This book shows how 1947 marked the beginning of a history of politicized animosity associated with the differing ideas of “India” held by communities and in regions on one hand, and by the political–military Indian state on the other. Assembling literary, historiographic, performative, and visual representations of gendered violence against men and women, the book establishes that cultural expressions do not just follow violence but determine its very contours, and interrogates the gendered scripts underwriting the violence originating in the contested visions of what “India” means. Ambitious and ranging across disciplines, the book offers both an overview of and nuanced new perspectives on the ways caste, identity, and class complicate representations of violence, and how such representations shape our understandings of both violence and India.