‘Didi, are you Hindu?’ Politics of Secularism in Women's Activism in India (Radika Govinda / MAS)

Modern Asian Studies / Volume 47 / Issue 02 / March 2013, pp 612-651
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X12000832 (About DOI), Published online: 21 November 2012

‘Didi, are you Hindu?’ Politics of Secularism in Women's Activism in India: Case-study of a grassroots women's organization in rural Uttar Pradesh *
RADHIKA GOVINDA

University of Edinburgh Email: rgovinda@exseed.ed.ac.uk

Abstract

In this paper I take the women's movement as the site for unpacking some of the strains and tensions involved in practical interpretations of secularism in present-day India. Several sources within and outside the movement point out that there has been a tendency to take the existence of secularism for granted, and that the supposedly secular idioms and symbols used for mobilizing women have been drawn from Hindu religio-cultural sources. Women from Dalit and religious minority communities have felt alienated by this. Hindu nationalists have cleverly appropriated these idioms and symbols to mobilize women as foot soldiers to further religious nationalism. Through a case-study of a grassroots women's NGO working in Uttar Pradesh, I seek to explore how women's organizations may be reshaping their agendas and activism to address this issue. Specifically, I will examine how and why the 2002 Gujarat riots affected the NGO, the ways in which it has started working on the issue of communal harmony and engaging with Muslims since the riots, and the challenges with which it has been confronted as a result of its efforts. In doing so, I will show how the complexities of NGO-based women's activism have become intertwined with the politics of secularism.

(Online publication November 21 2012)

Footnotes

* Many thanks to Professor Geoffrey Hawthorn, Professor Patricia Jeffery, and Dr Francesca Orsini who read and commented on previous versions of this paper, and to Vimukt Mahila Samuh for their generous support of my fieldwork. As the author of the paper, I alone take responsibility for the analysis presented here.