In some way, the anti-imperialist, anti-colonial struggle of the pre-independence days - the “Nationalist movement” -was perhaps a doomed enterprise as post Independence developments have shown. For even when it rejected the coloniser it was unable to reject in totality the post-Enlightenment project of nation building that had already been launched. The actors perhaps changed but the lines did not lose their logic. For the “processes and procedure of the post-enlightenment project are made to become the hallmark of nation-building, thematic in the postcolonial country.”(1)

And so the advent of the politics of nationalism signals the subordination and demise of the politics of the “others” who are reconstituted to fit into the identity of the “one”. Integrated and assimilated at best or segregated, degraded and destroyed at worst. After its encounter with nationalism no other “identity”, be it that of gender, religion, caste or that of the Adivasi has been allowed to remain the same – nor have they been able to transform themselves in their own logic, by their own lyric. Partha Chatterjee is of the opinion that “the cultural history of nationalism, shaped through its struggle with colonialism contained many possibilities of authentic, creative, and plural development of social identities.” He says that post colonial states “tend to replicate the modular forms of the modern nation-state, thereby were violently disrupting the political history of the different identities.”(2)

Partha Chatterjee  also analyses how the contradictory demands on nationalist ideology were resolved around the separation of the domain into two separate spheres - the material and the spiritual. While the material sphere was dominated by Western civilisation with science and technology, rationality, and economic organisation, the spiritual was within us - “our true self”. In order to resist the cultural domination of the colonial powers, the nationalist project was to focus on the spiritual essence of ‘national culture’.

This material - spiritual dichotomy was condensed into a similar dichotomy of outer - inner, and further to a world - home dichotomy. The world was the domain of the male, and the home of the female. The home was the “principal site for expressing the spiritual quality of the national culture”, and women were responsible for preserving and transmitting this national culture by developing virtues such as chastity, self-sacrifice, submission, devotion, etc.

Women were also used as nationalist icons. Reformers and revivalists of the 19th century sought to draw a parallel between the plight of the Indian nation, Bharat Mata shackled by colonial rule, and the condition of the Indian woman, crippled by practices such as child marriage, sati, denial of education, property, and widow remarriage, and so on.(3)

This chapter deals with some of the issues related to Nationalism, Nation State and identity. These impact women in a major way, particularly in relation to culture, religion, caste and sexuality.(4)

Culture and Religion
Placed as they are as carriers of an “essential” traditional culture, women have become victims not only of the colonialist enterprise of “reforming” traditional societies but also, in the post-independence period, of fundamentalist assertions of “nationalised” religious community identities. The debates over the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) and the sati legislation in the pre and post Independent India illustrate this point.

On the issue of culture and religion too, the women’s movement has by and large steered clear, mainly because religion is viewed as another patriarchal apparatus, which should be opposed and critiqued. However, the Shah Bano and sati issues have seen women mobilise around issues of religion and caste often in opposition to women of other religions and castes. Thus, many of the issues relating to culture and religion tend to challenge “sisterhood” among women, across identities. There is also the danger of universalisation of the practices of the majority community.

The issue of culture and religion has becomes more important, as the State has begun adopting a neo-conservative, right wing stand on most issues, while at the same time talking about “empowerment”.

“We see the rise of the neo-conservative state fed by economic recession and unemployment, nurturing the politics of the Right. Thematic shifts in the name of religion, language or ethnicity of dominant groups mix comfortably now with telling impact on women. The nation-state seeks to contain the effects of uneven capitalist development and struggle for resources by different classes, by violent repression and imposition of uniform, dominant group national identity. Rooted in economic and political factors, a deep crisis of national and personal identity exists at each level.”(5)

Uniform Civil Code
While relaying the foundations of civil and criminal jurisprudence for this country, the British colonialists left relatively untouched “personal laws” that belonged to the “domestic” domain – a domain they deliberately interfered less with leaving it to the genius of community and culture. However, this does not imply that community practices remained intact, under the large-scale social engineering that had already been initiated. For what they did codify as personal laws, that were supposedly based on textual and scriptural knowledge, ended up homogenising the diverse customary practices under the dominant tradition in each religions. Thus we were left with a colonial reading of tradition that has now to reinterpret itself in the hands of the “custodians of culture”. During the Shah Bano case, when protests were launched by the Hindu fundamentalists for a UCC or against it by the Muslim community, the central issue of rights and justice for women was totally sacrificed in the name of the larger interest of the Muslim community on the one hand, and a Hindu nation on the other.(6)(7) For the secularists who argued for a UCC, the task remained that of strengthening a modern Nation State built on the foundations of a rational, secular jurisprudence as opposed to the irrational vagaries of “our” own traditions.

The women’s movement was initially united in its stand for a UCC on the grounds that gender inequality was inherent in personal laws that reflected the anti women bias of all religions. However, large sections of women within the Muslim community also resisted this demand restating their religious leaders’ cry that “Islam was in danger” – especially when Hindu fundamentalists suspiciously  became protective of Muslim women vis-a-vis using the burkha, talaq, and other discriminatory aspects of Muslim personal law, in order to demonstrate how barbaric, anti-women and of course anti-national Islam and Muslim were. This was not unlike, as Madhu Kishwar said, “the British attempt to ‘civilise the barbaric natives, in their role of coloniser and rulers.” When the then Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi pushed through “Muslim Women’s (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986, he came in for strong criticism from women’s groups who felt it was political expediency that prompted this move and betrayed a lack of concern for the plight of deserted Muslim women.

Other positions too began to emerge from within the women’s movement resisting the move to impose a Uniform Civil Code.(8) Besides being a majoritarian move to impose a Hinduised code, on a homogenised western jurisprudence it was felt that the problem of discriminatory personal laws would be better addressed by initiating reforms from within. Such an approach would affirm and strengthen the plurality and cultural richness without compromising on women’s rights, even while ensuring her access to justice by making her community more responsible and accountable.(9)

The furore sparked off over Roop Kanwar committing sati further deepened this debate.

Sati
When feminists condemned Roop Kanwar’s Sati in Deorala, Rajasthan (1987) as a traditional evil practice, there was a profusion of attacks on the women’s movement itself. The debate that ensued spanned “not only the rights and wrongs of Hindu women, but questions of religious identity, communal autonomy and the role of the law and the State in a society as complex and as diverse as India’s.”Radha Kumar, 1993.

A series of polarities between tradition and modernity, rural and urban and materialism and spirituality emerged. Some like BJP MP Ganga Charan Rajput were overtly pro-Sati. They accused the Indian feminist movement of “being agents of modernity who were attempting to impose crass market-dominated views of equality and liberty.” Rajput society was seen by them as noble, self-sacrificing and spiritual which was being rapidly destroyed by the essentially selfish forces of the market. So Indian feminists stood accused of being “westernised, colonialists, cultural imperialists and indirectly - supporters of capitalists ideology.” Many like Leena Mehendale (Joint Secretary of the National Commission on Women) said that the intelligentsia that was too quick to condemn people as superstitious,  should have instead looked at the original person, Sati. According to her, Sati and Savitri represent women who were “daring, challenging and conquering ... (their) rights even by defeating death itself.”(10)  She stressed the need to get back cultural symbols that have been appropriated by the fundamentalists. This echoed the views of earlier anti-sati activists like Raja Ram Mohan Roy and Rabindranath Tagore, who while opposing the contemporary practice of sati affirmed the values underlying the mythology of Sati that presumes the superiority of cosmos of the feminine principle over the masculine.

Some felt that the anti-sati activists had not understood the full import of “rural traditional communities who were struggling to preserve themselves from the homogenising tendencies of the Indian nation-state”, they were also described as “representing elite, urban, modern sections of society.” The latter is seen as pressing the state to intervene in communities they bore no relation to, and thus encouraging the nation-state to extend its sphere of control over civil society.

Others like Ashish Nandy, who were also critical of the nature of intervention made by women’s groups which led to the anti-sati legislation, tried to make a distinction between sati in mythical time and sati in historical time – between sati as an event (ghatana) and sati as a system (pratha). A stand, which invited wide-ranging criticism by feminists who felt he was being pro-sati. Lotika Sarkar and Radha Kumar however reframed this argument in an analysis of the sati bill. They wrote, “The Bill assumes sati is a practice, whereas it could be described as a kind of rare and frightful event which reveals in a flash, several of the problems of our time. In other words, we might do well to consider whether it is now being given the sanctity of tradition and practice and if so by whom and with what motives. In order to do this we must first distinguish between sati as an act, sati as an ideology and sati as a source of political and financial profit.”(11)

It is therefore possible, some have felt to be an ‘‘aggressive opponent of sati as practised in contemporary times, yet respectful to the ideas behind it.” This difference is also implicit “between the simple faith of the pilgrims who thronged Deorala after the Sati of Roop Kanwar and the actions of the organisers of the event who profited from it.” It is also clear that no amount of resurrecting tradition can blind us to the fact that no religious event today can remain uncontaminated by our times. “Nothing is safe from the secular cost-calculations and market morality which has now entered the interstices of Indian society.”(12)

Multiple Identities
Women’s ideas of themselves are complex and are a construct of many attributes. The roles they play, the beliefs they hold, their colour, caste, sexual orientation and ability (among other things) are determinates of this multiple identity. Unfortunately there are very few fora where these multiple identities can be fully expressed.

Women participate in many, many struggles but it is generally one aspect of their identity that comes to the fore- they are seen as Dalits, as Muslims, as Adivasis, as disabled,as lesbians or only as women.

Gail Omvedt felt that even the most “radical social movements in India, such as Phule’s Satyashodhak Samaj, Periyar’s Self-Respect Movement, Ambedkar’s Dalit Movement” did not pay adequate attention to the question of Dalit women though they went “further than the Brahmin-dominated reform movements in asserting women’s equality and rights.”(13)

Jyotiba Phule, considered the father of the Dalit and anti-caste movements in India, is also seen as the founder of the women’s movement in Maharashtra. His mission was the liberation of shudras (peasant castes) and atishudras (untouchables) from conditions of slavery imposed by Brahminism.

In the process of challenging the hierarchy of caste, this movement also challenged the subjugation of women - as women were considered on par with Dalits within the caste hierarchy. Phule’s Satyashodhak Samaj founded the first school for untouchables and girls, organised marriages with no priests, widow remarriage etc.

Violence against Dalit women as also against Adivasi women is part of the multi-layered structure of brutal force to maintain economic and social interests. It is as much a symbol of caste, class and gender oppression, as it is ethnic, economic and landlord power. It represents total and complete control of the immediate world of the Dalit Women, a structural dehumanising of a community and a warning to its members against fighting oppression.(14) Thus the struggle of these women is at once a struggle against patriarchal hierarchies at the personal level, as also the social structures of oppression.(15)

Little wonder then that in such situations, as also during communal strife and war, men from the dominant force routinely resort to raping women as a symbol of their power and a means of “settling scores” and bringing “dishonour” to the men from the other side.

Mandal and Women
The violence in the wake of the implementation of the Mandal Commission recommendations in August 1990, is still fresh in public memory. The Commission had recommended 27 per cent reservation for Backward Castes, apart from 22 per cent for SC/STs in government service and public sector jobs. The anti-reservationists argued that they were fighting for the “right” of “meritorious”; that reservation was basically against one’s democratic right to equality. A speech by Jawaharlal Nehru, which said that reservations would produce a “second-rate” nation was circulated. A more dangerous trend was the labelling of those who favour positive discrimination for the oppressed castes as casteist. In contrast, being anti-Mandal was equated in mainstream discourse ( i.e. writings in the media and in speeches) with being secular, egalitarian and progressive.

“Equality would be achieved by a transcendence or repudiation of caste, community, and gender identifications... For feminists who had struggled for years to inscribe gender into the liberal and a pro-oppressed model, the Mandal issue posed a difficult question. Young middle-class women began to declare that they were against reservations for women”. (16) This position increased the distance of middle-class women from lower/backward caste women, especially Dalit women’s organisations.

This contradiction was deepened during the later debate on the women’s reservation bill. It was argued that only women from privileged classes and upper castes who would take advantage of the opportunities afforded by reservations and that the poor, lower caste women would not get representation in the state legislature and parliament.

However, in this agitation women began to be clearly seen as subjects in the social change process – “feminists” who were assertive and non-submissive, a force that would participate as citizens and protest against injustice. Dalit women, along with women of other minority communities, are today asserting their new identities, raising new issues and are formulating visions within an alternative framework. All of these streams have enhanced the plurality of ideology, perspective and practice within the women’s movement

Women and Sexuality
Another aspect of a woman’s identity that is hardly allowed to express itself is her sexuality. Patriarchy has always tried to control, determine and define a woman’s sexuality. There is very little serious, non-academic discussion on sexuality. A recent collection of essays on various operational dimensions of sexuality, is significantly titled A Question of Silence? (17) If at all addressed or talked about, sexuality is either trivialised, pornographic or is spoken of in very negative contexts like HIV/AIDS, STDs, rape and sexual abuse.

Resistance to patriarchal control and definition of women’s sexuality has been around for some time, often just under the surface. For example Ismat Chugtai’s The Quilt, a story about a lesbian relationship, was published in 1941. Folk-songs that women sing often portray the desire and longing of a woman or talks of the fulfilment of sexual union. And yet there is a paucity of terms and language to talk of women’s sexuality.

In the early days of the women’s movement in India, most feminists did not highlight the sexuality issue mainly because they were afraid of being labelled as “bra-burning”, “home-wrecking”, “western feminists”. Also in the seventies, it was felt that survival issues were more important than concerns of sexuality. The few feminists, who did go public about their position on these issues, were dismissed as “radical” feminists or separatists.

The issue of sexual control especially of fertility was first publicly debated during the struggle against the Family Planning Programmes. However, seldom had issues of sexuality, especially of sexual minorities (lesbians, bisexual, gays and transgender people) and their rights figured in the agenda of most women’s organisations.

The issue of lesbianism got some visibility and public attention almost for the first time when in March 1988, Leela Nanded and Urmila Srivastava, two women constables in Bhopal decided to marry each other. They were dismissed from their jobs. This sparked off media debate. Many groups like Forum Against Oppression of Women, CED , Shakti - Bombay, Manushi- Delhi supported the campaign to reinstate the policewomen. Some, however, supported it on the grounds of labour rights rather than on freedom of sexual preferences.

In the decade that followed, the scenario changed to an extent. At the Fourth National Conference of Women’s Movement held in Calicut in 1990, there was a special session on “single women”. And in the Tirupati conference, in January 1994, some lesbian women, who felt that they could no longer take “public refuge under the umbrella of ‘single women’, ensured that there were specific discussions on sexuality and lesbianism.

In December 1998, the Shiv Sena attacked the theatres that screened the film “Fire”, which portrayed a sexual relationship between two women. Many women’s groups came out in protest against these attacks. But here too, there were those who were more concerned with issues of artistic freedom and democratic rights than the issue of sexuality. In fact, women who took this opportunity to “come out” as lesbians and foregrounded the issue of sexuality, were criticised for missing the “bigger” issues. Whatever the merits and politics of the film, “Fire” brought the issue of lesbianism into the Indian middle-class drawing room. It was no longer just viewed as a “foreign” or “west-aping” phenomenon. The Campaign for Lesbian Rights (CALERI) coalesced in the days following these protests.(18)

The year 1999 saw the publication of the first Anthology of Lesbian Writing in India edited by Ashwini Sukthankar.(19) “We put pen to paper so that one less woman might experience the isolation.”

All in all, it appears to be a paradoxical time for people working on the issue of sexuality. On the one hand one can sense the opening up of new spaces where sexual minorities are gaining greater visibility. Bihar saw the first hijra being elected to a State Assembly. New organisations like Sanghi, Stree and Sangama have become active. On the other, there is evidence of a strong backlash from mainstream culture to stamp out all such diversity and difference as threats to existing institutions like marriage and family.(20)