The brutal rape and murder of a trainee doctor in Kolkata has brought an influx of perspectives and demands on women’s rights. The rage is divided: how can a doctor be a victim despite her ‘noble profession’ and how did this happen in a metropolitan city? In the same week, multiple cases of rape and murder were reported across India, including two brutal incidents against a 14-year old girl in Bihar and a 6 year-old girl in Uttar Pradesh, that did not make it to ‘mainstream’ media as the women were Dalits. Demand for safety policies and better workspaces reflects an upper caste lens on women’s rights, ignoring the lived realities of women in rural and informal spaces. An informed articulation of demands should attempt to dismantle the structures enabling this patriarchy rather than using ineffective policy band-aids.
Class, Caste and the Hindu Nation
What is a woman’s place in society? In a profit-driven system, women’s role in society is reduced to becoming a site of production and reproduction of labour on a daily basis- to replenish the man so he can give his labour- and generationally – to reproduce a new workforce who will be exploited to sustain the class structure. In India, the subordination of women is directly linked to caste hierarchy. The upper caste woman is central to brahminical patriarchy as protecting her ‘womb’ is necessary to ensure endogamy and caste purity. This structure denies dignity to Dalit women, as witnessed in Khairlanji, Hathras, and many other cases. Here, rape and violence are not just products of patriarchy but tools of oppression and humiliation used by upper caste men to ‘keep Dalits in place’. Thus, gender politics becomes reductionist in India as sexual violence is a direct consequence of the caste system. This control of women through endogamy is also the core of Hindutva. The female body and its manifestations as ‘Bharat Mata’ and ‘Matru-Bhumi’ has been one of the universal ways to imagine nationhood, while reinforcing the care-giving roles of women in Hindu nationalist society. This is accompanied by a discourse on the need to protect the Hindu women from the ‘virile’ Muslim men through the manufacturing of ‘Love Jihad’ conspiracies. Conversely, sexual violence is used as a tool against Muslim women as seen during the Gujarat pogrom or the recent auctioning of Muslim women on online platforms.
Gender-Based Violence in the Indian State
How does this feature in gender violence in the Indian State? How should the state respond to gender-based violence? A welfare state, by virtue of its very structure, reproduces patriarchy through gendered division of labour and the institution of marriage. The fact that a woman is a benefactor of a scheme only as a member of family (through her father or husband) is a glaring reminder of this. The state also claims monopoly over violence within its territory and this is deeply rooted in class, caste, and religious divisions. The Indian state has actively sanctioned violence against women through numerous orchestrations including sterilisation campaigns enforced upon the poor or draconian legislations like AFSPA. In the latter, the deployment of sexual violence is a tool to ‘discipline the anti-state’. The implementation of AFSPA in Kashmir, Manipur, Nagaland, Assam, and Arunachal Pradesh and the role of the army in Bastar has been sanctioned by a state-guaranteed impunity that disallows women from seeking judicial redressal. This extends beyond war or conflict zones as women are violated routinely. The incidents of police brutality by the governments of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka against women under the guise of a hunt for Veerappan is one of many such examples.
Reform vs Radical Response
Keeping this in mind, what does reform mean? Who is this reform for? Looking at the history of women’s empowerment in India, though the middle-class Hindu men ‘welcomed’ reforms on Sati and widow remarriage, they created alternate structures of subversion to control the sexuality and mobility of women. One example is the creation of the ‘lustful and lecherous’ male gaze- men would gaze and ‘respectable women’ must dress and act appropriately to avoid this gaze. In the aftermath of the R.G. Kar incident, governments instructed female medical professionals not to wear jeans, flowers or makeup to work, reinforcing that women must avoid this male gaze. The second question is on, what reform we are asking for. Better amenities for doctors and safe spaces for female doctors to rest are justified, but indicate selective outrage. No ‘Reclaim the Nights’ happened for the cases of brutal violence against Dalit women in rural India. The cultural hegemony of caste and religion in India will always invisibilise the experiences of marginalised and working class women and address only the concerns of privileged women, that too to fulfil interests of pride and purity. Acts of gender-based violence are not to be seen in isolation. We live in a system that survives on subjugating women and other gender minorities. We see this violence manifesting in cultural spaces, in policy-making (as seen in labour codes), and in the state machinery itself. Women’s rights are mere agenda within political campaigns. It is on us to move beyond feeble imaginations of policy reform and radically demand liberation- from capitalism, class and the Bramhinical Nation-State.
