Manufacturing a Feminized Siege Mentality

Abstract

This article examines the discursive and embodied processes employed at Hindu nationalist paramilitary camps for women that transform traditional, middle-class Hindu women into committed, active participants in the powerful, right-wing Hindu Nationalist Movement in India. Based on ethnographic research on the Rashtra Sevika Samiti (the Samiti), a core women's organization in the movement, I argue that the Samiti effectively manufactures a feminized siege mentality. This mentality is a learned disposition in which female members of a community perceive themselves as potential prey to male members of a community of “outsiders.” The discursive practices include entwined discourses of Hindu women's victimization by Muslim men and empowerment by the Samiti. The embodied practices include a paramilitary physical training program that masquerades as self-defense training but in fact manufactures a fear of sexual attacks by Muslim men in the public sphere, while deflecting from sources of violence within the private sphere.