The Hidden Toll: How Communal Violence Disproportionately Affects Women

When we talk about communal violence – riots, ethnic clashes, religious conflicts – the public discourse tends to centre on deaths, property destruction, and political fallout. But there is a dimension of communal violence that is consistently undercounted, underreported, and legally neglected: the specific, targeted, and systematic violence perpetrated against women. Women are not simply incidental victims in communal conflicts. They are deliberately targeted, their bodies weaponised, their suffering used as a tool of communal warfare. And when the riots end, the law largely looks away.

Women’s bodies as sites of communal conflict 🔗

To understand why women bear such a disproportionate toll in communal violence, it is important to understand the logic that drives it. In patriarchal societies, a community’s honour is often constructed around the bodies and sexuality of its women. Women are seen not as individuals but as symbolic representations of communal identity, purity, and pride. When one community wants to humiliate, defeat, or terrorise another, attacking its women – particularly through sexual violence – becomes a calculated strategy.

This was devastatingly evident during India’s Partition in 1947, when kidnapping, rape, and the public parading of naked women at places of worship were used as deliberate acts of humiliation against rival religious groups. The logic was explicit: dishonour a community’s women, and you dishonour the community’s men. Women’s bodies became the terrain on which two nations’ competing claims to honour were violently contested.

This pattern did not end with Partition. During the 2002 Gujarat pogrom, large numbers of Muslim women were gang-raped, as were many hundreds in the 1992-93 Mumbai violence – yet in neither case was a single perpetrator charged with sexual crimes. The Bilkis Bano case became a symbol of this failure. During the 2002 Gujarat riots, Bilkis Bano, then 21 years old, was brutally gang-raped and members of her family murdered. After years of legal struggle, 11 convicts were sentenced to life in prison – only to be released on remission in 2022 after serving just 14 years. Her case is representative of how the justice system treats sexual violence during communal conflict: as a secondary crime, an afterthought in the broader narrative of riot and disorder.

Forms of violence against women in communal conflicts 🔗

The violence women experience during communal clashes is not random. It is patterned, targeted, and multi-layered. Understanding these forms is essential to any meaningful legal or policy response.

Sexual violence as a weapon 🔗

Rape and gang rape are the most visible and devastating forms of violence against women during communal conflicts. As scholars have documented in the context of the Gujarat 2002 violence, the objective of such sexual violence is to destroy the social fabric of the targeted community. Sexual violence in this context is not simply a crime of individual aggression – it is a collective weapon, ordered or condoned by community leaders, mobs, and in some cases, even state actors. The 2002 Gujarat violence was preceded by propaganda campaigns that specifically projected sexual violence against Muslim women as a form of communal revenge and a means to restore male pride – illustrating how sexual violence is ideologically justified and socially sanctioned in communal contexts.

Abduction and forced conversion 🔗

Women are also frequently abducted during communal violence. Abduction serves multiple purposes simultaneously: it removes women from their families and communities, imposes sexual slavery, and can be used to force religious conversion. During Partition, tens of thousands of women were abducted, many never returned to their families. The abduction of women carries an additional layer of communal messaging – it signals to the targeted community that it cannot protect its own.

Displacement and secondary violence 🔗

Even when women escape direct physical violence, communal conflicts displace them into relief camps and temporary shelters where they face a new set of dangers. Reports from the 2002 Gujarat violence documented instances of sexual violence even within relief camps, perpetrated by men from the same community. Displacement strips women of economic independence, social networks, and physical safety – making them vulnerable to exploitation long after the riots have formally ended.

Intersectional vulnerability 🔗

Women from minority communities, Dalit communities, and lower socioeconomic groups face compounded risk. During the 2007 Kandhamal riots, for instance, large numbers of Christian tribal women were raped and sexually assaulted. As one analysis notes, women from socioeconomically marginalised groups face a “triple burden of inferiority” based on caste, class, and gender, making their vulnerability in communal violence exponentially greater than that of women from dominant communities.

Invisibility in legal discourse 🔗

India has a substantial body of legislation addressing violence against women. The Indian Penal Code, the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act (2005), the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act 2013, and most recently the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (2024) all contain provisions relating to rape, sexual assault, and harassment. On paper, these laws appear comprehensive. In practice, they were never designed to address the specific dynamics of communal violence – and that gap is fatal.

General laws miss the communal dimension 🔗

The IPC and its successors treat rape as an individual crime committed by one or more perpetrators against an individual victim. They do not recognise rape as a communal weapon – as a crime committed with the specific intent to terrorise, humiliate, or destroy a community. This distinction matters enormously. When courts treat communal rape as ordinary rape, they miss its political character, its organised nature, and the state complicity that frequently enables it. India’s security and justice system has fundamentally failed to protect women from gender-based violence, with inconsistencies in laws leaving room for abuse and a patriarchal system that resists genuine equality.

Police failure and institutional complicity 🔗

Filing a First Information Report (FIR) after communal violence is an enormous challenge for women survivors. Policing in India is inconsistent, with officers often failing to register GBV cases, discouraging complaints, or actively encouraging reconciliation rather than prosecution. During and immediately after communal riots, police forces are frequently aligned with the dominant community or are simply overwhelmed by disorder – making them inaccessible or hostile to women survivors. The process of seeking justice becomes a second victimisation, with insensitive police procedures, hostile cross-examinations, and years-long trials. For women who have already survived communal violence, this process is prohibitive.

Honour-based framing erases the crime 🔗

When sexual violence in communal contexts is acknowledged at all, it is frequently discussed in terms of community honour rather than individual rights. This framing is deeply problematic. It positions the rape survivor not as a rights-bearing person who has been wronged but as a symbol whose violation reflects on the entire community. When women are framed as vessels of community honour, their status as “victims” can actually diminish the perceived criminal liability of perpetrators, since the crime is repositioned as a political act rather than a violation of an individual woman’s rights. The victim’s suffering becomes secondary to the community’s wounded pride.

The communal violence bill failed women 🔗

Legislative attempts to specifically address communal violence have also fallen short on gender. The Communal Violence (Prevention, Control and Rehabilitation of Victims) Bill, 2005 was introduced with the intent to provide a framework for preventing and responding to communal riots. However, it was widely criticised for its inadequacy on gender. The 2005 Bill did not explicitly include any special protections for women who are disproportionately impacted by communal violence, and its provisions for marginalised groups – including Dalits, tribals, and religious minorities – were insufficiently developed. The Bill was never even passed into law, leaving India without any dedicated legislative framework for communal violence at all.

Why the IPC alone is not enough 🔗

A recurring argument made by policymakers is that existing IPC provisions on rape and sexual assault are sufficient to prosecute violence against women during communal conflicts. This argument fails on several grounds.

First, standard IPC provisions do not recognise the organised and collective nature of sexual violence in communal contexts. When rape is committed by mobs with the knowledge or participation of political leaders, it requires legal tools that can hold collective actors accountable – not just individual perpetrators. Second, India’s GBV laws are principally punitive in nature and fail to address the patriarchal structures, inadequate institutional infrastructure, and gender-biased perceptions that affect their implementation. Punishment after the fact does not address prevention, survivor rehabilitation, or accountability for state actors who enable communal violence. Third, the armed forces continue to enjoy protections from prosecution for custodial rape under the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, creating a zone of complete impunity in conflict-affected areas.

A genuine commitment from the government, with a multi-faceted and coordinated approach, is needed to challenge social attitudes and deliver timely justice – and this must be accompanied by laws specifically designed to address the communal dimensions of sexual violence, not just its individual criminal manifestations.

The case for gender-sensitive communal violence laws 🔗

What would a gender-sensitive legal framework for communal violence actually look like? Several elements are essential.

Recognition of sexual violence as a communal weapon 🔗

A dedicated law must explicitly recognise that rape and sexual assault during communal conflicts are not simply individual criminal acts but forms of group-targeted violence – analogous to international legal frameworks that treat systematic sexual violence as a crime against humanity or a war crime. This recognition would shift the evidentiary and prosecutorial framework, allowing courts to assess the collective and political character of communal sexual violence rather than reducing it to case-by-case individual prosecutions.

Special provisions for survivor support and rehabilitation 🔗

Women survivors of communal violence face compounded needs: immediate medical care including sexual and reproductive health services, psychosocial support, safe shelter, legal aid, and long-term economic rehabilitation. While India operates over 800 One-Stop Centres providing medical aid, legal aid, temporary shelter, and psychosocial counselling, these services are not specifically tailored to the context of communal violence. Survivors in conflict-affected areas are often physically cut off from these services at exactly the moments they need them most. A gender-sensitive communal violence law must mandate dedicated, mobile, and accessible survivor support structures in conflict zones.

Accountability for state actors 🔗

One of the most serious gaps in India’s legal framework is the absence of strong accountability mechanisms for state actors – police officers, government officials, and political leaders – who enable or participate in communal violence against women. The Bilkis Bano case illustrated this: the case raised profound questions about the state’s role in enabling and then failing to prosecute sexual violence during the 2002 Gujarat riots. A gender-sensitive framework must include clear provisions for accountability of public servants who fail to protect women during communal conflicts.

Feminist input in policymaking 🔗

A feminist approach to GBV policymaking would put an analytical lens on gender norms and centre prevention alongside punishment. This means involving women’s rights organisations, survivor groups, and feminist legal scholars in drafting any legislation on communal violence. It also means training law enforcement in gender-sensitive procedures, ensuring that women officers are available to record testimonies from sexual violence survivors, and building a legal culture that treats survivors as rights-holders rather than as objects of communal shame.

Gender-disaggregated data collection 🔗

The UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women defines gender-based violence as any act resulting in physical, sexual or psychological harm, including threats, coercion, or deprivation of liberty in public or private life. Yet India consistently lacks reliable, gender-disaggregated data on violence during communal conflicts. Without this data, the extent of sexual violence in communal contexts remains invisible. Any serious legal framework must mandate the systematic collection and public reporting of gender-disaggregated data during and after communal violence incidents.

Moving beyond silence 🔗

The violence that women endure during communal conflicts is not a private tragedy or a side effect of religious tension. It is a deliberate, structured, and gendered form of warfare – one that the law has consistently failed to name, address, or punish adequately. Standard IPC provisions were not designed for this context. The 2005 Communal Violence Bill was never passed. The Bilkis Bano case ended with convicted perpetrators walking free. This is not a series of isolated failures: it is a systemic pattern of legal invisibility that leaves women in conflict zones without protection, justice, or redress.

The path forward requires more than tougher punishment clauses tacked onto existing laws. It requires a dedicated, gender-sensitive legislative framework that recognises sexual violence in communal contexts as a distinct category of crime, holds collective and state actors accountable, mandates survivor-centred support, and treats women as full rights-bearing citizens – not as symbols of communal honour whose suffering is incidental to the real political story. Conflict situations and communal violence see the systematic use of sexual violence against women, and the law must respond with equal system and seriousness.

What do you think? If sexual violence during communal conflicts is widely recognised as organised and deliberate, why do you think it continues to be prosecuted – when it is prosecuted at all – as ordinary individual crime rather than as a collective, politically motivated act? And what would genuine accountability look like for state actors who enable communal sexual violence rather than prevent it?

References

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2. https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii99/articles/manali-desai-gendered-violence-and-india-s-body-politic
3. https://www.orfonline.org/research/the-case-for-a-feminist-approach-to-gender-based-violence-policymaking-in-india
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