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Women and Communal violence
- Finch Atticus

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this is a paper presented by my friend at World Socialist forum helt at Mumbai this year. Women and Communal Violence Introduction: At the outset itself I would like to thank the organisers for having invited me to speak to all of you gathered here on the topic of Women and Communal Violence. Instead of speaking about the topic in an isolated way I would like to root it in the ground of the recent riots that took place in Gujarat and the violence faced by women there. In the last few months all of us have been horrified by the extreme violence that has taken place in Gujarat and I think that if we are to speak of Women and Communal violence then we must begin with the real stories of women who were brutalised in the recent carnage. I am quoting verbatim from an article by Syeda Saiyidain Hameed who is a former member of the National Commission for Women (NCW) and Convenor of the Muslim Women's Forum, Delhi. She was part of six-member Women's Panel that released its report entitled, 'How has the Gujarat Massacre Affected Minority Women? The Survivors Speak, this is what she had to report “Thirty-year-old Saira Banu and Sajida sit close to one another, drawing comfort from each other. 'They did something very evil. Our small children were dying of thirst. When they asked for water, Allah! kerosene was poured down their throats. Then a match was lit,' they relate. Then Saira speaks, 'From all sides we were being stoned. Then the mob came, with hockey sticks, trishuls and knives. They began to hit us women. They threw my sister-in-law, Shah Jehan, and her two children, three and five years, in the fire. To my sister-in-law's sister, Kausar Bano, they did something really gruesome...' The foetus story is then narrated. It has become everyone's story. The symbol of a bestiality and barbarism so far unheard of in the history of human depravity. May my eyes be rendered blind - I saw photographic evidence of a burnt foetus on the burnt mother's belly. Mehboob Bi speaks about the mob which came from one side of her basti (tenement). 'We tried to run. People from the nearby Gangotri Basti and Gopinath Basti said, 'Come, we will shelter you.' But when we reached those houses, we found that there were only men, no women. They had been sent away. 'We were betrayed. No god of any religion will forgive this,' says Mehboob Bi. 'We tried to take shelter in the State Reserve Police quarters. But there was no one to save us. They came. They were wearing vests and shorts and saffron headbands. They carried trishuls, rods and swords. They said, `If you had not set fire to the train you would not be killed'. They hounded us. Those of us who are alive today had to lie down with our own dead for many hours. We left, walking over the dead bodies of our families. My sisters, Hameeda Bano, Gulnaz, Abida Bibi - all killed. First hit, then dashed to the ground, then killed by sprinkling petrol and set on fire.' In the blistering heat people wait in throngs outside an enclosure which served as a makeshift hospital. Workers of Sahrwaru (an NGO) who live in nearby Millatnagar tell us about the rape victims. Naseem and Mahmooda speak about the day when women arrived stark naked at the camp. The women could barely walk due to their torn genitals. Another volunteer, Fehmida, tells us she had to remove cricket bails from their vaginas, inserted by their rapists as a matter of sport or amusement. When the bails were removed it was found that their insides were torn. She tells about the night when the men cried out, shouted for women from the nearby bastis to come and help the injured women. 'Whatever we had - plastic sheets, men's shirts, our dupattas - we used to cover their bodies,' says Fehmida.” Tanika Sarkar in an article entitled “Semiotics of Terror” points out that “Women have been killed in very large numbers. At the mass grave that was dug on March 6 to provide burial to 96 bodies from Naroda Patiya, 46 women were buried. Bilkees Beghum from the Godhra relief camp told a tale that seemed to confirm a recurrent pattern in most places, according to survivor’s accounts. She was stripped, gang-raped, her baby killed before her, she was then beaten up, then burnt and left for dead. For variety’s sake other women also had acid thrown upon them and then burnt in fires… Before they were finally killed, some were beaten up with rods and pipes for almost an hour. Before and after the killing, their vagina would be sliced, or would have iron rods pushed inside. Similarly, their bellies would be cut open or would have hard objects inserted into them. A 13-year old girl, Farzana, had a rod pushed into her stomach, and was then burnt. A mother reported that her three-year old baby was raped and killed in front of her, while elsewhere daughters reported on the rapes of their mothers, now dead. Kausar Bano, a young girl from Naroda Patiya, was several months pregnant. Several eyewitnesses testified that she was raped, tortured, her womb was slit open with a sword to disgorge the foetus which was then hacked to pieces and roasted alive with the mother” The stories are indeed horrifying and any normal reaction would be not only of horror and disgust at the brutality but also a certain sense of helplessness and powerlessness of the listener in the face of such cruelty. However we cannot allow ourselves to fall into a paralysis of analysis. While at one level the stories of suffering must be told on another level there also has to be a serious analysis into the actual politics of communal violence. To make a simple but also at the same time a profound connection between women and communal violence would be to understand that the women’s body was “the site of almost inexhaustible violence, with infinitely plural and innovative means of torture.” We must begin to understand that the brutalising of women was not just the ‘natural’ fallout of communal violence in the sense that men were victimised during the riots and therefore so also women would be, neither were they mindless acts of violence or even acts of ‘mere’ lust or sadism, but the violence against women in a communal/ethnic violence is rather a part of a larger scheme that is intended to specifically injure a community. In the following sections of this paper we shall try to bring to light the structural politics at play in the processes of the specific victimization of women in communal violence. We shall do this by dividing the paper into four sections, the politics of sexuality, the politics of rape and the politics of control. Hum Paanch Hamaare Pachees: The politics of sex and sexuality While there has always been a connection between sex sexuality and violence against women this has taken a particular direction in the history of communal violence in India. There exists among the followers of the Sangh Parivar today an almost unnatural fear of the sexual prowess of the Islamic male that is most apparently reflected in the myth of the ever-increasing Muslim population. This is not only manifested in the oft-quoted myth of the enormous increase in the Muslim population in the country but also in overtly sexual language and symbols used by the Hindu right. In an article entitled The Feminization of Violence: Women in the Politics of the Shiv Sena by Sikata Banerjee, the author quotes an interview with a Shiv Sena activist who makes the point that when the news of Hindu households being burned in Mumbai reached the ears of his wife, she remarked that “I should offer you bangles now. What are we? In our own country Hindu’s are being burned” The sexual overtones are very clear – The ‘manhood’ of the activist is being put into question here, it is as though he has been emasculated. It is also interesting to note that the question “What are we?” is posed instead of ‘who are we?’ The obvious innuendo being made here is that the activist is a eunuch and not a man. The same sexual overtone was once again seen in the post-Godhra chants of the ABVP on the JNU campus who chanted “Jis Hinduon ka Khoon na Khola, voh Hindu nahin, voh hijra hai.” This feeling of emasculation is usually built up by myths and legends, namely the rape of Hindu women during the partition, rapes of Hindu queens by Muslims and abductions of women by Muslims right throughout history. The penal envy is further perpetuated by the loss of the Indian ‘Hindu’ cricket team to ‘Muslim’ Pakistan. One can begin to understand then why Cricket becomes such a bone of contention for the Sangh Parivar. The politics of sex and sexuality also comes clear in the reaction of the Shiv Sena towards Valentines Day, after all love is something that has to be countered for the fear of Hindu girls falling in love with Muslim boys. The anger against cross-cultural marriages can also be evaluated as a response to the same to the same phenomenon. The loss of virility and impotence then has to be compensated by overt signs of maleness, it is no wonder then that the BJP tested nuclear weapons as soon as it came into power, a sure sign of male aggressiveness, Pakistan’s follow up of a greater number of nuclear tests was just another way of comparing size! Even more overt is the innumerable number of missiles that have been tested so far; the phallic symbolism of a missile should not go unnoticed. Communal Violence against women then has to be begun to be read within the framework of men regaining their lost virility by overt acts of aggression towards others and towards the women of the ‘other’ community in particular. The form that this aggression takes is of course rape and other forms of sexual violence towards women. Meri Izzat Bachao: The Politics of Rape On the surface level of course the simple politics of rape is to revenge the lost honour of one community by the dishonouring of another. The most obvious way of doing this is by violating the ‘honour’ of the women of the other community. In the recent Gujarat riots for instance the many rapes of Muslim women was considered to be an appropriate response to the rumour published in several Gujarati dailies that 80 women on the Sabarmati Express that was torched were also raped and their breasts cut off. However a careful analysis shows us that the ‘dishonouring’ of the other community goes far beyond mere an eye for an eye revenge. Feminist scholars have shown us how men have used rape or the fear of rape as a tool of control of women, that rape is not an act of sex but an act of power and control. In the context of community violence then rape should be read as an exertion of power and as an act of control of women of the other community and thereby as an act of power and control of the men who are supposed to be in control of the women of their community. Rape then is the wilful plundering of the property of the other community the patriarchal nature of male-female relations determines that a woman’s body does not belong to her but to her husband, by the process of rape the perpetrator robs the male of the other community of what belongs to him. On another but a related level rape in the context of communal violence is also related to destroying the purity of another community. A woman’s body and sexuality is often referred to as her honour or her purity and is under the protection of her husband or father. In the process of rape the perpetrator defiles this purity and in the process humiliating her father or husband. But the politics of pollution go further than this, communal violence requires the existence of two or more communities that perceive themselves as distinct. In the process of rape the perpetrator in fact plants his seed in the woman thus polluting the lineage and claiming it as his own. He has in fact subjugated the entire race. In several cases however, as we have already heard, the sexual organs of the women were severely injured and women were murdered, the effort was no doubt to hit at the demographic and the economic status of the community. The seemingly obvious response to the myth that Muslims were overpopulating the country was that their numbers had to be reduced. The pogrom was carried out by bringing injury to the reproductive organs of the women who were and would be bearing the children to ensure that the population would not grow. While the economic enterprise of the Muslims in Gujarat were effected by the burning of their shops, restaurants etc. the possibility of an economic regeneration was negated by the killing of foetuses, children and of course the murder of women and the destruction of their reproductive organs. The culture of violence and the violence of culture: The politics of control The apparatus of control of the ‘other’ at work in the process of communal violence should have become clear from the above discussion, however the processes of communal violence also serves to further the cause of patriarchy within ones own community as well. In an article on women’s initiatives for peace in the aftermath of the Gujarat riots Bela Bhatia reporting on several riot affected women who met in Rajasthan informs us that at the meeting the close link between domestic violence and communal violence was brought to notice. The author tells us that Uma Chakravarty said that “men who are violent outside the home are likely to bring that violence inside and vice versa.” It has also not gone unnoticed that the fundamental organisations are also extremely patriarchal and often seek to confine women to the private realm under the control of men. The Hindu right wing therefore sees as the ideal Indian women the sati savitri whose life’s fulfilment is in fulfilling the desire of her husband. Similarly the Islamic right wing prescribes severe restrictions on women including dress codes and injunctions on education. The appeal to revivalist notions of bringing back the golden age also has connotations of returning to a time when women were docile and could be easily controlled. T.K Oommen writing on communalism makes the point that one of the forms of communalism is separatist communalism; within this form of communalism a particular community insists on a separate cultural identity. Thus there is an insistence on a Christian, Hindu or Muslim way of life that is presumed to be distinct from the rest. Often this distinct way of life is just a euphemism for greater controls on the women. This is also seen in the insistence on personal law that is oppressive to women and is also a religious justification of this oppression. This has to be distinguished from the Sangh Parivar’s call for a secular personal law that will be nothing more than a generalised Hindu law. What is needed is a law that is fair to women and based on secular values of justice. The process of Ghettoisation that takes place in the context of communal riots also serves to demonise the women of the other community and caricatures them as being ‘loose’ or ‘easy’ while our women are the good pure ones. This process of stereotyping is not only injurious to our perceptions of the other community but also serves as an ideological weapon to further the control on the women of ones own community. The point to be made here is that patriarchy or the male control of female labour, sexuality and fertility was a structure that was born out of violence and violence in society, any kind of violence only serves to perpetuate the system. Conclusion In the last three sections of this paper we have seen how women in this country cutting across religion have been the victims of communal violence the question that we must now ask is, is it possible for them to do anything about it? Gabriele Dietrich, a reputed Indian feminist activist and ideologue would answer this question in the affirmative for two reasons. Firstly she would point out that “Women’s groups have begun to cross the barriers of caste, class, language and religion, more than any socio-political force in the last 15 years. This potential needs to be fully developed.” She says this in the context of the massive mass base that the communal forces have developed and goes on to point out that a similar mass anti-communal mass base has to be developed, in her contention the women’s movement is that mass base. Secondly she argues that, “In the women’s movement we are faced with drastic choices of values and very ultimate questions of meaning. We are grappling with secular answers to questions that were traditionally dealt by religion.” She says this to counter the ideological sway that communalism seems to have on people by offering them a collective identity within which ultimate questions of meaning and collective values can be answered. To her again the women’s movement offers an alternative view of life that can be used to counter the menace of communalism. To effectively do this however she would point out the following – that we would have to reinterpret the religious texts, traditions, myths, rituals and festivals from a women’s perspective. Also required would be an attack of all oppressive religious practices as well as a working towards a separation of church and state at the level of legal and political institutions. Philip Vinod Peacock

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