India

Citation:

Menon, Kalyani Devaki. 2005. “‘We Will Become Jijabai’: Historical Tales of Hindu Nationalist Women in India.” The Journal of Asian Studies 64 (1): 103-26.

Author: Kalyani Devaki Menon

Topics: Gender, Women, Nationalism, Religion Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: India

Year: 2005

Citation:

Thapar, Suruchu. 1993. “Women as Activists; Women as Symbols: A Study of the Indian Nationalist Movement.” Feminist Review 44: 81-96.

Author: Suruchu Thapar

Topics: Gender, Women, Nationalism, Political Participation Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: India

Year: 1993

Citation:

Bacchetta, Paola. 1999. “Militant Hindu Nationalist Women Reimagine Themselves: Notes on Mechanisms of Expansion/Adjustment.” Journal of Women’s History 10 (4): 125-47.

Author: Paola Bacchetta

Abstract:

This article explores modes in which women militants from India's most extensive Hindu nationalist organization, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, have used Hindu nationalist discourse to produce themselves as political agents. The author compares personal narratives of three Hindu nationalist women militants from three different generations to the official discourse of the RSS and its affiliated women's organization, Rashtra Sevika Samiti. Notwithstanding the diversity of the women's life trajectories, identities, perspectives, and modes of political engagement, there are also some commonalities. All three women selectively modify official Rashtra Sevika Samiti discourse to justify their personal, intellectual, emotional, physical, and spatial expansion as new political agents. Simultaneously, they reproduce official RSS anti-feminist and anti-Muslim stances, thereby ensuring their own confinement within the Hindu nationalist order which ultimately men dominate. Thus, the women end up adjusting to their (newly conceptualized and expanded, albeit still subordinate) place within that order.

Topics: Combatants, Female Combatants, Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Hierarchies, Nationalism, Political Participation, Religion Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: India

Year: 1999

Citation:

Rao, Shakuntala. 1999. “Woman-as-Symbol: The Intersections of Identity Politics, Gender, and Indian Nationalism.” Women’s Studies International Forum 22 (3): 317-28.

Author: Shakuntala Rao

Abstract:

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 dichotomy of Indian nationalism by stating that religion, in postcolonial India, has emerged as a discursive totality 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.

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Gender, Women, Indigenous, Nationalism, Religion Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: India

Year: 1999

Citation:

George, Glynis R. 2007. “Interpreting Gender Mainstreaming by NGOs in India: A Comparative Ethnographic Approach.” Gender, Place & Culture 14 (6): 679-701.

Author: Glynis R. George

Abstract:

This article examines the way gender mainstreaming is interpreted by specific non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in India whose development initiatives draw upon particular ideologies of gender equality in their attempts to apply gender analysis. Its purpose is to locate and situate gender mainstreaming in the culturally specific contexts in which it is practiced to capture the complex realities in which gender policies are implemented and women are positioned to effect change. This is an important focus given that gender mainstreaming now pervades transnational governance and yet is informed by feminist analysis. Moreover, NGOs form key sites in which these policies are expected to be implemented. Of the critiques of gender mainstreaming which have emerged in the last 10 years, I examine how potentially conflicting models of gender inequality and equality take local expression and expand on the importance of framing in making gender mainstreaming meaningful by attending to indigenous interpretations of feminism and gender equality. The analysis I offer provides an ethnographic and comparative contribution to an understanding of gender mainstreaming as a contested site whose possibilities and limitations can be revealed by an attention to its feminist origins, namely a focus on context, process and identity formation.

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Gender Analysis, Gender Mainstreaming, Indigenous, Indigenous Knowledge Systems, NGOs Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: India

Year: 2007

Citation:

Sinha, Mrinalini. 2000. “Refashioning Mother India: Feminism and Nationalism in Late-Colonial India.” Feminist Studies 26 (3): 623-44. doi:10.2307/3178643.

Author: Mrinalini Sinha

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Feminisms, Gender, Women, Nationalism Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: India

Year: 2000

Citation:

Mayer, Tamar, ed. 2000. Gender Ironies of Nationalism: Sexing the Nation. New York: Routlege.

Author: Tamar Mayer

Abstract:

This book provides a unique social science reading on the construction of nation, gender and sexuality and on the interactions among them. It includes international case studies from Indonesia, Ireland, former Yugoslavia, Liberia, Sri Lanka, Australia, the USA, Turkey, China, India and the Caribbean. The contributors offer both the masculine and feminine perspective, exposing how nations are comprised of sexed bodies, and exploring the gender ironies of nationalism and how sexuality plays a key role in nation building and in sustaining national identity.

The contributors conclude that control over access to the benefits of belonging to the nation is invariably gendered; nationalism becomes the language through which sexual control and repression is justified masculine prowess is expressed and exercised. Whilst it is men who claim the prerogatives of nation and nation building it is, for the most part, women who actually accept the obligation of nation and nation building. (Amazon)

Topics: Gender, Masculinity/ies, Femininity/ies, Nationalism, Sexuality Regions: Africa, MENA, West Africa, Caribbean countries, North America, Asia, East Asia, Middle East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Europe, Balkans, Southern Europe, Western Europe, Oceania Countries: Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Liberia, Sri Lanka, Turkey, United States of America, Yugoslavia (former)

Year: 2000

Citation:

Burlet, Stacey. 1999. “Gender Relations,’Hindu’ Nationalism, and NGO Responses in India.” Gender & Development 7 (1): 40-7.

Author: Stacey Burlet

Abstract:

This article explores the strategies that non-government organizations (NGOs) are using to challenge the right-wing nationalism presently dominating Indian politics. Development workers must be sensitive to the importance of religion, but also avoid getting caught up in religious conflict. Gender issues, which straddle religious and political boundaries, can end up marginalized.

Topics: Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Nationalism, NGOs, Religion Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: India

Year: 1999

Citation:

Banerjee, Sikata. 2003. “Gender and Nationalism: The Masculinization of Hinduism and Female Political Participation in India.” Women’s Studies International Forum 26 (2): 167-79. doi:10.1016/S0277-5395(03)00019-0.

Author: Sikata Banerjee

Abstract:

Feminist analysis has revealed the gendered nature of nations and nationalism. Adopting such a perspective, this paper analyzes the relationship between the masculinization of Hindu nationalism and female political participation. The image of an aggressive male warrior is central to certain versions of Hindu nationalism or Hindutva in contemporary India. This image is embedded within a political narrative, which declares its affinity for ideas of resolute masculinity through an array of symbols, historic icons, and myths. Given that Indian women are very visible in the politics of Hindutva, this paper interrogates how women have created a political space for themselves in a very masculinist narrative. This interrogation focuses on historical and cultural processes that enabled this masculinization, certain ideals of femininity implicit within this narrative which opens the door for female participation, and womens' use of images and icons drawn from a common cultural milieu to enter the political landscape of Hindutva.

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Women, Masculinity/ies, Gender Analysis, Femininity/ies, Gendered Power Relations, Masculinism, Nationalism, Political Participation Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: India

Year: 2003

Citation:

Nussbaum, Martha C. 2001. “India: Implementing Sex Equality Through Law.” Chicago Journal of International Law 2 (1): 35–58.

Author: Martha C. Nussbaum

Keywords: gender inequality, discrimination, social inequality

Topics: Gender, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Governance, Constitutions, Rights, Human Rights Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: India

Year: 2001