ABSTRACT
This chapter will trace the varied ways in which criminal and civil laws in India
construct women’s sexuality as subordinate to male sexuality and systematise
sexuality within a marital, heterosexist paradigm. A range of criminal and civil
laws will be analysed from this perspective, including laws on rape, prostitution,
maintenance, adultery, divorce, homosexuality and pornography, and we will assess
whether there is a continuum between criminal and civil law as far as the construction
of women’s sexuality is concerned. Further, the chapter will access how Indian
feminists have conceptualised sexuality. We will examine the view that the focus on
legal rights and campaigns to amend the anomalies of law has created a narrow and
rigid view of sexuality within Indian feminism, wherein sexuality became an adjunct
to discussions on rape, adultery, rape and personal laws, but was rarely seen as the
flowering of women’s identity (Dietrich 1992, 3). Some issues relating to sexuality
have therefore been unexamined within Indian feminist movements, leading to a
meaningful silence on some aspects. These include: feminist understanding of
morality, marriage, monogamy and socially coercive heterosexuality. Sex workers
organisations and gay rights groups have argued that feminists have not consistently
taken a stand on debates on prostitution or gay rights. One of the issues we will
be looking at in this chapter is the validity of these claims; whether the silence is
linked to Indian feminists wanting to disengage themselves from debates that may
be seen as ‘western’ orientated, thus producing a strategic silence, or is it due to
the cultural problems of discussing sex and sexuality within India and the ways in
which feminists have responded to these challenges. The chapter will first focus
on legal interpretations of women’s sexuality in laws relating to sexual control of
women within marriage; to sexual assault and sexual harassment; to sexual practices
constructed as ‘unnatural’ therefore homosexuality or deviant, such as prostitution
and pornography and finally on feminist responses to issues of sexuality.
