By – Jyotsna Panicker
Abstract
India’s legal system has tried to protect the rights of women belonging to the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes, but it is a very hollow framework without any implementation or change in Indian society. This article examines how the intersectionality of gender and caste makes Dalit and Adivasi women disproportionately more vulnerable to sexual violence, institutional neglect, and gender and caste discrimination. This article will use cases such as the Mathura rape case, Khairlanji Massacre, and Vishaka v. State of Rajasthan to argue that although the Indian legal system is becoming more progressive, it continues to maintain caste-patriarchal hierarchies by protecting the male gender in society despite their committing atrocities against women from SC/ST and OBCs.
Introduction
As per the 2014-22 National Crime Records Bureau report, more than 10 Dalit women are raped every day. Yet the numbers failed to capture the brutality of violence faced by Dalit and Adivasi women, which is simultaneously gendered and caste-inflicted, and committed not just to harm an individual, but to remind an entire community of its place in a centuries-old caste hierarchy.
The concept of intersectionality introduced by scholar Kimberle Crenshaw in her text called Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color, 43 Stan. L. Rev. 1241 (1991) highlights what a single-axis framework of either caste or gender discrimination alone misses: Dalit and Adivasi women occupy a uniquely marginalised position due to the intersection of both. They are not just women who also happen to be Dalit or Adivasi, but they also hold a unique and more disadvantaged position in society where caste violence becomes sexualised, and sexual violence against them is due to their caste. On Women, Equality and the Constitution: Through the Looking Glass of Feminism, 5 Nat’l L. Sch. J. 1 (1993) by Ratna Kapur and Brenda Cossman has argued that the mainstream feminist movement in India has failed to include the violence faced by lower-caste women by centering the experience of upper-caste, middle-class women as the norm.
Case Studies of Gender and Caste Atrocities
Mathura Rape case
Tukaram v. State of Maharashtra, 1979 (also known as Mathura Rape case) is a historical moment in the 2nd wave of the Indian feminist movement, but also a cautionary tale about how caste and class tarnish judicial reasoning. Mathura, a young Adivasi woman, was raped by two police constables inside a police station in Maharashtra. The Sessions Court acquitted the accused, reasoning that she was “habituated to sex”. They were convicted by the Bombay High Court, but the Supreme Court of India unjustly reversed the conviction, adjudicating that Mathura had not raised any protests and had no injuries, hence the sexual assault was consensual.
The Supreme Court’s reasoning was not just legally flawed, but it also revealed a deeply patriarchal and casteist mindset of the judiciary, which treats Adivasi and lower-caste women’s bodies as inherently consenting, sexual, and incapable of being sexually violated. This judgment provoked many protests across the nation and was later foundational to the feminist legal movement, which resulted in the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act of 1983, which shifted the burden of proof in custodial rape cases.
Khairalnji Massacre (2006)
In this case, on 29th September 2006, four members of the Bhotmange family (a Dalit community) in the Khairlanji village of Maharashtra were killed by an angry mob consisting of upper-caste members of their village. Surekha Bhotmange and her daughter Priyanka were forcefully stripped and paraded naked through the village, gang-raped, and murdered. Their bodies were disposed of in a canal. The crime was motivated by the family’s assertion of land rights and their daughter’s education, and these acts were perceived as transgressions against the caste hierarchy.
The legal response to the Khairlanji massacre was even more brutal and unjust towards the Dalit community. Police initially registered the case under ordinary IPC provisions and avoided the PoA act, which would have triggered mandatory special court proceedings and harsher penalties. It took many protests from the Dalit communities to force re-registration. Even then, the Bombay High Court in 2010 reduced their death sentences, which were awarded by the Sessions Court, whereas the Supreme Court ultimately adjudicated life imprisonment for most of the accused while acquitting some of them. All of these courts crucially refused to see the rape and murder as caste-motivated violence, effectively erasing the intersectional aspect of the heinous crime.
This shows us a pattern where when Dalit women are punished for daring to claim rights for land, education, and dignity, the law tries to isolate the crime and depoliticise the violence, stripping the victims of their lower-caste identity, which makes it seem incapable of being caste-based violence.
Vishaka v. State of Rajasthan (1997)
This landmark judgment was about Bhanwari Devi, a Dalit social worker in Rajasthan who had been gang-raped by upper-caste members of her village for attempting to prevent a child marriage in their upper-caste family. While the accused were ultimately acquitted by the Sessions Court in a criminal court on the reasoning that upper-caste men would not rape a lower-caste women. But a public interest litigation filed in the Supreme Court established the Vishaka guidelines on sexual harassment at the workplace.
This judgment is celebrated as a feminist milestone, and it established progressive legislation for women’s rights against sexual harassment. But it is equally important to see the caste aspect of it. Bhanwari Devi’s rape was an act of upper-caste retaliation for her work challenging caste privilege. But it also revealed that the Indian legal system is more comfortable elaborating procedural protections rather than resolving caste-motivated sexual violence.
Patan Jamal Vali v. State of Andhra Pradesh (2021)
The most explicit acknowledgment of the intersectionality of gender and caste in the Indian legal system is in Patan Jamal Vali v. State of Andhra Pradesh (2021), which was adjudicated by the Supreme Court of India, which was regarding the rape of a visually impaired Dalit woman. The Court held that courts and lawmakers must adopt an intersectional lens to comprehend “multiple and layered” disadvantages faced by women who belong to historically oppressed communities. A blind Dalit woman is even more vulnerable because of the intersectionality of her being a woman, Dalit, and visually impaired.
This landmark judgment was significant towards a progressive mindset in India society for multiple reasons. Firstly, it introduced the vocabulary of intersectionality into mainstream Supreme Court jurisprudence. Secondly, it called for re-examination of sentencing and evidentiary standards to account for structural disadvantages. Thirdly, it implicitly criticised the practice of treating gender and caste as separate issues rather than as mutually constitutive aspects of oppression. Even though this judgment is transformative in its theoretical aspects, it needs to be implemented in its practical aspects in Indian society to change its regressive mindset.
Conclusion
The cases analysed in this article reveal a recurring structure in which violence committed against lower-caste and tribal women still never receives proper justice due to misclassification, acquittal, procedural failure, or institutional obstruction. The criminal framework governing the rights of Dalit and Adivasi women is relatively comprehensive in theory, but fails to protect them from the atrocities of a patriarchal and caste-biased society.
The violence faced by Dalit and Adivasi women is not incidental to social order; it is constitutive of it. As B.R. Ambedkar has stated, caste is not merely a division of labour – it is a division of labourers, enforced through the bodies of women. Law, at its best, can be a site of counter-power. But only if it is willing to name, with precision, the power it must counter.
About the Author
The author is Jyotsna Panicker, a 5th-year law student of BBA LLB (Hons.) studying in O. P. Jindal Global University with keen interests in feminist legal theory, constitutional morality, and intersectionality of caste and gender in Indian society.
Image Source : https://newint.org/features/2022/10/25/view-india-dalit-history-month