Language

English (en)

Date of Award

4-2026

Author's School

College of Arts & Sciences

Author's Department

Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts (A.B.)

Restricted/Unrestricted

Unrestricted = Publicly available

Abstract

Since the 2012 brutal gang rape and murder of Jyoti Singh brought India’s pervasive rape culture to international attention, media, politicians, and the broader Indian public demanded justice for “India’s daughter.” Protestors called on the Indian government to expand the police state, execute perpetrators, and create fast-track legal courts to avenge her death. Collectively, they cast the state in the role of a protector, even of a patriarchal authority. The nature of these demands stands in contrast to Kashmir and Manipur, geographies differentially controlled by the Indian state, where protests call for the withdrawal of the Indian army, a primary perpetrator of sexual violence. The contrast in these three campaigns – in their form, demands, and expectations – is not incidental; it is reflective of the geographies differently negotiating with state power. My thesis undertakes a comparative analysis of protest culture against sexual violence in New Delhi, Manipur, and Kashmir. Though the three campaigns all decry sexual violence, some amplify Indian state power, whereas others question or resist Indian nationalism. I focus on the divergences in newspaper coverage and the symbolism of family structures, particularly through invocations of motherhood, as prisms to understand protestors’ negotiations with state power. Within these divergences, I locate the organizing logic of the Indian state: an imagined community, an assimilable outgroup, and a perpetual other. The state first relies on rape and then responds to anti-rape protests in ways that maintain this logic and amplify its power, revealing the centrality of sexual violence in imagining India.

Mentor

Shefali Chandra

Additional Advisors

Rachel Brown, Jami Ake

Download

Share

COinS