Sexual violence against Dalit women in India: Speech, silence, and intersectional resistance

This chapter explores how Dalit women’s experiences are shaped by India’s sexual violence discourses in the context of the family, community and state. Twenty-eight qualitative interviews were conducted in Delhi, India with Dalit women who had been raped by men. The chapter draws on intersectionality; Foucault’s notions of resistance, regulation and subjectivity; and Goffman’s work on stigma. It examines the words the women used to name and/or describe their rape, what they did not say about their rape and what contributed to their silence; it also explores secrecy and cultural censorship around sex and sexual violence in the Indian context. The chapter further contextualizes the women’s silences, differentiates between their being silenced and being silent, and discusses the role of silence as resistance. The findings suggest that in terms of their lived experiences of sexual violence, these Dalit women’s subjectivities were shaped by practices of regulation exercised through patriarchal discourses of protection, honour and shame.