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Everytime you draw a naked woman to talk about rape, especially caste rape, you make it more about the woman’s body and it’s subsequent sexualisation, than you do about power, when we know that rape is not about sex, it’s about power and enforcing that power.
Art like this showcases women as vulnerable and as victims that need to be ‘saved’ and hence excuses the brahminical patriarchy from the gruesomeness of its violence. It perpetuates the idea that women have no autonomy instead of emphasising on the fact that the caste system and
the patriarchy hand in hand infringe on the autonomy of Dalits, especially Dalit women. And to wrap the tri-colour... This country has failed it’s Dalits time and again. No UC person gets to pat their own back with the tri-colour.
Read this article by Omayeli Arenyeka about creative saviour complex and doing good as a creative person: https://thecreativeindependent.com/guides/how-to-think-differently-about-doing-good-as-a-creative-person/
To put it simply, you must ask yourself everytime you choose to draw someone else in a state of vulnerability, of depicting violence, how you would feel If someone drew you like that? How would you feel if that happened to you and people made imagery about it.
Is that how you’d want to be depicted and remembered? To be shown your trauma again and again? For that to be shown to your loved ones? I think not.
