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Woman-As-Symbol: the Intersections of Identity Politics, Gender, and Indian Nationalism

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Woman-As-Symbol: the Intersections of Identity Politics, Gender, and Indian Nationalism Women’s Studies International Forum, Vol. 22, No. 3, pp. 317–328, 1999 Copyright © 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd Pergamon Printed in the USA. All rights reserved 0277-5395/99 $–see front matter PII S0277-5395(99)00033-3 WOMAN-AS-SYMBOL: THE INTERSECTIONS OF IDENTITY POLITICS, GENDER, AND INDIAN NATIONALISM Shakuntala Rao Department of Communication, 101 Broad Street, State University of New York Plattsburgh, NY 12901, USA Synopsis — The purpose of this article is to explore the connection between Indian nationalism and gender identity. I provide a critique of Radhakrishnan and Chatterjee’s notion of the outer/inner dichot- omy of Indian nationalism by stating that religion, in postcolonial India, has emerged as a discursive to- tality that has subsumed the politics of indigenous or inner identity more so than other rhetoric of caste, tribal, gender, and class. I provide a groundwork for this debate via the writings of Nehru and Gandhi. I conclude, through an analysis of the practices of amniocentesis and Sati, that women and their bodies have been used as representations of the conflicts surrounding national subjectivity. © 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. The women’s question in India has been a dif- ing and emergence of the Indian nation sub- ferent one from the feminist struggles of the sumed the location and identity politics of the West (Chatterjee, 1990; Chatterjee, 1995; Lid- “woman.” Radhakrishnan (1992, p. 78) addresses dle & Joshi, 1985; Nandy, 1987; Pillai, 1996; the conjunction of the women’s question and Sangari & Vaid, 1990; Shiva, 1989; Spivak, 1990). nationalism in his now classic essay, “National- In India, during the independence movement, ism, Gender, and Narrative” by asking, “Why women were stepping out into a public world is it that nationalism achieves the ideological only for the nationalist cause, thereafter they effect of an inclusive and putatively macropolitical were to return home to their roles as mothers, discourse, whereas the women’s question—un- wives, and sisters. The English women leaving able to achieve its own autonomous macropo- their homes to work in factories, on the other litical identity—remains ghettoized within its hand, had long-term effect, which would shake specific and regional space? In other words, by unequal sexual arrangements both within the what natural or ideological imperative or his- home and outside of it. Chatterjee (1990, p. torical exigency does the politics of nationalism 233) points out that while women’s social and become the binding and overarching umbrella political position was under much debate and that subsumes other and different political scrutiny in early 19th-century India, by the end temporalities?”1 of that century it had disappeared completely Drawing on Chatterjee (1990) and Sangari from the public agenda. This occurred, he pos- and Vaid’s (1990) earlier work, Radhakrishnan its, because of the emergence of a competing, arrives at the idea of Indian nationalism as having more seemingly fundamental, discourse of na- a dichotomous origin. “Nationalist rhetoric,” he tionalism. The contextual rhetoric of the build- writes, “makes woman the pure and ahistorical signifier of inferiority” and the West—transcribed by its Enlightenment identity—remains the An earlier version of this article was presented at the Canadian “outer other” (Radhakrishnan, 1992, p. 80). Women’s Studies Annual Conference in Montreal, Quebec. I wish to thank Joseph Reinert and Marjorie Pryse for their By creating this duality Indian nationalism comments. I also thank James Der Derian in whose fails on both fronts: its external history re- political theory seminar this essay first began. mains hostage to the Enlightenment identity 317 318 Shakuntala Rao of the West and its inner “true” and “pure” sence gendered. In this sense the collective dis- self resorts to a “schizophrenic” and “misogy- course of nationalism, unable to subsume the nist” essentialist indigeniety. It is this outer/in- religious, is confronted with an equally univer- ner problematic with which postcolonial na- salizing category of Hinduism. Radhakrish- tionalism constantly struggles: “the very mode nan’s extrapolation of the inner self of India as in which nationalism identifies its inner iden- merely a “reaction” against the Western ideol- tity privileges the externality of the West, and ogies denies the complexities of Indian politi- the so-called inner or true identity of the na- cal identity. India is no more conceived as tion takes the form of a mere strategic reaction merely a “modern” nation, as Radhakrishnan formation to or against interpellation by West- (1992) writes in his readings of Nehru’s autobi- ern ideologies” (Radhakrishnan, 1992, pp. 84–85). ography, but also fundamentally a “Hindu” Chatterjee (1990, p. 238) argues that the nation. The recent successes of the militant outer/inner dichotomy of Indian nationalism Hindu political organization Bharatiya Janata has been establishing of a relationship between Party (BJP) in national elections and the sub- the spiritual (inner) and material (outer) worlds: sequent bulldozing of the mosque Babri Masjid one signifying the home and the East, the has placed religion on the forefront of national other world and the West. Like Radhakrish- identity politics.2 By ignoring the significance nan, Chatterjee, too, sees the distinction between of religion, not as a subspace but as a fully the inner and outer India as one in which the formed discursive totality that defines what he spiritual India has historically positioned itself terms as the inner self of Indian nationalism, as a reaction to the material West. He writes, Radhakrishnan fails to address the women’s question within contemporary India. As I dis- The discourse of nationalism shows that the cuss later, it becomes impossible to apply material/spiritual distinction was condensed Radhakrishnan’s analysis to an understanding into an analogous dichotomy: that between of the resurgence of the practice of Sati unless the outer and the inner. The material domain one also introduces religion as a narrative lies outside us—a mere external, which influ- structure within which the popularity of Sati ences us, conditions us, and to which we are can be best situated. forced to adjust. But ultimately it is unimpor- The centrality of the narrative of gender, tant. It is the spiritual which lies within, thus, becomes doubly displaced: once by na- which is our true self; it is that which is genu- tionalism in its purpose to integrate and secu- inely essential. (Chatterjee, 1990, p. 238) larize India as a modern nation and again by religion in order to re-construct India as a tra- This dichotomy and its explanatory develop- ditional Hindu nation. Both present them- ment in both Chatterjee and Radhakrishnan’s selves as universalizing totalities and, there- writings limits the multifariousness of Indian fore, are in constant conflict. It is the double political life today. While this dichotomy seems displacement of the women’s question and two to have operated in the formation and devel- of its postcolonial representations—amniocen- opment of 19th-century Indian nationalism, it tesis or sex-determination tests and Sati or cannot be used in explaining contemporary widow burning—which I explore in this article. trends in Indian national politics and the However, such an exploration also entails a women’s question. closer analysis of the context within which this I argue in this article that contemporary na- debate most often takes place. For Chatterjee tionalism no more subsumes, as Radhakrish- and Radhakrishnan (and many other postcolo- nan (1992) suggests, the many forms of “sub- nial writers3) the struggle to understand the in- spaces” such as “the ethnic, the religious, the ner/outer dichotomy that signifies Indian na- communal” (p. 85). In this respect, the recent tionalism is best situated in Nehru and powerful impact of Hindu nationalism on In- Gandhi’s writings. While Jawaharlal Nehru and dian cultural politics cannot be ignored. What his national legacy has been well-established Radhakrishnan fails to acknowledge is that through lineage (42 of the 50 years since In- postcolonial nationalism reconfirms the “na- dia’s independence either Nehru, his daughter tive sense of identity” (p. 85), or what he calls Indira Gandhi, or his grandson Rajiv Gandhi the inner self, through an affirmative reimagin- have been the Prime Minister), M. K. Gandhi ing of religious identity which is also at its es- has been revered as the “father of the nation.” Indian Women Nationalism 319 Both of them have impressed equally their in- a passive capacity in which one does not have fluence on Indian nationalism in different the subjective power to cast oneself. While a ways. In order to understand the narrative of nation could represent itself as woman, for ex- gender in postcolonial India, therefore, also ample, in Nehru’s (1946) constant reference to requires a rereading of Nehru and Gandhi’s India as Bharat Mata or Mother India, women national politics within the rhetorical parame- within the nation could not represent them- ters of gender and religious identity—an anal- selves, their own identity, or their Indianess. A ysis that is largely absent from Chatterjee and comparable analysis is made by Gilroy (1987) Radhakrishnan’s essays. In fact, both Chatter- who conceptualizes British society as imagin- jee and Radhakrishnan, in their efforts to ing race as an agency through which national praise Gandhi (who Radhakrishnan, 1992,
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