Women’s Activism in India: Negotiating Secularism and Religion

Abstract

In post-independence India secularism was almost taken for granted as a defining feature of the women’s movement with its rejection of the public expression of religious and caste identities. However, already by the 1980s, the assumption that gender could be used as a unifying factor was challenged, revealing that women from different social (class/caste) and religious backgrounds understand and sometime use their identities in ways that are not driven necessarily by some ideology (such as feminism or human rights), but by more immediate concerns and even opportunism. This realization opened up a debate about new strategies to tackle women’s activism, especially in light of aggressive political activism of some women associated with right-wing parties in India, which has clearly shattered the perception, held by some, of women as inherently peace-loving, whose gender identity would override their caste and religious belonging.

Posle sticanja nezavisnosti, sekularizam je u Indiji prihvaćen skoro kao nešto što se podrazumeva, a odbacivanje javnog ispoljavanja religijskog i kastinskog identiteta smatralo se glavnom odlikom ženskog pokreta. Međutim, već 1980-ih godina pretpostavka da se rodna pripadnost može uzeti kao ujedinjujući faktor ženskog pokreta dovedena je u pitanje pokazavši da žene iz različitih socijalnih (klasnih/kastinskih) i religijskih miljea razumeju, a ponekad i koriste, svoje identitete na načine koji se nužno ne rukovode nekom ideologijom (kao femi nizam ili ljudska prava), nego mnogo neposrednijim interesima, pa čak i oportunizmom. Ovaj uvid je pokrenuo raspravu o novim strategijama u okviru ženskog aktivizma, naročito u kontekstu agresivnog političkog delovanja nekih ženskih grupa pri desno orijentisanim političkim partijama. Njihovo delovanje je poljuljalo sliku koju su neki imali o ženama kao suštinski miroljubivim, kao i uverenje da rodni identitet može da prevaziđe kastinsku i religijsku pripadnost žena u Indiji.