Sikata Banerjee

Warriors in Politics: Hindu Nationalism, Violence, and the Shiv Sena in India

Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Theoretical Dichotomies Instrumentalism and Primordialism A Critique of Instrumentalism Conclusion 2. Incidents of Violence Jogeshwari Behrampada Dharavi, Govandi/Deonar, Context of the Riots in Mumbai, Conclusion, 3. Economic Dislocations Unique Conditions De-Industrialization The Informal Sector Demand for Factory Labor Growth in the Services Sector Aftermath of the Textile Strike Conclusion 4. Political Dislocations Crisis of Congress Governability Internal Rivalry and the Political Vacuum in Maharashtra Shifts in Caste Voting Betrayal of Secularism Politics of Demolition Conclusion 5. Mobilization of the Shiv Sena The Political Story of the Shiv Sena The Recruitment of Party Activists The Shiv Sena: Who Leads? The Shiv Sena and Its Economic Role Conclusion 6. Masculine Hinduism Hegemonic Masculinity and Nationalism Hinduism and Colonialism Masculine Hinduism and Hindu Revivalism Tactics of Masculine Hinduism in Maharashtra Ideas of Masculine Hinduism in the Mumbai Riots Conclusion 7. The Future of Secular Democracy Public Responses to the Mumbai Riots Hindu Nationalism and the Elections Sena/BJP Governance: Loss of Credibility Sena/BJP Governance: Selected Policies Hindu Nationalism and Nuclear Testing Conclusion 8. Conclusions Selected Glossary Selected Bibliography Index

Armed masculinity, Hindu nationalism and female political participation in India

Abstract Male and female bodies as well as societal ideas defining cultural interpretations of masculinities and femininities are potent metaphors for expressing nation. This article examines two cultural expressions of nation and manliness – the Hindu soldier and warrior monk – disseminated by Hindu nationalist organizations in India. These images, among others, emerged from Indias experience of British imperialism and are defined by values of martial prowess, muscular strength, a readiness to go to battle and moral fortitude. Men and women both respond to the call of a nationalism glorifying muscular warriors radiating an uncompromising moral resolve to defend their nation (us) against an easily recognizable enemy (them). This article argues that this masculinized vision of nation carries important implications for women. Women enter this masculine environment through roles such as heroic mother, chaste wife and celibate warrior. Although divergent in their articulation at the grassroots, all three models of female behavior articulate two social themes. One, womens bodies represent national honor and two, this embodiment only works if women are chaste and virtuous. Indian feminists view such feminine activism with suspicion because the considerable empowerment women may derive from Hindu nationalist politics ultimately does not challenge the gendered power imbalances within the patriarchal Hindu family.

Inventing a Muscular Global India: History, Masculinity, and Nation in Mangal Pandey: The Rising

This chapter unpacks a particular gendered vision of the nation, specifically in the context of muscular nationalism in modern India. In muscular nationalism, the idea of nation is animated by an idea of manhood associated with martial prowess, muscular strength and toughness, and is reliant on the image and construct of woman as virtuous. In muscular nationalism the focus on the chastity of female bodies stems from their role as border guards. A particular interpretation of muscular nationalism has unfolded in India within a cultural milieu shaped by an assertive middle-class self-confidence fueled by “liberalization,” a process by which India has been integrated into the global political economy, coupled with the prominence of Hindutva or Hindu nationalist politics. India’s prolific commercial film industry centered in Bombay has used images of manhood to express as well as valorize these cultural changes. This chapter uses the popular and critically acclaimed film Mangal Pandey: The Rising (2005) to illustrate how history is used to rediscover and imagine an Indian legacy of muscular nationalism. Given India’s aspirations to become a recognized international player, the chapter goes on to argue that this film invents a tradition that constructs a legacy of masculinized nationalism that presumably always existed and needs to be reactivated to enable modern India’s global ambitions. Imperial effeminization of Indian men and contemporary responses to this gendered critique provides a cultural background for these films as they turn to history to challenge the discourse of effeminization that still haunts the Indian polity, as well as to reaffirm muscular nationalism in India as it seeks international recognition within this particular global moment of neoliberal capitalism and consumerism.

In Kashmir: Gender, Militarization, and the Modern Nation State by Seema Kazi

Although lauded for its serene beauty and tranquil setting in various historical and contemporary texts, the state of Kashmir remains one of modern India’s most contested and militarized areas. In 1948 a cease-fire line, or Line of Control (LOC), divided the territory with Gilgit and Baltistan being allocated to Pakistan, while Jammu, Ladakh, and the Kashmir Valley remained in India. The LOC still remains in place and demarcates an area that is subject to considerable military presence. Indeed, as Kazi points out, in 2004, approximately 500,000−700,000 Indian soldiers were stationed in Kashmir. This translates into one soldier for every ten civilians, making this area one of the most heavily militarized in the world (97). Kazi’s book offers an analysis of the gendered impact of this militarization on civil society and human rights. Not only does she interrogate the atrocities committed by the Indian army and the brutal suppression of militancy in Kashmir, but she also examines the increasing theocratic militancy of Pakistan-supported Hizbul Muhajideen, which has marginalized the relatively moderate Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front that fought for an azad, or independent Kashmir. However, it is clear from the discussion that the groups resisting the Indian army’s presence have no clear political plan to implement if the army decides to leave and Kashmir is given autonomous status. The conflict in Kashmir is further complicated by the fact that, while the Kashmir valley has a Muslim majority, Jammu is mostly Hindu, and Ladakh is ethnically and culturally separate from both Jammu and the Kashmir valley. The Indian state’s extreme reluctance to negotiate any kind of treaty that supports self-determination is linked to an allegiance to a particular kind of nationalist project that visualizes political strength as being maximized by a strong, unitary center that promotes a particular monolithic view of the Indian nation. Given the ethnic, linguistic, religious, and cultural diversity of India, this form of nationalism has both fomented regional uprisings in Assam, Nagaland, Mizoram, the Punjab, and Manipur as well as resulting in extreme state response to any challenges to central power. When one couples this rigid view with the rise of Hindu nationalism that equates Indian identity with a particular interpretation of Hinduism, then the

Masculinity, Asceticism, Hinduism: Past and Present Imaginings of India

in 1881 New York: ‘an incongruity between what they had hoped for, the orientalized Indian dancing body, and the material body performing live in the theater’. The end result of such incongruity amounted to a co-option of Indian dance practices by white female dancers and other foremothers of modern dance like Ruth St. Denis. In Chapters Three and Four Srinivasan deconstructs St. Denis’s career and her participation in simultaneously racist and modernist discourses on dance over the course of the twentieth century. Her discussion of St. Denis offers an important perspective on the legacy of modern dance as it points out the complicated construction of modern vis-a-vis Western, while drawing upon what were otherwise categorised as ‘ethnic’ movement vocabularies. This analysis makes the obvious, but important, point of drawing our attention to the Indian (male) dancers who St. Denis often contracted in order to endorse and frame her performance as ‘authentic’. Drawing on both legal archives and biographies of important figures in modern dance such as Martha Graham and Ted Shawn, Srinivasan examines how conceptions of immigration and otherness reified the dancing body. Aptly put, she explains how dance and immigration history merged:

Women, Muscular Nationalism and Hinduism in India: Roop Kanwar and the Fire Protests

Abstract This article unpacks the manner in which women/womanhood circulates within an uniquely Hindu interpretation of a particular gendered vision of nation that I term ‘muscular nationalism’. Muscular nationalism centres the values of martial prowess, physical strength, moral fortitude and the readiness to go to battle against groups defined as enemies of the nation. Further, these values are most frequently expressed by a male body. The relationship between women/womanhood and muscular nationalism is dynamic. This nation as woman can take multiple forms; it can be imagined as powerful mother or vulnerable virgin or warrior goddess. Whether mother or virgin or goddess, chastity and purity are important components of this imagination and nation as woman impacts real women’s lives through ideas of honour. In muscular nationalism this focus on the purity and chastity of female bodies stems from their role as border guards. By border guards I mean the notion that the boundaries separating ‘we the people’ from ‘them’ are represented by chaste women’s bodies. Put another way, this line of thinking argues that our women are chaste and pure, yours are not. This is the difference that separates our nation from yours. Women’s role as border guards requires that their purity be vigilantly guarded. The story of women/womanhood in Hindutva or Hindu muscular nationalism which unfolds in this essay is rooted in the assumptions described above. By drawing on interviews with women in the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Sevika Samiti – with reference to women’s involvement in the Bharatiya Janata Party, Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Shiv Sena – this paper contextualizes the role of women in Hindutva. Then it goes on to unpack the 1987 immolation of Roop Kanwar as well as cultural protests against Deepa Mehta’s film Fire to illustrate the contested location of female bodies in this ideology. This analysis indicates that many women are certainly politically active in Hindu muscular nationalism; however, the vision of femininity driving the discourse around Roop Kanwar and the resistance against Fire reveals the limitations of an activism embedded in a context of a rigid expectation of female chastity and virtue.