Commentary | Joyshri Pathak, To Think, To Practice: The Promise and Peril of Gender and Women’s Studies in Northeastern India
India’s election campaigns in recent years have been inundated with slogans like “Good Days are Coming” (Acche Din Aane Wale Hain) and “Save the Girl Child, Educate the Girl Child” (Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao), as the country has witnessed an upsurge of Hindutva attempts to re-entrench Brahmanical patriarchy and other conservative ideals. Hindu organizations that endorse Hindutva believe that if one does not support Hindu nationalism and its values and traditions, one does not belong in the nation. These dangerous ideals not only threaten the secularism of India, but also the security of members of minorities like people of different faiths, tribal communities, genders, and castes, etc. All the while, these campaigns glorify the image of the woman as a symbol of culture and tradition, while asserting that resisting or questioning patriarchal values infused in Hinduism is intolerable. Speaking out or taking action challenging Hindutva values, on the other hand, is seen as a threat to dominant right wing ideologies. Countering these orthodox norms is often received with hostility, attracting graphic insults, demeaning slurs, and even physical abuse and death threats.
Hindutva ideology proclaims a masculine desire to protect Bharat Mata (Mother India), the feminine nation that must be watched, monitored, and regulated. Right-wing adherents see their ideologies as asserting a “macho culture,” or a superior form of masculinity, drawing criticism of misogyny and homophobia. In this regard, this ideology echoes the deep-rooted patriarchal belief that women need to dutifully obey men and be submissive under their watch. Before the state election of Assam earlier this year, Amit Shah, Home Minister of India promised that if elected the conservative populist Bharatiya Janata Party would enacted to prevent a “love jihad and land jihad” in Assam, referring to the sensationalist Islamophobic conspiracy that Muslim men prey on non-Muslim women.
Those advancing Hindutva draw from the most conservative of Hindu ideals that regard women as lesser beings. To be sure, Hindu rituals and festivities have always preferred women as dutiful, obedient and subservient beings, be it brides touching the feet of the groom, wives keeping fast for their husband’s well-being, or restricting menstruating women from entering temples or widowed women from wearing colorful clothes or jewelry. These sex-based discriminations of conservative ritualism are obsolete in today’s world, but are still followed by most of the Hindu families. Discriminatory conventions and taboos, therefore, are not only limited to religious or traditional practices, but also greatly limit opportunities for women to attain education, professional careers, or to participate in society or politics.
“Gender and Women’s Studies are paramount to safeguarding women and the queer community from the political and social impact of the Hindutva project.”
In this context, the disciplines of Gender and Women’s Studies are paramount to safeguarding women and the queer community from the political and social impact of the Hindutva project. Women’s Studies has played the urgent role of tackling issues of oppression, inequality, lack of representation, wage inequity, sexual assault, and motherhood and familial burden, since it was introduced to India in 1986. However, the discipline is not enough to address broadening issues of body, disability, class, ethnicity, regional and racial inequality, queer studies, and so on. Hence, the emergence of Gender Studies as a discipline.
But how well did Women’s Studies spread its roots in a space like Northeast India? Only seven universities in the Northeast have departments of Women’s studies, including the UGC funded Centre of Women’s Studies. Elsewhere, Gender Studies only appears in a few other mainstream universities as an elective paper for a semester or specialization paper within the syllabus of other disciplines.
Pursuing gender and women’s studies in the Northeast is a wholly different experience than in metropolitan cities, hence the struggles and issues that borne out here are also different and context specific. To begin, the cultural realities of mainland India and the states of Northeast are different. What is common between both is the fear that a strong-willed, educated, and liberal woman would refuse to follow traditions, deny the responsibilities of marriage and motherhood, resist the assigned notion of chastity, explore her agency over her body and sexuality, and protest against the blatant misogynistic norms of the society. Therefore it is important to recognize distinctions and the need to address the region and culture specific issues of a particular location or community. The reason for this is obvious, as homogenizing the entire nation’s women and gender issues would be done at the cost of inclusiveness and representation, as the issues vary depending on the social background, ethnic strife, arm conflicts, caste history, literacy issues, geographical crisis and so on.
Without a doubt, Northeast India has its own set of dated and sexist rituals and conventions that emphasize familial values, traditional gender roles, and the chastity of women. As Bidisha Mahanta and Purusottan Nayak point out, the Northeast has still struggled to establish equal status for women in the society despite being free from dowries, sati pratha, female feticide and female infanticide (which persist in other parts of the nation). Customary norms practiced by various local tribes and communities, moreover, are not favorable for women at all, as they continue to be oppressive Ruth Lalsiemsang Buongpui also notes how despite being the only matrilineal communities where women have property rights, Khasi and Garo women do not actually have the authority to represent the family or make family decisions. Likewise, the Barpeta Satra (Vaishnavite temple) of Assam continues to restrict women from entering the Manikut (main dome), for it is considered inauspicious. As these examples show, women in the Northeast are still subjugated in the name of preserving traditional customs and tribal identity. Therefore, it cannot be asserted that the indigenous culture of the Northeast is progressive towards women, as gender discrimination still exists in subtle notes.
To make matters worse, students studying Women’s and Gender Studies in the Northeast often face questions about the relevance of a degree in these disciplines, along with the suggestion that the degree is futile because there are no substantial career paths in the region unless it is combined with other established subjects. The fact that only a few universities offer future research opportunities in these disciplines, along with the lack of a guaranteed placement after completing the degree, are the two main reasons why students choose to opt for other disciplines. Even the longevity of the departments that already exist in the Northeast is in question after the Plan XII of University Grant Commission (UGC) was unable to clarify if they were resuming the funding of the Centre for Women’s Studies in 2017 after their planned timeline was over.
Despite these obstacles, Women’s and Gender Studies provide a vital safe space for students and professors to discuss not only inequality or injustice, but also lived experiences, one’s sexual identity, orientation, desire and so on. I remember during my masters days the distinction between the classroom where we read Samuel Beckett’s play Endgame and the whole class laughed at an obscene scene (to hide our awkwardness perhaps), while in my gender and literature classroom we talked openly with our professor about very sensitive issues like rape, abuse, bodies, motherhood, lesbian desire, drag, gender performance, and so on. The atmosphere of the class in gender studies was much more sensitized and liberal, and it was not bound to the traditional norms of feminine chastity, ideal familial values, restrictive gender binaries and the stigma around sexual desire and orientation. The classroom not only introduced us to the history and evolution, emergence of theories and concepts in academia and scholarship, but also opened our eyes towards a new perspective where we could evaluate gendered experiences and detect the normalization of patriarchal conditioning in all of our everyday acts.
The disciplines of Women’s and Gender studies give students the tools to speak out against the oppression of women and queer communities in India, and to challenge dated socio-religious conventions that stagnate our social, cultural, economic growth. In the current political climate, it is worrisome to witness these pompous attacks against voices that speak for equality and freedom. The twenty-first century Northeast needs more radical activists, scholars and youth to take the blindfolds off of Hindutva fanaticism and its obsession with molding caste, women, gender, body, marriage into rigid restrictions. As a community away from the capital of academic prosperity, let us learn the lexicon of gender, unlearn irrelevant and condescending socio-religious norms, and practice broadening our horizon, instead of distorting people by fitting them into limiting categories and suppressing their autonomy. There is a need for international organizations, NGOs, governmental funding, and steady placements to attract more students and scholars and to maintain the energy of the movement through scholarly contributions and actions. The influence of the political, cultural, legal, medical and social institutions will be paramount to strengthening the roots of the disciplines of Gender and Women’s Studies and yielding promising results for the future of Northeast India.
Joyshri Pathak is a Doctoral Candidate in the Department of English, Gauhati University, and an Assistant Professor based in Assam. Her research interests include European literature, Gender politics, trauma and memory studies among others.
To cite this Commentary essay, please use the following entry:
Joyshri Pathak, “To Think, To Practice: The Promise and Peril of Gender and Women’s Studies in Northeastern India,” criticalasianstudies.org Commentary Board, August 9, 2021; https://doi.org/10.52698/OPMD5928.