Rape culture and its critique from the educated middle classes remains restricted to urban contexts rendering the marginalized cases of non-urban, non-dominant sections outside the framework of rape culture and so outside the realm of protests. 

By Sohini Saha

Groundxero | July 14, 2026

Incidences of rape and the protests that have followed from them have always emerged in context of and initiated discussions & awareness on rape culture. While Bhanwari Devi’s case (1992) could bring in the sexual harassment at workplace law, the Delhi gang rape (2012) case was able to usher in reform in rape laws. Protests and movements thus enabled significant reflections and awareness in understanding rape, rape culture, and the context of power embedded in the very act. However, people’s protests and mass movements have always been selectively driven and limited mostly to urban, middle class contexts, at least in the recent past. Although rape is an everyday crime where innumerable cases pile up, or not get reported, or fade into oblivion, there has been a general acceptance that not all cases can invoke equal forms of outrages. Even if we accept this to be largely true, the question arises which ones do and why?

The critique of rape culture, a culture that justifies or normalizes rapes or sexual assaults on several grounds, often is the central ground around which protests builds up. Although it is significant, what these critiques often overlook is that they remain tied to certain spaces and certain marginalized identities. This writing comes as a form of reflection on the nature of silence from the urban public at large after the brutal rape and murder of an 11 year old girl in Baruipur, West Bengal. I try to extend an understanding of this silence in this piece so that we can bring back the questions that have been silenced. I emphasize on spaces or location of rapes as likely ground that determines the nature of protest or its absence. I point towards how rape culture and its critique from the educated middle classes remains restricted to urban contexts rendering the marginalized cases of non-urban, non-dominant sections outside the framework of rape culture and so outside the realm of protests.

Recollecting the Delhi gang rape case of 2012 (popularly known as the Nirbhaya case, where a 22 year old woman succumbed to death after being brutally gang raped in a private bus) and the R.G. Kar rape case of 2024 in Kolkata (known popularly as Abhaya case, where a 31 year old woman was raped inside the hospital while being on her night shift as a doctor) in the recent past, the outrages speaks of a urban middle class context that has driven people’s anger. While brutality often becomes a starting point to differentiate certain rape cases that are considered to be demanding more attention than others, I argue it is always the space and the kind of identities associated with, that plays a crucial role. People tend to uphold a “civilized” “safe” city idea to invoke the gravity of the cases as urban spaces like public transport or workplaces come to be conceived as unlikely spaces where such grave acts can be perpetuated. The shock and anger thus are not directed towards the act of rape itself or the sufferance of the woman/girl, but the space which becomes an unlikely location for the crime. The supposedly “civilized” “secure” space of the city becomes then inflicted with an “uncivilized” crime, the way rape is perceived.  In differentiating the RG Kar case by explaining the occurrence of rape in a supposedly “secure” place as  justifiable ground for demanding accountability, the Baruipur case was rendered as ‘acceptable’ for occurring in a place that fell outside of what is considered as “secure”. This makes localities and spaces of the suburban areas or marginalized classed spaces within urban contexts as acceptable grounds of rape and criminal activities that demands no accountability of safety and security from the state. Further they are rendered into marginalized zones whose responsibility and accountability cannot be taken up. It is also not only the space but who occupies them, i.e., the class, caste, religious, ethnic identities that further shapes how a rape case is prioritized or undermined over the other. This is not new, as historically, rape culture has actively pursued a line of thinking that victim blames by rendering certain time, clothing, spaces, circumstances and localities, as justifiable grounds for sexual assault. However, this rape culture that is often challenged and protested against also restricts itself to dominant urban spaces or dominant identities in question.

If Park Street rape case invoked rape culture in terms of time, place and identity of the victim as a way to justify or nullify it, Delhi gang rape was again about time and place that was used as a way of policing the victim. These were actively critiqued to open up discussion on the perpetuation of rape culture. Reclaim the Night movement of Kolkata (2024) too began on such a note as a challenge to the rape culture surrounding working at night shift and the insecurity of the otherwise “secure” workplace. I pick up these cases, to draw our attention to cases which have occupied a place in our public memory and the protests that followed and initiated discussions on rape culture. Thus, the protests and movements that followed from them were driven towards justice as well as demand for freedom from this rape culture. Strangely, the discussion on rape culture like the movements remains limited to urban spaces and contexts, often upholding a liberal radical idea of claiming spaces.

However, the discussion on rape culture, which constitutes the social environment that justifies or normalizes rape or sexual assault, does not really emerge in context of rape cases of marginalized women or those that have taken place in marginalized spaces and places. Thus, rapes of dalit, tribal women, religious or class minorities outside city spaces or outside dominant spaces of the city, although gravely brutal, do not arouse similar sentiments of anger among the masses nor do they initiate any conversation on the question of rape culture. Nandini Dhar’s (2024) piece on the hierarchy of rapes shows us this. These rapes are often reduced to individual cases and to their immediate marginalized identities. This, as if, renders any critique of rape culture to be restricted to the domain of the urban dominant class-caste groups and urban spaces, for which the middle classes mainly takes to the streets to “reclaim” their spaces. The marginalized are rendered as those for whom such conversations are not required. This is evident in how rapes of dalit women in villages or the brutal act of parading them naked has become normalized and everyday news that does not arose the sentiments or anger of people at large. However, will such an act in the city space be tolerated by people or not protested against?

The Baruipur case reminds us of this intersection of marginalized identity and non dominant suburban locality. The brutal rape and murder of the 11 year old girl did not spark the kind of public protests that we have seen previously in our city based protests. Although Baruipur cannot be considered as ‘rural’ in the true sense with the growing elite high rises and for not being far from the city, there was still a lack of mobilization of people unlike other movements. Thus, its peripherality vis-a-vis the core city space of Kolkata and its marginalized classed locality vis-a-vis upper middle class and middle class gated communities in other parts of Baruipur, shaped how this case would be perceived. Thus, in urban contexts, homes, workplaces, universities and public spaces remained not just quiet on the matter but also indifferent. There was a lack of mobilization around the bereaved parents, who often becomes central in empathetically understanding the gravity of rape. Although the parents of the little girl did speak up, there was a lack of visibility and empathy surrounding them from the larger public. The girl also could not become the “girl next door” for the middle classes (Dhar, 2024). The case makes us see how the suburban locality becomes a place that lies outside of what is considered as a legitimate space or ground for demanding state accountability or the attention of the dominant mainstream society to build a movement around. There is a banality associated with these spaces outside of dominant urban contexts that render even brutal rapes acceptable and unattended towards. Thus, no “spectacle” or mass movements can be created out of them. However, what open us to these cases are in turn local protests which are grounded in context of its immediacy and the demand for justice. The circumstances under which the crime happened and the way the body of the girl was discovered raised several questions. Although the larger urban public remained silent and indifferent, it was the local people’s questions and initial protests that brought the case to public view. This distinction of protests: the absence from the larger public and the local protests is where I would like to draw our attention towards. Reclaim the night movement (2024) is said to have been able to draw people from rural hinterlands to join in reclaiming their rural spaces at night. A solidarity of the rural and suburban people flowed to the mainstream urban protests. However, the same could not unfold in Baruipur where local protests remained localized and no solidarity from the ‘mainstream’ urban areas or the city could come up. This hierarchy in solidarity, of how protests of urban ‘mainstream’ subsumes the local/rural but not the other way, goes on to say alot about how classed and marginalized spaces and places define the contours of rape, rape culture and protests that follows from there.

Amidst this our public collective conscience is easily satisfied by an invocation of punishment to perpetrators. As if the utterance of these words are enough to ensure justice in front of which even investigation or evidence ceases to matter. Mallika Kaur has argued how calls for violent retribution rendered the violent Delhi rape case into a spectacle that took away any impetus for discussions on rape culture and violence. While judgments are passed, how far they lead to ‘justice’ is a question with which I will end this piece.

References:

Mallika Kaur (Sept. 19 2013) ‘Why hangings won’t stop India’s rape culture”

Nandini Dhar (18th August, 2024) আমাদের সমাজে আছে ধর্ষণের একটি ক্রমাধিকারতন্ত্র: কিছু অস্বস্তিকর পর্যবেক্ষণ

Sohini Saha is an academic. The views expressed in this article belong to the author.