Communalism, women and violence
Communalism is a violent ommunalism is a violent ideology. Not just during communal riots, but in its conception and regular practice. Women are very often the targets of this violence. Not just from the "other" community, but when they transgress the rules defined by communalists in "their own" community. But we must avoid the misconception that all women under all circumstances are merely hapless victims. Women have also promoted and perpetrated communal violence. Soma Marik During the last elections, the Mumbaibased magazine Communalism Combat published a series of adverts exposing the ruling BJP as a Hindu communalist, anti-minority, violent and anti-women party. One key advert was titled "They Don't Respect Women". and countersigned by several women's organisations and NGOs working on women's rights issues. The government asked a judge to force the authors to prove their allegations in court. The purpose was to gag dissent and to thwart all organisations trying to highlight women's rights and secular10 International Viewpoint #317-318 January 2000 ism. But most of the responses to the government attack have concentrated on the democratic rights of the NGOs, without looking at the content of the ad which most raised the hackles of the BJP and what it says about official sponsorship of violence against women.
Certainly, the most open and extreme forms of violence are on display when communal conflicts peak. After the disaster of 1984, when the BJP got only two seats in parliament, the BJP and its more openly fascist allies in the RSS set about rebuilding the fortunes of the party through reemphasising the core Hindutva (Hindu fundamentalist) agenda.
The solution adopted was the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. On 6th December 1992, Hindutva militants destroyed a historic mosque and unleashed the worst violence against India's beleaguered Muslim minority since the traumatic partition of India and Pakistan in 1948.
The riots in Ahmedabad, Bhopal and Surat were well planned. Rumours of assaults on Hindu women were used to goad mobs into attacks on Muslims. Survivors recounted how they or their kin had been attacked, raped, and/or murdered. Hindu women who tried to shelter Muslim women were threatened with the same fate - a telling commentary on the real respect accorded to Hindu women by Hindutva militants.
But a significant number of Hindu women were willing and active participants in the fostering of violence.
There is a parallel development in the Kashmiri minority, where the militant fundamentalist women's group Dukhtarane Millat wants to impose the veil on Kashmiri Muslim women.
Communalist forces in India have been forced to exist within a democratic political system and to compete with parties that in various ways fight for civic and social rights. So fundamentalist women have developed a discourse of "women's rights". But this nowhere questions patriarchy. Indeed the BJP seeks to strengthen patriarchal authority.
Communal identities are constructed by projecting the picture of enemies. Hinduism is portrayed as the sole authentic Indian religion,. Muslims and Christians are seen as external enemies of the supposedly threatened Hindu community, and of the nation equated with that community. Every struggle for women's independence and equality is condemned as "the enemy within."
We could not ignore these problems when we organised our recent campaign against violence against women. An attempt to be "evenhanded" (and often a creeping majority communalism) leads to a large section of the Indian media focusing chiefly on Muslim communal violence directed to Muslim women.
Since every communalism constructs itself partly by oppressing and using violence towards the women of the community, singling out the Muslims is not useful. In fact, since Hindu communalists are now the major force in India's government, it would be better to put the stress on Hindu communalism.
For Hindu communalist, it is only the Muslims who perpetrate violence— on Hindu women, and also on Muslim women. Violence by Hindu men on women is impossible because Hindus are inherently tolerant and chivalrous.
But if we examine this fantastic discourse more closely, we see that those Hindu women who do not conform to Hindu standards—as defined by the communalists-do not deserve rights.
Tanika Sarkar's interviews of right wing Hindu women revealed that many believe that rapes occur because women fight for equal rights. The demand for equal rights is western, alien and colonial, and women who succumb to the lures of western culture are adulterous, and deserve violence. The only solution they see is a curtailment of democratic rights, particularly for women.
In this, Hindu communalism is no different from Muslim or any other fundamentalism. One has only to think about the repeated attacks on abortion clinics in the USA by the misnamed right-to-lifers. The General Secretary of the VHP described the recent rape of four Christian nuns as a patriotic Hindu reaction to Christian attempts at conversion.
On the one hand the communalists use rape as a strategy for political mobilisation. On the other hand they demand the death penalty for rapists. Of course, this proposal would only increase violence and decrease the likelihood of conviction of rapists. Every measure making the state more powerful leads to the risk of greater violence on women, while the accused in rape cases will continue to walk free, or even be congratulated for their patriotic act.
Hindu communalists have threatened violence recently whenever women have tried to exercise independent choice of husbands, or marry a non-Hindu partner. The president of the Bardoli VHP unit, Kalaben Patel alleged the existence of "a conspiracy by Muslim fanatics to target Hindu girls". RSS general secretary Harshad Shah, claimed that madrasas (Muslim religious schools) train Muslim youth in the art of seducing Hindu women.
For communalists, in majority and minority communities, the rights of the individual, especially of women, are subordinated to the supposed rights of the community. Those intellectuals who argue that to talk of the rights of the individual is either to falsely universalise a Western discourse, or to propose an unreal notion of rights, have given a stick to the communalists to beat us all with. sa hed eure one of there potem The dispute over Muslim polygamy For Muslim clergy and other so-called leaders of the community, polygamy is a right they enjoy as a community, which cannot be abolished without offending their religion.
Meanwhile, the main theme of the popular campaign of the Hindu communalists is: "if we have given up our right of polygamy, why should they have the right?" Of course, "we" and "they" refer exclusively to the males of the two communities. It is true that the codification of Hindu family law almost 50 years ago led to the prohibition on Hindu polygamy. but the practice is still widespread among Hindus.
Both sides implicitly deny that women have rights. The Hindu communalists use "saving" Muslim women from their oppression as a justification for not respecting the religious customs of the Muslims as a whole. Through the construction of the Muslim woman as an "other" • the Muslim community is condemned. There is no attempt to consider the oppression of women within the Hindu fold
Finally, the violence is directed towards anyone or any group of persons trying to preserve or exercise their rights. The debate over Deepa Mehta's film Fire also showed that the Hindu right is much more interested in attacking women's rights than attacking violence against women. ommunalist led toch is
Hindu communalists leader Thackeray has never called for a struggle against pornography—which is real violence against women. But he immediately called for "an all out war" against Fire, a film which portrayed a lesbian relationship between two women who learned to reject their traditional submissive role.
The call for saving India's traditional culture actually means violent attacks on civil liberties, on attempts (particularly by a woman) to portray women's sexuality in independent terms. There is much rhetoric of respect for womanhood, but womanhood is a rigidly defined concept. Muslim women are excluded. Lower caste women are excluded. "Westernised" women are excluded. And women who assert their rights, who claim equality and transgress the space set aside for women are not only excluded, but violently dealt with. The Nazis rationalised the murder of millions of Jews by arguing that they were not human. Indian women who do not fit the mould should beware of what communalism presages for them. * Soma Marik is an activist in Nari Nirjatan Pratirodh Mancha (Forum against oppression of women, Calcutta, part of the Maitree women's movement. Maitree organised two weeks of activities around violence on women in November-December 1999. She is a regular contributor to the press of the Inquilabi Communist Sangathan and International Viewpoint. She can be contacted at <[email protected]> International Viewpoint #317-318 January 2000 11
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