(This report was written with screenshots by Pozhil SG and notes by Meghna Menon.)
The launch of the Prajnya Gender Violence in India 2020 report shaped the first day of the 2020 Prajnya 16 Days Campaign against Gender Violence.
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| Clockwise L-R: Swarna Rajagopalan, Kausumi Saha, Semmalar Selvi, Kalpana Kannabiran |
We organised a small panel discussion on the main themes and trends in the GVR--digital, of course. The report's curator-author, Kausumi Saha, and guest contributor, Semmalar Selvi, made presentations based on their contributions. Dr. Kalpana Kannabiran--sociologist, lawyer, activist--was kind enough to read the report and offer her comments.
We had a small but highly engaged audience join the discussion, which we streamed live on Facebook for the first time, successfully reaching many more. You can watch a saved copy here.
“I’ve heard a lot of people saying COVID-19 is an equalizing disease- that it does not see caste or creed before it infects someone. But, honestly, that could not be further away from the truth, and I think this report has been even more eye-opening in that matter. Because how we have access to any resource depends on our social location. And, existing social inequalities get coupled with new economic and social stressors to make sure that people who do not have access to these resources are further marginalised. So, in that way, I think COVID-19 is so much more than a health issue; it is a gendered health issue."
“The [COVID-19] pandemic has been a shock to our economic, social and political lives. It is a gendered health issue when we talk about not just overt kind of gendered violence, but even covert violence, let’s say access to sexual and reproductive healthcare, access to contraceptives, unintended pregnancies and not being able to get abortions. All of these are forms of violence that women face, which is manifold.”
“Domestic violence has been forefronted and perhaps the most talked about gender based-violence and rightly so, because it has increased exponentially during the pandemic.”
“Child marriage and forced marriages have been on the rise during COVID-19. This is because a lot of working-class families have lost their livelihoods, and a lot of young girls haven’t been able to access education.”
"Human trafficking is connected to migration. A lot of migration takes place that is not accounted for. During the process of migration, there are a lot of key moments when the trafficking can take place, where women and children get trafficked to different locations where they are exploited sexually, commercially and for their vital organs.”
“When we talk of custodial violence, we continue to think of violence that happens in a physical space But, custody can be so much more than that. It can be in conflict zones. It can be about people living under a draconian law. When a rape victim’s body is burnt without her family getting justice is violence by the state, that is also custodial violence. Custody is not just judicial custody or prisons. It can be a hospital, a protection home, an orphanage. Anywhere where a person’s rights are curtailed and they are not physically allowed to move out of that zone is a state of custody. In such a state, we should not only be looking at custodial violence but also in extending what we know as custody. Custodial violence is problematic, simply because it is inflicted on you by a person who is supposed to protect you. We should be talking more about that, instead of less. And, it has to involve conversations on our laws and policies which continue to be patriarchal and carceral because of the heteronormative ideas in our society.”
“Violence against women, especially Dalit women, is rooted in brahminical patriarchy. The code of manu is dictating how women should behave and how her body should be controlled. There is a sociocultural pattern from which violence is erupting.”
“The identity of a woman plays a crucial role in terms of she being attacked and also what kind of justice she is able to access. So the idea of intersectionality that I want to stress on is that, not all women are the same. When it comes to violence against Dalit women, we need to look into the identity and how the society responds to this violence.”
“Electoral politics is connected with caste vote bank. Especially in states where the right-wing politics is strong, they make connections with caste outfits. These groups are provided armed training for them to be able to prove their power by creating violence in Dalit settlements or Muslim settlements. They prove their masculine power among Dalit women by sexual violence, rape or attempt to rape. The main intention of this is to create unrest in Dalit settlements, where Dalit women are the most vulnerable.”
“Systematically, these right wing political parties along with the caste groups are building animosity between Dalits and OBCs, where Dalit women are victimised in the cycle of politics that happens.”
This is a very clear communication being made by the entire country on how the right-wing politics in connection with the caste outfits are causing violence which is constituting 81% of sexual assault in only five states [Haryana, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh]."
“The pandemic of impunity is fueled by caste orders. When we speak of impunity, we are speaking predominantly of state impunity, and we are speaking of the impunity of dominance in which the state is complacent. And, in a sense, even if you look at the impunity of dominance, we are essentially speaking of state impunity. So, if we speak about the pandemic of impunity and we look at Hathras, what we see is that our understanding of pandemic vulnerabilities is inseparable from the oppressions of a caste order. The oppressions of a caste order not just reinforce but constitute the oppressions of majoritarian dominance”
“When we are speaking of the right-wing politics, or Hindutva politics, we are speaking of the violence against women that is embedded in Hindutva politics, This is essentially the violence of the caste order that bestows impunity on Hindutva and on the state systems”
"We cannot ignore the caste impunity in the horrifying declarations of love jihad. We have the Allahabad High Court saying that the religious faiths are immaterial to the marriage or union of two people as consenting adults. It is, of course, a lifeline that we can hold on to. What is worrying is that it is not Uttar Pradesh alone. When we are speaking of the war on relationships by choice, we are speaking of Uttar Pradesh which is a BJP ruled state, Madhya Pradesh which is a state that BJP has usurped, we are speaking of Tamil Nadu as well as Telangana."
"I hate the use of the term [Love Jihad], but that is the term used in the public domain and, it is a term that incites and supervises the use of violence against persons entering a relationship and the communities the persons belong to. It is not simply Hindu-Muslim relationships or marriage that are the subject of surveillance. It is the vast terrain of the war against marriages and relationships by choice that one sees in a very great measure in non-BJP states as crimes of honour, but basically a surveillance on intimacies that are seen as a legitimate part of our social fabric today."
"If the family is one site of carceral politics with the confinement of women and the holding of the women in a chokehold of castes and community, the prison complex is a public site of carcerality. During the pandemic we see that an increasingly carceral state has demonstrated impunity in very, very frightening ways.”
"There is a huge leap of impunity because of the pandemic of impunity that has seen a renewed vigour and height under a right-wing nationalist majoritarian government."
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