Encountering (cultural) nationalism, Islam and gender in the body politic of India

Abstract

In this article, I analyse how the ideology of Hindutva has been manipulated by the contemporary Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government of India to locate an internal enemy along religious lines to support its nationalist agenda, with subsequent implications for gender. Following a brief introduction to the literature of nationalism, with special reference to nationalism as an ‘invented tradition’ and the role of ‘ideology as doxa’, I situate the case of post‐colonial Indian nationalism whereby I highlight how a complexity of ‘social imaginaries’ and ‘identities’ have been used by the post‐colonial Indian state leaders as constituting the ‘mental state’ of India. I contrast the conceptions of a political/territorial nationalism as evidenced under the Congress with that of the emerging Hindu/cultural nationalism under the contemporary BJP and highlight how the BJP, like the colonialists but with subtle differences, has sought to replay the re‐construction of Islam/Indian Muslims as Others to the supposedly Hindu India. Interweaving feminism to support its nationalist project becomes an integral part of the BJP's nationalist/communalist agenda.

Notes

Runa Das may be contacted at the Department of Political Science, PO Box 15036, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ 86011, USA, e‐mail: [email protected], telephone: [phone], fax: [phone].

For such details of feminist critiques see, Eisenstein (1989); Davis and Anthias (1989); McClintock (1991); and Peterson (2000)

So, Nehru expressed his view, ‘We have to bear in mind that we are here not to function for one party, or one group but always to think of the welfare of the four hundred millions that comprise India …’, see Constituent Assembly Debates, 1946.

In an attempt to integrate the Muslims in the Indian union, aspects of the Nehruvian policy gave special attention to the recruitment of Muslims in adequate numbers to the armed and civilian services, and also encourage their employment in the private sector. Knowing that Urdu, while not a monopoly of the Muslims, was a language to which they attached special importance, Nehru requested his colleagues to give special considerations for the promotion of Urdu; in 1948 passed a resolution in the Constituent Assembly calling for a ban on such parties that allegedly spread communalism (although this was a matter in which Nehru failed to act according to his convictions); and also opposed a call for the banning of cow slaughter. Thus, Nehru was able to meet up with the challenges of even some of the communal‐minded members from the Congress, as for instance K.M. Munshi, who observed with doubt that the Indian state should not promote any particular religion and that despite Nehru's efforts at maintaining secularism he was able to give only an official colouring to this project. See, Gopal (1989).

Expressing the view that society itself was responsible for making women backward, Nehru claimed that, ‘Our civilization, our customs, our laws have all been made by man and he has taken good care to keep himself in a superior position and to treat women as a chattel … to be exploited for his advantage … Under this continuous pressure, women have been unable to grow and to develop her capacities to her fullest, and then man has blamed her for her backwardness’ (Gopal, 1980, p. 246).

Article 44 of the Constitution of India states that, ‘the State shall endeavor to secure for all its citizens a Uniform Civil Code (UCC) throughout the territory of India’. However, a UCC is not listed in the constitution as a fundamental right (which can be re‐enforced in a court of law), but rather as a directive principle of state policy, which means that it can only be recommended. The difficulty of mandating a UCC is based on the potential conflict that may arise with the different personal laws of the minorities in India (referred to as personal law in India). Because Articles 25 and 26 of the Constitution of India guarantee freedom of religion and Article 29 guarantees minorities the right to conserve their culture — it was decided that mandating a UCC would violate such guarantees. However, a Hindu Code was passed by the Parliament in 1956, which despite making significant departures from traditional minority laws did confer a semblance of equal rights on Hindu women in spheres of marriage, property, and so on. Muslim women and women of other religious minorities were left under the umbrella of personal religious laws because the difficulty of ensuring cultural and religious autonomy to already‐threatened minority groups led the state to adopt a secular non‐interference policy with regard to personal laws of minority communities.

The Hindu Marriage Act aimed at extensive changes in the Hindu law of property, marriage, inheritance, and succession. The provision of divorce freed Indian women from the centuries of bondage of having to live under the most repressive conditions. Further, the Hindu Succession Act rationalised the Hindu Civil Code through promoting important changes in the succession laws. It abolished women's limited rights to property and put them on equal footing with men in the matters of rights related to the inheritance of property. With the adoption of the aforesaid Acts, Nehru brought significant change in the social status of Hindu women in India. For details see Mishra (1992).

As Krishna explains, there have been numerous instances where the Congress has revoked regional resistances and alternatives grounded in affiliations like minority religions, lower‐caste movements, workers movements, peasants movements, women's movements, and the like. Such movements were suppressed on the grounds that they represented divisive and sectarian mentalities before the larger issue of India's nationalist integrity. Thus, the Congress' secularism was indeed used as a rhetoric to construct pluralities to win elections but ultimately failed to move beyond a ‘hailing distance of majoritarian identity’. See Krishna (2002).

After her electoral defeat in 1977, Indira Gandhi lifted the ban on the Congress party from the protection of religious minorities and secular values to a champion of Hindu interests, to regain the Hindu votes. She passionately advocated for ‘Hindu hegemony’ in the heartlands of India, made pilgrimages to Hindu religious sites throughout the country, and even hired an internationally renounced Hindu guru (spiritual guide) to act as her mentor.

This got evidenced in Rajiv Gandhi's act during the Shah Bano case (the Shah Bano case is detailed in footnote 16 below). His initial inclination towards the Hindus by originally supporting the Supreme Court's decision on the Shah Bano case, was later reverted towards the Muslims by over‐riding the Supreme Court's decision by passing a Bill in the Parliament that made the Shariat (Islamic Personal Law) superior to the civil law in matters concerning maintenance of divorced Muslim women's rights. While Rajiv Gandhi argued that the interpretation of secularism required giving ‘emotional security’ to the Muslims, it resulted in an unstable equilibrium between the Hindus and the Muslims in India and bred insecurity all around them.

On 21 November 1991, Rao, in the course of his convocation address at the Satya Sai Institute of Higher Learning said that Saibaba's (a Hindu saint) emphasis on the five universal values of Satya (Truth), Dharma (Code of Conduct as embodied in the Hindu religion), Shanti (Peace), Prem (Love), and Ahimsa (Non‐Violence) — all associated predominantly with the Hindu religion — are truly secular in character and constitute the bedrock of all the religions of the world.

Because of the concentration of the Muslims in the Malabar coast of Kerala, the Muslim League has been able to play a balancing role between the Congress and the Communist‐led governments — both of which have alternated for power in the state of Kerala in the decades of the 1970s and 1980s. Likewise, in Northern India, no Muslim political organisation can hope to succeed in having a significant effect as an exclusively Muslim political party. Consequently, the strategies pursued by the Muslim League in Northern India have alternated between loyalty to the dominant party, the Congress, during the first 15 years of independence, and attempts to use the Muslim vote as a balance in inter‐party conflicts in the hope of persuading the candidates of other secular parties to be sympathetic to the Muslim causes.

For details on the RSS see Anderson and Damle (1987).

For details on the inter‐connections between the ideological positions of the BJP and the RSS see Embree (1994).

The Jana Sangh (1951) and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (1964) were formed under the broader umbrella of the RSS. The Jana Sangh, which had formed an alliance with the Janata Dal after the 1977 elections to form a coalition government at the centre, broke up from the Janata party in 1980 and emerged independently in Indian politics as the BJP. Currently, the BJP maintains ideological connections with its master organisations, the RSS and the VHP, and are called the Sangh Parivaar. They uphold the Sangh ideology manifested in the concept of Hindutva.

Numerous views to this extent become evidenced in the BJP published newspaper, from Calcutta, India, called Swastika. As for instance: Swastika, 7 December 1998, p, 1; Swastika, 8 March 1999, p, 1; Swastika, 8 April 2002, p, 1; Swastika, 6 May 2002, p, 7.

A debate concerning the discrepancy between a UCC and the Muslim personal law erupted in India with respect to the Shah Bano case. This case was brought before the Supreme Court in the mid‐1980s, when Shah Bano, a seventy‐three year old Muslim woman, sued her husband, Mohammad Ahmed Khan, for maintenance under the Criminal Procedure Code. The code guarantees the maintenance of wives, children, and parents who are destitute. Challenging the decision of the Madhya Pradesh High Court (that ruled that Mohammad Ahmed Khan pay Bano a modest maintenance), the plaintiff appealed to the Supreme Court. In his appeal, Khan claimed that he had repaid Bano's dowry and also had maintained her during the idda period (three months following divorce) as was required by the Muslim personal law. In April 1985, the Supreme Court upheld the judgment of the High Court and awarded Bano a the sum of Rupees 79.00 (approximately $US 14). Interpretations of the Muslim personal law and scholarly interpretations of the Qur'an were used by the Supreme Court to justify its decision. The government of Rajiv Gandhi initially hailed the Supreme Court's decision, but reversed its position because of losses in the 1985 by‐elections and Muslim fundamentalist uprisings against the Supreme Court decision. Opposition to the Bano decision also led the Rajiv government to introduce a Muslim Women's Bill in the Parliament, which in essence denied Muslim women the right to avail themselves of the Criminal Procedure Code in maintenance proceedings. The government explained its introduction and support of the Muslim Women's Bill by saying that Muslims were not ready for change (clearly revealing the apprehension that continued support of the Supreme Court's decision would further alienate Muslim supporters from the Congress party).

During the Shah Bano case, progressive activists within the Muslim community demonstrated all over India to declare their support of Muslim women's right to maintenance under the Criminal Procedure Court. A large percentage of Muslim women, academicians, journalists, film personalities and experts in the Sharia law signed a memorandum indicating that providing support to divorced women in no way interfered with the personal law. The Committee for the Protection of the Rights of Muslim women was formed with members from Trivandrum, Delhi, and Calcutta. This reveals the existence of multiple progressive voices within the Muslim community in support of women's rights. However, ignoring these positions and placing the blame for India's fragmented law regime on the Muslim community enables the Hindu right to manipulate gender justice to establish cultural, religious, and larger communalist/nationalist identities.

I interviewed several Delhi‐based BJP activists and observers (namely Ramkripal Singh, Ashwini Kumar, and others) at the BJP party office located at 11 Askoke Road, New Delhi, from 29 July through 5 August 2002.

The portrayal of Hindusim as monolithic or ‘synthetic’ constructions has been critiqued with historical evidences to substantiate that the community has indeed been internally fragmented. For details see Thapar (1992).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Runa Das

Runa Das may be contacted at the Department of Political Science, PO Box 15036, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ 86011, USA, e‐mail: [email protected], telephone: [phone], fax: [phone].