Analysing Femicide and Antinationalism in The Nirbhaya Case: A Feminist Revisionist Mythmaking Reading of Clea Chakraverty's La Voix de Sita

Abstract

Violence against women often stems from gender inequality, societal structures such as patriarchy, impunity, and institutional violence. Despite the remarkable progress it has made in establishing the representation of women in all fields, India still finds itself an unsafe country for women, with multiple cases of femicide reported every year. The present paper proposes a close look at violence against women in India through a multidisciplinary reading of Clea Chakravarty’s novel La Voix de Sita [Sita’s Voice] which is a retelling of the 2012 Delhi gang rape. Commonly known as the Nirbhaya Case, it ushered a lot of debates around women’s modesty and morality, alongside controversial anti-feminist remarks by the dominant misinformed strata of society on women being responsible for crimes done against them and the branding of feminism as anti-national. By approaching the revisionist mythmaking of Indian epics in the novel through a feminist lens, the paper also traces the root cause of violence against women in India by analysing media reports, interviews, and anecdotes focused on the case.