Conflicted Democracies And Gendered Violence

Engaging recent histories of protracted conflict and social upheaval within "conflicted democracies" in the postcolony, this monograph draws attention to events and aspects of gendered and sexualized social suffering that such dissension causes. Numerous emergent and durable political democracies are habitually afflicted by long-drawn-out political and foundational violence. In the transition from feudal-imperial-colonial formations, the anatomy of conflicted political democracies is surfeited with myriad disputes, nationalist assertions, and unresolved politics. These situations erupt as recurrent law and order issues, or develop into episodic confrontations or full-blown conflicts, and as decolonial movements for autonomy and self-determination. This text locates postcolonial India, the world's most populous political democracy, as an exemplar. The text narrates issues of extraordinary gendered and sexualized violence within varying political situations in India. Detailing events and impacts in and between sites of protracted conflict (in the northwestern state of Punjab and the northern state of Jammu and Kashmir) and social upheaval (in the western state of Gujarat and the eastern state of Odisha), the monograph explicates the conflicted relations of a troubled political democracy to violence, the "Other," and justice. Theoretical precepts-conflicted democracy, gendered and sexualized violence, and transitional and transformative justice, are examined in section I, and particularized in sections II-III. Sections II-III focus on two sites of protracted conflict and two areas of social upheaval from India. Section II elaborates on issues in India, whereas section III, part one identifies case examples from different regions and contexts across India that are rarely discussed in the same analysis to illustrate official responses to events of gendered and sexualized violence. Section III, part two threads together victim-survivor memory narratives from two sites that are seldom considered together. In closing, the monograph expands on the notion of immediate, structural, and transformative justice and espouses the right to heal. In doing so, section III, part three explores possibilities for accountability and historical dialogue through defining provisions for transformative justice to gendered violence within a conflicted democracy. It raises prefatory questions regarding the role of the state, civil society, and multisector institutions, and the most elemental of constituents: victim-survivors.