Between Her Legs: Hindutva and Dalit Women - Meena Kandasamy

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existence of the problem, the Hindutva forces succeed in totally
ignoring the need for feminism. Tanika Sarkar brilliantly
summarizes the construction of the Sangh’s concept of motherland
vis-à-vis its stands on caste and class. She writes:
Internal divisions of class and caste are seen as
forms of divisiveness that desecrate the wholeness
of the desh. These divisions, therefore, are not to be
interrogated but submerged under a political
piety that suspends all manner of criticism which
might expose social hierarchies. Such criticisms,
whenever encountered, elide into the metaphor of
a divided and mutilated yet sacred body which is
to be reconstructed as non-stratified so that it can
continue singular and integrated. The sacrality of
an integrated and aggressive yet perpetually
threatened female body is the organizing principle
that holds the edifice together. The argument
loses its power, its charge, if the country is
allowed to be seen as a piece of land with fleshand-blood
people living within it. The power of
this vision is further undone if the mystical
description of people as soldiers in a holy war
lapses into one in which they are social beings
with very real social problems. Rithambara warns
untouchable Dalits against violating the sacred
unity of Hindus by the lure (‘candy’) of the
Mandal issue. The problems of territorial diversity
and social division require endless transcendence;
a reply on many registers of the long history of
past mutilations and desecrations of an inviolable,
sacred body. The loss of Ramjanmabhoomi,
Partition, Hindu disunity, lower-caste protest—
all these are ranged together as enactments of the
same terrible sin 9
Note here that the internal divisions of caste and class are seen
in contemporary Hindutva theology as divisiveness, whereas the
largest problem—of gender as the basis of subjugation—is easily
given the go-by. As a further elaboration of Sarkar’s thesis I feel that
it has to be also observed that there is a questionable silence on the
issue of feminism, and of women uprising against patriarchy. The