material

1. India's Winter of Discontent: Some feminist
Dilemmas in the Wake of a Rape
Authors: Debolina Dutta and Oishik Sircar
Date: Spring 2013
From: Feminist Studies(Vol. 39, Issue 1)
Publisher: Feminist Studies, Inc.
Document Type: Article
Length: 4,658 words
Lexile Measure:1750L
FEW PEOPLE IN INDIA RAP A PROBLEM shaking a leg to Punjabi rapper Yo Yo
Honey Singh's songs until the December 2012 brutal gang rape and murder of Jyoti
Singh Pandey. After this incident, numerous objections arose to the misogyny in the
lyrics of his songs such as "Main Hoon Balaatkari" ("I'm a Rapist"), which describes
raping a woman out alone in the night, and "Choot" ("Cunt"), which describes his violent
sex with and urination on a woman. Buoyed by the popular protests against Jyoti
Pandey's rape, an online petition and social media posts called for a ban on Honey
Singh's performance at a hotel on New Year's Eve. (1) The petition also demanded that
he be arrested. The show did get canceled, and the police registered a complaint
against him. (2)
This incident highlights the debated connections between representations of violence,
actual violence against women, and the call for censorship, which together comprise a
familiar feminist dilemma. Several of those calling for a ban against Honey Singh were
not avowedly feminists and--in their call for censorship--were echoing a logic similar to
those used by the Hindu right wing, which has launched violent campaigns in its calls
for censorship over depictions of women's sexuality and sexual agency in such works
as Deepa Mehta's film Fire and M. F. Hussain's painting Saraswati. (3) Many feminists
in India who identify with the sex-positive politics of queer feminism and would
otherwise resist censorship also signed the petition. Shilpa Phadke, a feminist academic
from Bombay, expressed her dilemma after signing the petition.
Once we go down the slippery slope of banning where do we
stop?
.... Censorship is no friend of feminists .... Feminists who
support censorship often find themselves on the same side of
the
fence with the most undesirable of collaborators. (4)

2. Critiquing the move to ban Honey Singh, queer feminist and gay rights activist Ashley
Tellis wrote the following:
Just calling it sexist and offensive and attempting to shut
it down
only
offer collusion with the moral police that is ever-ready to
shut all
manifestations of the sexual down, especially when it comes
to women
and
sexuality. (5)
Did the act of signing, or not signing, this petition mark a political difference? The
contrast in positions has become pronounced in the months that have followed, and
fault lines within feminist thinking and activism have emerged. Simultaneously, the
unfolding of events has opened up possibilities for revisioning feminist responses to
sexual violence.
Following the gang rape of Jyoti Pandey, who was a twenty-three-year-old female
physiotherapy student, Delhi saw unprecedented public protests. India's otherwise
indifferent middle-class youth took to the streets. A sustained and market-driven media
campaign fueled public outrage and mobilized people to occupy roads; protest marches
led to the president's residence in Raisina Hill, encountering police violence. Similar
protests were held in other metropolitan cities across the country, but in Delhi the
protests became so intense that the government imposed curfew orders in parts of the
city and the police resorted to beating the protesters. (6) It seemed, as so many people
in India have remarked in the wake of these protests, that the Arab Spring for India had
arrived--but in the midst of the Indian winter.
There has been a surfeit of writing on the incident and the protests on blogs and social
media. (7) There was widespread international attention, with statements from the
United Nations and international human rights organizations. (8) Media from across the
world covered the protests and provided regular updates, many of them recreating the
colonial imagery of premodern victimhood. (9) The incident also provided fodder to a
range of motley actors--from spiritual gurus to the Indian president's son to Hindu right-
wing leaders whose misogynist drivel was widely covered by the media and decried by
many feminists, progressive commentators, and protesters. (10)
The form and nature of these public protests have an interesting trajectory and are of
recent genesis. The 2006 Bollywood film Rang De Basanti depicted middle-class youth
thronging to Delhi's India Gate with candles in hand. Since then, most middle-class

3. protests in Delhi have used India Gate as their space and candlelight vigils as their
method notably in the protests demanding justice for two murdered upper-middle-class
women, Jessica Lall and Aarushi Talwar. (11) The participation of urban, upper-caste,
middle-class women (and men) in ostensibly feminist protests in particular the Pink
Chaddi Campaign (Pink Underwear Campaign) and the SlutWalk marches are part of
this shared trajectory. (12) But, as we detail below, they have rarely questioned their
own privilege and seldom extended their solidarity to marginalized groups who, as B. R.
Ambedkar noted in the context of the untouchables, "have no press." (13)
Feminist voices have been a part of these protests, but the chorus of slogans made it
difficult to decipher who was saying what. There were loud calls to end state apathy on
violence against women, make public transportation safe, make the police more vigilant,
speed up judicial prosecutions, amend rape laws, and stop victim blaming. But
demands for the death penalty, chemical castration, and death by stoning of rapists
were louder. Despite Indian feminists' clear position against the death penalty, our
responses to emotionally charged calls for "justice" through retribution seemed
inadequate. (14) In the face of the grave loss, anger, and trauma that gave rise to
demands for revenge, how would feminist "rational" political reasoning stand its ground?
How were we to converse with the parents who demanded the death penalty for the
rapists who had brutally tortured, raped, and murdered their twenty-three-year-old
daughter? (15)
RAPE IN INDIAN FEMINIST HISTORY
Historically, rape has been the precipitating event that has led the autonomous women's
movement in India to engage with the law and to forge a collective visible presence in
public spaces. These engagements have also made talking about women's sex and
sexuality in public respectable, as long as it was focused on sexual violence. Cases of
sexual assault have been the rallying ground for demanding gender-just law reforms:
Mathura (1972), Rameeza Bee (1979), Maya Tyagi (1980), Suman Rani (1989),
Bhanwari Devi (1992); the list of women who have been brutally sexually assaulted
goes on). (16) All of these cases except Bhanwari Devi's involved rape by policemen.
Indicting the state was thus central to the activism around sexual violence in the Indian
women's movement. In feminist circles, the very names Mathura, Rameeza Bee,
Suman Rani, and Bhanwari Devi also signify the dynamics of class, caste, and religion
that are integral to the forms and methods of sexual violence against women.
The 1978 Supreme Court verdict in the Mathura case stands out for provoking the first
nationwide, concerted feminist mobilization around sexual violence in India. The court
acquitted the two police officers who were accused of raping Mathura, a young girl from
an adivasi (tribal community), while she was in police custody. The court acquitted the
policemen on the grounds that Mathura was already "habituated to sexual intercourse"
and was of "loose moral character" because she had eloped with her boyfriend. It also
declared that the absence of injury marks on the bodies of the officers who raped her
signified her consent to sex. Enraged by this judgment, four law professors wrote an
open letter to the Chief Justice accusing the judgment of "sacrificing human rights of

4. women under the law and the constitution." (17) The letter served as the foundation for
mobilizing protests and a nationwide campaign to demand changes in rape law. (18)
Bhanwari Devi's 1992 case speaks volumes about caste privilege: upper-caste Gurjar
men gang-raped Bhanwari, a Dalit (India's lowest caste) grassroots worker employed by
the Rajasthan government's Women's Development Project, as retribution for her
intervention to prevent the arranged marriage of a nine-month-old. Although women's
rights groups turned Bhanwari's rape into a public interest case that prompted the
Supreme Court to pass historic guidelines on sexual harassment in the workplace in
1997, known as the Vishakha Judgment, the actual case against the men who raped
Bhanwari is yet to reach a verdict and is in a state of perpetual adjournment. Bhanwari
relentlessly continues her activism, and the case is currently being appealed in the
Rajasthan High Court. (19) She has been hailed as a feminist icon. She is also in
support of the death penalty for rapists. (20)
Thirty-four years after the Mathura case and twenty-one years after Bhanwari Devi's
case, Delhi was witnessing something similar in spirit, but much larger in scale. The
open letter and public interest suits were now replaced by around-the-clock news media
coverage and a rush of commentary on Facebook and Twitter. Despite the massive
public presence, the media representation of the 2012 protests seemed to have the
effect of erasing history, of exceptionalizing this event in a way that has the capacity to
elide not only the rich lineage of feminist activism and struggles against sexual violence,
but also the memories of several other, equally brutal experiences of sexual violence
against women from marginalized communities. The concern that Mathura was an
adivasi girl, and thus doubly disadvantaged, was central to the concerns raised in 1978.
In 2012, the feminist consciousness of class/caste privilege seemed to have waned,
and instead the air was thick with demands for censorship and capital punishment, If
feminism is about what questions we are asking and how we are framing our
responses, the 2012 protests were, and are, yet to become feminist. The risk is real:
feminist demands have been regularly drowned out by calls for blood-thirsty retribution
or coopted by those with a conservative political vision to achieve contrarian ends.
Jyoti Pandey was returning home after watching the film Life of Pi . She was a student;
she had to board a bus at 9 p.m. because she was refused service by several auto
rickshaw drivers--everyday experiences with which middle-class youth in Delhi identify.
In many ways this identification served as the affective impulse, while the brutality of the
act added to the outrage. The migrant, working-class identity of the perpetrators
resonated with the middle-class anxiety over the enemy other --a sentiment that has
been fueled by, among others, Delhi police advertisements across the city that single
out "cooks, drivers, maids, watchmen, nannies" as potential criminals whom employers
should guard against. (21)
The incidence of rape, particularly in public spaces, is especially high in Delhi, leading
many to call it India's "rape capital." (22) But previous victims/survivors of rape in Delhi
have not as easily met the identity criteria that could outrage its middle-class citizens in
the way that Pandey's rape and murder did. The 2005 gang rape of a twenty-year-old

5. Delhi University student from the northeastern state of Mizoram, for example, saw only
a few university students, some people from the woman's northeastern community, and
feminist groups taking to the streets for a day or two. Media attention to this incident
died down quickly, perhaps because she was from a region that is not only
geographically on the margins of India, but also marginal in "mainstream"
consciousness; or because she worked in a call center and was returning home at an
hour considered improper for "respectable" Indian women. In any case, the
northeastern woman in Delhi is racially stereotyped as sexually aggressive, available,
and thus violable. (23) Most tellingly, while Jyoti Pandey's death was fresh in everyone's
minds, three minor siblings were raped and murdered, and their bodies were dumped in
a well on February 14, 2013, in the Bhandara district of Maharashtra. There has been
little public outrage anywhere in India apart from Bhandara. (24) Location and identity
thus seem to be essential qualifiers in determining whose rape is worth being the
subject of urban, middle-class concern and rage.
THE STATE AS ACTOR
The list of sexual assaults and other forms of violence against women from
marginalized communities in nonmetropolitan India is long. The examples range from
individual acts of bodily violence on women, to group attempts to "dishonor" minority
communities in times of religious or caste conflict, to the armed forces' use of sexual
assault as a weapon of oppression. State-sanctioned sexual assaults against
marginalized women, most troublingly, have seldom generated mass public outrage on
a comparable scale. In 2002, Bilkis Bano, a pregnant Muslim woman, was gang-raped
by a Hindutva (Hindu fascist) mob during the state-orchestrated anti-Muslim pogrom in
Gujarat. In 2004, Thangjam Manorama was abducted by the army on mere suspicion of
being an insurgent, raped, and found dead the next day with a bullet through her vagina
in Manipur. In 2006, Tapasi Mallik was raped and burned alive by Communist Party
goons in Singur, West Bengal, and a mother and daughter, Surekha and Priyanka
Bhootmange, two Dalit women from Khairlanji in Maharashtra were sexually assaulted
and murdered by dominant caste men. In 2007, Laxmi Orang, a young adivasi woman,
was forcibly stripped naked, thrashed, and paraded by a violent mob in broad daylight in
Guwahati, Assam. In 2009, Neelofar and Aasiya Jaan were raped and murdered by
India's paramilitary forces in Shopian, Kashmir. In 2011, in Dantewada, Chhattisgarh
police officer Ankit Garg watched as junior police personnel stripped adivasi school
teacher Soni Sori naked, administered electric shocks, assaulted her, and then inserted
stones into her vagina and anus. In all these cases, the state was conspicuously
present either in the commission of the assault or in its omission to protect and
prosecute. Despite evidentiary difficulties, convictions were achieved in the cases of
Bilkis Bano, Tapasi Mallick, and the Bhootmange family. However, only in the case of
Bilkis Bano was the conviction for rape; the assailants of Tapasi and the Bhootmanges
were convicted of their murders only and not for the sexual assault. (25)
None of these gruesome incidents, each no less violent than Pandey's gang rape and
murder, were considered worthy of national outrage and sustained coverage in the
media. Writing for the website Savari , which features works by adivasi and Dalit

6. women, Anu Ramdas commented on this selective rage of city protesters and urban
feminists:
No, all the coverage that the Delhi rape incident gets is not
excessive
attention; the amount of expressed outrage never needs to be
quantified
for crimes such as these against women.... But yes, this
rightful but
selective national exclamation of horror against this urban
gang rape
furthers the normalization of rapes and gang rapes of dalit
and
adivasi women.... Yes, this is an erasure of the protests by
dalit
and
adivasi women in Vachati, in Chattisgarh, in Haryana, in
Manipur, in
jails, in thanas, in courts and in villages all over the
country.
(26)
Jyoti Pandey's story has not only received intense attention; she has been claimed as a
national martyr. In the lead-up to her death on December 29, 2012, her tragedy
assumed an intensely nationalistic twist: since her name had not yet been revealed,
media stories called her "Amanat" (cherished
property), "Nirbhaya" (fearless), "Damini" (lightning), and "India's brave heart daughter."
She had, literally, been turned into India's national property. (27) One politician
suggested that any law on sexual violence that was passed in the wake of this case
should be named after her. (28) The nation was paying homage in a manner befitting a
martyr, but we must wonder whether this sense of collective mourning and outrage
would have emerged had she been tortured and killed by other means and not
penetrated by the penis; that is, if the incident was just as brutal but the violence not
sexual in nature. The outrage signals the continuing primacy that is placed on sexual
violence generally, and on penile-vaginal penetration in particular, as the ultimate form
of violation. News outlets magnified this narrative, initiating polls about appropriate
forms of punishment for violence, presenting text messaging options such as the "death
sentence, bobbitization, chemical castration and life imprisonment." (29) Even before

7. the actual trial had started, news outlets reported that a majority of viewers demanded
that the accused be sent to the gallows. When those accused of gang raping Pandey
were produced in the Saket District Court in South Delhi, advocates refused to defend
them. (30) Feminists were muted on the principle of defending every accused person's
right to a fair trial, no matter what the crime.
FEMINIST FAITH IN THE LAW
More generally, despite a historical debate about the efficacy of law to counter violence
against women, feminist faith in the law has not waned. Many feminists in India have
been critical of an overreliance on the law and the uncritical foregrounding of violence
as a strategy to demand law reform, without taking on board structural issues of power.
(31) The law's complicity in maintaining gender hierarchy has been a bone of feminist
contention--the law has entrenched conservative sexual morality that makes "good,"
"chaste," and "respectable" women deserving of protection. In the name of protecting
women, the law strengthens state power to police women's sexuality. The singular focus
on legal protection against sexual violence proliferates a language of sexual wrongs and
consequently sexual negativity, rather than that of sexual rights and pleasure. The law
also works on heteronormative presumptions that keep queer people,
particularly hijras and kothis , out of its protection. (32) What has made rape law reform
a contentious issue (apart from the patriarchal inflections in the law) is that the
stakeholders in the debate are not only "women" any more. Along with women, there
are queer people and children vulnerable to sexual abuse who are calculated targets of
sexual assault. Interestingly, the demands by each of the stakeholder groups are
precariously in contestation against each other, particularly on the issues of gender
specificity of the law and the age of consent.
The most tangible achievement of the December protests has been the report of the
three-member Justice Verma Committee. The committee was set up by the government
to recommend changes to the criminal law on sexual violence in the wake of the public
outcry. Taking on board a wide range of suggestions from civil society at large, including
human rights groups and feminists--albeit through the elite channels of emails and
facsimile--the committee came out with its 657-page report in record time. (33) It made
far-reaching recommendations encompassing almost all the demands that the Indian
women's movement has made over several years. The sense of achievement, however,
was short lived as the government secretly passed an ordinance that selectively omitted
some of the most important recommendations: to criminalize marital rape and to impose
command responsibility in cases of rape by the army. (34) The interests of the state
were quite baldly clear in this comment by a parliamentary committee: "If marital rape is
brought under the law, the entire family system will be under great stress and the
committee may perhaps be doing more injustice." (35) Additionally, this emergency
ordinance provided for the death penalty as punishment for repeat offenders and when
rape leaves the victim/survivor in a vegetative state.
Before this ordinance expired and a law was passed to replace it, feminists insisted that
the age of consent be brought down to sixteen years of age (from eighteen), to avoid

8. criminalizing sex between consenting adolescents, and that rape be regarded a gender-
specific crime, only as far as the rapist is concerned. (36) The Criminal Law
(Amendment) Bill of 2013 that replaced the ordinance was finally passed by the
parliament (amid sexist remarks by several legislators) and received presidential assent
to become law on April 3, 2013. (37) It brought in new crimes such as stalking,
voyeurism, and acid throwing and enacted stricter punishments. (38) Feminists
welcomed the expansion of the definition of rape beyond penile-vaginal penetration.
(39) However, disregarding feminist demands and the recommendations of the Verma
Committee, the state fixed age of consent at eighteen, exempted marital rape, and
retained the death penalty. In addition, the army remained immune from prosecution for
sexual assaults, and the state did not recognize sexual violence against women from
marginalized communities as aggravated forms of the crime. It treated rape as a
gender-specific crime, identifying the victim as female, a provision that will continue to
exclude transgender persons from the purview of legal protection from rape. (40) Yet
again, the spectacular attraction of legal reform has only deepened the feminist
dilemma of reposing its faith in the law.
In the course of these debates, a group of Harvard University professors pulled together
a task force called Beyond Gender Equality to advise the Indian government about how
to best implement the Verma Committee recommendations. (41) Many Indian feminists
and US feminists, such as Carole Vance, offered strong critiques of the imperialist
overtones of this move, which raised another dilemma: how do we build a transnational
feminist solidarity that does not reinforce civilizational hierarchies. (42)
Meanwhile, on March 11, 2013, Ram Singh, one of the accused in Pandey's gang rape
and murder was found dead in his high-security ceil at Delhi's Tihar jail. (43) Competing
speculations say that it was suicide because of sexual abuse by other prisoners or
torture by the police or that he was psychologically disturbed. While many called it
divine retribution, the truth remains that he died in state custody, under the guardianship
of the police. It's no surprise that this death while in police custody has been ignored, for
he had been made into an archetypal villain who deserved to die. For feminists, this
deepens the dilemma of confronting a criminal justice system that weighs heavily not
only against the female victim/survivor of sexual assault but also against the working-
class male accused. It appears that India's winter of discontent is continuing through the
raging summer.
NOTES
(1.) See Kanika Johri, "Facebook, Twitter Campaign Demands Honey Singh Ban for
Lewd Lyrics," Hindustan Times , December 31, 2012,
http://www.hindustantimes.com/Entertainment/Music/Facebook-Twitter-campaign-
demands-Honey-Singh-ban-for-lewd-lyrics/Article1-983065.aspx. For the text of the
petition, see http://www.change.org/petitions/gmof-the-bristol-hotel-gurgaon-india-stop-
honey-singh-s-performance.

9. (2.) See Ashish Tripathi, "Gurgaon Hotel Cancels Rapper Honey Singh's Concert, FIR
in Lucknow over Offensive Lyrics," Times of India , December 31, 2012,
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/lucknow/Gurgaon-hotel-cancels-rapper-Honey-
Singhs-concert-FIR-in-Lucknow-over-offensive-lyrics/ articleshow/17833933.cms.
(3.) See Praveen Swami, "Furore over a Film," Frontline 15, no. 26 (December 19,
1998-January 1, 1999), http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl1526/15260430. him; and
Praveen Swami, "Predatory Pursuit of Power," Frontline 15, no, 11 (May 23-June 5,
1998), http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl1511/15110990.htm.
(4.) Shilpa Phadke, "The Grey Zone: Censorship and Consent," Ultra Violet: Indian
Feminists Unplugged , January 3, 2013, http://ultraviolet.in/2013/01/03/ censorship-and-
consent-thinking-through-some-muddy-waters.
(5.) Ashley Tellis, "Study Honey Singh, Don't Shut Him Down," Sify News , January 5,
2013, http://www.sify.com/news/study-honey-singh-don-t-shut-him-down-news-
columns-nbfbTwihfcc.html.
(6.) See Harmeet Shah Singh, "Police Crackdown amid Outrage over Gang Rape,"
CNN, January 4, 2013, http://edition.cnn.com/2012/12/24/world/asia/ india-rape-
protests.
(7.) A wide selection of these writings have been archived at "Gender and Violence:
Archiving and Connecting," http://gender-and-violence,blogspot.com.
(8.) Jason Burke, "India Gang-rape Victim Cremated as UN Chief Calls for Action to
Protect Women," The Guardian , December 30, 2012, http://www.
guardian.co.uk/world/2012/dec/30/india-gang-rape-un-call-action; IANS, "India Needs
Uniform Protocol for Rape: Human Rights Body," Daily News & Analysis , December 30,
2012, http://www.dnaindia,com/world/report_india-needs-uniform-protocol-for-rape-
human-rights-body_1783432.
(9.) Amith Gupta, "Orientalist Feminism Rears Its Head in India," Jadaliyyah , January 2,
2013, http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/9371/orientalist-feminism-rears-its-head-in-
india.
(10.) Times News Network, "Activists Slam Asaram Bapu for His Comments on Delhi
Gang-rape Incident," The Times of India , January 8, 2013, http://
articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-01-08/india/36216040_l_asarambapu-victims-
of-sexual-assault-rapists; Times News Network, "President Son's Sexist Remarks Kick
Up Nationwide Storm," The Times of India , December 28, 2012,
http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-1228/india/36035658_l_sexist-remarks-
unconditional-apology-cpm-leader; PTI, "Rapes Prevalent in India, Not in Bharat," The
Hindu, January 4, 2013, http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/rapes-prevalent-in-
india-not_in-bharat/ar ticle4272914.ece.

10. (11.) See Ritesh Mehta, "Flash Activism: How a Bollywood Film Catalyzed Civic Justice
toward a Murder Trial, Transformative Works and Cultures 10 (2012),
http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/345/271.
(12.) The Pink Chaddi Campaign is a nonviolent protest movement formed in 2009 in
response to a right-wing Hindu attack on a group of women and men in a pub in
Mangalore for behavior the attackers perceived to be immoral and disrespectful to
traditional Indian values. See Padma Govindan, "Understanding India's Pub-Going,
Loose and Forward Women," InfoChange (May 2009),
http://infochangeindia.org/human-rights/the-body-politic/ understanding-indias-pub-
going-loose-and-forward-women.html.
(13.) Quoted in S. Anand, "Covering Caste: Invisible Dalit, Visible Brahman,"
in Practising Journalism: Values, Constraints, Implications , ed. Rajan Nalini, (Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005), 172.
(14.) See Nivedita Menon, "Statement by Women's and Progressive Groups and
Individuals Condemning Sexual Violence and Opposing Death Penalty," Kafila ,
December 24, 2012, http://kafila.org/2012/12/24/ statement-by-womens-and-
progressive-groups-and-individuals-condemning-sexual-violence-and-opposing-death-
penalty.
(15.) "All the Accused Should Feel Pain, Hang Them: Delhi Gang Rape Victim's
Father," Firstpost India , February 15, 2013, http://www.firstpost.com/india/ all-the-
accused-should-feel-pain-hang-them-delhi-gangrape-victims-father-627082.html; "Jyoti
Singh's Mother Believes Suspects 'Deserve to Die' as Indian Police Arrest Six for
ANOTHER Alleged Gang Rape on Bus," Mirror , January 13, 2013,
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/ india-gang-rape-jyoti-singhs-1532404.
(16.) For a historical record of sexual assault activism in India, see Radha Kumar, The
History of Doing: An Illustrated Account of Movements for Women's Rights and
Feminism in India, 1800-1990 (New Delhi: Zubaan, 1993), 127.
(17.) Upendra Baxi, Lotika Sarkar, Vasudha Dhagamwar, and Raghunath Kelkar, "An
Open Letter to the Chief Justice of India," Supreme Court Cases (Journal) 1, no. 17
(1979).
(18.) Nandita Haksar, "Human Rights Lawyering: A Feminist Perspective," in Writing the
Women's Movement: A Reader , ed. Mala Khullar (New Delhi: Zubaan 2005), 132.
(19.) See Vibhuti Patel, "A Brief History of the Battle Against Sexual Harassment at the
Workplace," InfoChange , November 2005, http://infochangeindia.org/
women/analysis/a-brief-history-of-the-battle-against-sexual-harassment-at-the-
workplace.html; and Shivam Vij, "A Mighty Heart," Tehelka , October 13, 2007,
http://archive.tehelka.com/story_main34.asp?.filename=hubl31007A-MIGHTY.asp.

11. (20.) See Laxmi Murthy, "Irony of Iconhood--The Life and Times of Bhanwari
Devi," Kafila , March 11, 2013, http://kafila.org/2013/03/11/ the-irony-of-icon-hood-the-
life-and-times-of-bhanwari-devi-laxmi-murthy.
(21.) The image of the advertisement is available at http://caravanmagazine-in/
sites/default/files/imagecache/galleria_image/img03-1.jpg.
(22.) V. Narayan, "Shame: Delhi Still India's Rape Capital," Times of India , June 4,
2012, http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-06-04/ india/32030137-
1_offences-madhya-pradesh-tops-cases.
(23.) Duncan McDuie-Ra, Northeast Migrants in Delhi: Race, Refuge,
Retail (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012).
(24.) "Bhandara Rape-Murder Case: No Nationwide Outrage, Culprits Yet to Be
Arrested," IBN Live , February 21, 2013, http://ibnlive.in.com/news/hhandara-
rapemurder-case-no-nationwide-outrage-culprits-yet-to-be-arrested/ 374260-3-237.html.
(25.) See Urvi Mahajani, "12 Convicted in Bilkis Bano Case," Hindustan Times , January
8, 2008, http://www.hindustantimes.com/News-Feed/India/ 12-convicted-in-Bilkis-Bano-
case/Article1-270252.aspx; Subir Bhaumik, "India Marxists 'Guilty of Murder,'" BBC
News, November 11, 2008, http://news. bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7721783.stm; and
"HC Commutes Death Sentence to Imprisonment in Khairlanji Killings," The Hindu , July
14, 2010, http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/hc-commutes-death-sentence-to-
imprisonment-in-khairlanji-killings/ article515322.ece.
(26.) Anu Ramdas, "In Solidarity with All Rape Survivors," Savari , December 20, 2012,
http://www.dalitweb.org/?p=1342.
(27.) See Rukmini Sen, "The Need for an Everyday Culture of Protest," Economic and
Political Weekly 48, no. 2 (January 2013), http://www.epw.in/web-exclusives/need-
everyday-culture-protest.html.
(28.) PTI, "Why Not Name and Honour Her, Asks Tharoor," The Hindu , January 1,
2013, http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/why-not-name-and-honour-her-asks-
tharoor/article4262741.ece.
(29.) The advertisement of the poll is available at http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-H3_UHjdtolI/
UPaqsX3NWqI/AAAAAAAAADY/tFA SqV4_7M/s1600/rape3.jpg.
(30.) "Saket Lawyers Refuse to Defend Delhi Gangrape Accused," IBN Live , January 3,
2013, http://ibnlive.in.com/news/saket-lawyers-refuse-to-defend-delhi-gangrape-
accused/313552-3-244.html.
(31.) See Ratna Kapur, Erotic Justice: Postcolonialism, Subjects and Rights (London:
Glass House Press, 2005); Flavia Agnes, State, Gender and the Rhetoric of Law

12. Reform (Mumbai: Research Centre for Women's Studies, SNDT Women's University,
1995); Kalpana Kannabiran and Vasanth Kannabiran, De-Eroticising Assault: Essays on
Modesty, Honour and Power (Kolkata: Stree, 2002); and Nivedita Menon, Recovering
Subversion: Feminist Politics Beyond the Law (Hyderabad: Permanent Black, 2004).
(32.) Hijra refers to a "traditional" male-to-female transsexual/transgender cultural
community; Kothi refers to an effeminate homosexual/bisexual man. See People's
Union for Civil Liberties Karnataka, Human Rights Violations against the Transgender
Community: A Study of Kothi and Hijra Sex Workers in Bangalore (Bangalore: PUCL-K,
2003).
(33.) Garga Chatterjee, "The Fax, E-mail Democratic Republic," Daily News & Analysis ,
December 30, 2012, http://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/column_the-fax-email-
democratic-republic_1783329. Full-text of Justice Verma's report can be read at
http://www.thehindu.com/multimedia/archive/01340/Justice_
Verma_Comm_1340438a.pdf.
(34.) Nivedita Menon, "The Impunity of Every Citadel Is Intact," Outlook , February 3,
2013, http://www.outlookindia,com/article.aspx?283779.
(35.) See Bharti Jain, "House Panel Backs Move Not to Treat Marital Rape as Sexual
Offence," Times of India , March 2, 2013, http://timesofindia.india-
times.com/india/House-panel-backs-move-not-to-treat-marital-rape-as-sexual-
offence/articleshow/18759230.cms.
(36.) The age of consent has been sixteen years since the post-Mathura amendments
in 1983. It was in 2012 that the age of consent was raised to eighteen years by the
Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act. Flavia Agnes, "No Sex Before 18,
Please!" Asian Age , April 7, 2013, http://www. asianage.com/columnists/no-sex-18-
please-719. Gender-neutrality in rape law has consequences for disabled women as
well, and the disability rights movement needs to work with the women's movement
regarding this. See Shampa Sengupta and Saptarshi Mandal, "Not a 'Safe' Issue:
Disabled Women and Sexual Violence," InfoChange March 2013,
http://infochangeindia.org/disabilities/analysis/not-a-safe-issue-disabled-women-and-
sexual-violence.html.
(37.) Criminal Law (Amendment) Bill, 2013, as passed by the Lok Sabha, Parliament of
India, http://164.100.24.219/BillsTexts/LSBillTexts/PassedLoksabha/
63C_2013_En_LS.pdf; Press Trust of India, "'Sexist' Sharad Yadav Says 'Who amongst
us have not followed girls,'" Indian Express , March 20, 2013, http://
www.indianexpress.com/news/sexist-sharad-yadav-says-who-amongst-us-have-not-
followed-girls/ 1090506; Sandeep Joshi, "Stringent Anti-rape Laws Get President's
Nod," Hindu , April 3, 2013, http://www.thehindu.com/ news/national/stringent-antirape-
laws-get-presidents-nod/article4576695.ece.

13. (38.) For an overview of the law's features, see Karuna Nundy, "Explaining India's New
Anti-rape Laws," BBC News , March 28, 2013, http://www.bbc. co.uk/news/world-asia-
india-21950197.
(39.) Team FI, "Activists Call CLA Bill Historic But Slam Tenor of Its Parliamentary
Debate," FeministsIndia, March 24, 2013, http://feministsindia.com/activists-call-cla-bill-
historic-but-slam-tenor-of-its-parliamentary-debate.
(40.) Siddharth Narrain, "Crimes of Exclusion," Indian Express , March 29, 2013,
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/crimes-of-exclusion/1094515/0.
(41.) The announcement of the Task Force is available at
http://hcwc.wordpress.com/2013/02/15/a-history-of-violence.
(42.) See "Dear Sisters (and Brothers?) at Harvard," Kafila , February 20, 2013,
http://kafila.org/2013/02/20/dear-sisters-and-brothers-at-harvard; and Carole Vance,
"What Is Wrong with This Picture?" Kafila , February 18, 2013,
http://kafila.org/2013/02/18/what-is-wrong-with-this-picture-carole-vance-2.
(43.) Krista Mahr, "Another Outrage: Delhi Bus-Rape Suspect Found Dead," Time,
March 11, 2013, http://world.time.com/2013/03/11/another-outrage-delhi-bus-rape-
suspect-found-dead.