India
The India case study is a virtual archive of experiences, reflections and insights around some of the most significant of women’s movement struggles against rape and sexual violence. Through more than five decades of mobilization and resistance, Indian women’s movements have exposed and dissected the system that creates and justifies violence against women, girls and queer people. This is the system of Brahminical patriarchy created by the interlocking hierarchies of caste, gender and state power. Caste endogamy and compulsory heterosexuality reinforce the control of institutions and resources by men of the privileged castes and feeds the power of the state.
The power of Brahminical Patriarchy is rooted in the convergence of interests of the family, caste structures and the state in framing women as perpetual subjects of custody.
The India report maps these citadels of institutional power
and the connections that ensure impunity for perpetrators.
Methodology: Archiving the Women's Movement in India
The India Case Study brings a feminist lens to bear on engagements and contestations between Indian women's movements and the state through the situated perspectives, recollections and reflections of feminists activists, survivors and thinkers.
The study weaves together multiple sources and strands of enquiry: oral histories and personal accounts from movement actors, commentary and critiques by feminist scholars, accounts in popular media, campaign materials, court proceedings, judgements, audio-visual records and a range of formal and informal writings - to establish the context and trace the trajectories of some of these processes.
The landscape of women's struggles against violence is mapped through the stories and experiences of women who live at the intersections of multiple hierarchies of power and privilege. These are the locations where the hidden "deep structures" of power burst through the surface and shed their invisibility, even as they engineer, normalise and valorise violence against particular groups of women.
The study highlights these dynamics through detailed mapping of some landmark struggles, starting from the flashpoints and back-stories, and tracing subsequent actions and events in the courts, movement spaces, the media, the public sphere, state institutions and policy spaces. Changes in the larger landscape - the expansion of feminist framings of justice and accountability and the evolution of movement strategies of mobilisation and alliance-building - are surfaced through these story-lines.
“Our biggest takeaway from this endeavour is the discovery that archiving can still be taken into new and uncharted directions: this is just the beginning of another feminist journey.”
Creative strategies of protest and resistance
The early history of Indian women’s movements have been preserved through the dedication of feminist photographers, artists, singers and performers who took their creative skills into their activism, telling the stories from the inside out.
Activists adapted folk traditions and popular media to spread feminist messages, uniting audiences and fostering solidarity. Familiar tunes and powerful imagery created a shared sense of identity and resistance that transcended regional and linguistic divides.
From issue-based struggles to transforming the system
Initially focused on issues like rape and dowry murders, women’s movements quickly expanded to address a wide array of systemic challenges, including gender-based violence, reproductive rights and economic justice. These campaigns probed the intersection of patriarchy, social and economic exploitation of women, and the role of the state.
From the early years to the present, women’s movements have called for re-imagining social norms and transforming the system that denies women their rights and freedoms.
