Gender and Hindutva
Recent literature on the rise of the Hindu nationalist movement in India suggests two strands of academic work that bring forth two different kinds of theories about the ascendancy of this movement. One set of theories explains this phenomenon as the result of decades of systematic, painstaking, organizational work and imaginative political strategies ; while the second strand interprets Hindu Nationalism in more cultural and historical terms, arguing that the Hindu nationalists could be successful because they were drawing on older reserves of “religious nationalism” that were always central to most forms of Indian nationalism. A third and much contested argument explains the resurgence of this movement in terms of a larger transformation taking place within the practice of democratic politics in India . TB Hansen terms this the strategy of ‘conservative populism’ and argues that Hindu nationalism is successful due to its ability to successfully ‘articulate fractured desires and anxieties in both urban and rural India.’ The use of post-modern notions of Lacanian ‘lack’ and ‘theft of jouissance’, experienced by the Hindu community, enables Hansen to describe the process whereby Hindu nationalists treat the ‘outsider as enemy’ and focus on the process of ‘othering’ Muslims that is especially crucial to the project of Hindu nationalism. Jaffrelot on the other hand, argues that the Hindu nationalists have used the universalistic language of democracy to further their own particularistic ends and their adherence to democracy does not validate their democratic and secular credentials.
Today I have decided to put forth some issues about the description of gender in Hindutva. There is no singular understanding of the women’s movement in India. Feminist scholars have motioned towards four phases of what can be called the Indian women’s movement. In the first phase, women were called upon to join hands with the nationalist leaders and fight the colonial empire. The second phase describes the post-1947 scenario where women’s rights took a back-seat to the development of a state that they hoped would address issues of gender inequality. In the third phase, the disbanded women’s movement came together to express a common critique of what they called the benevolent-patriarchal state. The fourth phase includes the decades from the 80’s onwards that have seen grassroots women’s activism against immediate concerns like domestic violence and alcoholism. Yet, if I were asked to describe anything as an Indian women’s movement I would have to answer there is none. There are women from the Indian elite that have aligned themselves with the Western women’s movement and then there are the subaltern women’s movements that are not connected to the elite movement. Undoubtedly, women are crucial to the project of Hindu nationalism. Yet, to view women in the Hindu right as mere tools in the hands of the masculine leaders of the movement does grave injustice. The appropriation of gender by the Hindu right in India posits a serious challenge to notions of gender equality based on universal principles of liberty and equality.
I strongly disagree with Sikata Banerjee’s framework that seeks to explain women’s involvement as intricately constructed in the form of emotional and economic incentives to attract women’s support for the Shiv Sena. This framework places Hindu women in the position of followers of male Shiv Sainiks. It takes away from women the ability to make their own decisions. Explaining women’s rational choice in terms of ‘emotions and economics’ does not make the argument any less patronizing. Banerjee’s argument also fails to give a clear explanation of how women mobilized by the Shiv Sena exercise their power as ‘workers, wives and warriors’ (pp 1221) and why even after it is clear that actual power in the domain of masculine politics can never be exercised, do women still continue to support such ideologies. More recent literature on women and hindutva sees women’s involvement in the hindutva project as an active choice exercised by Hindu women (Bacchetta, 2004). Of course, Bacchetta’s work deals with the RSS and its female wing, the Rashtra Sevika Samiti. Further, a third group called the Durga Vahini (women’s wing of the VHP) has practically no scholarship that could lend itself for our discussion purposes. So not only, is academic resource on gender and hindutva scarce, what exists is probably insufficient to enable us to understand women’s involvement in a notoriously anti-woman ideology.
I think the starting point on any discussion on gender and the Hindu right must necessarily begin with an understanding of how the Hindu right sees the nation- state. For VD Savarkar and other ideologues of the RSS, the nation is a ‘mother’ , a female entity that must be protected from invaders (Muslims) who are put in the role of rapists. The inclusion of warring female Goddesses in the Hindu pantheon is again symbolic of the power of the female. But, the female only exists as part of or in opposition to the male. Therefore, a woman can be powerful as a mother, sister and sometimes as a wife; but this power is circumscribed by the masculine domain. A Hindu woman is portrayed as a reservoir of moral virtue and all things pure. She is systematically desexualized and her sexual role as a wife is underplayed while her role as a mother is deemed sacred due to the procreative process, which is considered divine. This is nothing new. Even during the national movement women were placed in the role of the keepers (never rulers) of the ‘inner domain’ of the family, while men were ‘forced’ to negotiate the ‘world outside this sacred space’. As is revealed by Tagore’s Ghare Bahire (The Home and the World) and Char Adhyay (Four Chapters) women essentially were involved in the national movement as focal points which wanted to resurrect the cult of the Mother Goddess and yet the women in his novels remained under the overarching control of the male nationalist.
Therefore, when questions of women being empowered are broached the more important issue is to consider in which domain women are looking for empowerment. Even in the family women exercise their power only in terms of rituals and symbols. For instance, they are the executors of auspicious rituals. But when it comes to women’s assertion in the political domain, they are left out due to a number of binding traditional and institutional factors (internal party female representation, etc). The problem then, it seems to me is whether women join Hindu nationalist groups as an alternative means of entering the political domain or do they rationalize their choices ‘economically and emotionally’ thinking that this is the closest they can get to empowerment (as Banerjee suggests), without challenging masculine domination over politics.
Going along with Bacchetta’s argument there is little room for doubting the fact that women constitute an extremely conscious and active group in the Hindu right. This assertion gains a political dimension when Hindu women are placed in opposition to Muslim women and the latter are hypersexualised in response to the former’s desexualization. So, Muslim women are presented as baby-factories, prostitutes, suppressed, craving attention from the Hindu male . Hindu women are both chaste and pure and are equated with the nation-state. They constitute an inviolable domain. Muslim virility is to be controlled and one way to emasculate the Muslim is to attack Muslim women. The Muslim woman’s body then becomes the site of violence in a battle between Hindu men against Muslim men. Sexual domination over Muslim women becomes political domination over the Muslim community.
The point I am trying to make is that the Hindu Nationalists in India have resurrected a sacred feminine myth and inserted it into the overarching patriarchal myth of the nation. So women are not essentially reduced to appendages of men and their ideologies, but in fact do have their own space within the discourse of the Hindu nation. What results, in my view, is the strengthening of Hindu women as carriers and perpetuators of patriarchy. This movement of Hindu women is in some senses posited against the Western feminist movement led by elite Indian women.
So the overarching problem that women in India seem to be grappling with is not whether there is need for reform (there is an agreement that there is), but where should this reform take place? Should the reform take place within the existing religion/culture/tradition? Should the process of reform and empowerment align itself with Western notions of reform and thereby challenge existing structures of family? This process of interrogation has produced diverse responses ranging from Hindu women seeking to empower themselves in abstract notions of purity and finding a ritualistic voice that is sought only in times of communal crisis and solely for purposes of jingoism and incitement; to grassroots mobilization and finally the elite-led liberal and left traditions. Appropriating gender is again crucial to the Hindu right since without the inclusion of women, they can never portray the Hindu community as an un-fractured, collective whole. The Hindu right’s appropriation of the feminist agenda is a grave setback to Indian women’s movement as a whole. Within this agenda, Hindu women cannot interrogate Hinduism and patriarchy; Muslim women are targets of communal hatred and violence, and liberal feminists cannot talk in terms of equality, entitlements and a uniform civil code for fear of aligning themselves with the Hindu right unwittingly. To conclude, women in the Hindu right can be mothers, sisters, wives, sages, – but never queens (in the political sense)!
Today I have decided to put forth some issues about the description of gender in Hindutva. There is no singular understanding of the women’s movement in India. Feminist scholars have motioned towards four phases of what can be called the Indian women’s movement. In the first phase, women were called upon to join hands with the nationalist leaders and fight the colonial empire. The second phase describes the post-1947 scenario where women’s rights took a back-seat to the development of a state that they hoped would address issues of gender inequality. In the third phase, the disbanded women’s movement came together to express a common critique of what they called the benevolent-patriarchal state. The fourth phase includes the decades from the 80’s onwards that have seen grassroots women’s activism against immediate concerns like domestic violence and alcoholism. Yet, if I were asked to describe anything as an Indian women’s movement I would have to answer there is none. There are women from the Indian elite that have aligned themselves with the Western women’s movement and then there are the subaltern women’s movements that are not connected to the elite movement. Undoubtedly, women are crucial to the project of Hindu nationalism. Yet, to view women in the Hindu right as mere tools in the hands of the masculine leaders of the movement does grave injustice. The appropriation of gender by the Hindu right in India posits a serious challenge to notions of gender equality based on universal principles of liberty and equality.
I strongly disagree with Sikata Banerjee’s framework that seeks to explain women’s involvement as intricately constructed in the form of emotional and economic incentives to attract women’s support for the Shiv Sena. This framework places Hindu women in the position of followers of male Shiv Sainiks. It takes away from women the ability to make their own decisions. Explaining women’s rational choice in terms of ‘emotions and economics’ does not make the argument any less patronizing. Banerjee’s argument also fails to give a clear explanation of how women mobilized by the Shiv Sena exercise their power as ‘workers, wives and warriors’ (pp 1221) and why even after it is clear that actual power in the domain of masculine politics can never be exercised, do women still continue to support such ideologies. More recent literature on women and hindutva sees women’s involvement in the hindutva project as an active choice exercised by Hindu women (Bacchetta, 2004). Of course, Bacchetta’s work deals with the RSS and its female wing, the Rashtra Sevika Samiti. Further, a third group called the Durga Vahini (women’s wing of the VHP) has practically no scholarship that could lend itself for our discussion purposes. So not only, is academic resource on gender and hindutva scarce, what exists is probably insufficient to enable us to understand women’s involvement in a notoriously anti-woman ideology.
I think the starting point on any discussion on gender and the Hindu right must necessarily begin with an understanding of how the Hindu right sees the nation- state. For VD Savarkar and other ideologues of the RSS, the nation is a ‘mother’ , a female entity that must be protected from invaders (Muslims) who are put in the role of rapists. The inclusion of warring female Goddesses in the Hindu pantheon is again symbolic of the power of the female. But, the female only exists as part of or in opposition to the male. Therefore, a woman can be powerful as a mother, sister and sometimes as a wife; but this power is circumscribed by the masculine domain. A Hindu woman is portrayed as a reservoir of moral virtue and all things pure. She is systematically desexualized and her sexual role as a wife is underplayed while her role as a mother is deemed sacred due to the procreative process, which is considered divine. This is nothing new. Even during the national movement women were placed in the role of the keepers (never rulers) of the ‘inner domain’ of the family, while men were ‘forced’ to negotiate the ‘world outside this sacred space’. As is revealed by Tagore’s Ghare Bahire (The Home and the World) and Char Adhyay (Four Chapters) women essentially were involved in the national movement as focal points which wanted to resurrect the cult of the Mother Goddess and yet the women in his novels remained under the overarching control of the male nationalist.
Therefore, when questions of women being empowered are broached the more important issue is to consider in which domain women are looking for empowerment. Even in the family women exercise their power only in terms of rituals and symbols. For instance, they are the executors of auspicious rituals. But when it comes to women’s assertion in the political domain, they are left out due to a number of binding traditional and institutional factors (internal party female representation, etc). The problem then, it seems to me is whether women join Hindu nationalist groups as an alternative means of entering the political domain or do they rationalize their choices ‘economically and emotionally’ thinking that this is the closest they can get to empowerment (as Banerjee suggests), without challenging masculine domination over politics.
Going along with Bacchetta’s argument there is little room for doubting the fact that women constitute an extremely conscious and active group in the Hindu right. This assertion gains a political dimension when Hindu women are placed in opposition to Muslim women and the latter are hypersexualised in response to the former’s desexualization. So, Muslim women are presented as baby-factories, prostitutes, suppressed, craving attention from the Hindu male . Hindu women are both chaste and pure and are equated with the nation-state. They constitute an inviolable domain. Muslim virility is to be controlled and one way to emasculate the Muslim is to attack Muslim women. The Muslim woman’s body then becomes the site of violence in a battle between Hindu men against Muslim men. Sexual domination over Muslim women becomes political domination over the Muslim community.
The point I am trying to make is that the Hindu Nationalists in India have resurrected a sacred feminine myth and inserted it into the overarching patriarchal myth of the nation. So women are not essentially reduced to appendages of men and their ideologies, but in fact do have their own space within the discourse of the Hindu nation. What results, in my view, is the strengthening of Hindu women as carriers and perpetuators of patriarchy. This movement of Hindu women is in some senses posited against the Western feminist movement led by elite Indian women.
So the overarching problem that women in India seem to be grappling with is not whether there is need for reform (there is an agreement that there is), but where should this reform take place? Should the reform take place within the existing religion/culture/tradition? Should the process of reform and empowerment align itself with Western notions of reform and thereby challenge existing structures of family? This process of interrogation has produced diverse responses ranging from Hindu women seeking to empower themselves in abstract notions of purity and finding a ritualistic voice that is sought only in times of communal crisis and solely for purposes of jingoism and incitement; to grassroots mobilization and finally the elite-led liberal and left traditions. Appropriating gender is again crucial to the Hindu right since without the inclusion of women, they can never portray the Hindu community as an un-fractured, collective whole. The Hindu right’s appropriation of the feminist agenda is a grave setback to Indian women’s movement as a whole. Within this agenda, Hindu women cannot interrogate Hinduism and patriarchy; Muslim women are targets of communal hatred and violence, and liberal feminists cannot talk in terms of equality, entitlements and a uniform civil code for fear of aligning themselves with the Hindu right unwittingly. To conclude, women in the Hindu right can be mothers, sisters, wives, sages, – but never queens (in the political sense)!
posted by Vasundhara at 2:42 PM
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