“Are you a man?”: Performing Naked Protest in India

This article examines the feminist potential and political risks of a theatrical mode of protest staged by women in India, namely, the deliberate and public exposure of naked female bodies as a gesture of defiance against the violence of the Indian state. I examine literary, theatrical, documentary, and political representations of such naked protests in India, tracing how they draw from and reconstitute a wider cultural repertoire around women’s nakedness that shapes their meaning and impact as critiques of patriarchal violence. I also consider the gendered logics through which each of them attempts to rescript the patriarchal terms underwriting the violence of the state. I argue that naked protest does deviate from the hegemonic norms of feminine shame that render women violable—yet in particular framings, the gesture also risks reinscribing a chivalrous ideal of masculinity in ways that should give feminists some pause. I conclude that the eventual success of naked protests as a viable mode of women’s protest in India should be gauged not only in terms of their immediate reception and outcome but also in terms of the gendered scripts that they rewrite or reinforce. Moving away from a false dichotomy of protective or dominative masculinity implicit in some of these protests, I conclude that an ongoing deconstruction of the gender binary is integral to any feminist critique of violence.