1. Religious Nationalism, Brahmanical Patriarchy, and the Politics of Hindutva: Does Ideology Matter in International Relations?
- Author
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Das, Runa
- Subjects
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HINDU women , *FEMINIST theory , *NATIONALISTS , *PATRIARCHY , *RELIGIONS - Abstract
This paper seeks to highlight how the imagery of Hindu women (which has been discursively utilized by the BJP to support its nationalist/ communalist agenda) is also being used by the party to support a ?Pakistan-centric/ communalized? version of Indian nuclearisation, in defense of a Hindu rashtra. Building upon existing feminist (Chakravarti 1993; Bagchi 1995; Sinha 1995; Chowdhry, 1998; Sarkar 2000; and Gupta 2001) and non-feminist (Nandy 1983 and Chatterjee 1995) scholarships that have demonstrated the centrality of gender in the context of anti-colonial as well as post-colonial India?s nationalist identity formation, I explore in this paper a discursive relationship between a Hindu patriarchy, its quest for Hindu nationalism, and gender and the ways in which this patriarchy, which I term in this study as a Brahmanical/ cultural patriarchy, uses women as markers of communal differences to sustain India?s nuclearisation. Far-fetched or indirect as it may seem on the surface, I explore how this construct of a Brahmanical/ cultural patriarchy based on the fictitious assumption that ?men can do no wrong to women be Hindu or Muslim by religion,? (Chowdhry, 2000:107) both uses and (ab)uses the image of Hindu women to establish Pakistan as a threat to India and bestows upon the Indian state as a patriarchal institution the task of protecting the status of women in India. I argue that, that what makes the case of Indian nuclearisation unique is the Brahmanical/ cultural violence undergirding Indian nuclearisation-- making the issue a matter of cultural sensitivity experienced by the nation, with special imbrications on gender. A corollary of this, which forms the concluding section of this paper, is the Indian state?s role under the political leadership of the BJP in maintaining a communalized, militarized, and a Hindu patriarchal violence at three inter-connected levels, namely between gender (ordering of Hindu women by Hindu men), communities (bordering between Hindu and Muslim communal identities), and inter-state (Othering between India and Pakistan) identities. I argue that this demarcation of identities (which I term in this study as ?Ordering, Bordering, and Othering?) is an outcome of the BJP?s Brahmanical/ cultural patriarchy, to sustain a nuclear India. This is a part of my Ph.D Dissertation which is in progress. If you have any questions concerning this ongoing project, or an updated manuscript of this, then please feel free to contact me at Runa.Das@nau.edu. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2004