South Asia: India, Giant of the Subcontinent - Dragons and Tigers: A Geography of South, East and Southeast Asia - page 226

The overwhelming majority of Indians are Hindu. In
fact, in some languages such as French and Persian, the
word for “Indian” is Hindu. It once meant “people be-
yond the Indus,” but history has rendered it, correctly or
incorrectly , a term designating a nation and a religion.
However, like India itself, Hinduism is a polyglot of prac-
tices and lifestyles. Unfortunately , in the twentieth-first
century , this kaleidoscope has become blurred under
the forces of socioeconomic inequities and political
ambitions.
The unlikely notion of Hindu chauvinism emerged
in the political arena with the Bharatiya Janata Party
(BJP) that was in power from 1998 to 2004. This Hindu
nationalism is not simply religious. It incorporates the
resentments and animosities of caste, belief, and regional
sectarianisms. It cannot be simply religious, because
Hinduism is not a singular faith divorced from all other
faiths. Hinduism is not a monolith; it is inclusive in na-
ture. However, it is convenient to appeal to differences in
practice or detail of belief for those with a particular po-
litical or economic agenda.
In the early 1990s, the BJP called for a ban on Eng-
lish, the promotion of Sanskrit, and a ban on proselytiz-
ing by other religions. By 1999, the BJP had achieved
national power and Hindus were killing Christians in
Gujarat, Orissa, and elsewhere. Gujarat is also a hotbed
of Hindu-Muslim violence. Religious insurgencies con-
tinue to plague this vast and complex country .

Whenever there is a patriarchal system, control of
women' s honor becomes a primary symbol for the
strength and preservation of both family and state. The
most reliable form of ensuring honor is embedding the
concept into the female psyche from birth. A woman
must be imbued with a creed of self-discipline. En-
trenched into the notion of self-discipline is reverence
for such precepts as chastity , fidelity , maternity , domes-
ticity , humility , and self-sacrifice.
Because women have always been instilled with
these essential fundamental values in the context of
patriarchal structures, they become custodians of such
value systems that must be passed on through genera-
tions, thereby ensuring piety of the household. Sati, as
discussed in Chapter 6, was the epitome of a woman' s
subservience to and honor of her husband and the entire
community .
Women who have internalized these values and
shaped their lives around them find their very self-
esteem threatened by the social and economic changes
they see around them. Risquételevision programs, show-
ing a couple holding hands or mildly embracing, for in-
stance, are perceived as outright scandalous. The
“brazen” behavior of middle- and upper-class city girls in
public and such radical ideas as dating or choosing one' s
own husband are anathema to conservative women as
well as men.
Ironically , Hindu nationalism and conservatism have
created new spaces for women' s activism. Upper- and
middle-class families who, in many areas, tend more to-
ward to female seclusion, are permitting their daughters
to take part in protests and even riots against perceived
forces of societal evil.
Upper-caste Hindus see themselves as under attack
on two fronts: from the outside by “immoral minorities”
(read Muslims) and from the inside by “unclean
castes”—having to work with them, for instance. Under
this onslaught, it is clear that women must be protected
from the rapacious intent of “others.”
Prominent women in the Hindutva movement are
very few in number and varied in style but common to all
of them is an emphasis on personal strength. Moreover,
all stress vigilance against Muslim “perpetrators” and
even the potential evils of Christianity .
In 2007, a Hindutva political official announced
that, “we Hindus believe in peaceful coexistence, Mus-
lims do not.” This proclamation seems ludicrous to
India' s some 150 million Muslims who well remember
the riots of 2002, which began after a train in Gujarat,

HINDUTVA: GENDER AND SOCIETY
Hindutva means “Hinduness”—a desire to make India a
country where Hindu principles prevail. This is the guid-
ing precept of the BJP and is expressed as Hindu nation-
alism, Hindu patriotism, and Hindu heritage. Hindutva
believers want to foist a Hindu curriculum on schools,
inhibit activities of non-Hindu religious proselytizers,
change family law in ways that would upset Muslims,
and render non-Hindus as outsiders.
This philosophy worries Muslims and other non-
Hindus. It also concerns those who believe that India' s
secularism, its separation of religion and state, are indis-
pensable to the survival of its democracy . Moderate Hin-
dus and non-Hindus oppose these divisive ideas.
However, they do acknowledge the appeal of the BJP ,
which swept into power on a Hindu nationalist platform.
They also realize that it is only the constraints of a coali-
tion government that keeps the excesses of Hindutva
from being put into practice.