The present paper aims at analyzing the inevitable relationship of patriarchal
impunity with counterpublic in India with reference to Onaatah of the Earth (2017) by
Paulami Duttagupta. It is apparent that much of the discourse on counterpublic
emphasizes on either countering the existing state agencies as mentioned by
Nancy Frazer where she critiques the exclusionary practices of bourgeois public
sphere labeling the process as undemocratic or advocating locational counterpublic
to uplift the subalterns to establish democracy discussed by Kanika Batra. However,
not much has been discussed about the exclusion of discourses critiquing impunity
which forms an essential background to establish a correlation between patriarchal
impunity and the counterpublic. Thus, the paper attempts to examine bourgeois
public sphere mainly as a patriarchal discursive arena disseminating and
strengthening the idea of impunity granted, especially in cases of sexual violence
within the framework of Habermas’s public sphere. The study also focuses on how
the novel Onaatah of the Earth acts as a counterpublic to undermine or neutralize
the impunity by addressing issues related to gender sensitivity bringing them
forth not only in discursive space but in activism too.