Gender, Community and Sexual Violence in a Bengal Village: 1948

Abstract

This essay explores the inseparability of sexual violence and dominant-caste privileges embedded in structures of local power, which are finally nested within the legal institutions of the State. This essay examines the court transcripts of the trial of a village lynchpin, Gobinda Nandi, on the charge of rape. The individual to bring in the charges was a 20-year-old woman by the name of Genubala. The essay lays out the internal dynamics of the low-caste Bagdi community, as its members confront the rapist who controlled most of the village sources of livelihood. The essay turns on the refusal of the aggrieved Genubala and her husband Pashupati’s refusal to abide by Bagdi community’s unhappy decision to opt for a compromise with Gobinda Nandi. The political economy of the village power structure marks the aggrieved couple’s deliberate choice to approach legal institutions and the judicial process of the state as the crucial moment of departure from the communitarian redistributive justice and its specific life-world. But what does this choice imply for the two highly vulnerable individuals who are reluctant to be part of the Bagdi community, and who are seeking to activate the Indian State’s judicial system in their favour?