Devi Khadka: a woman’s fight against conflict-related sexual violence
Kaveri Qureshi reflects on the documentary film Devi - screened at the University last month - about the life of Devi Khadka: rebel warrior, mother and survivor of sexual violence from Nepal’s civil war.
Last month, on February 27th, GENDER.ED, PeaceRep and the Global Justice Academy held a closed educational screening – ahead of its UK premiere – of Devi, a multi-award winning documentary about the life of Devi Khadka. Scenes from the film, and issues raised during the Q&A we held afterwards with the director, Subina Shrestha, are still running through my head.
Nepal’s civil war ended, after a decade of conflict, in 2006 with the overthrowing of the monarchy and the establishment of a people’s republic. A third of the rebels who fought in the war were women. One of their number was Devi Khadka. In 1997, 17-year-old Devi was arrested, accused of being a rebel, tortured and raped in custody by multiple perpetrators. Devi recounts this story in her own words in the film. Speaking what is for so many survivors unspeakable, Devi’s narrative was reminiscent of the analysis of authors like Cynthia Enloe, which I teach on gender-based violence in the postgraduate course gender and development. For the perpetrators, violating her body was a tool for punishing male rebel leaders, to whom she was seen as belonging.
The rebels revealed her publicly as a rape victim. On film, one of the leaders explains this choice as an effort to pre-empt the state’s co-opting of her story – to deter women from joining the rebels – and enfold the story of her violation to their own cause. But the political mileage both sides tried to draw, left Devi the public face of a shameful taboo, ostracised by those around her.
Devi describes herself as mentally disturbed for a long time after this. But somehow she converted her grief into rage, decided to – in her words – avenge her torturers, and joined the rebels. She rose through the ranks and even served as a member of the parliament when the war ended. But the party betrayed her bitterly on the issue of justice for sexual violence survivors. The peace process’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission focussed largely on crimes experienced by men. Slow-moving, out of some 63,000 war crimes recorded, only 3700 had been investigated by the early 2020s. Only 314 rape cases were ever recorded, and these files hadn’t even been opened, let alone any justice served. Furthermore, Nepal’s statute of limitations for reporting rape prohibited the registration of new cases, so it looked to be that 314 would be the final number.
Devi found this intolerable. She travelled around Nepal talking to survivors, building and unifying their voices. These women recounted testimonies not only of wartime sexual violence, but also of repudiation by their spouses and their families. Thousands of women came to Devi with their testimonies. They formed an organisation called The Undefeated. Finally, in August 2024 Devi Khadka saw Nepal’s government pass a key law on conflict-related sexual violence, amending the Truth and Reconciliation Act so as to bring Nepal in line with international standards for reporting rape. Now, Devi and others in her organisation are campaigning to make sure the law is enforced.
It became clear during the Q&A with director Subina Shrestha afterwards, that the documentary not only captures Devi Khadka’s fight for justice but rather, the process of making the film gave Devi further momentum. The idea for the film began when Subina, a journalist, met Devi for a news story and the interview left them both unsettled; with a sense that they both needed to do more to secured justice for survivors. Intriguingly, Devi gave Subina her diary from the time of the civil war. Out of these germinal conversations, Devi’s convictions grew and she began to amplify her work with survivors. Devi puts down the incredible impact she has had in the last five years, especially in the 2024 legal reform, in part to the process of making the film and to the support of the director.
However, another way in which the film changed Devi’s life is that it forced her to confront, anew, her experiences of violence. As shown in one scene, as part of the film-making Devi went to parliament and there, a member of parliament told her some facts about her case – about what she had experienced in police custody – which she had erased from memory. The revelations pitched her deeply back into mental illness and she needed to return to therapy. Devi and Subina decided to take the therapist with them on their journeys across the country to meet survivors, so that all who spoke out could have the capacity to address their trauma with a skilled professional.
On the sensitive question of re-traumatisation, in the Q&A, I asked Subina Shrestha about her choices in making and composing the film, about what she had done to give ownership to those represented, over their story and how they were represented. The film depicts a lot about Devi Khadka’s family and especially, her late-teenage daughter. It was impactful to learn that these parts of the film were instigated by Devi, out of her concerns about inter-generational trauma.
I was concerned during the Q&A, and in writing this blog, not to enable a civilisational discourse locating “gender violence and its perpetrators… in savage, racialized distant places and others”, as Lila Abu Lughod et al. write in The cunning of gender violence (p.4). Because of this, I asked Subina to elaborate upon the ways in which Devi Khadka uses aspects of local Nepali culture to build resistance. In one scene, Devi uses her own name, which means goddess, to build momentum among survivors, telling them “you are all devis”. At the same time, she speaks of the need to “challenge our society”. Where rapists feel protected by the particular culture of this context – are confident that women will not speak out because they would rather die than face this shame – surely justice demands more than jail sentences and government apologies, but rather a broader dismantling of patriarchy, starting with women’s roles as cultural standard-bearers.
Author Bio:
Kaveri Qureshi is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Social and Political Science, and an Associate Director of GENDER.ED.