There is considerable outrage in Kerala about how the accused in the murder of the young woman worker Soumya in 2011 has slipped the noose at the Supreme Court. There is considerable doubt remaining on how the murder of the young dalit woman student Jisha was handled by the present government. In both cases, the accused are not men who would earn the sympathy of the Malayali middle-class – in one case, a tamil homeless man, and in the other, a Muslim migrant worker. Not surprisingly, the cry for their blood has been particularly shrill. Outrage at the Supreme Court’s refusal to endorse the lower court’s judgment in the first case is particularly striking – not only because of its loudness, but also because one is unable to forget the Suryanelli case. The difference between the present cases and the Suryanelli case is that in the latter, the victim has been condemned to living death, though she has persistently fought to be heard as a survivor of the most horrific violence. Yet her pleas that the powerful Malayali politician P J Kurien be also tried never roused the kind of outrage was have heard recently. It appears that the Malayali public is kinder to dead violated women than women who survive violation; it also seems harsher towards abjected males than to .powerful males who occupy the pedestal of elite masculinity. Continue reading The Orphaning of ‘Women’s Collective Interests’ in Kerala →