Gender, Violence and Governmentality

Legal and Policy Initiatives in India

Skylab Sahu

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000297799
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Staatsbürgerkunde & Bürgerrechte

This book critically examines gender-based violence in India and interrogates the legal and policy discourse surrounding it. It discusses various forms of violence faced by women such as sex selective abortion, trafficking, rape, domestic violence, as well as the violence faced by female sex workers and transgenders in India. It draws on in-depth interviews and case studies to highlight the socio-economic conditions of the survivors who find themselves forced to contend with legal and policy framework that is inadequate to deal with these issues. The author analyses the major laws against violence and the policies introduced to ameliorate the condition of survivors in order to understand the potential and challenges of these initiatives from a postmodern and feminist perspective. The book also addresses the survivors' realisation of agency and resistance which is seen to be expressed both sporadically and on day-to-day basis.

An important and timely contribution, this book will be indispensable to students and researchers of gender and sexuality, feminism, minority studies, sociology and social policy, politics, law, human rights and South Asian studies. It will also be of interest to policymakers, government agencies, think tanks and NGOs working in the area.

1
INTRODUCTION

Gendered citizenship is a socio-cultural and political construction that segregates society into diffracted identities with different values and citizenships. The identity of the gender is constructed and formulated differently for men, women and transgenders. Women are often treated as second-class citizens, and transgenders are largely perceived as non-subjects in the society. Socio-cultural construction takes place through various socio-political institutions, discourse of knowledge, religions and media that help in the creation of certain kind of graded subjectivity (Geeta 2006). The gender identity in a patriarchal system not only recognises the status of femininity, masculinity and the transgender in a structured way, but also constructs the gendered notion of the body, sexuality, production and reproduction. Gender identity at times operates as a distinct character and at other, functions along with other multiple marginalities creating a sense of graded powerlessness through class, caste and ethnicity by making a particular gender of the community more vulnerable and powerless to others.

Socio-cultural construction and structural inequality makes women and transgenders more vulnerable to violence in the society. Violence against women is often perpetrated by the dominant gender in different spheres, and violence therefore is often used as a tool for the subordination and powerlessness of women and transgenders. Women face several forms of violence such as rape, sex-selective abortions, and domestic violence in the Indian society. Gender-based violence has several physical and psychological implications as it victimises and violates the very ethos of autonomy and dignity of an individual. However, the subjectivity of gender also has possibilities for realisation of agency and resistance against its victimhood, violence and exclusion.¹

The state while interacting with the society, or operating within the society, in Foucault’s term exercises governmentality through institutions, policies and law for the population of the state. The state, operating through law (colonial), police, judiciary and policies acts as the most powerful body of power, and so has an immense role in the formation of the identity or deconstruction of any. It can either strengthen the patriarchal ideology or deconstruct it.

Trajectory of citizenship and locating gender in the discourse of citizenship

Marshal (1950, 1992) has defined citizenship as a status bestowed on those who are full members of a community (1950: 14), which includes civil, political and social rights and obligations.² The liberal political idea of citizenship, as discussed by the early political philosophers such as Aristotle and Rousseau, perceived a few selective males as citizens who had virtue or reason and were allowed to participate actively in the public realm. The liberal notion of citizenship and specifically Marshal’s modern interpretation included citizens who are not active rather, citizens as passive subjects with rights (Roy 2010). Citizenship in liberal terms meant being protected by the law, rather than participating in its formulation or execution. It became an “important but occasional identity, a legal status rather than a fact of everyday life” (Walzer 1989: 215). The modern liberal idea of citizenship is derived from the notions of freedom, rights and equality, which are often considered as absolute values, based on the universal concept of reason. However, the liberal interpretation of citizenship includes a number of binary oppositions (either in a universal manner or in diversified forms) such as citizens vs. alien, we vs. they, self vs. other and nature vs. culture (Ivic 2011).

In modern plural societies, citizenship remains levelled through hierarchies of class, caste, sex, religion, race and ethnicity (Roy 2010). Since the 1980s, with the emergence of multiculturalism, plurality and diversity have been the reference points for citizenship.³ Scholars such as Kymlicka (1996) and Marion Young (1990) argued that the uniform or the universal theory of the citizenship fails to capture how the citizenship rights to the diffracted and once excluded groups had not translated into equality and full integration, notably in the case of Afro-Americans and women (Williams 2004; Young 1989).⁴ However, the scholar’s emphasis on the preservation of the community as a discrete unit may act as patriarchal and undemocratic to women. Therefore, the differentiated citizenship, if perceived under the prism of multiculturalism, produces a situation where cultural community as dominant units maintain internal restrictions, especially on women (Roy 2013). Moreover, Young does not argue heterogeneity based on multiple identities as the fundamental trait of the group itself. Rather, she emphasises that different social groups have different historical and social understanding and imply different narratives and conceptions of identity. She concludes that one group cannot entirely understand the experience of the other groups. However, this point of view represents a homogeneous understanding of the group itself (Ivic 2011).

Chatterjee (2006) argues that citizenship has two understandings: one is formal, and the other one is real. “Citizen” both in the formal and real sense is perceived as an equalising word. Rights and obligations are then described in egalitarian language and in generic terms: all citizens pledge allegiance to the flag, using a capacious rhetoric that ignores differences of gender, race and ethnicity, and class. The dominant notion of the citizenship has been perceived in terms of the political membership within a state or nation-state. Yet, while having political membership, there could be possibility that a group of women, men or transgenders may not be treated as equal citizens. A group of people despite having formal constitutional equal power may be treated in a less than equal manner. As a result, the citizenship that is otherwise perceived as uniform in nature is in reality a hierarchical experience of power and powerlessness. There is a possibility that a particular identity many not be recognised as an identity by the state legal system such as transgenders in India (until 2018) and live with a sense of powerlessness. The discourse of the citizenship is often related to the heterogeneous and overlapping spaces on the one hand, an autonomous subjectivity envisioning and constituting the political community or communities on the other. Citizenship from a postmodern perspective is based on the notion of identity that is multiple and fluid, but may not be defined by nation or culture⁵ (Foucault 1977). Furthermore, one could comprehend that citizenship is not always a given concept rather an evolving one, whereby the individuals realise powers associated with citizenship and dignity in a progressive manner. “Becoming” a citizen can either be understood as inclusion of a group or recognition of a group and the extension of the status of equal citizenship or breaching the structure or system of oppression. Derrida criticises Western discourse as it gives priority to universality over particularity, necessity over contingency, nature over culture, and so on. In the Western discourse, Derrida argues that the two terms in binary oppositions as presented (signifier/signified, objective/subjective, male/female, nature/culture, etc.) cannot be opposed, because every term in such binary opposition contains in itself the phantom of the other. He introduces the concept of “difference”, which overcomes the fixed identity of “difference” and represents a constant interplay of meanings. The postmodern theorists further believed that a subject is created or constructed by discourses. For instance, there is a large role of the developmental discourse, legal discourse for the creation of a particular gender subjectivity, which remains fluid and subject to transformation.

Ever since the concept of citizenship originated, it has often been used in hierarchical ways in general and in gender terms in particular. For instance, Aristotle’s concept of citizenship excluded the women, poor, slaves and alien as members of the community⁶ as non-citizens. He believed that like a slave, a woman also can act as an instrument in ensuring better participation of the male members in the public sphere. Aristotle defined “a citizen is one who rules and is ruled in turn”. He further stated “We should regard women’s nature as suffering from natural defectiveness”. The contractarian theorists such as Thomas Hobbes, J. J Rousseau and John Locke in the modern times prescribed the theory of creation of the state through the contract made by individuals and specifically women’s role in the formulation of the contract to create the modern state, remained missing. However, their idea of the political individual was gender-neutral and they hardly discuss women’s position in state of nature, and state. In the background, Carole Pateman (1992) argued that “contract was the means through which the modern patriarchy was constituted”.

Most feminist scholars have been critical of the dominant and universal conception of citizenship in two ways: First, they argue that citizenship is gender-blind as the dominant perspective considers citizenship as equal and uniform in nature, whereas in almost all modern patriarchal societies, male members socio-culturally and politically remain in a dominant and privileged position of power than women. Equality in such situation remains challenged and the inequality of women is sustained by the political, economic and social institutions. Second, the feminists find that the notion of the citizenship often operates through certain conceptual binaries for instance citizens vs. non-citizens, active vs. passive, public vs. private and male vs. female. They argue that generally male members are often projected as active, participative citizens in the public sphere, whereas women are identified with the private and domestic sphere as passive and non-participative citizens in the public sphere. A section of (liberal and radical) feminists although remain critical to the public vs. private dichotomy yet they consider it is important for women to participate politically as equal citizens in a democracy. They therefore have argued for the inclusion of women participating equally with men in the public sphere, representing economic and political spheres while trying to democratise the public sphere. For them such participation would lead to “active and sex-equal citizenship” which can be crucial for the development of women’s citizenship (Rian Voet 1998). There is another strand of feminists (fall under radical feminists) who critique the first strand where a greater inclusion of women in politics is perceived as one of the important measures of ensuring active and equal citizenship for women. In contrast, this group has highlighted on the private realm and argued that the “personal is political” implying that the private sphere is an institution that has power relations and violence intrinsic to it and hence remains political. In addition, they argue that the state and the private domains are associated with power relations and both the state and family are subject to the norm of justice. A few scholars within this strand such as Elshtain (1981) and Ruddick (1989) further stated distinctly that instead of a masculine citizenship, they would prefer to come across citizenship with feminine characteristics such as love and compassion (Rao 2013).⁷

As mentioned above, compared to the ancient period, while understanding the nature of exclusion of women from citizenship, in the modern times, the citizenship as argued by Rao (2009) has not entirely excluded women. However, they are placed outside the sphere of the politics on the basis of their socially useful and dependent roles as mothers and wives. Thus, they are substantially excluded from accessing resources and opportunities such as employment, education, health and property (which enable individuals to politically participate in an effective manner). A similar idea was also flagged by the feminist Simone de Beauvoir in her book The Second Sex. Simone de Beauvoir narrated that women from birth are constructed as second-class citizens: “One is not born, rather becomes a woman”.⁸

A close look on the literature on citizenship indicates that there has been a vacuum in the feminist literature to understand how the gender-based citizenship is constructed in the society in a particular manner, how violence is integrated into the notion of construction and how several power structures enforce a particular notion of citizenship related to a particular identity such as female and transgender. The interpretation of the gender-based citizenship was perceived in terms of gender binary (signifier/signified, objective/subjective, male/female, nature/culture, etc.), while emphasising on the norms of heterosexuality. Lacan’s concept of sexual identity is not based on the biological gender or any other innate factor but it is learned through dynamics of identification and gender. Lacan states that the individual unconsciously is affected by other discourses (Sullivan 1982).

The construction of gender or “becoming”⁹ starts right from the birth of a child. Gender is a socio-cultural construct and is also perceived as something we are born with, and not something we have, but something we do (West and Zimmerman 1987)—something we perform (Butler 1990). These arguments focus that not only the heteronormativity of gender in the society that is constructed rather it is done through a graded manner with graded values assigned to different genders. Moreover, female or transgender is not a homogeneous category; rather, there are diverse identities and intersectionality of identities such as caste, class, ethnicity, working along with the gender identity. There could be diversities in female identities such as female sex workers, or lesbians may face the issue of citizenship in a particular manner than dalit poor-class women. The perception and impact of violence could be different for various groups of women, for instance the experience of violence and victimhood varies for female sex workers (street based), to housewives, to lesbians and to dalit women. Even among the sex workers, street-based sex workers could be more powerless and vulnerable to violence than the escorts. Similarly, a transgender sex worker may have some unique experience as against transgender non-sex workers or distinct from female sex workers.

In India, during the pre-colonial period, women largely were considered as merely submissive and subordinate beings specifically confined to the private sphere.¹⁰ However, during the colonial times, the nationalist struggle for independence from the colonial forces and the class-based movements against the existing feudal lords as against oppression provided many females a platform to share t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of tables
• List of abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Sex-selective abortion: a feminist interpretation of legal dilemmas and policy initiatives in India
• 3 Impunity assured and impunity snatched: the state and the discourse of rape in India
• 4 Normalisation of domestic violence in India
• 5 Sex work in India: invisible labour, deviant sexuality and experience of violence
• 6 Citizenship and transgenders: analysing the legal and policy discourse in India
• 7 State, law and resistance
• Bibliography
• Index