The Personal is Political: Maternity Protection



Aponayan/Elimination, a solo exhibition of installations and drawings by Dhali Al Mamoon, a Bangladshi artist at the Bengal Art Lounge, Dhaka.



“The personal is Political” is not just a rallying cry of some feminists rather a living experience of most women, particularly, women workers in the formal and informal economy. An issue such as ‘pregnancy’ is, indeed, a personal issue of a woman. It concerns the contentious issues of her right over her body, her emotional readiness to be a mother and make a long-term material commitment to care for a child, and her physical ability to be pregnant, carry the foetus in her womb and give birth without endangering her life.

When we look at the overall environment and specific contexts in which these ‘personal’ prerogatives of the millions of women have to be exercised, we can see how bleak the situation continues to be for women.  The situation is infested with issues of control of women and their reproduction, and regards maternity protection as a financial liability. The situation, therefore, calls for ‘political’ actions such as conscientization or critical consciousness-raising, empowerment of women, affirmative action, legalization of maternity protection, mass-protests, mobilization of men for women’s rights and so on. The old feminist adage helps see the ‘political’ dimensions or the power relationships that interrupt a personal matter. 


Photo: The Daily Star, Read the Essay: Begum Rokeya, Sultana's Dream and woman power

Bangladesh is the home to Rokeya Sakhawat Hussain (1880 – 9 Dec 1932) who wrote Sultana’s Dream (1905), perhaps the first feminist novel in the world with a sci-fi story involving a Utopia where male-female roles reverse. She spent her life working tirelessly for social reform and wrote courageously against restrictions on women, for women’s emancipation, ending the gender based division of labour.

Bangladesh is also a signatory to the Convention 183 - Maternity Protection Convention, 2000 (No. 183) but it has not ratified the Convention so far. The Labour Act 2006 in the land of Rokeya Sakhawat Hussain continues to see pregnancy as an individual woman’s issue because it does not recognize men’s role in pregnancy, child-birth and in caring for a child, and it continues to treat pregnancy as a financial burden on the employer and an economic drain for the larger economy. It is far from recognizing the social returns and the economic dividend that the country gains from this individual function of women. Pregnant and lactating women and those with children who still require care are still vulnerable in the formal economy workplace and completely unprotected in the informal economy.

Discrimination against migrant Bangladeshi women workers does not make the situation look any less bleak. Most countries of destination for the migrant workers do not recruit pregnant women and the health checks within Bangladesh wean off pregnant women from the list of potential migrant workers. Countries like Singapore and Malaysia have a requirement of periodic health checks, which include pregnancy tests and as per their laws/rules they can send back women who are found to be pregnant. The stories of women being harassed and sacked after becoming pregnant in the countries of the Middle-East, or of women being made to sign pledges that they will not become pregnant, and being denied paid maternity leave are not uncommon.

One cannot even imagine the trauma that women, who have been trafficked, smuggled for forced labour or who have crossed the borders through irregular migration channels have to go through when they get pregnant.

Photo: Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights

To tie in with the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women on 25 Nov 2012, the ILO, in collaboration with a number of other UN agencies, has published Maternity Resource Package to help organizations, government ministries, workers and employers organizations strengthen and extend maternity protection to women at work. The Maternity Resource Package can be accessed at: http://mprp.itcilo.org/pages/en/index.html.
 
As per the ILO, the aim of such protection is to preserve the health of the mother and her new baby and to provide economic security for the women and their families. This can be achieved through maternity leave, cash and medical benefits, health protection in the workplace, employment protection and non-discrimination, and breastfeeding at work.

Since the societies and economies gain from women’s role involving pregnancy, child-birth, and child-care, maternity protection is not just a personal issue, it is a political issue that requires a concerted political action. Maternity protection and gender equality in the process of child-care help achieve a number of development goals. ILO, therefore, regards it as a collective responsibility. It suggests that the governments, employers, recruiters and workers need to work together in a social dialogue so we can find solutions that meet the rights and the needs of the women workers in both the domestic economy and in the countries of destination where migrant Bangladeshi women live and work or aspire to go.

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Disability and Violence against Women

Photo: Art for Prabhat, Disability India Network

Within the gamut of violence against women, one of the things that I find extremely intriguing, at least, in the context of India, is reluctance among organizations and activists to take up issues of sexual violence against children, especially girls by their family members and sexual violence against disabled women. Here, I want to bring attention to a general apathy, and denial around sexual lives of disabled women and sexual violence against them. References to sexual rights of this population group and their violations are rarely heard. Discussion and programmes designed to address violence against women rarely keep this group in view. These groups’ numerical under-representation in the organizations working on violence against women could be one of the reasons.

I find that the reluctance also has to do with this group being a minority – accessing information about the abuses this group goes through and reaching them with protection and care services would require some extra efforts which do not seem ‘cost effective’ to many.

The disability movement in India has focused on political ideas of universal physical access and survival. The issue of violence against them is not a priority. As a result, public and private violence against disabled women, especially intellectually challenged women, has not surfaced as an issue.

Families, most of them, somehow cannot see their intellectually challenged family members as anything other than a curse and a liability on the family. It is not surprising then that despite protests by some women’s activists, institutional violence against disabled women is sometimes carried out with the support of their family members. Examples of such collaborations include prevention of (potential) pregnancy by violent methods like vaginal hysterectomy or uterine hysterectomy.

These actions are given the name of protection measures. But protection from what – living with implications of having a sexual life or from implications of sexual violence like rape? If such measures are a protection from implications of having a sexual life, shouldn’t one treat these measures as violations of reproductive rights? And if these measures are being treated as protection from implications of sexual violence like rape, shouldn’t these measures be considered as institutional and family ‘approval’ of men’s ‘right’ to rape women?

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Power is Money and Money is Power?




Paid Work. Photo Courtesy: Commonwealth Foundation



The road to equality in rights, in ability to exercise those rights, and in being able to obtain redress when rights are violated is a story of crossovers of human rights not often recognized. Often, protection of a particular right is seen as enough. For example, many believe that if women are ‘bestowed’ with economic rights it will end the discriminations against girls and violations of women’s human rights. The rationale behind this thinking is that money gives a person power. In other words, पैसा बोलता है!

It is correct that economic empowerment of the vast majority, especially in a poverty-ridden context such as India, is a critical need that must be met. More so when we have all data to see that the income gap has worsened in the last decade. But the limitations of the economic empowerment approach as an isolated-strategy, as far as girls and women are concerned, are also out there to see. The limitations exist in the form of dowry-murders of educated and employed women, double-whammy of paid work and unpaid household work that economically empowered women have to suffer, denial of certain civil rights like ‘equal parenthood’ to married/divorcee women, demands to write ‘father’s/husband’s name’ in any and every document with a bit of legality involved and so on. The fact that women who bring dowry get killed for bringing ‘less than expected dowry’ or ‘no more dowry’ shows that women, when it comes to money, are seen as conduits to bring money or sources of unpaid work that would save and build up money of their husband/father and the rest. This is why women have such poor control over their resources and income. This means that women's ability to earn an income or bring resources home cannot be equated with or assumed to mean control of income and an ability to own, use, and dispose material assets. The question is what is preventing women from using money as power ever so often?

Unpaid Work. Photo Courtesy:
Socio Economic Research Institute

At the immediate level, household relationships affect women's ability to control their income. Prevailing codes of gender relationships may place the husband/father/another male recognized as having rights over a women in control of all or some income/resources of a woman. Women are often not involved in the savings, investment or expenditure related discussions and decision-making. When their name is added to ownership documents, it is usually to benefit from the certain taxation policies. It is also not unusual to find that majority women are still given a fixed sum every month by their husbands to run the kitchen even if the income has been earned by women. And this does not happen only in the rural or urban slum areas.

The next level that affects women’s economic empowerment from bringing empowerment in the other realms of life can be called the neighbourhood or environmental barrier. This barrier varies in its controlling power from culture to culture, region to region, class to class and sometimes, a bit also from caste to caste.  But, on the whole, this barrier aims to ensure that women’s economic empowerment does not pose a threat to patriarchal family relations.  This barrier exists in the form of socio-cultural practices like early/child marriage; denial of women’s choices with regard to who they would like to marry or whether or not they would like to stay in a marriage; procreation being treated as women’s duty and  determining the number of and spacing between children a male preserve; recognizing descent through male lineage; dime-a-dozen festivals like karwa-chauth and teej, which tell women that they are nothing without their husbands or like raksha-bandhan or rakhi that tell girls they can’t protect themselves and will always need the protection of their brothers; and so on. This barrier works by establishing women as ‘dependents’ and thereby reducing their bargaining power vis-à-vis their male family members and in doing so not recognizing women as equal members of the society.

Agriculture Extension. Photo Courtesy:
Institute for Integrated Rural Development

At the outer level, because of the denial or repression of the social and cultural rights, the discrimination against women continues to be evident in the economic fields as well. This includes job market and entrepreneurship opportunities. Denial of equality in the social and cultural realms means that women, without male relatives, have limited access to social security; continue to be treated as unwanted children so either get killed in the womb or attract little investment in their health and education, and as a result, have high rates of illiteracy in comparison to men; and live in the extreme poverty and with social exclusion.

In terms of economic impact of the above, women come out as a lower-grade human resource who cannot either meet demands of the job market or match the requisites of the entrepreneurship opportunities because they lack in relevant skills and education and do not have collaterals of offer. Where women are qualified to meet these demands, they are seen as incapable because of gender stereotypes. Sometimes, the job market cannot reject women on grounds of qualifications or a perceived lack of capacity due to the affirmative legal provisions but employers still go ahead and under-pay or deny equal opportunities to women because they are confident that the justice system will be inaccessible to women. 

The cumulative impact of the above is also felt on their political participation, which is no small deal. Limited or restricted political participation affects women’s ability to protect and promote their rights through public policies, laws and oversight. It prevents them from holding their elected representatives and the governance system accountable to them.

The basic problem is that discrimination against girls and women is engrained the socio-cultural, economic and political fabric of the country. The discriminations are deep-seated beliefs and practices that have been institutionalized. They are what may be termed as structural inequalities. These inequalities are pervasive in all public and private spheres, including the economy, education, labour, health, justice and decision-making and so on. These inequalities do not occur in isolation rather crossover from one sector to another and act simultaneously.

So what do we take from the fact that women have less means than men to satisfy basic needs like education, training, food, access to housing and to the specialized health services, like, safe child-birth, pre and post natal medical facilities, contraception, and women specific diseases; that they are particularly vulnerable to physical and sexual violence; and that they have limited options when it comes to finding decent work and having a voice in shaping public in their countries? In my opinion, it shows the defeat of the isolated-strategies and calls for multi-pronged concerted strategies for promoting and protecting all of women’s human rights. 

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Define freedom!

You, the owner of a free will, have chosen to struggle.
You are the possessor of moral might.
You snatched away the mask of benignity that the power-holders wore.
You are reciting.
You are chanting.
You are singing.
Freedom!

Bahrain, you are marching to the light today

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F I R E

Seething -

Suppressed

Fermented

Turmoil took over the streets

"The Arab Spring"                                                                     

Flickering -

Distressed

Anxious

Fear crossed his face as the crowd  impersonated him

“Gaddafi”                                                                                    

Dancing -

Rhythmically

Passionately

They moved and were laid to rest
“Children of Syria”                                                                                        

Spreading -

Wings

Horizon

Flame to flame words multiplied mocking boundaries
“Crack Down on Internet Freedoms”                                                           

 

Slowly -

Determinately

Sensitively

Joining hands they walked
“The Arab Women”                                                                          



Energetically -

Emotionally

Forcefully

They led from the front

“Young Men and Women in the Arab Region”                  

 

  

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Equality in Corruption: A Myth or A Reality?



Photo: The Hindu

I have often heard that corruption:

(1) treats people equally, woman or man,

(2) hits all poor equally, woman or man,

(3) does not discriminate between poor of the minority or the majority,

(4) further marginalizes all poor whether from they are from the marginalized socio-political/ethnic groups or from the dominant/mainstream communities, and

(5) lacks ‘consideration’ for age, that young and old are affected in the same manner

Let’s look at corruption from three different angles: first, as an intention to defraud; second, as it affects individuals and groups; and third, as it affects the larger the society/country/organization:

(1) Corruption, as an effort to do wrong or gain something for personal benefit by means which are illegal or not approved in a transparent manner with the wider public knowledge, is indeed the same for all in its intention to misappropriate.

(2) Beyond this intention and in so far corruption is practiced at various levels and in various proportions, its impact on different genders, economic groups, socio-political and ethnic groups, and age-groups is different.

(3) The overall impact for the larger country or an organization may be the same, ie, public resources generated through public contributions, direct and in-direct taxes and public sector profit, being siphoned off for the personal interests of an individual or a group through extraction of bribes, exchange of benefits, undue favour, national or transnational deals by duping the regulatory and oversight mechanisms. Sometimes, the regulatory and oversight mechanisms also become a party to such misuse or fraud.

It’s the second point which is of concern to this discussion. Let me focus on how corruption affects the broader category of women (however, it is to be remembered that the effect is different based on economic status, family background, culture, religion, political and legal system, age, community of origin, etc).



Photo: Bangladesh Women Chamber of Commerce and Industry



In most parts of the world, women are responsible for taking care of the household – procuring food, fuel, and other consumables, education of children, care of elderly and the sick, getting utilities like electricity and water for the family, and so on. In this role, many women, especially those who lack support of men in meeting the role and poor women come across corruption. They face overt or covert demands for bribes for being able to get food-ration or subsidy, school admission or fee exemption, accessing utilities and public services like health facilities and medicines. Since women constitute 66 percent of the world’s poor, it is not difficult to imagine who is affected the most by this kind of corruption. This estimate is often considered dodgy but it can’t be far from the reality as even in the supposedly egalitarian part of Europe, almost 55% of the poor are women. It is not surprising that in context of acute poverty induced by harsh economic conditions, inequitable social order, conflict, displacement, natural or human-made disaster, etc the level of sexual exploitation and abuse grows very high. In such circumstances, women are forced to provide sex in order to meet their household’s basic needs and rights.



Women are still not considered equal in terms of their professional abilities and employability. Studies and assessments in different countries suggest that women continue to earn 17 to 19 percent less than men in similar/same work. Women access to the white collar, technical and security jobs are restricted and where they do get access, they meet with what is termed as the ‘glass-ceiling’ or the invisible limit beyond which organizations/companies do not promote or hire women. By and large women are concentrated in low-wage, low-skill fields or in jobs which are poorly paid like, school-teaching and nursing. This implies that women not only suffer gender-based exclusion from participation in various jobs, which are considered the ‘man’s job’ (for example, employment with the armed forces, policy, mining, etc), they are also not present around the tables and hang-out joints where decisions about employment and career growth are made. So in a nepotistic system, women are more likely to lose out on the employment and career advancement opportunities. Since women earn less their ability to pay bribes needed for either staying in the job or for growth is also limited. Therefore, without affirmative action, they are more likely to continue to suffer from the gender-wage gap and segmentation into low paid jobs/positions.

Photo: Insaf

Similarly, many of the economic and business support sub-sectors continue to treat women as dependents, rather than economically capable individual citizens. In many instances, women do not get a loan or insurance till they have a male family member to provide collateral. This form of discrimination is specific to certain countries but where it prevails, it affects women’s ability to be economically self-sufficient. When this type of gender-based discrimination is twined with higher poverty, exclusion from decision-making and corruption, women’s inability to meet the demands for bribes or exchange of favours worsens. This is one of the reasons why so few women owned businesses get selected as contractors/vendors at the end of public and private sector procurement processes.

Today, with so much noise about quotas for women in representative politics and growing openness of the political systems, women continue to be far under represented, and by and large, ordinary women face tremendous barriers to participation. In politics, men are regarded as politically savvier than women. In countries, where political parties are not subject to strict oversight and regulatory mechanisms and financing of election campaigns are not open to public scrutiny, black money or unaccounted-for and untaxed cash generated by dealings in a under-cover economy, black market or organized crime, is used to fund them. In other words, candidates receive money from businesses, which are corrupt or potentially corrupt or from money generated from under-cover deals. Since politics is a male-stronghold, most beneficiaries of such party or campaign funding also happen to be men. This sort of corruption is usually coupled by nepotism and nepotistic access to the government resources. In countries where the practice of political patronage is not checked, the politicians, most of whom are men, have allies in the public/civil services. The civil servants often serve their political patrons by abusing the public infrastructure, resources and control authority, like, government buildings, stationary and utilities, giving undue favour in allocation of public spaces like parks, etc. In this kind of covert and convoluted system, women are more likely to be left out when party nominations take place or when they contest elections as independent candidates. They are more likely to lose elections because often they do not have money and access to power to fund their campaigns or bribe/buy [and more than often, threaten] voters.



Fed up with abusive husbands and corrupt officials,

India's Gulabi Gang fights back!



When the entire electioneering process is corrupt and fails to have measures to ensure that women voters are able to exercise their right to vote ably and without threat, voter level corruption disfranchises many women. From my childhood, I remember how men would take to burqa and go to the polling stations using the names of their female relatives and cast votes. More than often, women voters are told by their male relatives who to vote for. Women voters, knowing the complicity among the party workers at the polling station, their male relatives, and election officials, comply with the dictate. They know that if they do not for the dictate, the information about who they voted for will be leaked to their male relatives and they may face physical or other forms of violence at home. Another practice, which I witnessed, was faking the age of the young persons so the number of voters could be increased and influencing these voters to cast their votes or casting votes on their behalf for specific candidates. The party workers are found complicit in this or actually they are the ones who plot this. The election officials, if corrupt and know that they can get away with corruption, do nothing to prevent or do not hesitate to become a part of this arrangement at the polling stations. Sometimes, in a political constituency where a dominant politician with huge access to money and power is involved, even the honest election officials fear for their lives and do nothing. This kind of corruption usually involves high profile traditionally dominant leaders from various communities/castes/religions, who, more often than not, are men. The possibility of a woman getting elected in such a situation is remote.

These are just some of the ways, corruption impacts negatively on women and compound their gender-based vulnerabilities. The traditional forms of gender-based discrimination and gender-stereotypes have kept women out from many economic, social and political fields. Corruption prevents women from overcoming those challenges and gaining access to services and opportunities. It hinders and sometimes completely prevents women’s abilities to meet their households’ and their basic needs. Corruption further weakens women’s ability to compete with men on a level ground. This is of major significance because their abilities are already weakened as a result of gender based discriminations in education, empowerment opportunities, skills training, and resource allocations by the families, etc.

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Leadership Crises, are they?

The Dominique Strauss-Kahn saga has left the International Monetary Fund (IMF) preparing for a new leadership by this month. The list of candidates is not long but there is a list. There was a rumour that Hillary Clinton would like to be next president of the World Bank. Although Hillary Clinton rubbished the rumour with the same speed as it emerged. The United Nations (UN), on the other hand, seems to be preparing for the continuation of Ban Ki-moon for another five years.

Bank of Mexico Governor, Agustin Carstens, and other contenders have been touring the world to mobilise support for the post. The southern part of the world, at least some of it, is not quite warm to the idea another European taking over the position as it seems imminent from the European bloc’s support to France’s Finance Minister, Christine Lagarde. As of now it seems she is likely to keep the post for Europe. In terms of support mustered so far, Agustin Carstens seems to be the only candidate from the Southern world who could offer her competition.

The European bloc through the European Union (EU) seems to suggest that a candidate from the Southern world can the IMF some other day because they need a European to help them deal with the current financial crisis in Europe. How far this argument can be held valid can be gauged from the fact that neither the EU nor any European country even once raised the issue of leadership by a region that is facing an economic crisis when Latin America was reeling under the debt crisis, the peso crisis damaged Mexican economy like nothing before and the whole of Asia suffered the financial crisis, Based on the justification being put forth by the EU, one can claim that the various economic crises mentioned earlier were perhaps worsened because they lacked ‘region-specific’ leadership. I don’t think so but stating so to demonstrate the ill-logic of the EU justification.

 

Another kind of bank,
not international, nor world but close to
the needs and for building financial discipline

Countries like Brazil, China, India, Russia, and South Africa had made their displeasure clear about the fact that the IMF has been led by Europe since its creation in 1946. But politics of leadership of the institutions like the IMF, the World Bank and the UN being part of the politics of the member states, it would not be surprising if these countries may warm up to Christine Lagarde. Sometime big sacrifices get made for small but immediate gains. My own view is not really firm, yet, though I am not really averse to Christine Lagarde. I believe in bringing in representative leadership. It is a fact that the international financial institutions have been macho outfits in terms of the way they have excluded certain groups of people from leadership. From this angle, the most underrepresented group by far is women.

The point of the above is that there is some level of competition and the countries and their candidates are trying to strengthen their positions.

In contrast, the UN seems to have agreed to another term for Ban Ki-moon. The four of the five Security Council members, namely, China, France, UK and USA, have already publicly voiced their support for the continuation of Ban Ki-moon. As of the 6th of June, no member state of the UN had come up with the name of a candidate who could be a contender to Ban Ki-moon. So given the fact that the Security Council recommends the secretary-general and the General Assembly approves the appointment and that there is no contender, Ban Ki-moon is set to remain in the position.

There is, indeed, a leadership crisis. But not because there are no people with the leadership qualities, rather because the old guard does not like change, and when it agrees to a change, it brings in a new leadership that is quite like itself.

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Glance

The Not-So-Easy-to-See Frescoes at the Citadel of Sigiriya, Sri Lanka.
500 painting of women wiped out when the citadel became a monastery (again)
so that they would not disturb meditation.



I was
suffused with the inside out
but what your fleeting glance could discern
if not the embodied absence

Every time the pain of being surfaced
I quickly averted the glance
why should it be so
if not to look for the pleasures of ephemeral

I am who I am
able to withhold
unable to contain

So what you discern is the key
to let me recognize you

I must tell you
each glance that dwells fleetingly
leaves an imprint
everlasting.

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Women and Religious Fundamentalism

A message from Bhagawad Geeta as the Thought of the Day
in front of Baitil Aman Guesthouse, Shela Village, Lamu,
owned by Sidiki Abdulrehman

WOMEN’S support to religious fundamentalism could be explained with the help of notions of women as objects and subjects of community identity, conditioned as much by patriarchal values as men, their interests so intrinsically connected to the community that thinking of individual or collective interests may amount to blasphemy. Also, making an assumption that all women would like to oppose fundamentalism implies rallying behind universal notions of women-hood and sisterhood, and romanticizing women as universal peace-seekers.

Here, I would like to explore women’s identities, interests and values as complex interactive elements in the multitude of intersections and over-lapping themes of fundamentalism. I will attempt to analyze a few key intersections of religion, nationalism, caste, class, gender and community identity in India with a special focus on current trends in Hinduism to understand the layers of women’s support to religious fundamentalism. I will also attempt to link the growth of religious fundamentalism with increasing attempts to control women.

While approaching religio-spirituality, we should make a distinction between the values of the religio-spiritual realm and their practice. The growth of values is associated more with metaphysical aspects of the religion and is seen as the preserve of enlightened and unattached spiritual persons who could devote themselves fully to emancipate the soul. The practice of these values is considered to be closer to ordinary mortals. The intricate world of attachments in which women live makes them ‘incompatible’ to the demands of a spiritual world which is highly valued, powerful, and a typically male domain. Some women may strategize an escape from attachments and create a religio-spiritual space for themselves by renouncing their sexuality and sex roles through sanyas (renunciation of attachments) (Babb 1988, p. 280-285) and affiliations with religious movements and organizations looking for women in their fold to gain broader legitimacy.

To use Gaitskell’s analysis of South African women’s conversion to Christianity through the Christian Mission Stations (Gaitskell 1990, p. 253), these organizations provide women an alternative set of protectors and economic base which makes escape from the drudgery of life as a daughter, sister, wife or widow possible (Basu 1999, p. 200). In India, right wing organizations like the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), and others, which frequently invoke the goddesses and female spiritual gurus of the past and use women in liturgy have attracted many Hindu sanyasins (female religious mendicants/proponents/ascetics) like Ritambhara or Uma Bharati. The invocations are not only a bait for women but also a reminder to the women affiliates to see the scope for their philosophy and activity in supporting everything that these organizations are doing, including promoting hostility towards faiths and people perceived to be damaging Hinduism.

Talking of the Sangh Parivar, Arundhati Roy says, ‘its utter genius lies in its apparent ability to be all things to all people at all times’ (Roy 1999, p. 181). A broad understanding of ‘violence’ beyond the direct physical and mental abuse and as produced in people’s perceptions may help us in seeing the image of the Sangh Parivar as it exists in the minds of middle class, poor and home-bound women. This perception of violence is linked to the notions of religious domination and subordination, which subvert the chances of survival of another value system. For example, beef eating, spread of non-Hindu values, unemployment, religious conversion, inter-religious marriages, adoption of a Hindu child, etc. may be taken as attempts to denigrate the status and spoil the purity of Hindu religion. Therefore, these may be perceived as socio-economic and cultural violence against the ‘Hindu’.

The Sangh Parivar has articulated a feminist politics that reflects upon such perceptions and created ‘a space for personal accomplishment to which unskilled working class women and frustrated middle class women [across caste, particular religious community and region] might be attracted’ (Sahgal and Davis 1992, p. 9, text in brackets mine). While taking on the persona of a religious saviour, the Sangh seeks to mobilize women against the ‘perceived perpetrators of the violence’. The counter violence or support to fundamentalist organizations is seen by these women as an issue of religio-political identity and collective empowerment to oppose ‘occupation of minds and cultures’.

Kandiyoti in her paper ‘Islam and Patriarchy’, talks about women resisting the old normative order slipping away without any empowering alternatives and women pressurize men to live up to their obligations to provide protection in exchange of submissiveness and propriety as part of patriarchal bargain (Kandiyoti 1992, p. 36). The exchange of submissiveness and propriety for protection brings forth the issue of women’s bodies being treated as sites of community identity in a patriarchal society (Kannabiran 1996, p. 32-33). Submissiveness and propriety by these bodies is essential for patriarchal honour.

In India, for example, Ritambhara’s speeches, marked by incitements to reclaim male honour, remind men to live up to their part of the bargain. Similarly, when Uma Bharati asks women to play a political role without compromising their ‘basic nature’ (Llewellyn 2001), she is reminding that impropriety by female bodies would damage the Hindu honour which corresponds to male honour. The Sangh Parivar seeks to secure women’s support by playing on the tensions between ‘deeply ingrained images and expectations of male-female roles and changing realities of everyday life’ (Kandiyoti 1992, p. 36), which put a demand on women to step in the public space. By using the lack of alternatives before women, it attempts to consensualize women’s investment in patriarchal values and simultaneously puts conditions on her public engagement.

The offer of male protection comes with (i) the condition that women will have to become consenting custodians of patriarchal values, and (ii) an implicit guarantee that they will get the residual power and benefits that would accrue from their support to the Hindu male communal coercion (Sangari 1999, p. 398-408). The perceived notions of danger and security and the chance to exercise residual power through patriarchal bargains may make this offer lucrative for many women (Jeffery 1998, p. 223).

According to Moghissi, fundamentalism is ‘an attitude towards time’. It proposes ‘an ideal past, initial conditions’ or ‘golden age’ which contrasts to the present and can be retrieved…’ (Moghissi 1999, p. 69). All may not view the fundamentalist form of return to the golden age as conservative or retrogressive. For example, by linking fundamentalist space with religion and women’s welfare, the Sangh Parivar makes it possible for a woman to occupy public space and for her family to explain their daughter’s feminism as a form of sewa (Sahgal 2000, p. 198). This may appear as liberal to many.

Similarly, in the context of Muslims, ‘attempts by disadvantaged groups to rise in ritual status by strict adherence to "tradition" or the Shariat are not seen by them as a return to medievalism but in fact as symbols of achievement’ (Pandey in Chhachhi 1988, p. 23). So, acceptance in a social group closed so far or the move upwards in the social ladder may appear progressive and create an incentive for both poor men and women to support fundamentalism.

Fundamentalism also has a unique feature of constructing its own version of the ‘true identity’. In India, this is evident from the Sangh’s move to homogenize identity by disregarding the variety of ‘Hindu religions’, which have existed within the concept of Hinduism (Romila Thapar 1989). An interrogation of gender, class and caste in India reveal that the Sangh is promoting a uniformly brahminized, class-based, transregional modernity and a principle of formal gender equality located in a dichotomous upper caste practice.

The impact is visible in the spread of practices like dowry in states like Tamil Nadu (Kapadia 2002), wearing of sindur and mangalsutra and practice of karwa chauth by Hindu women irrespective of the region and culture. In the homogenization process, women’s space as well as capacity to bargain is being curtailed further by emphasizing brahminized feminine constructs and collective identity (Basu 1998, p. 175-76). Traits like self-sacrificing motherhood and devoted wife are now also being channelized towards building and nurturing a Hinduised social cohesion. In this brahminized, class-based, trans-regional modernization process, women may not have the space to think of separating their identities from the image of the ‘homogenized community’.

The Indian national movement, beginning in the 19th century, was imbued with simultaneous processes of socio-religious reform, specifically attempts to improve women’s condition within Hinduism. These attempts could be attributed to (i) initially, a desire to emulate what the reformers considered modern, i.e., the models of womanhood and conjugality of the colonizers, and (ii) later, the need to engage the wider masses in protesting against the colonizers. It would not have been possible to engage women in the protest without raising the issues which restrict their participation. During this period activists like Pandita Ramabai, Anandibai Joshi, Kailashbashini Debi, Tarabai Shinde, Haimavati Sen, Saraladevi, among others, challenged the patriarchal system by identifying the power dynamics which make man-woman relationships unequal (Chakravarti 1998, Sen 2000, Sarkar 1997, Omvedt 1980). Though dalit leaders started talking about caste, cultural, regional and class differences, but on the whole women were treated as a homogeneous entity.

The national movement identified the humiliated and colonized land with the image of a subjugated Hindu woman’s body – her body, sari and adornment encompassing present India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and parts of Afghanistan and Myanmar. The image stays even after 56 years of Partition. It also plays an important role in the projects of Hindu nationalism. The image of the motherland has been used to exhort proliferation of female deity or Shakti cult among women who find the concept of shakti empowering. The Sangh Parivar sees partition as a mutilation of the sacred body of the mother and holds Muslims responsible for this act of ‘desecration’ (Sarkar, p. 163-190 and 268-288). By laying claim to Hindu nationalist feminine icons and linking them to female power, patriotism, partition and a dream of Akhand Bharat the Sangh has successfully managed to mobilize Hindu women to support the cause of avenging partition.

Women’s support to the communalized politics of the Sangh Parivar also needs to be looked at from vantage point of individual women’s politics to benefit from the 73rd and 74th amendments to the Constitution as well as BJP attempts to enlarge its vote constituencies. The BJP has much to gain by keeping women’s collective political empowerment within the bounds of socio-historically gendered subjectivities. However, any such analysis must also keep in purview the socio-historical factors.

Women in India have long been active in various types of social and political movements – at national, regional and local levels. They were engaged in grassroots caste-based politics during the Nehruvian period when political power was mainly with the upper castes.

The emergence of ‘backward castes’ and farmers’ parties brought in many other groups of women in politics. Throughout, mainstream politics neither allowed an orientation towards gender issues, nor allowed women to use their agency in collaboration with women’s activists to actively raise and interrogate issues of gender inequalities. If anything the incorporation of gender issues has been considered divisive in the mass nationalist/caste/community building processes and movements. The controlled participation did help some individual women to ameliorate their own situation but systemic gender inequalities have remained unaddressed (Jeffery 1998, p. 222) and women’s orientation towards collaborative agency has been constrained.

Women’s support to religious fundamentalism reflects a situation where women are caught between emancipatory aspirations and inherited notions of ideal womanhood. Notwithstanding multiple factors influencing women’s support to fundamentalism and the impossibility of talking about a common protest against religious fundamentalism, it is possible to turn this ‘situation of being caught’ into a ‘situation of struggle’. Not by ascription to the universal notions of womenhood and sisterhood but by recognizing women’s multiple realities of and exploring questions such as, ‘is there a dissatisfaction with the nation building processes because they have not addressed the issues of gender, ideology, power and identity’, ‘are the modernization processes being seen by women as socio-cultural and economic devaluation of women’, and so on. The contested relationships between women, religion, society, state, culture, nationalism need to be theorized afresh in the public space and ‘discursive and related historical frameworks alike need to be (re)addressed’ (Rouse 1998, p. 69).

Article originally published in Seminar #537, May 2004, India Shining at http://www.india-seminar.com/2004/537/537%20comment.htm

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Elections & Votes … Are These All to Democracy?

Elections are commonly viewed as the key element of democracy. In deed, they are but they are one of the key elements. When democracy is understood in terms of democratic representation, it is easier to understand that it entails a far more complex process that extends well beyond elections. Citizens participate in governance through a multiplicity of activities - among them interaction with their chosen representative, and getting their chosen representatives and others influenced through participation in voluntary associations, social movements, interest groups, and nongovernmental organizations-all of which enable citizens to voice common concerns and influence public policy between elections. Through these they are able to have a voice in decisions that govern them. Representative democracy is therefore not just about the elected representatives but it is the broad framework of ‘mediated politics’. How the elected representatives will be influenced by mediated politics is not determined by their skills to read and write (it is good if they have these skills) but by their intellect, ability to analyse, ability to see the interlinkages and impact of their actions, ability to express in any medium that is understood by the key group whose interests they are representing and so on.

Since representative democracy can remain representative only by being in an environment of integrated multiple channels of interaction, what is needed is also that the chosen representatives are people who are part of multiplicity of activities or initiatives in which their electorate are engaged. That means they need to be people who are rooted (even by the process of transplantation/naturalisation/adoption/immigration) in their constituencies and so that they link the constituencies with the political system. The repercussion of a lack of this rootedness and all the other abilities that are mentioned in the first paragraph is the representatives cannot see the various interest groups in their constituency, do not hear different voices that would enable them to represent all interests.

If criteria like minimum education qualification becomes a minimum eligibility condition for contesting election, it runs the risk of pushing those out who have all the abilities to be a representatives but lack the reading and writing skills. It also runs the risk of further marginalizing the those who are educationally marginalized because they may prefer their interests to be represented by one of them. Usually the educationally marginalized are also socially, economically, and/or politically marginalized. Therefore, the imposition of the minimum education qualification as is sought, say in an employee in a public or private sector, runs the risk of not giving representation to, for example, women because in a country like India, majority of them are illiterate. This does not foretell well in a country where women’s interests and numbers both remain largely unrepresented. Such a requirement pushes back the representation of the disabled, dalits, and many other such interest groups.

Also there is a need to break the perception that only those citizens who take part in election and are interested in party politics are active citizens and keeping democracy alive. Citizens who identify with certain political parties do mediate the politics through their participation and opinions and therefore through the political parties play a role in the political process. But lack of engagement with on decline in engagement with in party politics does not signal the absence from mediated politics. Similarly non-exercise of the right to vote does not mean disengagement or social disinterest in politics. These citizens usually still influence politics through their engagement in media (including internet and traditional media), social and interest groups and many other forms of organized or informal interactions. Often, those who are ‘disgusted’ or ‘disappointed’ with the current day politicians or those contesting elections, they resort to other outlets, platforms, and means of engagement that influence or are a part of political mediations. Rise of protest and social movements and social accountability measures like gender audits and social audits, emergence and mushrooming of interest groups, creative ways to institutionalize participation like participatory development and budgeting, community policing, etc, are an example of ‘non-party political engagement’. This kind of situation does not symbolise decline in citizen’s political participation rather it means a decline in party and vote based politics and growth in 'personalised politics'. It is also a sign that the strength of political parties is going to decline gradually, particularly, in terms of their ability to mobilise electorate. This is already evidenced by the proliferation of the smaller political parties, regional parties, independents, and weakening of the major political parties in India. This also keeps democracy alive as these citizens may have chosen not to exercise their right to vote but by their 'personalised politics', they are still being effective citizens in the sense that they are still mediating politics of the place/region/nation.

Read a similar post: http://j-k.in/blog/2009/12/make-voting-mandatory/

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