Ms Urmi Gupta1
1Bml Munjal University, India
Biography:
Urmi Gupta is currently working as an Assistant Professor, BML Munjal University. She is also pursuing her PhD at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her research interests are IR theory, conflict, feminist security studies, gender and security, Queer IR,
Abstract:
The existing scholarship on conflict related sexual violence (CRSV) indicates that certain conflicts attract significant international attention and hyper-visibility, either due to high incidence of rapes or clear evidence of sexual violence employed as a ‘weapon of war’. This framing of sexual violence as ‘strategic’ suppresses different other motivations that can play a role in conflict zones. In the context of South Asia, the lens of ‘strategy’ struggles to explain sexual violence in the region as the data doesn’t show high incidence of cases. Reporting on sexual violence is extremely low as it is highly stigmatized and silenced. This doesn’t necessarily indicate an absence of sexual violence, rather it points towards a complex relationship between gender, conflict, and power in the region. One of the reasons for the silence is the overshadowing nature of the larger political and militarized conflict that contributes to the invisibility of everyday losses, pain and suffering. By analysing two protracted conflicts – Kashmir from India and Sri Lanka as case studies, this paper tries to re-imagine alternative ways of looking at sexual violence. The analysis unfolds in two sections. First, it looks into how time and space is queered in conflict zones wherein militarism seeps into the intimate, everyday spaces of supposedly peaceful/non-combative areas. Second, it queers the heterosexual framing of sexual violence by moving out of the binary – male perpetrated violence on women. By doing so, the paper aims for a reimagined discourse on sexual violence in the context of South Asia.