Communities As Political Actors

440 Gender and Politics in India patriarchal subjugation of women within wider ideologies of permanence and change. What is sought to be preserved is what is seen to be changing: monogamous fidelity, the woman inside the 12 domestic role the woman as the preserve of ‘truth‘ and iradition’, the arena on which to defend personal religion against the law. The universalizing definition of the pativrata is not mechanically tied to a caste or dass, but to whar mybe a dass consciousness shared by those who do not physically belong to it. The pativrata woman is Communities as Political Actors: being defined against women who work (in the Shekhawati area, women in agricultural labour), non-Hindu women (only Hindu The Question of Cultural Rights women can be ‘sari’), the popular caricatuFe of the westernized woman - (the model that urban banias have KO contend with), women in marriage arrangementsother than monogamy (most likely to belong Veena Das to lower caste groups), widows who may seek remarriage, divorced and unmarried women, educated women who may seek employment. urban feminists, and any women who challenge their given role. It is to these women and the complex, changing forces t the time of Partition, over the question of recovery of which they appear to embody that the consent to widow immolation, ‘Aabducted women and unwanted children, the nation state together with attendant ideologies and belie&, is addressed. Clearly was invested with a new agency-it was addressed by the people this address goes beyond any single social group or class though it as the agency for setting right grievous wrongs suffered by family may originate in them. The domesticjurisdiction ofpativrata dharma and community. The two cases which I examine in this essay enlarges into a powerful patriarchal discourse which performs a range relate to a transformation of this relationship between people of functions in the public domain which are not restricted to either and the state. Here, what we witness is not a tactical alliance women or widow immolation. It is a discourse that mark within between state and community but a contest over the issue of itself both contestation and the changes to which it is addressed. As cultural rights, especially the right to regulate the spheres of law far as women are concerned it is a discourse which challenges the and memory. notion of the woman as a citizen, i.e. in the consciousness of Ona of the symbols used by the community ro mobilize democratic rights and individual abilities, in the right to choice, and political support in modern India in recent years is couched within in the right to an identity not governed by religious denomination. the phrase ‘cultural rights’. Despite the apparent similarity of The internalization of ideologies and Mieh produced by the phrasing, however, I believe that cultural rights cannot be thought event is thus related to a wider social process and not confined to the of as parallel to, or analogous to, political rights, for the term narrower stakes in the practice of widow immolation or to the ‘cultural rights’ includes a variety of situations with very different patriarchies of the specific groups involved. However, once moral implications. Further, cultural rights cannot be understood internalized, these ideologies and belieh become a part of the objective exclusively within a framework of a theory of interests, for they forces and structures which can produce further widow immolations refer primarily to political passions. Before I explore this or carry over into other forms of violence against women. For these relationship between cultural righcs and political passions further, reasons we need to explore rhe wide range of relationships between let us see the political and juridical contexts in which the problem patriarchies, the sysremic violence which inheres in them, the consent of cultural rigkts has been formdated.1 they need to generate and contemporary processes of social change. * I am grateful to Upendra Baxi for intensive and extensive discussions on the subject of cultural rights, and for many ideas most generously shad. 442 Gender and Politics in Iiidia Communitiesar Politicd Anon 443 The Subjects of Cultural Rights 1. Rights of individuals, peoples, groups, and minorities to existence and protection from physical suppression. At the The question of cultura! rights has been formulated in national individual level this is expressed as the right to life, of which an and international forums primarify in the context of the rights of individual may only be deprived through due process of law. At minorities. The Indian Constitution grants minorities the right to che collective level this is recognized through the Convention on preserve and develop their culture as well as make institutiona Genocide which makes the physical suppression of a group arrangements for this, for instance by establishing educational punishable.3 institutions. As formulated in the Constitution, this right is in the 2. Rights of individuals not to be discriminated against on narure of a restriction on the powers of the state. grounds of membership of a minority group. A similar concern with the preservation of minority culture is 3. Rights of persons belonging to racial or ethnic groups not evident in the foormdations of various provisions of international CO be the objects of hate or hostile propaganda. law concerning the rights of persons belonging to minorities.2The 4. Prohibitions against actions meant CO destroy or endanger Commission on Human Rights, established in 1946 by the United the existing character, traditions and culture of such groups. Nations assembly, appointed a Subcommission on Prevention of 5. Rights of persons belonging CO ethnic, linguistic, or religious Discrimination and Protection of Minorities. Between 1947 and minorities to preserve their culture and language, and rights of 1954 this Subcommission artempred to define the concept of a persons belonging to religious minorities to practise and pro& minority. Although most members agreed that the definition must their religion. include an objective and a subjective element, ir failed to arrive at an agreed definition of this crucial concept. This was partly a It is quite clear that the subjects ofall these righn are individuds. reflection of the dualistic character of international law in relation Especially important in this context is the right of an individual to human rights-for which the state and the individual form the not to be discriminated against on grounds of membership of a two poles around which legal personalities are organized. In group, or not to be made the object of hat& or hostile propaganda. international law it is states which mutually recognize each other. Yet it is also evident that the subjects of these rights cannot be In certain cases groups of individuals have rhe right of petition, treated as isolated, atomized individuals, because, in order for them but there has been great hesitation in granting legal personality to to preserve and enjoy their culture, the collective survival of groups. In part, this approach is a result of the specific historical traditions becomes an important condition. To understand the circumstances under which the international community complexityof the issues involved, let us pay close attention to Article recognized that the most gross violations of individual rights can occur within lawfully constituted states, for example the attempt 3 It has been noted that the Convention on Genocide made physical killing and to exterminate Jews in Nazi Germany. Thus the first formal forcible comrol of biological reproduction punishable, but could not ruch any agreement on cultural genocide. Further, the provisions of the Convention were ksae recognition of the crime of genocide (crimen humanitus) was not appliable to groups whose members were recruited on rhe criterion of choice, made in Nuremberg in 1945. This concrete context, within which such as political groups on homosexuals [cf. Lodor-Lederus, 19831. On major the concern with human rights came to be articulated in examples of genocide in the twentieth century, see Baccianini, 1987. Crawfbml international opinion, naturally emphasized the rights of individuals 1988 has noted that ‘peoples’ or ‘groups’ protected by rhe rules on prevention against the overwhelming power of rhe stare. and punishment of genocide include groups which could not be classed as beneficiaries of the right to self-determination. He also notes char the Genocide According to Sacerdoti (1983, these rights M1 into the following Convention is directed at offenders rather than victims, emphasizing the durirr five clusters: of legal persons, whether these be rulers, public officials or private individuals. But to the extent that the Convention has as iu object the preservation ofgroups, ’ On the question of rights of minorities in international law, see Copotorti, it is meaningful to talk of their rights. As we shall see later, it is precisely on the 1985 and Saccrdoti, 1983. question of the preservation ofa group as a cultural entity that serious conflicts may come about between the rights of groups and those of individuals. 444 Gtnhr and PoIitirs in India Communitiesas PofiticafActor, 445 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: The following theoretical issues, then, seem to me crucial in developinga conceptualframework within which we may think about In chose states in which ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities exist, cultural rights. First, if we divide rights according to their adjectival persons belonging CO such minorities shall not be denied the right, in qualities into (a) individual rights, and (b) collective rights, then we comrnunitywith orher members of their groups CO enjoy their own culture, need to what relation this distinction has with the one between to profess and practise their own religion, or to use their own language. ask the individual and the collective as morphological categories ;IS well It should be noted that the subjects of these rights in Article 27 are as subjects of rights.

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