ABSTRACT
This chapter, while discussing the philosophy of law, highlights the postmodern and feminist philosophy of law and its emancipatory dimensions. Furthermore, the chapter describes the emergence of law and the system of punishment in India against gender-based violence. From a postmodern and feminist perspective, it engages with the role of the state, governmentality, dilemmas of laws and welfare policies related to violence against gender. It argues that the law while acting as the yardstick of justice, on the one hand, provides impunity and, on the other hand, suffers from its own ambiguities and often acts with anomalies. The state policies hardly get translated adequately into action, and in the process, emancipatory intentions are curtailed. It further argues that subjection to violence by ineffective legal and state systems may not prevent the vulnerable gender in exercising agency. In such a situation, the survivors of sexual exploitation and victims of violence reacted, resisted and exercised their agency both sporadically, on a day-to-day basis, and also collectively.
