The Veiled War: State, Patriarchy, and Domestic Violence in South Punjab (1980-2000)

• ZAIN UL ABDIN

  Independent Scholar.

  Author

This essay investigates the entrenchment of domestic violence against women in South Punjab, Pakistan, during the pivotal decades of 1980 to 2000. We propose that the escalation of such violence was not a mere aggregation of private, familial disputes but rather the direct and intended consequence of a state-driven project of legal and social engineering. This project, initiated under General Zia-ul-Haq's regime, institutionalized gender-based discrimination through a series of laws, most notably the 1979 Hudood Ordinances and the 1984 Qanun-e-Shahadat. These legal instruments devalued female testimony, criminalized victims of sexual assault, and fortified patriarchal control over women's bodies and autonomy. We argue that the subsequent democratic governments of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, hampered by political instability and conservative alliances, fundamentally failed to dismantle this discriminatory architecture. This state-level failure allowed pre-existing feudal and patriarchal norms in South Punjab to flourish, creating an environment of impunity for perpetrators. Drawing on a methodological triangulation of legal history, literary analysis of Tahira Iqbal's Neeli Bar, and qualitative interview testimonies from women in the region, this study demonstrates how the convergence of state policy, economic dependency, and socio-cultural tradition created a "perfect storm" of oppression. The findings reveal a landscape where violence was normalized, women's access to justice was systematically obstructed, and the silence of victims was enforced through both legal and social mechanisms. This research reframes domestic violence in the region not as a cultural inevitability but as a calculated outcome of modern state power.

• pdf

Copyright (c) 2025 ZAIN UL ABDIN (Author)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.