Trigger warning: sexual violence, police brutality, casteism, suicide
The Gender Impact Studies Center (GISC) of the IMPRI (Impact and Policy Research Institute) organised a talk on the state of gender equality, with professor Pushpesh Kumar. It was titled, sexual violence: perspectivising the role of the state.
The event was chaired by professor Vibhuti Patel, an influential economist, feminist, and a former professor at the Advanced Centre for Women’s Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai.
The speaker, prof Kumar, is a professor of sociology at the University of Hyderabad (UoH). He has edited the book “Sexuality, Abjection and Queer Existence in Contemporary India”, published by Routledge.
He also serves on the international advisory board of the Community Development Journal published by the Oxford University Press, and in UK as well as Ireland.
Prof Patel set the tone for the session by mentioning Mary Taylor, the top legislative official at the US Department of State, who was with the Trump administration since 2017 and resigned post the rise of police brutality.
The moderator also highlighted the fact that the Hyderabad city police, along with the Hyderabad City Security Council (HCSC), has launched a program called “she triumphs through respect, equality, and empowerment” (STREE) to support and empower women, who are victims of domestic violence and abuse.
She brought to attention some misogynist judgments by justice Chandrachud and spoke about how how heterosexism reinforces sexism, because it subordinates the female sex through its hierarchical polarity.
She lauded four professors of Delhi University—Upendra Baxi, Dr Vasudha Dhagamwar, Raghunath Kelkar, and Lotika Sarkar—who wrote the historic, open letter to the chief justice of India in 1979, challenging the judgment of the apex court in the Mathura rape case.
Finally, prof Patel reminisced that the first world conference on the status of women was convened in Mexico City, Mexico, to coincide with the 1975 international women’s year.
Sexual Politics In Present Day India
Prof Kumar then began to talk. He used the adage “rakshak bane bhakshak” (protectors turned into oppressors) to analogise the present day dynamics of policing. Through his work, he has explored the sexual cultures of present-day India and the predicaments faced by sexual marginalities.
He juxtaposed sexual politics within popular culture, literary genres, advertisement, consumerism, globalising cities, social movements, law, science and research, the hijra community’s life, chosen families and kinship, as well as the sites that define the cultural other (whose sexual practices or identities fall beyond normative moral conventions).
His lecture essentially connected sociological and political issues, including questions of agency, judgments around intimate sexual relationships, the role of the state, popular understandings of adolescent romance, the notion of legitimacy and stigma, moral policing and resistance, body politics and marginality.
Also, he elaborated on the representations in popular and folk culture, sexual violence and freedom, problems with historiography, structural inequalities, queer erotica, gay consumerism, hijra suicides, marriage and divorce.
Prof Kumar criticised aggressive masculinity under the folds of criminal law, and spoke about how the courts are not just legal bodies anymore, but patriarchs infantilising women.
The “fairer sex” is treated as easily manipulated, then commercially exploited. Prof Kumar gave the example of residents of the Khori Gaon area.
They have been pleading with the Faridabad Municipal Corporation (FMC) to stop the demolition of their homes and asking for the provision of immediate rehabilitation. However, the FMC is going ahead with their demolition plans.
Casual Casteism And Sexism In Pop Culture
He pointed to the Facebook post by Telugu film director, SS Rajamouli, and the casteist remarks in his magnum opus, the “Baahubali” series. He also said that it was unfortunate that the present government has referred to people who have had the wherewithal to get vaccinated using the same glorified term.
Only recently, Anannyah Kumari Alex, the first transgender woman to become a radio jockey, from Kochi died by suicide after a botched gender affirmative surgery.
He also reminded us of that one, infamous instance from desi pop culture, when the director of “Arjun Reddy” and “Kabir Singh”, Sandeep Reddy Vanga, said in an interview to Anupama Chopra that, “If you can’t slap, if you can’t touch your woman wherever you want, if you can’t kiss, I don’t see the emotion there.”
Prof Kumar expressed that he looks up to the Ambedkarite model of feminism in times like these.
He also brought to the audience’s attention, how in 2018, actress Sri Reddy walked to the Telugu Film Chamber of Commerce, stripped, and sat cross-legged to protest against the sexual harassment and casting couch, prevalent in Tollywood.
This move of hers gained traction and public support after the Movie Artists Association (MAA) imposed a ban on her.
Prof Kumar scathingly critiqued the international Megan’s law from the US, which requires those who committed a sex offense against a child to have a permanent stamp placed on their passport.
Of Seeds, The Earth And Sexual Liberty
Quoting from the abstract from his work: “Gender and procreative ideologies among the Kolams of Maharashtra”, he said that procreative ideologies, alternatively called conception beliefs, are ideas concerning the male and female contributions to biological reproduction.
Expressed through the metaphor of “seed” and “earth” in many south Asian cultures, these ideologies have been found to be demonstrably gendered, acting sometimes as a central variable in mediating men’s and women’s access to material and symbolic resources.
Many gender-sensitive ethnographies have demonstrated the power of this metaphorical understanding, in regulating and controlling the body and sexuality of women, and affecting the everyday lives of men and women as gendered subjects.
His article examines and evaluates the operation of procreative ideology in the case of the Kolams, a “primitive” tribal community in south-eastern Maharashtra.
Of The State And Its Citizens
Our discussants were Maitrayee Chaudhri, a professor at the Centre for the Study of Social Systems, School of Social Sciences, at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU); and Dr G Sridevi, who is an associate professor at the School of Economics at the UoH.
They elucidated how beauty pageant winners are hailed by the state, however, cricketers are not associated with maternal qualities. Prof Chaudhri called for exploring the possibilities of the state by constantly interrogating its moves, because that is precisely the relationship between citizens and the state.
She referenced many quotes from “Sultana’s Dream”: “Why do you allow yourselves to be shut up?”
“Because it cannot be helped as they are stronger than women.”
“A lion is stronger than a man, but it does not enable him to dominate the human race. You have neglected the duty you owe to yourselves and you have lost your natural rights by shutting your eyes to your own interests.”
Dr Sridevi underscored vulnerable groups, misdemeanours at the workplace, lack of social networks, and other precarious cases, like the Badaun gangrape case of 2014, and the custodial death of Mariamma.
Finally, questions from the audience were taken up and the evening came to an end with several, enriching conversations.
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Acknowledgment: Priyanshi Arora, Research intern at IMPRI.
Written by Ishika Chaudhary.
This article was first published here.