Bharat Mata Ki Jai, Really? Indian Women Don’t Wish To Be Gods, Just Treat Us As Equals

Amidst the nationwide protests against Citizenship Amendment Act another incident which shook public conscience around the same time that CAB was passed, have been forgotten, the death of the second Unnao victim who was set ablaze by her alleged rapist. She came to be known as the ‘second’ victim because the first one was the 17-year-old who named BJP MLA Kuldeep Sengar as her rapist.?

These two cases got media attention but a total of 86 cases of rapes in just 11 months were reported from the same district, Unnao. Media was also shaken recently by the rape allegations brought against Swami Chinmayanand, a saffron wearing self proclaimed religious leader and a former BJP MP.?

AP

While there is a deep-seated criminal politician nexus in India, with every political party fielding candidates with criminal background, the growing incidences of sexual violence involving BJP leaders, and from areas like Unnao where BJP has a stronghold, and sexual offence by so called Hindu God men like Asaram Bapu, Nityananda etc should raise eyebrows if we consider their stated commitment to Hindu values, traditions and ‘Bharat Mata’.??

In the female deity circle, the exaltations that Bharat Mata receives is something to envy. BJP’s Union Minister recently claimed that if we don’t chant Bharat Mata Ki Jai (BMKJ) we are not allowed to stay in India. A Muslim MLA once got suspended for not chanting BMKJ. Such exaltation by a party which takes the moral ground so high above than the rest, that its party president, now India’s Home Minister, has declared an intention to stay in power for next 50 years (as if India is not a democracy which goes to poll every five years) should worry Indian women.

BCCL

Firstly, we should be worried who is this mysterious Bharat Mata deserving of all the attention even as girls and women face unspeakable violence with an average of 91 rapes reported daily as per 2018 NCRB data? 94% of these rapes are perpetrated by somebody known to the woman.

During BJP rule, Bharat mata has grown stronger but India has consistently fallen down the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap with the latest rank being 112th out 150 nations, 14 notch below from 2006 when it was first measured. Indian women’s labour force participation had a decadal fall to 26percent?in 2018 from 36.7 percent in 2005 even as women’s education rate increased during this period. From health, education, economic and political participation to the field of science technology entrepreneurship there is no field where women are ahead in a nation whose politics is so vociferously driven by ‘Bharat Mata’.

Yet, government seems to be not worried and responds to these global indexes with disdain because they are ‘Western’. If a Hindu nationalist government is unwilling to accept ‘Western’ facts and figures, then should it expect every Indian women to identify with a Bharat Mata who seems to be belonging to a particular caste, class and community? Bharat Mata’s imagery is that of a Hindu Goddess, and is a very restricted one.?

At one hand the lived realities of Indian women and on the other hand the worship of an abstract idea of Bharat Mata taking women back to an imagined ‘glorious past’; at one hand stories of women like the Unnao rape victim who lost her father, aunts and almost lost her life fighting for justice and on the other hand a hyper masculine ethnic nationalism which dismisses all critical questions in name of ‘India’s image’ – what really is the future of Indian woman if BJP indeed gets to rule for next 50 years??

To find answer, understand women’s role in ethnic nationalism.?

Ethnic nationality is based upon the idea of inclusion and exclusion. A national identity is chosen, and women’s role is to produce, nurture, protect and expand the identity. Women are valued as mother, wife, daughter, and other relational roles so long as they perform their pre-ordained duties while their individual choices and freedom are policed. Thus we have Indian?nationalists asking every Hindu woman to give birth to 10 children and young women like Hadiya has to go all the way to the Supreme Court just for her right to choice. Identity politics compels women to keep up a good image of her community men, so she is not allowed to complaint about violence, such as eve teasing, domestic abuse, marital rape or even gang rape.? ?

Women become the embodiment of nation and are objectified in the same manner that Bollywood item numbers do. Just like sexualized images of women strip them off their identity and reduce them to objects of sexual gratification the image of ‘Bharat Mata’ does the same for nationalist or patriotic gratification. The nation’s land or territory is imagined as female and citizens as males. Thus we have phrases like Dharti Putra, and the woman body is shown co-terminus with the map of India representing Bharat Mata.

Both the nation and its women are men’s property, something to be owned, cherished, controlled and exploited as per needs. But just like a piece of land cannot have a will or desire of its own, same with the women. The exaltation of mother Cow is also on the same line. Own the cow, worship the cow, milk the cow, abandon the cow.

BCCL

BJP and their ideological parent body RSS has never shied away from the view that women’s primary role is to be a home makers. In the documentary film ‘The world before her eyes’ film maker Nisha Pahuja captures the world inside a Durga Vahini camp, RSS’s women wing, where young girls are given lesson on patriotism, weapons and fire arms, self defences, and yet they are not given the freedom to choose whether to marry or not, whom to marry. It is perhaps not a wonder then that more Indian women get education more they stay at home.?

Far too many times Indian women have been told that only Hinduism treats women as Goddesses but it doesn’t seem to help for most of us. If there was only one lesson to be taken from the two centuries of feminist movement, it is that deification is the problem. Women don’t want to be Mata or Devi. Just treat them as humans with all the follies humans have, and let them live as equal citizens. Bharat Mata’s fate is sealed, she cannot be anything else, but for a free citizen sky is the limit. Let her be more.

The author is a Delhi-based freelance writer, photographer and research scholar. Views expressed are author's own.