Kiruba Munuswamy: progenitor of shockwaves in a casteist-pratriarchal society

Q1 Social Sciences

Gender and Development Pub Date : 2023-01-02 DOI:10.1080/13552074.2023.2184531

Anjali Chauhan

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Abstract

In such a dismal state, Kiruba Munusamy is ensuring outrage. An advocate practising in the Supreme Court of India and a researcher and Dalit rights activist, Munusamy introduces herself as a lawyer first and then an Ambedkarite (Dastidar 2022). After passing the bar exam in 2008 at an early age of 22, she steadily made a name for herself by taking sensitive cases like rape, murder, and torture against people from the Dalit community, and openly advocated for the rights of transgender people. According to the 2019 report by IndiaSpend (IndiaSpend 2020) which analysed crime in India, there were 3,486 cases of rape against Scheduled Caste women including girls, and 3,375 cases of assault, each constituting around 7–8 per cent of total crimes against Scheduled Castes (Srivastava 2020). Cases of rape and assault against Scheduled Caste women have increased by 37 and 20 per cent, respectively, since 2015 (ibid.). According to the findings of the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) 2019, ten Dalit women were raped every day in 2019 and these are only the reported cases (Biswas 2020). One such horrendous incident occurred in 2020, in Hathras, Uttar Pradesh, where a 19year-old Dalit woman was gang raped, brutalised, and murdered by upper-caste Thakur men of the village (ibid.). Several reports suggested that the victim’s family was mistreated by the police who later forced the family to cremate the victim’s body in haste (Khan 2022; Kumar 2020). Though the accused were arrested and put to trial, the oppressive caste people were outraged by the arrest. Amid such a clash, Kiruba Munusamy came forward to not only highlight the case which was either reported without the caste angle or sidelined altogether, but also provided her unconditional support to fight the systematic caste-laden patriarchy which uses rape and other forms of physical violence against women, particularly Dalit woman, to degrade and dehumanise the oppressed communities and to maintain the caste hierarchy. As argued by Uma Chakravarti, ‘upper caste men have sexual access to lower caste women, an aspect of the material power they have over the lower castes’ (Chakravarti 2018, 81). In a similar line of thought,

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Kiruba Munuswamy：种姓制度实践社会冲击波的先驱

在这样一个令人沮丧的状态下，基鲁巴·穆努萨米(Kiruba Munusamy)肯定会引起愤怒。Munusamy是印度最高法院的一名律师，也是一名研究人员和达利特权利活动家，她首先介绍自己是一名律师，然后是一名Ambedkarite (Dastidar 2022)。2008年，年仅22岁的她就通过了律师资格考试。此后，她通过处理强奸、谋杀和虐待达利特等敏感案件，并公开倡导变性人的权利，逐渐声名鹊起。根据印度消费网(indiaspend2020) 2019年的报告分析了印度的犯罪情况，有3486起针对在册种姓妇女(包括女孩)的强奸案和3375起袭击案，每起案件约占针对在册种姓的犯罪总数的7%至8%。自2015年以来，针对排班种姓妇女的强奸和袭击案件分别增加了37%和20%(同上)。根据2019年国家犯罪记录局(NCRB)的调查结果，2019年每天有10名达利特妇女被强奸，而这些只是报告的案件(Biswas 2020)。2020年，在北方邦的哈特拉斯发生了一起这样可怕的事件，一名19岁的达利特妇女被村里高种姓的塔库尔人轮奸、虐待和谋杀(同上)。几份报告表明，受害者的家人受到警察的虐待，后来警察强迫受害者的家人匆忙火化了受害者的尸体(Khan 2022;Kumar 2020)。虽然被告被逮捕并接受审判，但压迫种姓的人们对逮捕感到愤怒。在这样的冲突中，Kiruba Munusamy挺身而出，不仅强调了没有种姓角度的报道或完全边缘化的案件，而且还提供了她无条件的支持，反对系统性的种姓制度，这种制度对妇女，特别是达利特妇女使用强奸和其他形式的身体暴力来贬低和非人的被压迫社区，并维持种姓等级制度。正如Uma Chakravarti所说，“高种姓男性可以与低种姓女性发生性关系，这是他们对低种姓女性拥有物质权力的一个方面”(Chakravarti 2018,81)。在类似的思路中，

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来源期刊

Gender and Development Social Sciences-Gender Studies

CiteScore

2.10

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0.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： Since 1993, Gender & Development has aimed to promote, inspire, and support development policy and practice, which furthers the goal of equality between women and men. This journal has a readership in over 90 countries and uses clear accessible language. Each issue of Gender & Development focuses on a topic of key interest to all involved in promoting gender equality through development. An up-to-the minute overview of the topic is followed by a range of articles from researchers, policy makers, and practitioners. Insights from development initiatives across the world are shared and analysed, and lessons identified. Innovative theoretical concepts are explored by key academic writers, and the uses of these concepts for policy and practice are explored.