Abstract
Women engage in patriarchal negotiations in view of creating a space for their personal well-being. However, these negotiations tend to remain as a ‘politics of survival’, which do not address the structural inequalities of the established order. Since patriarchy is deeply entrenched in the Indian society, it demands a shift from the politics of survival to a ‘politics of subversion’ as a means of challenging its persistent character. Politics of subversion entails a process by which women gain control over their lives. It calls for a rights-based approach on the part of women, involving resistance as a means of contesting and overturning hegemonic structures and reclamation of what has been denied them over the ages. A critical consciousness is imperative in this task of subverting patriarchy, and feminist sensibilities can enable this in women.
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Notes
- 1.
The gruesome gang rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl child who belonged to the Gujjar–Bakarwal community, a predominantly Muslim minority community in Kathva of the Jammu region, in January 2018, is a glaring projection of the intersectionality of patriarchal sexual violence. See “Communalizing Sexual Violence”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol.53, No.6, Feb. 2018; Samreen Mushtaq and Mudasir Amin, “Why the Kathua Case Cannot Be Seen Outside of India’s Nation-building Project”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol.53, No. 19, May 12, 2018.
- 2.
Banyard K., The Equality Illusion, London: Routledge, 2010.
- 3.
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, New York: Routledge 1990/1999: viii.
- 4.
Joan W Scott, ‘Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis’, American Historical Review, Vol. 91, No 4, 1986, 1053–1075.
- 5.
See S. Anandhi, J. Jeyaranjan and Rajan Krishnan “Work, Caste and Competing Masculinities: Notes from a Tamil Village”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 37, No. 43 (Oct. 26–Nov. 1, 2002), 4397–4406.
- 6.
Catherine MacKinnon, Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and law, Cambridge MA: Princeton University Press, 1987.
- 7.
Christian Scharff, “Femininity”, in Mary Evans and Carolyn Williams (eds), Gender, the Key Concepts, London and New York: Routledge, 2013, 60–63.
- 8.
I borrow this expression ‘de-naturalization of gender categories’ from Carolyn Pedwill. See “Power” in Gender, The Key Concepts, 185.
- 9.
Rajesh V. Nair takes the notion of ‘counter-space’ from Lefebvre in order to interrogate the performative aspect of gender. See his “Rethinking Panel Culture: Resistance and Subversion in Drawing the Line: Indian Women Fight Back”, Indian Journal of Gender Studies, 24/2 (2017), 266–280, 266.
- 10.
Kumkum Roy (ed), The Power of Gender and the Gender of Power: Explorations in Early Indian History, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010, 2.
- 11.
Judith Butler, The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997b, 18.
- 12.
Butler, Gender Trouble 1990/1999, viii.
- 13.
Uma Narayan, “Minds of Their Own: Choices, Autonomy and Cultural Practices and Other Women” in L.M. Antony and C. Witt (eds), A Mind of One’s Own: Feminist Essays in Reason and Objectivity, Colorado Westview Press, 1993.
- 14.
As per tradition—though not very distant historically—women belonging to the age group between 10 and 50 years are not allowed entry to the Sabarimala shrine dedicated to Lord Ayyappa, who is believed to be a celibate deity, on the belief that menstruation will pollute the deity and the shrine. While there is clearly a caste and gender politics associated with misogynic notions of religious purity/pollution in these prohibitions, thousands of women protested on the streets in Kerala in October 2018, holding ‘Save Sabarimala’ placards, unmindful of its absurdity. See Kunika, “Why Patriarchy Continues?”, Economic and Political Weekly, (October 27, 2018) Vol. Liii No, 43, 4–5; Kalleeswarm Raj, “Do all women have a right to enter Sabarimala?”, The Hindu, October 20, 2017; Rajan Gurukkal, “Yes, Sabarimala Is In Peril, But Not The Way You Think”, Outlook, October 25, 2018.
- 15.
Uma Chakravarti, Gendering Caste, (Revised edition), New Delhi: Sage, 2018.
- 16.
Brahmins are considered to be holding the highest status on the caste hierarchy.
- 17.
Padma Angol, “From the Symbolic to the Open: Women’s Resistance in Colonial Maharashtra”, in Anindita Ghosh (ed) Behind the Veil, 21–57, 33.
- 18.
Kavita Panjabi and Paromita Chakravarti (eds) Women Contesting Culture, xx.
- 19.
Butler, Gender Trouble, (Special Indian Edition) 2013, 44.
- 20.
Ibid., 31.
- 21.
Kumkum Roy, The Power of Gender and the Gender of Power…, 2.
- 22.
In the narration of Lissie in the previous chapter, she suggests that women learn from Kamasutra in order to exercise sexual agency.
- 23.
Kamasutra IV.1.11; IV.24, 16 etc., See Kumkum Roy “Unravelling the ‘Kamasutra’”, Indian Journal Gender Studies, 3 (1996): 2, 155–170.
- 24.
Rajesh V. Nair, “Rethinking Panel Culture…”, 277.
- 25.
Bandhyopadhyay Shibaji 1994, ‘East Meeting the West’, Kolkata: DSA programme in Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University.
- 26.
Kavita Panjabi and Paromita Chakravarti (eds), Women Contesting Culture, xliii-xliv.
- 27.
Sherry B. Ortner, “Selections from ‘Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture’” in Carol C. Gould (ed), Key Concepts in Critical Theory: Gender, New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1997, 16–24.
- 28.
Kavita Panjabi and Paromita Chakravarti (eds), Women Contesting Culture, xlvii.
- 29.
Christian Scharff, Femininity, in Gender, the Key Concepts, 64.
- 30.
See Human Development Report 1995, 1, 10.
- 31.
Padma Angol, “From the Symbolic to the Open: Women’s Resistance in Colonial Maharashtra”, in Anindita Ghosh (ed), Behind the Veil, 21–57, 22.
- 32.
Haynes Douglas and Gyan Prakash (eds), Contesting Power: Resistance and Everyday Social Relations in South Asia, Berkeley and LA: University of California Press, 1992, 3.
- 33.
Padma Angol, “From the Symbolic to the Open…”, 27.
- 34.
Ibid.
- 35.
See Angol, “From the Symbolic to the Open”, 28–55.
- 36.
Anindita Ghosh (ed), Behind the Veil 16.
- 37.
Padma Angol, “From the Symbolic to the Open…”, 57.
- 38.
Ruth Vanita: “Thinking Beyond Gender in India” in Nivedita Menon (eds), Gender and Politics in India, New Delhi: Oxford University press, 1999, 530.
- 39.
Cf. Anindita Ghosh (ed.), Behind the Veil: Resistance, Women and the Everyday in Colonial South Asia, Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2007, 8.
- 40.
See Douglas Haynes and Gyan Prakash (eds), Contesting Power: Resistance and Everyday Social Relations in South Asia, Berkeley and LA: University of California Press, 1992, 3.
- 41.
Geraldine Forbes, “Small Acts of Rebellion: Women Tell Their Photographs” in Anindita Ghosh (eds), Behind the Veil…,72.
- 42.
See Nivedita Menon, “Outing Heteronormativity: Nation, Citizen, Feminist Disruptions”, in Nivedita Menon (ed), Sexualities, New Delhi: Women Unlimited 2007, 3–51. See also Mary E. John and Janaki Nair (eds), A Question of Silence? The Sexual Economies of Modern India, New Delhi: Kali for Women 1998.
- 43.
See Anindita Ghosh, “A world of their very own: Religion, pain and subversion in Bengali Homes in the Nineteenth Century” in Anindita Ghosh (eds), Behind the Veil… 191–221, 221.
- 44.
Ibid.
- 45.
Bierema, Laura L. “The Role of Gender Consciousness in Challenging Patriarchy,” Adult Education Research Conference (2002) http://newprairiepress.org/aerc/2002/papers/4, 2.
- 46.
Anindita Ghosh, “A world of their very own …”, 200.
- 47.
Padma Angol, “From the Symbolic to the Open…”, 36.
- 48.
Gerldine Forbes, “Small Acts of Rebellion: Women Tell Their Photographs…”, 81.
- 49.
Padma Angol, “From the Symbolic to the Open…”, 33.
- 50.
Reich Wilhelm, The Mass Psychology of Fascism, London: Pelican, 1975, 138.
- 51.
Audre Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power” in Sister Outsider, Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde, CA, the Crossing Press Feminist series 1984, 53–58.
- 52.
Ibid., 59.
- 53.
For a detailed analysis of Indian #MeToo movement, seewww.epw.in/engage/article/metoo-crucial-moment-revisit-history-indian-feminism.
- 54.
V. Geetha, Patriarchy, 160.
- 55.
For more information on STEPS and women’s Jamaat, visit www.stepswomenjamaat.org/
- 56.
Cf. Paolo Freire, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 15.
- 57.
Ibid., 25–26.
- 58.
Ibid., 54.
- 59.
Ibid., 101.
- 60.
Rajesh V. Nair, “Rethinking Panel Culture…”, 267.
- 61.
Adrienne Rich, The Dream of a Common Language, New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1978.
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Abraham, K. (2019). Conclusion: From Politics of Survival to Politics of Subversion. In: Persisting Patriarchy. New Approaches to Religion and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21488-3_7
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