Author ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3277-0371

Date Available

8-3-2025

Year of Publication

2025

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

College

Arts and Sciences

Department/School/Program

Gender and Women's Studies

Faculty

Srimati Basu

Faculty

Carol Mason

Abstract

My doctoral research focuses on the violations of human and citizenship rights of women and religiously marginalized communities (based on religious differences) in the backdrop of right-wing movements in India. I assess the Hindu nationalist propaganda named “love jihad” to demonstrate the way it weaponizes religious exogamy. This propaganda legitimizes violence against Indian religious minorities and women as it claims that marriages between Hindu women and Muslim men are acts of terrorism against Hindus with the sole aim of increasing the Muslim population using Hindu women's bodies. I have used ethnographic research methods to explore the legal process of interfaith marriage and how anti-religious conversion law/s and anti-Islamic sentiments impact it. My research examines the various forms of violence that Indian women are experiencing at this juncture, including physical and emotional abuse inflicted by their own families, legal and institutional violence perpetrated by the state and judiciary, and the social violence resulting from cultural attitudes My research foregrounds the feminist argument about the centrality of sexuality to any nation and society’s organization, which makes women uniquely vulnerable in times of nationalist projects. I argue in this research that the contemporary violations of women’s rights in India are a classic example of how nationalist projects use women as signifiers of their community’s honor while simultaneously using their bodies to demarcate differences and reproduce nation, religion, race, and caste through violent means.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.13023/etd.2025.298

Funding Information

  • Policy Studies on Violence Against Women (PSVAW) Graduate Fellowship 2024-2025, University of Kentucky

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