Do women participate in riots? exploring the notion of ‘militancy’ among Hindu women

Abstract

Over the last decade, leftists and feminists have written on the success that nationalist parties in India have enjoyed in mobilizing Hindu women to perpetrate violence on Muslims during religious riots. Based on fieldwork done in two Indian cities – Bombay and Meerut – I question the validity of this thesis. I argue that this particular representation of Hindu women's militancy is driven less by empirical data and more by the ideological agenda of the scholars involved. There certainly are women leaders whose rhetoric is vituperative and inflammatory but they span the political spectrum. Again, when ordinary Hindu women loot or burn, they too can hardly be identified in terms of political afflliation. Therefore, I suggest that while violence is a ubiquitous feature of the Indian political landscape, it is difficult to establish a causal connection between the mobilizing activities of nationalist parties and Hindu women's militancy.