Towards an Inclusive Gender Just Code in India: Women’s Rights are Non-Negotiable 

https://amzn.in/d/gM7XgbQ 

The Common Civil Code (the UCC) in India was initially introduced during the making of the Constitution to create a common legal framework for marriage, divorce, inheritance, and adoption with a focus on gender equality. While it aimed to eliminate harmful practices and promote justice, its inclusion as a fundamental right was blocked due to potential conflicts with religious freedoms, resulting in its placement as a Directive Principle of State Policy. In post-colonial India, family laws remain governed by diverse religious norms. However, over the years, despite difficulties, women from diverse backgrounds have increasingly sought reforms through courts. These women-led reforms followed the framework of intersectionality, are progressive, democratic, just, and based on their everyday realities.
Simultaneously, the dominant narrative initiated by political parties and religious leaders has politicized this debate for their vested agendas while suppressing women's voices. This top-down approach driven by vested interests seeks to restrict women’s rights. Moreover, the current push for a UCC is coercive, unconstitutional, anti-secular, and anti-women. It forcefully imposes a discriminatory law and is lacking in a democratic process, therefore refused by many, including women from minority communities.
While rejecting this arbitrary law, this work argues that to navigate the complex terrain of religious freedom and gender justice, the family laws reforms should be comprehensive, inclusive, consensus-based, progressive, rights-based, uphold a person’s dignity, women-led, and should involve the consent of women from various communities it affects. This work suggests that the state should revoke the Uttarakhand UCC law. Instead, the state should facilitate conditions that allow women to exercise their rights through transformative constitutionalism across all communities. The family law reforms should adhere to democratic norms, constitutional morality, and gender justice. Grounded on the concept of women’s autonomy, this work proposes to rewrite a feminist code based on feminist principles of substantive equality, solidarity, acceptability, and respect for community rights while forging unity across diversity—a feminist code written by women, of women, and for women from diverse communities.

Patriarchy, Hindu Rashtra, and Bharat Mata

 Excerpts from 

Resisting Gendered Citizenship: The Politics of Colonialism, Nationalism, and Maternalism in India

https://riverapublications.com/article/resisting-gendered-citizenship-the-politics-of-colonialism-nationalism-and-maternalism-in-india

Patriarchy, Hindu Rashtra, and Bharat Mata

Despite the expansion of the progressive rights-based framework globally, religious sentiments, mysticism, and divinity have all been intricately woven into the fabric of spiritualism to shape the concept of theocratic nations (Roy, 1937:1). Such an authoritative framework glorifies women as mothers while denying them humanity. For example, in India, the Mother Earth or Goddess is worshipped through various rituals and traditions. Mother, as an asexual figure, is associated with Shakti, the divine power (Mayaram, 2016). Interestingly, this maternal figure is also visualized as the source of afflictions such as smallpox or chickenpox; and the healer of these very maladies. Hence, the maternal concept is enmeshed in patriarchal structures, where it is controlled and suppressed by male-dominated systems.

Brahminism, the ideology promoted by upper-caste, orthodox traditions, subordinates women, emphasizes male supremacy, and denies women their freedom while regulating their sexuality and fertility (Nigam, 2016). It views women as sinful, deceptive, wicked, fickle, and sexually insatiable (Chakaravarti, 1993). Consequently, it prioritizes the virginity of unmarried women and the chastity of wives. However, it cannot ignore a woman’s reproductive capacity. Therefore, Brahminism elevates women’s status as mothers. A Hindu upper-caste woman is valued primarily for her reproductive role in this hierarchical order. However, this motherhood is devoid of power and construed only as a mere carrier and preserver of patriarchy. She is expected to ensure blood purity, maintain caste hierarchies, and safeguard family honour. This framework values the mother of a son while otherizing the mother of a daughter.

Also, the patriarchal presumptions consider the father as a ‘provider’ and, therefore, superior to handle the role of a guardian. While quoting an ancient Indian mythological text, Dube (2001) explains that this discrimination against the mother was nudged into the socio-cultural imagination through the concepts of ‘seed’ and ‘land’, with women seen as passive incubators and not the owners of wombs. This theory negates their reproductive labour. In such a framework, children belong to their fathers. Their identity is construed through men.

In the nineteenth century, the British rulers criticized the downgraded status of Indian women by highlighting practices like Sati (widow immolation), child marriage, polygamy, purdah, and female infanticide. Several male reformers such as Raja Ram Mohan Roy and Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar considered this critique a symptom of decay. They initiated movements to end primitive practices and ‘uplift’ the status of women. They prioritized women’s education but never addressed the structural oppression. Also, deeply affected by their colonized status, the orthodox nationalists invoked the idea of a mythical "golden past" to justify women’s high status in ancient Vedic society. This narrative suggested that women’s status declined due to external influences such as the emergence of Buddhism and Jainism, and the invasion by the Mughals in the tenth and eleventh centuries.

In 1923, VD Savarkar in Essentials of Hindutva propounded the idea of rendering complete dedication to one’s Fatherland (Pitribhu) and Motherland (Matribhu) and linked it to Punyabhu (Holy land) merging the notions of religion, heterosexual family, and sacredness with nationalism. Further, in ‘Bunch of Thoughts', MS Gowalkar (1966) glorified the nation as a sacred motherland, intertwining the concept of territorial nationalism with the imagery of the divine mother. He besought women to be ideal mothers who teach their sons the idea of Hindu nationalism and desist from being modern or Western. This masculine ideology limited women’s existence to domesticity denying any transformation of gender relations (Dixit, 2013).

As per this regressive approach, the motherland must be protected by women warriors who fulfill their roles as mothers, leaders, and professionals (matrutvam, netrutva, and >kartutva). This idea of motherhood intersects with nation-building in three ways. One, women bear sons who defend the nation as soldiers; two, as primary caregivers, they socialize future citizens and warriors; and three, mothers manage homes and train children in patriotism (Banerjee, 2003). Similar to ideas propagated during the Nazi regime, this ideology confines women’s role as producers and nurturers who impart patriotism to their children (Venugopal, 2016).

Brahminical ideology deepens the gendered divisions by categorizing women into binaries of good versus bad, nationalist versus anti-nationalist, and respectable homely women versus vulgar street women. Those who challenged these norms or defied traditional "values" were ostracized. The purpose is to silence women's voices and isolate them. An autonomous woman who thinks, questions, and resists is a threat because she disrupts the patriarchal narrative framed by upper-caste men.

Bharat Mata and her Saviour Sons

During the interwar period, women emerged as a distinct political category. When progressive leaders such as Pandit Nehru, Gandhi, and Ambedkar envisioned a free secular nation, simultaneously orthodox nationalists projected their vision of Hindu Rashtra grounded in communal ideology. Both these frameworks relied on the mythical imagery of Bharat Mata as a symbol of the mother nation to forge anti-imperialist unity, though each interpreted it differently (Agarwal, 2019).

In Discovery of India, Pandit Nehru (1945:53) referred to peasants and workers and explained that “Mother India was essentially these millions of people, and victory to her meant victory of people.” According to Nehru’s vision, Mother India symbolized Indianness, cultural diversity, and secularism as the foundational principles of the nation-state. In contrast, Dr Ambedkar rejected the idea of Mother India deeming it as anti-women. He advocated for giving women their rightful dues and coined the term Bhaishkrit Bharat (Outcast India) to highlight the fractured Indian reality composed of multiple identities (Singh, 2017).

Contrary to this progressive vision, the regressive Hindutva framework exploited and instrumentalized women's roles as mothers to reinforce a narrow patriarchal idea. In this conception, women were expected to embody selflessness and a nurturing role. This masculine narrative objectified women portraying them as a glorified symbol of nationalism (Gupta, 2021). It linked religion with patriotism and depicted the nation as a Goddess (Menon, 2012). Connections were drawn between the nation's honour and the purity of female bodies while positioning men as the protectors of that honour. This metaphor was constantly evoked linking it with maps, language, and cows to design the nation because of its malleability, effectiveness, and emotional appeal (Gupta, 2001).

This nationalist motherhood was expanded to legitimize the idea of a theocratic nation-state, consolidating Hindu national identity and fostering a masculine nationalism. Several nationalist leaders such as Kiran Chandra Banerjee and Bipin Chandra Pal visualized Bharat Mata as an idol that expresses the idea of Hindu Rashtra. DN Jha (2016) explained that the vocabulary of Bharat Mata was not eternal but emerged only in the late nineteenth century, particularly with KC Bandopadhyay’s play Bharat Mata. Daniyal (2016) contended that the image of Bharat Mata was first deployed in Bengal in 1875 when Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay composed Bande Mataram, which became an anthem against British hegemony. Later in his novel Anand Math, Chattopadhyay hailed the motherland as a goddess. In 1905, a painting by Abanindranath Tagore titled Banga Mata visually embodied this idea and was widely used during the Swadeshi movement.

Aurobindo Ghosh, while explaining patriotism, referred to the map of India in 1905 and stated, “Do you see this map? It is not a map but a portrait of Bharat Mata: its cities, mountains, rivers, and jungles form her physical body. All her children are her nerves, ....” (Daniyal, 2016). This fusion of divinity, motherhood, and nationalism played a crucial role in shaping the vision of the mother nation as a body and political project, symbolized by the map of Bharat Mata draped with a saffron flag to consolidate the idea of the Hindu nation (Sumathy, 2001). This iconic depiction illustrated the concept of a unified India, or Akhand Bharat, encompassing Afghanistan, Myanmar, Tibet, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.

As a symbol of national purity and honour, Mother India became a construct that restricted women to rigid roles, reducing their identities to mere functions within the family and the nation. This myth of Bharat Mata marginalized women, erased their agency, and portrayed them as an ‘idealized, stylized and ultimately passive figure’ (Sumathy, 2001: 110) This discourse idealized the mother as an asexual symbol of femininity, with the dyad of a mother and son becoming central. This masculine dominance reflected a vision in which neither women were portrayed as daughters, nor non-Hindu men were considered as sons. The narrow imagination of Bharat Mata became inherently tied to the Hindu upper-caste male elite, excluding women, minorities, Dalits, and Adivasis.

This conceptualization of Bharat Mata has been further manipulated in post-colonial India by those propagating Hindutva ideology. They aggressively exploited this iconic symbol to foster communal division while inflicting violence upon those who refuse to chant the slogan "Bharat Mata ki Jai." (Jha S, 2016). This fundamentalist discourse weaponized the theocratic imagery of Mother India to incite communal conflicts. The coercive imposition of loyalty to such symbols has shaped a new narrative on patriotism and nationalism entangled with violence (Thakurta, 2016). This obsession has even led to petitions calling to rename India Gate to Bharat Mata Dwar (Parashar and Roushan, 2025).

Ironically, in a country that proudly chants "Hail Mother India," the everyday reality for women is a stark contradiction. Women endure relentless violence in public spaces and private spaces and face severe assaults in conflict zones such as the Northeast, Naxalite areas, and Kashmir. In short, in the Hindu Rashtra propagated by the current regime, the nation has waged an ongoing war on women's bodies, their sexuality, labour, and reproductive rights in the guise of hailing Mother India (Nigam, 2024c).

The Colonial Discourse and the Politics of Mother India

In The Sexual Contract, Carol Pateman argued that Western political theorists while asserting their masculine power, created a political order where men dominate to legitimize the subordination of women. Pateman contended that these power relations influenced democratic discourse, where the male fraternity upholds the masculine bond to preserve and expand its supremacy. She called this dynamic the "story of women’s subjection." The underlying purpose of this structure, she argued, is to consolidate men’s exploitative power over women’s sexuality and labour, reinforcing a fraternal order.

This idea of citizenship is much more complicated in the Indian context because of its fusion with the history of colonization. Colonizers, guided by Victorian ideology, replicated their oppressive discourse in the colonies, where patriarchy was already deeply entrenched while reinforcing caste and gender hierarchies. They portrayed Indian culture as savage, barbaric, uncivilized, deceitful, and sexually perverse, requiring civilizing interventions. Moreover, British rulers argued that the native women not only suffered at the hands of men but also were oppressed by “the entire body of scriptural canons and ritual practices,” which they claimed rationalized such atrocities within a framework of religious doctrine (Chatterjee, 1989). Colonizers highlighted the ‘woman’s question’ as a crucial tool of exploitation to justify their coercive intervention (Chakravarti, 1990). Colonialism was framed as a civilizing mission while the colonizers positioned their ‘higher morality’ in stark contrast to the perceived degradation of Indian women (Forbes, 1996).

Sinha (1995) argued that the colonizers evoked the contours of masculinity to distinguish between the ‘masculine Englishman’ and ‘effeminate Bengali’ native as the historically constructed categories. The natives were portrayed as savages who lacked self-control compared to the manly and civilized Englishman. These effeminate Indian men’s characteristics were reconstructed over the period by the colonizers. This war against the perceived backwardness was also evident from the book Mother India by Katherine Mayo (1927). Relying on the argument of the victimhood of women, she deemed Indian men unfit to govern their nation. Her work reinforced the imperialist narrative that denies “less ‘civilized races” their right to self-rule.’ (Sinha, 2000).

Reflecting the Eurocentric perspective, she portrayed India as a hypersexualized society, where motherhood was forcefully imposed on young girls (Teed, 2003). She highlighted practices such as purdah, female foeticide, and forced widowhood and reinforced this grim metaphor with census data, police records, hospital statistics, and official reports. Her claims repudiated the Indian nationalist’s efforts to revive the golden past (Sinha, 2006). Mayo (1927:16) argued, “Inertia, helplessness, lack of initiative and originality, lack of staying power and sustained loyalties, sterility of enthusiasm, weakness of life-vigour itself – are all traits that truly characterized the Indians not only of today but of a long past history.” Through these assertions, she questioned the masculinity of native men (Thapar 1993).

Mayo's book sparked a global controversy, raising critical questions about the political and social ramifications of colonial rule in India. Men were outraged. They viewed her work as an attack on their pride and dismissed it as imperialist propaganda (Wilson, 1997). Her motives, credentials, and observations were fiercely questioned. Gandhi referred to it as a "Drain Inspector’s report," while Tagore wrote an extensive rebuttal. Several reports and films were created to counter Mayo’s arguments. This controversy became a broader debate on Home Rule, ignoring the women’s condition.

In response to the imperial description of vulnerable Indian women and Mayo's accusations of backwardness, conventionalists adopted a different approach than earlier reform initiatives. They inverted Mayo’s metaphor to present the ideal of "Mother India" as a revered, divine figure symbolizing national pride. In the battle between colonizers and the colonized, the female body became a tool for representing the nation’s culture. Patriarchal notions were invoked to craft women’s political image as self-sacrificing mothers. This gendered portrayal served to "otherize" women, relegating them to passive roles.

The Nationalist Discourse and the Idea of Bharat Mata

Enloe (1989) remarked, “Nationalism has typically sprung up from masculinized memory, masculinized humiliation, and masculinized hope.” Similarly, the dominant Indian discourse systematically denied women their control over motherhood by intermixing maternalism with nationalism. Traditions critiqued by the colonial rulers were reinvented with the construction of ‘a new woman,’ ensuring the reification of male supremacy. Nationalists selectively appropriate Western modernity to defend conventional norms. They celebrated domesticity as a last reserve saved from the onslaught of colonization (Sarkar, 1992).

Emotions were fused in the nationalist project where domesticity became sacred and a mother was reduced to a patriotic object (Sarkar, 1992). Motherhood was idealized as a symbol of national pride while neglecting women’s issues, where women were portrayed as moral guardians of society (Mani, 1987). Men, in contrast, were visualized as the sons and protectors of the nation (Forbes, 1996). This regressive framework stripped women of agency, manipulating the maternal construct to serve the nationalist political agenda (Bagchi, 1990). Instead of recognizing women's autonomy, the nationalists co-opted women’s participation in the independence struggle to assert national identity. Within this framework, women's rights were restricted, therefore, this essentialized patriarchal discourse was vehemently resisted by women (O’Hanlon, 1995).

Chatterjee’s (1993) analysis of cultural nationalism in nineteenth-century Bengal explored how nationalists projected their superiority by creating a dichotomy between the ‘inner’ spiritual, pure, superior, and feminine world of the home (ghar), and the ‘outer’ material world (bahair) consisting of science, technology, and democratic ideals. Nationalists argued that while the West had conquered the material world, it had failed to dominate its spiritual culture (Chatterjee, 1989). They attempted to control the domestic sphere and positioned the family as a key site of resistance. This view presented Hindu culture in alignment with liberal, humanitarian values, in contrast to the Western model (Thapar, 1993). It emphasized addressing the "women’s question" internally, without colonial interference.

These dichotomies of feminine and masculine, inner and outer, spiritual and material, home and the world, all crafted the image of a middle-class respectable ‘new woman’ (bhadramahila) and compare her with an English woman (memsahib) and a common woman on the street such as the prostitutes, washerwomen, maidservants, and street vendors. This categorization bifurcated women as good and bad. The conventionalist norms portrayed ordinary women as ‘coarse, promiscuous, vulgar, sexually promiscuous, devoid of moral sense, loud, and quarrelsome’. She lacked the gentleness and refinement of the new woman who was educated, disciplined, and responsibly fulfill her familial duties. This formulation of the new woman remained subservient to patriarchal norms. It essentialized traditions to alienate the masses.

Nationalists designed regressive norms to control women’s mobility. They defined the role, status, and position of a new woman based on patriarchal virtues such as morality, sacrifice, modesty, chastity, virginity, purity, honour, devotion, loyalty, and decorum. As the custodians of family unity, preservers of spiritual identity, and defenders of cultural integrity, women were expected to embody these oppressive ideals while remaining rooted in limited roles. The conventionalists, thus, invented a new hegemonic patriarchal order distinct from the indigenous or Brahminical patriarchy that had existed before (Chatterjee, 1989).

However, Sinha (2006) challenged Chatterjee’s views by highlighting that when orthodox men critiqued Mayo’s book, several subaltern movements, such as the Self-Respect Movement in Madras demanded reforms to address gender, caste, and class hierarchies. However, these contentions were ignored because of the rising communal politics. Sinha (2000) argued that the Mayo's propaganda led to a crucial reshaping of women’s collective agency in colonial India, allowing them to reimagine women as equal citizens and rights-bearing individuals. The women’s movement effectively refashioned the feminist discourse, which marked a significant "rupture in the history of the empire.”

The organized women’s collectives expressed their outrage against Mayo’s propaganda, critiqued it, and acknowledged the need for social reform. Women's organizations passed a resolution recognizing the conditions presented in the book while condemning its "misrepresentations and false generalizations" (Sinha 2006: 141). Globally, they engaged with transnational networks including the League of Nations (Parr, 2021). Nationally, they mobilized agitations against Mayo's propaganda suggesting that imperialism itself was to blame and that Indian women, in collaboration with the national leaders, were in the best position to address their issues. Their protest rearticulated the ‘woman question’ to expose the myth of benevolent imperial paternalism and undermined colonial legitimacy.

Mayo’s Controversy and the Child Marriage Law

The controversy ignited by Mayo’s propaganda led to political transformations and had cascading political consequences in colonial India. While Mayo aimed to expose backwardness, her narrative was challenged by the native women inadvertently revealing the shortcomings of the imperial rulers as a civilizing force. This change was evident in the push for the child marriage law, where women from various backgrounds united to demand legislative reform. The mounting pressure to enact the child marriage law exposed the colonial state's inaction and resistance to progressive reforms.

The women’s organizations forced the reluctant colonial state to enact the Child Marriage Restraint Act (or the Sarda Act) in 1929 as a penal measure to regulate the age of marriage. This law was applied to women across communities, regardless of caste, class, or religion. Although they criticized the bill as deeply flawed, women’s collectives played an instrumental role in organizing the campaign for passing this law, positioning it as a strong response to the "Mother India" controversy (Sinha, 2000). They framed their stance around women's health and actively commented on the proposed bill, lobbying, and petitioning for approval (Forbes, 1996:88).

When women’s organizations advocated for this law, the Hindu upper-caste orthodox nationalists hindered their efforts to legalize equality and attempted to reinforce prevailing hierarchies. They articulated their opposition to raising the age of consent by citing Shastras (Hindu treatise). The women representing the All-India Women Conference countered this argument by demanding new Shastras (Nair, 1994). Similarly, the Muslim leaders sought an exemption from applying the law. However, women intervened actively to shift male dominance by advocating for an inclusive nation (Forbes, 1996).

This activism contributed to the emergence of women as agents capable of demanding their political rights. It illustrated that women no longer had to mediate their rights through their communities. Instead, they could directly approach the state. Additionally, this debate raised crucial questions regarding the dynamics between the colonial state and its subjects, especially how it utilized caste, kinship, culture, and religion to shape this relationship. Following the enactment of the Sarda Act, women’s activism expanded beyond the issue of marriage to demand reforms in inheritance laws besides equal rights for working women.

The Politics of Motherhood and Mothering

 Excerpt from 

Resisting Gendered Citizenship: The Politics of Colonialism, Nationalism, and Maternalism in India

https://riverapublications.com/article/resisting-gendered-citizenship-the-politics-of-colonialism-nationalism-and-maternalism-in-india

In many indigenous societies, women's reproductive capacity is imagined as a source of power that shapes their status and identity. While rejecting the notions of male supremacy, these societies view maternity as a positive and empowering experience. In Myth, Religion and Mother's Rights, JJ Bachofen (1967) explores the idea of matriarchal clans where mother's rights are central. These societies embody the concept of maternal rule, where women are considered influential matriarchs, and lineage is traced through them.

Thapar (2023) noted that matriarch societies existed in certain Indian regions, as evidenced by practices of bride price and the worship of mother goddesses as the symbol of power or Shakti. Further, the report Towards Equality (CSWI Report, 1974) observed the presence of matrilineal communities in North East and South West of India, particularly in Meghalaya, Assam, Kerala, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu. In some areas, matrilineal societies continue to thrive today. For instance, matriliny exists among the Khasi tribe in Meghalaya, where women hold significant roles in public spaces, although patriarchy works subtly (Rathnayake, 2021).

In contrast, within patriarchal societies, several scholars have distinguished between oppressive motherhood and feminist mothering. Fineman (1991) describes male-dominated motherhood as "a colonized concept" where a woman’s experience is defined and shaped by regressive principles. Rich (1976), in Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution, argues that patriarchal motherhood is a reductive social construct imposed to control women. It fails to acknowledge the complex women’s experiences, reducing them to vessels or containers to produce babies. This subjugation of female reproductive tasks is evident in many traditional societies, where a child's identity is legally and customarily tied to the paternal family.

Patriarchal motherhood otherizes women by appropriating their roles, identities, and contributions. For centuries, societal prejudices have minimized women’s efforts co-opted their achievements, erased their contributions, and given credit to men. Consequently, women’s work is appropriated in the guise of the "father" of science, the "father" of the Constitution, the "father" of literature, and so on. This misogynistic framework relies on paternal principles to erase a woman’s role under the pretext of sacrifices for her children, family, community, and nation. Additionally, this masculine approach ignores the fact that wars, violence, trauma, and suffering are primarily the result of male-dominated decisions in contrast to the feminist principles that focus on peace, justice, and care.

Nevertheless, several feminist scholars have demonstrated that focusing on motherhood prioritizes the role of women as caregivers, not as citizens endowed with economic, political, and social rights (Dietz, 1985; Phillips, 1991). In The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir argued that the idealization of motherhood discourages women from pursuing meaningful careers and personal advancement. Additionally, caregiving is associated with women’s invisible labour leading to their exploitation (Tronto, 1993). Moreover, in capitalist economies, women are increasingly forced to choose between their careers and maternal roles (Kadoglou and Sarri, 2013). Caught between the demands of family, work, and motherhood, they struggle to break through the glass ceiling and face the penalties of motherhood (Kahn et al., 2014).

However, this debate on women’s economic rights being overshadowed by maternalism often overlooks the situations of pecuniary compulsion faced by women in Third World countries. In these contexts, women as mothers and subalterns, are compelled by their specific circumstances to ensure the survival of their families while also advocating for their rights. Trapped by the constraints of marriage and motherhood, with limited education or employment opportunities and no available support, for many, maternalism is not a matter of choice. In situations of absence of a husband due to illness, divorce, abandonment, or death, they were forced to fend for themselves and their children (Nigam, 2024a). This agency was evident in cases like the Bhopal Gas Tragedy and many similar situations described below. In such circumstances, motherhood moves beyond the private sphere and into the public domain, transforming into empowered mothering where the personal becomes political.

Moreover, in the context of Black mothers as caregivers, bell hooks (1984) argued that the early criticisms of maternalism by white feminists were unfair, as they excluded a large segment of women from the feminist movement. This narrow constriction of feminism affected poor and non-white women because mothering served as a site of positive affirmation for them. By condemning maternalism, these feminist perspectives overlooked how it could serve as a source of strength and identity for marginalized women. She explained,

“At the beginning of the feminist movement, feminists were harsh critics of mothering, pitting that task against careers which were deemed more liberating, more self-affirming. However, as early as the mid-'80s some feminist thinkers were challenging the feminist devaluation of motherhood and the overvaluation of work outside the home.” (Hooks, 2000: 76)

Furthermore, Hooks (1984) illustrated how Black mothers redefined family work as humanizing labour, which affirms a woman's identity as a caring individual. She argued that feminist mothering can be liberating, positive, and revolutionary. While work can provide financial independence, she explained that the capitalist culture fosters sexism, competition, antagonism, and alienation. It fails to meet deeper human needs. She emphasized that women’s liberation cannot be found solely while pursuing economic independence but through reclaiming the value of caregiving.

O’Reilly (2008) in Feminist Mothering has deconstructed mothering from a wider perspective to explain the concepts of feminist and empowered mothering. According to her, the former resists and refuses patriarchal motherhood while the latter widens its scope to focus on a mother’s position of agency, authority, and autonomy. Maternalism, therefore, is viewed as a site for activism, where mothers fulfill their selfhood through work, activism, friendships, relationships, and hobbies by involving the larger networks to make it compatible with paid employment. O'Reilly (2004) explained that feminist mothering dismantles patriarchal narratives to create space for counter-narratives of maternalism. She introduced the term "matricentric feminism," based on women’s agency as mothers (O’Reilly, 2016).

Hence, different from patriarchal motherhood, feminist mothering is a complex and multifaceted concept that prioritizes inclusion and justice. Embedded in the maternal framework, it is dynamic, emancipatory, and can be a site for feminist activism (Roberts, 1993). Collins (2000) elaborated on Black mothers’ experiences to demonstrate that mothering is a political category. Feminist mothering is entrenched in feminist consciousness and focuses on preservation, growth, and acceptability. It is a key to social change capable of transforming family and society (Chodorow, 1978; Ruddick, 1989). Hence, an inclusive feminist theory must consider women’s diverse experiences, specifically in post-colonial societies, which entails explicit nuances considering the socio-economic and political context.

Resisting Gendered Citizenship: The Politics of Colonialism, Nationalism, and Maternalism in India

 https://riverapublications.com/article/resisting-gendered-citizenship-the-politics-of-colonialism-nationalism-and-maternalism-in-india

Abstract

This work examines the politics surrounding Indian women’s rights, illustrating how it deeply intertwines with historical narratives of marginalization and resistance. In the context of the struggle for independence from colonial rule, women's rights got enmeshed with maternal rhetoric, thereby triggering gendered notions of citizenship. The dominant rhetoric contemplated by colonial narratives and orthodox nationalist discourses framed citizenship through the prism of patriarchal motherhood to deny women control over their reproductive roles, intertwining it with the nation to symbolize Mother India. Despite their active participation in the freedom struggle, contributions to drafting the Constitution, and efforts to secure their citizenship rights, maternalism is systematically exploited to exclude women. Yet for ages, individually and collectively, women have consistently fought to reclaim their rights as citizens, striving towards feminist mothering. This work unravels these complexities of marginalization and resistance. It claims that feminist agency persists in diverse forms and calls for the reassessment of maternal politics besides rethinking legal and policy measures to support women’s ongoing struggle for citizenship rights.

Keywords

Motherhood, mothering, colonialism, nationalist discourse, citizenship, feminism

Introduction

In Decolonising the Mind, Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong'o (1986) explores the hegemonic aspects of colonial domination highlighting how imperial rulers inflict violence and deployed language and ideology to undermine local traditions. He wrote, “The bullet was meant for physical subjugation. Language was the means of spiritual subjugation.” Simultaneously, the orthodox nationalist discourse in the non-Western world emerged in response to colonialism and perpetuated hegemony through the language of oppression to silence the voices of the oppressed, rendering them invisible. In short, both the colonial rulers and conservative nationalists deployed regressive masculine ideologies to marginalize women.

Spivak (1988) in 'Can the Subalterns Speak?’ noted how the voices of 'brown’, 'black’, or 'women of colour’ have been muted throughout the intellectual discourse. She argued that colonial power displayed paternalism while portraying colonizers as saviours of colonized women in need of rescue. Patriarchal ideology has systematically negated the feminine realities and suppressed the 'herstory’. Moreover, while writing history, women’s role has been overshadowed by the reification of male supremacy (Butler, 2011).

Rather, every aspect of women's lives, including their reproductive abilities and sexuality, has been manipulated to uphold an androcentric worldview. The authoritarian patriarchal regimes worldwide exert control over maternalism by legitimizing marital rape, prohibiting divorce, demonizing reproductive freedoms, and criminalizing abortion. Rich (1976:68) writes, "The idea of maternal power has been domesticated. In transfiguring and enslaving woman, the womb — the ultimate source of this power—has historically been turned against us and itself made into a source of powerlessness".

In colonial India, to justify colonization, the British rulers portrayed young mothers as victims of their own culture to paint the image of a backward nation. In response, the orthodox nationalists symbolized women as "Mother India," idealizing them as the embodiments of national virtue and sacrifice. In this contestation between colonial and nationalist perspectives, women's voices were suppressed. Both these narratives by the colonizers and nationalists depicted women through regressive ideologies to diminish their agency, reducing them to mere tokens reproducing future citizens (Sarkar, 1992).

Neither women’s demands nor their needs could be integrated into these regressive notions around maternalism (Forbes, 1996). These dominant narratives prioritized males as liberal subjects and relegated women as mothers, wives, or daughters. These politics of exclusion erased women's significant contributions to the freedom struggle, their involvement in drafting the Constitution, shaping laws, and rights advocacy. Despite their active engagement, women’s efforts were overshadowed by dominant discourses. However, since ancient times, women have advocated for their rights rooted in feminist principles of justice, seeking to redefine citizenship (Nigam, forthcoming).

Drawing from James Scott’s (1985) notion of everyday resistance, this work explores the complexities of women’s oppression and resistance during colonial times and in post-colonial India. It dwells on questions regarding the treatment of women as second-class citizens in the dominant discourse. Why are women glorified as mothers and yet otherized in reality? Why did the state, in colonial and post-colonial India, define women’s rights through the prism of patriarchal family relationships, particularly motherhood? Why has the state negated women’s agency while disregarding their claims to equal citizenship? How does the dominant narrative continue to marginalize women, and how have women contested this subjugation while deploying constitutional and feminist frameworks striving towards feminist mothering?

While briefly examining the historical context and several case studies, this work demonstrates that mothering is a subversive site where women as mothers, single mothers, non-mothers, and citizens have challenged the power of the authoritarian states to reclaim their citizenship rights by evoking the rhetoric of politico-legal rights and maternal appeals. Instead of conforming to the patriarchal norms, they have reimagined feminist approaches to mothering (Nigam, 2024a). Rejecting their portrayal as symbols of sacrifice for nationalistic or patriarchal purposes, women have resisted oppressive narratives to redefine mothering as a source of strength. While doing so, they reshaped the dominant narrative to imagine an inclusive and just society (Nigam, 2024b). This work suggests examining the debate on women’s rights in the non-Western world through the layers of the discourse embedded in history alongside the feminist narrative rooted in the constitutional framework. It claims that feminist agency persists in diverse forms and proposes rethinking legal and policy measures to support women’s ongoing struggle for citizenship rights and to enable conditions fostering empowered mothering.