Women as arm-bearers: Gendered caste-violence and the Indian state

SynopsisThis article examines the intersections between gender, caste and violence in a post-colonial context. It analyses how in specific cultural and historical contexts, men, women and children can act as both victims and perpetrators of violence and ‘inhuman atrocities’. This is coupled with the lack of law and order and protection from the state, the state understood in terms of both the pan-Indian state and the provincial state of Bihar. The complexities involved when women do take up violence moves the analyses beyond a circumscribed understanding of women as ‘vulnerable victims’ and ‘recipients of violent acts’. The empirical research draws on recent and ongoing caste conflicts in rural Bihar (but also in Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Gujarat), North India. Dalit women are the chief arms bearers who defend their interests over economic resources (land and water) and have taken the responsibility to protect their own integrity against sexual violence from the upper caste men.