Forging Identities: Gender, Communities, And The State In India

287 Pages·2019·25.557 MB·English

by  Zoya Hasan

Forging Identities
Gender, Communities and the State in India
Edited by
ZOYAHASAN
First published 1994 by Westview Press
Published 2018 by Routledge
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Copyright © 1994 This edition, Kali for Women
Copyright © 1994 For individual papers with the authors
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ISBN 13: 978-0-367-00938-0 (hbk)
Contents
Introduction: Contextualising Gender and Identity in
Contemporary India
Zoya Hasan vii
Reading and Writing about Muslim Women in British
India
Barbara D. Metcalf 1
Gender and the Politics of Space: The Movement for
Women's Reform 1857-1900
Faisal F. Devji 22
Defining Women through Legislation
Shahida Lateef 38
Minority Identity, State Policy and Political Process
Zoya Hasan 59
Identity Politics, Secularism and Women: A South Asian
Perspective
Amrita Chhachhi 74
The Constitution and Muslim Personal Law
Kirti Singh 96
Between Community and State: The Question of
Women's Rights and Personal Laws
Maitrayee Mukhopadhyay 108
Education, Money and the Role of Women in Maintaining
Minority Identity
Elizabeth A. Mann 130
Preserving Identity: A Case Study of Palitpur
Huma Ahmed-Ghosh 169
vi Contents
Communal Property/Sexual Property: On Representations
of Muslim Women in a Hindu Nationalist Discourse
Paola Bacchetta 188
Muslim Socials and the Female Protagonist: Seeing a
Dominant Discourse at Work
Fareed Kazmi 226
Urdu, Awadh and the Tawaij: the Islamicate Roots of
Hindi Cinema
Mukul Kesavan 244
Notes on Contributors 258
Index 260
Introduction: Contextualising Gender
and Identity in Contemporary India
Zoya Hasan
Recent writings on India have focussed on the interplay of poli-
tics and religion, largely because the country's current experience
has been punctuated by inter-community conflicts, the escalation
of religio-revivalism, and a heightening of communal conscious-
ness. The demolition of the Babri masjid at Ayodhya on Decem-
ber 6, 1992 as well as the widespread communal violence that
followed highlighted the potential of using religious symbols to
forge communal solidarities. At the same time, it brought to light
the connection between Hinduism and the Indian nation, on the
one hand, and between the minorities and the State, on the other.
The intensification of communalism culminating in the happen-
ings at Ayodhya, raises further questions about the role of the
State and government in coping with contentious religious issues,
the future of secular values and institutions, and the place of
minorities within the parameters laid down by India's Constitu-
tion.
The close interaction of politics and religion in India today is
not unique, it parallels similar trends in many different parts of
the world. The past decade has witnessed a far reaching decline
in the commitment to secularism, to equal opportunities for all,
and to social welfare benefits for the underprivileged and disad-
vantaged. These values formed part of a broad package-secular-
ism, democracy, social justice-that facilitated modernisation in
the second half of the twentieth century in India and many other
parts of the world. These values and concerns, embodied in the
post-colonial agenda of social transformation, have almost every-
where suffered a reversal. Contemporary politics is characterised
by a preoccupation with community identities, religious tradi-
tions, cultural practices and chauvinist ideologies and move-
viii Forging Identities
ments that divide people into Hindus and Muslims, natural in-
habitants and foreigners, infiltrators and refugees, and so on.1
I
Associated with the renewed growth of communal politics and
the sharpening of religious identities is the noticeable subordina-
tion of both gender and class loyalties. Most notably, the politics
of religious self-assertion, claiming to speak in the name of major-
ity and minority rights, seeks to negate and suppress the diver-
gent interests and rights of individuals and social collectivities.
There is little reason to doubt that the short and long term impact
of these developments is profoundly divisive. What is its effect on
women? What are the conditions under which women begin to
define themselves primarily on the basis of a religious identity?
Why have communal organisations succeeded in mobilising
women? Do communal and fundamentalist organisations create
a sense of crisis to mobilise women around loyalty to the commu-
nity and religious symbols? What is the significance of minority
identity for other social solidarities and the possibility of mobilising
women on gender issues?
The nature of women's relationship to religious identity and
various communal projects is complex. They may figure as im-
portant signifiers of differences between groups; community iden-
tities are often defined through the conduct of women, which is
subject to the customary strictures of tradition.2 On other occa-
sions, women become the agents of various communal projects.
Part of the reason why this is so is because of a narrow culturalism
which emphasises the activities of women in the religious,
communitarian domain as a form of empowerment that suppos-
edly transgresses patriarchies.3 These roles cannot be understood
without recognising the link between gender relations and the
State (which has a major role to play at different levels of society),
the ways in which it accords to women an unequal status in
relation to men, and the contradictory notions of equality and
citizenship posited by the State and by communal and fundamen-
talist forces.
Despite a spurt in feminist/ gender literature, there are only a
few studies which explain the link between gender and religious
community or analyse the integration of women into commu-
Contextualising Gender and Identity ix
nitarian processes.4 Little is known about contradictions in the
political agenda of communal projects, or the implication and
position of women in relation to such projects. Essays in this
volume reflect on some of these issues. They are confined to the
Muslim minority, largely in north India, and deal mainly with
middle and lower middle classes in urban areas. They explore,
perhaps for the first time, the inter-relationship of gender, com-
munities and patriarchal practices in relation to Muslim women,
and the relationship of these processes with history, state, reli-
gion, law and culture.
Much of the scholarly literature on politicisation of religion,
minorities and Muslims has not explored many of these ques-
tions. This is largely because Muslims are seen asa monolithic
community with an irreducible interest in self-identity deriving
from the community's commitment to an absolute Islam. This
monolithic character is supposed to shape their world view and
the community's fundamental religious commitments, overrid-
ing all others; most crucially, this committment stands in the way
of legal reform. This tendency towards essentialismoversimpli-
fies a complex and highly diverse terrain and has only helped to
produce a static understanding of tradition without coming to
terms with social diversities, cultural pluralism, the specificities
of historical context and the radical negotiability of the concept of
identity.s
The essays in this volume offer a more contextualised and
nuanced understanding of the complex ways in which identity is
constructed, the manner in which gender and community inter-
sect and cross-cut each other, and the ways in which these two
elements interact with State policy. Also examined is the influ-
ence of the State on the wider context in which power structures
operate and the extent to which state policy is changed in re-
sponse to popular and communal pressures. Several papers look
at the working of religious ideology, which functions at both the
local and govemmentallevels. A dominant theme that emerges in
the volume is that religious ideology and leadership do more
than legitimise patriarchal structures, they playa vital role in the
socialisation and creation ofM uslim identity, so that community
and state legitimise and reproduce each other.
Barbara Metcalf's paper reviews reformist movements during
the colonial period and highlights the differences in relation to
x Forging Identities
class and gender in the development of Muslim reformist ideas
and movements. Faisal Devji traces the historical meaning and
relationship of revivalism and conceives revivalism not as a sharif
reaction to colonialism, but as a shift associated with the consoli-
dation of the north Indian Shurafa as a polity, distinguishing itself
against both aristocrat and plebe on the basis of "true" Islam.
Shahida Lateef describes the contending pressures of govern-
ment, communitY-l?ased political groups and women's
organisations on the issue of legislative changes pertaining to
women's rights. Elizabeth Mann discusses the symbolic and prac-
tical value of Muslim women in relation to the social and religious
identity of Muslims living in Aligarh (Uttar Pradesh) as a means
of distinguishing religious communities from each other, and to
press for concessions from the government. I focus on the re-
sponse of the Indian State to the conflict between reform and
community pressures in the post-Independence period. I have
tried to highlight the mutual.complementarity of the State and
religious leadership in reinforcing community identity, as also in
subordinating women. Paola Bacchetta explores the representa-
tions of Muslim women in the Hindu nationalist discourse of the
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the characteristics which
are constructed and assigned to them. Her contribution under-
scores the critical functionality of women in the anti-Muslim
propaganda of the RSS. Amrita Chhachhi addresses the relation-
ship between state structures, identity, and gender in South Asia.
She delineates the ideology of nationalism and the establishment
of legal structures which maintained separate identities for Hin-
dus and Muslims. Huma Ahmed-Ghosh examines the dual aspi-
rations of Muslim women in strengthening community conscious-
ness as well as emulating higher caste Hindu customs as a means
of achieving higher status in the wider social system in Palitpur
(Uttar Pradesh). Maitrayee Mukhopadhyay ana1y~ the law-
tradition-scripture nexus in the process of codification and for-
mulation of personal laws in the colonial period, the implications
for changes in social and gender relations for the constitution of
authentic cultural tradition. Her case studies, based on field work
in West Bengal, reveal the way in which these identity assertions
subordinate women's material interests. Kirti Singh's paper, while
dealing with the same subject, looks critically at the relationship
Contextualising Gender and Identity xi
between personal laws and the Constitution, and the guarantees
made to all Indians as citizens. Fareed Kazmi analyses represen-
tations of Muslim women in eight of the most popular films in the
genre of Muslim Socials in the last three decades, while Mukui
Kesavan examines the relationship bet~een Hindi cinema and
Islamicate culture and argues that Urdu, Awadh and the tawai!
have together been instrumental in shaping Hindi cinema as a
whole and not just the Muslim component of it.
II
Most accounts of Muslim women in India focus on their role and
legal status within the framework of Islamic doctrine and prac-
tices. Muslims in general, and women in particular, are treated as
separate from the rest of society.6 This approach is a logical sequel
to the widely-held assumption that India's Muslims constitute a
homogeneous community and are unified by the common sym-
bols of Islam. TheMuslim League's successful mobilisation cam-
paigns around these lines reinforce this view. Yet, the means
through which the League's message was communicated and the
precise nature of its appeal have yet to be determined. Although
newly published studies of movements in BengaJ, Punjab and
Sind have questioned Jinnah's assertion that the Indian Muslims
constituted a "nation" / the myth of a structured and homogenised
Muslim community remains firmly ensconced in much of South
Asian social science literature.
Contributions to a volume edited by Imtiaz Ahmad some
years ago not only challenged the view that Muslims adhered to
the basic tenets of Islam embodied in the Shariat, they argued that
the ground realities did not always correspond to formal legal
codes and principles.8 They brought to light the rich diverSity in
family structures and, importantly enough, the correspondence
in family norms across communities. This can be seen from a
study of Dharwar, Karnataka, which concluded that "Muslim
family practices are quite similar to those of Hindus in everyday
life"/ and further, that '~this finding would seem to confirm the
consensus of available literature when it suggests that family
patterns are common among all elements of society in India,
given similar education and other social attributes" Ahmad
10