Abstract
The statement quoted above is the dedication in a book written by Indian feminists whose voices express the complex experience and problems of women in contemporary India. Their words succincdy convey the great struggle of Indian women in their search to live a life of human dignity and worth, a life that encompasses both the freedom of women and the freedom of religion in an ancient culture. Yet these two freedoms may well be in tension in present-day India—a vast country with more than a billion people consisting of numerous ethnic and religious groups surrounded by a dominant Hindu culture. Hinduism is one of the oldest religions of humankind, marked by an extraordinary heritage of religious rites, practices, symbols, and beliefs, and not easy for an outsider to grasp. This article will explore areas where the freedom of religion or belief in India is in tension, or even clashes, with the human rights of Indian women today.
“To all those women of India some known, but mostly unknown whose lives have been devoted to the struggle for freedom and dignity.”
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References
See Madhu Kishwar and Ruth Vanita, eds., In Search of Answers: Indian Women’s Voices From Manushi (New Delhi: Manohar, 1996), dedication.
Ved P. Nanda, “Hinduism and Human Rights,” in Human Rights and Humanitarian Law: The Quest for Universality ed. Daniel Warner (Boston: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977), 2 9–4 1 (internal citations omitted); Leroy S. Rouner, éd., Human Rights and World Religions (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988). Rouner’s book contains a chapter on “Duties and Rights in Hindu Society” by John B. Carman (113–28), but it deals only with normative prescriptions, not with empirical social reality, nor is there any mention of women’s rights.
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See Klaus K. Klostermaier, A Survey of Hinduism 2d ed. (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1994). See especially chapter 23, “Stridharma: The Position of Women in Hinduism,” a chapter that was added to the second edition after reviewers had pointed out that in surveying Hinduism the author had not included women, a position typical of much traditional scholarship on Hinduism where women remain largely invisible.
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Quoted in Wadley, “Women and the Hindu Tradition,” 33.
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This point is made in Prabhati Mukherjee, Hindu Women: Normative Models (Andhra Pradesh, India: Orient Longman, 1978 ).
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Radha Kumar, The History of Doing: An Illustrated Account of Movements for Women’s Rights and Feminism in India 1800–1990 {London: Verso, 1993), 9.
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See Flavia Agnes, Law and Gender Inequality: The Politics of Women’s Rights in India ( New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999 ).
See Tad Stahnke and J. Paul Martin, eds., Religion and Human Rights: Basic Documents ( New York: Columbia University Press, 1998 ), 119.
See Kelly D. Askin and Dorean M. Koenig, eds., Women and International Human Rights Law vol. 1 (Ardsley, N.Y.: Transnational Publishers, 1999), section III.
Broken People: Caste Violence Against India’s “Untouchables” ( New York: Human Rights Watch, 1999 ).
Ibid., 30–32. See also Vimal Thorat, “Dalit Women and Human Rights: Some Neglected Issues,” in Human Rights of Dalits: Societal Violation, ed. G. S. Bhargava and R. M. Pal ( New Delhi: Gyan Publishing House, 1999 ), 163–68.
Quoted in The Human Rights Watch Global Report on Women’s Human Rights (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1995), 230.
Estimates of the total number range from hundreds of thousands to over ten million nationwide.
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Sara S. Mitter, Dharma’s Daughters: Contemporary Indian Women and Hindu Culture ( New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1991 ), 112.
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Klostermaier, A Survey of Hinduism 374.
See the perceptive analysis of this in Lata Mani, “Contentious Traditions: The Debate on Sati in Colonial India,” in Recasting Women, Essays in Colonial History, ed. Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid (New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1989 ), 88–126.
Hawley, Sati, The Blessing and the Curse, 7 (Introduction).
Kumar, The History of Doing 172–81 (ch. 11, “The Agitation Against Sati 1987–88”).
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Gabriele Dietrich, Reflections on the Women’s Movement in India: Religion, Ecology, Development (New Delhi: Horizon India Books, 1992). See especially chap. 1, “The Secular State: Freedom of Religion and Women’s Rights.”
See Eva Hellman, “Political Hinduism: The Challenge of the Visva Hindu Parisad” ( Ph.D. diss., Uppsala University, 1993 ).
Rao, “Speaking/Seeking a Common Language,” 132.
See Amrita Basu, “Hindu Women’s Activism in India and the Questions It Raises,” in Appropriating Gender: Women’s Activism and Politicized Religion in South Asia, ed. Patricia Jeffery and Amrita Basu (London: Routledge, 1998 ), 167–84.
Hindu fundamentalism in general is dealt with in a number of works, but there is little explicit reference to the role of women. This is true of Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby, eds., The Fundamentalism Project (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), as well as a number of other studies. See John Stratton Hawley, ed., Fundamentalism and Gender (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), especially his essay “Hinduism: Sati and Its Defenders,” 79–110. Most helpful and unusual is Tanika Sarkar and Urvashi Butalia, eds., Women and Right-Wing Movements: Indian Experiences (London: Zed Books, 1995); see Amrita Basu, “Feminism Inverted: The Real Women and Gendered Imagery of Hindu Nationalism,” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 25, no. 4 (1993): 158–80. Also very helpful is the wide-ranging survey by Courtney W. Howland, “Women and Religious Fundamentalism,” in Askin and Koenig, Women and International Human Rights Law, 5 3 3–621.
See Katrina Tomasevski, ed., Women and Human Rights ( London: Zed Books, 1993 ).
V. R. Krishna Iyer, Human Rights: A Judge’s Miscellany ( Wilmington, N.C.: B. R. Publishing, 1995 ), 237.
Radhika Coomaraswamy, “Reinventing International Law: Women’s Rights as Human Rights in the International Community,” (The Edward A. Smith Visiting Lecturer, Harvard Law School Human Rights Program, 1997), 26f.
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King, U. (2004). Hinduism and Women: Uses and Abuses of Religious Freedom. In: Lindholm, T., Durham, W.C., Tahzib-Lie, B.G., Sewell, E.A., Larsen, L. (eds) Facilitating Freedom of Religion or Belief: A Deskbook. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-5616-7_22
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