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UNIT 5 Region and Language

Dipti Nath Structure

5.1 Introduction

5.2 Objectives

5.3 Feminist Engagement with Religion in the West

5.4 Religion and in the 20th Century

5.5 The Indian Context

5.6 Religious Feminism: Issues and Strategies

5.7 Feminism and Religion in India

5.8 Islamic Feminist Movements in India

5.9 Feminist Responses to the Church in India

5.10 Women in Other Religions in India

5.11 Let Us Sum Up

5.12 Unit End Questions

5.13 References

5.14 Suggested Readings

5.1 INTRODUCTION

In the previous Unit we learnt how a gendered perspective can help us explain the relation between region, language and literature differently. In this Unit, we will study gender and religion, both of which are complex systems of that directly impinge upon the lived experiences of people. Most people have strong convictions and commitments regarding religion as well as feminism, and as such find it difficult to effectively separate an academic approach to these from their personal practices. It therefore, becomes a fraught and conflict-ridden endeavor when we attempt to examine religion through the lens of feminism using feminist strategies and methods. The issue is rendered even more complex when we seek to apply a feminist approach to religion in the Indian context with its obvious intersectional complexities of class, caste, regional specificities and multilingualism, compounded by cultural and religious difference. Let us try to unravel some of these complexities in this Unit.

165 Interrogating the Nation 5.2 OBJECTIVES

After completing this Unit, you should be able to:

• Explain the importance of religion, its patriarchal underpinnings and its impact on women’s lives;

• Provide an overview of the feminist engagement with religion;

• Discuss the engagement of Indian feminists with different Indian religions; and

• Identify the plurality of issues and problems related to gender and religion within the multi-religious and diverse Indian context.

5.3 FEMINIST ENGAGEMENT WITH RELIGION IN THE WEST

The study of religion as an academic discipline is of cardinal importance because it “…has been a major mover and motivator in human culture from time immemorial to the present, it is impossible to understand human history and culture while ignoring religion. Only an extremely artificial division of human life could tolerate the teaching of history, art, or social custom without understanding their connection with religion” (Gross, 1996, p.7).

Religious feminists seek answers to the fundamental question as to how theologians engage in creating systems of thought that become naturalized as the ‘truth’. Many feminist theologians assert that personal experience can be an important component of insight into the divine, along with the more traditional sources of holy books or received tradition. They ask why there is hardly any mention of women in religious history. Feminist historical theologians study the roles of women in periods throughout history that have influenced any particular religion. They study individual women who influenced their religion or whose religious led them to impact their culture.

What a feminist approach to religion aims to do is to reconsider the traditions, practices, scriptures, and of the major religions of the world from a feminist perspective. Some of the goals of feminist include increasing the participation and role of women among the clergy and religious authorities, reinterpreting male-dominated imagery and language about God and favouring the use of non or multi-gendered language, determining how religious discourse fixes women’s place in relation to career and motherhood and studying images of women in the religion’s sacred texts and matriarchal religion.While feminist interrogation of religion first gained prominence in the 1960’s in the West, the past centuries had already witnessed women’s 166 engagement with religious issues. The writings of Abigail Adams (1744- Gender and Religion 1818) and Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) in the late 18th century questioned the traditional Christian stereotypes about women (Hogan, 2009, p. 207 and Wollstonecraft,1790, p.54).

By the 19th century, instead of seeing them as weak and prone to lust and sin like their Biblical foremother Eve, women were in fact established by theologians as morally superior to men, though still too fragile and delicate for the hurly-burly of politics and business. Women, especially those belonging to the middle class, with education, leisure time and a sense of their own moral worth to back them, became prominent as participants in and organizers of religious activities like charities and missionary bodies. This also allowed women access to public spaces, an opportunity to sharpen their organizational skills and gave them a sense of self-worth (MacHaffie,1986, pp. 93-95).

The 19th century also saw the beginning of the debates regarding ordination of and preaching by women. Some Christian evangelical groups were surprisingly open to the idea of women preachers, while more established Protestant denominations were resistant to the idea. The first formal ordination of a happened in 1853 when Antoinette Brown (1825- 1921) was ordained into the Congregational Church in the United States. Yet ordination was not a common practice and most Christian denominations did not even consider the idea. Hence very few women were ordained into the Church and the idea of women ministers did not gain currency until the 1970s and later (MacHaffie, 1986, pp.107-12).

The question of religion was initially not of primary importance to the 19th century women’s movement. Women did not blame religion for their inferior position and neither did they demand a change for women in the church. And yet, with the passage of time they realized that it was quite impossible to ignore religion as many aspects of their social being were mediated by Christian ideas concerning the role of women and links began being made between women’s inferior position and religion. Thus when Lucretia Mott (1793-1880) and Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) wrote The Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions that was adopted by the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 they began by stating that “all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights….” (cited in Schneir, 2009, pp. 76-82). They list a number of “injuries and usurpations” on the part of men towards women including the usurpation of the prerogative of God to assign women their sphere of action. To correct the imbalance they adopt a number of resolutions including the idea that “woman is man’s equal—intended to be so by the Creator” and another stating that “woman has too long rested satisfied in the circumscribed limits which corrupt customs and a perverted interpretation of the Scriptures have marked for her” (cited in Schneir, 2009, pp.76-82). 167 Interrogating the Nation Consequent to this, Cady Stanton and a committee assembled by her proceeded to compile The Woman’s Bible, the “major nineteenth century feminist interpretation of religion” which was published in 1895 (Gross,1996, p. 37). However, the conclusions that Cady Stanton came to in this text were rejected by the Church and most women’s organizations, and it was only in the 20th century that these ideas were re-articulated and have gone on to make an impact on feminist approaches to religion.

Check Your Progress:

i) What were patriarchal Christian stereotypes about women?

ii) Who was the first ordained Christian woman and in which year did her ordination happen?

168 Gender and Religion 5.4 RELIGION AND FEMINISM IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

At the beginning of the Second Wave in the 1960s and 1970s, feminists started to point out how women had been historically excluded from the full practice of and . The “generic masculine language of the liturgy, the monolithically male images used of deity, and the male monopoly on all visible roles beyond singing in the choir, baking and teaching young children” were examined by them (Gross, 1996, p. 40). This, when women formed the bulk of the congregations, and apart from leadership roles, performed most of the everyday tasks required for the functioning of religious institutions. One of the first issues to be addressed by women in the 1970s was that of the ordination of women into their religious institutions as it is an important, albeit symbolic, indicator of whether women have genuine membership within their religion (Gross, 1996, pp. 40-1).

Through the 1970s and 1980s major battles were waged and won as the Episcopal Church, the Church of England, the American Lutheran Church and most Protestant denominations opened their doors to women priests and bishops and in the case of Judaism, rabbis. However, many major Western denominations like Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy and Orthodox Judaism still do not allow women to be ordained as priests. In 1976, the Vatican issued an official statement declaring the impossibility of allowing women into the priesthood, arguing that the priest is a representative of Jesus and since Jesus was a male, he could only be represented by another male. Despite this, the numbers of women priests and rabbis of many different denominations increased dramatically and by the 1990s women numbered one third of the student body at seminaries. One must bear in mind though, that women ministers and rabbis continue to be challenged and faced difficulty in finding employment even today (Gross, 1996, pp 41-3).

Apart from ordination, the other major focus of feminists was to rewrite traditional liturgies which are couched in androcentric language to describe both the worshippers as well as the deity. It was pointed out that women were excluded by the use of such masculinist language and it was suggested that corrective steps be taken such as the use of female imagery to describe deity and the inclusion of women’s experiences vis-à-vis religious ritual. In Judaism as well, reformatory movements have resulted in new translations of the Jewish prayer book which use more inclusive language.

Yet other feminists, impatient with the dilatory pace and half-hearted nature of such reforms and the resistance to these from conservative clergy, have chosen to move away from traditional institutions in more radical 169 Interrogating the Nation directions. There are those women who still consider themselves Christian or Jewish, but who draw on resources outside their institutions for their spiritual needs. The Women-Church movement, for example, growing out of the frustration of Catholic women, practices a distinctive feminist form of Christianity (Gross, 1996, p.44).

There are still other religious feminists who believe that the institutional churches and synagogues are beyond reclamation as they are entrenched in and inherently sexist in their symbolism and theology. Their choice has been a complete break from biblically based religion to embrace a spirituality borrowed from and other pre- and non-biblical religions which often include images of the female divine. These various groups are collectively known as feminist Wicca or the feminist spirituality movement (Gross, 1996, pp. 44-45).

As it happened within the larger feminist movement, religious feminists too, in recent years have had to combat diversity within their ranks, and sometimes in an unfortunate throwback to patriarchal have sought to turn difference into hierarchy. There was the avoidable assumption that white, heterosexual, middle-class Christian women could speak for all women. During the 1980s many diverse voices started to be heard which reflected the diversity of feminist religious positions (Gross, 1996, pp. 50-2). By the turn of the century, the enabling realization became widespread that no one person can speak for all genders, classes, races or sexual orientations. While the acknowledgement of diversity hampers the project of inclusivity, it is important that there be an honest and non-imperialistic examination and understanding of different religions and women’s experiences within them.

Check Your Progress:

i) What is significant about the 1970s-80s in terms of feminist approaches to religion in the west?

170 Gender and Religion ii) Activity: What is the feminist Wicca? Find out more about it through online or other sources and describe it in your own words.

5.5 THE INDIAN CONTEXT

When one considers a history of Indian women within the religious context, one is immediately confronted with the sheer impossibility of encapsulating a time frame that extends over 4000 years and the absence of a monologic or monotheistic tradition which implies a bewildering (and enabling) pluralism that denies any homogeneous terms of identification. Moreover, a religious tradition as complex as Hinduism is not amenable to Western conceptual categories especially given the diversity of geographical, linguistic, socio- economic, political and other factors. This is in addition to the fact that many women in India, like Madhu Kishwar in her article “Why I do not Call Myself a Feminist” in the magazine Manushi, reject the label of feminism as a Western term with assumptions and nuances which have nothing to do with the Indian context.

In a country replete with myriad religious practices, a secular education has always seemed the best option and there is hardly any tradition of the academic study of religion by men or women. Most studies of Indian religions were undertaken by Western scholars in the past, sometimes with an unfortunately absolutist Western perspective influenced by imperial and missionary ideas.

171 Interrogating the Nation This means that there has been a predominantly text-oriented approach to Indian religions such as Hinduism and a tendency to confine the study to selective male-dominated texts and to interpret textual prescriptions as descriptions of actual reality (Sugirtharajah,2002,p.99). In addition, this privileging of texts ignores other avenues of information like dance, music, art, folklore, oral narratives which could provide a far more realistic and accurate picture of women’s religious lives. Within Hinduism, religion is not limited to texts or scriptural authority and a text-based approach is limited and limiting. Traditionally, European-inspired histories and the Indian texts cited by them essentialized Indian women as devoted and self-sacrificing. While religious, legal, political and educational texts carried numerous pronouncements for men dependent on caste, class, age and religious sect, women were lumped together in one category, and their socio-religious differences were overlooked because of their biological characteristics and subordinate role. If Indian women are occasionally singled out for mention by historical narratives, it is usually because their accomplishments were significant by male standards. Important areas of women’s lives like “household and agricultural technology; religious rituals and sentiments; fertility and family size; furnishings; jewelry and clothing; inheritance and property rights; and marriage and divorce were largely overlooked” (Forbes,1996,p.1).

Thus, there is a degree of difficulty in recuperating a history of women’s engagement with or interrogation of religion in India because of this tendency towards a text-based approach, seeing Hindu patriarchy in monolithic terms and ignoring instances of disruptions of patriarchal norms by women in texts. Despite the availability of other liberating textual perspectives of women, there has been a focus on patriarchal and misogynistic texts such as the Dharmashastras and the Laws of Manu, conferring on them an authoritative status. Scholars have ignored the fundamentally gynocentric core of the Indic tradition which is evident in many everyday practices and in traditions like worship, Bhakti and Tantra. The complex web of thousands of years of history is complicated further by “Western hegemonies of the past few centuries that used the very idiom of women’s oppression to create an ideology of the white man’s burden to save non-white women from their men” (Saxena, 2011, p.143).

As in other parts of the world, the 19th century saw the beginnings of a women’s movement in India. This was mostly in response to the colonial justification of the British rule in India, which claimed among other things, that Indian men oppressed the women. A vigorous reform movement was launched in response, led by men and seeking to improve the status of women. Social reformers like Raja Ram Mohan Roy (1772–1833) and Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar (1820–1891) campaigned against child marriage and sati, and for widow remarriage and women’s right to own property. Drawing 172 on Orientalist representations they also asserted a glorious and exalted past Gender and Religion for Indian women evidenced by ancient Vedic texts while rejecting colonial and missionary versions of Hinduism and Hindu women. As Sugirtharajah suggests, “this male espousal of the women’s freedom was emancipatory and yet enslaving because it was constrained by male-values” (Sugirtharajah, 2002, p.102). For example, supporting the idea of education of women was largely due to the desirability of having efficient wives and good for their children. During the Indian independence movement in the 1930s and 1940s, women became much more visible, joining the men in the struggle against colonial rule. The advent of Gandhi on the national scene heralded a more equitable position for women within the freedom movement, and while Gandhi too was using the traditional concept of streedharm, or duty to one’s husband, for the first time this was seen to extend to the public domain. In addition, he did not see the domestic role of women as inferior and in fact valued the qualities traditionally associated with women such as self-denial, sacrifice, non-violence and endurance and expected men to emulate these values (Sugirtharajah, 2002, p.102).

Post independence, India’s constitution and the laws it enshrines are quite liberal vis-à-vis women although they are not always enforced within the more specifically religious sphere in India there have been some fairly dramatic changes in the roles of women. For the first time, women are functioning as religious gurus and initiating disciples. Many male gurus and teachers have passed their spiritual lineage and authority on to women, something that would have been impossible in earlier days. Traditionally Hinduism has not encouraged women to be world renouncers, but now women ascetics are seen as bearers of Hindu spirituality. It has also been pointed out that the key to religious expertise within the Hindu context has resided in the knowledge of Sanskrit, which was once reserved as an upper- caste, male privilege (Gross, 1996, p.60).

Check Your Progress:

i) State some of the complexities in revising a feminist Hindu historiography.

173 Interrogating the Nation ii) What led to the changes in the position of women in the nineteenth century?

5.6 RELIGIOUS FEMINISM: ISSUES AND STRATEGIES

Religion is not just an intangible and abstract set of beliefs but also something that is practiced by both men and women. And yet given the gender roles that are socially inscribed, women’s experiences within religion are very different from those of men. However, historically, very little interest has been paid to the religious lives, roles and images of women. This of course reveals the androcentric bias that decides what is considered important in society and culture or even worthy of study. Religious feminists, that is, feminists who examine and interrogate discriminatory and unequal practices against women within religions, question why and how the rituals and practices that women engage in are discounted and rendered invisible.

By focusing on the hierarchical authority that men wield in the public sphere, an androcentric view ignores the unacknowledged power that women often exercise in a private, informal domain and insist on seeing women as powerless within patriarchal religion. For example, in religions like Hinduism and Islam, whose texts affirm male dominance and whose public aspects are firmly within male control, women have rich, well-developed and specifically female religious practices that do not involve male participation and control. Observing patriarchal religion through an androgynous rather 174 than an androcentric lens, or in other words, applying a view that includes Gender and Religion male as well as female perspectives rather than a purely masculine perspective, allows the understanding that women do not necessarily subscribe to male stereotypes about them or fulfill masculine expectations of their behaviour.

Another strategy employed by religious feminists is to recuperate a useable past for women from the annals of history though it is an attempt fraught with difficulty. Often, only androcentrically inflected information is available and sometimes the voices of women are completely obliterated. These omissions in historical records need to be pointed out and explained and the connection made as to how women along with other disempowered groups are left out of history. The project of revisionist history-writing must also acknowledge that historical accounts are subjective and driven by agendas of all kinds and that women engaging in such a practice also have a specific aim. The aim is that of countering androcentric histories which foster the belief that male dominance is centuries old, hence normal, appropriate, unalterable and omnipresent. As the past is especially relevant within religions constituting as it does, tradition, ritual and emulation, the importance of a revisionist or interventionist enterprise cannot be overestimated. The past is revisited by feminists to document instances of and patriarchy, discover great women who have been buried by androcentric traditions of memory and to include forgotten contributions of women and forgotten female imagery.

Very often, women’s experience and understanding of religion is not in consonance with men’s understanding of it. Women’s religious lives are undocumented and overlooked because of the usually nonverbal and almost always non-textual context of women’s spirituality which is more performativity than theoretical. Religious feminists examine how women have often inhabited roles as nuns, leaders, healers, shamans and founders of new movements. While text-based studies and the priesthood are often the sole domain of men, women have often been at the forefront of charismatic and spiritual movements within religious traditions.

Feminists working in the field of religion also seek examples of female personifications of sacred power, or in other words rituals for and devotion to (Gimbutas, 2001).In earlier times, Western scholars of religion discounted the possibility of feminine symbols of the divine and generally regarded goddesses as foreign and primitive as well as insignificant (Gross,1996, pp. 156-190). It is to be expected that an androcentric account of the world which sees masculinity as the human norm, would also see it as the divine norm. Far from considering goddesses as an aberration from the norm, one needs to consider how the feminine has been made absent in the world’s monotheistic religions. Feminists study the goddesses, like Kali and Durga, within polytheistic religions like Hinduism and also those to 175 Interrogating the Nation be found in the religious practices of Western antiquity, like the birth-giving goddesses Artemis and Eileithyia in ancient Greek religion.

When one examines the major contemporary religions of the world it becomes apparent that they are all patriarchal in some degree. They often assert the propriety and necessity of male dominance and are very often misogynistic as well. Even those religions that have a more positive and inclusive view of women, limit their participation in the most valued religious activities. Feminists point out that many indigenous religions are much more egalitarian and equitable by comparison, with women being accorded a complementary role and sometimes even a superior one, for example, in some West African societies where equal importance and ritual is accorded to both male and female divinity. Another example of true religious complementarity would be that of the Kaatans, a Bolivian indigenous group that lives on Mount Kaata (Gross, 1996, p.69). The study of such religious traditions is important as it challenges the thesis that patriarchal religion is the time honoured norm.

An examination of religions through a feminist lens reveals an interesting divergence between those religions that are primarily oriented toward family and social units and those that are oriented towards individuals. Religions like Islam, Judaism, Confucianism and Hinduism, which lean towards a primary concern with society and family have been found to have strong and detailed gender specific codes of behaviour and are publicly male- dominated, with hardly any role for women in public religious or political leadership. There is usually a cultural preference for maleness and women’s family roles as wives and mothers are privileged with very little purpose or significance accorded to any other roles for them. On the other hand, within Christianity, , Taoism and Hinduism that concern themselves more with the individual’s spiritual wellbeing, women do have roles outside the family, for example these religions have strong monastic traditions in which women can participate. Since the focus is on individual salvation, there is also an understanding, to some degree, of the ultimate irrelevance of gender. However, these religions are institutionally male dominated and can also display misogynist tendencies, because of the value that they place on asceticism and celibacy, with women commonly regarded as being more materialistic than men (Gross,1996, pp.91-2).

Feminism has also engaged with religion taking a developmental or anthropological perspective with very interesting results. Societies are commonly classified by anthropologists as foraging, horticultural, agricultural and industrial. Feminist scholars demonstrate how certain types of society seem to correlate with certain degrees of participation in religion by women. For instance, in foraging and horticultural societies, men and women have a greater degree of egalitarianism and have complementary roles in society 176 and religion, while agricultural societies are generally patriarchal and Gender and Religion misogynistic with a limited public role for women in religion. Thus scholars assert that in earlier societies women occupied a more prominent position and the dominant deities were goddesses and this was followed by a ‘fall’ into patriarchal religion. Other scholars like Peggy Reeves Sanday (Sanday, 1981, p.171). believe that religious factors are crucial in the presence or absence of male dominance. She shows how in most male-dominated societies, the godhead is defined in exclusively male terms. She further correlates male dominance with factors such as technological complexity, sexual segregation at work, an orientation towards the male creative principle, competitiveness and stress, which tellingly, often lead to violent conflict.

Finally the feminist engagement with religion looks ahead to a transformation of patriarchal religion to a post patriarchal state that is enabling for women. The most important aspect of this vision of feminist transformation is that it should be integrated with other issues like class, race, caste and sexual orientation.

Check Your Progress:

i) What are female personifications of sacred power?

ii) How would you define a postpatriarchal state?

177 Interrogating the Nation 5.7 FEMINISM AND RELIGION IN INDIA

As we have discussed earlier, women have been made invisible in most religious discourses by androcentric theologies. Yet within Indic traditions this attempt was never fully successful. This was partly due to the amorphous nature of Hinduism which is not conducive to an understanding based on absolutist Western values but requires a multi-vocal, plural and relational perspective.

Feminist Responses to Hinduism

In recent years much work has been done by feminist theologians and the voices of practicing Buddhist scholars and Islamic feminists have begun to be heard in the global arena, but Hindu women’s voices are still relatively rare. Some Indian women reject the very label ‘feminist’ because they view it as being imbued with Western nuances; others are comfortable with the term ‘feminist’ but choose to view women’s oppression through the lenses of their own disciplines rather than from the perspective of religion. Consequently, there are only a handful of scholars like Vasudha Narayanan, author of Hinduism (2009), T.S Rukmani, Dr. Lina Gupta, who has extensively researched and documented the Durga Puja in Kolkata, and Neela Bhattacharya Saxena, who have produced critiques of religion as practicing Hindu women. These scholars challenge the hegemony of the masculine universal in the religious sphere in many ways.

One of these is the assertion of the ubiquitous presence of female symbols of the divine within Hinduism. These goddesses, in fact are so numerous that they cannot be catalogued, with every village having its goddesses. Within the Indic tradition of ‘dharma’ extending from early Vedic Brahminism to its later manifestation as theistic ‘Hinduisms’, ‘Buddhism’, ‘Jainism’ and ‘Sikhism’ and multifarious folk practices, one can identify a common goal of individual liberation and salvation, namely ‘moksha’ in Hinduism and ‘nirvana’ in Buddhism. All of these in their practice have powerful images of the Goddess. (Saxena, 2011, p.133). The figure of the goddess is seen as the validation of the legitimacy and autonomy of female power. Speaking as a Shakta or Shakti worshipper, Saxena describes the great emancipatory potential of the goddess Kali, the all powerful female deity. Kali is a “strategically gendered Ishwari or The figure” who is “supremely alone and is no one’s escort,” who creates Shiva as part of her creative play and all over India appears as the “fiercest aspect of the Divine Feminine” (Saxena, 2011, p.138). Kali’s iconography, her dark and naked body, lolling tongue, garland of severed heads, suggestive as it is of aggressive sexuality and violence is variously interpreted. Lina Gupta suggests that Kali’s horrific jewelry stands in contrast to the usual adornments used to please the and connotes a hidden rage at the need to adorn or objectify oneself. Her demeanor represents the “personified wrath of all women in all cultures” 178 and her terrifying howls are a “demand for equality where is Gender and Religion equated with meekness and subservience, since such anger is the only language that can be heard” (Gupta, 1991, p. 31). Many men have been devotees of Kali, addressing her as ‘’, an unconventional mother who destroys as well as creates. She is associated with death and life and renewal of life. Contemporary Indian women too, turn to the goddess for empowerment as Ritu Menon and Urvashi Butalia chose the name Kali for the feminist publishing house established by them in Delhi in 1984.

While we have a very positive role model for feminists in the goddess Kali as is evident from the ideas discussed above, it can also be argued that goddesses are used to justify real women’s oppression and the very recognition of women’s power has led to male control over that power. ‘Subservient’ goddesses like the Hindu Sita or the Christian Mary, sanctify and valorize patriarchal social norms, rendering them even more opaque to interrogation. And yet, there can be little doubt that though goddesses do not provide legal, political or economic autonomy and equality to women, they can and do provide a great deal of psychological and spiritual comfort which is important. Feminists consider it enabling that Hinduism offers images of the divine feminine which are regarded as legitimate and normative.

Hindu society as well as family is hierarchical in nature and while women have constitutional rights one often finds an inability to exercise these as Hindu women often have to accede to the notion of ‘dharma’ or duty. The law of ‘karma’ holds people responsible for their actions and applying this law requires some standard of determining the rightness or wrongness of actions. This standard is ‘dharma’ or ethical duty and it is derived from sources such as divine revelation from the scriptures, sacred traditions passed down through generations, the practices and examples of those members of society considered wise, and the individual’s own conscience. The concept of dharma is equally applicable to men and women, towards each other and the family, but there is unnecessarily greater emphasis placed on the duties of women towards their husbands. Also, within the structure of the family, age, gender and seniority play a role in fixing hierarchy. As such it becomes even more difficult for women to assert their identities and aspirations. The ‘dharma’ for women has traditionally emphasized obedience towards men, first the father, then the husband, and finally the sons. The duties of caste and stage of life which figure prominently in constituting the ‘dharma’ of men are far less relevant for women.

The Bhakti and other devotional movements are another area within the religious sphere where we can see the subversion of gender and caste hierarchy and the challenge to brahminic hegemony and ritualism. Although bhakti did not alter the social conditions for women, it allowed both men and women a certain degree of personal autonomy in the religious sphere. 179 Interrogating the Nation As S. Sugirtharajah notes, male and female bhaktas were free to relate to God in a personal way. There was also sometimes a reversal of roles as male bhaktas approached the deity as their beloved felt free to imagine themselves as women yearning for their lord (2002,p.101). Women saints like Mirabai (16th century) and Akka Mahadevi (12th century) did not conform to conventional standards of femininity. While they did not set out to be social reformers, in their opposition to whatever obstructed their devotion they subverted established norms. Though some feminists critique such figures and accuse them of substituting slavery to a husband by slavery to a God, they did challenge and subvert caste and gender inequalities (Sugirtharajah, 2002, p. 101).

Within the larger Hindu religious domain the feminine and masculine domains are not mutually exclusive. Conceptually, Hinduism affirms the equality and inseparability of male and female. The masculine or Shiva is incomplete and powerless without the activating power of the feminine or Shakti. As already mentioned, Hinduism is replete with images of the divine feminine. The feminine is associated with the fine arts and wisdom in the form of the goddess Saraswati, prosperity and wealth in Laxmi, and power in the goddesses Kali and Durga. This is especially significant as these are traditionally seen as male preserves. Hindu men worship these goddesses too, though that does not necessarily make them less patriarchal in their social conduct. Within the domain of religion, the feminine is not restricted to women, or the masculine to men. Both men and women worship male or female deities and so-called feminine qualities are not exclusive to women. Even at the level of naming, many men have names that invoke the masculine as well as the feminine like Radhe Shyam, Sitaram, Laxmi Narayan and so on (Sugirtharajah,2002,p.103).

In pre-independence India, while colonialists and missionaries saw little merit in the worshipping of female deities, for Hindu men and women the feminine force or shakti of the goddess was seen as empowering. In fact, during the later stages, British colonialism itself came to be identified with a violation of the feminine principle and Indians united in symbolically freeing Mother India or Bharat Mata from foreign rule (Sugirtharajah, 2002,p.103).

Goddess-centred spirituality has also been used by Indian eco feminism in the Hindu concept of Prakriti, the feminine nurturing force, in opposition to Purusha, the masculine principle. This divine female force is celebrated as reclamation of an enabling tradition for women as well as an oppositional force to patriarchy which is seen as a universal paradigm that destroys relatedness and promotes homogenization by rendering women and nature passive objects to be largely developed, controlled or consumed (Shiva, 1989, p. 38). 180 Gender and Religion 5.8 ISLAMIC FEMINIST MOVEMENTS IN INDIA

We have seen how women’s movements in India tend to differ from the Western women’s movements in important ways. This is true of women’s religious movements as well. Most women’s movements in major religions other than Christianity and Judaism seek to create their own feminism rather than imitate Western varieties which are deemed inappropriate for their specific concerns. Islamic and other Asian feminists, for example, do not want to emulate the Western tendency towards , and would rather promote a kind of feminism that is not detrimental to their relationship with men or to family life. They focus instead on education for women and the ability to work outside the home (Gross,1996,p. 58).

In many Islamic nations across the world, there have been strong secular Islamic movements since the 1920s. While these movements have mostly sought to restore the rights that women have under Islamic law, fundamentalists urge a return to traditional gender relationships and see these movements as demonstrations of unwelcome Western influence. Islamic religious feminists focus on the interpretation of the Quran and question the patriarchal system that is reinforced and perpetuated through a fundamentalist understanding of Quranic teachings. Complex questions abound too, regarding the traditional dress codes for women that are imposed variously in different countries.

One of the major areas of scholarship and resistance for Islamic feminists are aspects of the or Islamic law which is also known as Muslim personal law (MPL). Though interpretations of sharia vary between cultures, in its strictest definition it is considered the infallible law of God, as opposed to the human interpretation of the laws. There are two primary sources of sharia law: the precepts set forth in the Quranic verses, and the example set by the Islamic prophet Mohammad. Some of the issues for feminists in the MPL include polygyny, divorce, and custody of children, maintenance and marital property. In addition, there are larger issues regarding the underlying assumptions of such legislation, like the assumption that the man as head of the household.

Islamic feminists have objected to the MPL legislation arguing that these discriminate against women. Some Islamic feminists have taken the attitude that a reformed MPL which is based on the Quran and sunnah, which includes inputs from Muslim women, and which does not discriminate against women is possible. Such Islamic feminists have been working on developing women-friendly forms of MPL based on the Qur’an. Other Islamic feminists argue that MPL should not be reformed but should be rejected and that Muslim women should seek redress, instead, from the civil laws of the state. 181 Interrogating the Nation Within the Indian context, the relationship between gender and religion has been most contentious vis-à-vis the issue of Muslim women’s rights. This became evident during the Shah Bano case in 1980s when the women’s movement in India was forced to reconsider its strategy with regard to religion when faced by growing and violent attacks on religious minorities. As Nida Kirmani argues in her article ‘Beyond the Impasse’, the contemporary Indian women’s movement from the very start was committed to the principle of , and generally avoided religious questions outright. The few instances of engagement with religious discourses and symbols invariably focused on Hinduism and was often a strategy to counter a perceived Western bias and brand of feminism, an attempt in fact to indigenize feminism (Kirmani, 2011, pp.3-4). However, many of these movements inadvertently contributed to the alienation of non-Hindu women from the movement.

At the time of the Shah Bano case, the women’s movement supported the creation of a Uniform Civil Code arguing that all women deserved the same rights regardless of religious identity (Kirmani, 2011,pp 4-6). However, this position was soon co-opted by Hindu fundamentalists who used the case as evidence of Muslim ‘backwardness’ and resistance to national integration. In this one finds echoes of the colonial attitude to ‘native’ women, whose reform and uplift was the key to their civilizing mission. Within Hindu right- wing rhetoric the ‘oppressed Muslim woman’ serves as a symbol for the violence and backwardness of Muslim men (Kirmani, 2011, pp. 6-7). The case raised serious questions regarding the representation of women within the feminist movement in terms of the caste, class and religious backgrounds of its members. It was realized that there was a need to explore alternative avenues for the reconciliation of gender-related concerns and religious identity. The increasing participation of women in right-wing movements which called for violent action against religious minorities challenged the notion that women were peace-loving and united against a common gender- based oppression (Sundar Rajan,1994,pp.318-331; Bacchetta, 2004). In addition, the numerous Muslim women who had taken a conservative position during the Shah Bano case and the growing number of disaffected Dalit women pointed to the need to factor in class, caste and religion as important determinants within the women’s movement (Sundar Rajan,1994, pp.330; Kirmani, 2011, pp. 8-10).

Since the 1990s an increasing fragmentation has been witnessed in the women’s movement in India along religious and caste lines. Members of the movement have been forced to reflect upon issues regarding secularism, communalism and representation, and on the idea that the movement earlier was not truly secular but was dominated by urban, Hindu, upper caste and upper class sensibilities. In recent years groups of marginalized

182 women including Dalit and Muslim women, have started mobilizing themselves Gender and Religion along lines of caste and religion, drawing attention to issues of intersectionality and multiple forms of oppression faced by women in India (Kirmani, 2011, pp. 9-10). The need for a sensitive inclusivity in the feminist movement that recognizes multiple identities but demands an end to all forms of inequality was realized.

From the 1980s onwards, Muslim women’s organizations like Awaaz-e-Niswan, the Bhartiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA) and the Muslim Women’s Rights Network (MWRN), have emerged that are explicitly religion and community based. Some of these, like AeN are secular and open to women from all religious communities, whereas others focus on the specific oppressions faced by Muslim women and on issues related to Muslim personal laws, securing marital rights for Muslim women, the socio-economic status of Muslim women and the religion-based insecurity vis-à-vis the sexual violence faced by Muslim women during communal conflict (Kirmani, 2011, pp.10- 14). They acknowledge that religion is inextricably a part of social identity, that it cannot be treated as a private matter and that a solution can and must be found that factors in women’s rights as well as religious identity (Kirmani, 2011, pp.14-18). Many feminists have argued for a Gender Justice Law that would replace existing personal laws and give women wider matrimonial rights. They believe that such a law would not favour the laws of one religious group over another, but would increase the space for all women to demand their rights regardless of their religious identity. Others believe that the way forward is through reform of the existing Muslim personal laws. Still others believe that there should be a reformed set of Muslim personal laws that is both respectful of women’s rights and also functions within the religious framework, as well as an optional Uniform Civil Code which would give women an option to choose.

Sylvia Vatuk in her article “ in India: Indian Muslim Women Activists and the Reform of Muslim Personal Law”, (2008) describes a nascent ‘Islamic feminist’ movement in India, dedicated to the goal of achieving gender equity under Muslim Personal Law. In justifying their demands, these women activists refer neither to the Indian Constitution nor to the universalistic human rights principles that guide secular feminists campaigning for passage of a gender-neutral uniform civil code of personal law, but rather to the authority of the Quran, which, they claim, grants Muslim women numerous rights that in practice are routinely denied them (Vatuk, 2008, p.489). They accuse the male Ulema of foisting patriarchal interpretations of the Quran on the unlettered Muslim masses and assert their right to read the Quran for themselves and interpret it in a woman- friendly way. Hence “their claim to reform gender unjust laws within Muslim Personal Law is not based on the Indian constitution or the universal principle of human rights, but first and foremost on the authority of the Quran. The 183 Interrogating the Nation central argument of Islamic feminism is that the Quran guarantees a number of rights to women, which are constantly denied to them as a consequence of prevailing patriarchal interpretations” (Schneider, 2009,p.57).

Their activities reflect an increasing ‘fragmentation of religious authority’ in the globalizing Muslim world, associated with the spread of mass education, new forms of media and transport and a mobile labour force, in which clerical claims to exclusive authoritative knowledge are being questioned by a wide variety of new voices, women’s among them. Whether it can ultimately succeed remains questionable but the movement is clearly having an impact, even on the clerical establishment itself, insofar as the legal issues it considers most pressing for women are concerned (Vatuk,2008,p.489).

Check Your Progress:

i) How do fundamentalists interpret women’s religious movements within Islam?

184 Gender and Religion ii) What is the central argument in Islamic feminism?

5.9 FEMINIST RESPONSES TO THE CHURCH IN INDIA

Christian women theologians across the globe are concerned with common themes of critique of sexist symbols in Christianity and the reconstruction of the symbolism for God, Christ, humanity and nature, sin, and salvation, to affirm women’s full and equivalent humanity. But Christian women in their different contexts take up issues particular to their societies and histories and draw on cultural resources before and beyond Christianity to envision a more just world. In India, Christians constitute 2.3 percent of the total population according to the 2011 census. Christians include educated elites and those drawn from tribal and untouchable groups. In the recent past networks of have developed among Catholics and Protestants. The All India Christian Women’s Council and Women’s Institute for New Awakening (AICW and WINA) have held conferences on feminist theology and sponsored research and publication. Local groups, such as Satyashodak (Searchers for Truth) in Bombay work on issues of women in church and society. The Lutheran Seminary in Gurukul has made both women and Dalit theology areas of particular attention.

Padma Anagol (2005) in The Emergence of Feminism in India, 1850-1920, demonstrates how feminist interrogation of Christianity amongst Indian Christians goes back to the 19th century. In fact the feminist roots of 185 Interrogating the Nation Christian Indian women can be traced to the critiques of Hinduism that led to many Brahmin women converting to Christianity in the first place, as they saw it as a religious option without the distinctions of caste, colour or gender. Women like Pandita Ramabai, Krupabai and Soondarbai Powar were early feminists who not only turned their backs on the inequities and injustices that they saw in Hinduism, but also saw Christianity as a social doctrine whose message of equality could be used by communities of women for empowerment. The enormous amounts of energy that they directed towards projects of education of women, rehabilitation of widows and prostitutes, protesting against early marriage and female infanticide bear testimony to the feminist thrust of their religious beliefs. Their writings reveal an acute understanding of the gendered nature of religion and the political agenda behind the centuries old systematic vilification of women by men and also a connection between national progress and the education and self-realization of women. These early Christian feminists openly confronted the dominant revivalist, reformist and nationalist masculine discourse in their time that disavowed Hindu responsibility for the oppression of women and attributed it to Muslim rule in India. They argued instead that it was the Hindu priesthood that was responsible for the systematic marginalization of Indian women.

While it is true that the illiterate converts to Christianity failed to make the connection between Western imperial interests and the missionary endeavours in India, it is also evident that for women, Christianity offered more personal and social freedom, for example freedom from caste regulations, than they had previously enjoyed.

A very significant fact that Anagol discusses is the rejection of different Christian denominations and creeds by the educated and more influential Indian women converts to Christianity. Both Pandita Ramabai and Soondarbai did not belong to any Church and nor were they part of any specific denomination. This distancing can be seen as the formation of a specifically Indian variety of feminism which “although firmly rooted in an alien religion, held women’s issues at the heart of its concerns. Indian Christian women indigenized Christianity because of their woman-centred approach to religion” (Anagol, 2005, p.43). In the rejection of specific Christian denominations by Indian Christian women there was also a rejection of clerical mediation in their relationship with God and hence a rejection of Victorian values like sex segregation and biologically determinist theories regarding gender roles. They also criticized Western missionary attitudes towards Indians and Indian culture accusing them of being orientalist. In fact, a characteristic feature of Indian Christian women was the vehement enforcement of their idea of ‘ Indianness’. Many Indian Christian women, apart from their pioneering work in education, entered the literary profession and the field of print culture, while a large number engaged in the public activity of philanthropy. 186 The latter often brought them into conflict with the state and patriarchal Gender and Religion and imperial policies as they dealt with issues like opium and alcohol addiction and prostitution in relation to the misogynistic and tyrannical Contagious Diseases Act (1864-1869) which required prostitutes in colonial India to carry licenses and submit to medical examinations.

Post-independence India witnessed the giving of constitutional rights to women, at least theoretically, and feminist voices acquired a consciously held secular position with a general tendency to avoid religion. However, as discussed earlier, political and social developments in the past few decades have underlined the importance of religion as one of the significant markers of identity for women in India. Flavia Agnes in her writings has referred to the biases within the Indian women’s movement and the marginalizing of the concerns of non-Hindu women as ‘minority’ issues (Agnes,1995,pp. 136-57). Since the Shah Bano controversy, efforts have been made to reform Christian personal laws as well, with women’s rights activists and Church representatives lobbying for reforms in laws related to divorce. However, if one considers the 2001 amendment of the 1869 Divorce Act in India (after persistent demands by women’s organizations), it can be seen as a gain for Indian Christian women. Yet, one must also consider that there are still anachronistic features in it such as, fault-based grounds of divorce, the lack of recognition of marriage as a partnership, no mention of the concept of matrimonial property and the continuation of the idea of the father as the natural guardian of a child (Parashar,2008,p.109). This is just one example amongst the many of gender-inequality within religion based experiences of women in India, including Christian women.

5.10 WOMEN IN OTHER RELIGIONS IN INDIA

Religions such as Sikhism and Buddhism which are seemingly at core gender- egalitarian are now being interrogated by women who feel that while scripturally women are accorded equal status with men, in practice, women have been consistently marginalized within their religions. As far as Sikhism is concerned women have started to question the patriarchal appropriation of all public spaces within religion, the preference for male offspring and rampant sex selective abortion, dress codes and behaviour that are socially if not scripturally imposed. Interestingly, it is in the Sikh diaspora in the US, Canada and the UK that women are investigating issues of feminine identity within Sikhism with organizations such as SAFAR (The Sikh Feminist Research Institute) based in Vancouver whose stated intentions are to bring expansive revival, attention, voice and praxis to the feminist values and egalitarian politics inherent within Sikhi. Increasingly, Sikh women are feeling the collective need to evolve feminist thought within their religion by drawing on the egalitarian messages inherent within Sikhi and rediscovering a

187 Interrogating the Nation feminism that pre-dates the western paradigm of feminism. The engagement with Sikh feminist research recognizes the transformative nature of the attempt to document accounts of Sikh women’s experiences and regards Sikh feminist research as a catalyst for personal and collective engagement in seeking social justice.

Buddhism too, is a religion that manifests patriarchy not in its doctrine, but in its institutional forms such as monastic rules that favour men over women, a lower standard of education for women, a preference for male teachers and a disqualifying of women from religious achievement. The major task for feminist Buddhist scholars is to demonstrate that the core teachings of Buddhism do not support Buddhism’s male-dominant forms and that they can in fact, be interpreted favourably from a feminist point of view and promote the well-being of women. For example, as Rita M. Gross discusses, two key concepts of Mahayana Buddhism, emptiness or Shunyata and Buddha- nature or tathagatagarbha, can be used as effective feminist strategies (Gross, 1996). The doctrine of emptiness suggests that if everything is interdependent, then nothing has any essential, unchanging, independently existing essence or nature. Thus, femininity does not exist and cannot be used to limit and circumscribe women in any way. Similarly, the concept of in-dwelling Buddha-nature states that all things, not just human beings, have the potential to become enlightened, to be manifest as Buddha. Hence Buddha-nature is gender neutral and gender blind and the feminist implications of this are patently obvious.

Buddhist thought admits that women are disadvantaged in patriarchy, but their oppressed state is seen as a consequence of their karma, accrued in past lives. Accordingly women can avoid suffering in the future by being reborn as men. While there is an inherent admission here of the prevalence of male dominance and the suffering of women under it, Buddhism does not have a tradition of social activism and criticism and sees the world as intractable and unconformable. A feminist view would assert that what needs to be eliminated is not female rebirth in the future, but the present conditions that make life unbearable for women, that oppression must be recognized and pointed out and resisted whenever encountered. Thus feminist scholars like Gross interrogate the conflict between view and practice in a religion like Buddhism, and seek the reform of patriarchal religious institutions and demand gender equity for women in religion.

5.11 LET US SUM UP

This Unit began with a feminist engagement with religion in the west contextualizing it with the first, second and third wave of the feminist movement in the western world. Subsequently we looked at the complex position of religion within India given its multi-religious and plural landscape. 188 We particularly analyzed the problematic aspect of Hinduism where the Gender and Religion denouncement of religion as a patriarchal institution was undermined by the absence of a homogenous or unified Hindu doctrine. A consequent discussion on the aspects of Islam in India intersected with the feminist explorations and suggestions in amending the Muslim Personal Law. The colonial history of India and the early conversions to Christianity were then examined to locate the gendered perspective of these conversions and the subversive politics in indigenizing Christianity. Finally, we briefly engaged with the patriarchal appropriation of seemingly gender-egalitarian religions like Sikhism and Buddhism in order to understand the religious exclusion of women.

5.12 UNIT END QUESTIONS

1) What are the many ways in which women are marginalized within the major religions of the world? Discuss.

2) Discuss the various strategies employed by religious feminists to question patriarchal religious institutions. To what extent have these been succesful?

3) Discuss how imagery of the Divine Feminine and non-textual resources can be used by feminists to assert the power of women within Hinduism.

4) ‘For the feminist movement in India to be considered truly representative and inclusive, it must factor in religious difference as a distinct marker of the identities of Indian women.’ Agree or disagree with this statement and justify your response.

5.13 REFERENCES

Agnes, Flavia (1995). Redefining the Agenda of the Women’s Movement within a Secular Framework. In Tanika Sarkar and Urvashi Butalia, (Eds). Women and Right-Wing Movement: Indian Experiences. New Delhi: Kali for Women.

Anagol, Padma (2005). The Emergence of Feminism in India, 1850 to 1920. Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing Limited.

Bacchetta, Paola (2004). Gender in the Hindu Nation: RSS Women as Ideologues. New Delhi: Women Unlimited.

Forbes, Geraldine (1996). Women in Modern India, Vol. 4. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

189 Interrogating the Nation Gimbutas, Marija (2001). The Living Goddesses. Berkley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Gross, Rita M. (1996). Feminism and Religion. Boston: Beacon Press.

Gupta, Lina (1991).“Kali, the Savior” In After Patriarchy: Feminist Transformations of the World Religions. (Edt). Paula M.Cooey , William R. Eakin, and Jay B. McDaniel, pp. 15-38 . New York: Maryknoll.

Hogan, M. A. & Lyman, H.B. (2009). Adams Family Correspondence: January 1790 — December 1793. (Eds).Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press.

Kirmani, Nida (2011). Beyond the Impasse: ‘Muslim Feminism(s)’ and the Indian Women’s Movement. Contributions to Indian Sociology, 45(1).

MacHaffie,Barbara(1986).Her Story; Women in Christian Tradition. Philadelphia: Fortress Press.

Michaels, Axel (2004). Hinduism: Past and Present. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Parashar, Archana (2008). Gender Inequality and Religious Personal Laws in India. Brown. Journal of World Affairs. XIV(2).

Sanday, Peggy Reeves (1981). Female Power and Male Dominance: On the Origins of Sexual Inequality. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Sarkar, Tanika (1999). Pragmatics of the Hindu Right: Politics of Women’s Organizations. In Women’s Studies in India. (Ed). Mary E. John. New Delhi: Penguin India.

Saxena, Neela Bhattacharya (2011). “Gynocentric Thealogy of Tantric Hinduism: A Meditation Upon the Devi”. In Mary McClintock Fulkerson et al.(Eds). The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Theology. New York: Oxford University Press.

Schneider, Nadja-Christina (2009). Islamic Feminism and Muslim Women’s Rights Activism in India: From Transnational Discourse to Local Movement - or Vice Versa? Journal of International Women’s Studies, 11(1), pp.56-71.

Schneir, Miriam (1972). Feminism: The Essential Historical Writings. New York: Vintage Books.

Shiva, Vandana (1989). Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development. New Delhi: Kali for Women.

Sugirtharajah, Sharada (2002). Hinduism and Feminism: Some Concern. Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, 18(2), pp.97-104. 190 Sundar Rajan, Rajeshwari (2004). Is the Goddess a Feminist. In Maitrayee Gender and Religion Chaudhuri (Ed.), Feminism in India. New Delhi: Kali for Women.

Vatuk, Sylvia (2008). Islamic Feminism in India: Indian Muslim Women Activists and the Reform of Muslim Personal Law. Modern Asian Studies, 42 (2-3).

Wollstonecraft, Mary (1790). A Vindication of the Rights of Men. (2008). New York: Cosimo Books.

5.14 SUGGESTED READINGS

Bacchetta, Paola (2004). Gender in the Hindu Nation: RSS Women as Ideologues. New Delhi: Women Unlimited.

Saxena, Neela Bhattacharya (2011).“Gynocentric Thealogy of Tantric Hinduism: A Meditation Upon the Devi”. In Mary McClintock Fulkerson et al.(Eds). The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Theology. New York: Oxford University Press.

Sugirtharajah, Sharada (2002). Hinduism and Feminism: Some Concern. Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion. 18(2), pp.97-104.

Vatuk, Sylvia (2008). Islamic Feminism in India: Indian Muslim Women Activists and the Reform of Muslim Personal Law. Modern Asian Studies, 42 pp.2-3.

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