Gendered Legacies of Empire: Law and Feminicide in Postcolonial Pakistan

Abstract: This paper uses the concept of feminicide, developed by Latin American feminists, to illuminate patterns of gendered governance in colonial India and postcolonial Pakistan. We argue that the British Empire in India was built on the structural subordination of women, the normalization of gendered violence, and the devaluation of women’s lives. We trace the long trajectory of state complicity in gendered violence back to British colonial legislation that extended male control over women’s bodies, sexual agency, and autonomy. The Indian Penal Code of 1860 created an exception to murder due to “grave and sudden provocation,” which was (and is) commonly used by men who killed women in colonial and postcolonial South Asia to evade punishment. Unmasking the violence of law that diminished the criminal culpability of men who murdered women in colonial India, the article argues that the legally sanctioned killing of women in Pakistan persists, in part, because the postcolonial judiciary applies a hybrid mix of colonial and Islamic laws. The colonial license to kill women has been strengthened by Islamic laws that have intermixed with rather than displaced colonial law, absolving the state of its duty to protect women and contributing to the enduring pandemic of feminicide in Pakistan today.