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Gender, Religion and Democratic Politics inIndiaZoya Hasan aa Centre for Political Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawarhal NehruUniversity , New Delhi, 110067, IndiaPublished online: 15 Sep 2010.

To cite this article: Zoya Hasan (2010) Gender, Religion and Democratic Politics in India, Third World Quarterly,31:6, 939-954, DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2010.502726

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Gender, Religion and DemocraticPolitics in India

ZOYA HASAN

ABSTRACT This article examines the impact of identity politics on genderequality. More specifically it explores the paradoxical and complex relationshipof religion and politics in a multi-religious society and the complicated ways inwhich women’s activism has both reinforced and challenged their genderidentities. Contrary to the argument that religious politics does not alwaysnegate gender equality, the article argues that the Hindu religious politics andwomen’s activism associated with it provides a compelling example of theinstrumentalisation of women to accomplish the political goals of the Hinduright. It also examines the approach and strategies of influential politicalparties, women’s organisations and Muslim women’s groups towards legalreform and the contested issue of a uniform civil code. Against those who arguethat, in the current communal conjuncture, reform within Muslim personallaws or Islamic feminism is the best strategy for enhancing the scope of Muslimwomen’s rights, the article argues that such an approach tends to freezeidentities within religious boundaries. It shows how women’s and minorityrights are used within the politics of religion to sideline the agenda of women’srights.

India’s democratic politics has witnessed significant shifts that can be tracedto the defining period of 1989–91, when the neoliberal restructuring of theeconomy and the rapid rise of political organisations that espouse Hindutva(Hinduness), a self-defined ideology of Hindu supremacy that believesHindustan (India) is a Hindu rashtra (nation), changed the contours bothof its economy and politics. The emergence of a Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government in the late 1990smarked a crucial turning point in modern Indian politics as, for the first timethe BJP, India’s main right-wing political party and the front party of a familyof militant Hindu organisations (known as the Sangh Parivar) formed agovernment at the centre, ending decades of erstwhile political isolation. Be itthe communalisation of the polity, or the anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat in2002, the communalisation of national security, its educational policy, orgender issues, the BJP’s legacy is, to say the least, disquieting. The electoralvictory of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) led by the Indian National

Zoya Hasan is at the Centre for Political Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawarhal Nehru University,

New Delhi 110067, India. Email: zoyahasan@bol.net.in.

Third World Quarterly, Vol. 31, No. 6, 2010, pp 939–954

ISSN 0143-6597 print/ISSN 1360-2241 online/10/060939–16

� 2010 Third World Quarterly, www.thirdworldquarterly.com

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Congress in the 2004 and 2009 elections, defeating the BJP-led coalition wasseen in this context as a respite for secular politics.Apart from the six years of the BJP-led coalition government in Delhi,

India has not been governed by a political party or a coalition of partiesthat make explicit appeals to religion. Nevertheless, religious and identitypolitics are an important force in India’s public life. They assumed greaterprominence during BJP rule but that party alone has not been responsible forthe increasing role of politicised religion. Even secular parties such as theCongress Party, which has ruled India for more than four decades, has foundthe idea of scoring quick electoral gains by tampering with secular principlesand institutions too tempting to resist. Political parties seeking to stake out aposition as pro-Hindu, or simultaneously pro-Hindu and a protector of theminorities, have given a fillip to religious politics.This article focuses on identity politics and its impact on gender equality.

Identity politics, for long a part of India’s political landscape, refers tomovements, campaigns, party strategies and group assertions that mobilisepolitical support around caste and religious identities to gain access topolitical power and public goods, services and resources of the state. Theseassertions have affected the ‘woman question’ so much so that the coherenceof ‘women’ as a category has come to be seriously questioned and debated.More specifically the article seeks to examine the implications of the interfacebetween politics and religion for women’s rights and minority women’srights, as well as for India’s democracy and political secularism. It willattempt to show how women’s and minority rights are used instrumentallywithin the politics of religion, thereby sidelining the agenda of women’srights.The analysis comprises three principal sections. The first section introduces

the key issues of secularism and women’s legal status; the second sectionlooks at the ways in which religion and politics have been intertwined inIndia and the role of the Congress Party and the BJP in this process, with asub-section on Hindu women’s political activism. Finally, the third sectionexamines the approach and strategies of influential political parties, women’smovements, and Muslim women’s groups towards legal reform and thecontested issue of a ‘uniform civil code’.

Political secularism

Secularism in India, as elsewhere, means a separation of organised religionfrom organised political power. The basic constituents of this separation,however, are not exactly the same as in Western European or US secularisms.The term secularism did not enter the Indian Constitution until 1976. Butdespite this and serious differences of interpretation, secularism has beena central feature of the Indian project of modernity and democracy. TheConstitution does not mandate a strict separation of religion and state, andreligion has not been disestablished. Departing from the disestablishmentmodel, the state has chosen to interpret secularism as the responsibility toensure the protection and equality of all religions and to provide for

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regulation and reform, rather than the strict separation of religion and state.1

Yet there is no mistaking the overall secular design articulated in threesalient principles. The first is the principle of religious freedom, which coversnot just the right to religious thought, but every aspect of faith, includingbeliefs and rituals, and also freedom from discrimination on grounds ofreligion, race, caste, place of birth, or gender.2 Article 30(1) recognises therights of religious minorities and, unlike other articles applicable to citizensqua individuals, it is a community-based right. Second, Article 30(2) commitsthe state to give aid to educational institutions established and administeredby religious minorities. The third feature is the emphasis on social welfareand reform.3 Significantly Articles 17 and 25(2) permit the state to intervenein religious affairs and to regulate or restrict any economic, financial,political, or other secular activity that may be associated with religiouspractice. Unlike the US view of disestablishment, which is often thought tobe based on a strict ‘wall of separation’ between religion and the state, theIndian state is empowered to legislate against the ‘non-egalitarian’ and ‘caste-ridden’ prejudices legitimated by Hindu society, including opening templeentry to former untouchables, abolition of child marriage, and abolition ofuntouchability.Overall secularism was adapted to suit Indian conditions in ways that

enabled it to combine with and respond to the demands of statecraft,while incorporating the religious ideals of Gandhi, on the one hand, and themodernist outlook of Jawaharlal Nehru, on the other. Despite its manyweaknesses, this strategy worked for many decades. Even in the face ofpressures from the Hindu right, Nehru never countenanced a political rolefor religion, as that would endanger national integrity.One issue most relevant to the religion–politics relationship in India is

that of minority rights. The question of whether minorities should beaccorded special treatment by the state remains a matter of bitter conflictand controversy in India, especially in recent years when the Hindu right, bypersistently attacking minority rights, has questioned the link betweensecularism and minority rights.4 It has been particularly severe in its attack‘[w]henever secularism has meant providing for substantive equality forreligious minorities’.5

A related issue pertains to women’s rights. Indeed, one of the majorrationales of secularism was its promise of gender equality and support forwomen. Equality before the law is a principle that seeks to promote genderinclusiveness and Articles 14 and 15 of the Indian Constitution explicitly statethis. One of the greatest challenges relating to gender equality pertained tothe domain of personal laws.6 After Independence reform of personal lawsbecame necessary to meet the needs of secularism and modernisation, and torender personal laws fair, just and non-discriminatory. India’s postcolonialmodernist leadership demonstrated a willingness to intervene in matters ofpersonal law, which are widely seen as the domain of religious and traditionalauthorities, and where religious and customary precepts (the latter oftengiving women even fewer rights than the former) continue to hold sway.However, only Hindu laws were singled out for reform.7

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The Congress government under the leadership of Nehru went aheadwithin a year of Independence to enact a number of progressive laws inrelation to marriage and divorce (1955), adoption and maintenance (1956),minority and guardianship (1956), and succession and inheritance (1956),among others. These broke away from the scriptural tradition andrepresented important steps in the direction of, first, the liberalisation andsecularisation of Hindu personal law and, second, the eventual formulationof a uniform civil code.8 Nehru hailed this reform as revolutionary and ‘themost outstanding achievement of his time’.9 These changes went quite far inthe direction of gender equity but not complete equality. In later yearswomen’s organisations were to argue that they did not go far enough, not inpractice giving equal rights to women; most of these laws are also floutedwith impunity. For example, the Hindu Marriage Act 1955 permits themarriage of a girl at 18, but not of a boy until the age of 21. Similarly theHindu Succession Act provides for different schemes of succession for maleand female intestates.More contentious than the shortfalls of Hindu law reform was the state’s

reluctance to adopt a similar approach towards reform of the religiouspersonal laws of minority communities (ie Muslims, Christians, Sikhs andParsees) to bring them into line with modern notions of gender justice. Thecritics have directed their energies on what they perceive as the unequalexercise of power of the state, providing for reform of the institutions andpractices of Hinduism, while not deploying this power in relation to IndianIslam. This asymmetric treatment created an aberration in the very notion ofequal citizenship: if it was accepted that the state could intervene to provideequal rights to members of one community, then what grounds were there fornot doing the same for others?Although Nehru considered legal reform of all personal laws necessary and

a uniform civil code (for codification and the legal unification of the civilcodes of different religious communities in India) for the country as a wholeessential and a vital element for national development, he was apprehensivethat any imposition on minorities, without their consent, would be impru-dent. Hence the policy of merging the personal laws of different religiouscommunities into a set of uniform and equal laws was indefinitely postponeduntil such time as the minority communities were ready for it and/orwilling to initiate it. The aspiration for a uniform civil code was placed in thenon-justiciable Directive Principles of State Policy (Article 35 in the draftConstitution and Article 44 in the present Constitution), leaving personalcodes in place.Post-Independence the personal laws of minorities remain unchanged and

unreformed. Muslim leaders, with some notable exceptions, have vocallyopposed a uniform civil code, insisting that personal laws are an intrinsic partof their religion, and that therefore the state should not legislate on it. Theyclaim protection of their personal laws under Articles 25 and 26 of theConstitution, which guarantees the right to religious freedom. Many Hinduleaders had taken the same oppositional position against reform of Hindupersonal laws during the parliamentary debates in 1955–56,10 but were

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overruled; this was possible because the majority in parliament comprisedHindus who were agreeable to changing these laws.11 On the other hand, inregard to minorities there was reluctance to impose the will of the majority ona minority that was disadvantaged and underrepresented.

The rise of identity politics: role of the Congress and the BJP

For more than four decades after Independence the Congress occupied apivotal position in Indian politics. Congress’s political supremacy began todecline from the late 1960s and with it India’s secular framework began toweaken. Before this period the political influence of religion was limited andcommunal parties won few seats. Although Indira Gandhi retained a strongcommitment to India as a secular state, her definition of secularism waspremised on the equality of all religions and not the rejection of religion orcomplete separation of religion and politics. The readiness to overstep thebounds of constitutional propriety on matters of religion and secularismcreated the space for the rapid rise of an anti-secular alternative.A series of events, some unintended, others calculated, helped anti-secular

forces to gain a foothold in the political system. The unravelling of thesecularist fabric began with demands for regional autonomy in Punjab andthe manner in which the state responded to those demands. The Congressdecided to play ‘the Hindu card’ to undercut the popularity of its regionalrival, the Akali Dal in Punjab.12 In a defining case delivered in 1985 theSupreme Court called for the enactment of a uniform civil code which wouldgive all women, regardless of faith, equal rights—for example the right toalimony or maintenance once divorced. This landmark judgment granted amaintenance allowance to Shah Bano, a 73-year-old Muslim divorcee, to bepaid by her husband under the Criminal Procedure Code (Cr Pc). The Courtruled that Section 125, as part of the criminal rather than civil law, overridesall personal law and is uniformly applicable to all women, including Muslimwomen.At stake in this case was the right of a divorced Muslim woman to claim

maintenance from her former husband under the Cr Pc. Avoiding theconstitutional question of equality, the court dilated at length on thecompatibility of the Cr Pc and the Quran. This sparked off a major politicaluproar which the Rajiv Gandhi government pacified by means of the MuslimWomen’s (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act (MWA), which overrode thejudgment and thus excluded Muslim women from the purview of the Cr Pc,to which otherwise all citizens have recourse. Acting on the advice of theclergy, the government took the decision to nullify the court’s verdict andenact the MWA in 1986, declaring that Muslim women would not have accessto civil law in matters of marriage and divorce. The new law createdproblems not only for sex equality but also for non-discrimination ongrounds of religion: Muslim women were the only ones denied this remedyunder the criminal code.13

Reversal of the Shah Bano verdict breathed life into the ideology of theHindu nationalists, who condemned the Congress for its appeasement of

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Muslims through this legislation. While it is doubtful how much Muslimsupport Rajiv Gandhi garnered in terms of Muslim votes in the 1989parliamentary election, his move certainly alienated a large section of theHindu community, especially the middle classes, which saw him as ‘appeasing’Muslims. This decision was cited again and again by Hindu political activiststo claim that Hindus as a majority community were discriminated against.This is an absurd charge, since the discrimination is against Muslim women,rather than Hindu men.The most far-reaching in this series of events that damaged and

destabilised secularism was the mishandling of the Ayodhya dispute. Fromthe mid-1980s the BJP and its affiliates launched a nationwide campaign toconstruct a Ram temple at the site of the Babri mosque in Ayodhya in thestate of Uttar Pradesh in northern India. Hindu activists had been claimingthat the mosque stood at the exact spot believed to be the birthplace of LordRam. Several decisions were taken by the Congress government bothcentrally and in Uttar Pradesh, including unlocking the disputed site,launching the party’s 1991 electoral campaign from Faizabad, a town nearAyodhya, and allowing the foundation stones of the proposed Ram temple tobe laid near the mosque. All these dubious decisions were aimed at arousingHindu sentiment in favour of the Congress for electoral purposes but endedup compromising the principle of the separation of religion and politics, andabove all encouraging the BJP to intensify its campaign for a Ram temple.Overall the decision to turn a dispute between two religions over a piece ofholy ground into a national issue was intended to appease the majoritycommunity, which was unhappy with the government’s decision to overturnthe Shah Bano court verdict.Both the Shah Bano and Ayodhya decisions, calculated to please,

respectively, communally minded Muslims and Hindus, ended up giving amassive boost to the forces of the Hindu right, reflected in the BJP’s rise froma mere two seats in 1984 to 89 seats in the Lok Sabha (lower house ofthe Parliament) in 1989. Giving one concession to a particular communityand then offsetting it by granting concessions to other communities was aprocess that left both Hindu and Muslim communities feeling they had lostsomething. Despite, or some would say because of, the concessions toreligious group demands, the polity has been torn apart by competitivecommunalism and sectarian conflict. Even as Congress flirted sporadicallywith the politics of religion, it was eventually to become its principal victim,paving the way for the emergence of BJP as a major political force in the nameof protecting the majority community against the excesses of minority andthe vote-bank politics of the Congress.Although Hindu nationalists have been around for nearly a century, it is

only from the 1980s onwards that there has been an increase in their influencein India’s public life. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is at thecentre of a constellation of forces and organisations which includes the BJP,the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), and the Bajrang Dal. Together theseorganisations and their affiliates are aiming to establish a Hindu rashtra(state) by playing down the horizontal divisions among Hindus; they strive

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for the integration of all castes, communities and sects into a homogeneouswhole. There are, however, obvious difficulties in the advancement of thisproject as not all Indians are Hindus. An even greater hindrance is thediversity of Hindus, who are divided into numerous castes and sub-castes. Inorder to overcome this obstacle Hindu nationalists have cast Muslims as ‘theOther’ and the enemy against whom all Hindus need to unify. The Hindutvacampaigns have consistently sought to exploit a sense of anxiety about Hinduidentity and the alleged partiality of the state towards religious minorities,especially Muslims, even though upper-caste Hindus dominate all politicalinstitutions in independent India and are economically and culturallypowerful. Yet Hindu nationalists have created a pervasive sense that Hindushave not received their due even after the Partition of India.14 Such ideasappeal to sections of the population who need something to cling to, someoneto blame, for the social and economic problems that have plagued India sinceIndependence. A distinguishing feature of this movement lies in the way thissense of vulnerability has been communicated through the claim thatminorities do not condemn terrorism sufficiently. This critique posits Muslimsas the adversary for all Hindus regardless of their internal differences, beliefsand practices. It derives its charge from an external principle of coherencewhich is central to establishing unity among Hindus.15 That is to say, it seeksto unite Hindus not by what they share but by what they oppose, which is thecommon opposition to the ‘enemy within’ independent India.The growth of Hindu nationalism was aided in large measure by political

opposition, especially in northern and western India, to reservations forlower castes in education and government jobs. The party succeeded intaking advantage of the increase in caste conflicts around redistributivepolicies for lower and backward caste Hindus. Middle class hostility toreservations for the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) opened up fissuresbetween upper and backward castes, which sometimes appeared to be closelylinked with communal tensions and these at times turned caste conflicts intocommunal violence.16 This happened in Gujarat in 1985 and at the nationallevel in 1990–91. The turning point in this process came in 1989, when thecentral government-appointed Mandal Commission decided to implementthe long-standing government report that recommended mandatory reserva-tions of 33 per cent in government employment for the OBCs.17 The reactionagainst the so-called Mandal decision proved to be violent, resulting in self-immolation of some university students and it prompted widespreaddisturbances in several parts of the country. Incensed by the possibility thatreservations would heighten caste consciousness and thereby undermineHindu solidarity, the BJP organised a rath yatra (carriage procession)throughout the country. During the 1991 election campaign the BJP, RSS andVHP mounted a campaign led by Lal Krishna Advani which focused on theissue of Ayodhya. Activists marched towards the disputed site carrying withthem the BJP’s electoral symbols (a lotus) and pressed on by loudspeakersrelaying Advani’s speeches and militant religious songs. Advani made a pointof emphasising that this was not a religious crusade. ‘This [rath yatra] is acrusade against pseudo-secularism and minorityism which I regard as a

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political issue’.18 ‘Don’t be under the misconception that I have becomereligious’, he said, later reiterating: ‘I am a politician’.19

The Ayodhya strategy illustrates the broader logic of the Sangh Parivar,which accords a central place to religious symbols but whose appealultimately has more to do with politics than religion. As mentioned above,contingent events such as the Mandal decision also gave it a fillip. Thebackward caste-dominated Janata Dal state governments in Bihar and UttarPradesh blocked the rath yatra, prompting the BJP to withdraw support to theminority government led by Prime Minister VP Singh. The Janata Dalgovernment at the centre collapsed in the process, as did the vote share of theparty in the 1991 elections, while that of the BJP rose as it benefited fromthe VHP’s campaign and the resentment over state action in halting themarch, which was interpreted as an anti-Hindu action. The party won 120parliamentary seats and 20 per cent of the vote, and succeeded in increasingits influence further in some states, especially Uttar Pradesh. Many uppercaste voters, embittered by the Janata Dal’s decision to implement theMandal Commission’s recommendations, switched support to the BJP.Ensconced as the major opposition party after the elections of 1990–91, the

BJP faced pressure from the RSS cadres and the movement that had catapultedthe BJP to centrestage, which now pressed it to focus on the Ayodhya issue.The BJP sustained the pressure by organising Ram processions in manyregions. Hindu pilgrims and RSS activists continued to flock to the site and on6 December 1992 a large crowd of RSS and VHP members entered the disputedarea and demolished the mosque. In one way the demolition of the mosquehelped the BJP by showing that it was capable of uprooting what it describedas a powerful symbol of humiliation, but in another way it deprived it ofa focus for mass mobilisation. The period was also marked by waves ofcommunal rioting that left thousands dead across northern and westernIndia, culminating in the election of the first ever BJP-led NDA government atthe centre. In 2002 the state of Gujarat was engulfed by brutal communalviolence against Muslims. It is estimated that 2000 people were massacred.The violence in Gujarat stands out from the innumerable incidents ofcommunal violence in India over half a century in one particular: the BJP

government in the state was directly involved in acts of omission andcommission. Gujarat is a vivid example of the politics of religion goinghorribly wrong, when a political party bases its appeal on ideas of religiousnationalism and ethnic homogeneity, and when violence is aided and abettedat the highest levels of government and no action is taken against those whoperpetrate it.

Women and the Hindu right: instrumentalising women

During the Ayodhya movement in the 1990s the Sangh combine intensifiedthe mobilisation of women with the assistance of RSS affiliated organisa-tions—Rashtriyasevika Samiti, the VHP’s Durga Vahini and the BJP-affiliatedwomen’s organisation, the Mahila Morcha—and of the women leaders theyhad thrown up. During this period it was keen to project its women leaders in

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public places and roles, and also its elected women members in legislativeassemblies. For the first time it won recruits from educated middle-classfamilies and professional backgrounds for the Hindutva cause. This was amajor advance insofar as it succeeded in activating women and brought theminto the politics of the Hindu right. Most of these women did not come fromwomen’s organisations or movements, and therefore were indifferent towomen’s issues and problems. In fact, they performed mostly sex-linked rolesin the public domain.20 Their activities in the public arena re-enacted theirprivate roles, for example preparing food packets for karsevaks (Hinduvolunteers) during the Ayodhya campaign.The association of women was not, however, limited to supporting roles in

the Ayodhya movement. Many of these women were also actively involvedin the campaign for the demolition of the Babri mosque in December1992. Indeed, the most powerful voices heard in the course of the Ayodhyamovement urging the destruction of the mosque were those of womengoading Hindu men into violence against Muslims.21 Another feature wasthe complicity and direct participation of these activists in violence againstMuslims. During these incidents Hindu women were often leading pro-cessions through Muslim neighbourhoods with trishuls (tridents) andshouting inflammatory slogans. They were seen directing Hindu mobstowards Muslim localities and, worse still, preventing the police from helpingMuslim families.22 It is clear from these episodes that the leadership of theHindu right does not advocate pacifism; rather, it implicitly sanctions andencourages women’s participation in sectarian violence. Immunity frompunishment has further emboldened and encouraged violent action as theperpetrators of violence are confident that they will never be punished or beheld to account for their acts of violence.On the face of it the Sangh Parivar appears to promote women’s activism,

which has helped the BJP marshal fresh support since 1989.23 Participation inthe activities of the Rashtriyasevika Samiti brings women into the publicdomain and this helps them to cultivate engagements beyond the confines offamily and kinship. The Hindutva ideologues take pride in the fact thatwomen were out on the streets campaigning for Hindutva and establishinga Hindu community identity through aggressive and visible religiosity.Many leaders projected the public participation of women as a sign of theemancipation of Hindu women. Tanika Sarkar remarks, however, that, whilethe Sangh combine brought women into the public domain, it did so in waysthat do not fundamentally challenge their traditional roles within a generallyconservative domesticity.24 She also notes that it permitted and encouragededucation, employment and activist politicisation only on the basis ofcommunal violence and commitment to an extremely inegalitarian socialperspective. The communalised public identity of Rashtriyasevika Samitiwomen reinforced conservative ideas about women and their status. ForSamiti women their work was different from that of other women’sorganisations, which educate women about their rights, Samiti was tellingwomen how to sacrifice themselves to hold the family together by being agood mother; it did nothing to help them emancipate themselves as women.25

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In other words, the ideology of the Rashtriyasevika Samiti ‘is a form ofsurrender to patriarchy’, because the primary goal is not taking forwardwomen’s issues but advancing the cause of the RSS and transmitting its ideas.Thus, while the women’s movement challenges notions of women’ssubordination within the family and society, Hindutva ideology places themsquarely within private spaces and propagates a patriarchal model eventhough it brings them out into public spaces.26

Even so, many women participants felt empowered by the experience ofpublic activism on behalf of Hindutva. This is because many of thesecampaigns offered women an escape from the world of domesticity. Lessnoticed was the fact that the women who participated in the Ayodhyamovement also quickly returned to traditional roles, working within theconfines of their family and community and routinely spreading the ideologyof Hindutva and the BJP. Consequently activism did not really changewomen’s outlook because they were not in the first place drawn to it by itsadvocacy of their rights; their principal attraction was Hindutva’s emotionalcharge. Thus Hindu women’s activism works in the service of Hindutva andnot in support of women’s interests as such.As the BJP’s primary objective is to gain power, it has encouraged women

to come forward and participate in politics in different capacities, moststrikingly to campaign in elections. It proudly puts up elected womenmembers in legislative and executive bodies. The party claims to be a strongadvocate of women’s rights and of reserving a third of seats in parliament forwomen. The need to give nominations to women is self-evident in view of thesteadily growing women’s constituency, but the party has not given a largenumber of nominations to women. Indeed, the Congress Party has fieldedmore women candidates than the BJP, although their overall performance hasnot been impressive. The Congress Party has nominated more women tocontest elections and most women elected to parliament belong to it.27

Even though women’s empowerment is not central to theHindutva project,the movement appears keen to promote Muslim women’s rights. On the onehand, the BJP derides and decries the principle of minority rights, a keyfeature of Indian secularism, as an unwarranted privilege in order todecouple secularism and minority rights;28 on the other hand, it supportsMuslim women’s rights only to draw attention to the unreformed characterof Muslim personal law and seek its abolition. This helps it compensate forits attack on minority rights by appearing to support Muslim women’s rights.This support was staged in order to establish the party’s liberal credentialseven as they does little to advance Hindu women’s rights.

Religion, feminist politics and uniform civil code

Over the years the debate on religion in the women’s movement has shiftedfrom a position that virtually ignored religion to an attempt to work forreligious reform from within.29 This shift occurred at a time when thecommunalisation and politicisation of religion was apparent in the series ofevents discussed in the preceding section that led to the waning of secularism

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and attacks on minority rights. As the issue of minorities catapulted to centrestage, Muslim women’s rights became a subject of considerable debate,typically with reference to the status of Muslim personal law and theconflicting claims of personal law, identity and gender. This was most clearlyunderlined during the Shah Bano controversy already discussed.The BJP is the strongest advocate of a uniform civil code, while Muslim

conservatives are among its strongest opponents. In 1998 the BJP promised toinstitute a uniform civil code if it came to power. Until then the party hadraised the issue of a uniform civil code principally to embarrass the CongressParty, which was reluctant to change the status quo in the face of Muslimopposition to it. The BJP has argued that leaving Muslim law untouchedimplies unequal and asymmetrical treatment. This asymmetry has formed thebasis for the charge that secularism, especially secular practice, impliespandering to Muslims for electoral gain. Hence the party criticised theunequal exercise of the power of the state, which intervened to reform theHindu personal laws whereas the same was not done in relation to Muslimpersonal law. The Muslim leadership, on the other hand, fears that such lawswould inevitably lead to uniform cultural practices and alien customs beingfoisted upon them. In this the overlaps and convergences between the Hinduand Muslim positions are striking. Both are impelled by the need to preservegender hierarchies as well as to retain their own religious authority andautonomy.30

From the outset the problem with the uniform civil code debate was itsgratuitous emphasis on uniformity, which found its reflection in terming it a‘uniform’ civil code. Both judicial pronouncements and public debatejustified it as essential for national integrity. For a long time it was rarelyarticulated in the public consciousness as a feminist issue.31 It became adebate about uniformity versus minority rights, secularism versus religiouslaws and modernisation versus tradition in the context of the new nation-state.32 As Tahir Mahmood, an expert in personal law, points out, theultimate object of Article 44 (which enjoins the state to move forwardtowards a uniform civil code) is secularity in family law: ‘the call foruniformity is merely the means’.33

In recent years the issue has become considerably more complicated withthe changing positions of women’s groups and sharp divisions on a range ofissues relating to it. The decisive shift occurred in the wake of the Ayodhyaconflict and the dramatic growth of the BJP and with it of Muslim fears of theimposition of a ‘Hindu’ code.34 There is agreement among feminists that allreligious personal laws are discriminatory and must therefore change. Thereare, however, disagreements over the means to achieve this objective, whetherthrough a state-sponsored civil code or internal reform. Aware that legalchange cannot be isolated from wider political conflicts and majoritarianpolitics, women’s groups made an attempt to distance feminist positions fromthe Hindu right’s demand for a uniform civil code.35 The women’s movementhas since moved to a more nuanced position which combines the options ofreform from within personal laws, with the formulation of gender-just lawsderiving from the concept of a common civil code.

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For example, Kumkum Sangari argues that the opposition betweena uniform civil code and personal laws is ‘manichean and politicallyperemptory’:

The possibility of gender equality, democratic rights, and full access toequitable laws cannot be recuperated without changing the terms of the debate.The question is not whether women should come under the patriarchaljurisdiction of the state or that of the community. Such a formulation ignoresfeminist agency. The stake should not be the state or the community but genderjustice as a principle and a social horizon.36

The change is most explicit in the case of the left-leaning All IndiaDemocratic Women’s Association (AIDWA), which not very long agopromoted a uniform civil code, but now favours a gradual change inpersonal laws in recognition of the difficulty of pushing change through stateinitiative. It supports a two-pronged strategy to achieve reconciliationbetween gender-just laws as well as reforms from within. It has activelyengaged in mobilising Muslim women and encouraging communityinitiatives for legal reform, codification of personal laws, and at the sametime demanding legislation with regard to matrimonial property and thecustody of children, among other issues.In the context of the controversies surrounding uniform civil code, an

important development over the past few years has been the emergence ofMuslim women’s activism seeking to promote women’s rights rather thanfocusing all energies on changing personal laws.37 Muslim women in Indiaface considerable challenges as citizens and as members of the largestminority. They suffer from many disadvantages in areas such as education,employment and access to welfare programmes. The status of Muslimwomen broadly indicates the shortage of three essentials: knowledge(measured by literacy and average years of schooling), economic power(captured through participation in paid work and income), and autonomy(measured by decision making and physical mobility) as the defining featuresof women’s low status.38

It is not religion or religiously-ordained customs and laws alone that affectthe status of Muslim women. However, when it comes to Muslim women’srights there is an inordinate emphasis on personal laws as the stumblingblock to their empowerment. Both Muslims and Muslim women continue tobe defined by birth-bound identities, and consequently the notion thatMuslim women’s status is attributable to certain intrinsic, immutable,‘Islamic’ features is widely prevalent. All the debates tend to revolve aroundeither the desirability of reform from within, ie within the community andwith religious sanction in order to preserve a Muslim identity, or on the needto transcend community and end the gender discrimination inherent inpersonal laws by working towards a uniform civil code that will govern allcitizens. This preoccupation has meant glossing over the economic, politicaland social problems that define the everyday experiences of Muslim women.On the other hand, the appropriation of Muslim women’s issues by a vocal

and politically influential and conservative male Muslim leadership poses a

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challenge to Muslim women’s empowerment. The emergence in recent yearsof forums and associations of Muslim women is an important step infacilitating a new public debate on women’s rights. The alliance of Muslimwomen’s groups with the women’s movement, together with movementsfor secularism, democracy and human rights, has also been crucial inbroad-basing the struggle for women’s rights. Two Mumbai-based groups—Women’s Research and Action Group (WRAG) and Aawaz-e-Niswan—illustrate important initiatives which have gone beyond personal laws topromote gender equality.39 They aim to provide aid and support to poor,illiterate and marginalised women, while at the same time raising theirconsciousness about the gender inequities that exist in society and the need tostrive to overcome them. Their engagement with legal reform is an outgrowthof these broad-based activities. Much like other women’s groups Muslimwomen’s groups engage with a range of issues that include education,employment and domestic violence.40 Although these efforts have not to dateinspired the development of a major reform movement among Muslims, theyrepresent vital steps in seeking to build a rights-based movement. There is,for the first time, the beginnings of serious debate on social reform.The project of legal reform is greatly complicated by the problems

confronting the Muslim community, which remains a vulnerable minority inIndia. A recent high-level committee on the status of the Muslim community,known as the Sachar Committee, has shown that they are impoverished,marginalised and underrepresented in public institutions.41 They do,however, have the right to have their own personal laws and to continueto practise these under state protection. From the point of view of Muslimwomen this has meant that the articulation of gender interests has beentightly controlled and articulated within the terms of an identity discourse.Political negotiations over personal laws have invariably favoured con-servative voices among Muslims to the detriment of women’s voices andwomen’s rights. Those who argue for reform from within of Muslim personallaws as the best strategy for enhancing the scope of Muslim women’s rightsignore the fact that such an approach tends to freeze identities withinreligious boundaries. Very little attention has been paid to the multiple cross-cutting identities of Muslim women based on class, language and region,among others. Implicit in this approach is the assumption of a homogeneousMuslim identity, which fails to hear the different voices within thecommunity. Legal reform becomes tricky because the moral and legalframework on which it is based is supposed to be immutable. In addition, it isprojected as an important issue for all Muslims because it supposedly definestheir identity.In the end the system of personal laws has created a legal and social

quagmire. It raises the question of whether personal laws should have beenallowed to continue in the first place. To have replaced the system of personallaws with a uniform civil code would have resolved and prevented manyproblems that haunt the country. The problem, however, was that, in theimmediate aftermath of Partition it would have given a signal of inferiorstatus to the Muslim community, which was already reeling under a sense of

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insecurity, no matter how neutral and how carefully framed such a codemight have been. Internal reform of personal laws to bring them within theambit of equal protection and other fundamental rights has proven to be justas complicated. It will be difficult to accomplish this goal even with the bestintentions and will, and even with the considerable involvement of Muslimwomen.

Conclusion

Over the past 20 years or so the politicisation of religion has madeconsiderable headway in India but it has not overwhelmed secular politics.Even as Hindu nationalism enabled the BJP to shift India’s political agenda inthe 1990s, it has so far not been able to shake the foundations of the secularstate or enlarge its political support in a major way. In reality the Hindu righthas encountered serious structural barriers and substantial opposition amongdifferent groups of India’s diverse population. The stunning verdict in favourof a secular government in two successive parliamentary elections (2004 and2009) is an indication of the strong opposition to the politics of religion andsectarianism. The continued existence of a secular state in a deeply religioussociety and in a context in which ethnic nationalism remains a powerful forcein the world and especially in India’s neighbourhood is a matter of greatsignificance.In India identity politics and secularism seem to go hand in hand. The

most important issue is not the growth of religious politics but the inordinateplay of identity politics in public life, which has resulted in two paradoxes.The first is that India is secular and yet ordinary Indians no longer haveaccess to public institutions except on the basis of religious and socialidentities. The other is the protection of conservatism among Muslims, whichis the effect of a secularism that envisages state intervention in the affairs ofthe majority religion but strict non-intervention in that of minority religions,paradoxically in the name of secularism.The Hindu right has demonstrated an enormous capacity to mobilise

women but this was not progressive or emancipatory politics, even thoughwomen’s participation in such movements and campaigns may have helpedmarginally to improve the status of individual women at home. There areoccasions when the BJP has supported women’s rights but this was invariablyto garner support for the larger goal of attaining political power. OverallHindu women’s activism provides a compelling example of the instrumenta-lisation of women for the achievement of the political goals of the BJP and theSangh Parivar. At the same time the resistance of minority communities tolegal reform in the name of preserving their religious identities poses a seriousproblem for gender equality. In this regard the major issue is the eagerness ofthe state to put up with an enlargement in the influence of conservativeleadership, which has resulted in the propping up of identity politics andstrengthening the hands of forces that oppose women’s rights. Even thoughwomen’s groups have strongly opposed religious politics and religiouspatriarchies in all communities, they have nevertheless had to contend with

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minority vulnerability, which has often pushed women’s rights aside. Muslimwomen frequently pushed into the conservative fold of the community havepaid the price of such compromise. The irony of Indian secularism is that theprotection of diversity and minority rights has resulted in a sheltered retreatinto conservatism.

Notes

1 R Bhargava, ‘The distinctiveness of Indian secularism’, 2007, pp 28–30, at http://www.yale.edu/macmillan/southasia/events/bhargava.pdf.

2 R Dhavan, ‘Religious freedom in India’, American Journal of Comparative Law, 35(1), 1987, pp 209–254.3 R Dhavan & F Nariman, ‘The Supreme Court and group life: religious, freedom, minority groups anddisadvantaged communities’, in BN Kirpal, AH Desai, G Subramanium, R Dhavan &R Ramachandran (eds), Supreme but not Infallible: Essays in Honour of the Supreme Court of India,Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000.

4 R Bhargava, ‘The political psychology of Hindu nationalism’, Open Democracy, 5 November 2003.5 AD Needham & RS Rajan (eds), The Crisis of Secularism in India, Delhi: Permanent Black, 2007, p 2.6 The term ‘Muslim personal law’ refers to family law that governs the domestic relations of Muslims inIndia. It operates in matters relating to inheritance, marriage, divorce, maintenance and adoption,which are regarded as personal issues because they relate to the family or personal sphere.

7 P Chatterjee, ‘Secularism and tolerance’, in R Bhargava (ed), Secularism and its Critics, Delhi: OxfordUniversity Press, 1998.

8 A Parasher, Women and Family Law Reform in India: Uniform Civil Code and Gender Equality, Delhi:Sage Publications, 1992.

9 R Som, ‘Jawaharlal Nehru and the Hindu code: a victory of symbol over substance’, Modern AsianStudies, 28(61), 1994, pp 165–194.

10 The government succeeded in passing four Hindu Code Bills, including the Hindu Marriage Act(1955), Hindu Succession Act (1956), Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act (1956) and HinduAdoption and Maintenance Act (1956).

11 PB Mehta, ‘Reason, tradition and authority: religion and the Indian state’, in I Creppel, R Hardin &S Macedo (eds), Toleration on Trial, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008.

12 S Ganguly, ‘The crisis of Indian secularism’, Journal of Democracy, 14(4), 2003.13 Z Hasan, ‘Minority identity, state policy and the political process’, in Hasan (ed), Forging Identities:

Gender, Communities and the State in India, Delhi: Kali for Women, 1998.14 Bhargava, ‘The political psychology of Hindu nationalism’.15 A Vanaik, ‘The new India right: reflections on communalism and nationalism in India’, New Left

Review, 9, May–June, 2001, p 183.16 O Shani, Communalism, Caste and Hindu Nationalism: The Violence in Gujarat, Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2007.17 Reservations policies refers to laws, regulations, administrative rules, court orders, and other public

interventions for lower and backward castes to provide government jobs and admission into schoolsand colleges on the basis of membership of a caste group. The access of these castes to publicinstitutions has traditionally been low.

18 Cited in M Nussbaum, The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence and India’s Future,New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2007, p 175.

19 Ibid, p 175.20 T Sarkar, ‘Woman, community and nation: a historical trajectory for Hindu identity politics’, in

A Basu & P Jeffery (eds), Appropriating Gender: Women’s Activism and Politicised Religion in SouthAsia, London: Routledge, 1998.

21 A Basu, ‘The dialectics of Hindu nationalism’, in A Kohli (ed), The Success of India’s Democracy,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

22 A Basu, ‘Hindu women’s activism in India and the question it raises’, in Basu & Jeffery, AppropriatingGender.

23 Ibid.24 T Sarkar, ‘The gender predicament of the Hindu right’, in KN Panikkar (ed), The Concerned Indian’s

Guide to Communalism, Delhi: Viking, 1999, p 141.25 Ibid, p 150.26 T Bedi, ‘Feminist theory and the right-wing women mobilize Mumbai’, Journal of International

Women’s Studies, 7(4), 2006.

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27 A Basu, Women, Political Parties and Social Movements in South Asia, UNRISD Occasional Paper 5,July 2005.

28 G Prakash, ‘Secular nationalism, Hindutva and the minority’, in Needham & Rajan, The Crisis ofSecularism in India.

29 N Menon, ‘Introduction’, in Menon (ed), Gender and Politics in India, Delhi: Oxford University Press,2001, p 11.

30 RS Rajan, The Scandal of the State: Women, Law, and Citizenship in Post-colonial India, Delhi:Permanent Black, 2003.

31 Menon, ‘Introduction’, p 30.32 Rajan, The Scandal of the State.33 Cited in R Baird, ‘Religion and law in India: adjusting to the sacred as secular’, in Baird, Religion and

Law in Independent India, Delhi: Manohar Publishers, 2005, p 152.34 Z Hasan, ‘Uniform Civil Code and gender justice in India’, in PR de Souza (ed), Contemporary India:

Transitions, Delhi: Sage Publications, 2000.35 F Agnes, ‘Hindu men, monogamy and Uniform Civil Code’, Economic and Political Weekly, 16–23

December 1995.36 K Sangari, ‘Politics of diversity, religious communities and multiple patriarchies’, Economic and

Political Weekly, 23–30 December 1995.37 A Katakam, ‘The divorce debate’, Frontline, 28 August–10 September 2004.38 Z Hasan & R Menon, Unequal Citizens: Socio-economic Status of Muslim Women in India, Delhi:

Oxford University Press, 2004.39 Y Sikand, ‘The Muslim personal law debate: need to listen to alternative voices’, 5 May 2005, at http://

www.islaminterfaith.org.40 S Vatuk, ‘Islamic feminism in India: Indian Muslim women activists and the reform of Muslim

personal law’, Modern Asian Studies, 42(2–3), 2008.41 Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh constituted a High-Level Committee on the Social, Economic

and Educational Status of the Muslim Community of India in 2005. The committee, chaired byJustice Rajender Sachar and charged with investigating the socioeconomic status of Muslims,submitted its report to the prime minister in November 2006. The Report (SCR) found stark under-representation of Muslims and systematic evidence to show that they were an underclass on a parwith the lowest Hindu caste groups. Government of India, Social, Economic and Educational Statusof the Muslim Community of India, Prime Minister’s High Level Committee, Cabinet Secretariat,New Delhi, 2006.

Notes on Contributor

Zoya Hasan is professor of political science at the Jawaharlal NehruUniversity and was until recently a Member of the National Commission forMinorities. Her recent books include Politics of Inclusion: Caste—Minorityand Affirmative Action (2009); Unequal Citizens: A Study of Muslim Women inIndia (co-authored, 2004); and Democracy in Muslim Societies: The AsianExperience (edited, 2007). She is the Series Editor of Critical Issues in IndianPolitics, Oxford University Press.

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