This chapter reconceptualises approaches to understanding and interpreting gendered violence in the Rāmāyaṇa, one of the two most significant narrative religious texts in Hinduism. This is done through extending Rene Girard’s construction of sacral violence as a tool for social cleansing, as articulated inβ Violence and the Sacred (1972), outside of its traditional application to acts of physical ritual violence. Acts of social exclusion and psychological harm inflicted upon the Rāmāyaṇa’s female protagonist, Sītā are acts of sacral violence which serve to reinforce and validate traditionalist structures of gender binaries and social roles. In doing so, the discussion extracts personal violence from the “domestic” sphere which has traditionally shielded gendered violence against women from scrutiny and deconstruction, and re-envisions it as an embedded social malaise protected and reinforced by the Rāmāyaṇa and other influential religious and cultural texts. Two key questions are addressed. Firstly, to what extent might the process of social exclusion as portrayed in the Rāmāyaṇa fit the overall construction of sacral violence within Girard’s methodological framework? Secondly, what are the implications for broadening a definition of sacral violence in applications of this framework, particularly regarding gendered violence against women.