By Manjula Lal The recent 244-page report, 'Threatened Existence: A Feminist Analysis of the Genocide in Gujarat', brought out by the International Initiative for Justice (IIJ) - a network of national/international feminists, jurists, writers and activists - is the first document trying to look at the 2002 Gujarat violence through a feminist prism.
In the sea of post-pogrom studies and reports, this report stands out for its feminist concerns about the centrality of sexual violence as "an inherent part of the Hindutva project".
In its prologue, the report states: "...Women's bodies are being used as battlegrounds in the struggle over defining India as a Hindu state.
However, there has been a lack of a coherent, national, feminist response to the violence in Gujarat grounded in a `primarily' feminist understanding of the nature of power and sexual violence as a tool in conflict situations." The report is a result of meetings with 181 women and 136 men who spoke of violence that occurred in more than 84 urban and 66 rural areas.
It says that when the state machinery colludes with the violators, with the rapists, the problems faced by women are exacerbated.
It specially mentions police excesses on women.
Zeba, from Ahmedabad narrates in one chapter: "The police declared,`We will insert this stick up your vagina'...
This happened for the first time ever (in a riot)...
All the men would strip - even policemen stripped - fondled their genitals and called us over." Inadequate rehabilitation measures, discrimination in compensation and lack of proper prosecutions further marginalised women in Gujarat, the report says.
Part of the report deals with the social and political scenario of the pogrom and exposes the politics and violence of the Sangh Parivar (group of organisations, including the country's ruling party, under the umbrella of the right-wing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh), especially against women.
The report claims that the violence and targeting did not end in February-March 2002, but continues till today.
The women still suffer from the fear of physical attack, sexual violence and displacement.
Survivors of sexual violence, even after two years, have little access to counselling, reproductive health and rights.
In the concluding chapter, the IIJ members say their initiative can operate as a "reflection on the inadequacy of existing processes - both legal and otherwise - to provide justice and redress to victims, and as an allusion to new forms of activism around Gujarat that are relevant to broader struggles for democracy and equality".
The report further states that "we need to understand the genocidal nature of the Hindutva project so as to emphasise the critical responsibility of intervention that lies with both the civil society and the State".
Claiming that its research is an attempt to redefine the community in a non-patriarchal way, the report writers say: "In the dominant perception of the violence in Gujarat, not only were Muslim men and Muslim community 'sullied' by the rape of their women, the rapes were also an assertion of Hindu manliness, and Hinduism's cultural and religious superiority." The IIJ members, which include Farah Naqvi, Uma Chakravarti (both from India), Nira Yuval-Davis from Britain and Sunila Abeysekara from Sri Lanka, have made several recommendations in the report.
They say that the use of sexual violence as a strategy needs to be specially addressed by the international community, which needs to build a platform and solidarity networks to help struggles of such communities.
The members have also asked the Indian government to implement the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, (already ratified by India) whereby government officials (including ministers) can be prosecuted for the genocide in Gujarat.
Despite its strengths, the report in some ways fails to deepen the feminist perspective it claims it has attempted to share.
One cannot expect a report on Gujarat not to condemn the complicity of the state.
The government must be held accountable, as it was for Delhi 1984 and Ayodhya 1992.
But a feminist analysis is supposed to tread where no man has tread before, and the report just doesn't do that, or does so very gingerly.
Like, while referring to instances of sexual violence, the researchers do not offer any major insights into the links between the steady rise in violence against women in the country and the reactionary 'moral policing' of the rightwingers.
More waste of a feminist opportunity is evident in the glossing over of what the terror and insecurity wrought in the last year.
The report calls hasty marriages of girls, pulling out of minor girls from school and/or limitations on their mobility "an inevitable reaction to a very real lack of safety for women".
Why should this feminist report offer a patriarchal argument as inevitable? The researchers could perhaps have asked the Hindu women, who were openly providing food to marauding mobs, what they felt about the rape of their Muslim sisters.
Not in a confrontational spirit, but in the spirit of the kind of female bonding that is not too difficult to establish.
The researchers have pointed to the sense of complicity between the men of the two communities, a patriarchal understanding that the rape of innocent women, even minors, was an act of vengeance on a community.
How did these Hindu women feel about it, really, deep down? How did a Hindu wife feel knowing that her husband had indulged in this act? The inclusion of women in Hindutva projects is seen through the 'secular' prism.
"While this gives some recognition to women as members of the community, it also means strict norms of prescribed behaviour for women, as in any other right wing religious ideology.
Those who are regarded as 'deviant' or independent are policed and sometimes terrorised by stormtroopers of the Sangh".
Civil society activists do not want to recognise that all fundamentalists tend to oppress and marginalise their women.
Again, it only touches on the plight of the Muslim girl (mentioned in one of the chapters) whose father asked her, "Why was your sister not raped?" While expressing sympathy for a victimised community, its shortcomings need not be highlighted.
But a feminist analysis must highlight the brutal results of making women repositories of 'honour'.[WFS] About us | Advertise | Other Publications | Subscriptions | Weather | Letters | Send Mail Disclaimer: Information is being made available at this site purely as a measure of public facilitation.
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