Zubaan Sexual Violence and Imp – serie

Acts of sexual violence are often committed with impunity—perpetrators do not consider their actions consequential. Yet throughout history, impunity for sexual violence has been challenged by fearless, just, and compassionate speech—both in courts of justice and outside of them. Those who speak out not only advance a politics of accountability, but also an ethics of recognition, suffering, and hurt.Undoing Impunity explores the contours of the politics and ethics pertaining to sexual violence in contemporary South Asian communities. Using a historical lens, V. Geetha closely examines explicitly feminist responses from the region and, drawing from them, suggests that sexual violence and the impunity it claims for itself are best understood in relation to cultural attitudes towards sexuality. In all, Undoing Impunity is an important and timely look at the social, psychological, and legal conditions that allow perpetrators to act without fear of responsibility or guilt. The book forms part of the Sexual Violence and Impunity in South Asia series, supported by the International Development Research Centre, Canada.

Breaching the Citadel, part of the Sexual Violence and Impunity in South Asia series, supported by the International Development Research Centre, Canada, puts India in focus, showcasing new and pathbreaking research on sexual violence and impunity. Bringing together both young and established scholars, the book explores medical protocols, the functioning of the law, the psychosocial making of impunity, histories of sexual violence in places like Kashmir, the media, and sectarian violence, among other timely topics.The essays Urvashi Butalia has collected here were developed through comparative research and a series of workshops, so each entry is peer-reviewed and on the cutting edge of the field. Breaching the Citadel breaks new ground as it uncovers and analyzes the link between sexual violence and the structures and institutions that enable perpetrators to act with impunity.

Part of a new series titled Sexual Violence and Impunity in South Asia, supported by the International Development Research Centre, Canada, Of the Nation Born takes Bangladesh as its focus, compiling some of the best writing and research to date on sexual violence and impunity. The book brings together both new and established scholars to look at areas as wide-ranging as the law and its histories, nationalism, memory and sexuality, the status of minorities, religion and its directives, universities as sites of gender-contestation, and more.With an introduction by acclaimed scholar Meghna Guhathakurta, the book offers a comprehensive overview of the situation in Bangladesh from the 1971 war for liberation to the present.  Guhathakurta gives readers an excellent entry point for understanding the complex realities of how impunity for the perpetrators of sexual violence has become standard in Bangladesh in particular, and South Asia in general. Of the Nation Born is a valuable cross-disciplinary study and the first of its kind.

Nepal, because it was never directly colonized, is seen as something of an outlier on the subcontinent, but the country could not remain totally immune to the influence of colonialism in its neighborhood. A Difficult Transition shows that, in addition to home-grown feudal patriarchal structures, it is the larger colonial and postcolonial context of the subcontinent that has enabled the structuring of inequalities and power relations in Nepal, which today allow for widespread sexual violence and impunity. Recent years have seen an increase in public discussion about sexual violence in Nepal, and the state has created legislation and action plans to address the problem. And yet, impunity for perpetrators remains intact and justice elusive. What are the structures that enable such impunity? And what can be done to change and radically transform these structures? How must states understand the search for justice for victims of sexual violence?Part of the Zubaan Series on Sexual Violence and Impunity in South Asia, the essays in this volume attempt to trace a history of sexual violence in Nepal, look at the responses of women's groups and society at large, and suggest how this serious and wide-ranging problem may be addressed.

Fault Lines of History is the second volume in Zubaan's Sexual Violence and Impunity in South Asia series, to focus on India. This volume addresses the question of state impunity, arguing that when it comes to the violation of human and civil rights, particularly in relation to sexual violence, the state of India has played an active and collusive role, creating states of exception, where its own laws can be suspended and the rights of its citizens violated. Drawing on patterns of sexual violence in Kashmir, Northeast India, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, and Rajasthan, the contributors focus on the histories of militarization in regions of conflict, as well as the histories of caste violence that are often ignored out of convenience. The essays come together to offer an urgent call for action. Though the contributors acknowledge the difficult odds facing the victims and survivors of sexual violence, they urge resistance and an end to silence as the most important weapons in the fight to hold accountable the perpetrators of sexual violence.