In the Service of Nationalism: Women in the Hindu Nationalist Paradigm

Abstract

The Hindu nationalism with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) as its vanguard, in the recent times, has emerged as dominant creed in the contemporary politico-cultural scenario of India. No walk of society, associated polity as well as their fragments has remained untouched with the nationalist mooring of Hindutva philosophy. This all encompassing and homogenizing doctrine besides other aspects of national life has inadvertently embraced and co-opted the Hindu woman in her different avatars. The gender connotation that is usually ascribed to the nation has unerringly given rise to a situation wherein the women have been consciously intertwined with the nationalist discourse. This phenomenon of co-option by the way of women affiliates of the RSS climaxed particularly during the Ramjanmabhoomi movement in the early 1990s besides at different communal conflagrations. Therefore, the honour of the nation (Hindu Nation) and the honour of the Hindu women is closely linked each other in the Hindu nationalists’ worldview. Hence, within the strong patriarchal system that Hindutva seems to espouse, the women represents both as a flag bearer of family honour (and of the nation) as well as matrishakti, i.e. victim and victor at a same time. This construct of women is highly questioned by the feminists who look at the right-wing tendencies as obscurantist, regressive and totally anti-feminist. This paper deals with the dual imagery that woman seemingly appropriate in the Hindu nationalism espoused by the Sangh Parivar as well as the feminists’ perspectives on such appropriation.