Found this interesting study on the thread subject.
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Honor and Disorder
The Circumscription of Women’s Sexuality in India
INTRODUCTION 2
CHAPTER 1: HEGEMONY OF THE HONOR DISCOURSE 5
CHAPTER 2:THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF CHAOS 15
CHAPTER3: SEXED BODIES BETWEEN AND BEYOND MODERN STATES AND TRADITIONAL SOCIETIES 25
CONCLUSION 33
REFERENCES 36
Introduction
On July 3, 2009, the Delhi High Court delivered a historical judgment that ruled that all adults had the right to choose their partners and that criminalizing of alternate sexualities was incompatible with the basic rights guaranteed to citizens under the Indian Constitution. According to the court order: “Section 377 IPC, where it “criminalized consensual sexual acts of adults in private”, violated fundamental rights to personal liberty (Article 21 of the Constitution) and equality (Article 14) and prohibition of discrimination (Article 15).” (Mitta & Singh, 2009) It was heralded, probably justly, as a watershed moment in Indian socio-political scene. Just a few weeks later a caste magnate in eastern Uttar Pradesh (UP), Mahendra Tikait, declared that “only whores choose their own partners”. (Arshad, 2009) Tikait was responding to a trend not very uncommon in eastern UP, Haryana and Punjab. Despite the threat of public disrepute and an imminent brutal death, many women are choosing their own partners. They, along with their partners, are often hunted down by the male members of their family, who have the backing of the community. In fact, the pressures of community and community leaders, who view this as an issue of caste honor, encourage family members to pursue these witch hunts.
Though the consequences are very unpleasant, popular perception is that more and more young women and men choose to face them rather than give up their notions of romantic love. While community elders view themselves as custodians of culture, they are actually devising new legal responses to an urgent situation. Jat (the landowning caste that virtually dominates the landscape in Haryana and parts of the neighboring states – Tikait belongs to this caste) leaders are presently trying to have their rules on marriage legalized so that the need for honor killings will not arise. A conglomerate of khap panchayats (caste councils or courts where women are not present or not allowed to speak) decided in September to “draw up a set of recommendations for making ‘suitable’ amendments to the Hindu Marriage Act (1955) at the state level so that their rulings become valid under law.” (Divya. A, 2009) Jat leaders have been seeking to dilute this progressive law since its very inception. Despite continuing failure, advocate Chander Singh Dalal complacently believes that a new bill will be passed unopposed and “once the amendments are brought in, there’ll be no place for dispute.” (IBID)
At a time when Indian laws seem ready to embrace alternate sexualities, Haryana and its neighboring states ironically seek legal measures to restrict heterosexual relationships. The post-colonial Indian State has come to embody these contradictions of the western liberal and traditional/conservative. Women in India in this framework can only choose the liberal discourse that stands for their rights over their familial and social associations. And yet, these liberal institutions have done little, if at all anything, to prevent crimes committed in the name of honor or even to bring the perpetrators to trial. Sections of Indian judiciary have been, until recently, one of the sites where women’s sexuality is delegitimized and agency is denied. In cases where women have assumed control over their bodies and exercised their constitutionally sanctioned rights with regard to sexuality the State, through the judiciary and law enforcement agencies, has subverted its own laws to assume familial and caste roles to restore status quo. (Chowdhry, 2004)
A woman who becomes aware of her rights over her body and seeks to overthrow the suffocating barriers placed on it ends up reinforcing the very structure that she rebelled against as death becomes the ultimate weapon in the hands of a snubbed masculinity to reinforce order, that is, male control over women’s bodies.
In this project, the State does not merely play a supportive role. The State is the family/caste, which had failed in protecting the boundaries around women’s bodies. In protecting family/caste honor, the State is protecting itself. But it would be misleading to assume that this state is a traditional one. The post-colonial Indian State was constructed, as we shall see later, as a masculine state where affirming the rights of male guardians over women’s bodies was considered a matter of national honor. The State was fashioned after western models even as the new nation upheld correct kinship ties and the orderly exchange of women. (Das, 2007) Hence, the issue at hand cannot be conceptualized in terms of a fundamental conflict between western laws and the traditional social structures. In this paper, I seek to unravel how these mythical boundaries between liberal India and these so-called traditional structures combine forces at certain points to place curbs on women’s sexuality, and also constantly confound the resolution of the issue. Circumscription of women’s sexuality takes place across the board even as India seems ready to permit a variety of sexual expressions. How do we explain this paradoxical situation? What role does the honor discourse play in this process, how is it disseminated?
Chapter 1: Hegemony of the Honor discourse
Kiran (name changed) has been told many times that she is very lucky. At 22, she has survived two near-death experiences and still going strong. "People say I am the only woman in Haryana to survive an 'honour killing' bid that succeeded in killing my husband. Women usually don't, though some men manage to. My family still regrets that I wasn't killed when it sent out hired goons to murder us," she says with a smile. (Srinivasan, 2007: 1)
When I met her two winters back she was completely confused regarding the future of the criminal trial lodged against her family members, including her father, and uncertain about her own continued survival. Even in her pathetic state her bodily presence made a bigger statement than any legal trial could hope for. She had observed astutely that her survival was a contrary to some preordained rule. In an early survey of court cases dealing with what she calls ‘runaway marriages’, Chowdhry notes that courts dealing with such cases (under charges of kidnapping, abduction and rape) condemn women who consent to a sexual relationship but punish her male partner. His crime is that he disrespected the rights of the woman’s male guardian, that is, he breached an unwritten code between men. These courts restore the male guardian his possession (the woman) but only after finding her guilty of an ‘illicit’ sexual relationship. (Chowdhry, 2004)
Chowdhry finds that courts selectively disbelieve the women – they essentially accept her claim (if she does make one) of choosing to be in a relationship in order to hold it illicit but refuse to accept her claim of being an adult. Hence, not being able to have a licit relationship (since any marriage is invalidated on grounds that she is a minor) and condemned for having an illicit one, Haryana courts create an identity of a woman habituated to sex. (Chowdhry, 2004) This is the reason why once restored, the position of these women becomes highly uncertain and can only end with the ‘elimination’ of the deviant body. According to Chowdhry, “taking such a step evokes only relief all around.” (Chowdhry, 2004: 84) Kiran merely reiterates this position when she says that her family still regrets her survival. The idea that a women’s body is the carrier of her male relatives’ honor finds reverberations in many countries and societies. In choosing her partner, a woman is consciously recovering her rights over her body and her family, community and, as Chowdhry’s survey shows, even the State (courts) is aware and threatened by this message. The State assumes familial and communal functions when it neglects its own laws to restore the guardian ‘his possession’ and in consequence his honor. But even if restored, the body stands for a disruption and makes everyone uncomfortable.
The position of a woman who been ‘restored’ can be understood in terms of Barbara Kristeva’s conception of the ‘abject’, quoted by Judith Butler. According to her, we understand the boundaries of our body through the distancing of that which has been expelled from it. “The ‘abject’ designates that which has been expelled from the body, discharged as excrement, literally rendered ‘Other’ … The construction of the ‘not-me’ as the abject establishes the boundaries of the body which are also the first contours of the subject.” (Butler, 1990: 133) When a woman separates herself from the strangehold of her male guardians’ control, she also denotes the boundaries of the body through her rupture.
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