East/West encounters

Abstract

This article analyzes the politics of feminist publishing as reflected in the women's journal Manushi, and aims to highlight some of the complexities of writing about gender and culture in transnational feminist discourse. Since its founding in 1979 as a Marxist-oriented, collectively edited publication, Manushi has remained one of the longest-running women's periodicals in modern South Asia. Over the years, the editorial collective disappeared, leaving Manushi in the hands of its founding editor, Madhu Kishwar. With the rise of Hindutva and Hindu nationalism in the 1980s and 1990s, there was a shift in Manushi's politics. Numerous articles in the pages of the journal over the past 25 years produce or reproduce hierarchies of “East” versus “West,” Indian womanhood versus western feminism, and Hindu versus Muslim identity.

Keywords:

• Manushi
• gender
• transnational media
• Hinduism
• nation

Notes

1. The formal study of religions is not a part of the curriculum of major universities in India. Manushi's Indic Studies project is an attempt to reverse this trend. Also see Hawley (2000).

2. I use the term poetics, as Pérez does, to mean a “construction through human consciousness” (1999, p. 59).

3. While scholars cannot agree on the boundaries of the “Hindu-Right” (regarding which groups constitute this formation and which stand outside it), it is widely accepted that 1992 marked an important moment in the consolidation of a pan-Hindu identity. The combined forces of three Hindu organizations—the VHP (Vishwa Hindu Parishad), RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh), and BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party)—are collectively addressed in this paper as the Hindu-Right, or advocating Hindutva. For four years the Hindu-Right organized and staged yatras (pilgrimages; in this context nationalist pilgrimages) all over India, focusing their staunchest demonstrations in areas where there was a predominance of Muslims. These yatras culminated with the destruction of the Babri Masjid (a sixteenth-century mosque) in Ayodhya.

4. Vigorous organizing took place between 1977 and 1979 in Bombay and Pune by Dalit and Adivasi (Gandhi's terms for low-caste/outcast peoples and tribals) women. The Economic and Political Weekly (EPW), for example, carried a two page description and coverage of the conference organized by Stree Mukti Sangathan, which mobilized over three hundred women from towns and villages surrounding Bombay. See “Towards a Women's Movement” (1979).

5. I am referring here to the case of Shah Bano, which has been discussed extensively in South Asian feminist scholarship. See, for example, Mody (1987); Pathak and Sunder Rajan (1989); Rajan (2001).

6. Hollywood's Sensible Ecstasy (2002) is a fascinating study of the influence of Christian mysticism on four French intellectuals: Georges Bataille, Simone de Beauvoir, Jacques Lacan, and Luce Irigaray. A similar study with respect to Hinduism would provide a valuable point of departure for a socially progressive and transnational interpretation of religions in India. Because of the strong association of the term religious with communalism and religious violence in India, I prefer the term mystical as it has been appropriated by feminists in numerous contexts (African, Chicana, Latina, etc.) to speak of women's spiritual power and to invoke oppositional histories. Mysticism also evokes esotericism as opposed to mainstream, canonical practice and can be deployed, therefore, more fruitfully for progressive social agendas.

7. The objections were presented to the California Board of Education by the Vedic Foundation (based in Texas) and the American Hindu Educational Foundation (HEF) and were initially accommodated by the School Board. Soon thereafter a group of academics, led by faculty from Harvard University and campuses across the University of California system, voiced their criticisms of proposed changes to the representations of Hinduism. The School Board finally accepted proposed changes as outlined by the state curriculum committee, much to the chagrin of the VF and the HEF.

8. My point is simply that Manushi serves as the medium of exchange between non-Resident Indians (NRIs) and those located in the Indian subcontinent, who together form the bulk of Manushi's readership.

9. It was only on July 3, 2009, that the Delhi High Court decriminalized homosexuality, abolishing an outdated British law against homosexual practices that was deemed unconstitutional and discriminatory. The fear of homosexuality was thus motivated as much by juridical factors as by social attitudes.