Raped! The Indian polity in shambles (guest blog)

A 23 year old student, varyingly named by the media as the treasure (Amanat), the light (Jyoti) or the fearless (Nirbhaya) – died, after being gang-raped and tortured with an iron rod by 6 drunk men on a moving bus in the Indian capital New Delhi on 16th December 2012. The capital, and some other cities, erupted in unprecedented protests which began online, then went offline and continued through the New Year – demanding not just the gallows for the rapists, but a reform of the Indian penal code which provides little for sexual crimes, let alone sexual crimes of this kind – most of which are not caught or reported, let alone dealt with, legally. Former Polis Silverstone Scholar Ranjana Das, now teaching at the University of Leicester, reports on the deeper, disturbing politics of gender, image and power in India that have been exposed by this case.