Notes on the Patriarchal Moral-political Economy: Hindutva, Fascism & the masculine politics of domination

“Politics is the continuation of war by other means.”

Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended

In my previous post, my central argument was to explore how the patriarchal moral-political economy is Janus-faced; that is, how, through “collective conscience”…the moral-political economy “legitimates violence against the bodies of criminals, not because of the crime they commit, but because who they commit it against; and…in doing so, through its various institutions, it creates and reinforces network of hegemony, that defines criminality…and its (selective, and often brutal) punishment.” In this post, I attempt to offer further explanation on what I call the “masculine politics of domination”, in the context of the political Right-wing Hindutva in contemporary India.

Thus, to reiterate my other two conditions of moral-political economies: there is no one model of a moral-political economy; there are moral-political economies. That is, networks of hegemony, patronage and violence; networks that fall outside the ambit of government, but are insidious components of governance. And one way these networks of violence are operationalized (and legitimated) is through what I call the masculine politics of domination. This ‘politics’ invests its power in the category of the masculine as the dominant trope of organising power relations. However, this does not work in, or limited to, the rigid binaries of gender, or even sexualities. It is located at the intersection of political ideologies, spaces, economics, and, more importantly, in engendering violence, and manufacturing the legitimacy for the same.

Therefore, our discussion on moral-political economies also has a lot to do with the events that unfolded on our television screens the same day that the Saket Sessions court awarded the death sentence to the Delhi gang rape-murder perpetrators: Narendra Modi’s anointment as the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate.

Masculine Politics of Domination: More forms of legitimating violence

That there’s a lot being said about Modi is an understatement. And it is indeed quite a task to sift out contradictory and divergent strands of thought, or ideas that can elucidate what the deal with him is: Is it purely economics? Based on the merits of his so-called Gujarat Model of development? The belief that he can deliver “maximum governance, with minimum government”, where the corrupt UPA has failed?

Or, is it about his complicity (if not direct involvement) in the genocidal riots that rocked Gujarat in 2002? – That are, by any account, one of the worst instances of communal conflicts in India. Clearly, his refusal to talk about 2002, and his usage of metaphors (for when he does) – that the riots were like a “puppy coming under the wheels of a car” and that, naturally, he is sad – is, to say the very least, problematic But, what then? And let us not forget the spate of fake encounter killings between 2004 and 2007, that were, undoubtedly, a quasi-policy of the state in dealing with the sublime threat of Islamic terrorism.

Personally, I do not think that dwelling on 2002 purely on the basis of rhetoric gets us anywhere (which degenerate into petty exchanges). The proof against Shiv Sena leader, Balasaheb Thackeray, in the 1992 Bombay riots was as damning, if not more. And that man, on whose watch one of India’s greatest cities burned, got a state funeral. Will Modi ever be held accountable for 2002? I am not sure. In fact, if anything, the question of the 2002 riots vis-à-vis the patriarchal moral-political economy begs a pertinent intervention in discussing what Ward Berenschot calls “riot politics” in his book Riot Politics: Hindu-Muslim Violence and the Indian State.

For Berenschot, the violence in Gujarat was possible not because it was an explicit government pogrom, or because the riots were uncontrollable; they were possible because of several factors, like the decline of traditional mediation networks in the communities, decline of trade unions, and the rise of virulent Hindutva politics. Older structures, like Pol Panchayats had but lost their influence in the communities of Ahmedabad; in lieu of them, politicians, goondas, and chamchas were now extended patronage networks, to which people (the Gujarati middle class) turned to. And it is these social actors that served as “riot networks”, and the riot, ultimately, was a way of “maintaining power relations” (read his paper here). A feminist reading of Berenschot’s arguments thus renders a conception of a “working” moral-political economy: the question of macro- and micro-spaces, making Berenschot’s work indispensable in our understanding of masculine politics of domination.

Following Judith Butler’s idea of performativity and violence, politics of domination would refer to not only the legitimation of violence – “rape-as-punishment” & “rape-being-punished-by-death” – but also the very nature of the violence perpetrated (the appalling description of violence and rape chronicled by Human Rights Watch’s report on Gujarat). Moreover, this form of violence is a perverse process of creating the bodies of the “other” – women, Muslims, Dalits – as a site which engenders a fundamentally Right-wing politics of violence. Thus, the violence enacted on Muslim bodies during the riots, of allowing Hindus to express their anger”, of “putting the Muslims in place”; as well as the violence perpetrated on Dalits, and women, engenders the legitimacy of violence, and more so, the necessity of it, in the creation of moral-political economies.

In this essay, however, I also explore another fundamental idea: the intersection of fascism with the Right’s moral-political economy. It is my argument that, by representing Modi as the dominant trope of masculinity, and, through his own attempts to forge more secular or tolerant credentials for himself, Modi’s image as “the governator” is essential for the creation of the Sangh’s moral-political economy. Secondly, I also extrapolate how the Sangh itself embodies or represents what Italian philosopher Umberto Eco calls “Ur-Fascism”. [Note: the term ‘Sangh’ is shorthand for mainly the RSS, and its associated organisations: the BJP, VHP, Bajrang Dal & Durga Vahini].

Modi, Hindutva and image of the “governator”

It is no secret or great big revelation, that the RSS, the VHP and other right-wing outfits associated with the BJP are regressively patriarchal. They, and their assorted misogynistic codswallop, represent what I have earlier described as a culture of violence. Misogyny, policing of sexualities, a pervasive rape culture, are actually normalized fields of violence for them. In Masculinities, R.W. Connell differentiates between different masculinities, and the relationship between them – these being, hegemony, subordination, complicity, and marginalisation (see the previous post for a discussion of Connell’s work on hegemonic masculinity).

The masculine that Modi comes to define and inhabit is, to refer the arguments above, a penultimate form of hegemonic masculinity. The resurgence of the right can also be seen, in part, as a re-masculinization in reaction the emasculating politics of the soft, corrupt UPA regime. It also functions to emasculate and marginalise the masculinity of the Muslim “other” – which has always been the Sangh’s object of attack (more on that later).

That might offer some preliminary explanation on why Hindutva figures so virulently in the political agenda of the BJP specifically. I mean, on the one hand, they are desperate to show that they are not entirely dominated by the regressive patriarchy of the VHP, and much less, the RSS. And on the other, they are equally desperate to reverse the emasculating policies of the UPA, to reassert, and reinstate, what Michael Messner has called the “masculinity of the governator”.

Messner argues that the rise of Arnold Schwarzenegger in American politics was done so by him forging a credible, hybrid masculine imagery as a “kindergarten commando”. This, he says, “represents an ascendant hegemonic masculinity…foregrounding toughness, and the threat of violence and following the situationally appropriate symbolic displays of compassions”. This utilisation masculine imagery, for the Republicans, was necessary in national politics to gain voters’ trust in times of fear and insecurity. What the BJP and Modi are trying to achieve, is a similar process. Both, the so-called Gujarat Model and Modi’s masculine imagery, his “56-inch chest” included (he was dubbed “Rambo Modi” with news of his rescue of 15,000 stranded Gujaratis in Uttarakhand after the floods) represents both, a kind of Janus-faced politics, and the constitution of a hegemonic category of masculinity. The shrill cry of Hindutva – his claims of being a “Hindu nationalist” – contrary to being (just) a communal assertion, is actually a masculine assertion. It is, among many other things, an attempt for the BJP to forge the Hindutva patriarchal moral-political economy with the image of Modi as governator at its helm (if the claim of “Ram-rajya”  is not a plea for more patriarchal control, then I don’t know what is). 

Many of these arguments on Hindutva politics, masculinity and male embodiment are explained in Joseph Alter’s Moral Materialism: Sex and Celibacy in Modern India. Alter locates the discussion on celibacy in the milieu of nationalist discourse of post-Independent India, where to contrast the hegemonic, western masculinity of the colonisers, there was a revival in the Indian (more so, the Hindu) conception of celibacy and sexuality.  Incidentally, however, the RSS' recent claim that Hindus should scrap the one-child norm and have more children to “balance” the demographic imbalance (i.e., to counter “rising” Muslim population) represents yet another patriarchal attempt at biopolitics—the most notorious being the mass-sterilizations and family planning under the aegis of Indira Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi.

Thus, apart from being Messner’s “governator”, Modi also serves as the epitaph of popular Hindutva for a vast majority of Hindus (predominantly, male youth) in the country. His stance on the economy (especially, the Food Security Bill), the armed forces, the border, and India’s (emasculated) relationship with China and Pakistan, are fantastic ideological tools that have, and pardon my use of floral language, captured the hearts and minds of the masses. For, as sociologist Shiv Visvanathan rightly points out in his essay, ‘The Remaking of Narendra Modi’: “He [Modi] is a cultural dream for Hindus tired of softness and gentleness who welcome his technocratic machismo.”

Modi, Hindutva & Ur-Fascism

Modi’s hard, masculine stance is, for obvious reasons, highly problematic. Further to Connell’s understanding of the “relation between and within genders”, a closer and more nuanced examination of Modi also begs extremely pertinent questions on fascism, and its relation of the patriarchal moral-political economy. In an interview with Modi when he was an RSS prachalak in the 1980s, social scientist Ashis Nandy described him as “a classic, clinical case of a fascist” and that for the first time in his life he had “met a textbook case of a fascist and a prospective killer, and perhaps even a future mass murderer”. [Note: it should be clarified that I do not have access to Nandy's original statement]. 

Now, I am wary of throwing around a term like ‘fascist’ – partly because Digvijay Singh’s (or, more recently, Nithish Kumar’s) more-than-judicious use of the same bothers me; and also because I do not possess Nandy’s qualifications. However, situating the discourse of Modi in the larger scheme of the Sangh, some of the fascist iterations become evident. Also, Nandy’s later writings on Modi – for instance, in which he claims that politics has “blunted him and made him less dangerous” – are interesting. He writes: “Modi's earnestness has declined...he has become more instrumental [and] is at once less threatening and more dangerous”. Modi, now, can balance his power ambitions, and project the RSS’ (and the Sangh's) patriarchal ideologies in a manner that hides their regressive patriarchy in the patina of “development” and “governance” (Janus-faced). And, while Nandy may seem reluctant to revisit his diagnosis of fascism, I would agree with Shiv Visvanathan, when he writes that we must understand “the remaking of Modi, the modernist as fascist…if we wish to unmake it”.

Umberto Eco’s essay, Ur-Fascism, is extremely pertinent in this regard. Eco, who as a boy survived the Fascism of Mussolini in Italy in the 1940s, has offered the most compelling, exhaustive and chilling explanation of what he calls “Ur-Fascism”, or “Eternal Fascism”. He writes:

“…fascism [did not] contained in itself…all the elements of any later form of totalitarianism. On the contrary, fascism had no quintessence. Fascism was a fuzzy totalitarianism, a collage of different philosophical and political ideas, a beehive of contradictions.” 

But despite of this “fuzziness”, Eco outlines a list of 14 features that are typical to “Ur-Fascism”. A more contextual reading of Eco would thus render a lot of sense to the insidious politics of the BJP and, more importantly, of its allied bodies in the Sangh Parivar (more so when we put Modi in the picture). However, due to constraints of space it is difficult for me to explain and extrapolate entirely Eco’s points on Ur-Fascism to the discourse of the BJP & RSS’ Hindutva politics. However, I shall retain some of the points that I think are extremely relevant in my analysis. 
[Note: I would urge the reader to read Eco’s essay more closely to understand the points he raises about fascism; see also, Sumit Sarkar's essay on The Fascism of the Sangh Parivar, which he wrote after the 1992 Babri masjid demolition, and the subsequent riots that followed].

Thus, with regard to the BJP-RSS in general, and to Modi in particular, my understanding of fascism, and its intersection with the patriarchal moral-political economy, is based on seven fundamental points that are raised by Eco in Ur-Fascism. The first is the “cult of syncretistic traditionalism” which “rejects modernism”. Although Modi’s Gujarat model is, supposedly, pro-development, the Ram janmabhoomi debate features vociferously the BJP’s election agenda. An argument can also be made about the Janus-faced nature of the BJP’s political agenda here: their claims on development, and a regression to their idea of Hindu Rashtra. In fact, it would seem that only in the discourse of patriarchy and fascism can such glaring contradictions coexist.

Second, is the fear of difference, and the obsession with a plot (which is an appeal to xenophobia); this grows with an appeal “against intruders”, which is why Eco terms Ur-Fascism as racist. Third, in relation to the second point, is pacifism is trafficking with the enemy…because life is permanent warfare—be it against the threat of our neighbours, or ISI-sponsored terrorists within the country – who, then, are killed in fake encounters, for display to the world. Tehelka journalist, Rana Ayyub’s exhaustive coverage of the fake encounters in Gujarat is exemplary in this regard.

Fourth, is will to power to sexual matters…this is the “origin of machismo”, and perhaps, the most important point insofar as we are looking at the relationship between patriarchy and fascism. As a woman, a friend of mine once commented, she is uncomfortable with what sees about the BJP’s rise to power; and as a feminist, I share her concern: I find it disconcerting too, that Modi, being a part of a supra-patriarchal institution like the RSS—whose chief, Mohan Bhagwat, claimed that “rapes don’t happen in Bharat; they happen in India”—can appropriate the voice of protests that were witnessed post-December 2012 gang-rape murder (the supreme irony of Modi being anointed the same day as the accused were given a death penalty).

If you require any more evidence, there is none more clear, or shocking, than this clip from Nisha Pahuja’s documentary, The World Before Her. The clip examines two contrasting scapes: first, the camp of the RSS’ women’s wing, Durga Vahini, and the assaults on women and couples in public places, and pubs (the latter by the notorious Shri Ram Sene); and second, the selection round of the Miss India pageant. The instructor at the Durga Vahini (women's wing of the RSS) camp goes on record to say that women are “biologically weaker than men”, and must, therefore, shun any hopes for gender equality. The more shocking aspect about this brainwashing at the camp, according to Pahuja, is what Prachi, a trainee at the camp, has to say about her father, (and, thus, the moral-political economy he and the RSS represent):

 “In a traditional family they don’t let girl child live. They kill the child. So this is the thing. I get angry; I have quarrels with my dad. But this thing, when it comes in my mind, I feel like crying… he let me live. That is the best part.” 

 Modi, for all his claims on development, for all his talks on the “Gujarat model”, ultimately, represents (and, comes from) the same oeuvre and ideology that is espoused by the Durga Vahini camp instructors when they claim “women are weaker than men”; by the Shri Ram Sene when they attack women in pubs; by the Ranveer Sena when they attack Dalits trying to reassert their rights; and, ultimately, by misogynists like Prachi’s father, who claim to mould her as “their product”. My stance as a Leftist often unsettles many of my critics (who happen to be supporters of Modi), inviting jibes of “Stalinism/Maoism”; but, as a feminist, I have more than enough reason, and am more than justified, to be critical of him, and the Right. And I’d dare any apologist to prove so otherwise.

The fifth condition of Ur-Fascism is an appeal to the frustrated middle class – who are (rightly) tired with ten years of the UPA’s corrupt regime and soft policies on terror, the economy, and so on. In continuation, the sixth is selective populism, where the people (in this case, the Hindus they represent) are only a theatrical fiction. Eco says, “…there is, in our future, a TV or an internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.”

Ramachandra Guha’s experience with such “Hindutva Hate Mail” – what journalist Sagarika Ghose has termed “Internet Hindu” – perfectly illustrates this facet. Terms like “Sickular”, “paid-media”, and, my personal favourite, “anti-national”, are in fast currency amongst these anonymous handles on Twitter. Nowhere, however, have these anonymous Twitter handles provided enough proof to counter any arguments, or to back up the accusations they hurl. And this brings us to the seventh and final condition of my interpretation of Ur-Fascism: it [a syncretistic faith] “cannot withstand criticism”. Eco sums up my thoughts, when he says that the modern community “praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge. For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason.”

“Development” and the “Gujarat model” are, for apologists and supporters of Modi alike, sanctimonious; any criticism of the same is tantamount to treason. And, they very conveniently forget the fact that any true development must happen through an informed process, through scientific argument, and critical reasoning. These are qualities whose glaring absence is not only conspicuous, but also (I suspect) deleted in the discourse on Modi: because, unlike capitalism for Marx, the masculine politics of domination cannot afford to sow in the seeds of its own destruction. It needs to be fought, and resisted, unceasingly, and without respite. More than anything, a deeper understanding of patriarchal moral-political economies is required to reassert, and refashion feminist politics.

Understandably, my argument is too little, and perhaps, too late, to convince anyone (his supporters, most of all) that it is a very dangerous place for country to resort to desperation to want an authoritarian persona as Modi. His persona – for the lack of a better term – is situated at the intersection of so many discourses of violence and exclusion: and his elevation as a potential prime minister only escalates some of these concerns. However, this discourse is not about Modi: he just happens to be the dominant form of hegemonic masculine in the patriarchal moral-political economy that the Sangh is projecting.

We must remember that the patriarchal moral-political economy is more than just one person; it is an ideology, and an insidious, brutal network of hegemony, dominance, violence and exclusion. It is a system which valorises a persona like Modi, because for the BJP’s (and the Sangh Parivar’s) moral-political economy to come to force, it needs a Modi. An older figure, like Manmohan Singh – or even Advani, for instance – is spent, exhausted, if not entirely emasculated. Moreover, Modi’s image gives legitimacy to the underlying fascist tendencies of the political right, reasserts its core (fascist & patriarchal) values, and constructs what is perhaps the most powerful, and ideologically virulent, form of the patriarchal moral-political economy.

And that is precisely why we will need feminist politics. Always.

Afterthoughts

My criticisms of Modi, and the 2002 riots, are in relation to a particular and specific argument I am making on the nature of patriarchal moral-political economies. And it stands to reason that any kind of genocide or mass violence engenders a masculine politics of domination. Of course, on the other hand, the Congress would represent a different, “softer” kind of hegemonic system altogether—a more Janus-faced one, as my previous post argued; one that cannot tolerate dissent, or criticism. This is reflective of a larger problem of intolerance in the political space—a governance of paranoia. However, an objective measure cannot be adopted for the two forms; and a discursive criticism becomes necessary.

Any counter-argument, stating that Modi and the BJP represent the lesser evil, and therefore, are the necessary evil, is reflective of intellectual laziness; and so is defending the UPA’s Janus-faced policies. Both forms require incessant criticisms. And I believe I have provided enough critiques on both, in previous posts and on social media platforms. Understandably, this presents a dilemma for less nuanced minds who tend to see and organise realties in binaries.

In this post, I have, to the best of my abilities, tried to infuse a degree of analytical rigour, and provided references to back my arguments. At the end of the day, however, this is a blog post, and lacks the expansive research required for a more academic work; any suggestions regarding the arguments are more than welcome. Conversely, I do not make any claims to being an intellectual; I write. But writing, while not entirely cathartic, is a political act. And, with that, I stand by the by-line of this blog, and the feminist adage that has inspired it: the personal is indeed political.  

  This post is a dedication to the brilliant women, and men. I admire, and follow on social media; many of them feminists, activists & enthusiasts, but more importantly, people who value reason & argument. I am thankful to their engaging debates, exchanges & criticisms. 

I am especially thankful to Shubhra Rishi, Ketaki Haté, Vaishali J, Malathi Jogi, Arundhati Bhattacharya, and Vivien D'costa, for their comments, feedback & criticisms on the earlier drafts of this essay; and to Nolina, for her constant encouragement, support and love. 

  

A Culture of Violence

Let's face it: are we really that surprised with the shameless levels of misogyny on display on our TV screens, and on our Twitter and Facebook feeds? I mean, we know it's that bad, and probably, this just scratches the surface (a very large surface, as this post by CNN-IBN illustrates). Of course, what's happening is that the polemic against politicians and the political class in general is strengthening, and so is the sense of repugnance against the same – which has already quite mature in India in the course of the last few years.

After Abhijit Mukherjee's statement on “dented-painted women”, it was the RSS Chief, Mohan Bhagwat's turn, whose statement – that “rapes don’t occur in Bharat, they happen in India” – is at the focus of outrage by the liberal media (A claim which, not very surprisingly, has merit  according to sociologist Ashish Nandy, who sees a connection between modernisation, globalisation and violence against women). Now, I’m not comfortable arguing in the realm of mythology; I've argued elsewhere that doing so deflects, and obfuscates the question and the nature of real violence faced by women. Not only is the recourse to mythology pointless, arguing on the same place with idiots like Bhagwat, or Asaram Bapu (who claimed that the girl “was at fault” as she“did not plead sufficiently” to the rapists or call them “brothers”, for them to stop), or Ramdev (um, do I need to cite anything?), is ultimately futile because a reasoned argument cannot displace their obscurantist logic. I would recommend that you read Sagarika Ghosh's column on the struggle between modernity and such obscurantism in today's edition of Hindustan Times; it articulates this argument far better than the scope of this post.

In my opinion, the RSS (and its lackeys, like the VHP) are among the most regressive, violent, and at the same time, robustly organised ideological instruments in the country today. And so are institutions like Jamaat-e Islami Hind, or Asaram Bapu’s spiritual-commercial enterprise. While, on the one hand, religion per se really has nothing to do with things, insofar as we look at it in the realm of the secular, democratic nation-state; on the other, it is difficult to overlook the fact that religion is among the several governance mechanisms that form the ideological basis of the patriarchal nation-state and moral-economy (I’ve briefly elaborated what I mean by governance in an earlier post).

Women in such conditions are organised in a descending order, based on their supposed “virtues”. At one point, it seems inevitable that these patriarchal ideologues would make such absurd, but politically virulent statements; because such institutionalised and ideological misogyny are required to establish the domain of control in the patriarchal moral-economy. This is not to suggest that men and masculinities are not policed; of course they are. But the paradox is: the misogynist then becomes the embodiment of the hegemon; the basis of defining masculinities (or a masculinity, in particular) is hinged on, and operationalized in, the acts of violence against women. 

While this polemic against the political class is a step in the right direction, and is entirely justified, what it does, I believe, is limits our interrogation of misogyny, patriarchy, sexism and violence – forms of oppression which happen to be far more pervasive, virulent and often, invisible to the public discourse(s) or anti-political polemics. This is the misogyny of the everyday life; a culture of violence, real, symbolic and otherwise, which women from across classes, castes, and spaces face. A kind of violence practically everyone engages in, including, I suspect, some of the polemicists. Now, as tempting as it is, I wouldn’t go as far as calling this hypocrisy. ‘Hypocrisy’ would mean double standards, and at least an element of volition.  Sure, a lot of politicians are hypocrites (a professional requirement these days, in my opinion), but the kind of double-sidedness I’m talking about is incredibly nuanced, invisible and pathological (and, most importantly, not seen in dichotomies); it is embedded in our language, it informs our responses, colours our perspectives. Political misogyny is, to use a cliché, only the tip of the iceberg.

Snehalata Gupta, writing for Kafila, puts forth a pertinent and critical perspective in her discussion on patriarchy in the classroom. Gupta, who is a teacher at a co-ed in Delhi, recounts an incident when one of her 'difficult' male students, all of 16 or 17 years, suggested that she wear a dupatta in class. Her not doing so, explained the boy, “embarrassed” him and his male classmates – something she termed a "blatant show of patriarchal arrogance". The incident, in my opinion, is ubiquitous and far more common than just this one post. There are certain elements that I'd like to borrow from Gupta's reflexive post in an attempt to understand what I mean by the pervasiveness of patriarchy: namely, the male gaze, peer group socialisation and the operationalization of patriarchy. 

The ‘male gaze’ is an overused term in sociological lexicon, but in popular discourse, it is very rarely understood. Not only does the gaze have a policing or a predatory function (the Foucauldian surveillance), it is also an articulation of the misogyny I was harping on about. The term ‘objectifying women’, as overused as it is in our references to Bollywood and “item numbers”, is more than just reducing them to objects of sexualised desires (there is a variety of literature, for instance, that argues for an agentic function in such objectification; most of the discussions on The Dirty Picture, for instance, encapsulate this). The gaze then is, as I mentioned before, an operationalization of misogyny; a brutal way of policing: (a) sexualities, especially of women (and men) exercising sexual freedom; (b) the process of socialization, which essentially indoctrinates children into patriarchy, as Snehalata Gupta’s post so clearly illustrates; and finally, (c) of ensuring that the patriarchal moral-economy functions through such surveillance mechanisms: the gaze itself being one, and the more well-known examples are what Shuddhabrata Sengupta has called “eminent Bharatiya moustachioed misogynists”.

I've seen such misogyny being operational in the last few years of my schooling. There wasn't, to the best of my knowledge, any serious or untoward incident; but what many of us consider trivial, are actually very strong symptoms of the kind of pervasiveness of misogyny that I am trying to explicate in this essay. For instance, I recall vividly how the consumption of porn, and what kind of porn, defined the sort of male you were; girls were encoded on the basis on their bodies; the classes were segregated almost with religious zeal (I was in a Catholic school, yes); any casual interaction with the opposite sex, if not an opportunity to ‘score’ (I use the term despite its value-laden nature) was, well, looked at as a wasted opportunity. Sure, a lot of this can be called a part of growing up, or adolescent fantasies – something many have indulged in, as well. But there is a problem in trivialising misogyny or rape, especially under the adage of “boys will be boys” or such codswallop. Michele Weldon's article on al-Jazeera, for instance, discusses the way in which community efforts, the family and cultural shifts can prevent sexual violence, in the aftermath of the rape of a sixteen year-old girl in Ohio by two local football stars. What was staggering, she writes, was the way the perpetrators bragged on about them violently subjugating the girl. In her analysis, Weldon writes that “no mother wants her son to grow up to be a rapist, just as no mother wants her daughter to be raped”. However, she concedes that her naive notion of the family being able to prevent sexual violence is flawed; a scepticism I share as well, after having met many amiable parents whose kids were, to put it politely, “difficult”. The production of misogyny and violence, therefore, is not localized to one site; peer groups, class stratification, the media, etc. form a network of the patriarchal moral-economy. Any alternatives focusing on rectifying faults in family and/or education are problematic because it assumes that there could be alternative; an alternative that requires the destabilization of the patriarchal moral-economy, of which socialization and education is but a microcosm.

That said, I also have a problem with our excessive emphasis on misogyny, which by definition is a strong dislike for women. The female object, therefore, is the central focus of misogynistic discourses, and of those trying to interrogate it. However, the fact that many, including myself to an extent, have taken for granted is the gender dichotomy implicit our critiques. Many have argued that there is a continuum of gendered violence of which gays, lesbians, transgender people are as much victims as are women (again, a fissured category). This is something the polemicists have ignored completely; except perhaps, the token Gay Pride marches. ‘Misogyny’, then, is a limiting term insofar as we assume there is a stable category of a biological female. Violence against women is very, very real; but so is the violence against people labelled as ‘sexual minorities’. Following Judith Butler’s highly influential idea of gender performativity, it is possible to argue that violence is indeed located in a gendered continuum; a network of power relations among social groups, relations of dominance and subversion. But this happens to be a domain that is entirely absent in our public discourses and polemics; sure, there has been a lot of discussion on homosexuality after the decriminalization of Section 377 in 2009, or in the collective efforts of many civil society organisations fighting for equal rights of gays, lesbians and transgender people. But these discussions are seldom articulated in the space marked off as ‘violence against women’, or ‘justice for rape victims’.

Women aren't the only victims of patriarchal violence; the culture of violence is virulent, and operates on many different terrains; victimizes many different people; and thus, as a public, already galvanised, I feel it is imperative that we adopt a stance that does not exclude other marginal voices. However, our failure and, I’m afraid, our reluctance, to have done so reflects a deeper problem; a problem of the culture of violence; a problem that we must identify and address. Any interrogation of this culture of violence, of this institutionalised misogyny, of the patriarchal moral-economy, requires a sustained engagement with these problems, and our first step in this direction is to acknowledge that the problem runs far, far deeper than just politicians, and right-wing, fundamentalist outfits.

Acknowledgements: First of all, to Natasha Patel, for patiently reading this, as well as many other drafts in the past, for humouring me and never faltering on feedback; to Tasneem Kakal, for her pertinent comments (some of them on my bad grammar); and to Shubhra Rishi, who I cannot seem to thank enough.

"They don't really care about us."

Note: This post is a follow-up to an earlier post (click here), wherein I've made certain preliminary arguments on the Delhi gang-rape & murder incident. 

A thought has been bothering me for quite some time now: I’m not sufficiently anti-establishmentarian enough; that, after a point, I’d still be willing to invest whatever little bit of faith I have in my reserves in the machinery of the state, rather than ideologues, demagogues and the so-called civil society. That illusion has shattered.

It’s been about a week since I have been angry and outraged at the brutal gang-rape of a 23 year-old physiotherapist in Delhi, and an equally brutal assault on her friend. I’m still angry, and I want to be. But when I saw cosmetic protests organised at my college just the other day, or when I heard a clamour for death penalties and castrations on the social media, or when I saw politicians and celebrities and god-knows-who-else behave like they’re freaking PhDs in dealing with violence against women, I was disillusioned. The state, I knew very well, was as indifferent as hell. And as Vivek Kaul so rightly wrote, the only reason why the six perpetrators have been arrested – despite the Delhi Police Commissioner’s claims of the blind case being solved in record time – is because the perpetrators were not some politician’s kids, nor were they associated with any political outfits; neither were they cops, nor army-men; or anyone on a very long list of people who will never be held accountable for the crimes they commit.

That’s the first failure. Unfortunately, there have been several more, far too many for me to articulate in this space.

Three problems

Three things that have bothered me, more so with respect to the aftermath of this incident: The first of course is the way in which the media manufactures conscience and outrage (my incredibly crass interpretation of Chomsky’s “propaganda model”; I refuse to call it the “press” or “journalism” because those values, I believe, are entirely absent in public discourse). The industrial nature of the news media requires this manufacturing of conscience; it doesn't care about causes. It happened with the deaths of Keenan and Rueben in Amboli last year; with the Guwahati assault earlier this year; and now, the Delhi gang-rape incident. I’m not commenting on the good or bad of reporting: clearly, some channels and papers are providing exceptional coverage of the incident. But very few manage to break away from this discourse of manufacturing conscience. However, since I've dealt with this issue sufficiently, I shall not bother the reader with any more polemics against the media.

My second problem is with the ideological response to the incident, primarily by politically motivated groups – like the BJP, or the ABVP, or Kejriwal’s Aam Admi Party – they have, all of them, hopped on to the “dissing-the-government” bandwagon. For them, essentially, this case isn't any different from the FDI in retail, the 2G spectrum allocation scam, the coal block allocation scam, or any of the UPA’s other bluders, for that matter: they are at India Gate to garner political mileage. This is political posturing at its worse, and its most crass levels. In a Kafila, post arguing against this political double standard-ness, Shuddhabrata Sengupta decimates Sushma Swaraj’s callous comments on the nature of the crime; Swaraj, who said that rape is “worse than death”, and the victim was “zinda lash” or a living corpse, Sengupta argues, is actually “endorsing the patriarchal value system that produces rape”, and that she and the rapist “are in perfect agreement about the worth of the life of a rape victim”. In another Kafila article, Pratiksha Baxi argues that the right-wing politician is “not concerned with how a strident Hindu nationalism is built on the violated bodies of women”. No one in the BJP (or anywhere else, for that matter) cared sufficiently about Dalit girls being raped and set on fire in Haryana; or when women in the North East, like Manorama, continue to raped, molested and killed by army men and paramilitary forces; or in the Naxal-affected areas, when policemen are engaged in custodial rapes; or when politicians and their goons get away with rapes, and get elected into parliament. Unfortunately, rape is reduced to the violation of the woman’s honour; as an aberration to the normalcy of things, where ‘normal’ is defined as a state where women and marginalised groups blindly accept their exploitation and maintain the status quo.

Third, and finally, I have a problem with the state’s violent action against the protestors at India Gate. Make no mistake, I’ve never taken warmly to protests, marches, vigils and all that; there’s a deep sense of scepticism I have towards “well meaning” civil society action; but a deeper sense of disillusionment at the failure of governance: something I've called a governance of paranoia – wherein the political (and powered) class is informed by illogical reactionism, and not a coherent ideological standpoint. This is not to suggest that the problem is merely anti ideological. It is the failure on the part of ideologies, and modes of governance to adapt, to say: “We were wrong”. Because it is precisely this posturing, this ambivalence in governance, this resistance to acknowledge the truth that “the emperor has no clothes”, is what maintains the illusion of power. I concede that this argument is incredibly complex, but I shall attempt to deal with it further on.

Disparate discourses

There is a parallel I see in the Delhi police commissioner, Neeraj Kumar’s, insistence on not acknowledging the fact that the police screwed up at India gate (and on several occasions in the past), and in the National Rifle Association’s unapologetic stance (summed up with the ridiculous reasoning: “Guns don't kill people, people do”) in the aftermath of the Sandy Hooks shooting massacre in Connecticut, just over a week ago. These are disparate incidents, separated by thousands of miles and, on the face of it, have no commonality. Yet, I believe that they are deeply connected. For one, the brutality of shootings and rapes are borne directly by marginal groups, in this case, children, students, and women – groups that require the state’s protection, by any standard of liberal democracies. Secondly, and unfortunately, both the United States government and the Indian state have, time and again, refused to acknowledge the chronic nature of the problems of gun-proliferation and shootouts, and rapes, respectively; nor have they offered any long term solutions; from President Obama’s teary eyes to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s incoherent and, ultimately, inconsequential mumbling, the state, in both cases and countries, has simply sidestepped the issue, proffering only symptomatic solutions and empty rhetoric. Right-wing ideology and patriarchy are powerful ideologies, no doubt. However, that fact that a sovereign nation should so consistently fail to keep both in check is staggering, unless, of course, there is a deeper problem in the very nature of governance itself.

What we've got here, is failure of governance

Clearly, I’m disillusioned with both major parties in this struggle: the protestors, and the state. My scepticism of the Delhi protests is informed by two major ideas: one, is the criticisms levelled against civil society by the Slovenian philosopher, Slavoj Žižek; and idea of the “political society” formulated by the subaltern studies scholar, Partha Chatterjee. While Žižek’s criticisms are founded more on the ideological nature of civil society in his native Slovenia, Chatterjee, being much closer to home, offers more relevant insights. That the nation is following the India Gate protests so closely; that many such protests are being replicated across the country, in Bangalore, in Mumbai, and other cities, is what Chatterjee calls the domain of the “civil society”. Opposed to this civil society is the “political society”, i.e., the social groups like Dalits, de-notified tribes, slum dwellers, who negotiate with governing agencies, usually bureaucrats, low level civil servants, but people who exercise considerable power at the micro-level (my apologies to Partha Chatterjee for reducing his arguments to this dichotomy, but I've done so for the sake of better comprehension). 

I’ve had the chance to observe such negotiations first hand on several research projects: where people living in bastis spend every day without the certainty of work, or that their makeshift houses would be standing by the time they get home from work. There have been many incidents of rapes in similar areas across the country, most of them usually go unreported, or are a column in newspapers which dedicate full pages to advertisements. Things are worse in states like Orissa, or the North East, where atrocities are carried out against women like clockwork. The brutal nature of the crimes against these women, many of whom brave tremendous odds to fight for justice (for instance the International People’s Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Kashmir has done commendable work in the Shopian murder-rape case), does indeed unite them in a discourse of resistance.

Despite of all my cynicism and scepticism, I empathised with the protesters at Delhi; while I do not endorse their views, I do share their anger, their frustration, their angst and their fears. From the ground at Raisina Hill and India Gate, Nilanjana Roy and Aditya Nigam wrote that the protestors were anything but violent in the initial phase, and that they did wish to engage in dialogue with the administration, before the police started lobbing tear gas, that is. Why, then, did the administration, in this case, the Delhi police, not engage in dialogue with the protestors? Why must the Indian state’s response always oscillate between abject apathy and excessive brutality? I suspect it is because the very nature of governance, as I mentioned before, is based on the insistence that the emperor is indeed clothed – and the Indian state insists on insisting with tear gas, water cannons, lathi charges and Section 144.

I understand I've not been very clear about what I mean when I say a "patriarchal nation-state" or "governance". Let me address this ambiguity. First of all, with respect to the nation-state, many greater minds before mine have argued that the very nature of the modern nation-state is patriarchal, i.e., it values a particular class of citizens over others; in the West, it's exemplified by the WASP - White Anglo-Saxon Protestant male. In India, as the authors of Why Loiter? Women and Risks on Mumbai Streets have argued, it is the upper caste, upper class, heterosexual, Hindu men who form the top section of this hierarchy. Women, Dalits, lower caste men, Muslims (young men, in particular), gays, lesbians, transgenders, hijras, and a host of other categories constitute the "undesirable" body, in a descending order of undesirability. The patriarchal nation-state discriminates against these very groups, by policing them, by marginalising them.  And this is an anathema to the very idea of modern, sovereign liberal democracies. And by governance, I mean not just the official mechanism of the state, but, following the French Marxist scholar, Louis Althusser's "ideological state apparatus", includes the official state mechanism, the institutions of the family, ideology, religion, media and so forth. In a patriarchal-nation state, these elements, these parties come together to form a virulent discourse of exclusion and belonging; of policing and punishing it's members; of fear and false consciousness (which, Žižek or Sloterdjik would argue, is actually the peoples' cynical acceptance of the fact that they are being fooled).  Perhaps, there is a problem in my usage of the term "governance" itself, which assumes that there can be an ideal mode of governance, that is, in the liberal democratic sense. The assumption, I am realising now, is certainly ill-founded, as both Althusser, and the French social theorist, Michel Foucault (particularly his works on governmentality and biopolitics) would agree.

Rape, then, is a political tool against dissent: it is an articulation of violence, of intolerance, of the severest insensitivity; of patriarchal governmentality’s recourse to extrajudicial means to crush any and all levels of transgression, political, social, or otherwise. Delhi police’s action against the protestors at India Gate was rape; it was an assault on democracy; it was a step into a fascist future, right alongside the demands for death penalties and castrations; it was an act of violence which endangers not just women’s safety and rights in our country, but that of citizens’ altogether; particularly social groups which do not have access to media coverage, let alone the posturing of political parties, or the sympathies of the general Indian public. And the failure to acknowledge the fact that rape is a problem - that it is not about sex; nor is it about "men assaulting women", or about morality; that it is used to further political agenda, to silence dissent, to obfuscate the nuanced nature of violence, is a muted justification and a shameless vilification of rape.

“They don’t really care about us”

The patriarchal nation-state, the elite civil society and misogynistic political ideologies, by their nature, are inimical to the discourse of women’s access to rights, to address the burning issue of violence against them. Violence against women, in this case rape (‘women’ being incredibly fissured category) is either a political tool itself, or is of absolutely no concern to the parties I mentioned above. Women claiming to speak for women, like the BJP MLAs, propagate the patriarchal ideology of subordination of women by placing a price on their honour and chastity; families would seek to police women, restrict their mobility; the state, as we have clearly established, fails on so many levels – failing to ensure protection, and at the same time, violating it; civil society, on the other hand, is limited by the very narrow nature of its interest; and as for academia, well, I certainly can vouch for the feeling of helpless that has gripped me.

Who, then, speaks for the women? Who cares for them? Are women, as many feminist scholars argue, merely property in the patriarchal political economy? – To be terminated as a foetus, or be killed before they have a chance to live? – That raped women, or those who exercise their sexual freedom, are “damaged goods”?

At this point, I have nothing better to offer than a handful of these questions: questions that I hope someone would answer; or, more importantly, that someone would ask. Personally, I have no hopes for an answer. I am angry, and at the same time, I am reflecting back on my masculinity, on the assumptions that society has thwarted on my gender. Unfortunately, I do not know how many men out there are doing so. Responding to my previous post, one of my professors suggested that rape is a man’s burden…that there is actually soul searching to be done by every man, because at some point in our lives we have all done violence to women. I want to disagree with this, but I know that I can’t: for, not speaking against injustice is also to exacerbate it, if not to partake in it. That is one of the reasons why I write. But, if ever the process of writing was cathartic, it has now ceased to be so.

Acknowledgements: First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to everyone who read, and commented on, the earlier post: their comments and responses have been incredibly motivational. To Shubhra Rishi, for once again being critical and supportive, and for the engaging discussions over GTalk; to my teacher, Fr. Joseph, to whom I am indebted for the sociological nature of my arguments; to my class mates, particularly Natasha Patel, Tasneem Kakal and Simone Salazar. And, finally, to Runcil Rebello, Achyuth Sankar and Anubhav Dasgupta for being such avid readers, and for all the 'Shares' and 'Tweets'.