Promising Rape: Private Militias against Maoist Guerrillas in the State of Bihar (India)

Abstract

Rape is indifferent to war or peace times. But it was a fundamental fact in the creation of two separate Indian and Pakistani nations at the partition of 1947. Rape, abduction followed by forced marriage, carving the war cries of opposing camps (Allah Akbar, Jai India) on women’s bodies, amputation of breasts as a physical attack on the symbols of womanly nourishment and thus of social reproduction, all are acts of extreme violence open to interpretation as the transformation and reduction of woman to a sign, a means of expression between men in conflict.1 Not simply confined to Indian space, this dialogue between men over the violated female body shows the essentially masculine order of the nation.2 In the ordinary course of daily life in times of peace, the presence of rape maintains this order, by ambiguous laws condemning the action and its author but also, frequently, the victim.