Abstract: Hindu nationalist sentiments have grown in the past few decades partly as an emergent ideology that relies on framing the idealized masculine Hindu body against the Muslim form. The Hindutva movement, especially nationalist efforts during the 2002 anti-Muslim mobs in Gujarat, sought to reassert Hindu dominance through discursive and physical violence towards the Muslim community to reclaim the ‘ideal’ Hindu nation. Here, historical narratives contextualize the conflict, especially the violent anti-Muslim mobs. This paper seeks to apply Butler’s work, Bodies that Matter, to understand how the materialization of sexuality plays into the productive forces that regulate the Hindu and Muslim body in the context of Hindutva activism. Thus, this paper will argue that the Hindu Right materializes a ‘unified’ masculine Hindu man through knowing and dominating the ‘Other’ — the Muslim body — through reiterative discourses and disciplinary, violent sexuality.
Keywords: Hindutva, anxious masculinity, abject bodies, emasculation
Introduction
Hindu nationalist sentiments have grown in the past few decades partly as an emergent ideology that relies on framing the idealized masculine Hindu body against the Muslim form. In earlier Hindutva writings, the Muslim “is simply assumed to pre-exist, always-already constituted” and fundamentally challenges the existence and strength of the Hindu nation and the Hindu male body.[1] The Hindutva movement, especially nationalist efforts during the 2002 anti-Muslim mobs in Gujarat, sought to reassert Hindu dominance through discursive and physical violence towards the Muslim community to reclaim the ‘ideal’ Hindu nation. Here, historical narratives contextualize the conflict, especially the violent anti-Muslim mobs. The RSS, one of India’s prominent nationalist organizations, portrays through educational and political campaigns male Muslim invaders raping the Motherland as fundamental in India’s history, thus providing motivation for Hindu men to gather and organize to protect out of “love of the Mother-nation”.[2]
This paper seeks to apply Judith Butler’s work, Bodies that Matter, to understand how the materialization of sexuality plays into the productive forces that regulate the Hindu and Muslim body in the context of Hindutva activism. “Sex,” as outlined by Butler, is a highly reiterative and citational practice, “whose regulatory force is made clear as a kind of productive power, the power to produce – demarcate, circulate, differentiate – the bodies it controls”.[3] Butler further argues that this understanding of “sex” becomes a regulatory mechanism “whose materialization is compelled”.[4] Thus, this paper will argue that the Hindu Right materializes a ‘unified’ masculine Hindu man through knowing and dominating the ‘Other’ –the Muslim body– through reiterative discourses and disciplinary, violent sexuality.
Where Do Women Fit In?
Women in the context of Hindutva politics are by no means passive actors. This paper is specifically concerned with how discourses and engagement with these women contribute to the emasculated Muslim and hyper-masculine Hindu, and how delineating these boundaries forms what the nation ‘should’ be according to the Hindu Right. In this manner, Hindu right-wing politics in relation to women serve as a mechanism to enforce disciplinary structures by which to establish Hindu dominance through discourse and sexual violence. In Sikata Banerjee’s article discussing Hindu armed masculinity and female political participation in India, she explains that within Hindutva, the idealized Hindu woman under “masculine Hinduism” is framed as a “heroic mother, chaste wife, and celibate warrior”.[5] She further argues that even if this ideal is not attained, it is “worthy of emulation”.[6] Thus, even if one falls short of becoming the ideal Hindu woman, one is still subject to emulating this Hindu nationalist vision and essence. “Failed” Hindu women are still brought into the fold of scrutiny in order “to differentiate, accommodate, and supervise” these bodies and to understand what the idealized, unified, and masculine Hindu nation should look like.[7] In line with similar logic of the success of the ‘failing’ carceral system as outlined by Foucault, regulation of the abject Hindu woman is a success of Hindu Right ideology. The abject Hindu woman is not a failure: every Hindu female body has now become a subject to be known and scrutinized.[8] Thus, Hindutva ideology essentializes the Hindu woman to be chaste and pure in order to uphold the Hindu nation.
Additionally, Hindu women who are part of the Hindu Right claim that “Love Jihad” –Muslim sexual seduction– is one of the paramount concerns of the Hindu Right.[9] Love Jihad refers to a set of discourses utilized by the Hindu Right, specifically female nationalist leaders, that instills “a moral panic against the alleged seduction, marriage, forced conversion and trafficking of young Hindu girls by Muslim men”.[10] Public spaces are seen by nationalist women as unsafe and, therefore, it is the duty of the Hindu woman to prevent herself from falling prey to these schemes by rendering herself invisible in public.[11] Tyagi and Sen argue, however, that these groups of female Hindu Right nationalists educating young Hindu girls are primarily concerned with proving Hindu masculinity and dissuading “masculine anxieties”.[12] Through creating standards of proper Hindu female conduct, self-regulating mechanisms materialize the idealized Hindu nation devoid of morally unworthy Hindu women.
The women who do fail to adhere to these values are not failures of these disciplinary structures – instead, they serve as a necessary component of the reiterative process of reinforcing the idealized pure Hindu woman. As Butler argues, the abject subject creates “the possibility to put the consolidation of the norms of ‘sex’ into a potentially productive crisis”.[13] This idealized essence then serves as an embodied form for the masculine Hindu man to protect, especially in place of rhetoric that decidedly imposes the Muslim man as violating and threatening the chastity of the Hindu woman. Rumors of Muslim men raping Hindu women served as moral justifications for Hindu militant organizations to unleash violence in the city of Ahmedabad in 2002.[14] This appeared in defenders of Love Jihad as well, who argued that Muslim men were attempting to procreate with Hindu girls to change their minority demographic status. Nationalist leaders of Love Jihad even spread rumors of young, suave Muslim men ensnaring Hindu girls to sell them to older Muslim men for procreation.[15] Women were thus essentialized to the role of Hindu child-bearers, a way of bringing forth and sustaining the nation to maintain hegemonic Hindu masculinity.[16]
On the other hand, Hindu men raping Muslim women during the Gujarat riots was seen as a way of emasculating ‘weak’ Muslim men and hyper-masculinizing themselves as the dominant and superior men. Rape was inextricably linked to “Hindu communal discourse, which sees Muslims as an inimical collective body and views individual Muslims as legitimate targets” – rape was thus seen as a way to “other” Muslim communities through physical violations of communal honour.[17] These violent acts became a way to support the ‘Self’ versus ‘Other’ dichotomy. The Hindu woman thus became the symbol of a pure and unsullied nation, a symbol worth protecting from “the treacherous Other” –the Muslim male– “who not only fractured the physical boundaries of the Indian subcontinent to create…Pakistan” but also continues to undermine Hindu nationalism in the eyes of the Hindu Right.[18] First, the Hindu woman becomes a mechanism by which to understand the threat of the Muslim male; second, violations of Muslim women become a way of emasculating the Muslim community, both with the goals of sustaining the Hindu nation through violent sexuality and its discourse.
How the Threat Is Internalized and Justified: Hyper-Masculinizing the Muslim Man
Part of establishing a discourse of superiority through sexuality is to frame the Muslim man as a genuine, hyper-masculine threat. In manufacturing the essence of Hindutva, Tyagi and Sen argue that the threatening image of the Muslim man allows for “a signifying practice within a particular discourse that constitutes ‘reality’” [emphasis added].[19] This connection links well to Butler’s understanding of the materialization of ‘sex’ – discourse matters because of the active and reiterative processes of citing the Muslim male body as one that is threatening to Hindu nationalist ideals. Discourses propagated by the Hindu Right detail the “irresponsible sexuality” of Muslim males that overpopulate the Hindu nation and threaten the fertility of the Hindu female.[20] Within this, fears of the lure of Muslim males for Hindu girls becomes a constant trepidation of “a kind of penis envy and anxiety about emasculation that can only be overcome by doing violent deeds”.[21] The concern about Muslims overpopulating, especially with Hindu women, is less about the realities of population demographics but more about uncovering ways in which the Hindu Right can know and justify violence towards the Muslim body, especially in relation to how it positions itself as a threat to Hindu nationalist masculinity. Among Hindu Right groups, including the RSS and VHP, alarm over Muslim male sexuality is so rampant that some argue only the intense education of Hindu girls can prevent them from falling victim to the ‘sexiness’ of the Muslim man. This is seen in the emotional lure of the Muslim male but also in physical appearance, including the anxiety over the attraction of Hindu girls to Muslim men, such as “hard foreskin due to circumcision”.[22] Conversations between young girls and female Hindu Right activists detail similar worries and utilize a politics of fear to steer young Hindu girls away from Muslim men – members even argue that young Hindu women run the risk of being trafficked in the wrong company.[23] In this way, the Hindu Right understands the Muslim ‘Other’ as a reasonable and justifiable threat that must be acted against with violence. Dibyesh Anand, an International Relations scholar, summarizes the ‘Othering’ of the Muslim male succinctly: “Fear, disgust, and desire work together in creating the image of ‘the Muslim,’ a stereotyped Muslim hypersexual masculine figure that performs the function of the constitutive Other against which the new Hindu (read Hindutva) Self is called for”.[24] Thus, the Muslim male body is framed as hyper-masculine, a seeming contradiction in the efforts of the Hindu Right to position themselves as the proper and true version of strong masculinity. However, the ‘Othering’ of the Muslim creates an opportunity for Hindu and Muslim masculinity to be framed against each other, and for Hindu masculinity to be understood in juxtaposition to the over-populating, hyper-masculine, and lustful Muslim male. This phenomenon has been referred to by Anand as a form of “porno-nationalism” in which Hindu male activists publicly assault the Muslim body in order to denigrate the ‘Other’ to a base form of “pornosexuality”.[25]
Translations to Anxious Hindu Male Sexuality
In dialogue with the framing of the hyper-masculine Muslim comes the need to recover the masculinity and sexuality of the Hindu male. Namely, how does anxious masculinity translate into physical and discursive violence; additionally, how does Hindu male sexuality translate into ‘Othering’ the Muslim body to reassert Hindu dominance? Riots in Gujarat took on forms of sexual violence – in rioting mobs, Hindu men, including the police, exposed their genitalia to demonstrate that they were “real men”.[26] Hindu women handed out bangles and saris, symbols of the feminine, to Hindu men that were not engaging in the rioting.[27] Interpellations towards the masculine and feminine become clear here: the Hindu woman shaming the Hindu man for failing to protect the feminine Hindu nation and Hindu men exhibiting their penises as a display of dominance over the Muslim male.[28] These articulated forms of Hindu masculinity interpellate the Hindu body to adhere to the unified, masculine Hindu nation, as expressed through materiality and fixity within the body.[29] Blom Hansen adds to Anand’s analysis by understanding Hindu male rioting and violence as a way of “shedding…perceived humiliation” in order to recover their masculinity.[30]
Additionally, discursive violence in anti-Muslim poetry is linked to physical violence during the Gujarat riots. From a collection of well-distributed hate speech from the Hindu Right in 2002, one brochure read:
The people of Baroda and Ahmedabad have gone berserk
Narendra Modi you have fucked the mother of miyas [Muslim men]
…
It has burnt the arse of miyas and made them dance nude
We have untied the penises which were tied till now
Without castor oil in the arse we have made them cry
…
Wake up Hindus there are still miyas left alive around you
…
With a Hindu government the Hindus have the power to annihilate miyas
Kick them in the arse to drive them out of not only villages and cities but also the country
Let the fuckers know that
The fucking of fuckers will not work.[31]
Discursive calls to subdue the Muslim body rely on establishing dominance through sexuality of the Hindu male to quite literally clarify who the “fuckers” are and who is getting “fucked”.[32] References to the Hindu government also link Hindu masculinity to the superiority of the Hindu Right inspired nation, one in which the Muslim body fades into the background and is no longer a threat to Hindu dominance. Further anxieties over Hindu masculinity are evidenced in the “homoerotic (anti-)desire” towards Muslim men.[33] This example demonstrates how historical narratives, poetry, and other propaganda fuel and materialize violence towards the Muslim population. In Gujarat, discourse became practice: Hindu male rioters wore saffron underwear –a colour that has traditionally been associated with religious abstinence and salvation but has been co-opted by the Hindu Right– to demonstrate that rape was religiously obligatory, materializing Hindu male genitalia into “instruments of torture”.[34] Emasculation of Muslim men through violations of Muslim women became embodied ways of reclaiming and reaffirming previously anxious Hindu male sexualities. Hindu men that did not adhere to such discursive or physically violent practices were labelled by the Hindu Right as eunuchs, literally lacking their embodied form of ‘manhood’.[35] In this, Hindu male genitalia become a way of materializing masculine dominance over the Muslim body. Upholding the essence of the ideal Hindu nation thus requires upholding Hindu masculinity to protect and prevent the rape of the Motherland as referenced in Blom Hansen.
Conclusion
This paper investigated ways in which the Hindu Right justifies their nationalist vision through anti-Islamic discourse and violence. Within this, the Hindu woman is crucial in Hindu Right activism as evidenced through Love Jihad – the chaste and pure Hindu woman at home and the invisible one in public become symbols to represent the ideal Hindu nation. The Motherland must therefore be protected by the hyper-masculine and dominant Hindu man. These images are inspired from historical narratives of the “always-already” Muslim, the one that seeks to ‘out-populate’ with their hyper-masculine tendencies and their “irresponsible sexuality”. In this, the Hindu Right justifies the notion that the Hindu nation has always been threatened by the Muslim body and must be regulated, known, and therefore, punished through discursive emasculation and physical violence. Divisive rhetoric between ‘correct’ and ‘incorrect’ sexuality; ‘real’ and ‘weak’ manhood; and ‘chaste’ and ‘flagrant’ women, is essential to craft this narrative. Physical violence, including exposing genitalia, indicates that there is a need to materialize and prove one’s masculinity. Applying Butler, Hindu masculinity is thus materialized through the domination and abuse of Muslims. Discursive forms of mobilization become essential to mobilize physical violence for the Hindu Right, demonstrating how rhetoric and practice are inextricably linked to the active materialization of anti-Muslim efforts within right-wing nation building.
Mariah Stewart is currently in her fourth and final year of studies at the University of Toronto, majoring in Political Science with a double minor in Contemporary Asian Studies and Mathematics. Mariah’s academic interests are heavily concentrated in Southeast Asian politics – she was recently involved in research on decentralization in Myanmar. After her fourth year, Mariah intends on conducting research in Southeast Asia before returning for her Master’s.
Bibliography
Anand, Dibyesh. “Anxious Sexualities: Masculinity, Nationalism and Violence.” The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 9, no. 2 (May 2007): 257–69. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-856x.2007.00282.x.
Anand, Dibyesh. Hindu Nationalism in India and the Politics of Fear. U.S.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. https://books-scholarsportal-info.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/en/read?id=/ebooks/ebooks3/springer/2016-09-19/1/9780230339545#page=56.
Anon. “Communalism Combat—Pamphlet Poison.” Sabrang Communications & Publishing Pvt. Ltd., 2002. https://www.sabrang.com/cc/archive/2002/marapril/pamphlet.htm.
Banerjee, Sikata. “Armed Masculinity, Hindu Nationalism and Female Political Participation in India.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 8, no. 1 (March 1, 2006): 62–83. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616740500415482.
Blom Hansen, Thomas. “Recuperating Masculinity: Hindu Nationalism, Violence and the Exorcism of the Muslim ‘Other.’” Critique of Anthropology 16, no. 2 (June 1, 1996): 137–72. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308275X9601600203.
Butler, Judith. “Introduction to Bodies That Matter.” In The Gender/Sexuality Reader: Culture, History, Political Economy, edited by Micaela di Leonardo and Roger Lancaster, 531–42. New York: Routledge, 1993.
Foucault, Michel. “Illegalities and Delinquency.” In The Foucault Reader, edited by Paul Rabinow, 226–32. New York: Pantheon, 1975.
Sarkar, Tanika. “Semiotics of Terror: Muslim Children and Women in Hindu Rashtra.” Economic and Political Weekly 37, no. 28 (2002): 2872–76.
Tyagi, Aastha, and Atreyee Sen. “Love-Jihad (Muslim Sexual Seduction) and Ched-Chad (Sexual Harassment): Hindu Nationalist Discourses and the Ideal/Deviant Urban Citizen in India.” Gender, Place, & Culture 27, no. 1 (May 11, 2019): 104–25.
[1] Thomas Blom Hansen, “Recuperating Masculinity: Hindu Nationalism, Violence and the Exorcism of the Muslim ‘Other,’” Critique of Anthropology 16, no. 2 (June 1, 1996): 154, https://doi.org/10.1177/0308275X9601600203.
[2] Ibid., 148.
[3] Judith Butler, “Introduction to Bodies That Matter,” in The Gender/Sexuality Reader: Culture, History, Political Economy, ed. Micaela di Leonardo and Roger Lancaster (New York: Routledge, 1993), 531.
[4] Ibid., 532.
[5] Sikata Banerjee, “Armed Masculinity, Hindu Nationalism and Female Political Participation in India,” International Feminist Journal of Politics 8, no. 1 (March 1, 2006): 76, https://doi.org/10.1080/14616740500415482.
[6] Ibid., 76.
[7] Michel Foucault, “Illegalities and Delinquency,” in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: Pantheon, 1975), 231.
[8] Ibid., 231.
[9] Aastha Tyagi and Atreyee Sen, “Love-Jihad (Muslim Sexual Seduction) and Ched-Chad (Sexual Harassment): Hindu Nationalist Discourses and the Ideal/Deviant Urban Citizen in India” Gender, Place, & Culture 27, no. 1 (May 11, 2019): 104.
[10] Ibid., 104.
[11] Ibid., 115.
[12] Ibid., 112.
[13] Butler, “Introduction to Bodies That Matter”, 536.
[14] Banerjee, “Armed Masculinity, Hindu Nationalism and Female Political Participation in India”, 76.
[15] Tyagi and Sen, “Love-Jihad (Muslim Sexual Seduction) and Ched-Chad (Sexual Harassment): Hindu Nationalist Discourses and the Ideal/Deviant Urban Citizen in India”, 108-109.
[16] Tyagi and Sen, 108-109.
[17] Dibyesh Anand, “Anxious Sexualities: Masculinity, Nationalism and Violence”. The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 9, no. 2 (May 2007): 264, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-856x.2007.00282.x.
[18] Tyagi and Sen, “Love-Jihad (Muslim Sexual Seduction) and Ched-Chad (Sexual Harassment): Hindu Nationalist Discourses and the Ideal/Deviant Urban Citizen in India,” 109.
[19] Ibid., 109.
[20] Anand, “Anxious Sexualities,” 260.
[21] Tanika Sarkar, “Semiotics of Terror: Muslim Children and Women in Hindu Rashtra,” Economic and Political Weekly 37, no. 28 (2002): 2875.
[22] Anand, “Anxious Sexualities”, 260.
[23] Tyagi and Sen, “Love-Jihad (Muslim Sexual Seduction) and Ched-Chad (Sexual Harassment): Hindu Nationalist Discourses and the Ideal/Deviant Urban Citizen in India,” 110.
[24] Dibyesh Anand, Hindu Nationalism in India and the Politics of Fear (U.S.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 50.
[25] Ibid., 50.
[26] Anand, “Anxious Sexualities,” 265.
[27] Ibid., 265.
[28] Ibid., 261.
[29] Butler, “Introduction to Bodies That Matter.”
[30] Blom Hansen, “Recuperating Masculinity,” 153.
[31] Anon, “Communalism Combat—Pamphlet Poison,” Sabrang Communications & Publishing Pvt. Ltd., 2002, https://www.sabrang.com/cc/archive/2002/marapril/pamphlet.htm.
[32] Anand, “Anxious Sexualities,” 265.
[33] Ibid., 265.
[34] Sarkar, “Semiotics of Terror,” 2875.
[35] Ibid., 2875.
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