayness is disrupted, justice will remain episodic and violence will remain structurally inevitable.
References
Ambedkar, B. R. (1916). “Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Origin and Development.” Indian antiquarian, XLI.
Chakravarti, Uma. (1993). “Conceptualizing Brahminical Patriarchy in Early India: Gender, Caste, Class and the State.” Economic and Political Weekly, 28(14), 579-585.
Crenshaw, Kimberle. (1991). “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color.” Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 1241-1299.
Irudayam, Aloysius SJ, Mangubhai, Jayshree P. and Lee, Joel G. (2015). Dalit women speak out: caste, class and gender violence in India. New Delhi: Zubaan.
Jamil, Ghazala. (2018). Muslim Women Speak: Of Dreams and Bondage. New Delhi: Sage Publications.
Regret, Sharmila. (2006). Writing Caste/Writing Gender: Telling Testimonies of Dalit Women. New Delhi: Zubaan.
