Public Secrets of Law: Rape Trials in India. By Pratiksha Baxi. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2014. 434 pp. 1,150.00, $59.95, cloth.

• Date: 01 June 2015
• Published date: 01 June 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lasr.12142

Book Reviews

Jinee Lokaneeta, Editor

Public Secrets of Law: Rape Trials in India. By Pratiksha Baxi. New Delhi:

Oxford UniversityPress, 2014. 434 pp. 1,150.00, $59.95,cloth.

Reviewed by Durba Mitra, Department of History, Fordham

University

In the aftermath of the brutal gang rape in Delhi in 2012 and the

international scrutiny of Indian rape culture that followed, protests

against sexual violence quickly turned to the law as the primary site

of reform. But what are the possibilities and limits of law in address-

ing the issue of sexual violence in India today? In its detailed analysis

of rape cases, forensic medical practice, and the working of criminal

courts, Pratiksha Baxi’s Public Secrets of Law is a remarkable study of

the public life of rape in Indian trial courts. As one of the first com-

prehensive studies of the working of criminal courts in contemporary

India, PublicSecretsofLawgives critical insights about the nature of

the Indian criminal court that extend beyond cases of rape. The

detailed ethnography demonstrates the contingent and highly sub-

jective process of decision making by legal authorities in the adjudica-

tion of rape cases in local courts. She marks through her case studies

thehighlyperformativenatureofpowerincourtsinIndiatoday.

The introduction situates her study in relation to comparative

ethnographic work on the law and a growing critical literature on

law in postcolonial India. Baxi argues that the rape trials reinforce

deeply violent “phallocentric notions of ‘justice’” in a performance

of the “public secret” of rape in Indian trial courts. Baxi’s study is

based on extensive archival and ethnographic work conducted in

the city of Ahmedabad, Gujarat from the late 1990s. The location

of Baxi’s study is key, the highly volatile city of Ahmedabad,

defined by communal violence in 1992 and 2002 that resulted in

horrific acts of sexual violence committed against minority com-

munities in Gujarat. Baxi’s introduction incorporates her own

experiences of patriarchal hierarchy, sexual harassment, and even

her violation at the hands of a judge, who describes how women’s

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