Version imprimable[This paper was originally prepared in 1987 for CWDS (Centre for Women’s Development Studies). The first paragraph is a subsequent addition.]
Woman’s Question in Communal Ideologies in India: A Study into the Ideologies of RSS and Jamat-e-Islami
Attack on women’s fundamental right to equality has been the common, continuing feature of the communal forces in India, of all hues irrespective of the religion from the particularly motivated interpretation of which they derive their ideological base and political support. Rape and gang rape have historically been an integral part of communal pogroms, with certain exceptions. Just like race and gender, communalism is not an attribute of biology or any eternal idea like the value of pi that has traveled to us through generations. Communalism is not an idea but an ideology like Race in the USA that is constructed, consolidated and expanded by our everyday social and political practices and discourses. It has nothing to do with the antiquity, but is the modern ideology. In fact, in India, as shall be substantiated in the proposed paper, communalism is colonial construct. In India, there are
