Civil Society and Citizenship in India and Bangladesh

• Editorial: Bloomsbury India
• Año: 2021
• ISBN:
  9789389611373
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Categoría: Relazioni internazionali

'The sort of critical awareness necessary to actually enrich discussions of civil society, rather than contribute to its elusiveness, pervades through the book.' -Professor Vedi R. Hadiz, Asia Institute, University of Melbourne, Australia '…introduces readers to the dynamics shaping the complex relationship between CSOs and the state in today's India and Bangladesh.' -Professor Sarah Ansari, Royal Holloway, University of London 'This volume should be a compulsory read for everyone who is interested in contemporary contests in the civil society space in South Asia…' -Professor Amit Prakash, Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi 'This edited anthology is a timely and an important contribution to the scholarship on civil society and citizenship, particularly in South Asia.' -Associate Professor Mohammad Salehin, Centre for Peace Studies, The Arctic University of Norway, Norway Civil Society and Citizenship in India and Bangladesh presents new multidisciplinary research, exploring the opportunities and challenges facing civil society in today's India and Bangladesh. It informs contemporary understanding of citizenship, gender rights and social identities and is published at a time of increased global uncertainties related to changing civic space, political tensions, a downturn in the world economy and the rise of populism. India and Bangladesh are key contexts, not the least because of rapid (and uneven) economic and social development but their contrasting experiences of democracy and discrimination and inequality faced by dierent groups and communities. This new multidisciplinary title presents new research findings that also contribute to theory-building on the form, functioning and democratic role of civil society in the 21st century.

1

Civil Society, Gender and itizenship Rights:
Complexities and Challenges Facing the Women’s Movement in Today’s India

B. Rajeshwari

Civil society, gender and citizenship rights have complex shades in the context of India. The three as separate concepts have acquired contested meanings complicating their relationship with each other. A lot of the literature on civil society in India has dealt with the subject as a response to the Western understanding of civil society and weaved the concept within the liberal democratic space (Chandhoke, 2007; Mahajan, 1999; Betteille, 2001). Yet, as some scholars argue (Rudolph, 2004; Sahoo, 2013), civil society in the Indian context is not always about organisations/movements advancing democratic, liberal values as has been understood in the west. There are many organisations in the civil sphere whose activities strengthen fundamentalist and extremist views; in consequence shrinking democratic spaces and voices. Gender rights are not just about men and women but about transgender identities and ‘queer community’. Similarly, gender issues are no longer restricted to heterosexual men and women but also now extended to gays, lesbians, sex workers and others, resulting in the expansion of what we understand by gender.

The same trajectory is true of citizenship where several new rights are being extended to citizens (right to information, right to education, etc.). For instance, the Right to Information Act, 2005, gives Indian citizens access to information about any public authority or institution, including non-government organisations substantially funded by the government. Similarly, the Right to Education Act implemented in 2010 makes education for children between the age of 6 and 14 a fundamental right. At the same time, there is further contestation over who can claim to be a citizen, given the current developments surrounding the enactment of Citizenship Amendment Act and the National Registration Council in India. The Citizenship Amendment Act seeks to include new groups within the ambit of citizenship on the basis of their religious identity. But it leaves significant questions unanswered for the minority religious groups (George, 2019). All these factors serve to underline the dynamic, complex and challenging relationship between civil society, gender and citizenship in today’s India.

Given the complex shades to civil society, gender and citizenship, it is impossible to explore all aspects of their evolving relationship at the start of the 21st century. The chapter, therefore, focuses in bringing forward some of the complexities facing civil society organisations (CSOs) in India while they work to advance gender and citizenship rights. Specific attention is given to the multiple and plural voices in the women’s movement/organisations/groups that claim to advance gender and citizenship rights. Inter alia, the following discussion considers what challenges emerge when different groups within civil society seek legitimacy to advance gender and citizenship rights. It asks, how does a fragmented and significantly diverse civil society impact the claims of legitimacy for CSOs. Thus, in exploring the complex nature of civil society, the chapter addresses issues of legitimacy that most organisations and movements face irrespective of their ideological base and character. As the discussion proceeds, the chapter argues that increasing participation by one kind of movement or organisation can result in undermining the legitimacy of other organisations and their action repertoires (Porta, 2013). There are new forms, types and methods of actions that movements and organisations adapt and these tend to question the earlier forms. In this way, the chapter highlights that a central challenge to legitimacy is often faced by movements and organisations associated with the contested frameworks and claims of ‘gender’ (Tilly, 1977). This is particularly evident in the context of India where multiple identities and intersectionalities are at play and CSOs often struggle to address them all. The fact that women, men, transgender and the queer community are also entangled in other identity formulations like caste, tribe, religion, class and rural–urban. These tend to overlap with the gender identities, thereby, creating different formulations of what entails gender equality, the ways and methods to achieve the same.

The chapter is divided into three sections. The first critically reflects on the role of the women’s movement in advancing the gender and citizenship rights along with questions about their legitimacy. The second and the third section discuss two key issues that question the legitimacy of women-led civil society movements and organisations. Specifically, the second section deals with the rise of right-wing groups led by and/or supported by women. In turn, we consider how these pose a challenge to women’s groups/movements that are based on democratic values and liberal principles. The third section brings out a more complex shade to the issue of legitimacy. It explores how organisational/social movement legitimacy is possible when civil society activism is driven around the decisions of liberal democratic state institutions, such as the judiciary. In this context, the chapter discusses the case of the Muslim Personal Law and the Muslim women-led movement against Triple Talaq. In the face of questions being raised over their legitimacy, the section looks at the future prospects of women-led CSOs that work to advance gender and citizenship rights.

In making these arguments and claims, this chapter conceptually draws from feminist studies and writings that bring complex realities to the fore¹ while examining critically their own movements in advancing gender rights in India. The following discussion engages with the differences and diverse voices within feminism that range from white, liberal, socialist, north/south, coloured and Marxist feminisms. All of these give space for a dialogue and, therefore, a scope for new ways of approaching concepts like civil society (Deo, 2018). A critical feminist lens also allows us to reflect on some of the complexities and dichotomies involved within civil society groups and organisations that claim to advance rights of women and other groups who have been marginalised on grounds of their gender.

There are two other reasons for the current analytical approach. First, feminist writings and scholars have tried to grapple with the subject for some time now whilst other studies on civil society do not particularly engage with the relationship between gender and citizenship rights (Menon, 1998; Rajan, 2000; Sinha, 2003; Chari, 2009). Second, most CSOs that claim to advance gender rights have aligned with feminist ideas either directly or even indirectly. For instance, right-wing women’s organisations in India despite their differences with feminists in ideology are certainly closer to them in their functional activities which includes running of charities, community service, child care, medical service for the poor, running schools and intervening in domestic abuse (Bedi, 2006). There are also structural and issue-based similarities between the right-wing organisations and other women’s organisations (Deo, 2018). Thus, they have similarities in function/activities even if not in ideology. This makes it more important to draw from a diverse range of extant feminist writings and understand the ways in which they have explained the challenge of completely opposing ideologies to have similarities in form and also the participation of women in large numbers in civil society activism that do not believe in inclusive politics. Feminist studies have in various ways questioned the relevance of concepts like citizenship understood in liberal individualist terms in advancing women’s rights (Pateman, 1989; Devenish, 2019). All these reasons make feminist studies the main conceptual framework to explain the challenges to legitimacy that CSOs confront while trying to advance equal citizenship and rights based on gender.

Women’s Movement and Challenges to Legitimacy

The struggle for equal rights and citizenship claims based on gender has over the years been led in India primarily by the women’s movement—comprising diverse organisations and groups (Krishnaraj, 2003; Subramanian, 2004). The Indian women’s movement is most often referred to ‘activities of hundreds of women’s organisations with their own understandings of women’s oppression and ways to counteract them’ (Agnew, 1997). These organisations range from women’s departments within the state bureaucracy to professional women’s organisations, women’s branches of political parties and trade unions to those dealing within specific issues like environment, anti-trafficking, etc. (Kumar, 1989). They have been joined by other women-led movements like the sex workers’ group and LGBTQ movement. Overall, the women’s movement has sustained the demand for gender equal inclusive rights and citizenship since independence. Yet, we know that the women’s movement is not homogenous and there are many plural voices that are a part of it. The Indian women’s movement has several streams of ideological thought and varying strategies (Gandhi and Shah, 1992). There are several divisions within the women’s movement based on their ideology, caste, class, region and religion (Subramanian, 2004). These divisions have existed right from the 1960s when the women’s movement started emerging in some shape and form in contemporary times (Khullar, 2005). Some of these divisions are based on urban-rural, feminist movements that draw from west as against other women’s organisations/movements that distance themselves from Western influences. There have been several moments of ideological, methodical and processual differences among the different organisations that come within the ambit of women’s movement but there has also been an overall consensus on the patriarchal and oppressive ways in which women undergo margnalisation, which needs to be addressed.

Among these components, religious divisions threaten the existence and legitimacy of civil society and its activities in an increasing politically constrained, yet notionally liberal democratic, civic space. The rise of fundamentalist voices appropriating the language of equal rights for women and large number of women becoming this voice has in serious ways questioned the activities of women’s groups and movements that function according to democratic values. But this challenge seems to be far from answered by the feminists themselves. On the one hand, feminists have argued that one of the greatest challenges faced by the Indian Women’s Movement since the 1990s is the co-option of their practices and discourses by ‘forces that are inimical to feminist ends and progressive ideals’ (Roy, 2015; Menon, 2004; Sangari, 2007; Tharu and Niranjana, 1994). The right-wing women’s organisations also undertake activities as other feminist-based women’s organisations by running charitable trusts, giving medical care to women, intervention in domestic abuse situations. Thus, they are similar in form even if not in ideology to the women’s organisations who situate themselves within progressive feminist politics. The Mahila Agadi (women’s wing of the Shiv Sena) is an example of how the co-option of strategies and activities have occurred. But feminists would argue that co-option seems to be a simplistic explanation to what is happening now with the Indian Women’s Movement in terms of the ideological confrontation and women leading organisations that do not shy away from taking extremist/ violent/communal positions within the women’s movement.

These developments need to deal with complexities within the Indian women’s movement, which include arguments linked to agency and empowerment to explain the current challenges (Saheli, 1991). The fundamentalist voices, whether it is the Mahila Agadi in Mumbai, the Sevika Samiti or the Durga Vahini (the women’s wing of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad [VHP]), have appropriated the language of rights and equality to strengthen patriarchal structures and, more significantly, created a strong base for themselves among marginalised women who are emerging as the new ‘female citizens’ (Batliwala and Dhanraj, 2007). The female citizens as opposed to women as citizens are willingly, through their own agency, taking a secondary status vis-à-vis male citizen. They are coming out in public spaces creating their own positions without critically questioning the gender inequalities and patriarchal structures and rather reinforcing them in significant ways. Accordingly, this chapter explores the challenge of co-option by women’s organisations like Durga Vahini, Sevika Samiti, Hindu Mahila Sammelan and Mahila Aghadi who speak simultaneously of exclusion on the basis of religious identity and of inclusion by making space for women in public sphere alongside men. They also speak of equality in participation for women and of turning them into warriors and baton bearers of Hindu cultural tradition and practices. Their positioning of women as nodal points attracts large-scale membership from middle and lower middle-class women, threatens the legitimacy of the women’s movement in advancing rights and equal citizenship on the basis of gender.

Another challenge for the women’s movement emerges from its internal heterogeneity and the multiple voices that exist within the movement. The women’s movement in India has historically been accused for excluding marginal voices. For instance, the women’s movement after independence was viewed as indulging in stereotypical activities and not raising crucial issues concerning women, such as rising gender disparities in employment, health, education and political participation (Sen, 2000; Subramanian, 2004). The Indian women’s movement particularly witnessed in the 1980s and 1990s the mushrooming of professional and transnational non-governmental organisations who specifically worked on issues related to women and gender justice. But, despite several varieties of organisations becoming a part of the women’s movement, it struggled to include all sections of women who were facing marginalisation at multiple levels. Despite these challenges, the women’s movement played an important role, particularly since the 1970s, in foregrounding gender disparities and the need to address them.

A close study of the women’s movement suggests the presence of several dichotomies. On the one hand, it seemed to take up issues linked to both urban and rural women while, on the other hand, it also seemed to create a divide between them (Kumar, 2015). The linkages were in recognition of oppressive patriarchal practices, the absence of women in public spaces, the cognisance of the violence against women and ways to counter them. The divide was apparent in the language of rights that the urban feminists spoke by locating women in the spectrum of individual rights which alienated the rural women and other women’s rights’ organisations for whom advancement of women’s rights cannot be located outside their community rights. Similarly, it seemed to open the debate on public and private by taking on the state for its gender discriminatory personal laws. The women’s movement and organisations have long argued in India as also in the West that gender justice and equal rights can only be realised when division of labour, oppressive practices in the private sphere are addressed alongside the lack of women’s participation and gender equality in public sphere (including the state). Yet, the women’s movement has struggled to give space to multiple realities of identities and cultural practices that exist while calling for reforming the personal laws. This has particularly been true when it is related to reforming the personal laws of the minority communities in India. The women’s organisations like Forum against Oppression of Women and Working Group of Women’s Rights, that aim to reform personal laws through state intervention, are a crossroads where they are being challenged for excluding the agency of the women whose rights they seek to advance.

In the case of women’s movement, the notion of ‘civil society’ suggests that activism around equal citizenship based on gender is deeply entangled with other identities becoming more important for women themselves. The Temple Entry movement² in Sabarimala, backed by the Supreme Court’s judgement, is a prominent example of the multiple ways in which a movement can be viewed by the members of the same community whose rights it claims to advance. In such situations, the legitimacy of the movement comes under serious question alongside the fact that some of these movements further reinforce patriarchal practices without being aware of doing it. Some of these issues are highlighted later in the chapter through the Sabarimala Temple entry movement.

The Growing Participation of Women in Communalist Activism

A serious challenge and complex reality that CSOs are currently facing is the participation and incorporation of women to advance agenda that are antithetical to democratic principles. What remains inexplicable is that a lot of this active participation happens through organisations working in civil society. This aspect is often less studied from the lens of a civil society subject because these organisations are viewed outside the purview of civil society, given their illiberal and sometimes even undemocratic foundations. The emergence of the right-wing political parties in India with ideological roots in nationalism, majoritarianism and religious conservatism has taken an active form since the 1990s—post the demolition of the Babri Masjid. In India, the politics of the right wing has been studied under the umbrella of what is termed Hindu nationalism and political parties like Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Shiv Sena a...

Índice

• Cover
• Praises for Civil Society and Citizenship in India and Bangladesh
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword: Civil Society—Some Reflections : Neera Chandhoke
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction :Sarbeswar Sahoo and Paul Chaney
• 1. Civil Society, Gender and Citizenship Rights: Complexities and Challenges Facing the Women’s Movement in Today’s India :B. Rajeshwari
• 2. Women’s Rights and Social Movements in Bangladesh: The Changing Political Field : Seuty Sabur
• 3. Political Failure and the Suffering of Stateless ‘Non-Citizens’: Civil Society Perspectives on the Rohingya Crisis : Paul Chaney
• 4. Cooperation or Conflict? Understanding State–Civil Society Relationship in Postcolonial India : Sarbeswar Sahoo
• 5. The State, NGOs and Civil Society in Bangladesh: Exploring Diverse Trajectories of Interaction : M. Saiful Islam and Md Fouad Hossain Sarker
• Conclusions: Civil Society and Citizenship in South Asia: Contemporary Malaise, Future Prospects :Paul Chaney and Sarbeswar Sahoo
• About the Editors and Contributors
• Index