Religious Fundamentalism and the Dangers of Identity Politics
06/12/2007
Anita
Ratnam
When
Narendra Modi invited Taslima to live in safety in Gujarat it raised many
eyebrows. Yes, on the face of it, it seems hilarious and incredulous that a
staunch Hindutva leader like Modi could be talking about the safety of a Muslim
Woman. After all the engineering of mass killings and rapes and daily
terrorising of Muslim women in Gujarat, here is Modi now inviting Taslima to live there! Not just
Modi, but the BJP national leaders too have been speaking about Taslima’s
rights, safety and urging the UPA at the Centre to give her citizenship.
Suddenly her criticism of Islamic fundamentalism and the Sangh’s outright
hatred for Muslims seemed to have converged in a ludicrous moment. But are
these not very different stances that emerge from two very disparate notions of
identity?
While Taslima’s writings (sometimes poignantly and sometimes rather shoddily) highlight the authoritarianism and the anti-women leanings among Islamic Fundamentalists, she is not disowning Islam or Bangladesh. Rather, she is questioning the way the religion has been interpreted in Bangladeshi society and polity. Somehow, a lot of the discussion in the last few weeks has been on Taslima, the writer, and the writer’s freedom of expression. Yet what is at stake is not merely a writer’s freedom, but also an individuals right to question her “religious” community and a citizen’s right to critique the state.
From the Taslima incident ( and Imrana and Shah Bano’s) it seems that for hardliners, membership or acceptance in the community is dependent on absolute surrender to community norms as articulated by its leaders. Is dissent then seen as a sin and total allegiance a virtue? Surely this is untenable for any community as it could spell doom, stagnation and an unhealthy obsession with its supremacy or righteousness.
While Islamic hardliner’s intolerance towards dissent from within the Islamic community is currently making news, let us not forget how Hindu Fundamentalists have treated dissent from within- be it artists, film makers or others. Even more important is the systematic co-option of “Hindu” women into a basically patriarchal notion of Hindu Rashtra, which never makes the headlines. While Modi is busy making mileage out of Islamic Fundamentalism, we can hardly forget that Hindutva’s co-option of women into its brand of Hindu Nationalism is even more lethal.
Not only are large numbers of women active as members of Shiv Sena, Sevika Samiti, other Sangh bodies and scores of affiliated smaller organisations, their orientation towards women’s rights and democracy have been contorted in such a way that they even protest against efforts that seek to highlight women’s oppression in the name of Hinduism. The women who were out on the streets in Benares opposing Deepa Mehta’s film on widows seemed oblivious to the fact that a film like “water” was meant to depict how thousands of women are being violated and marginalised in the name of culture. What power there is in such co-option that women defend their own destruction!
Hindutva ideologues take great pride in the fact that women have been out on the streets building a new Hindu Rashtra, championing Hindu women's duties and honour, establishing a Hindu community identity through an aggressive religiosity, sometimes defying the “state.” They boast that women of all castes have participated in the shilanyas movement to collect bricks for the Ram temple at Ayodhya and have been active as kar sevaks. In Gujarat they took part as arsonists and even incited men to rape and murder Muslim women and children!
While Hindutva leaders might project such public militancy as a sign of emancipation of women, its difficult to really buy that. Firstly, Hindutva like any other nationalism is basically a patriarchal project where gender roles are differentiated in terms of duty vis a vis nation – male protect territories, women belong to the community and reproduce- nations, people, culture, and purity. Patriarchy is maintained through nation building; gender differences are justified and hierarchies among communities and “nations” gets naturalised.
Secondly,
without the references to Muslim “barbarism” and sworn enmity, the Hindu
nationalist project would loose much of its moorings as it also presents a
gendered community identity- with Bharat Mata as divine mother, Hindu Community
as feminine, tolerant, and victimised and Muslim community as aggressive, rapacious,
and masculine! As a result of such construction, Hindu women have been conditioned into thinking that threats to their
dignity and honour come from “outside,” i.e. Muslim men, thus externalising the
enemy and dismissing any problems that Hindu could women face from Hindu
Men. There is a focussing on “invasions”
as processes that reduced women’s status or humiliated/emasculated the Hindu male
and justified restrictions on women- cleverly legitimising patriarchal
tendencies as necessary in the face of “external” threat.
Not only does such conditioning prevent women from acknowledging domestic or intra community issues, it projects Hindu women as homogenous and “united” category to dismiss differences of class or exploitation in the name of caste.
To make matters worse, the use of iconography in the construction of womanhood has been replete with powerful imagery ridden with tensions and multiple meanings. Durga, Sita, Ashtabula, and Rani of Jhansi have all been used to tell Hindu women that they can integrate piety with the role of the warrior, be both submissive wife and devoted mother at home and fierce warrior outside by transforming political tasks into religious missions, and taking on violent roles alongside men -without threat to their femininity!
So, when Modi made his invitation to Taslima, he was trying portray Hindutva forces
as her friends, while Islamic fundamentalists had turned against her. Yet what
is left unsaid is the commonalities between Muslim and Hindu fundamentalists.
Both are intolerant towards any criticism even from insiders, both do not hesitate
to eliminate outsiders who are seen as being critical, both treat women as property of a community, both have coopted
women in the name of culture and identity and both are threats to democracy.
Healthy debates about gender issues, economic equality, cultural diversity, and democracy even within the broad categories of “Hindu” or “Muslim” are much needed today. Such a process would strengthen moderate and secular voices to not only build bridges across religions, but would also open spaces to address oppressions and dogmas within. Instead, what we have is the worst form of identity politics where there is too little of intelligent critique and too little tolerance of dissent. Voicing discontent about oppression or speaking about human rights issues, becomes so very difficult as it invites death, ostracism or the loss of whatever little dignity is left. Giving in to the “community” even at the cost of losing one’s autonomy, curtailing speech/writing or being silent about one’s own desires then seems the only way out. So maybe its time to recognise that the problem in such identity politics is not a conflict between fanatics and secularists or between patriarchal forces and feminists, but between two ideas of nation- authoritarian and democratic.
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