Hasan, Zoya. "Gender, Religion, and Democratic Politics in India". Third World Quarterly, Vol.31, No.6 (2010): 939-954.

Hasan, Zoya. "Gender, Religion, and Democratic Politics in India". Third World Quarterly, Vol.31, No.6 (2010): 939-954.

• The election of a Bharatiya Janata Party-led government in 1998 represented a massive change in Indian politics, where previous decades had seen the BJP politically isolated. This was the turning point in the political changes that had begun in 1989 with economic liberalization and the rapid rise of Hindutva political organizations, collectively known as the Sangh Parivar (939).
• Secularism in India does not refer to the separation of church and state, its traditional meaning in the United States, but instead to the duty of the government to treat all religions with equal respect and protect them from persecution or discrimination. This often requires regulation and government involvement in religious affairs (940-941).
• One of the justifications provided for the Indian government's secular policies is that they promoted gender equality, which was enshrined in Articles 14 and 15 of the Constitution. Under the Nehru government, Hindu customary and religious laws were overruled by progressive laws on women, but Muslims, Sikhs, and others were largely excepted from these laws (941-942).
• Jawaharlal Nehru originally planned to create a unified code of civil laws for all religious communities in India, but delayed this due to continued tensions following independence. It was never implemented, and Muslim communities have strongly resisted the concept (942).
• The BJP and RSS actually play a large role in promoting the expansion of women's rights for Muslims. Although this is done as a political gimmick to incite anger at the Muslim community, it still serves to promote issues of Muslim women's rights (948). Today the BJP is the strongest advocate a uniform civil code (949).
• Most discussions of the uniform civil code have not been framed in issues of feminism and gender, but instead as a religious dispute between those who wished for uniform laws and those who wanted religious communities to preserve their own laws (949).
• This current secular establishment has faced attacks from the Hindu right in recent decades on the grounds of claims that the implementation of secular policies actually benefits religious minorities at the cost of Hindus (941).
• The secular political order in India began to break down as the electoral dominance of Congress weakened. This prompted Congress to respond to political threats, like that of the Akali Dal in Punjab, by appealing to sectarian Hindu interests or claiming to protect minority religious groups from Hindu majoritarianism (943).
• The turn of Hindu nationalists against Congress really began in 1989 when conservative Hindus switched from Congress to the BJP in response to Rajiv Gandhi's decision to woo Muslim voters by overruling the Supreme Court decision on the Shah Bano case, making Muslims no longer subject to civil law on divorce (943-944).
• Secularism in politics further degraded during the dispute over the Babri mosque in Ayodhya, which Hindu nationalists claimed was build on the birthplace of Ram and should be demolished to make room for a Hindu temple. The BJP had been mobilizing over the issue since the mid-1980s, but during the 1991 election campaign Congress decided to support the Hindu nationalist side in an attempt to win back Hindu voters. The plan failed, with the increased visibility of the dispute over the Ayodhya temple benefiting the BJP rather than Congress (944).
• Hindu nationalism has been around for decades, but emerged as a major political force in the 1980s. Hindu nationalism is centered around the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh [RSS], which organizes groups like the BJP, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, and Bajrang Dal. These groups are attempting to create a Hindu state including all members of the faith (944).
• The main obstacles to the Hindu nationalist groups of the RSS and its affiliates is the internal diversity and division of Hindus. The solution of the RSS has been to unite Hindus around hatred and resentment of religious minorities, especially Muslims, who they blame for India's problems, thus uniting Hindus around a common enemy (945).
• Politically, the BJP also managed to benefit from public anger in northern and western India over the implementation of the recommendations of the Mandal Commission. During this period of high inter-caste tensions, the BJP presented itself as a symbol of Hindu unity by focusing on the Ayodhya temple issue. When the Janata Dal government attempted to oppose BJP mobilization, they appeared partisan and collapsed, while the BJP looked like a symbol of stability during the crisis (945-946).
• The BJP made an active attempt during the 1990s to recruit more women into their political activism surrounding the Ayodhya temple, an effort which was successful in expanding the RSS to include more women and more people of middle class backgrounds. Women played major roles in the campaigns around the Ayodhya temple and during associated riots, such as the 2002 Gujarat riots (946-947).
• The Sangh Parivar offers women many opportunities in politics and activism, including in communal violence. At the same time, however, its women's organizations teach doctrines of conservative social values, instructing members that their first responsibilities are as homemakers, wives, and mothers, and encouraging their return to these roles after brief periods of activism (947-948).
• The BJP and other organizations used women to gain support from more demographics and have argued in favor of women's rights in minority religious communities, but these actions are not because the organizations of feminist, instead it is a shrewd political tactic to serve a deeply conservative and patriarchal organization (952).
• The Indian women's movement feels trapped within the debate over a unified civil code. Current political polarization means that debate is between Hindu nationalists and Muslim parochialists, neither of whom strongly support women's rights. Most groups have either tacitly supported the unified civil code or have focused on dealing with other aspects of gender inequality in Indian Muslim communities (950).
• Within Muslim communities, gender issues have become highly politicized, as the abolition of customary laws on gender are seen as another step towards the domination of the marginalized, underrepresented, and impoverished minority. Changes in these laws are seen as a violation of Muslim identity (951).