Events

Guest Speaker: Dr Arushi Garg, University of Cambridge

Title: 'Relational harms and harmed relationships: The role of respectability in rape prosecutions'

Abstract: This presentation draws on postcolonial feminist theory to critique the role played by sexual respectability norms in the design and operation of Indian rape laws. This analysis is based on primary data collected from Delhi in 2016 through ethnographic observation in six trial courts; the total population of trial court judgments over a period of 6 months each in 2014 and 2016 (n=254); and semi-structured qualitative interviews with victims, victim support-persons, lawyers and judges (n=61). The talk is organised around two categories of rape cases, which are discussed in sequence. First, I examine the role played by respectability in deceptive sex cases, which arise in large part due to the societal stigma attaching to non-respectable sex. Nonetheless, acquittals in these cases also seem based on judicial investment in ideas around respectability. The legal concept of consent serves as a blunt instrument in deceptive sex cases and is unable to capture the complexity of the victim’s experience, further depressing conviction rates. Specifically, the label of rape seems to undervalue the relational and social harms experienced by the victim in such cases. Next, I focus on cases where elopement is prosecuted as rape, with a view to protecting the victim’s respectability rather than safeguarding her agency. In this way, rape laws are deployed to the detriment of non-respectable, socially disruptive, consensual intimate relationships. Taken together, this analysis exposes the damaging role played by sexual respectability norms in the rape trials and argues in favour of dismantling these norms.