Women, Muscular Nationalism and Hinduism in India: Roop Kanwar and the Fire Protests

Abstract

This article unpacks the manner in which women/womanhood circulates within an uniquely Hindu interpretation of a particular gendered vision of nation that I term ‘muscular nationalism’. Muscular nationalism centres the values of martial prowess, physical strength, moral fortitude and the readiness to go to battle against groups defined as enemies of the nation. Further, these values are most frequently expressed by a male body. The relationship between women/womanhood and muscular nationalism is dynamic. This nation as woman can take multiple forms; it can be imagined as powerful mother or vulnerable virgin or warrior goddess. Whether mother or virgin or goddess, chastity and purity are important components of this imagination and nation as woman impacts real women’s lives through ideas of honour. In muscular nationalism this focus on the purity and chastity of female bodies stems from their role as border guards. By border guards I mean the notion that the boundaries separating ‘we the people’ from ‘them’ are represented by chaste women’s bodies. Put another way, this line of thinking argues that our women are chaste and pure, yours are not. This is the difference that separates our nation from yours. Women’s role as border guards requires that their purity be vigilantly guarded. The story of women/womanhood in Hindutva or Hindu muscular nationalism which unfolds in this essay is rooted in the assumptions described above. By drawing on interviews with women in the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Sevika Samiti – with reference to women’s involvement in the Bharatiya Janata Party, Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Shiv Sena – this paper contextualizes the role of women in Hindutva. Then it goes on to unpack the 1987 immolation of Roop Kanwar as well as cultural protests against Deepa Mehta’s film Fire to illustrate the contested location of female bodies in this ideology. This analysis indicates that many women are certainly politically active in Hindu muscular nationalism; however, the vision of femininity driving the discourse around Roop Kanwar and the resistance against Fire reveals the limitations of an activism embedded in a context of a rigid expectation of female chastity and virtue.