Women in Hindutva Agenda:
Construction of Womanhood, Role of their Women’s Wings, and Issues for
Women’s Empowerment
Anita Ratnam
1. INTRODUCTION
When women are out on the streets building a new Hindu Rashtra, championing Hindu women's duties and honour,
vilifying the Muslim, defying the
“secular state”, can such
militancy be understood as emancipatory for women? As women work alongside men, increasingly take on traditional “male” roles and transform
personal faith into a public duty to engage in a nationalistic political project,
is such a change to be understood as
liberation for women? Or does the
patriarchal underpinning of the project
itself undermine these efforts
and suggest that such agency is merely cooption into a patriarchal agenda?
In the face of women’s active participation
in the protests against the making of the film “Water”, that sought to depict
issues facing widows in Brindavan,
several new questions have emerged. Why are women against something that seeks to speak
out about women's rights and expose
women's oppressions? Why is a film on the
plight of widows being perceived
as an attack on “Hindu” culture and religion? Why are women out on the streets,
belligerently, vociferously protecting a system that is violent and cruel to
women themselves? That widowhood
itself has been a site for
construction of Hindu identity in the
debate between the reformists and revivalists during the colonial period, was underscored fifty years after independence. This time,
with women fighting, alongside men,
to establish a cultural identity, obfuscating any discussion on the
rights and aspirations of women.
Examples of women's active participation in public
demonstrations of “Hindu”
identity include the large numbers of women who were part of the shilanyas
movement to collect bricks for the Ram temple at Ayodhya, women as kar sevaks ,
women as arsonists and women inciting men to rape and murder Muslim women and
children in Gujarat. The large numbers
of women members of Shiv Sena, Sevika Samiti and other Sangh
bodies and of the scores of smaller affiliated
organisations, has not only posed a serious challenge to the women's
movement, but has raised certain
critical questions about women's empowerment as well.
Hindutva
as Hindu nationalism has constructed and reconstructed womanhood,
has sought to define the
Hindu man and woman (and indeed the
Muslim man and woman) in
myriad ways. In constructing the Hindu woman, Hindutva has circumscribed her roles, shaped her self image and delineated her identity through a range of discursive
discourses. Intrinsic to this,
has been Hindutva constructions of masculinity and femininity, prescriptions on the social relations between men and women in the Hindu community, and the
representation of Hindu community
as Hindu nation. In this paper I attempt to examine Hindutva construction of womanhood
and explore the role of their women’s
wings. On the basis of these two areas and their linkages, I
then raise issues/questions that
emerge for women’s empowerment in the context of identity based
politics.
Nationalisms,
nations and patriarchy
Before proceeding to unravel the
specificities of how Hindu nationalism constructs
woman hood and shapes women’s
agency, it is important to underscore
that all nations and nationalisms
have patriarchal agendas. Nation itself is a contested
concept, whose legitimacy, natural-ness and veracity
have been repeatedly questioned (
Nandi,1994, Anderson, 2006). And
there is now a
considerable body work on the nation as
a gendered entity - a notion
of a shared “motherland”
that invokes specific roles for men and women with gender, community and nations as
social constructs that form and define each other ( Ivekovic & Mostov,2002). Not only are gender roles differentiated in terms of duty vis a vis
nation, but gender has lent its
terminology and conceptual
framework to the construct of nation[1]. 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 by
forcing the male-female binary in nation building .Women need men to
protect them –men go to war to protect women and motherland. Gender differences
are thus justified and hierarchies among communities /nations
“naturalised”. This is not to suggest
that women have been passive subjects
(in nationalist struggles) upon whom
men's wills are perpetually imposed, but
have rather been active
and consensual participants in fundamentalist movements whose agency is circumscribed within patriarchal bounds.
(Claudia Koonz1987) [2].
Feminist critiques of nationalisms
have argued that nationalisms are legitimations of patriarchy,
with some scholars going so far as
to describe war as “armed patriarchy”.
Hindutva
as a political patriarchal project
Hindutva, with its agenda of transforming the traditional religious identity into a modern political one, and constructing religious
community as a sovereign nation is
nationalism in practice. If all
nationalisms are legitimations of patriarchy, it is imperative to recognize therefore that Hindutva
it is not a religious project, but a nation
building exercise.
Hindutva ideologues writings and speeches have revealed a nationalism constructed with India as divine mother. The metaphor of mother - a feminine life giver and care taker and controller who is also vulnerable as a woman to invasion, intrusion, domination- by a male s from the enemy nation is deployed to construct the mother land, Bharatmata. A super mother who demands loyalty, devotion and service from sons who are warriors to protect her and daughters who nurture and reproduce that nation.
The Hindu nation is also counter posed to the Muslim nation/community with two
racially defined nations at war ( Aggarwal 1995)[3].
Without the references to Muslim
invasion, humiliation, barbarism, and sworn enmity, the Hindu nationalist
project would loose much of its
moorings. Yet Muslims
are as much subjects of anxiety,
as they are objects of envy. The communal
problem therefore needs
to be understood not as a
conflict between fanatics and
secularists, but a conflict between two notions of nationalism- authoritarian and democratic.
2.
Hindutva and constructions of womanhood
With
the Hindutva agenda established,
we can move on to its ideological
underpinnings and explore
its implicit assumptions about
women and womanhood. Since definition of Hindu women in the Hindutva outpourings is located in a
constructed past which reduces
the “past” to the Vedic age and invokes
the manusmriti as its subliminal
text, it is to these that invocations that we need to address ourselves. Kumkum Roy and Paola Bacchetta have studied
Rig Veda and the manusmriti which
are used by Hindutva votaries to claim
sanctity and antiquity for
contemporary practice[4].
In the process of mythification,
(a)historical continuities are
evoked and Vedic parallels are invoked. What clearly emerges from their works is
that composition and preservation of tradition, as well as the definition and transmission of learning
were gendered processes,
reinforcing male/patriarchal
perspectives and gendered differences[5]
How is the Hindu woman constructed? Hindutva ideologues construct
Hindu women as a homogenous category to dismiss differences of caste/class
and underscore the identity of the
united “Hindu community” , thus universalising “Hindu women” as a
category and yet differentiating from “non-Hindu” women even while
co-opting or negating all other caste/class/sect based identities,
cultural or structural[6]. As in other
community identity formations,
women are portrayed
as property of a community- not
full subjects. These “Hindu
women” have been constructed
as torch bearers of community culture emanating
piety, patriotism, self –less service , chastity, devoted wifehood and mother hood with their
bodies represented as reproducers
of community/ as sites of honour.
Further,
the Hindutva project also suggests a gendering of community identity-
Hindu Community as feminine and tolerant and victimised and Muslim
Community as aggressive, rapacious and masculine
Texts: and their interpretation by Hindutva
ideologues
In interpretations of texts by Hindutva ideologues,
care is taken not to highlight
some of the negative traits attributed
to women in the mansumriti or other Vedic texts which
refer to women as -intellectually
inferior, sexually insatiable, polluting
etc . Today votaries of hindutva shy away from talking about these
underpinnings but rather obscure these while projecting “high” tradition
and worship of women, and the centrality of
wife-hood for Hindu women[7].
They employ a selective appropriation of
the “past’- where selection is implicit
rather than explicit- so that issues can be blurred.( Kumkum Roy)
History
as instrument of defining
identity- claiming rights in the face of historical “wrongs” /humiliations
From the writings of
Savarkar (Hindutva, 1928) and
Golwalkar ( Nation defined 1938),
one sees a focussing
on “invasions” as central historical processes- and as processes that (a) reduced women’s
status or ( b)
humiliated/emasculated the Hindu
male and (c) justified restrictions on women- legitimising patriarchal tendencies as
necessary in the face of external threat. Thus
Hindutva has absolved Hinduism of oppression towards women and externalised the problem of Hindu women as lying outside
the Hindu community. [8]
Myths
and Legends
Hindutva ideologues also
make reference to legends and
myths in their attempts to construct the nation as well as the roles and identities of men and women .
As Aggarwal (1995 ) points out, “legends or myths are not significant for
their historical basis, but for the
matrix of fears, anxieties and attitudes
that are reflected in the myths
construction and their consequent
internalisation/acceptance- that and go
into the making of consciousness”. The
consciousness of Hindu nationalism is no exception.-, Ramayana and Mahabharatha as epics have played a pervasive role in building a Hindu
communitarian consciousness. The legend of Allaudins aggression on Chittoor
to gain access to Padmini, has been
referred to time and again, portraying
Aluauddin as a rapacious ,libidinous Muslim. This is offset by
statements, especially by Savarkar,
that ridicule Shivajis
kindness to the daughter in law
of the Subedar of Klayna, captured y his army, whom he returns to her home.[9]
A recurrent theme in the myths is that of
Muslim men as rapacious lustful
and Hindu men as chaste, tolerant virtuous, impotent-,
effeminate. [10]. With
Honour-purity- sexual purity and - pollution of bloodline linked
together- rape is not represented
as personal trauma of being invaded for
individual women, but a matter of community prestige.
Therefore both Bharathmatah and her daughters are at risk from lecherous or
seductive Muslims, suggesting that there
were no domestic or intra -community issues for Hindu women.
Reformists
and the Subordination of
gender to community, women’s human
rights to community identity in the
early 19th century
Domestic, private and personal issues of
women came to be briefly fore grounded in
a three way debate between
the Colonial State, the reformists and
the revivalists in the late 18th and early 19th century. Much of
this debate revolved around women’s status and rights. Just to backtrack a little, it would be
relevant to emphasise that in Pre-British India, local customary law prevailed
with multiple justice systems. The British pre- occupation with
homogenisation and codification of laws led to
the formation of two camps- Hindu and Muslim- where women’s rights became markers for community identity[11].
The gestation of these “communities” also
legitimised the male leadership
of the elites within dominant groups so that
within the “Hindu” camp a
hegemony of Brahmanic patriarchy was created and in the Muslim Camp the Shias were marginalized.
Gender was thus the site of
struggle and contest between
three sources of patriarchal interpretation and practice in the process of nation formation. Women’s issues were
central to reformers, yet became
the point of contention vis a vis the
revivalists who felt that reform with
too many western/colonial ideas of
women’s rights was threatening the
fabric of Hindu society. For them, the identity of the Hindu nation had to be
established not by reform but by revival and revival meant adherence to Brahminical patriarchy-
sati etc. Even the best of reformers kept gender
subordinated to community identity, with a clear prioritization of North Indian
shastric traditions (Soma Marik 2001)
In the end
most reformers accepted that community laws/ shastric
injunctions should be considered the basis for reforms alongside attempts by
revivalists to “domesticate” women's issues and relegate them to a private
domain away from public and colonial gaze. Thus, in the very process of the country’s conception and birth, women’s human rights were
mere pawns in the hands of those
who were
forging national-community identities, and women’s life-issues were used
for marking community boundaries
Iconography
Iconography has emerged as a crucial element in the hindutva construction of womanhood with powerful imagery ridden with tensions and multiple meanings
First there is the Bharatmata iconography and idea, embodying deity as nation, as a chaste mother, victimized by Muslims and in constant need of protection by her sons, who at once are virile, physically strong, celibate, and Hindu nationalist.
Apart
from this, there is the iconography of the goddess and nation. S.C.Bose
explicitly incited women to emulate Durga and come to the rescue of the
struggling ‘nation”. In 1930, for instance, he toured Bengal, declaring that,
“…women had not only duties to their family, but they had also a greater duty
to their country just as gods in their
war with the demons had invoked the help of ‘sakti’ in the form of mother...
the country looked up to the mothers to come forward and inspire the whole
nation.” Gandhi often drew explicit parallels, in his addresses to women,
between Sita’s legendary fight against the demon Ravana, and Indian women’s
fight against the British.
The Rashtriya Sevika Samiti ( female counterpart of the RSS) creates for itself the figure of another goddess, the Ashtabhuja, the one with eight arms, which hold a saffron flag, a lotus, the Bhagvad Gita, a bell, fire, a sword and a rosary. The eighth hand is held in a gesture of blessing. The attempt is to integrate piety with the role of the warrior as icon.
The Shiva Sena uses the Rani of Jhansi as the model female who transcended normal domestic roles by leading troops to battle- not as a independent ruler – but for her adopted son, here too emancipation and subordination to her son come together (Sikata Bannerjee[12])
Throughout this iconography , invoking
goddesses, women are exhorted to be
both submissive wife and devoted
mother ( at home) and fierce warrior ( outside) - . Invocation of goddesses
does 2 things – (i) employs the familiar
and strikes an emotional chord and (ii) transforms a political task into a
religious mission… thereby allowing women to leave homes, and rub shoulders
with men etc to express their devotion.
In fact such iconography enables women to perceive a engagement with politics as seva to the goddess, allowing them to engage in a traditionally
masculine activity without threat to their femininity[13].
(Stéphanie Tawa Lama)
Hindutva and constructs of Hindu woman’s sexuality
The
control over women’s sexuality is central to
community establishing its identity.
As vehicles of procreation, whose
children women bear must be carefully
controlled if a community has to survive-
while men may sow their seeds anywhere-
women can only give birth to community members. Sexually assertive and autonomous women are thus a threat to a
community which perceives itself under siege.
As Uma Chakarvarthy has
elaborated, the caste hierarchy
is maintained through control over women’s sexuality i.e. new castes added at the bottom when upper caste women have sexual alliances with lower caste males[14].
Exclusive
control over her sexuality by her legitimate owner is the practical aspect
of the notion of honor. Duryodhana
chose the disrobing of draupadi to emphasizes the defeat of the Pandavas.
While Draupadi has her moment of
challenging those who disrobed
her, the pandavas did not protest as
they accepted the moral paradigm of patriarchy
implicit here. (Aggarwal 1995[15])
Charu
Gupta examines texts and
narratives to trace how
sexually assertive female protagonists gave way to a new image of the
Hindu woman. Among the texts Gupta discusses is Priyapravas by Ayo-dhya Singh
Upadhyay (alias Hari-oudh), which tells the story of Krishna’s departure for
Mathura, leaving Radha behind. In this version of the story, the passionate and
joyous Radha is transformed into a passive, restrained and moral wo-man who
abandons sensual love for a sense of duty.
(Charu Gupta 2001[16])
Concurrent with stipulations about women’s
bodies and sexuality, men especially ideologues and leaders have been urged to
follow sexual restraint and celibacy and
enjoy the powers/prestige that come with
renunciation as en-shrined in the principles of bramha-charya-. Therefore
women’s sexuality is constructed as a matter of community honour, whereas for
men, sexual restraint by leaders is rewarded by power and individual prestige.
Scholarly analysis of RSS and Indian State
reactions to women’s abductions during partition has provided another source of work on how women’s sexuality has been constructed. RSS writings in the wake of partition,
focused on Pakistan as a barbaric predatory state carved out of Bharatmatha.
Infact “mother India” was raped and
violated by Muslim men ( more
significant that the rape of Hindu women) as rape was an age old practice of Muslim men) (Butalia
1995[17]).
The Indian state was ridiculed for not responding aggressively to Pakistani
aggression: On the other hand, rapes by
Hindu men were referred to as acts of passion- aberrations to be dismissed.
Further the inability of the Hindutva forces or that of the Pakistani and Indian states to recognise women’s choice in the matter of returning to
their home country- underscored the
debate. Agarwal argues that
the sexually autonomous woman
does not have space in their world view- (Agarwal 1995[18]). Veena Das
emphasises the identity crisis faced by the Indian state in
formation and its attempts to recover
women, to establish the State and recover
nation’s honor. The debate was thus an exercise in denial of women’s
sexual autonomy or agency and only
highlighted her victimisation
3.Hindutva And Changing Contours
Of Women’s Agency
While
I have focused much on how
“Hindu women” as a category were
fashioned by Brahmanic patriarchal
community leadership, it is time to turn
to look at how
such construction as outlined above,
was internalized and/or interrogated by
Hindu women themselves and to examine articulations of their agency
which were also critical factors in the
shaping/expressing of a Hindu identity. Underlying this exploration
are a few basic questions: how
have women been inducted into a
patriarchal project like Hindutva? What
does this mean for the women’s movement?
Is such identity politics, based
of religious nationalism, harmful to
women’s strategic interests? Or are there spaces for women
to address patriarchal inequities
within such movements?
Pre-
Independence Agency of Women in the Hindu Fold
For the Brahmin women, it was primarily
through their adherence to religious orthodoxies that they came to occupy a
respectable position within the Hindu family, community and society. This sort
of space was neither available to women participating in anti-colonial
nationalist struggles, nor to those subscribing to radical, secular
traditions.. but was available to
women steeped in orthodoxy e.g. LaxmiBai Kelkar.[19].
When
LaxmiBai kelkar approached Hegdewar with a request to impart women with
lathi training, the leader of the RSS was faced with the dilemma of giving permission
to a woman in the exclusively male outfit, keeping in mind the patriarchal ideology and functioning
necessities of RSS such as the celibacy vows of senior sanchalaks, he prompted
her to form Rashtra Sevika Samiti, rather than permitting her to join RSS. .
Rashtra Sevika Samiti came into existence in 1936 and Hindutva was declared the basic principle of Samiti. Since then the Samiti has exhorted women to promote and protect Hindutva, through natural process of Sanskaras imparted in homes, worship of Devi Ashtabhuja a symbol of realization of Hindu women's chastity, purity, boldness, affection, alertness to build a character based society. Shishu mandirs were opened with the object of reorganizing the system of girls' education, befitting to the traditions of this land [20] The Rashtriya Sevika Samiti promotes Brahminical hegemony, gives an illusion of empowerment, while endorsing and protecting the patriarchy.[21]
A second
example of Hindu women’s agency
of around the same period was
the struggle to form a
woman’s mutt. Asha Debi of the
Sri Sarda Math, in her 1946 article concludes
“ We don’t want to be hospital’s nurses or school teachers only. We want
direct realisation.” A sustained campaign
over a decade - led to the
formation of the Sarada mutt- the first monastic organisation run by women. The Shri Sarada
Math is unique as there did not exist any other monastic organisation run by
women themselves independent on men. Though it is stressed that the Math is in
the tradition of the Vedic dharma and is understood as belonging to the Puri
sampradyaya of the Dashnami orders, it was something completely new because
these orders in general did not accept women as ascetic disciples not to speak
of permitting them to give brahmacharya and sanyasa to other women as it is
done in the Shri Sarada Math.[22]
These two illustrate Brahmin women’s struggles to be treated as equals with men while at the same time affirming their domination as the priestly castes and claiming
space for women in the domain of
“serving the nation” and priest
hood- sanyasi hood. at the time of nation
formation. This agency, rooted in orthodoxy and service, challenged male
bastions to be accepted as active
participants in the patriarchal project.
While these examples are of overt
agency, covert agency was (and is) manifest in the drawing of boundaries between Hindus and others which includes
ways in which the homes of caste
Hindus were closed to Muslims and to lower castes and ways in which
“polluting” touch was avoided and remedied. Their notion of self has also functioned in a way that they could
not transcend or cross their family and caste-community boundaries to identify
with their Muslim counterparts. Instead, they often identified themselves as
defenceless Hindu women threatened by the `sexually predatory Muslim male'.
This stereotyping justified Hindus' violence against Muslims, for communal
riots were often sparked by rumours of the sexual assault of Hindu women by
Muslim men in pre-Independence and post
independence India. Hindu communal organisations and leaders “created”
and supported women's anxieties against Muslims, and co-opted their
concerns into the broader Hindutva movement.
It would be relevant here to underscore some
examples of women’s struggles from
other castes ( albeit led by men!) during the colonial period- Dalit women in Maharashtra and the struggle for literacy, Ezhava women ‘sthe
struggle to cover their breasts, Nadar
women’s right to temple entry. These stand in sharp contrast to the examples cited above, as the “nation” as
mother is a conspicuous absence. With an
emphasis on the materiality of women’s lives these have these struggles have attempted to challenge patriarchal values and
build dignity of their “caste” community.
Hindutva and Women’s Agency Since the 80s
What is significant for us today is to
examine the agency that has been emerging from the Hindutva related organisations and their
legacy since the 80s be it - Rashtriya
Sevika Samiti, the BJP women’s
Morcha wing , the Durga Vahini- VHP women’s arm or the scores of localised women’s groups who swear allegiance to the
hindutva ideology. There is a host of intermediate range ideological
organisations and grassroots institutions
located between the BJP and the VHP-, schools, women's organisations,
sanskar kendras, welfare associations, and temple networks that unite the two poles and it is from here that the BJP draws its power,
its electoral success and mass base with women
Women’s agency as expressed
through these groups is varied
and yet striking similarities exist. What is relevant to our discussion today is not
their similarities /differences per se, but the
linkages between their
agency and the hindutva construction of womenhood.
The large scale cooption of lower caste
class women into a pan-indian, “Hindu” identity is
therefore
our first concern. From the upper caste nationalist leaders
“embarrassment “ with caste and domestication of caste at a critical
phase of the independence movement,
there has been an attempt to
unify the “Hindu” and project a new Hindu woman, sidelining caste differences and emphasising a community of Hindus. Through the running of
crèches, income generation programmes, everyday ritual, and by
providing them a feeling of pride
of community and nation, large number
of poor and lower/middle caste
women have been co-opted into a notion
of a Hindu extended family. Thus a
combination of token “material”
needs and symbolic “identity” needs has been
deployed to bring in the non-Brahmin woman. Today the Samiti itself
boast of a million members and the Shiv
Sena has a mass base in the slums of
Mumbai[23].
While speaking of Sangh women’s organisations, it is also important
to recognize that that each have their
own emphasis and character. These women's organisations also have
varied forms of militancy
and rough justice with the Shiv
Sainiks being more aggressive than the
Swayamsevikas. The VHP women's wing focuses more on the religiosity of women
and celebrations of vilakupuja, saradu manalsutra puja,
navrathri, etc, persuading and
co-opting women through ritual while the Samiti emphaises a culture of disciplined patrotism.[24]
With respect to women from dominant OBC communities and upper caste backgrounds, the spread of their ideology has also been through
their schools which symbolise opportunities for “upward economic mobility”, as against “basic
needs”. The training of teachers to
serve the “Hindu nation” has been a primary agenda of the Samiti and it is no coincidence that women constitute
the majority of the teachers in Sangh schools (Vidya Bharati schools). They
either come from the Shakhas, or are given periodic training at training camps
set up by the Sangh.
To many of us
it is increasingly apparent that
the increased demand for women’s labour, combined with an increased
consciousness of women’s rights as well as OBC and dalit assertion
have threatened both patriarchy and Brahmanic hegemony.
The Hindutva women’s mobilisation
is thus a response to this burgeoning consciousness
of women as well as the OBCs and lower castes assertion. We need to fully
recognize such nationalism as a
tool used by an elite to integrate
working classes, and women into a conservative
bloc in a manner that hierarchies of
caste, class and gender are overlooked and
their protests de-legitimised as “anti-national”. The cultivated silence on issues of
poverty, untouchability, caste based
violence against women is thus an
integral part of cooption, not
integration or assimilation. The agenda is the “Hindu nation” and
bharatmata, so discussing her poverty or inequality is considered almost
blasphemous [25].
The dangerous corollary to this is the reiteration by Sangh women that their fear of rape
( by Muslims) as the main issue facing “ Hindu women” today.
This constructed identity of “vulnerable or defenceless Hindu women”
threatened by the `sexually predatory Muslim male' not only
marginalizes other concerns
of women’s everyday existence , but
also justifies Hindus' violence against Muslims. Communal riots have often been sparked by rumours of the
sexual assault of Hindu women by Muslim men in both pre-Independence and post independence India. Hindu communal
organisations and leaders created and supported women's anxieties against
Muslims, and co-opted these “concerns”
into the broader Hindutva movement.
Women’s
issues in the Sangh’s women’s
organisations
Sangh’s women’s
organisations have also projected themselves as championing
women’s “rights”. Two examples of such “championing’ could be
examined here to help us understand the underpinnings: (i) protest
against Beauty Pageants and (ii) the
demand for a Uniform Civil Code.
Firstly, let us look at the sangh
women's protests against beauty pageants- a time when left and
autonomous women’s groups found themselves
of the same platform as
Sangh groups. What underlines the
difference here is that, while the left
and autonomous women’s groups were protesting the commodification of women’s bodies and
the commercialisation of beauty
standards, as well as the use of women’s
bodies for profit making by TNCs, the Sangh women’s groups underscored the
obscenity of women ‘s bodies being exposed in swimsuits[26].
Such embarrassment about the woman’s body, is very much linked
to the construction of the Hindu woman as chaste and sexually restrained.
Therefore, rape of Muslim women or disrobing of dalit women by upper caste men is not considered “obscene” but a
handful of women displaying their
bodies is considered obscene and an assault on the traditional family roles of
women and Hindu culture. So for the Sangh women, championing women’s right not
to be exploited, is more an articulation of women’s duties and
behaviour mores in the context of
the family and tradition[27]
The second area where Sangh women’s
organisations project themselves as champions of women’s rights, is in the
context of their lobbying for a Uniform Civil Code. What is the track record of
Sangh related women’s organisations on
issues of gender justice? It has been
found that women Shiv Sainiks sometimes take up
dowry murders, rape and other extreme violence faced by women. However
the manner in which these protests are carried out suggest that these are
expressions of ire towards violent and
errant behaviour by specific men, not a
critiquing of patriarchal structures.
This is also endorsed by the fact that these groups do not offer counselling to
battered women because domestic peace is
perceived to be the women's
responsibility and battered women are those who have failed here. Further, the
Sangh's women's organisations discourage widow re-marriage, lesbianism and
children's self-choice in marriage if it goes against parental decision-making.
Clearly, gender justice or a sensitivity towards
the nuances of patriarchal power
politics within the home is a far cry.
Hindu women’s rights and real life issues as mothers/wives are of little concern; in fact sati, dowry, wife beating, polygamy- are
all to be cherished as part of
Hindu tradition ![28]
The need to belong to a community and take
solace and comfort in it’s “extended /imaginary” family is something we take to
take cognisance of. Does gender identity
and a sisterhood of women take this into account? This is a question
that pertains to all identity based
politics and all fundamentalisms.
Imrana,- is again an example of
community identity being established
in the context of a woman’s sexual autonomy. Though there are
multiple and complex dimensions to the
Imrana issue, at the end of the day she proclaimed that she will abide by the ulema’s decision- subordinating her gender identity and human rights and desires for
community membership and belonging.
In the
vociferous arguments out forward
by Hindutva women leaders in support of a Uniform Civil Code, Muslim women
and Muslim personal law are both
perceived as “backward” as compared to
the outgoing and modernising Hindu woman
and their efforts are therefore underlined by an attempt to bring the Muslims to toe
the line. Opposing Muslim appeasement has been a staple point for “action” even
if its means taking an anti woman stand.
In the Shah Bano case for instance, their reaction focused less on the
injustice to a woman, but was transformed into a “Hindu injury” (through Muslim
Appeasement) and again sets the stage for communal tension. Here, too the concern is less with gender
justice and more to do with expecting
minorities to go along with the majority community. Not only is gender justice
sidelined or marginalised, those who are
striving for a re-working of gender
relations are seen as destroying the moral fabric of Hindu society.
While I have already spoken about the shared
public dias vis a vis beauty pageant
protests, feminist groups and Sangh women’s organisations have
often been at loggerheads as in the case of their protests over films like Fire, Water and the recent issue of the dance bar
girls all of which underscore the
theme that sexually assertive women are
not acceptable as such assertion is
equated with moral decay.
Violence and the agency of Hindutva Women
Since 1990, women have been active in all the violent Sangh campaigns,
Ram-Janma Bhoomi and the campaigns in Bombay, Surat or Bhopal. Appeals to take
up violence are made in name of motherhood are
increasingly becoming strident and the desire for anger, revenge, war
and military action against the “enemies of the Hindu nation” is stimulated
in endless ways. In the Shakhas, women are told to worship the icon of fully
armed Ashtabhuja Durga and specially meditate on her weapons, inculcate war-like qualities and pass them onto
children; their own and in schools.
The
new “leadership” of Uma Bharthi, Sadhvi Rithambara and Vijayraje Scindia are also represent important shifts
in the role of women's violence within the hindutva agenda[29].
Sadhvi Ritambara in her popular speech
in 1991 at Nagpur says” Mothers, the
bangle-covered [fragile] arm with which you served
your husband and sang lullabies to your son, the same bangle-covered arm must
now brandish a sword” ….. as she speaks of their hearts of
anger and their bodies hard with avenging will that will give birth to anger
that can facilitate active participation
in progroms and violence. Women are also
to produce sons “ who will kill” in a total contrast to maternalism as it is
popularly known[30].
This extent of violence and women's active
participation in killings, looting, rape and burning of Muslim homes and
businesses, as seen in Gujarat
is possible when the “other” is
totally dehumanised”. In the
speeches of Uma Bharthi, Sadhvi
Rithambara and Vijayraje Scindia, Muslim women
are time and again projected as
producers of enemy children, sexually loose,
not as pious/pure or morally upright
as the Hindu woman, conspiring with the Muslim men to destroy the Hindu nation thus making “incitement” / complicity desirable/necessary[31].
Multiple meanings have led to
an acceptance/celebration of genocide as it is the mother in them who is
committing violence. The active and consensual participation by women in the hindutva movements is kept within
“patriarchal bounds”. The question of
concern is to what extent are women
mere "vehicles" in this phenomenon, deployed at will to do men's bidding and to
what extent are they autonomous agents
acting on their own opportunism and conviction. Uma Bharti herself manages to
imitate to a great degree the Sangh's model of the ideal male while privileging
the more aggressive aspects of femininity outlined by the Samiti (Jjyotirmaya
Sharma[32]).
In Gujarat, we have also seen examples of violence against women of Hindu origin who
did not conform to Sangh notions of community. “ Gita Ben, a Hindu woman who was
in love with and married to a Muslim man tried to protect her husband by
locking him in her house and standing by the door when men started attacking
him. Gita Ben was killed for this act. She was stripped naked and her body was
thrown in the street. Gita Ben was taught a lesson and made an example to show
other Hindus, especially women, that this is what happens when you try to cross
the defined border.” ( Butalia, 2002).
4. Conclusion: Can identity based
politics be empowering for women?
This
brings us to a few basic questions:” Can identity based
politics be empowering for women? Or
will women be it’s trapped victims? Can
we have a liberating and gender sensitive politics which struggles for the
affirmation and celebration of women’s cultural and religious identities
without betraying their autonomy and their basic rights as human beings? Can
women’s movements recognize women’s cultural identities, address cultural
hegemononies and embrace women’s
abilities to invoke the different
aspects of their multiple identities to
fight for democratic rights? Posing
these questions in the context of women in hindutva politics, what do we find?
The examples of Hindutva women’s agency as outlined
above stress that the Sangh Parivars constructions of womanhood
through the glorification of motherhood,
piety and women as warriors have
underlined the character and thrust of
women’s actions.
The
choice of these issues for articulating
their agency and the issues on which
they are silent are both largely shaped by the way hindutva has
constructed the Hindu woman’s self image, her image of other’s
and her role in the hindutva project.
The domestic space is not the site of women’s struggle – it is in the realm of
the nation that women locate their struggles-
even to actively serve the
nation- this again shapes her
understanding of her private pace- her
motherhood, wifehood as reproducing the nation. Being
“Hindu” is the identity around which they were organising and mobilising and
therefore this identity cannot be ruptured, fractured or punctured, especially
not from within.
Women’s agency within Hindutva was initially
limited to “service/charity/welfare of the nation ” by upper caste women rooted in orthodoxy
who struggled for space
to serve the patriarchal project of the nation alongside
men. Today the movement is towards a more violent /aggressive
nationalism with “ foot soldiers” “
drawn from the lower and middle castes
whose religious faith,
needs for identity, upward mobility, allegiance to Hindu nationalism,
fears and anxieties about “enemies” and
perceptions of women's rights are
constantly linked together so that they
actively contribute to a fascist transformation
of society and state.
Yet, the
essentially anti-women,
patriarchal and authoritarian character
of hindutva is not problematised
by these women whose energies and imaginations have
been mobilised around a concept of nation, their
familial duties enamoured, whose
morale and sense of self is boosted by a sense of pride in their traditional
roles, an “inverted:” championing of women’s “rights”
and sense of belonging and of supremacy
that is inherent in the Hindu supremacist
agenda. The agency that hindutva has
offered to women has allowed an illusion of empowerment, of
working with men on a common project, occasionally attacking “errant” men and increasingly
taking on the masculine warrior role.
Women have been encouraged to see themselves
“as legitimate, equal and valued
partners in a public and political demonstration of their personal faith. Thus
boundaries of home and world, private and public , religion
and politics are blurred”.[33]
But the question remains whether managing the home along with
active and “equal” participation
in serving the patriarchal authoritarian nation, taking on male roles and using motherhood as a basis
for violence against minorities,
can ever be accepted s
women’s emancipation as women's strategic needs are relegated to the
margins.
As long as
human beings are discriminated against on the basis of structural or
cultural identities, identity based
politics will remain a part of
democratisation. However, when identity politics is based on principles
of supremacy, exclusion, authoritarianism, sexual repression, hatred of minorities and attempts at genocide, such identity
politics not only spells terror for those considered “outsiders” but also represses insiders as they have to
subordinate their personal aspirations
and rights to community identity, with
women's human rights often becoming the most visible casualty.
For the women's movement, in the face of Hindutva co-option, of women the challenges
are many and yet they way forward
could only be a movement
where women's multiple
cultural, sexual, religious and
structural identities, affinities and
anxieties are recognised and invoked when appropriate for building a humane, democratic, gender just
and plural society.
To close, I would like refer
to Rosenberg’s warning that “ in
any fascist project, the domination over the seriality by a group is the source of immense power by creating
powerlessness” Hence Hindutva with its patriarchal and
supremacist ideology, its
justification and glorification of violence, cooption of lower and
middle castes/classes and its
authoritarian culture is to be recognised not just as anti women, anti labour and
anti-pluralism, but a blow to
democracy and human rights itself.
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[1] Ivekovic Rada and Julie
Mostov, “Introduction” From Gender to Nation (eds) Rada Ivekovic and
Julie Mostov, Ravenna, Longo Editore 2002
[2]
See Claudia Koonz' (1987) ) Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family, and Nazi Politics
[3] Agarwal, Purushottam (1995)
, “Surat
[4] Bacchetta, Paoloa, Gender in the Hindu Nation: RSS Women as Ideologues, Women Unlimited, New Delhi
[5]
See Kumkum Roy, “ Where Women are
worshipped there Gods Rejoice” in Tanika Sarkar and Urvashi
Butalia ( eds.) Women and the Hindu Right Kali for Women, 1995. She studies the Rig Veda and the manusmriti and
emphasises that the Rig Veda
containing more than a 1000 hymns
mainly concerned with sacrificial ritual
has only 2% of them attributed to women seers- women who
were interlopers in “male” scholarly activities. She also culls out
the prescriptions of the manusmriti
which focus on wifehood as legal
( but merely physical) procreation of
sons, the unequal relations of men and
women to material resources and lack of
women participation in rituals
[7] Golwalkar's chapter, `Call to the Motherhood', in his Bunch of
Thoughts, implores Hindu women, who without exception are ideal mothers, to
teach their sons the essentials of Hindu nationalism, fight the Hindu nation's
enemies, but most significantly, desist from being `modern' (read Westernised).
Modern women, argues Golwalkar, lack in virtue and think that `modernism lies
in exposing their body more and more to the public gaze'
[8] See
Ram Puniyani ,Our"
Women, "Their" Women 16
August, 2005, Countercurrents.org for a expose on The BJP Government's decision
to swap the location of MLB Girls College and Hamidia College, Bhopal (June
2005)
[9]
Keer Dhananjay, Veer Savarkar, Popular Prakashan, 1966, p.539
[10]
Effeminateness of Hindu self image
irritatesVivekanda and he blames in on worship of Radha!
[11] Soma Marik 2001 India
[13] See Lama,
Stéphanie Tawa The Hindu Goddess and Women’s Political Representation
in South Asia : Symbolic Resource or Feminine
Mystique?
[14] Chakravarti, Uma. "The Myth of "Patriots' and 'traitors':
Pandita Ramabai, Brahmanical Patriarchy and Militant Hindu nationalism",
in Jayawardena and de Alwis, 1996
[15] See Agarwal (1995) “Surat
[16] See Charu Gupta Sexuality, Obscenity, Community: Women,
Muslims and the Hindu Public in Colonial India
[17] See Butalia “Muslims and Hindus, Men and Women “ in Sarkar and Butalia (eds) Women and the
Hindu Right, Kali for Women 1995
[18] See Agarrwal,”Surat
[19] A n example of this would
be Laxmibai Kelkar, founder of the Rashtriya Sevika Samiti. In the words of the
Samiti she was born into a “culturally gifted family” and demonstrated “Deep
devotion towards motherland, dauntless spirit, resoluteness, organising
capacity , patriotism, sacrifice, social consciousness and service could not
remain idle or be satisfied in doing household work only. She was just looking
for a chance to be able to participate again in freedom activities,.. Managing
efficiently the home front she started to attend the meetings, prabhat pheries
and such other programmes. And was
concerned that…Due to western impact women were struggling for equal rights and
economical freedom. ..there was every risk of women being non committed to
love, sacrifice, service and other inborn qualities glorifying Hindu women….
She expressed the urgency of organising the Hindu women on cultural and
national basis …he
first RSS supremo, Dr. K.B Hedgewar, was approached by Laxmibai Kelkar in 1936
with a request to be permitted to join the organization as she wished to get
the lathi (baton) training for women's self protection
[20] Samiti
own words: Samiti firmly believes that Hindus form the
national mainstream of this land and are responsible for the overall progress
of Hindusthan, their beloved motherland inspired by the traditions, having
their origin in the Vedas, the traditions honoured and glorified by Shree Ram
and Shree Krishna, Rana Pratap, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj and Swami
Vivekananda a real Hindu identifies himself with the glory and the gloom
of Bharat, takes pride in being a child of Bharatmata and is ready to surrender
everything at her altar voluntarily and pleasingly. He feels dignified
in introducing himself as Hindu. To promote this thought and emotion regarding
Hindutwa, is the main aim of the Samiti
[21]See 'Gender in Hindu nation', Paula Bachetta, p.8
[22] This struggle has been
documented by Hiltrud Rustau- traces its
origins from vivekanadas speech in 1899 where he
talked about a woman’s matt to
women’s acceptance as ascetic disciples
fifty years later, to being initiated
into brahmacharya, investing them with sanyasa and permitting them to give
brahmacharya and sanyasa to other women through the formation of the Sri Sarda
Matt . which was realised in 1954 and became independent in 1959.
[23] See Teesta Setalvad, “The woman Shiv Sainik and her sister Swayamsevika”
in Sarkar and Butalia (eds) Women and
the Hindu Right, Kali for Women 1995
[24] See Geeta and Jayanth, “ Hindutva and Politics of Caste” in
Sarkar and Butalia (eds) Women and the Hindu Right, Kali for
Women 1995
[25] See Tanika
Sarkar ( 2002) who writes of her conversations with women of the Sangh ,
their refusal to talk about poverty in A
will to Violence.
[26] See Niraj Pant (1997) , Facilitating Genocide: Women as Fascist
Educators in the Hindutva Movement, ,Ghadar, Volume 1: Number 1 May 1, 1997 The media, often failed to highlight the
divergence between the two broad critiques of the event, the Left-feminist and
the Hindu-nationalist. This disregard for differences of origins, locations,
rationales, and goals of these critiques and protests created an atmosphere
where the Hindu-nationalists gave the illusion of occupying a progressive, even
feminist, space. It would be naïve to believe that this was wholly inadvertent
or that it did not benefit the Hindutva organizations and generalizing this
effect is a clear objective of the Hindu nationalist strategy.
[27] Many secular organisations (including women’s groups)
have articulated anxieties about ‘obscenity’ and ‘vulgarity’ in a way that has
often dangerously over-lapped with the concerns of Hindutva. There is no doubt
a crucial difference in the positions taken by the women’s groups and the Hindu
right. Secular women’s groups critique images and representation while
simultaneously critiquing women’s subordination in traditional family and cultural
values. The Hindu right, alternatively, harps on the traditional role of women
in the family and looks upon feminism itself as an assault on traditional
family and cultural values. Such fundamental differences notwithstanding, many
secular men and women are complicit in the silencing of speech and images
deemed to be ‘vulgar’ and ‘obscene’ Charu Gupta
[28] Viajayaraje Scindia,
BJP vice president, took out a procession to parliament with the slogan that
committing sati is not only the glorious tradition of Hindu women but it is
also their right
See Sarkar,Tanika, A
will to Violence, indiatogether .org November 2002 and Niraj
Pant, Facilitating Genocide: Women as
Fascist Educators in the Hindutva Movement, ,Ghadar, Volume 1: Number
1 May 1, 1997..
[29] Note that real power
lies with the male leaders of the
party and male organisations of the Sangh Parivar.
[30] See Brendan Larocque,
Rhetoric and
Reality in Hindutva: A Reply to Niraj Pant's Facilitating
Genocide, Ghadar, Nov 26 1997 )”as
Claudia Koonz has pointed out regarding Nazi Germany. Koonz writes that
"The women who followed Hitler, like the men, did so from conviction,
opportunism, and active choice. Far from being helpless or even innocent, women
made possible a murderous state in the name of concerns they
defined as motherly" [my emphasis; pp. 4-5].
Based on the now established (though ignored, or overlooked, by Pant)
widespread participation of women in the
[31] Ms.
Bacchetta summarises the arguments and
texts where the Sangh blames Muslim men and women for India
[33] see Geetha and Jayanthi 1995 in
Sarkar and Butalia (eds) Women and the Hindu Right, Kali for
Women 1995
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