Abstract 2011 Mirella Lingorska

Mirella Lingorska, University of Tübingen

Email: mirella.lingorska@uni-tuebingen.de

Female Ascetics in the Hindutva

In the decades after Indira Gandhi’s emergency rule a crisis of governability has been strongly felt especially in lower circles of the Indian society. Communal riots as a distinct feature of inter-religious conflicts in India exposed a shifting pattern in the 1990s due to the decline of the Congress and the emergence of the BJP as a strong political force. While it is true that riots mainly evolve from political and / or economic interests, the wave of violence in the last two decades increased as a result of the manipulation of religious sentiments of people by the Hindu right-wing organizations.

Partly due to the testimony of the anti-colonial struggle for independence and partly connected with feelings of insecurity and exposure to changing moral values several militant factions appeared under the umbrella of the Family combine (Sangh Parivar): In the 80s the Bajrang Dal, the Army of Hanuman, appeared, and in 1991 the Durga Vahini, Durgas Army, followed. Both organisations appealed with a program of physical and mental training to young men and women with the perspective to shape them as anti-vice squad members and  transmitters of noble human values in keeping with the Hindu culture.

In the last decade of heavy inter-religious conflicts in India (2002 riots in Gujarat, 2006 serial train blasts in Mumbai) the issue of women and fundamentalism gained afresh prominence among the topics of Indian policy. Taking into consideration that a considerable part of the communal tension derives its energy from resentments deeply rooted in the traditionally shaped religious groups it becomes essential to investigate the role of women in these conflicts. Women as the doorkeepers of an intimate interior which houses private habits of eating, hygienic norms, cohabitation practices function often as transmitters of almost subconscious repugnance towards differently organised communities. Do these specific fields of female responsibility enter the politically powerful rhetoric of the Hindu Right? Who are the political figures carrying on this discourse?  If these be some of the female leaders in the Hindutva camp, do they reiterate the traditional role of the Hindu wife or the Hindu daughter in a changed social context or do they offer a new pattern of an outspoken and self-confident behaviour which can be taken as a stimulus to a modern female identity?  With these questions in view the paper deals with Sadhvi Ritambhara, Uma Bharati, Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur as some of the prominent female activists in the political branch of the Sangh Parivar.

Abstract 2011 Patrick Hesse

Patrick Hesse, Humboldt University, Berlin


Email: patrick.hesse@freenet.de 

Liberating women, defending tradition: Communist perspectives on gender emancipation in mid-20th century 

The Communist Party of India (CPI) had existed for three decades ere it first began formulating a policy on the issue of the condition of women in the 1950s. With the establishment of the NFIW (National Federation of Indian Women) in 1954, the demands and aspirations of the female part of the population were to have found an outlet apart from the Congress, one which would advance their cause as part of the great revolutionary struggles ahead of the Indian masses.

However being regarded as a subordinate aspect of a greater struggle from the very outset heavily influenced the stances communists would take vis-à-vis the discrimination of women. Not only did demands for women’s rights seldom figure prominently on the party’s agenda. Moreover, as was also the case with other social issues, the Communists’ approach to the unsatisfying status quo as a result of centuries of class rule and mostly unspecified “supporting ideologies” tended to obscure concrete exploitation and similar omissions on the part the ‘revolutionary masses’ except for the worst excesses.

The call of the CPI to help with organizing Muslim women in the Muslim League in the 1940s still might pass as an outgrowth of contemporary party policy, but the statements of Hajrah Begum, the party’s foremost organizer on the women front in the 1950s, testify as much to the development of a genuine party line on the subject as to that line being equally detached from the specific day-to-day problems of women as from revolutionary notions of the place women should occupy in society.

The presentation will trace this development and attempt to identify the mechanisms and imperatives that guided the communists in formulating a women’s policy between the sometimes divergent stances of anti-imperialism, emancipation, and mass revolution.