In this article, I will examine the arc of violence that women in India have been historically subjected to, as well as new arenas in which violence is now manifesting itself. The focus is on four arenas in which violence against women, especially sexual violence, needs to be located as each of these have specific features that are associated with the manner in which impunity operates, thereby invisibilising violence, and the long road traversed by the women’s movement in challenging that violence. The four arenas are: first, the home where violence is enacted in the intimate sphere of the family; second, the streets and fields where caste and class power provide impunity to the perpetrators; third, villages and regions where communal and targetted violence have been enacted, often with administrative and state complicity, especially in recent decades; and fourth, the borderlands where impunity is sought to be derived from special laws that the security state has put into operation to control turbulent populations.
Knitting the Future Story of Indian Women: Preventing Violence, Fostering Development, and Accelerating Empowerment
