Hang the Rapists Immediately

Rape Vigilantism, State Violence, and Impunity in Contemporary India

Bibliographic Data

ID2229990
AuthorsChaitanya Lakkimsetti (Gender Studies, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume49
Issue4
Pages755-777
Publication date2024-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSigns: Journal of Women in Culture and Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0097-9740 • E-ISSN: 1545-6943
PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/729880
OpenAlexW4400446712
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited21

This essay focuses on increasing public demands for instant justice in response to sexual violence in contemporary India. Through close analysis of a specific event—the brutal 2019 gang rape and murder of a female veterinarian in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad, public demands for the instant killing of the suspect men, and subsequent police killings of four male suspects—I show how in the aftermath of serious crimes against women, rape and rape laws act as a contested site of public power. During instances of sexual violence that are deemed exceptional, public mobilization against rape advances the idea that instant justice in the form of lynching or extrajudicial police action is the only way to respond to and control such crime. In discussing the linkages between vigilantism and state violence, I coin the term “rape vigilantism” to theorize this shift. Rape vigilantism is a performative political practice that shores up the state’s sovereign power by demanding that the state act outside the bounds of the law. Whereas critiques of carceral feminism draw our attention to how a singular focus on advancing penal solutions to gender-based violence expands state power, these critiques mainly focus on formal state institutions and practices. I contend that feminist analysis of rape politics in a postcolonial context should also attend to extrajudicial state practices—such as police executions in the name of providing instant justice—and the public legitimization of these practices to understand how regimes of impunity are produced to strengthen state and social dominance

Criminology · Hang · Human rights · Impunity · Political science · Sociology · State (computer science) · Computer Science · Engineering · Gender, Security, and Conflict · Law · Sex work and related issues · Sexual Assault and Victimization Studies

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