[sacw] sacw dispatch #3 (28 Nov.99)

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Web Dispatch #3
28 November 1999
-------------------------------------------
#1. Communalism, Women & violence in India
#2. Rajasthan: Women panchayat members stand up to male chauvinism
-------------------------------------------
#1.
[Thanks to Sukla Sen for forwarding the below article]

COMMUNALISM, WOMEN AND VIOLENCE
By Soma Marik

Communalism is a violent ideology, not merely at the moment of a communal
riot, but in its entire conception and practice. And women are very often
the targets of this violence in a number of ways. But when this is said,
one has to steer away from the misconception that all women under all
circumstances are merely hapless victims, because often women have emerged
as promoters and perpetrators of communal violence as well. Another
misconception is that it is only in the hands of the =ECother=EE community
that women face violence. The episode of attempted government action
against Communalism Combat and its co-signatories is a recent and
telling incident. . During the last elections, Communalism Combat had
brought out a number of advertisements aiming to expose the nature of
the BJP as a communal, anti-minority, violent and anti women party. The
one specifically picked up was one entitled They Don't Respect Women,
and this ad was countersigned by several women=EDs organisations and NGOs
working on women=EDs rights issues. The government responded by slapping =
a
show cause notice on them. The entire purpose was to gag dissent and to
thwart all organisations trying to highlight women=EDs rights and
secularism. 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 RSS set about rebuilding the fortunes
of the party through re-emphasising the core Hindutva issues in the long
=F1term RSS agenda. The solution adopted was the Ram Janmabhoomi movement.
On 6th December 1992, self-styled Hindutva militants destroyed a
historic mosque and unleashed a degree of violence against the
beleaguered Muslims that was unparalleled since the immediate partition
and post-partition era. At once, two of the themes mentioned above could
be seen. Riots in Ahmedabad, Bhopal and particularly Surat were planned
affairs, with rumours of assaults on Hindu women being spread in order to
goad mobs into attacks on Muslims. In Surat's Vijay Nagar II, 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 the Ram Janmabhoomi movement
also saw a large number of women , for e.g., those in the Durga Vahini,
as willing and active participants in the fostering of violence. The
role models here had been Uma Bharati and Sadhvi Rithambara. The reverse
side of the medal is seen when we look at the Kashmiri militant
fundamentalist women=EDs group Dukhtarane Millat who campaigned to
forcibly impose the veil on Kashmiri Muslim women. But are we therefore
to see even these as =ECspaces=EE for women, in the currently fashionable
language? To examine this, we have to recognise that 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 rights. So a
discourse on rights had to be professed. But this nowhere questions
patriarchy. Indeed the BJP seeks to strengthen patriarchal authority.
It would however be a matter of grave error to conclude that all this was
a passing phase, and that the BJP has now become mature under a wise
Vajpayee and a changed, more statesmanlike Advani, the picture a large
section of the media seems to be projecting. Communal identities are
constructed by projecting the picture of enemies. While 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. And an internal
enemy is every struggle for women=EDs independence and equality. In
observing the fortnight protesting violence against women, we have to
remember the specific contexts everywhere. An attempt to be
'even-handed' (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 addition, the
stress on Hindu communalism in the present context is necessary, as
Hindu communalism is now the major partner in government. According to
them, it is only the Muslims who perpetrate violence =F1 on Hindu women,
and also on Muslim women. As for violence by Hindu men on women that is
impossible because Hindus , including presumably the heroes of Surat,
Ahmedabad and Bhopal in 1992-3, are most tolerant and chivalrous. Then we
are also told that those Hindu women who do not conform to Hindu standards
as defined by them do not deserve rights. Historian Tanika Sarkar, in a
recent analysis of the women of the Hindu right, quotes Asha Sharma of the
Rashtrasevika Samiti to make the point that for them, rapes occur because
women fight for equal rights. And the only way out they see is through a
series of bans, curtailments of democratic rights for women themselves no
less than for men. The demand for equal rights is western, alien and
colonial, and women who succumb to the lures of western culture are in a
way adulterous and deserve violence. Not much wonder, then, that in 1983
Mahila Morcha president Mridula Sharma had rationalise wife-beating and
dowry, in 1987 Vijay Raje Scindia had defended the burning as a sati of
a young woman, Roop Kanwar, or, finally, that a young woman student had
been beaten up in 1999 in Muzaffarnagar for daring to question the prime
minister at a rally there. 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. Immediately after the rape of four nuns in Jhabua, the
General Secretary of the VHP described the incident as a patriotic Hindu
reaction to Christian attempts at conversion. But as important is the
fact that the communalists try to use rape as a strategy for political
mobilisation. Parallel to that, the actual politics of rape is sought to
be covered up through proposals like the one Advani made for death
penalty to rapists, a proposal that will only increase violence and
decrease the number of convictions of rapists. In addition, though this
proposal is apparently in women=EDs interest, it is women who are mostly
at the receiving end of state violence, and every measure making the
state more powerful leads to the risk of greater violence on women, while
accused in rape cases will continue to get off free and even be
felicitated, as BJP legislator Kanhaialal Meena showed by doing just
that to the accused in Bhanwari Devi's rape case. The RSS after Jhabua
warned the church to 'show restraint' in their protests. And in Gujarat
the VHP and the Bajrang Dal began to terrorise Muslims in Bardoli
district because some Muslim boys had married tribal girls. When the DG
of Gujarat police denounced the incidents of violence on Muslims the
chief minister pulled him up. This shows that for them, the independent
choice of women is particularly abhorrent, especially when Hindu women
choose to marry Muslim men. The president of the Bardoli VHP unit,
Kalaben Patel alleged, 'it is a conspiracy by Muslim fanatics to target
Hindu girls'. RSS general secretary Harshad Shah expanded in this theme,
claiming that madrasas train Muslim youth in the art of seducing Hindu
women. For every communalist politics, not only majoritarian but also
Muslim or other minority communalisms, the rights of the individual,
especially of women, are subordinated to the supposed rights of the
community. Intellectuals who assert 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, or both now often support this
position. Perhaps the clearest example is the dispute over Muslim
polygamy. For Muslim clergy and other so-called leaders of the community,
this is a right they enjoy as a community, and one that supposedly
cannot be done away with, without offending their religion. On the other
hand, very often, the popular level campaign of the Hindu communalist
over this issue is: =ECif we have given up our right of polygamy, why
should they have the right?=EE Clearly, the we and the they refer to the
males of the two communities, and the regret is about the fact that the
codification of Hindu laws had, nearly half a century ago, led to the
prohibition on Hindu polygamy. This also ignores the reality of a fairly
widespread illegal polygamy among Hindus. Similarly, these same Muslim
communalist elements also uphold retrograde laws on divorce and
maintenance. The ulama have been reported as asserting that women being
emotional, cannot be given an unconditional right to divorce. Both sides
implicitly deny that women have rights. 'Saving' Muslim women from their
oppression becomes the 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.
=46inally, the violence is directed towards anyone or any group of persons
trying to preserve rights or trying to exercise the rights. The debate
over Deepa Mehta=EDs film Fire also showed that it is not violence agains=
t
women, but their rights, that the Hindu right is keen to combat.
Thackeray has never called for a struggle against pornography, which is
a real violence against women. But he called for an all out war on Fire.
The call for saving India=EDs traditional culture therefore means violent
attacks on civil liberties, on attempts (particularly by a woman) to
portray women's sexuality in independent terms. The message is loud and
clear. The rhetoric of respect for womanhood is a loaded one, for
womanhood is rigidly defined. Muslim women are excluded. Lower caste
women (witness Bhanwari Devi) 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 to
be violently dealt with. The Nazis were the trailblazers here,
rationalising the murder of millions of Jews by arguing that they were
not human. Women who do not fit the mould should beware of what
communalism presages for them.
Soma Marik is Senior Lecturer in History.
----------------------
#2.
The Week
Nov 21, 1999

PACKING A PANCH:
RAJASTHAN: WOMEN PANCHAYAT MEMBERS STAND UP TO MALE CHAUVINISM
by Rinku Pegu

Hum Bharat ke nari hai Phool nahi chingari hai
(We are Indian women. We are not flowers, but sparks.) Rural Rajasthan is
an unlikely place to raise feminist slogans. But anger at being exploited
gave tongues of fire to women panches and sarpanches of Udaipur, Chittor
and Rajasmand, who attended a recent conference to commemorate the fifth
year of 33 per cent reservation to women in panchayats.

Intended to be an occasion to reflect on women's participation in
grassroots politics, the conference in Rajasmand, sponsored by the UN
Population Fund, became a forum for an outburst against male stratagems.
One for all, all for one: A group discussion during the conference of
women panchayat members in Rajasmand "The male panches try to take
advantage of my illiteracy," said Nandu Devi, pradhan of Ral Mangra
panchayat. "Before signing any document I make a neutral person read it
out to me." Most of the state's 3,000 women sarpanches and 33,000 women
panches have had similar tales of trickery, non-cooperation, oppression
and exclusion by male colleagues. Laduri Bai, tribal sarpanch of Khajuria,
got only Rs 50,000 from the panchayat sachiv (administrative officer)
though she had signed a cheque for withdrawing Rs 1.5 lakh. But Bai had
copied the figure while signing and, when others confirmed that the
officer had tricked her, she made him pay the balance. If Bai outwitted
one cheat, Gulap Devi triumphed over collective male hostility.
Immediately after her election as the sarpanch of Togi panchayat, male
panches moved a no-confidence motion against her, but lost because they
could not make women panches vote against her. Later, they won a few women
panches over to their side by appealing to caste sentiments and ousted
Devi. She went to court and obtained a stay order. Chanda Devi Asoda, who,
at 20, became the youngest sarpanch in the state in 1995, told the tale of
a series of deliberate exclusions. She was on maternity leave when the
male panches of Kherwada decided to lay the foundation stone for a
panchayat hall. They did not invite her, and when she went to the venue,
they cancelled the ceremony. According to Asoda, they wanted to create an
impression that women had limitations in participating in public life. A
few days later, they prevented her from signing the minutes of the first
panchayat meeting. They handed it over to the pradhan, Asoda got it only
after the intervention of the district administration. Most women said the
worst demoralising factor was the male habit of mouthing abuses and
denigrating womanhood. While fighting their way up, the women learnt to
manage public money and resources, and enriched their vocabulary. "They
have grown in confidence," said Roma Rao of Vividha, an NGO. "Women
members have grown more confident in public spaces. The fact that they
discharge their official duties even when they are pregnant indicates that
they can no longer be restricted to private spaces." Social activist
Kavita Srivastav said reservation for women had helped initiate the
process of empowering Dalit women. With empowerment as its watchword, the
UN Population Fund is concentrating on development at the grassroots. "The
institution of panchayat raj is an important tool in our bottoms-up
approach," said Michael Vlassof, the Fund's country director for India.
"We are concentrating on a need-based individualistic approach rather than
an infrastructure-based one." Panchayat elections scheduled for next year
were in the back of the minds of the 600-odd participants at the
conference. "In the elections, there will be half a dozen women
contestants for every reserved seat unlike the two or three we had last
time," said Gulap Chand, a retired panchayat member from Rajasmand.
According to Om Srivastav of women's NGO Astha, women have to deviate from
the male approach to development if they are to empower fellow women. Such
an approach would go beyond tokenisms such as pension for widows and press
for rights such as equal pay. Women labourers in the state are paid 40 per
cent less than male labourers.

__________________________________________
SOUTH ASIA CITIZENS WEB DISPATCH is an informal, independent &
non-profit citizens wire service run by South Asia Citizens Web
(http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex) since1996.