Structural and Direct Violence, Mukhtaran Mai: CSS 2019

Exam question: CSS 2019: Explain the structural and direct forms of violence against women in Pakistani society by highlighting the case study of Mukhtaran Mai.

Syllabus area: Section IX: Case Studies of CSS Gender Studies.

Short answer

Direct violence and structural violence are two floors of the same building: the visible act above, the invisible permission below.

Outline for quick revision

Introduction
Direct violence: definition and forms
Structural violence: definition and features
The triangle diagram
The case study of Mukhtaran Mai: the facts (2002)
The legal journey (2002-2011)
Reading the case: where the direct violence lies
Reading the case: where the structural violence lies
The lesson of the case for Pakistani society
Conclusion

1. Introduction

Gender-Based Violence is violence directed against a person on the basis of gender, defined by the UN DEVAW as “any act of gender-based violence that results in physical, sexual, or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion, or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or private life.” This violence exists in two forms that must never be confused. Direct violence is the act we can see, the rape, the slap, the acid. Structural violence is the machinery we cannot see, the jirga that orders the act, the police that shrug at it, the court that forgives it. The case of Mukhtaran Mai is the single most instructive case in Pakistan’s history precisely because it contains both forms in one story: fourteen men committed or ordered the visible crime, and an entire invisible structure then spent nine years protecting them.

2. Direct Violence: Definition and Forms

Direct violence is visible, intentional, and attributable to a person or persons, we know who committed it and who suffered it. It occurs as identifiable acts, and it includes all four forms of violence taught in this subject: sexual violence (rape, gang rape, harassment, incest), psychological violence (threats, blame, gaslighting, isolation), economic violence (denied maintenance, snatched inheritance), and physical violence (beating, acid throwing, burning, honor killing). In every case of direct violence there is a hand, a victim, and an act connecting them.

3. Structural Violence: Definition and Features

Structural violence is invisible and depersonalized, there is no clear perpetrator, because it is built into the structures of society which show unequal power and unequal life chances. It is embedded in social, political and economic systems, and it operates through institutions rather than fists.

(a) Its defining features

Structural violence is invisible: it cannot be photographed the way a bruise can.
It has no clear perpetrator: no single person is doing it, which is why it is called depersonalized.
It is built into the structures of society: the tribunal, the police station, the courtroom, which show unequal power and unequal life chances.
It is contrasted with direct violence in one line: direct violence is visible, intentional and attributable to a person, while structural violence is invisible, depersonalized and attributable to no one, and therefore protected by everyone.

4. The Triangle Diagram

Draw a triangle in the answer. Label the small visible tip as DIRECT VIOLENCE and write beside it: sexual, psychological, economic, physical. Label the large hidden base as STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE and write beside it: jirga, police, judiciary, state, society. The diagram makes the answer’s thesis visual: the act we see is only the tip, and it stands on a base we do not see, remove the base, and the tip cannot stand.

5. The Case Study of Mukhtaran Mai: the Facts (2002)

On 22 June 2002, Mukhtaran Mai, a woman of about thirty, lived in the village of Meerwala, district Muzaffargarh, Southern Punjab.
Her younger brother, Abdul Shakoor, a boy of about twelve, was raped by three men of the locally powerful Mastoi clan.
To silence the boy, his rapists inverted the crime: Abdul Shakoor was falsely accused of illicit relations with Salma, a woman of the Mastoi clan.
A panchayat/jirga: a tribal council dominated by the powerful clan, sat to “settle” the matter.
Mukhtaran’s family proposed a lawful settlement, offering the marriage of Abdul Shakoor to Salma, but the powerful side refused and demanded instead that Mukhtaran Mai come and apologize before the gathering for her brother.
When she came to apologize, on the jirga’s own decision she was gang-raped, and she was then paraded naked through the village, and this was declared the “settlement,” the revenge that closed the matter.

6. The Legal Journey (2002-2011)

The case would have been buried, but the local cleric Maulana Abdul Razzaq condemned the crime in his Friday sermon, calling it oppression and a mockery of religion, and a journalist who heard the story published it.
International attention followed, pressure fell on the government, compensation of Rs. 500,000 was paid, and the case was registered under the Hudood Ordinance.
Fourteen men were nominated: the rapists and the jirga members together, on the principle that those who decided, stayed silent and watched are as guilty as those who acted.
The trial court (2002) sentenced six of the fourteen to death and released eight.
The Lahore High Court (2005) acquitted five of the six and gave one man life imprisonment, although, the offence being under the Hudood Ordinance, jurisdiction arguably lay with the Federal Shariat Court or the Supreme Court, not the High Court.
The Supreme Court took the case up and reheard it against the fourteen.
In its final decision of 2011, the Supreme Court released the others and convicted only one man, despite the fact that the semen of two men had been detected in the medical evidence.
The arithmetic of the journey must be stated in one sentence: a jirga-ordered gang rape, fourteen accused, biological proof of at least two rapists, and after nine years, from 2002 to 2011, one conviction, in a decision that cannot be challenged.

7. Reading the Case: Where the Direct Violence Lies

The direct violence is everything in the story with a visible hand behind it, and it spans all four forms at once.
The sexual violence is the rape of Abdul Shakoor and the gang rape of Mukhtaran Mai.
The physical and psychological violence is her naked parading through the village, a punishment designed to destroy the mind after the body.
The direct violence is fully attributable: the rapists have names, the jirga members have names, and the fourteen accused stood in a courtroom, which is precisely what makes this half of the case, in theory, punishable.

8. Reading the Case: Where the Structural Violence Lies

The jirga itself is a structure of violence: a parallel court of powerful men that treated a woman’s body as the currency of settlement, the rape was not lust but a public demonstration of which family held power.
The police and investigation apparatus belong to the structure: overwhelmingly male institutions that do not take a woman’s complaint seriously until a sermon and a headline force them to.
The judiciary’s journey is the structure at work: bail-and-acquittal at every level, a High Court hearing a case arguably outside its jurisdiction, and a final verdict that walked past the medical evidence of two men to convict only one.
The state’s role completes the structure: compensation money in place of protection, and pressure responding only to international shame rather than to the crime itself.
the features all apply: no single villain can be pointed at for the nine-year failure, it was invisible, depersonalized, with no clear perpetrator, because the failure was built into structures which show unequal power and unequal life chances, where every decision-maker at every stage was a man of the same power structure as the accused.
One practical lesson is evidence of the structure’s reach: a survivor must go to the hospital and complete her medical tests before washing, because forensic evidence is her only weapon, and yet in this case even the biological proof of two men produced only one conviction, which shows that the structure can defeat even perfect evidence.

9. The Lesson of the Case for Pakistani Society

The case proves the triangle: the gang rape (the tip) could be ordered, executed and celebrated only because the base, jirga, police, judiciary, state, stood beneath it.
It proves the power analysis of this subject: ~12 women are raped daily in Pakistan regardless of class and education, and violence on that scale is produced by structures, not by individual monsters.
It also proves that the structure is not unbreakable, because the case turned on two structural actors defecting from it, a cleric who condemned from the pulpit and a journalist who published, which shows that when institutions choose the victim over the power structure, the invisible base cracks.
Mukhtaran Mai’s own conduct completes the lesson: she survived, spoke, pursued the case for nine years and became an advocate, the living refutation of the “settlement” that was meant to silence her forever.

10. Conclusion

Direct violence and structural violence are two floors of the same building: the visible act above, the invisible permission below. The Mukhtaran Mai case is the perfect exhibit of both, a gang rape that fourteen identifiable men committed or ordered, standing on a structure of jirga, police, judiciary and state that spent nine years converting fourteen accused and the evidence of two rapists into a single conviction. The case therefore teaches the discipline’s hardest truth: Pakistan does not primarily have a criminal problem; it has a structural problem, and the criminals are merely its visible tip. Justice for Pakistani women will begin not when the next rapist is punished, but when the structure that protects him, the parallel court, the blaming officer, the forgiving bench, is itself dismantled, because the real deterrent has always been certainty of punishment.

References

UN DEVAW, the definition of gender-based violence (quoted verbatim).
The Mukhtaran Mai case (2002-2011), the case itself is the primary reference, from the jirga to the Supreme Court’s 2011 decision.
Aurat Foundation / class figures, ~12 women raped daily in Pakistan (hedge exact figures).

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Last updated: 2 November 2026.

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