VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN IN ASSAM - The Case of the Assam State Commission for Women

A popular narrative passed down orally from older generations in my ancestral state of Assam in Northeast India has been that the lived experiences of Assamese women are better than women from the rest of the country. This narrative that gender discrimination happens least in Northeast India, with the Assamese society as the hallmark of women's improved status, has taken root across the country. The consensus has been that the Assamese community is egalitarian and its men, non-violent.

Theorisations of violence against women (VAW) in India also overlook the unique gender relations and social hierarchies in Northeast Indian societies. Assam's political agitation in the 1970s, alongside Indian feminist movements and economic modernisation, transformed traditional gender hierarchies in the Assamese community. Women's access to education increased and they participated in paid employment. The community is patrilocal but instances of matrilocality are present. Caste is also not a rigid and impermeable social grid and inter-caste marriages are commonplace. The ethnocultural, linguistic, and religious diversity in Assam requires a scholarly lens that takes into account these differences and how they inform the articulation of patriarchy in this context. Existing literature on violence in Assam has also mostly been from the point of view of a politically conflicted zone, with a focus on the negotiation of civilians with State-sponsored violence, leading to a scholarly lacuna around everyday manifestations of VAW.

My research hypothesis is that intra-community violence against women is a reality in Assam but historically shrouded in silence through positive narratives of women's emancipation. My research will therefore aim to uncover women's accounts of violence in the archives of the Assam State Commission for Women (ASCW) - a state-level statutory body that aims to protect and promote the interests of women in Assam - and through interviews with survivors and key informants, and undertake a feminist analysis of the ASCW to explore the role of the state in either tackling or perpetuating this violence.

The research will be guided by the following questions:
1. How do narratives of Assamese women's emancipation relate to material gender relations in the Assamese community and the history of violence in Assam?
2. How and why do Assamese women experience violence?
3. What interventions are made by ASCW and what are their implications?

The research will have a qualitative approach with a three-phase data collection, each exploring the three objectives of my research:
1. Key-informant interviews will explore the silence surrounding VAW, the perception of violence in Assam and the relationship between narratives of women's emancipation and male violence against women.
2. An analysis of archived case files at ASCW and survivor interviews will uncover the experiences of VAW and explore the influence of patriarchy and social hierarchies in Assam.
3. A feminist analysis of ASCW's interventions and ideology will be undertaken through participant observation of hearing sessions where the Legal Advisory Committee (LAC) meets complainants and defendants to discuss their cases.

I will undertake a feminist narrative analysis of this data, looking for emergent themes and exploring my research questions. My analysis will privilege the voices of the research participants while acknowledging my role in the creation of the narratives. The stigma associated with VAW complicates research, sharpening ethical concerns. It is pertinent that any ethical dilemmas emerging from my research are handled sensitively, following appropriate ethical processes.

The goal of my research is to create new knowledge by extending existing feminist research on the militarized context of Assam to a focus on the family and community.