Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Law and Sexual Violence: A Critical Ethnography of Higher Education in India

  • Published:
International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The political articulation of sexual violence, as legally understood today, took place in India from 1970s onward. In succeeding decades, its definition broadened, positioning it in contexts of caste-based violence, of violence against women at workplaces, and of custodial violence. The Delhi gang rape case, in 2012, introduced another set of political and legal articulations, simultaneously revealing the very politics around them. This paper begins by tracking these phases and definitions, to emphasize one area where such violence has been vocalized the most in recent years, i.e. institutes of higher education in India. Legal codes in this context, carry grave contradictions. Beside, altogether different interpretation occurs when these are applied within institutes of higher education via bureaucratic channels. Recorded cases have shown presence since 2013, except in some regions which appear in negligible measure. Therefore, alongside tracing the historical journey of political articulations of sexual violence in institutes of higher education, this paper takes the case of Raipur city, in the state of Chhattisgarh located in the central-eastern part of India, which has negligible presence in sexual violence crime records in the context of higher educational institutes. Based on a close reading of legal texts, and field visits conducted across institutions in Raipur between 2020–2022, I argue that the limitation of law in combating gender violence, appears not when it is neglected, but often when it is consciously reinterpreted against minority communities, despite claiming to protect those very communities. I attempt to reassess the potential of ‘law’ as a tool to combat gender violence, around existing debates around society and law.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Durkheim differentiates between different kinds of societies, and gives elaborate description on ‘law’ in his 1893 work, The Division of Labour in Society.

  2. Marx opines about ‘law’ in his 1848 co-authored work with Engels, entitled, The Communist Manifesto.

  3. It is important to note that scholars who have analysed feminist movements in India in waves, have marked 1970s as the start of second wave. However, simultaneously, many women collectives at the margins were vocalising movements and protests all over the country with significant effects. The 1970s has been criticised for being exclusionary in its articulation. However, this era directly led to legal articulations of sexual violence, as is known today in India.

  4. The Justice J.S. Verma Committee is also known as the only legal document, which suggested that marital rape must be criminalized in India.

  5. The University Grants Commission (UGC) is a statutory organization, a part of the Government of India, established in 1956. It is responsible for coordinating and maintaining research, teaching and evaluative systems in higher education in India.

  6. See also, Gautam Bhatia’s, The Transformative Constitution: A Radical Biography in Nine Acts, published in 2019.

  7. Some perpetrators of the Delhi gang rape case were sentenced with death penalty. Some feminist and civil rights reports, radically sought against the same. By the mention of fast-track legal proceedings in this case, I do not imply an argument in favour of death penalty. The point is to articulate what pushes the law to act on an immediate basis, with relation to sexual violence.

  8. The term modesty has been used in laws against sexual violence, such as, outraging a woman’s modesty, and is punishable by law. Although after 2013, this term was removed from some statutes, it still remains under Sect. 354 of the Indian Penal Code and the 1989, SC & ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.

  9. The term Nehruvian connotes matters of policy, initiated under post-independence India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.

  10. Interview conducted on July 13, 2022.

  11. Interview conducted on July 14, 2022.

  12. Interview conducted on July 8, 2022.

  13. Interview conducted on February 11, 2023.

  14. Saksham. New Delhi: University Grants Commission (Deeya Media Arts), 2013. https://www.ugc.ac.in/pdfnews/5873997_saksham-book.pdf.

  15. These are categories designation and recognised by the Indian Constitution for various forms of affirmative action, and include historically disadvantaged communities and groups. All public institutes in India are constitutionally mandated to follow reservations for these communities. Each category, especially OBC, has a distinct nature and history behind its recognition. Communities that fall under these categories differ regionally within India.

  16. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata/five-year-admin-role-bar-on-presidency-prof-after-sex-plaint/articleshow/95869705.cms

  17. https://thesouthfirst.com/telangana/for-the-first-time-2-dalit-queer-persons-contest-hcu-election/

  18. The National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) is a part of the UGC, primarily responsible for granting grades to institutes. It is a part of the Government of India.

  19. Interview conducted on July 12, 2022.

  20. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/guwahati/gauhati-hc-grants-bail-to-accused-in-iit-rape-case/articleshow/85549880.cms

  21. Interview conducted on July 15, 2022.

  22. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/education/news/chhattisgarh-government-restores-58-quota-in-educational-institutions/articleshow/102509585.cms

  23. Interview conducted on October 25, 2022.

References

  1. Agnes, Flavia. 1997. Protecting Women Against Violence: Review of a Decade Legislation. In State and Politics in India, ed. Partha Chatterjee, 521–564. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  2. Balagopal, Kandalla. 1997. Civil liberties movement and revolutionary violence. Balagopal.org. Balagopal.org. https://balagopal.org/civil-liberties-movement-and-revolutionary-violence/. Accessed 19 August 2023

  3. Balagopal, Kandalla. 1998. Of Capital and Other Punishments. The Economic and Political Weekly 33 (38): 97–132.

    Google Scholar 

  4. Balagopal, Kandalla. 2001. The Constitution and Social Movements. Indian Journal of Human Rights. 5 (1): 187–194.

    Google Scholar 

  5. Baxi, Pratiksha. 2014. Public secrets of law: Rape trials in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  6. Baxi, Upendra. 1986. Towards a Sociology of Indian Law. New Delhi: Satvahan Publications.

    Google Scholar 

  7. Bhargava, Rajeev. 2009. Introduction. In Politics and Ethics of the Indian Constitution, ed. Rajeev Bhargava, 10–26. New York: Oxford India Paperbacks.

    Google Scholar 

  8. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1987. The Force of Law: Toward a Sociology of the Juridical Field. Hastings Law Journal. 38 (5): 814–853.

    Google Scholar 

  9. Chatterjee, Partha. 1993. The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  10. Chaudhuri, Maitrayee. 1995. Citizens, Workers and Emblems of Culture: An Analysis of the First Plan Document on Women. Contributions to Indian Sociology. 29 (1–2): 211–235. https://doi.org/10.1177/0069966795029001011.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Das, Veena. 2020. A child disappears: Law in the courts: Law in the Interstices of Everyday Life. Textures of the Ordinary: Doing Anthropology after Wittgenstein. 1: 216–245. https://doi.org/10.5422/fordham/9780823287895.003.0009.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Deflem, Mathieu. 2008. Sociology of law: Visions of a Scholarly Tradition. New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  13. Dutta, Debolina, and Oishik Sircar. 2013. India’s Winter of Discontent: Some Feminist Dilemmas in the Wake of a Rape. Feminist Studies. 39 (1): 293–306. https://doi.org/10.1353/fem.2013.0023.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Epstein, Arnold. 1973. The Reasonable Man Revisited: Some Problems in the Anthropology of Law. Law & Society Review. 7 (4): 643. https://doi.org/10.2307/3052964.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Fortier, Anne-Marie. 2016. Afterword: Acts of Affective Citizenship? Possibilities and Limitations. Citizenship Studies. 20 (8): 1038–1044. https://doi.org/10.1080/13621025.2016.1229190.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Foucault, Michel. 1982. The Subject and Power. Critical Inquiry. 8 (4): 777–795.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Gregory, Christopher. 2013. Chhattisgarh at the Crossroads. In The Modern Anthropology of India: Ethnography, Themes and Theory, ed. Peter Berger and Frank Heidemann, 46–65. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  18. John, Mary. E. 2019. Sexual violence 2012–2018 and #MeToo. The India Forum. https://www.theindiaforum.in/article/sexual-violence-2012-2018-and-metoo. Accessed on 12 November 2021

  19. Jonathan, Parry. 2013. Company and Contract Labour in a Central Indian Steel Plant. Economic and Political Weekly. 42 (3): 348–374. https://doi.org/10.1080/03085147.2013.772761.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Parry, Jonathan. 2022. The Sacrifices of Modernity in a Soviet-built Steel Town in Central India. On the Margins of Religion. 13 (1): 233–262. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780857450111-015.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Kamat, Sangeeta. 2011. Neoliberal Globalization and Higher Education Policy in India. In Handbook on globalization and higher education, ed. Roger King, Simon Marginson, and Rajani Naidoo, 273–285. Gloucestershire: Edward Elgar Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  22. Kannabiran, Kalpana. 2013. Conclusion: Eliminating Hostile Environments - Non-discrimination, Liberty and an Insurgent Constitutionalism. In Tools of justice: Non-discrimination and the Indian constitution, ed. Kalpana Kannabiran, 427–444. New Delhi: Routledge.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  23. Kannabiran, Kannabiran. 2013. Introduction: Liberty and Non-Discrimination - The Scope of Intersectional Jurisprudence. In Tools of justice: Non-discrimination and the Indian constitution, ed. Kalpana Kannabiran, 1–49. New Delhi: Routledge.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  24. Kannabiran, Kalpana. 2013. Part III - Sex, Gender and the Denial of Freedom. In Tools of justice: Non-discrimination and the Indian constitution, ed. Kalpana Kannabiran, 305–425. New Delhi: Routledge.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  25. Kapur, Ratna. 2018. Freedom, Women’s Rights and the Rise of the Sexual Security Regime. In Gender, Alterity and Human Rights: Freedom in a Fishbowl, ed. Ratna Kapur, 86–119. Gloucestershire: Edward Elgar Publishing.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  26. Kaur, Ravinder. 2021. Gendered Parenting and Returns from Children in Contemporary India: A study of IIT Students and their Parents. Current Sociology 70 (4): 578–597. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011392121990022.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Merton, Robert, and K. 1934. Durkheim’s Division of Labor in Society. American Journal of Sociology 40 (3): 319–328. https://doi.org/10.1086/216745.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Nelken, David. 2014. Thinking about legal Culture. Asian Journal of Law and Society 1 (2): 255–274. https://doi.org/10.1017/als.2014.15.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Phadke, Shilpa, Sameera Khan, and Shilpa Ranade. 2011. Why loiter?: Women and Risk on Mumbai Streets. New Delhi: Penguin Books.

    Google Scholar 

  30. Roy, Srila. 2018. #MeToo Is A Crucial Moment to Revisit the History of Indian Feminism. Economic and Political Weekly. https://www.epw.in/engage/article/metoo-crucial-moment-revisit-history-indian-feminism. Accessed 15 July 2020.

  31. Sakhrani, Monica. 2016. Reading Rape Post Mathura. Indian Journal of Gender Studies 23 (2): 260–285. https://doi.org/10.1177/0971521516635347.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  32. Sen, Rukmini. 2017. Sexual Harassment and the Limits of Speech. Economic and Political Weekly. https://www.epw.in/engage/article/sexual-harassment-limits-speech. Accessed 22 July 2021.

  33. Sexual Harassment at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013. Available https://upload.indiacode.nic.in/showfile?actid=AC_DL_64_789_00006_00006_1593607984940&type=rule&filename=sexual_harassment_at_workplace_rules_sw.pdf.

  34. Sharma, Ditilekha. 2019. What is Missing in the #MeToo Movement? Economic and Political Weekly. https://www.epw.in/engage/article/what-is-missing-metoo-movement-limitation-law-justice. Accessed 11 August 2020.

  35. Slaby, Jan, and Christian Scheve. 2019. Affective Societies: Key Concepts. New York: Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  36. Sonavane, Nikita. 2017. Rape as an Atrocity: Analysis of Judgments Delivered by the District Court of Bilaspur, Chhattisgarh. The Law Review, Government Law College 9 (1): 69–93.

    Google Scholar 

  37. Subramanian, Ajantha. 2019. The Caste of Merit: Engineering Education in India. Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  38. Rajan, Sunder, and Rajeshwari. 2003. The Scandal of the State: Women, Law and Citizenship in Postcolonial India. Durham: Duke University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  39. University Grants Commission Saksham Report, 2013. Available https://www.ugc.ac.in/pdfnews/5873997_saksham-book.pdf

  40. University Grants Commission (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal of Sexual Harassment of Women Employees and Students in Higher Educational Institutes) Regulations, 2016. Available https://www.ugc.ac.in/pdfnews/7203627_UGC_regulations-harassment.pdf

  41. Vandana. 2020. Dalit Girls and Sexual Harassment in the University. Indian Journal of Gender Studies 27 (1): 33–54. https://doi.org/10.1177/0971521519891478.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  42. Vijayalakshmi, Akshaya. 2018. Extending the boundaries of #MeToo: Sexual harassment in the Lives of Marginalised Women. Economic and Political Weekly. https://www.epw.in/engage/article/extending-boundaries-metoo-sexual-harassment-marginalised-women Accessed 18 July 2020.

  43. Yuval-Davis, Nira. 1997. Gender and Nation. London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  44. Yuval-Davis, Nira. 2011. The Politics of Belonging: Intersectional Contestations. London: Sage.

    Book  Google Scholar 

Download references

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, University of Hyderabad, Prof. C R Rao Road, Hyderabad, Telangana, 500046, India

    Anamika Das

Authors
  1. Anamika Das
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Anamika Das.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

There are no competing interests to disclose.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Das, A. Law and Sexual Violence: A Critical Ethnography of Higher Education in India. Int J Semiot Law (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-023-10093-0

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-023-10093-0

Keywords

Search

Navigation