The Silenced Voices: Caste and Sexual Violence Against Women | SPAC & AOW

The Savitribai Phule Ambedkar Caravan (SPAC) & Alliance of Oversensitive Women (AOW) are organising a lecture on ‘Silenced Voices: Caste and Sexual Violence Against Women.’ The lecture will be delivered by V. Geetha, an Indian feminist campaigner, historian, and writer.

About the Lecture

Discussions of sexual violence in India tend to be incomplete without due consideration to the role of caste. While legal and social systems have attempted to tackle gender-based violence, the underlying caste dynamics of these problems are seldom considered in mainstream discussions. ‘The Silenced Voices: Caste and Sexual Violence Against Women’ seeks to place this important intersection at the centre, challenging hegemonic narratives and investigating the entrenched impunity facilitated by caste-based hierarchies.

We are privileged to welcome V. Geetha whose scholarship has shed light on how caste and patriarchy converge in constructing experiences of violence, justice, and resistance. Her groundbreaking book, ‘Undoing Impunity: Speech After Sexual Violence’, critically analyses how legal and social frameworks perpetuate impunity in sexual violence, especially when caste is a deciding factor. Through this lecture, we hope to spur a much-needed debate regarding how caste works within legal discourses and public discourses around sexual violence. This session is also part of an ongoing effort by LawSoc, SPAC and AOW to critically explore institutional policy around sexual violence, especially in educational institutions.

As per UGC guidelines and the report of the SAKSHAM Committee, we hope to raise voices for reforms that recognise caste as a determining factor in judicial and institutional reactions to sexual violence explicitly. This conversation will provide a chance to reflect on resources, judicial precedents, and potential reforms challenging the caste-blind nature of gender justice. This lecture is a call to critically address the silences regarding caste and sexual violence in legal and social discourse. By placing this discussion within larger feminist and anti-caste movements, we seek to open a space for substantial dialogue and action toward a more equitable and inclusive paradigm for confronting sexual violence in India.

About the Speaker

V. Geetha is an Indian feminist campaigner, historian, and writer living in Chennai. She writes widely on gender, caste, education, and civil rights and has critically approached the intersectionality of caste and patriarchy within Indian s ociety. As an editorial director at Tara Books, she has made substantive contributions to alternative publishing, and notably in areas of literature, history, and visual culture.

She has played a leading role in the Tamil Nadu Women’s Coordination Committee, which arranged milestone conferences on women’s violence, politics, and autonomy. Working with the women’s group ‘Snehidi’, she has worked among survivors of domestic violence and also worked with the Tamil Nadu State Legal-Aid Board. Together with S. V. Rajadurai, she has published a great deal of work on Tamil non-Brahmin movements and the revolutionary Self-Respect Movement of Periyar.

Her other notable works are ‘Towards a Non-Brahmin Millennium: From Iyothee Thass to Periyar’, which relooks at the historical changes of the Dravidian movements and how they are still pertinent in politics today. An English translator of novels of Perumal Murugan, Geetha’s intellectual inspirations are Ambedkar’s writings, Periyar’s works, Fanon’s writings, and K. Balagopal’s works. She continues to study and write about Dr. B. R. Ambedkar’s legacy, as well as the intersections of law, violence, and social justice in India.