COMMENTARY Economic & Political Weekly EPW august 17, 2013 vol xlviiI no 33 13 and living standards possible and in turn augment domestic demand. 1 China has been following such a pat- tern, although in an unbalanced way. Having gone through a phase in which it has relied on labour-intensive manufac- turing exports to create employment, build surpluses and improve its produc- tion system, it now faces the necessity to augment domestic demand by improv- ing wages and living standards across its length and breadth. Amartya Sen has insisted that growth is a means towards valuable human ends, not an end in itself. To this we can add the emphasis that inclusion is means as well as end. Note 1 I am grateful to Vittorio Valli for his insights in this regard. G Arunima (arunima.gopinath@gmail.com) teaches at the Centre for Women’s Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Every Woman’s Right to Say ‘No’ G Arunima This article is an attempt to understand the interrelated triad of love, masculinity and sexuality in the context of the recent “love crime” episode at the Jawaharlal Nehru University. The naturalising of violence and masculinised love is not “exceptional” anymore, and the woman’s autonomy and right to say “no” have been subverted by their fear for safety. O n 31 July 2013, a student at the School of Languages, Jawa- harlal Nehru University ( JNU), brutally attacked a woman classmate with an intent to murder. He subse- quently killed himself publicly by drink- ing poison. This incident, as everyone knows by now, happened in broad day- light, in-between classes, within the space of a classroom. It appears that there were classmates and others who might have witnessed this brutal act, possibly partially. Needless to say it has thrown the University community into a state of shock, making many of us furi- ous and sad, and, at least some young undergraduate women students, fearful. What has worsened the situation unfor- tunately is that the media is rife with un- substantiated reports, adding to the al- ready heightened state of tension. Clearly there are very urgent and grave issues facing JNU at the moment. Even as I write, discussions are under way amongst different groups – students, faculty, non-teaching staff and adminis- tration – on campus. Yet, like many oth- ers who have responded to this incident have observed, JNU is not an exceptional space. Like other parts of the city, and country, it is a microcosm, one that re- flects – in relation to the issue of violence against women – all shades and forms of patriarchal excess, including brutality. Normalising Violence At a panel discussion in JNU on 14 Febru- ary 2013 that brought together students, faculty and members of the administ- ration, participants spoke eloquently about the need to break the culture of silence regarding violence against women on campus. 1 The panel expressed deep concern about the manner in which sex- ual harassment on campus is normal- ised, and identified the myriad contexts (hostels and classrooms, amongst others) where such violence occurs. Students underscored the urgent need to expose and contest, amongst others, the contin- uing forms of intimate partner violence on campus. As panelist Pratiksha Baxi clearly stated in the course of this dis- cussion, “When love was characterised as rape and rape is disguised as love by laws and policies, violence is normalised and sexual agency denied” (Eswaran and Ponniah 2013). Barely five months after this meeting, we are faced with a horrific act of public violence against a woman student. Even as many of us struggle to make sense of it, and engage with this in different ways – from discussions in classrooms, hos- tels, dhabas, and elsewhere, to written responses in print and electronic media – it is patently clear that, however bru- tal, this too is not “exceptional” violence. Even a quick glance at the news over just the last few months reveals the extraor- dinarily large instances countrywide of highly vicious attacks against women, in what are often reported as “love crimes”. These take all manner of forms, from acts of privatised violence to innumera- ble instances of public aggression, of which acid attacks appear to be the most common. Strangely, despite repeated queries by journalists and others in the wake of the recent campus attack – from whether JNU is “too free” (read, promiscuous women inviting violence) to whether it is “completely unsafe” (read, the need to increase security and police sexual behaviour) – very few appear to be commenting about the remarkable ele- ments of continuity of this incident