Marginalized, Mobilized, Incorporated

Description

How has the participation of women in Hindu nationalist politics in India changed over time? More broadly, what has their changing participation meant for women, Hindu nationalism, and Indian democracy?

In Marginalized, Mobilized, Incorporated, Rina Verma Williams places women's participation in religious politics in India into historical and comparative perspective through a focus on the most important Hindu nationalist political parties in modern Indian history: the All-India Hindu Mahasabha (HMS) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). She compares three critical periods to show the increasing involvement of women in Hindu nationalist politics over time. In its formative years in the early 1900s, the HMS marginalized women; in the 1980s, the BJP began to mobilize them; and in the contemporary period, as the BJP returned to power in 2014, it has incorporated women into its structures and activities. Williams contends that the incorporation of women into Hindu nationalist politics has significantly advanced the BJP's electoral success compared to prior periods when women were either marginalized or mobilized in more limited ways. For the BJP, women's incorporation works to normalize religious nationalism in Indian democracy; however, incorporation has not been emancipatory for women, whose participation in BJP politics is still predicated on traditional gender ideologies that tether women to their social roles in the home and family.

Drawing on significant new data sources, Williams includes interviews with key BJP leaders, visual campaign materials, and an examination of major campaign events to construct an unmatched before-and-after view of India's watershed 2014 elections. Given that the BJP is one of the most dynamic religious/ethno-nationalist parties in the world at present, Williams' account of how it incorporated masses of women into its coalition is essential reading for scholars and students interested not just in India, but in the relationship between gender and right-wing populist politics globally.

About the author:

Rina Verma Williams is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Cincinnati, where she is also Affiliate Faculty in Asian Studies and Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies. She teaches and researches in the areas of gender and identity politics; religion, law, and nationalism; democracy and politics in developing countries; and South Asian and Indian politics. She has published extensively on these topics and is especially interested in the role of the state and democracy in the social and political construction of gendered identities. Her first book, Postcolonial Politics and Personal Laws, examined how religious laws affected ethnic conflict in India.

Reviews

"Rina Verma Williams' nuanced and sophisticated analysis of women's participation in Hindu nationalist politics illuminates a facet of women and politics in India that has not been hitherto extensively researched. Her book deftly uses original archival material, interviews, participant observation, and electoral data to persuasively argue that women as voters, activists, and politicians facilitated the enormous success of the Bharatiya Janata Party. This book is feminist research at its best and is an important and timely contribution to the scholarship on gendered politics in the context of Indian democracy." - Sikata Banerjee, author of Make Me a Man!: Masculinity, Hinduism, and Nationalism in India and Muscular Nationalism: Gender, Violence, and Empire in India and Ireland, 1914-2004

"Williams provides the most comprehensive up-to-date account of the stance Hindu nationalists have adopted towards women over the long durée. Her clear, balanced, insightful, study shows that although the BJP has benefitted electorally both from women's activism and their representation in the party, it has never challenged traditional gender ideologies that tether women to domestic roles." - Amrita Basu, Paino Professor of Political Science and Sexuality, Women's and Gender Studies, Amherst College

"This book is the definitive resource for showing how mobilizing and incorporating women helped to normalize an extreme ideology enough that it became the dominant political frame in India. It also shows why this devil's pact is not a winning strategy for the empowerment of Indian women as the BJP continues to use them without serving them. Williams offers a way to understand the role of women in Hindu nationalism that is historically informed and sensitive to the multiple perspectives of party workers, scholars, and activists." - Nandini Deo, author of Mobilizing Religion and Gender in India

"An analytical, wide-ranging, and superlative study of Indian women within the Hindutva movement. Williams superbly juxtaposes their attendant empowerment with the country's consolidating illiberalism. Ultimately, Marginalized, Mobilized, Incorporated is indispensable for understanding the Bharatiya Janata Party's contemporary dominance." - Neil DeVotta, Professor of Politics and International Affairs, Wake Forest University

Table of contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction. Women, Political Parties, and Indian Democracy
Chapter 1. Of Histories and Numbers: Hindu Nationalist Political Parties and Women
Chapter 2. Women Mobilized: Three Controversies, Three Prongs of Gendered Mobilization, 1985-1992
Chapter 3. Of Questions and Contexts: Feminist Responses, Scholarly Literatures, and Positionality
Chapter 4. Women Marginalized: The All-India Hindu Mahasabha, 1915-1951
Chapter 5. Women Incorporated: The Contemporary BJP, 2013-2016
Chapter 6. Dénouement. "The Condition of Its Women": Women's Political Participation and Indian Democracy
Bibliography
Index
Appendix A: Interviews
Appendix B: Manifesto Items, Coded