HVK Archives: Daughters of right
Daughters of right - The Telegraph
Debjani Banerjee
()
23 August 1996
Title : Daughters of right
Author : Debjani Banerjee
Publication : The Telegraph
Date : August 23, 1996
Woman and the Hindu Right, a compilation of essays and
interviews, uses the events of December 6, 1992, as a
pivotal point for the exploration of Hindutva ideology.
Unfortunately, the editors note, the recent electoral
success of the Bharatiya Janata Party - one of the units
that make up the Hindu right (the others include the
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad
and the Shiv Sena) - challenges the complacency with
which many have witnessed the spread of Hindutva
ideology.
As the title suggests, women and the Hindu right are the
two protagonists of the book. The successful
mobilisation of large numbers of women by the right is
contrasted with the failure of the feminist movement to
elicit the same commitment. The concluding statement in
the essay, "Resisting Women", can serve as a framework
within which to understand the project of this anthology:
"to prise open the collaboration of power and knowledge
in the readings of the Hindu right and its patriarchal
practices." One of the objectives of the Hindu right is
to bring about political and cultural transformation. To
this end, they have laid great stakes in identity
politics. Kumkum Roy's essay demonstrates the way
ancient texts like the Rig Veda are appropriated to
construct a monolithic notion of woman. This ideal woman
has no real links with women as material subjects of
history.
Instead, Purushottam Agarwal's essay shows that women
become a historical entities and function as symbol of
tradition. In tracing the continuum between the neo-
Hinduism of the 19th and early 20th centuries and the
current pop Hinduism, Agarwal writes, "Woman becomes a
name which the contestants of power attribute to a
complex strategic situation." Any threatening aspect of
her self, for example, her sexuality has to be controlled
by patriarchal structures.
The essay by Vasanth and Kalpana Kannabiran demonstrates
that communalist and fundamentalist discourses engage in
an empty ennobling of the image of the woman while.
remaining essentially antithetical to women's rights. By
constructing the identity of a community on the body of
women, these discourses refuse women all kinds of active
agency. More important, the construction determines and
even legitimises violence being directed against women in
situations of communal violence.
The central paradox that informs this book can be
formulated thus: in spite of women being extremely
vulnerable in communal riots and violence, they
themselves participate in and internalise the
communalised consciousness. The book looks upon women as
active agents who have found a platform for self
expression within the Hindutva movement. Amrita Basu
analyses the militant discourses of individual women who
have become visible within the ranks of the Hindu right;
emerging from very different social contexts, Vijayraje
Scindia, Uma Bharati and Sadhvi Rithambara have one thing
in common - they espouse violence against Muslims.
The process by which this communalisaition is entering
the very fabric of society is documented in several
essays. V. Geetha and T.V. Jayathi discuss the spread of
the Hindutva movement in Tamil Nadu. Tanika Sarkar's
essay, "Heroic Women, Mother Goddesses", engages in a
systematic analysis of the activities of the women's wing
of the RSS, the most effective bearer of the politics of
the Hindu right.
The samiti, as this women's wing is known, has undertaken
a meticulous programme to regulate and order the minds of
women from childhood. Women undergo compulsory physical
training and are encouraged to participate in the
activities of the samiti. Women thus gain access to the
public sphere and extend the boundaries of domesticity.
While the positive aspects of this empowerment cannot be
undermined, the independence of women is clearly
circumscribed within patriarchal. structures. Where her
interests are in conflict with traditional family values,
the latter emerge victorious. The more dangerous
consequence, Sarkar suggests, is that women - through
their close involvement with the sangh - become
complicitous in ideologies that foment communal hatred.
Her essay gestures toward a molecular transformation of
society where the samitis serve as microcosmic units
which enable the erosion of democratic and secular
values.
Flavia Agnes, Teesta Setalvad and Sikata Banerjee analyse
the similar role of the Shiv Sena in providing the
organisational base for mobilising women in Maharashtra.
This is not unlinked with women's militant participation
in the communal riots of Mumbai in January 1993.
Specifically, the authors claim, women as perpetrators of
violence in these riots bear evidence of the fact that
the Hindutva bandwagon has succeeded in desensitising
Hindu women against victimisation of Muslim women.
The practice of avenging one's community through sexual
violence against the "other" woman finds a precedent in
the Partition riots of 1947. Urvashi Butalia juxtaposes
the discourses of the RSS mouthpiece, The Organiser, and
that of the Indian legislative assembly in order to trace
the history of communalism. Several essays in this
volume, including Butalia's, expose the manipulative
process whereby the myth of the rapacious Muslim and the
tolerant Hindu have been ingrained into public memory.
"At the heart of Hindutva lies the myth of a continuous
thousand year old struggle of Hindus against Muslims as
the structuring principle of Indian history," write Kapur
and Cossman in "Communalising Gender, Engendering
Community". The thrust of the essay is to elucidate the
term "secularism" and the ways it is being used by the
Hindutva movement.
The authors analyse the methods by which the Hindu rights
uses the rhetoric of secularism and equality to construct
apparently cogent arguments that obfuscate the
implications of an inegalitarian Hindu rashtra based on
the assimilation of minorities.
In the light of these essays, it is perhaps worthwhile to
consider what would happen if the BJP were to improve its
electoral performance. Would we find these communalised
ideologies reflected in legal and policy matters? The
interviews with the office bearers of the women's wings
of the Hindutva organisations can only confirm these
fears. Their less circumspect comments endorse dowry and
economic dependence of women. In situations of domestic
violence, the officials of the women's wings do not
suggest divorce. Rather the problem would be solved "if
she learns to stifle her screams". Conjugal rape is not
a conceptual possibility in our culture, insists a female
member of the VHP.
Positioned precariously between a rejection of Islamic
and modern/Western values, "our culture" as defined by
the 'Hindu right belies its own interpellation by
modernity. However, this selective description provides
some anchor for a much needed identity politics. State
sponsored secularism has proved to be vacuous in the way
it has misapplied the concept of secularism. Moreover,
it has failed to organise women in any meaningful way. A
mere insistence on separation of religion and politics
supported only by arbitrary appeasement of minorities,
often at the cost of minority women, cannot stem the tide
of the Hindutva movement.
The authors in this volume insist that women bring with
them an informed consent and agency. Situated at the
intersection of the new middle class, religion, politics
and violence, she has to choose between facile
empowerment, the dubious comfort of adhering to
"tradition" and the more difficult and alienating task of
resistance. The editors point to the history of hope and
faith built up by left and secular organisations and
civil liberties groups. It is up to women themselves to
consolidate the strength of these groups engaged in the
struggle for democratic rights and social equality.
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