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A Mother of Many Sons:

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Gendered Justifications for Violence

Caity Rose Campana

RLG 5149: Religion, Violence, and Conflict

Professor Oren Stier

10 December 2020

1

On a spring day in 2017, before a crowd in , , a Rashtriya

Swayamsevak Sangh1 mahanagar pramukh (district chief) named Kundan Chandrawat gave a rousing speech. Comprised of RSS members and supporters,2 Chandrawat’s audience cheered as the local leader, clad in a pink , condemned the actions of the Communist Party of India

(Marxist)3 and called for the beheading of Pinarayi Vijayan, the chief minister of the southern

Indian state of . Although jarring in the violence it advocates, this was not the most striking of Chandrawat’s remarks. He went on to invoke the 2002 riots, in which over

1,000 people—most of them Muslims—died,4 bragging that “You5 killed 56, we sent 2,000 to the graveyard. We—this same Hindu community—shoved their corpses underground. You6 have killed 300 pracharaks [RSS recruiters] and activists, we will present Bharat Mata [] with a garland of 300,000 skulls in return.”7,8 It is Chandrawat’s last sentence, uttered with

1 Hereafter RSS. Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh translates from /Marathi to “National Volunteer Organization.” This group will be discussed at length in the third section of the essay, The RSS: Historical Elements and Ideology.

2 The event Chandrawat spoke at was organized by a local political group with the support of the RSS.

3 The Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the alliance of which it is a member, the Left Democratic Front (LDF), had been accused by the RSS of killing right-wing party workers in Kerala. A day before Chandrawat’s speech, right-wing organizations held anti-LDF demonstrations in the state. Pinarayi Vijayan also made controversial statements about the intentions of right-wing groups like the RSS, accusing them of attempting to divide the country and of modeling their organizational structure and ideology after those of World War II-era fascist European regimes.

4 Parvis Ghassem-Fachandi, in Gujarat: and Anti-Muslim Violence in India (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 1.

5 Likely a reference to alleged Islamic extremists who killed Hindu pilgrims in a 2002 incident known as the train burning (discussed in the essay’s final section). It should be noted that Chandrawat’s numbers do not align with widely accepted statistics pertaining to the train burning, the Gujarat riots, or the violent clashes between right-wing and left-wing groups in India.

6 Likely a reference to the LDF and related accusations described in note 3.

7 “RSS Leader Boasts of Killing 2,000 Muslims in Gujarat, Wants Kerala CM Beheaded,” The Wire, last modified March 2, 2017, https://thewire.in/communalism/rss-behead-kerala-cm-gujarat-killed-2000-ranawat.

8 Translated from . 2 hyper-aggressive conviction and upheld fist, that echoes the phenomenon with which this paper is concerned: the persistent overlap between RSS rhetoric and doctrine, gender, and violence in

India. The following questions frame my exploration of these topics: What are the gendered social ideals promoted by the RSS? What is the significance of Bharat Mata as an ideal woman, and how does the conceptualization of India as a Hindu mother inform RSS ideology and action?

Finally, what are Hindu nationalist (specifically RSS) justifications for violence against religious minorities, and how do these acts of violence invoke certain ideas about gender and gender roles?

Although a truly thorough analysis of each question goes far beyond the scope of this paper, I draw on various primary and secondary sources to argue (1) that RSS teachings understand women as important, yet primarily symbolic elements of Hindu culture, while men’s roles are understood as action based. Historically, this action has taken the form of

(daily communal gatherings), rallies, training camps, robust political participation, and—in the most extreme cases—violence. Next, (2) that the RSS is not an overtly violent organization, but in cases where the group is associated with acts of violence, gendered narratives of protecting, serving, and defending Hindu women frequently operate as justifications for such acts; and (3) that these justifications are the result of a desire to foster (in the verbiage of my chosen theoretical framework) authority ranking relationships between Hindu men and Hindu women as well as communal sharing relationships exclusively between RSS members and their ideological counterparts, at the great expense of those unto whom any violence is done. Finally, (4) that the aforementioned gendered narratives are informed by both the concept of Hindu women’s bodies as sources of national pride and reproductive potential as well as by the concept of Bharat Mata, imagined as a perfect, resilient, yet simultaneously vulnerable Hindu mother. 3

The concept of morality-centered violence, based upon relational models and outlined by

Alan Page Fiske and Tage Rai in their work Virtuous Violence (2015), serves as the essay’s theoretical backdrop. Following a summary of this theory, a brief historical introduction to gender roles in is provided, amplified by the work of Tanika Sarkar and Ujjayini

Ray. Highlighting research conducted by Walter Andersen, Shridhar Damle, Parvis Ghassem-

Fachandi, and Martha C. Nussbaum, the third section explores the rise of the RSS, with an emphasis on its role in communal violence as well as the organization’s key decision to exclude women from its ranks. The final portion of the essay is devoted to an application of Fiske and

Rai’s theory to these and other related issues. Through this analysis, I hope to show that, in keeping with broader notions embedded in Hindu nationalist ideology and Indian culture, the

RSS envisions Hindu women as symbols and Hindu men as active protectors of those symbols.

At times, this protection takes the form of violence, which the RSS justifies via situation within a moral context. That is, these enactors of violence tend to adopt a moral high ground that encompasses not just the defending of women’s bodies or sacred ideals of motherhood, but also the defending of each Hindu man’s shared mother: the nation itself.

Virtuous Violence Theory

Countless scholars have sought to explain the violence in our world. For those who have looked to morality-based rationalizations, like Donald Black (1983), arguments that violence is used as a means to punish wrongdoing (in the eyes of the perpetrator) and assert dominance abound. Fiske and Rai take this concept one step further, going beyond the notion that violence is simply a manifestation of retribution by positing that “people are impelled to violence when they feel that to regulate certain social relationships, imposing suffering or death is necessary, natural, 4 legitimate, desirable, condoned, admired, or ethically gratifying.”9 Aptly named, this virtuous violence theory focuses primarily on physical forms of harm, although the authors suggest that various instances of violence—emotional, economic, and others—potentially fit into their framework. They also note that their goal is to address most violence, but not all violence: some acts, they grant, are motivated purely by selfish or immediate factors instead of moral reasoning.

Although logical enough, the thesis that individuals “are morally motivated to do violence to create, conduct, protect, redress, terminate, or mourn social relationships with the victim or with others”10 seems innately problematic. How could anyone, but especially experts trained in the social sciences, imply that honor killings, child abuse, or the horrific violence visited upon minority groups by agents of political, social, or religious power are moral acts? Fortunately, this is not at all what Fiske and Rai intend to say. Rather, their definition of “moral” here revolves around what is considered good and right by the perpetrator, not by the authors personally. This is in part what renders the virtuous violence theory challenging, thought provoking, and—in terms of preventing or seeking solutions to violence—constructive. Indeed, it asks us to put ourselves in the very uncomfortable shoes of the murderer, the rapist, and the amorphous “bad guy,” not as a way to sympathize, but as an avenue to understanding—and ideally stopping— violence.

Relational models, first proposed by Fiske after conducting fieldwork among the Mossi people of Burkina Faso in the late 1970s, are central to virtuous violence theory. Each of the four models—communal sharing (CS), authority ranking (AR), equality matching (EM), and market pricing (MP)—has an associated moral motive, or relational “goal” it is organized to achieve, as

9 Alan Page Fiske and Tage Shakti Rai, Virtuous Violence: Hurting and Killing to Create, Sustain, End, and Honor Social Relationships (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 1.

10 Ibid., 1-2. 5 described below:

We use CS models when we perceive people in the same group or dyad as undifferentiated and equivalent in a salient feature, while others are not. Families, teams, brotherhoods, military units, nationalities, ethnicities, and some close friendships are often organized by CS. The moral motive guiding CS models is unity. Unity is directed toward caring for and supporting the integrity of in-groups through a sense of collective responsibility and common fate. … When we rank or order individuals along a dimension, we are using an AR model. AR is a linear ordering of the relative position of individuals in a linear hierarchy, such as between dominant and subordinate individuals, between adults and children, among military officers, and among people of different , ages, or genders in many . The moral motive guiding AR models is hierarchy. Hierarchy is directed toward creating and maintaining linear ranking in social groups. … When people use EM they keep track of whether they are even, or how many of something one owes the other…EM is manifest in activities such as turn taking, in-kind reciprocity, even distributions and randomization procedures such as coin flipping. The moral motive guiding EM models is equality. … MP relations involve the use of ratios and rates to compare otherwise non-comparable commodities on a common metric, such as in the monetary exchanges between buyers and sellers in a marketplace, costs and benefits of a social decision, or utilities in a moral issue. The moral motive guiding MP models is proportionality.11

The authors propose that these models stand for moral ideals, and therefore morality (as defined in the book) represents the desire to appropriately regulate relationships. Perpetrators of violence, then, see their role not as one of evil, but as one of necessary, justifiable action.

Although all the above models likely factor into the topics of this paper in some way or another, the two I’m particularly concerned with are the CS and AR models, which I will apply to the dynamics of RSS members, Hindu women, and those comprising a perceived Muslim

“other” in the fourth section, RSS Violence as Morally Motivated. There are two reasons the virtuous violence theory was chosen as a supplement to this project. First, it furthers the concept that violence is, in most cases, inherently meaningful. It does not simply “happen” and it is not

11 Ibid., 18-21. 6 just something humans “do” to one another. Fiske and Rai underline the fact that violence represents a kind of devastating human exchange, and that is vital to our understanding that violence associated with Hindu nationalism or with gender does not occur independently.

Second, it is sensitive to the cultural subjectivity of “morality,” which the authors say “consists of intentions, motives, emotions, and judgments about realizing relational models according to cultural preos.”12 In other words, while a person or group from one culture may regard something as good and right, this may not be the case for individuals or groups not affiliated with that culture. Seldom is there a universally agreed upon definition of morality. Historical and sociopolitical context are essential to comprehending why particular cultures and organizations conceptualize morality the way they do. Therefore, an application of this theory to RSS ideology and gender related violence in contemporary India first requires a visit to the cultural rules, conceived millennia before, which set the stage for these phenomena.

Women in Hinduism

In the sixth episode of the third season of , a mockumentary-style American television show that follows the antics of paper company employees in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the main characters are invited to a Diwali13 celebration organized by their Indian American co- worker, Kelly Kapoor. Halfway through the episode, Michael Scott, the show’s foolish yet lovable protagonist (he mistakenly believes that is an Indian version of , and consequently tells his girlfriend to come dressed in a cheerleader costume), engages in a dialogue with Kelly’s parents:

12 Ibid., 22.

13 Diwali is festival of lights, also celebrated by Jains and Sikhs. It occurs in the fall, typically 20 days following the festival of . 7

Michael: Wow, thirty years! And you two only met once before the night. Kelly’s father, smiling: Yes. Michael: Wow. Kelly’s father: How long have you been married to the cheerleader? Michael, awkwardly: Oh, she’s not a cheerleader. She thought this was a costume party. Um, no, we’re not married. Yet! Kelly’s mother: She’s very fair. Michael: She is very fair. Very fair and very kind. So, um, tell me, is your marriage the kind of thing where when you [gesturing to Kelly’s father] die, she [gesturing to Kelly’s mother] has to throw herself on a fire? Kelly’s parents, their faces now serious, both shake their heads. Michael, uncomfortable and getting up to leave: No? Okay. It’s still very cool. Okay, thanks!14

Despite the fact that audiences are meant to cringe at Michael’s ignorance and lack of propriety, his unmistakable reference to the classical practice of , in which Hindu widows would self- immolate, still reflects the common western understanding of women’s position in ancient

Hinduism. That is, even though viewers shake their heads at Michael, many probably do so thinking, “Well, Hindus did do things like that back then.” This kind of veiled judgment paves the way for more problematic and simplified views of Hinduism with respect to gender. Even though it appears to be directed at people who lived in the past, it still suggests that at some point in time, Hinduism did treat women in a backward way, and therefore Hinduism itself—historical and contemporary—has backward roots. Sati is, after all, frequently held up in the West as a prime example of the oppression of women; I can even distinctly recall my 10th grade world history teacher relaying to students the horrors of a typical Hindu woman’s life in ancient India, explaining to the girls in the class that if we had been born in that place and in that time, we’d be

“out of luck” if our husbands died young. But the full picture of is, unsurprisingly, as diverse as Hindu women are and have always been. It is certainly not as simple as the image of a goddess, revered as the absolute manifestation of reality, nor is it as

14 The Office, season 3, episode 6, “Diwali,” directed by Miguel Arteta, written by , aired November 2, 2006, on NBC. 8 simple as a woman being coerced into throwing herself onto her deceased husband’s funeral pyre. Throughout history, Hindu women have adopted both traditionally “feminine” and traditionally “masculine” roles. They have been servants, queens, political organizers, mothers, sages, land workers, warriors, and religious leaders. There is no universal theme that defines their experiences. It is with this sensitivity that the gendered elements of Hinduism most relevant to RSS ideology are introduced next. My intention is not to represent Hindu women as a monolith or as living fossils, nor is it to suggest that Hinduism as a whole oppresses women.

In Brahmanical texts written during the period of 500 BCE to 300 CE (as well as other

Hindu texts), ideas of women’s purity are inextricably linked to the body. While Ujjayini Ray, in her work on this era, warns that “these texts were a product of Brahmanical discourse designed to indicate how the world should be and not what it was,”15 over time, Hindu women’s bodies— imagined as objects that men could possess—did come to reflect on the status of men with whom a given woman was connected: fathers, husbands, and sons. It is important to note that this was especially the case for “high /class” women, namely those belonging to the or

Kshatriya castes, as the construction and maintenance of these “superior” categories was essential to balancing the fundamental structure of Hindu . Control over women’s bodies, which included ensuring “the wife’s chastity and the daughter’s virginity”16 and suppressing women’s perceived sexual insatiability—meant control over men’s social positioning, and was consequently considered necessary. Through this process, Hindu women’s bodies became the sources of both masculine pride and feminine shame.

Motherhood, as an ideal and a goal, was central to the larger pride-shame dichotomy. Ray

15 Ujjayini Ray, “Idealizing Motherhood: The Brahmanical Discourse on Women in Ancient India (circa 500 BCE - 300 CE)” (PhD diss., University of London, 1999), 3-4, https://ethos-bl-uk.ezproxy.fiu.edu/.

16 Ibid., 2. 9 proposes that a “classificatory system” based on Hindu women’s reproductive capability was established by Brahmanical texts: “In this scheme, woman as mother was the procreatrix and as such was accorded the highest ‘status.’ She became the primary normative category…Woman as wife or daughter formed the secondary normative category. She acquired the status of a potential mother, as she was yet to fulfill her primary biological function…according to Brahmanical ideas, a woman was defined by her reproductive abilities, one who was not a mother is by definition ‘deviant.’”17 A woman’s ability to marry well, produce more (preferably male)

Hindus, and perpetuate caste structures was undoubtedly important, and Indian society—as well as Hindu symbology—grew to reflect that. As Tanika Sarkar writes in Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation

(2001), “The politics of women’s monogamy then is the condition of the possible Hindu nation: the one is often explicitly made to stand in for the other.”18 One of the most striking examples of this is located in the personified image of India: Bharat Mata. Typically depicted as a young woman in traditional saffron or red Indian attire (sometimes adorned with an ornate headdress and jewelry, accompanied by a lion, or holding the Indian tricolor flag), Bharat Mata was first imagined in the late 19th century and featured prominently in the Indian independence movement. Perhaps the most renowned portrayal to emerge from this period, Abanindranath

Tagore’s 1905 painting (see Fig. 1) situates Bharat Mata in a specifically Hindu context: dressed as a sadhvi (female religious ascetic) with four arms calmly extended,19 she holds a white cloth,

17 Ibid., 1-2.

18 Tanika Sarkar, Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation: Community, Religion, and Cultural Nationalism (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2001), 41.

19 Multiple arms are an indication of immense power in Hindu culture and art.

10 prayer beads, sheaves of rice paddy, and manuscripts.20 A fusion of Hindu goddess representations relating to the ,21 Bharat Mata and her inception mark a departure from the lived reality of many of the Brahmanical concepts described above. As a political and religious icon, she was a way for India to retain its spirituality while also transitioning to a new modern realm, a necessary move if independence movements were to topple colonizing powers, who looked upon practices like sati, child marriage, and purdah (female seclusion) with contempt.22 In turn, the “spiritual embodiment of Mother India thus fortified divinity, chastity, and motherhood as the essential qualities of an ideal Indian woman”23 while India itself made outwardly social adjustments. Of course, this was not the first time in history that countries were artistically or symbolically rendered as women, nor is it the first instance of a woman’s likeness being used as a revolutionary tool. France’s , Britain’s Brittania, and Russia’s

Matushka Rossiya all come to mind. But what makes Bharat Mata so relevant to the content of this paper is not her association with one people or one land; it’s her explicit association with one religion over all others. She has become arguably the most recognizable, pervasive subject of visual and material culture in Hindu nationalism—the matter to which we now turn.

The RSS: Historical Elements and Ideology

In the 19th century, Hindu nationalism began as Hindu revivalism, a more appropriate

20 Shiv Sahay Singh, “Abanindranath’s Bharat Mata on Display,” The Hindu, last modified March 2, 2015, https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/kolkata/abanindranaths-bharat-mata-on-display/article6949692.ece.

21 The Tridevi is a triad of the Hindu goddesses , , and .

22 Ayshath Shamah Rahmath, Raihanah Mohd Mydin, and Ruzy Suliza Hashim, “Archetypal Motherhood and the National Agenda: The Case of the Indian Muslim Women,” Space and Culture, India 7, no. 4 (March 2020): 17, https://doi.org/10.20896/saci.v7i4.590.

23 Ibid., 18. 11 term as it took time for ideas to coalesce into something that could be applied to all of India.

Having first developed as a challenge to colonial British rule, its origins were in , Bombay

(today Mumbai), and . From the outset, Hindu revivalism (contrasted later with Hindu modernism) emphasized the martial aspects of Hinduism, embracing an aggressive attitude toward foreign invaders like Muslims and the British. Its proponents felt deeply that the pursuit of Indian independence was about more than just sovereignty—to them, it was about reclaiming an identity lost to time. They laid the blame of this identity crisis on a perceived Indian weakness and believed that the only way to combat it was through a return to the “fundamental truth,” an

“idealized past,” and “purer forms of Hindu culture.”24 Such messages were inherently exclusive.

Even if Indian Muslims comprised a sizable minority, Hindu revivalism was first and foremost concerned with Hindu issues and Hindu audiences. Accordingly, revivalist literature stressed the need for Indian religious awakening and a return to the proper practice of , the nature of reality corresponding to social position in Hindu belief. As Aurobindo Ghose, an often-cited

Bengali revivalist and philosopher, wrote of the cause: “All great awakenings in India, all her periods of mightiest and most varied vigour, have drawn their vitality from the fountain-head of some deep religious awakening.”25 Likely inspired by but not necessarily aimed at realizing this goal, the (today one of two predominant political parties in India) was organized in 1885, first as an appeal to the British to open more leadership positions to educated

Indians. Attempts to operate within the colonial structure imposed by the British eventually gave way to total frustration and disillusionment with Britain. The divide between Hindu modernists and Hindu revivalists also solidified in the wake of changing Congress leadership, specifically

24 Walter Andersen and Shridhar D. Damle, The Brotherhood in Saffron: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Hindu Revivalism, 2nd ed. (n.p.: Penguin Random House, 2019), 2-3.

25 Ibid., 5. 12 after the 1920 transition from to Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, whom

Tilak and his followers vehemently opposed.26 Tilak’s teachings were integral to the 1925 formation of the RSS in , by Dr. Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, a Telugu

Brahmin.27 The straightforward objective of this new group: to “train a cadre of men who would…forge a loyalty to the unified Indian state and thus advance the cause of independence.”28

The first organization to spring from the RSS was the Rashtra Sevika Samiti.29 Formed in

Wardha, Maharashtra in 1936 by a woman named Lakshmibai Kelkar, the Samiti aims to “make women conscious of their ‘divine identity,’ and to prepare them for the Hindu nationalist cause.”30 Its website lists three guiding ideals—matrutva (universal motherhood), kartrutva

(efficiency and social activism), and netrutva (leadership)—but does not elaborate on them.

Accompanying graphics include a drawing of a Hindu woman hugging the Earth, photographs of a female teacher with children and a female soldier superimposed over the outline of India, and a running footer that reads “Bharat Mata ki jai” (“Victory to Mother India,” a common slogan).31

It is possible, however, that Kelkar did not intend to start her own women-only group. Two

26 Ibid., 4.

27 Dr. Hedgewar is frequently misidentified as (a Maharashtrian Brahmin subcaste). Deshastha are contrasted with another Maharashtrian subcaste, Konkanastha Brahmins. Tilak came from a Konkanastha Brahmin family and this may partially explain why the RSS is often associated with this subcaste.

28 Walter Andersen and Shridhar D. Damle, Messengers of Hindu Nationalism: How the RSS Reshaped India (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 237.

29 Hereafter Samiti. Rashtra Sevika Samiti translates from Sanskrit/Marathi to “National Women Volunteers Committee.”

30 Paola Bacchetta, Gender in the Hindu Nation: RSS Women as Ideologues (New : Women Unlimited (an associate of for Women), 2004), 7.

31 Rashtra Sevika Samiti, “What Is ?,” Rashtra Sevika Samiti, last modified 2020, https://sevikasamiti.org/Shakha. 13 divergent Samiti origin stories have been proposed.32 In the first, Kelkar, provoked by the worrisome concepts engendered in western feminist movements and worried they’d come to impact Hindu women, learns through her sons (RSS swayamsevaks33) of Dr. Hedgewar’s revolutionary work, arranges to meet with him, and convinces him to co-found a women’s group.

In the second, Kelkar is motivated by the exploitation and abuse of Hindu women and, wanting to learn (and teach other women) self defense, she asks her sons (again, swayamsevaks) to show her how to wield a lathi, a heavy bamboo weapon. They refuse to do so, which leads to a meeting in which she implores Dr. Hedgewar to allow “defenseless” women to train at RSS shakhas. He declines, but suggests that she establish the Samiti. Both of these narratives are likely mythic to some degree, but at the end of the day, what really matters is why the RSS refused—and continues to refuse—to allow women into its ranks. The current RSS website FAQ section dances around this issue, chalking the prohibition up to “practical limitations.”34 But the answer is probably deceptively simple, and it harkens back to the cultural norms discussed in the previous section: where maintaining the Hindu nation is concerned, men and women are just too different. This difference necessitates unique instruction as well as the filling of fundamentally unalike, equally important, and intrinsically gendered roles.

For men, RSS membership is meant to center on chaaritya nirman, or character building.

Its social fulcrum is the shakha, a daily gathering in which (according to the RSS website) members participate in a consistent martial routine that includes “physical exercises, singing patriotic chorus, group discussion on a varied range of subjects, and a prayer for [the]

32 Bacchetta, Gender in the Hindu Nation, 8-9.

33 A swayamsevak, literally “volunteer,” is any man affiliated with the RSS.

34 Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, “Basic FAQ on RSS,” Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, last modified June 3, 2017, https://www.rss.org//Encyc/2017/6/3/basic-faq-on-rss-eng.html. 14 motherland.”35 With approximately 1.5-2 million regular shakha attendees and around 57,000 shakhas conducted daily since 2016, the RSS has a vast reach.36 Its leadership is structured according to an ordered hierarchy, ranging from the appointed sarsanghchalak (supreme leader/chief) to the swayamsevaks. To date, the RSS has had six sarsanghchalaks: Dr. Hedgewar

(1925-40), Madhavrao Sadashiv Golwalkar (1940-73), Balasaheb Deoras (1973-94), Rajendra

Singh (1994-2000), Kuppahalli Sitaramayya Sudarshan (2000-09), and (2009- current).37 Although the exact number of swayamsevaks is difficult to ascertain, the group’s extensive influence on Indian society is evident in the network of affiliated organizations and sociopolitical entities it has cultivated. These groups are collectively known as the Sangh

Parivar, or “RSS family.” Recent years have seen a shift toward inclusion of India’s Hindu tribal minorities and Dalits38 as well as more proactive political participation, most evident in the close ties between the RSS and the (BJP), India’s current ruling party.39

Narendra Modi, the incumbent Indian prime minister, is a member of the RSS. , the essence of Hindu nationalism espoused by the RSS, promotes “a brotherhood above caste, class, and regional identities”40 while “a uniquely Hindu ‘national soul’ is the guiding cultural principle of the elites of the .”41 Despite its conspicuously Brahmin genealogy, the RSS

35 Ibid.

36 Andersen and Damle, Messengers, xi.

37 Ibid., 261-4.

38 The term “” refers to various subcastes that exist outside of the traditional four-tiered Indian caste system (which consists of Brahmins, , , and ). Dalit subcastes are also known as “Scheduled Castes.”

39 Andersen and Damle, Messengers, xiii.

40 Ibid., xii.

41 Ibid., 238. 15 grew to be a casteless group (in an ideal sense, at least), drawing on Tilak’s interpretation of the

Bhagavad Gita,42 which “delink(ed) dharma and caste” by suggesting that each person has to decide for him/herself what duty to fulfill.43 Along with extensive charity work and participation in relief efforts, the group’s opposition to caste divisions is a positive feature, and one of the ways it has reshaped India, as Walter Andersen and Shridhar D. Damle contend. But one oppressed group appears to have been substituted for another. Where Hindu superiority reigns, maintaining that “Hinduism is the ‘mother’ of all religions” and sometimes taking on racially tinged undertones,44 so too does the notion that Hindus have an adversary in the form of Islam and its adherents.

This trend has manifested at many points throughout the RSS’s 95 years, but exceptionally so with the destruction of the in December 1992. Built in 1528 at a site in , believed by Hindus to be the birthplace of Lord (an eminent Hindu deity), the Babri Masjid became a point of controversy during the 19th century.45

Hindus, and certainly the RSS, argued for rights to worship at the site, which they believed had been occupied by a symbol of Mughal oppression for too long. During a 1992 religious gathering at which RSS, BJP, and Hindu Parishad (“World Hindu Council,” a member group of the

Sangh Parivar) leaders were in attendance, tensions escalated and mobs attacked the Babri

Masjid. Communal riots broke out soon after, resulting in the deaths of thousands of people. This event led to a yearlong ban on the RSS, which had been banned twice before. The first ban,

42 The is a Hindu scripture found within the larger Hindu epic . The Gita consists of a dialogue between the prince and demigod and the Hindu deity Lord .

43 Andersen and Damle, Brotherhood in Saffron, 8.

44 Bacchetta, Gender in the Hindu Nation, 45.

45 Andersen and Damle, Messengers, 192. 16 which lasted from February 1948 to July 1949, followed the assassination of Mohandas Gandhi:

Gandhi’s murderer, Nathuram Godse, was an ex-swayamsevak and a member of the

Konkanastha Brahmin community with which the RSS is often associated.46 The second ban occurred during Prime Minister ’s Emergency, which was sparked by allegations of election malpractice and lasted from 1975 to 1977.47

With the aforementioned historical context in mind, a more meaningful look at RSS violence is now possible. But first, it’s necessary to clarify that the following section, and the essay as a whole, do not aim to paint the RSS as the sole enactor of Hindu nationalist violence in

India. When I use the term “RSS violence,” I do not mean to suggest that every RSS member is a violent person, nor do I mean to imply that the RSS openly supports events like the two I’m about to describe. For all intents and purposes, it doesn’t. What I do mean is that over time, violence has been committed by people—devoted swayamsevaks as well as ideological sympathizers who had never set foot in a shakha—in the name of a specific and dangerous brand of Hindu nationalism. In the process, these individuals have used RSS symbology, referenced

RSS literature, and found inspiration in rhetoric like that of Kundan Chandrawat, the RSS district chief mentioned earlier. The RSS is a complex group that, in plain language, sometimes sends mixed messages. It’s quite likely that most of its members and leaders are people who, on a personal level, abhor violence. Official RSS statements and decisions often reflect this. For example, despite the cheering crowds, Chandrawat was arrested for his comments48 and almost immediately relieved of his RSS duties, with the RSS chief spokesperson remarking, “Whatever

46 Ibid., 262.

47 Ibid., 263.

48 “Threat to Kerala CM: RSS Leader Kundan Chandrawat Granted Bail,” Times of India, March 29, 2017, Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A487494451/ITOF?u=miam11506&sid=ITOF&xid=4a47015d.

17 he said was against Sangh’s culture. It was not Sangh’s language.”49 But while this kind of condemnation is refreshing to read, the RSS seemed preoccupied with only half of Chandrawat’s explosive words. The portion that went unaddressed was his terrifying allusion to the 2002

Gujarat riots, out of which came some of the most horrific communal violence in Indian history.

RSS Violence as Morally Motivated

The Gujarat riots50 (Gujarat is a state in northwest India) began on , 2002 and lasted into early March. Fueled by anti-Muslim sentiment arising from the

(see note 5) as well as unfounded claims that Gujarati Muslims had abducted Hindu girls,51 the riots were distinguished by mob violence. Hindu men, some wielding swords and trishulas

(tridents, associated with the Hindu deity Lord ), destroyed property, looted, and killed indiscriminately. Some areas of Gujarat witnessed celebratory destruction but no killing, while others saw multiple pre-planned, lethal attacks on Muslims; among these were Patiya and the Gulbarg Society in .52 The violence in these two locations resulted in the deaths of 97 people and approximately 69 people, respectively. While all the victims endured sadistic attacks, the Gujarat riots—and specifically the events that unfolded at Naroda Patiya and the

Gulbarg Society—were characterized by an especial Hindu preoccupation with the slaughter of

Muslim women. As Martha C. Nussbaum details in The Clash Within (2009):

49 “RSS Fires Its Leader Who Called for Killing of Kerala CM,” , last modified March 4, 2017, https://indianexpress.com/article/india/rss-relieves-ujjain-leader-kundan-chandrawat-of-his-responsibilities- kerala-cm-pinarayi-vijayan-beheading-remark-4553059/.

50 The riots have also been described as a massacre. Parvis Ghassem-Fachandi and Martha C. Nussbaum use the term pogrom, a Russian word previously used to describe organized anti-Jewish violence in Europe. I use the term “riots” because it is the most common word associated with the event, not because I disagree with the event’s characterization as a massacre or pogrom.

51 Ghassem-Fachandi, Pogrom in Gujarat, 46.

52 Ibid., 98. 18

The typical tactic was first to or gang-rape the woman, then to torture her (for example by inserting large metal objects into her genitals), and then to set her on fire and kill her. Although most of the dead were incinerated, burned with lye, or both, making a precise sex count of the bodies impossible, in one mass grave that was discovered it was possible to determine that more than half of the bodies were female. Many of the survivors who have testified are victims of rape and torture whose evidence was collected by women’s organizations soon after the carnage.53

The riots were also marked by violence against children, some of whom were killed in front of their parents. Additionally, there are several reported cases of pregnant women having their unborn babies ripped from the womb and shown to them before the women were raped and murdered. After the riots, there was widespread outrage at the lack of police efforts to stop the violence. Many Sangh Parivar member groups and , who was chief minister of

Gujarat at the time, were accused of either direct involvement in the riots or of condoning the violence.

Police and government complicity were also a hallmark of the more recent , which occurred from February 23 to February 29. The riots, which saw the deaths of approximately 50 people—two-thirds of them Muslim—were sparked in part by a sit-in related to earlier protests (themselves violent) against the passing of the Citizenship Amendment Act in

2019.54 Promising to aid religious minorities in India’s surrounding countries, the new law grants accelerated naturalization to immigrants and refugees who are Hindu, Sikh, Christian,

Zoroastrian, Jain, and Buddhist—but not to those who are Muslim. Although the Delhi riots were not branded by the same violence against women seen in Gujarat, Muslims were nevertheless brutalized by Hindu mobs in a similar fashion. Crowds destroyed property, vandalized , and randomly attacked people on the streets; chants of “” (“Victory to Lord Rama”)

53 Martha C. Nussbaum, The Clash Within: Democracy, , and India’s Future (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 187.

54 Jeffrey Gettleman et al., “How Delhi’s Police Turned Against Muslims,” New York Times, last modified March 12, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/12/world/asia/india-police-muslims.html. 19 were heard throughout, and some Muslims were aggressively coerced into saying these words.55

There is evidence that the mobs included police officers. One video depicts officers beating

Muslim men (one of the men died from his injuries) while forcing them to sing the Indian national anthem,56 a move that demonstrates how Indian Muslims are often viewed as needing to prove their loyalty to the country.

How do we make sense of the violence visited upon Muslims by Hindu nationalists, many of whom are in some way affiliated (even if just in terms of thought-ways) with the RSS?

To do this, we must look to gendered aspects of Hindu nationalist ideology. The horrors of the riots in Gujarat and Delhi may, in one analysis, be seen as attempts to combat humiliation and further an “us versus them” narrative. During the Indian independence movement, which we’ve seen was an avenue to reclaim Hindu identity for revivalists, Indian men (especially educated

Indians) were framed as “feminine, cowardly, and unrepresentative of the indigenous culture.”57

This picture was contrasted with Christian and British “manliness,” which was deemed superior by both British colonists and some Indian men.58 Thus, it became important for Hindu nationalists to promote—and situate themselves within—the image of the Hindu warrior, which reflected “hegemonic masculinity defined by attributes of decisiveness, aggression, muscular strength, and a willingness to engage in battle” as opposed to “femininity that is defined by traits

55 Ibid.

56 Ibid.

57 Andersen and Damle, Brotherhood in Saffron, 4.

58 Sikata Banerjee, Make Me a Man!: Masculinity, Hinduism, and Nationalism in India, SUNY Series in Religious Studies (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2005), 41. 20 such as weakness, non-violence, , and a willingness to compromise.”59 Nussbaum takes this argument a bit further by asserting that Hindu revivalists needed to invent an aggressive male sexuality to challenge past scripture-derived stereotypes of Hindu men as gentle, passive people who took after “playfully sexual” figures like Lord Krishna.60 To combat this humiliation, Hindu nationalists began to stress the martial aspects of Hinduism and while projecting a sexualized, gendered insecurity onto Muslim men. Indeed, the militant Hindu nationalism of the RSS and other groups, like the Samiti, partially depends on a Muslim “other,” as Paola Bacchetta writes: “There is only one model for Muslim men and it is thoroughly negatively connoted. They are overwhelmingly depicted in terms of violence: as rapists, rioters, murders.”61 The notion that Muslims are “taking over” India is also prevalent in Hindu nationalist and RSS discourses. This “population panic” has even been used as a political tool by the BJP: “Narendra Modi campaigned on the slogan ‘We are two and we have two, they are five, theirs twenty-five’—meaning that Hindus have one wife and Muslims four wives, and that as a result Hindu families contain two children and Muslim families twenty-five children.”62

Nussbaum notes that these accusations are totally baseless: in India, Muslims do have a slightly higher population growth rate, but are not anywhere near having double the number of children as Hindus. Moreover, Muslims and Hindus exhibit the same rate (five percent) of .63

Regardless of the facts, being outnumbered by Muslims—or worse, replaced by them—is clearly

59 Sikata Banerjee, “Armed Masculinity, Hindu Nationalism and Female Political Participation in India,” International Feminist Journal of Politics 8, no. 1 (March 2006): 64-5, https://doi.org/10.1080/14616740500415482.

60 Nussbaum, The Clash Within, 188.

61 Bacchetta, Gender in the Hindu Nation, 44.

62 Nussbaum, The Clash Within, 203.

63 Ibid.

21 an anxiety-inducing concept for many Hindu nationalists. Violence targeting Muslim women, then, becomes an important part of the equation, as exemplified by the Gujarat riots. Not just about anger or reclaiming what Hindu men believe they are entitled to,64 these acts also appear to be about population control and opposing the suspected hyper-fertility of Muslim women.

Like many patriarchal, all-male movements throughout history, Hindu nationalism was forced to deal with the fact that women are needed for society to exist. Although somewhat ironically not self-identified as a religious or political organization, the RSS draws on gendered norms from the past, like those discussed in the Women in Hinduism section, to carve out a space for women in the wider Hindu nationalist agenda. I argue that in this space, women take on symbolic roles while men take on action based roles. By this, I do not mean to say that Hindu women are passive, nor do I mean to say that women who fill traditionally feminine roles are inactive. To suggest this would be wrong and, admittedly, anti-feminist. Instead, my definition of

“symbolic” centers on the idea that Hindu nationalism envisions women as ethereal, or more than real, while men are envisioned as grounded. This is echoed in Samiti teachings, described by Manisha Sethi: “Women are the primeval source of all creation as ‘nirmatri’ and motion as

‘gati’ and power as ‘prakriti’ and ‘adi shakti.’”65 They are elevated to goddess status, but only if they fit into the categories organized for them (mainly mother and homemaker). For a woman to attempt to enter men’s roles, or to “demand rights equal to her own creation (men) is to taint the divinity attached to her status.”66 Of course, women’s bodies are an important part of this, as

64 Ghassem-Fachandi, Pogrom in Gujarat, 57.

65 Manisha Sethi, “Avenging Angels and Nurturing Mothers: Women in Hindu Nationalism,” Economic and Political Weekly 37, no. 16 (April 20, 2002): 1550, https://www-jstor-org.ezproxy.fiu.edu/stable/4412016.

66 Ibid.

22 they are believed to “represent national honor,” but only if they are “chaste and virtuous.”67

Hindu nationalism also plays off of the same insecurities instilled in the Indian male conscience during the colonial era. Sethi speaks of the role of the Hindu woman (specifically the sadhvi) as a renouncer, or one who shames Hindu men for their lack of virility (here, virility can be best expressed in the act of aggression toward the Muslim “other” mentioned above). If this is the case, it adds depth to the RSS’s contempt for Mohandas Gandhi, who sought peace with

Muslims and emphasized Hindu religiosity (read: celibacy) in the political realm. The natural next step is to vilify anyone who threatens the carefully constructed image of Hindu masculinity.

Another part of the symbolic-action based contrast involves how Hindu nationalism and RSS ideology consistently view women only in relation to others, while men are viewed as individuals. We see this in the previously mentioned stories of the Samiti’s origin. In both versions Lakshmibai Kelkar first interacts with her swayamsevak sons, who ultimately are the reason she decides to seek an audience with Dr. Hedgewar; even the formation of one of the only all-women Hindu nationalist groups cannot be entirely attributed to the efforts of a woman. This attitude is obvious, too, in the name difference between the RSS and the Samiti. The latter’s full name does not include the word swayam (self), such that “women’s self is relational and merged in other (always bi-gendered) entities. In contrast, the male self is unitary, mono-gendered, not dependent on relations.”68 In this structure, Hindu women are meant to seek refuge, salvation, and purpose in men. Their status as individual people with unique hopes, desires, interests, and fears comes second to their status as daughters, wives, and mothers.

Appreciating women’s positionality according to Hindu nationalism and the RSS is key to understanding how RSS violence is, when viewed by insiders, morally derived. Above all else,

67 Banerjee, “Armed Masculinity,” 62.

68 Bacchetta, Gender in the Hindu Nation, 7. 23 the RSS is a brotherhood. It is an exclusive group of boys and men who seek to achieve Hindu unity through charity, outreach, social conditioning, and political participation. This communal sharing (CS) relationship at times also seeks to create unity through violence (although this is not condoned by RSS officials). In doing so, it reinforces CS bonds between swayamsevaks and

Hindu men who are not formally affiliated with the RSS while creating a disdained “other” in the form of a threatening, monolithic Muslim community. Furthermore, the RSS maintains two different forms of authority ranking (AR) relationships. The first is with Hindu women, who are viewed as privileged subordinates in a natural hierarchy. Fiske and Rai write of this type of protection-centric AR relationship: “Superiors…feel a sense of pastoral responsibility toward subordinates and are motivated to lead, guide, direct, and protect them.”69 Additionally, the theorists name “protection” as a constitutive phase, or a reason someone might want to enact violence, stating that people tend to believe they have a “moral entitlement” to protect their relationship partners.70 In the process of protecting these relationship partners through violent means, the second type of AR relationship is enforced: one between superior Hindus and a subordinate Muslim “other.” This happens in both a pre-emptive way as a means to warn

Muslims of their fragile social position, but also in the context of punishment and revenge as a means to restore national honor. There is, of course, another fascinating side to the Hindu women-Hindu men hierarchy, as illustrated by the previous discussion of women as symbols: women may be subordinates, but they are integral to the Hindu nationalist equation, and thus are lifted up, their bodies made into symbols. As Tanika Sarkar writes, “The chaste body of the

69 Fiske and Rai, Virtuous Violence, 19.

70 Ibid., 23.

24

Hindu woman was...made to carry an unusual political weight.”71 Part of that political weight involves the need to protect this chaste body and its reproductive potential, a body that morphs into a substitute for the nation itself. This is reiterated in the RSS’s extensive use of Bharat Mata imagery, their framing of the 1947 as “rape,”72 and their preference for the

1882 Bankim Chatterjee poem “Bande Mataram” (“I Bow to Thee, Mother”) over the official Indian national anthem, “Jana Gana Mana” (“Thou Art the Ruler of the Minds of All

People”).73 Even though Bharat Mata is sometimes fused with images of Kali (see Fig. 2), the fierce Hindu goddess who represents creation and destruction, she is still seen as delicate. Her essence and identity are fluid, depending on who is attempting to use her image and for what reason. But the common denominator is that she—like living, breathing Hindu women—is viewed by Hindu nationalist ideology in relation to men, and in the context of her dependence on them. She is unable to independently defend herself, necessitating the presence of an army of devoted sons willing to shed blood in her name. It is in this manner that RSS violence becomes about more than hatred, but about protecting subordinates as a way to assert masculinity and maintain hegemonic control. Otherwise horrific acts become, in Hindu nationalist eyes, necessary means to defend a collective mother and, by extension, a way of life.

Conclusion

The topics this paper engages with are relevant in that they add to a larger conversation about the role of religion in violence. Appalling cases like the Gujarat and Delhi riots present questions about how readily we may attribute violence to religion versus how readily we may

71 Sarkar, Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation, 91.

72 Andersen and Damle, Brotherhood in Saffron, 72-3.

73 Ibid., 11. 25 attribute it to human nature. If we operate under the assumption that religion is a social and cultural construct, then we must also assume that it reflects all the different sides of humanity: beautiful and hideous, peaceful and brutal. Moreover, the gendered narratives embedded in

Hindu nationalist and RSS ideology prompt us to consider women’s experiences through the lens of this polarity, as well as the countless roles women play in religious violence—as perpetrators, complicit bystanders, symbols, and all too often victims. Finally, continuing research on the

RSS, its growing popularity, and women’s agency in India is incredibly important, as these do not exist in a vacuum. They are constructed and informed by many factors, the most pertinent being a recent and dramatic global shift toward nationalism. This shift is changing the sociopolitical landscape of several European countries, the , and others. The form it has assumed in India is one deeply rooted in a legacy of adherence to gendered norms, combating colonialism, and promoting a militant brand of Hinduism; the long-term impact of its presence and legitimacy in the world’s largest democracy remains to be seen.

26

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References

Fig. 1: ’s Bharat Mata (1905) 29

Fig. 2: Chromolithograph by Raja Ravi Varma depicting the goddess Kali (dated before 1906)