The relationship of women to religious politics is not only paradoxical, it is also complex. Traditionally, India had seen a woman as a member of the family or a group and not as an individual with an identity or right of her own.

1. Hindutva Politics and Projection of Women
The relationship of women to religious politics is not only paradoxical, it is also complex.
Traditionally, India had seen a woman as a member of the family or a group and not as an
individual with an identity or right of her own. Discrimination against women in most parts of
India emerges from the social and religious construct of women’s role and their status. Cultural
factors significantly influence anti-female bias in India, both directly through preferences and by
altering the economic constraints faced by households. Women have only been included
symbolically into the national body politic since no nationalism has ever allowed men and
women the same access to resources of the nation-state. Nationalism legitimises the dominance
of men over women. The images of women enshrined as Mother and the rhetoric about the
nation-as-woman further intensifies male-male arrangements and an all-male history. The BJP is
an example of this phenomenon. The BJP supports women’s independence to the extent it is
politically convenient for them. On the one hand, it advocates women’s rights whereas on the
other, it defends the regressive ideas relating to position of women in society. An example of this
is the close association of the BJP with the sati of Roop Kanwar in 1987 where it sought
justification for sati in Hindu scriptures, idealised women’s roles as dutiful wives and accused
feminists for being increasingly westernised .
The position of women in Hindutva politics is complicated. While Hindu nationalism may
preach both democracy and authoritarianism, its aim encapsulated in Savarkar’s slogan to
“Hinduize politics and militarize Hinduism” involves a ‘specific construction of Hindu self – a
virile, masculine, aggressively communal self’ which is intolerant ‘of other conceptions of
Hinduism’. This inherent conviction in Hinduism of a male ideal, challenges the notion that the
provision for Hindu women’s political assertion could ever be a simple issue on the nationalist
agenda.
Gender has emerged in RSS ideology as a politicised entity whereby women are depicted as the
repositories of religious beliefs and the keepers of purity and integrity of the community. During
the 1990s, communal violence witnessed the emergence of Hindu women as a crucial impulse
for much of the partition violence was centred on allegations of abductions by Muslims. This led
to the Hindu community dissolving into the figure of the threatened woman, and violence
became necessary for the restoration of Hindu male honour. It is argued that the idea of the
endangered Hindu woman was an extraordinarily potent weapon for violent mobilization against
the Muslims who were projected as ‘the Others’. Such ideas were a direct consequence of Hindu
nationalism, better known as Hindutva, evoked by organisations such as Rashtriya Swayamsevak
Sangh (RSS) and Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), including political parties like the Shiv Sena
and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Neverthless, the BJP, RSS and the VHP have their active women’s organisations. The Rashtra
Sevika Samiti, a branch of the RSS, stresses virtues such as physical strength and courage and
provides paramilitary training for some women but its major objective is to inculcate the ideals
of Indian womanhood. They teach the battered women to accept their situations and blame
themselves for their misfortunes. They discourage divorce and legal action, silencing protests

2. through invocations of Hindu patriarchal examples- the legendary wives who accept their fate
with a smile. Radical women’s organisations for women’s liberation, teaching women to think
for themselves, are often condemned and result in the social isolation, emotional deprivation and
insecurity of women who form part of them. On the other hand, the RSS organisations guarantee
the safety and protection of women who become members. It can be observed then that the RSS
gender ideology is a form of submission to patriarchy, in which the Samiti enhances the cause of
the RSS. It is retorted that if women do not perform their cultural role in a proper manner, then
the family suffers and then the nation. Feminism, an alien westernised concept, is highly
disregarded and believed to be the enemy of the Hindu family. There is a new generation of
women leaders in India in political parties such as the BJP who preach inflammatory and
divisive politics, but they apparently seem to have restricted success in mobilizing even Hindu
women to their other politico-religious causes. Hindu woman’s ability to assert herself politically
is ultimately limited by gender associations inherent in Indian culture.
The politics behind the Rashtra Sevika Samiti’s inception is telling of RSS gender ideology. The
group’s founder Laxmibai Kelkar first approached RSS founder K.B. Hedgewar seeking the
possibility for women to join the RSS, but was turned down. Women were denied membership in
the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). It was only in 1936, eleven years after the formation
of the RSS was the Rashtriyasevika Samiti born. The Samiti, being the dharmapatni or wife it
was meant to be, sticks faithfully to ‘Guruji’ Golwalkar’s dictum— ‘Disparity is an indivisible
part of nature, we should live with it. It has never been a celebration of feminity. Rashtrasevikas
are referred to more modestly than their swayamsevika male counterparts, to whom they are
‘related but subordinate’. As a means of mobilizing housewives and education, or conditioning,
children to the cause, Hindu nationalist groups combine the Nazi philosophy of ‘with the cradle
and the ladle’ with that espoused by their Hindu heritage that ‘the husband be a song’ and the
wife simply ‘a verse.
Women are often described in their role as mothers and sisters and, therefore, as asexual beings
in the official RSS propaganda. By denying their sexuality and describing them purely in terms
of their relationship to men – mothers and sisters, not wives – women are essentially devoid of
independent desires and personality. This is reflected in the official line on married life
disseminated through seminars and literature for RSS members. Girls are supposed to acquiesce
to the parental selection of a groom and self-choice is strongly discouraged. The tradition of the
docile, defenseless wife is stressed. Rather than stand up for themselves, women are supposed to
obey and support their husbands and blame themselves for any marital difficulties. Male
behavior, including infidelity, on the other hand, is often excused by pointing to biological
differences. These ideas and behavior tend to diminish the value and status of women in the
social, religious, as well as economic spheres in India.
Hindutva politics has ideologically played a significant role in withholding women’s liberation.
The ordinary Hindu women have no choice. Believing in Hindutva policies only ensures bread
on their table. In order to understand the part played by women in Hindu nationalism, it is
important to understand the Hindutva ideology first. It then goes to show that these organisations
use women not only symbolically (in myth and art) but also quite literally so as to cater their
extremist and nationalist cause. Nevertheless, there exists a link between anti-female bias and an
ideological proximity to the Sangh Parivar, literally a “family organization” of political parties,
social institutions and paramilitary forces affiliated with the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya

3. Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
As mentioned above, gender relations in the Parivar are shaped by a particular nationalist agenda
(Hindutva) that frames the current environment in terms of the defense of Hindu India against
Muslim aggression. Based on a particular interpretation of high-caste Hindu norms and
combined with a strong anti-Muslim rhetoric that is occasionally backed up by violent action
men are seen as the dominant force in gender relations with the male Hindu warrior image
featuring strongly in the ideology. In a patriarchal society, women have been and still are
constantly defined by the men in their lives; they are somebody’s wife, daughter or sister. Hindu
ideology presents women with the core belief that either praises or vilifies them, either they are a
good wife, or daughter who is under the control of men or they are sexually free and a danger to
society. The BJP’s real attitude towards women is based on a fascist communally-based politics
in which women are seen not as individuals with rights, but as bearers of their community’s
honour, to be protected or raped, depending who they are.
The rhetoric of the Sangha leaders reflects their ideology and their perception towards the
position of women in society. For example, in response to a high profile gang rape in Delhi,
Mohan Bhagwat, the head of RSS, stated that such incidents only happen in cities, not villages.
He further blamed “western values” for the increase in rapes in India. It has been successfully
contested that statistics show that rapes also happen in rural India but often go unreported.
Mohan Bhagwat on a different occasion had remarked that women should restrict themselves to
doing household chores, according to what he calls the theory of social contract. According to
him, theory of contract, theory of social contract, a husband and wife are bound by a contract
which says ‘you (woman) look after the household chores and satisfy me, I (man) will take care
of your needs and will protect you’, and until she delivers her duties without fail, he keeps her on
the contract and if she fails to honour the contract, he disowns her and if it is the same with the
husband who is not honouring the contract, she can also abandon him and go for a new contract
then. This is the respect and the position RSS offers to the women of India. The systematic use of
gang-rape as a weapon occurred in the Surat riots after the Babri Masjid demolition, and an ugly
innovation was the videotaping of the gang-rapes. This was not a case of some random bystander
filming the attacks, but a meticulously-planned spectacle with the venues flood-lit despite the
fact that electric wires to the rest of the neighbourhood had been cut. Sexual violence was also
evident in the anti-Christian pogroms in Kandhamal (Odisha) in 2007-2008, including the gang-
rape of a nun, Sister Meena. This was nothing but ‘using women’s body to inflict all kinds of
violence, attack on children, rape of young girls and women and subsequent killings’. In
Maharashtra too, Hindutva vigilantes target Hindu women in consensual relationships with
Muslim men. In the Gujarat pogroms, Geetaben was sexually assaulted and brutally killed by the
Sangh Parivar because she tried to save her Muslim husband, and she was not the only Hindu
woman attacked. If women are not acknowledged as persons, then their will and consent are not
recognised either.
Therefore, Hindutva is a force that is potent enough to reverse all that the women’s movement
has achieved in India. When the BJP was the ruling government (until the 2004 General
Elections when it was routed from power) it had planned to rename the Women Studies Centres
across the nation as Family Studies Centres; substitution of the word ‘women’ with the word
‘family’ shows the grotesque patriarchal aims of the Parivar to convert and convolute the agenda
of Women Studies. Now that the Hindutva force has female faces on its leaders list does not
dilute the fact that the Sangh Parivar is an anti-women, casteist, patriarchal organization.

4. Although women of the Parivar have been prominently placed in the public sphere and also serve
as kar-sevikas and members of semi-militant factions of the Parivar-like Durga Vahini, they are
all made to conform to the stereotype of the Hindu Woman. No matter what their positions of
power, the women of the Sangh are only instruments of upper caste patriarchy.
As rightly said by Shri Rahul Gandhi, RSS chief M S Golvalkar was not in favour of granting
voting rights to women and had said that “giving voting rights to women is a mistake. The
present leadership of RSS and BJP strongly support ideology and there is a remarkable
difference between what the BJP preach and practice.
* The Author is an Advocate and National Spokesperson of the Indian National Congress.