Ram Puniyani
When the government of India gave a red-carpet welcome to the Taliban delegation led by their Minister of Education Amir Khan Muttaqi, Army veteran Lt. Gen Prakash Katoch asked: “Should India be seen deferring to the Taliban? Taliban’s human rights record, particularly its regressive misogynistic policies are well known. No doubt, developing relations with the Taliban is a geostrategic requirement.”
The women of Afghanistan who are deprived of human rights, particularly education and assembly, must be feeling betrayed, particularly after women journalists were denied entry into the first press conference held in the Afghan Embassy in Delhi. Of course, due to heavy criticism, women were allowed to attend the next press conference.
As the Taliban came to power, their edicts came as a shock to the world at large. This is the same group that had destroyed Gautam Buddha’s majestic statues, 53 and 35 meters tall, despite requests from various powers in the world. The world is watching the gross abuse of human rights. It is the same Taliban which had imposed jizya (a tax) on non-Muslims.
The Taliban is an outcome of the youth (then) who were indoctrinated in a few madrassas in Pakistan, including the famous Lal Masjid in Pakistan. While now it has not only assumed its own agency, the circumstances in which they came up need to be recalled.
The Taliban has been indoctrinated in a particular version of Islam put forward by Maulana Wahab. When the erstwhile Soviet Union army occupied Afghanistan (1979-89), the US was not in a position to send its own army as their forces were demoralised due to their defeat in Vietnam.
The Kissinger (former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger) Doctrine was implemented, which aimed to fight the enemy (the communists) by using Asian Muslim youth. The madrassas were promoted and funded by the US. Academic and author Mahmood Mamdani in his book, Good Muslim Bad Muslim, on the basis of CIA documents, tells us how the Mujahideen were “indoctrinated and supplied with $8,000 million and 7,000 tonnes of armament”, including the latest stringer missiles.
These trained elements joined the anti-Soviet forces and the Soviet army faced defeat. America got total dominance through war against Afghanistan, and Iraq in particular. The Islam they practice is said to be the most conservative. The concept of human rights does not find any place in this version and women and subordinate sections of society face worst violations of human rights and their subjugation, as per various reports.
This degree of patriarchal control and abuse of human rights is not yet seen in the Hindutva nationalism ruling India today. As such, the seeds of rigid patriarchy are very much there and concept of human rights is gradually being replaced by ‘rights for the elite upper caste and rich’ and ‘duties for the poor and marginalised’.
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the parent organisation of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Rashtra Sevika Samiti, dealing with women, is an exclusively male organisation. It is based on the Brahminical version of Hinduism, in contrast to the liberal and inclusive Hinduism of Mahatma Gandhi, the one who was killed by a person steeped in Hindu nationalist ideology.
When B R Ambedkar was burning the Manu Smriti, the second RSS chief, M.S. Golwalkar, was writing eulogies for books like Manu Smriti. After the Indian Constitution was implemented, the RSS’s mouthpiece came out with scathing criticism of this book saying it nothing Indian about it.
“Consider how Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, regarded as the most consequential head of the RSS, believed women were misled by modernity. Citing a couplet that states that “a virtuous lady covers her body”, Golwalkar, according to Caravan, lamented that “‘modern’ women think that ‘modernism’ lies in exposing their body more and more to the public gaze. What a fall!”
When Laxmi Bai Kelkar (1936) wanted women to be incorporated in RSS, she was in turn asked to start the Rashtra Sevika Samiti, a subordinate organisation. In its very name the word, swayam, is missing, which stands for self.
Later Vijaya Raje Scindia (the then Vice President of BJP) went on to glorify Sati (wife immolation on the funeral pyre of husband). BJP leader Mridula Sinha also advised women to conform to the norms of family where husband is supreme. (Savvy, April 1994). The RSS progeny has been opposed to women wearing jeans, and celebrating Valentine’s Day.
As the feminist movement came up, it went on for reforms like abolition of dowry, female infanticide and other abominable practices against women. RSS never initiated any of these struggles, but did not oppose these reforms. But, it was against the Hindu Code Bill giving women some semblance of equality to some extent.
As India has some democratic space after Independence, though it is going for a free fall since the past few decades, the admirable struggle by women did get them a better place in the society. The march toward equality did take a few steps.
Today, the RSS has Rashtra Sevika Samiti, Durga Vahini and the BJP women’s wing, whose values derive from the core RSS ideology of graded hierarchy and gender inequality. Here Manu Smriti has an important place, as their basic philosophy is rooted in understanding where a ‘Muslim man’ is the culprit while not challenging patriarchal values.
It is true that the condition of women in Afghanistan and some other Muslim countries affected by communal/fundamentalist Islam is bad. The Taliban sits at the bottom of this list.
In India, as the grip of Hindu nationalism increases, the patriarchal ideology is not being challenged by the RSS stable, while the feminist movement is doing its best to challenge the prevalent patriarchy. So, currently the degree of Taliban patriarchy is at the bottom. Hindu nationalism has basic similarity with them at the ideological level, but the women’s movement has made some significant yet inadequate strides.
What is similar between these two is the seed of patriarchy, while the degree of its social manifestation is diverse. Politics hiding under the garb of religion uses the identity aspects of the religion to retain feudal values with the added spice of hate for people of other religions. Christian fundamentalism in various places reportedly also propagates the same. Nazism, a full-blown fascist regime, also defined the place of women in the kitchen, church and children.
While we condemn patriarchy and non-recognition of the concept of human rights, we should be aware that every sectarian nationalism structured around the identity of a religion or the superiority of one race, shares many of these despicable norms.
The author is the president of the Centre for the Study of Society and Secularism. The views are personal.
The women of Afghanistan who are deprived of human rights, particularly education and assembly, must be feeling betrayed, particularly after women journalists were denied entry into the first press conference held in the Afghan Embassy in Delhi. Of course, due to heavy criticism, women were allowed to attend the next press conference.
As the Taliban came to power, their edicts came as a shock to the world at large. This is the same group that had destroyed Gautam Buddha’s majestic statues, 53 and 35 meters tall, despite requests from various powers in the world. The world is watching the gross abuse of human rights. It is the same Taliban which had imposed jizya (a tax) on non-Muslims.
The Taliban is an outcome of the youth (then) who were indoctrinated in a few madrassas in Pakistan, including the famous Lal Masjid in Pakistan. While now it has not only assumed its own agency, the circumstances in which they came up need to be recalled.
The Taliban has been indoctrinated in a particular version of Islam put forward by Maulana Wahab. When the erstwhile Soviet Union army occupied Afghanistan (1979-89), the US was not in a position to send its own army as their forces were demoralised due to their defeat in Vietnam.
The Kissinger (former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger) Doctrine was implemented, which aimed to fight the enemy (the communists) by using Asian Muslim youth. The madrassas were promoted and funded by the US. Academic and author Mahmood Mamdani in his book, Good Muslim Bad Muslim, on the basis of CIA documents, tells us how the Mujahideen were “indoctrinated and supplied with $8,000 million and 7,000 tonnes of armament”, including the latest stringer missiles.
These trained elements joined the anti-Soviet forces and the Soviet army faced defeat. America got total dominance through war against Afghanistan, and Iraq in particular. The Islam they practice is said to be the most conservative. The concept of human rights does not find any place in this version and women and subordinate sections of society face worst violations of human rights and their subjugation, as per various reports.
This degree of patriarchal control and abuse of human rights is not yet seen in the Hindutva nationalism ruling India today. As such, the seeds of rigid patriarchy are very much there and concept of human rights is gradually being replaced by ‘rights for the elite upper caste and rich’ and ‘duties for the poor and marginalised’.
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the parent organisation of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Rashtra Sevika Samiti, dealing with women, is an exclusively male organisation. It is based on the Brahminical version of Hinduism, in contrast to the liberal and inclusive Hinduism of Mahatma Gandhi, the one who was killed by a person steeped in Hindu nationalist ideology.
When B R Ambedkar was burning the Manu Smriti, the second RSS chief, M.S. Golwalkar, was writing eulogies for books like Manu Smriti. After the Indian Constitution was implemented, the RSS’s mouthpiece came out with scathing criticism of this book saying it nothing Indian about it.
“Consider how Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, regarded as the most consequential head of the RSS, believed women were misled by modernity. Citing a couplet that states that “a virtuous lady covers her body”, Golwalkar, according to Caravan, lamented that “‘modern’ women think that ‘modernism’ lies in exposing their body more and more to the public gaze. What a fall!”
When Laxmi Bai Kelkar (1936) wanted women to be incorporated in RSS, she was in turn asked to start the Rashtra Sevika Samiti, a subordinate organisation. In its very name the word, swayam, is missing, which stands for self.
Later Vijaya Raje Scindia (the then Vice President of BJP) went on to glorify Sati (wife immolation on the funeral pyre of husband). BJP leader Mridula Sinha also advised women to conform to the norms of family where husband is supreme. (Savvy, April 1994). The RSS progeny has been opposed to women wearing jeans, and celebrating Valentine’s Day.
As the feminist movement came up, it went on for reforms like abolition of dowry, female infanticide and other abominable practices against women. RSS never initiated any of these struggles, but did not oppose these reforms. But, it was against the Hindu Code Bill giving women some semblance of equality to some extent.
As India has some democratic space after Independence, though it is going for a free fall since the past few decades, the admirable struggle by women did get them a better place in the society. The march toward equality did take a few steps.
Today, the RSS has Rashtra Sevika Samiti, Durga Vahini and the BJP women’s wing, whose values derive from the core RSS ideology of graded hierarchy and gender inequality. Here Manu Smriti has an important place, as their basic philosophy is rooted in understanding where a ‘Muslim man’ is the culprit while not challenging patriarchal values.
It is true that the condition of women in Afghanistan and some other Muslim countries affected by communal/fundamentalist Islam is bad. The Taliban sits at the bottom of this list.
In India, as the grip of Hindu nationalism increases, the patriarchal ideology is not being challenged by the RSS stable, while the feminist movement is doing its best to challenge the prevalent patriarchy. So, currently the degree of Taliban patriarchy is at the bottom. Hindu nationalism has basic similarity with them at the ideological level, but the women’s movement has made some significant yet inadequate strides.
What is similar between these two is the seed of patriarchy, while the degree of its social manifestation is diverse. Politics hiding under the garb of religion uses the identity aspects of the religion to retain feudal values with the added spice of hate for people of other religions. Christian fundamentalism in various places reportedly also propagates the same. Nazism, a full-blown fascist regime, also defined the place of women in the kitchen, church and children.
While we condemn patriarchy and non-recognition of the concept of human rights, we should be aware that every sectarian nationalism structured around the identity of a religion or the superiority of one race, shares many of these despicable norms.
The author is the president of the Centre for the Study of Society and Secularism. The views are personal.
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