Gender and COVID19 [part I]: Women’s Sexuality in Lockdown with the Hindu Nation
Patriarchal notions of women’s sexuality are being used to enforce the COVID19 lockdown in India under a Hindu nationalist state.
Note: This is the first in a series of posts on gender and COVID19, which will explore the various gendered constructions and impacts of the pandemic in India.
Hindu nationalism in India has historically been constructed upon the bodies and sexualities of women, as this post will highlight. This brand of nationalism can be observed in various ways in which the COVID19 lockdown has been enforced in the country to nudge people to follow lockdown orders. These also contribute to the building of a Hindu nation, the work of which has been underway through many state actions from the passing of the CAA to lynching of Muslims in the national capital.
A re-telecast of the Ramayana was initiated on DD National from March 28, a few days after the announcement of the national lockdown. Prakash Javadekar also tweeted a picture of himself watching Ramayana at his house, which he soon after deleted when criticism mounted against him for inaction towards the plight of migrants and other vulnerable communities in the country during lockdown.
Naari Dharm
The Ramayana narrates the story of Rama, who is exiled to a forest to live the life of an ascetic for fourteen years with Sita (his wife) and Lakshmana (his brother). Throughout the mythology, Sita embodies the figure of the loyal wife, who is devoted to the servitude of her husband and family, without a sigh of resistance. The virtue of ‘naari dharm’ is extolled as how women should behave in marriages. Sita’s sexuality is strictly controlled throughout the story, and is reserved for her husband only, which is how she remains chaste even during the time she is held captive by Ravan.
In India, the nationalist movement against British colonial rule capitalised upon this virtue of easily controllable female sexuality to assert a coherent, respectable Hindu identity. The West had colonised the public spheres of Indians which Hindu reformers were reluctantly forced to acknowledge. On the other hand, the domestic sphere was a private domain where it was still possible for the colonised Hindu man to exert his power and control. The Hindu woman was considered the essence of the home, which soon became a marker of Hindu identity. The chaste woman, loyal to her endogamous family, emerged as a symbol for maintaining the prestige of the Hindu household, and by extension, the Hindu nation. Hindu nationalism in India has therefore always been constructed through the control of women’s sexualities.
The substantial increase in care work undertaken by women during the national lockdown is a testament to this in the present day. Women have historically and culturally been responsible for the care of bodies (of children, elderly, and men in the household) and domestic spaces (such as cooking and cleaning). With the entire household staying indoors for extended periods of time during the lockdown, these tasks have now fallen upon the shoulders of women. When food is right now scarce in poorer households, it is the women and girls in the family who are expected to eat last or starve if there is no food left after the rest of the family has eaten (what has been painstakingly made by the women themselves). Though the woman is considered the mainstay of domesticity and the home, its head is still the man who controls what happens in it. This is part of the naari dharm women are expected to follow. (The crisis of care confronting women and society during the COVID19 lockdown will be taken up in detail in an upcoming post in this blog series.)
Lakshmana Rekha
Some versions of the Ramayana feature the lakshmana rekha, which is a line drawn by Lakshmana around the dwelling where he is living with Rama and Sita in the forest during exile. When Rama does not return for a while on his chase of a golden deer, Lakshmana draws the lakshmana rekha to protect Sita, while he goes to search for Rama. In the story, after Lakshmana leaves in search of Rama, the demon king Ravana takes the form of a beggar and approaches Sita for alms. As soon as Sita transgresses the lakshmana rekha to give him alms, she is kidnapped by Ravana.
The messaging is clear — a woman’s place is rooted in the family and home, and if you stay within the line, you will stay safe, but if you venture out, you invite danger upon yourself. Not only has such gendered and patriarchal messaging been regularly used to blame women for violence against them, it was also used against the women of Shaheen Bagh as Muslim women who venture out of their houses onto the streets to protest at night. The Hindu identity that was being forged (over the sexuality of women) in opposition to the colonial rule has also come up through deliberate positioning in opposition to gendered notions of Muslim identity.
This same messaging of a woman’s rightful place is now also being used to enforce the COVID19 lockdown. In one of his addresses to the nation during lockdown, Modi mentioned —
“One step out of your door, beyond the ‘lakshmana rekha’, can bring in this deadly disease to your home.” — Narendra Modi, in his national address during lockdown
B L Santosh, the general secretary of the BJP, similarly tweeted a poster depicting the lakshmana rekha that says “1st ever lockdown. She [Sita] didn’t follow. And rest is history.”
It is within this rightful place of a woman, her home, that domestic violence against her is now rising during lockdown. With women spending all their time locked up with abusive men, violence is increasing, and women are unable to go out to report the abuse. (The catastrophic and urgent problem of violence against women during the COVID19 lockdown will be taken up in detail in an upcoming post in this blog series.)
Agnee Pareeksha
In the epic, after Ravan kidnaps Sita, she is eventually rescued by Rama, who brings her back from exile to Ayodhya. What follows is patriarchy at its peak; Sita is asked to prove her chastity and purity through the agnee pareeksha (trial by fire). Her loyalty to Rama is tested twice throughout the story, while Rama himself is never questioned even once. This is reflected in our gendered cultural expectations till today wherein women are continually questioned and blamed for the atrocities they face, while men are not questioned at all.
These beliefs are also reflected throughout colonial Indian history. For example, certain provisions of Section 260, Code of Civil Procedure, 1882, related to the restitution of conjugal rights, and enabled husbands to use the threat of imprisonment to force reluctant wives to live with them. The famous Rukhmabai case of 1884 was fought against this provision. Some of the Hindu orthodox men who opposed imprisonment did so only because they claimed that no respectable Hindu man would anyway welcome an imprisoned woman, who has been outside of the home for a long time, back into the home.
These is not the kind of patriarchal social messaging a secular state should be endorsing during a national lockdown.
Bharat Mata
It is not just the virtues of a good wife that have been associated with nationhood, but also the glorification of motherhood, or Bharat Mata (Mother India), who is inevitably Hindu. Modi appealed to the public to stay at home during the lockdown for twenty one days referencing Bharat Mata with an analogy of a foetus that stays in a mother’s womb for nine months —
In many parts of colonial India, in the last part of the nineteenth century, the image of the mother was used to represent the nationalist aspiration. Mothers were justified by the greatness of their sons. They embodied an undying spirit of self-sacrifice for the family; in Swami Vivekananda’s words, “that marvellous, unselfish, all-suffering, ever forgiving mother.” Just like the domestic domain ascribed to women was seen as a space untouched by colonial influence, so too was the identity of motherhood emerging as a domain which Hindu nationalists could claim as their own. Nationalist glorification of the domain of domesticity and motherhood also had the impact of keeping women out of public domains such as education and jobs.
Bharat Mata looks really exhausted during the lockdown. She is cooking, cleaning, and looking after children, men, and the elderly. She is facing violence behind closed doors and there are few means for her to report it. But the cultural expectation upon her is to be sacrificing, loyal, and endlessly giving towards her abusive family. This is the ideal of a woman that has been passed down for generations in upper-caste Hindu families. It is the same practices that continue to be promoted by the state through the use of patriarchal notions of women’s sexuality to enforce the COVID19 lockdown.
Sita Speak
Bina Agarwal, 1985
Sita, speak your side of the story,
We know the other too well.
Your father married you to a prince,
Told you to be pliable as the bow
In your husband’s hand.
Didn’t you note Ram broke the magic bow?
They say you-the ideal daughter –
Bowed your head in obedience
As you were sent away
With your husband you chose exile
Suffered privation, abduction
And then the rejection –
The chastity test on the scorching flames
The victim twice victimised.
Could those flames turn to flowers without Searing the soul?
They say you were the ideal wife
You questioned him not
And let him have his way
The poets who wrote your story
Said: a woman is not worthy of hearing the Ramayana; like a beast she is fit only For being beaten Could such poetry ever bring you glory?
Yet, they spoke their verses without challenge and With such falsehoods got away.
Sita Speak
You who could lift the magic bow and play With one hand
Who could command the earth with a word
How did they silence you?
