Mediating rape: the ‘Nirbhaya effect’ in the creative and digital arts

While reports of ‘Nirbhaya’ referring to the brutal gang rape of a young woman on a moving bus in Delhi 2012 have been prolific, less attention has been paid to other media and artistic representations on the subject. In this article, I consider how the atrocity has been mediated through multiple outlets in India as part of a reinvigorated aesthetics of grief, anger, critique and protest. Building on earlier feminist modes of artistic engagement and describing it as the ‘Nirbhaya effect’, I consider outlets such as online films, canvas art, posters, photography, murals, comic books, satirical skits, and ‘social experiments’ which continue unabated in India despite the state’s censorship of the BBC documentary on the issues raised, India’s Daughter. The creative outlets may be considered in terms of five overlapping registers: memorialisation, affirmative solidarity, ironic provocations, rescripting the master narrative, and sensationalization. Altogether, they indicate the many potentials and limitations of a violent wound in the social fabric channelled through the creative arts and digital media. Keywords: gender, rape and sexual violence, media, creative arts, digital media, representation