Gang Rape Research Articles

Intersection of Sexual Violence against Women and Sectarian Agendas in India

ABSTRACTUsing on-line newspaper reports, this paper examines how the narratives and counter narratives of the highly publicised gang rape of Pandey in 2012 reproduce rape myths. Using thematic analysis techniques, this research examines how gang rape is used in sectarian agendas in India. It demonstrates that the responses of government, the main opposition political party, and prominent leaders of Hindu nationalist forces to rape cannot be separated from the intersection of gender, misogynist culture and politics. Findings indicated that violated women’s bodies became a space for political debates between a conservative, opposition political party’s claims about Indian traditions and the government of India. These findings have important implications if we want to challenge rape myths that obscure the need for social and political transformation to stop rape. The highly publicised rape of Pandey marked a turning point for the anti-rape movement in India.

Inside/out: women’s movement and women in movements

ABSTRACTAbout 20 years after Susie Tharu and Tejaswini Niranjana’s acclaimed essay ‘Problems for a contemporary Theory of Gender’ was written, suddenly women – of different ages, castes, classes, from diverse regions, and with various religious affiliations – have again taken the centre stage from the power corridors of policy-making to the debates in student organisations. In the last few years there has been an exponential increase in the coverage of violence against women in the media, several Government policies on the girl children have been launched, both sexual harassment and gender sensitisation have attained the status of everyday vocabulary amongst a significant section of the population, and yet feminism has remained a rather exclusive term from which the gentlefolk of urban India tends to keep a safe distance.The question remains, how do we make sense of this new visibility – which becomes glaring and blinding at the same time? Are we experiencing a resurgence in Women’s Movement? Is it a result of the nation-wide shockwave after the Delhi Gang rape in December 2012 when middle-class India came down to the streets? Is it the first wave of the new movements that are sweeping through university campuses and the ways in which new Dalit mobilisations are articulating economic and social rights? Is it connected to the visibility of protesting bodies on streets along with virtual solidarities in social media platforms, indicating debates on the layers of inequality and discrimination that accrue at this juncture of economic liberalisation and consumer culture? Probably it is all of them and more. This is an effort to engage with different ways of seeing, different genealogies of vision vis-à-vis gendered bodies in both public and private domains and explore the configurations of collective mobilisation around ‘women’s issues’. While voice and speech have been part of critical feminist discussions for the last three decades, the turn to visual constructions of gender is a recent one with brilliant but sporadic predecessors like Donna Harraway’s ‘Situated Knowledges’ (1988). This essay intends to conjoin vision with voice in understanding gender politics in India and unpack the ways in which multiple registers of women’s agency connect with each other.

Multimodal social semiotic analysis of Delhi rape conviction news in 2013 in CNN IBN website

ABSTRACTPerformative acts of reading in websites are defined by interactivity which constitutes a site of action and signs in cyberspace. The interactive potential in websites is further augmented through multimodal representations of content. Multimodality hinges on synaesthetic combinations of multiple modes such as orality, writing, visuality and sound. This paper seeks to examine the multimodal representations of discourses surrounding the news of death sentence awarded to four convicts involved in Delhi gang rape and murder of Nirbhaya in CNN IBN news website. Furthermore, it adopts an approach to locate affective forces that characterise the multimodal text concerning the macro-theme of the news through mediated discourses of affect.

The Power of a Powerless Woman: Examining the Impact of Violence on a Biblical Nation

She is nameless and without voice, viciously raped and murdered. The story of the Levite Concubine or Pilegesh , as told in the last three chapters of the Book of Judges, is often referred to by scholars as an appendix, unworthy to be considered part of the pantheon of illustrious judges in Israel. However, the account of the gang rape and murder of a defenseless and socially insignificant woman is more than a story of violence against women. It is the story of consequences of violence and the power one woman can have over an entire nation.

Dialogismo: as vozes em notícias de um estupro coletivo

Este artigo tem como objetivo identificar as diferentes vozes que se organizam no discurso jornalístico e como o dialogismo aparece no gênero notícia, apontando para a responsividade, tal como postula Bakhtin (2011). Para o filósofo, o dialogismo é o princípio constitutivo da linguagem, e, nesse sentido, o discurso não é individual e mantém relação com outros discursos, sendo sempre responsivo. A partir dessa fundamentação, foram selecionadas cinco notícias online, publicadas em diferentes portais, no dia 26 de maio de 2016, referentes ao estupro coletivo de uma jovem de 16 anos na cidade do Rio de Janeiro. O assunto foi amplamente abordado na mídia e gerou comoção nacional. Metodologicamente, a partir dos pressupostos bakhtinianos, esse corpus identifica quais são as vozes presentes e como a enunciação jornalística dialoga com elas. Portanto, todo texto sempre responde a uma série de vozes, marcadas ou não no discurso.

Transporting metropolitanism: Road-mapping feminist solutions to sexual violence in Delhi

This article reads literary texts on sexual violence in Delhi in relation to social texts such as the successive plans for the development of Delhi, notably documents produced by the “Safe Delhi” campaigns to assess the culture of sexual violence in Delhi today in the wake of the horrendous gang rape of 2012, and a 2013 report evaluating public safety and legislation. It focuses on Manjula Padmanabhan’s [1996] 2013 short story “Teaser” which describes a man’s prurient excitement, sexual harassment of women and his sexual humiliation during a bus ride through Delhi. This is compared to a 2009 story by Anglo-Indian writer Irwin Allan Sealy, “First In, Last Out”, in which an auto-rickshaw driver metes out justice to rapists who stalk their prey on the isolated Delhi Ridge. The article argues that feminist inputs are crucial for imagining and bringing to reality a city free from sexual violence.

Neelima P. Aryan’s ‘the prey’ from Drawing the Line: a graphic narrative response to the Delhi gang rape

ABSTRACTFollowing the unspeakable event of December 2012, where a young woman lost her life to brutal, sexual violence, there has been an increase in feminist visual art within India. This paper explores a short graphic story by Neelima P. Aryan, a Delhi-based artist from Kerala, South India entitled ‘the prey’. Dark in both form and content, the story narrates one young woman’s attempts at re-ordering a violent world where women are regarded as (sexual) ‘prey’. Replete with dark imagery, this short graphic story portrays India in a challenging light, usurping traditional paradigms of representing India in auspicious visual ways. Subsequently, this paper closes in consideration of the role Indian graphic narratives are playing in storying New India and their place in challenging established modes of visuality.

Writing Rape, Troping History: Story, Plot, and Ethical Reading in Julia Franck's Die Mittagsfrau (2007)

This article examines the rhetorical function of sexual violence in Julia Franck's novel Die Mittagsfrau (2007), which unflinchingly relates the degradations to which the protagonist is subjected from infancy: sexual exploitation by her sister, psychological abuse at the hands of her mother, sexual harassment by a family friend, abuse by her eventual husband, marginalization as a “Mischling” in the Third Reich, and gang rape by Soviet soldiers. Franck extensively and graphically describes individual episodes of sexual harassment within chapters that span several years. This narrative excess warrants a “hysterical reading,” so to speak: an approach that magnifies textual details in order to demonstrate the link between representations of sexual violence and wider patterns of structural and symbolic violence. The gaps and tensions that emerge as the narrative shifts between the mimetic and tropological levels provide the basis for a broader exploration of the ethics of reading and the ethics of representing sexual violence more generally.

The Role of Regional Organizations in Reducing Organized Rape

Abstract Organized rape in armed conflict is one of the most serious violations of human rights, which creates a clear crisis in the identity of the other party and solidifies the sense of bitterness of defeat. Rape in armed conflicts is thus different from that of others, which can have a negative impact on social and international peace and security. Conservative and racially conservative societies are also affected by systematic organized gang rape, which occurs systematically from parties to a non-international armed conflict or within the policy of the aggressor State in the event of an international armed conflict. In contrast to the efforts made by the United Nations to curb organized rape, regional organizations have made little effort in this direction. The role of regional organizations in the framework of Chapter VIII of the UN. Charter in reducing armed conflicts and protecting human rights, and in cooperation of the United Nations and the Security Council in the task of maintaining international peace and security. The European Convention on Human Rights has established a mechanism to monitor the extent to which individuals enjoy their rights and freedoms and the extent to which States parties respect them. The US Convention on Human Rights followed the same approach as the European Convention, but through the regulatory body of the American Commission on Human Rights and the American Court of Human Rights. Although women and children suffered systematic rape as a result of armed conflict on the African continent, the African Charter on Human Rights did not provide the necessary mechanisms to curb crimes of sexual violence, and the Arab Charter on Human Rights did not play a role in the face of organized rape. We therefore considered the adequacy of the provisions of the International Bill and the mechanisms of action of regional organizations in curbing the crimes of sexual violence, organized rape in particular in places of non-international armed conflict, and whether organized rape can be considered a violation of personal liberty and dignity. Or is it a crime against humanity? And other questions that can be raised, which we will try to answer in the context of this research.

Five years post Nirbhaya: Critical insights into the status of response to sexual assault.

It is five years since the fatal gang rape of Jyothi Singh (Nirbhaya), a physiotherapy student, on December 16, 2012, in New Delhi, the capital of India. The legal and policy reforms triggered by the Nirbhaya case will remain a watershed moment in the history of efforts towards seeking justice for survivors of gender-based violence in India. The Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013 and the "Guidelines and protocols: Medico-legal care for survivors/victims of sexual violence" issued by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in March 2014 are two landmark reforms. March 2018 marks four years since the issuance of these Guidelines and five years since the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013. Any reasonable tribute to Nirbhaya would constitute fair implementation of legal reforms, efforts to strengthen multi-sectoral response and sincere attempts to reduce crimes against women, gender and sexual minorities, and children. This paper reviews the issue, through a close study of recent cases of rape, police responses, court judgements, studies, news reporting and field-based observations. It brings forth the gaps in implementation that persist, and constitute a major obstacle in making these progressive policies and reforms effective. Given the fact that the reforms are intersectoral in nature, implementation has been particularly challenging. Lack of efficient implementation of such policies and reforms amounts to denying survivors their right to justice.

Policing responses to crime against women: unpacking the logic of Cyberabad’s “SHE Teams”

The widely discussed gang rape in December 2012 in New Delhi marked a significant moment in the public discourse around women’s safety and sexual violence in India. From expressions of shock and horror that marked the initial responses, the online and offline conversations quickly moved to the legal, social, and civic landscapes that encouraged what became referred to as “a culture of rape.” Responses from the state ranged from initiating legal reform to ramping up security and surveillance in public spaces. At one end of the spectrum was the report of the Justice Verma Committee, which called for responses that went beyond the narrow strictures of the law. At the other end were local intensifications of a protectionist and patriarchal attitude toward women, discouraging them from participating too visibly in public life and working to limit young women’s social and professional choices. Against this backdrop, the newly formed state of Telangana, created a cadre of first responder police teams focusing exclusively on crime against women, making use of mobile and social media applications. This paper argues that while such policing initiatives open up the conversation on violence against women, they do little to address the deeper contextual issues that underlie it.

Identifying to dis-identify: occidentalist feminism, the Delhi gang rape case and its internal others

Euro-American feminism’s embeddedness in a neo-liberal geo-political framework has created new though contested spaces for knowledge production among scholars, practitioners and policy-makers. In particular, a theoretical tool that has lost its transformatory potential is disidentification, specifically as a signifier for forging collective activism within Europe. In the age of global mobility and border-crossings, Western feminist disidentification is increasingly framed through a pre-conceived notion of the ‘other’ as dis-empowered, exotic and violent. These faulty identifications rather than integrating multi-ethnic intersectional identities deepen the cleavages, especially within the academy. This article draws on two case studies that emerged following the Delhi gang rape case (2012) in New Delhi, India. These studies highlight how debates within the western academy are largely framed from the standpoint of the empowered European feminist self. Thus disidentification, rather than being a process for unpacking hegemonic discourses, becomes, instead, yet another way of packaging new hierarchies of knowledge.

The Marxist analysis of Manjula Padmanabhan’s “Lights Out”

The societal rules have been largely shaped by the male-dominated legislators and forces where there is a limited right to exist for a woman. The woman though married or unmarried or a prostitute the way the society looks at her is not changing though we are globalized. Indian women, in some ways, have also made some strides. Millions of women have joined the workforce. Leaders like the Prathibha Singh Patel, Sushma Swaraj, Anandiben are role models who show that women can rise to great heights. But one of the greatest tragedies in our country is that women are on their own when it comes to their safety. According to many studies, it’s understood that most of the rape cases of rape are never reported because of the stigma surrounding gang rape. Considering this wide scenario, this article touches on Indian women’s vulnerability with a Marxist approach. I have applied the Marxist approach to analyse literary text, Lights Out by Manjula Padmanabhan in Indian English Theatre. In her work, the author proposes the urgent need to address women’s subordinated position as they are subjected to different forms of discrimination. In this article, I have focused on different issues such as gender discrimination, injustice, and fear of the law, police and judicial apathy. I conclude by suggesting recommendations for the improvement of women’s situation in India.

A critical study on the juvenile justice system in India and it's origins, growth and development upto present stage.

This paper represents the origins and development of Juvenileism and also Juvenile Justice system in India as incorporated under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2000 as amended. From the critical study of the subject it has become crystal clear that the concept of juvenile justice has it’s origins as old with the passing of resolution in the U.N. Convention on the right of child (CRC) and the African charter on the rights of Child (ACRWC). The constitution of India provides several provisions for safeguarding the right of the children. In this paper attempt has been made to highlight the law relating to juvenile justice system in India and also steps taken by the state to reform the juvenile who are in conflict with law by amendment of the juvenile justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act in the year 2015, which leads to amendment after the gang rape of paramedical student at enclose of where accused got the benefit of juvenileism only for few months to complete 18 years and in this amendment whole act was recast to make comprehensive provision for children in conflict with law taking into consideration the standard prescribed in the convention of the right of the child. By this amendment though the child is defined as a person who hasn’t completed 18 years but when he or she is found in conflict with law the juvenile justice board will decide examining physical appearance whether the child will be tried by the ordinary criminal court or by the juvenile court.

Humiliation as a Harm of Sexual Violence: Feminist versus Neoliberal Perspectives

This essay provides an account of humiliation as a manifestation of the relationship one has to oneself. This account elucidates two important insights: first, that all sexual violence and not only public gang rape humiliates and, second, that appeals to the neoliberal notion of resilience undermine feminist efforts to counter sexual violence. The first part of the essay provides an overview of the idea of a relation of self to self and its significance, presents humiliation specifically as a manifestation of the self‐relation, and then turns to feminist analyses of sexual violence and its effects in order to illustrate how sexual violence against women humiliates. The second part of the essay illustrates that, given the nature and function of humiliation, neoliberal discourse generally and that of resilience more specifically reproduce the individuation and exclusion that characterize humiliation and are thus detrimental to feminist efforts toward countering sexual violence against women. I conclude by encouraging feminist anti‐sexual violence efforts that at least counter individuation and at best promote collective and inclusive solidarity.

Retrospective study of accused and survivors of sexual offences in Karnal, Haryana

Sexuality is a crucial part of people’s health, general well-being and quality of life and enjoying a healthy sexuality is well thought-out as a human right. But it is counted as sexual assault or rape if it is without her consent or against her will or when it is obtained by unlawful manners such as fraud, putting her in fear of death or hurt, drugging or impersonation. Sexual offences are traumatic at the time of occurrence and may also leave a very bad and negative impact on her physical and mental health. A retrospective study was performed after collecting Medico-legal reports done on survivors and accused in Government Hospital Karnal from January 2012 to April 2016. In the present study, Total 69 cases of alleged history of sexual assault were taken, out of which 38 cases of male accused and 31 cases of female survivors’ medico-legal reports were studied. The highest percentage of female survivors was among age group between 11-20 years (64.5 %). The highest percentage of male accused was among age group between 21-30 years (55.3 %). During examination it was found that 2 female survivors (6.5%) out of 31 cases had alleged h/o sexual assault at the same time. There were 3 cases (7.9%) of gang rape. Out of these three cases of gang rape, in two cases (66.7%), two each accused persons were involved and in one case (33.3%) four accused were involved. In rest of the cases single male accused was involved. It is seen that younger aged females are at maximum risk for sexual assault threat and young adult males are active in these sexual assault activities. So it is important to give sex education to our young generation and make them aware.

Can comic books influence consumer awareness and attitude towards rape victims and perpetrators in India? The case of Priya’s Shakti

ABSTRACTThis paper explores the role of comic book narratives in creating awareness and influencing attitudes about how society treats rape survivors, specifically in the Indian context. The gang rape of a young woman in New Delhi in 2012 inspired an Indian-American filmmaker to author the comic book Priya’s Shakti, which was launched at the Mumbai Comicon in December 2014. The book uses Hindu mythology in its narrative to call for a change in existing belief systems about rape and rape victims. Twenty-four in-depth and ethnographic go-along interviews of informed participants were conducted to understand how they perceive the role of comics such as Priya’s Shakti in affecting popular awareness and attitudes about rape and what approaches they feel are best suited to use comic books to bring about sustainable social change. Results indicated comics can play a significant role in creating awareness, especially among the younger audience but that changing attitudes is a more complex issue, demanding the active and engaged participation of other stakeholders. A culture-centred approach was the key emerging theme. Respondents believed comic books could be used to reach out to children in schools and to rural audiences via multiple communication methods but that engaged and involved participation of community stakeholders was essential if comic books were to drive home socially relevant messages and affect awareness and attitudes about rape.

Cultura do estupro ou cultura antiestupro?

Resumo A expressão “cultura do estupro” não é nova, entretanto ganhou as ruas e as redes sociais com os novos movimentos feministas, depois da publicidade de um estupro coletivo ocorrido em uma favela carioca. Mas será que vivemos em uma cultura do estupro? Em caso afirmativo, em que consiste? Ou esses movimentos evidenciam uma cultura antiestupro? Esse artigo discute as ambiguidades das expressões “cultura do estupro” e “cultura antiestupro”, como se construíram e o papel do Direito para a manutenção ou enfrentamento do código relacional da honra no crime de estupro. Reflete sobre a necessidade de repensar esse dualismo e as políticas públicas de atendimento às mulheres vitimadas.

Globalization, Gender, and Development

Research and policy analysis on gender, development, and globalization have focused extensively on the changing roles and social status of women as one of the keys to reaching global development goals and improving social well-being. Yet at the same time as scholars and advocates highlight the importance of women's autonomy as a key to economic development, the international media are filled with tales and reports of public gang rapes, acid burnings, honor killings, and gang kidnapping and enslavement. We combine observations about growing class inequality among men, theories of male overcompensation, insights on the global crisis of patriarchy, and transaction-cost analyses of asset specificity and sunk costs to explain this gender-based violence. The data required to assess the causes, prevalence, and effects of public gender-based violence are sparse, and this affects our ability to come to definitive conclusions and policy recommendations. In addition to recommending better and more vigorous data collection on public gender-based violence directed at women and girls, we briefly discuss two possible scenarios that could frustrate attempts to improve the status of women in rapidly developing societies or lead to long-term, sustainable gains.

The Better Angels of Their Natures? The Declining Rate of Homicides against India’s Dalits

There is a common perception—made the more acute by the growing focus on rapes since the horrific gang rape incident in Delhi in 2012—that India is an increasingly violent society. One can even see aspects of this perspective in official documents. Crime in India, 2009 for example observed that ‘The quantum of total violent crimes [increased] continuously … from 2005 to 2009’. This article focuses on serious, violent crimes against India’s Dalits (Scheduled Castes), especially homicides, as they appear in official statistics. It suggests that contrary to popular understanding, murder, rape and arson directed against Dalits have declined significantly since a peak in the early 1990s. The article argues that, in part, the declines are due to the social mobilization of Dalits, the emergence of lower caste and Dalit political parties in north India and specific aspects of political competition. But another, broader and important influence, perhaps related to what Steven Pinker has called ‘the better angels of our nature’, is an unnoticed but significant decline in overall rates of interpersonal violence in India.