https://doi.org/10.67147/literariness.v1i3.003
“Shaadi License Nahin Hai”: Chiraiya and the Anatomy of Conjugal Coercion
DR NISHA THOMJI VARGHESE
Associate Professor
Department of English
St. Albert’s College (Autonomous)
Ernakulam, Kerala
https://orcid.org/0009-0000-3411-6720
Abstract: This article offers a feminist literary and cultural analysis of Chiraiya (2026), a six-episode Hindi-language web series directed by Shashant Shah and written by Divy Nidhi Sharma. Drawing on the theoretical frameworks of feminist critics, the article argues that Chiraiya constitutes a sustained critique of the structural conditions that make marital rape possible, invisible, and legally unpunishable in contemporary India. The series interrogates the legal architecture of impunity, the camouflaging function of educated patriarchy, the genealogy of conjugal entitlement, the dynamics of internalised patriarchy, and the political possibilities of female solidarity. The article situates Chiraiya within the broader tradition of feminist cultural production, contending that its most significant achievement is its insistence on naming conjugal sexual violence without euphemism, and on locating feminist resistance where the law will not go.
Keywords: marital rape, feminist theory, patriarchy, female solidarity, bodily autonomy, postcolonial feminism
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