Women and the invisible gender terrain of armed resistance in India

The gender dimension of armed conflict is marginal in the scholarship on Peace, Conflict, and Security Studies and requires further engagement through a feminist lens. It disrupts the notion that participation in these movements helps women escape patriarchy, and raises questions about the ‘ambivalent emancipation’ in India’s ‘Red Corridors.’ Through a historical and contextual reading of various resistance movements in South India and West Bengal, this paper explores how women navigate and negotiate varied socio-cultural and gender norms around women’s participation in the conflict. This reading is beyond the notion of women in conflict as passive participants or victims.