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Internal Security Of India-A Feminist Perspective (By-Manasi Ahire)
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Internal Security Of India-A Feminist
Perspective
Authored By-Manasi Ahire
University Of Mumbai
Feminist Perspectives On Security Aim
To Open Discussion On Human Security Of People[1]
We
hope to open discussion on the construction of systems of authentic national
security based on the human security of people rather than the protection and
perpetuation of the interests of the states. The present patriarchal state
security system is at best prejudicial to women and at worst openly oppressive
of half the human family.
This
conceptual core is the assertion that human security derives from the
experience and expectation of wellbeing of persons, communities and the planet
which sustains them. Human wellbeing, it asserts, depends upon 4 essential
conditions for the maintenance and the continuation of human life, a life
sustaining environment the meeting of essential physical nudes, respect for the
identity and dignity of persons and groups, and protection from avoidable harm
and expectation of remedy for unavoidable harm.
The major
assumption that influences the analyses and the arguments for change presented
here is that patriarchy, the hierarchy of power and privilege which advantages
men over women, rich over poor and the heavenly armed over the defenseless, is
the germinal paradigm from which most major human institutions such as the
state, the economy, organized religions and the social relations of the family
and community have evolved. The present security systems functions to maintain
this global patriarchal hierarchy, the most severe manifestation of which is
constant, pervasive and often lethal violence against women. Gender violence is
a daily occurrence in virtually all societies. Its severity and frequency is
always heightened by regular presence of military, war and armed conflict.
A second significant
assumption of the framework and analyses is that the fundamental inequalities
inherent in the multiple contemporary forms of patriarchy, evident in most of
the world’s cultures and institutions, pose obstacles to the realization of the
human security of such vast numbers of men and women as to threaten human
survival. It is argued that these inequalities must be challenged for the sake
of survival, equality and security, each of which we assert to be integral one
to the other, and that the approach to that challenge so fundamental and
essential to its success as to be imperative is gender.
A third
central assumption is that the frustration of the experience and the
expectation of human wellbeing is a continuing cause of armed conflict and war.
War, in this time of weaponry of unprecedented destructive capacity that
produces irreparable environmental damage and infrastructure destruction at
enormous economic cost, poses the widest and most serious threat to wellbeing
and to the very survival of all life on earth.
These assumptions
lead to our central assertion that the present highly militarized global system
of state security is not only incompatible with human security but
represents
the foremost barrier to planetary security. Human security, we assert cannot be
achieved within this system. The challenge raised here is a call to the
transformation of the present system into one intentionally and specifically designed
to achieve human security.
According
to Bernadette Muthien[2],
Security itself-even as the notion of assurance of protection against great
harms to the nation, i.e., national security is a contested term. That
contestation for the most part, concerns the issue of what constitutes
security, rather than the clarification of the term itself.
We would also contend
that the disadvantaged position of women in patriarchy puts in jeopardy the
security of most of the human community-even the patriarchy. If women and those
who depend upon them are not secure, to what extent can a nation, in the true
sense of the word, meaning the people of a state or society, be secure? This is
one of the central questions that inform this collection on gendered aspects of
significant obstacles to and the possibilities for the achievement of human
security.
The Family
What
is a family? ‘Family’ is an institution with a legal identity, and the state
recognizes as a family, only in a specific way. A ‘family’ can only be a
patriarchal heterosexual family: a man, his wife, his children.
·
FUNDAMENTAL
RIGHTS
In 1984, a
judgment of the Delhi High Court said that the Fundamental Rights ensured to
every Indian citizen by the Constitution, were not applicable in the family:
these rights have to stop at the door of the home. Letting Fundamental Rights
into the family, said the judge, would be like’ letting a bull into a China
shop’. The judge was in fact, absolutely right. If you bring Fundamental Rights
into a family, and every individual in the family is treated as a free and
equal citizen that family will collapse. Because the family, as it exists, is
based on clearly-established hierarchies of gender and age, with gender
triumphing age, that is, an adult male is generally more powerful than an older
female.
·
DECISION-
MAKING
In the process of
decision-making too, the female opinion is always considered secondary or not
at all. Women have no rights to decide, once a decision is made by the family,
any challenge to that decision is taken as the challenge to culture, family and
their values. Many experts believe that there are about 1000 honor killings a
year in India. The basic cause of this social menace is the tradition of caste
and control over a women’s body and the patriarchal mindset. In the second
decade of the 21st century, the term honor killings has come to be
routinely used in the context of the Jat community in Haryana, the khap
panchayats which have ordered or carried out murders of couples who choose “
inappropriate” marriage partners.
Dr. B.R. Ambedkar
had seen the potential of inter-caste marriage for what he called ‘the
annihilation of castes’. He had stated in 1936, “The real remedy for breaking
caste is inter-marriage. Nothing else will serve as the solvent of caste”.
Evidently, Ambedkar’s recognition of inter-caste marriage is being potentially
disruptive of caste identities is one that
continues
to be shared and feared by Khap Panchayats seventy- five years later. These
distinguish themselves from the sarkari panchayats instituted under the State
umbrella, and claim greater legitimacy with the community, which may well be
true.
·
THE
SEXUAL DIVISION OF LABOUR[3]
One
of the key features of this institution is the sexual division of labour. Women
are responsible for housework, that is for the reproduction of labor power. The
labor that goes into making people capable of working day after day {food,
clean homes, clean clothes, rest} is provided by women. There is nothing
‘natural’ about sexual division of labour. Certain kinds of work are considered
to be ‘women’s work’ and other kinds-men’s, but more important is the fact that
whatever work women do, gets lower wages and is less valued.
This division of
labor is interpreted to affect the economic security of women. On one hand,
women are supposed to be physically weak and unfit for heavy manual labor but
both in the home and outside, they do the heaviest work-carrying heavy loads of
water and firewood, grinding corn, transplanting paddy, carrying head loads in
mining and construction work. The unpaid work that women perform includes
collection of fuel, fodder and water, animal husbandry, pot harvest processing,
livestock maintenance, kitchen gardening and raising poultry that augment
family resources. However, so naturalized are assumptions about gender roles
that the Indian census did not recognize this as work for a long time, since it
is not performed for a wage, but is unpaid labor around the family. If women
did not do this work these goods would have to be purchased from the market,
services hired for a wage, else the family would have to do without.
·
THE
PLIGHT OF THE DOMESTIC SERVANTS
One estimate of the number of domestic
workers{servants} in India is made on the basis of the fact that the
white-collared middle class in India is around three crores. Assuming most of
these would have a maid, and that some would be in the same family, the number
of domestic workers is likely to be more than 1.5 crores.
There’s nothing
inherently demeaning about cleaning up other people’s homes or cooking for them
for a wage, it could be just another job. But not in India, there the work has
the worst aspects of both feudalism and capitalism.
The callousness of the
Indian middle classes towards their servants outdoes the worst excesses of
feudalism. They are treated as less than human, less than pet animals. Apart
from facing physical and sexual abuse-which is common-domestic workers perform
heavy unrelenting toil, for they have no specific work hours if live-in, no
days off or yearly vacations if part-time.
Formerly, the feudal family
servant could at least expect to be broadly looked after in times of need, but
the modern servant can at best expect small loans for personal emergencies, to
be deducted from the pittance they are paid. On the other hand, a capitalist
work contract could be more dignifies than a feudal situation-two parties
mutually deciding terms and conditions. It can also be more alienating than the
generations-old feudal bond, with no human relationship beyond the lines of the
contract but, atleat in principle, it is more equal. The Indian servant knows
neither the safety net of the feudal servitor nor the formal equality of the
capitalist contract, at the same time he or she bears both the humiliation of
the feudal hierarchy and the cold exploitation of the capitalism.
The family is the basic unit of socialization
and the smallest replica of the state. The state constitutes societies and
societies constitute families. Looking at the security of this fundamental unit
thus becomes imperative. Without recognizing the security concerns at his
level, it would be unfair to talk about the security issues at the national
level.
The Society
‘I
measure the progress of a community by the degree of progress which women have
achieved’-Dr.B.R.Ambedkar
Quite true! In this respect,
the security of a community should also be judged by the degree of security
felt by women of the community. And this security should be whole some
involving psychological, financial, social and physical. The human security,
emphasizing sustainable development, social justice, human rights, gender
equality and democracy.
On
a cold December night in 2012, a 23-yr old woman, a paramedical student was
brutally gang raped and grievously assaulted and her male friend injured in a
private transport bus in India’s capital city, Delhi. While the young woman was
battling for life in hospital and following her death, two weeks later, there
was an outpouring of outrage and grief
not only in Delhi but across the cities and smaller towns of India,a
phenomenon perhaps unparalleled in recent history of public agitation in the
country. The nation-wide outcry was primarily directed against the apathy and
insensitivity of the criminal justice system of the state, as seen in the
abysmally low conviction rate in rape cases {24% in 2011, National Crime
Records Bureau}.
In
July 2004, the army picked up Manorma Devi from her home in Manipur, took her
away to an unknown destination, raped her and shot her dead. Her body was found
in the fields the next day. Under the workings of the Armed Forces Special
Powers Act {AFSPA} in operation in the northeast since 1958, the army has
complete immunity from civil courts and has over the last 50 yrs. functioned
outside the ambit of law. The discontent over army violations in the region
exploded in Manipur after the rape and killing of Manorma Devi.There were
demonstrations and bandhs, yet most of characteristically took little note of
what was happening in Manipur. Then one day a group of Manipuri women stripped
them naked and demonstrated in front of the headquarters of the army in Imphal
during the army to come and rape them, they held banners that screamed, ‘Indian
Army rape us, Indian Army come take our flesh. Suddenly and predictably the
media in India picked up the pictures and the account of the demonstration from
the local media, finally, the rest of India sat up and took notice. All over
Manipur and other states of the Northeast, as well as in many cities across
India, civil rights groups demanded the unconditional withdrawal of the
AFSPA.Given the violence of the events triggered off by the incident, including
the self-immolation by a protester, some response by the state beamed
imperative.; first the state in Manipur, and then at the Centre announced
measures to placate the outraged response from the people. Among the measures
was a committee to review the AFSPA and the Act was withdrawn in 7 constituencies
in Imphal, despite opposition from the Centre. It remains in force in Manipur
as in many other states and the findings of the Commission set up to review the
Act are yet to be made public.
And even as all this was hitting the
media, how many of us have become aware that there is by now an over
six-yr.-long fast unto death happening at this very moment by a courageous
woman, Irom Sharmila, who has been demanding the lifting of the AFSPA since
2000 and that she was till recently being force fed in a hospital, and that the
state controls and decides who can have access to her?
Miranda
Alison explains that the male urge to rape in a conflict zone is related to
their aggression physical strength and natural role as protectors of females,
who are submissive nurtures and givers of life. Alison talks about ‘our women’,
in contrast to’ their women’ and ‘our men’ to ‘their men’ during conflict.
Masculinity defines men during conflict and gives them the “duty” to protect
‘their women’.
Susan Brownmiller {1975}
makes the case that rape is about the exercise of power over women. Her study
of rape scrutinizes war-time rape that has existed throughout history in all
locations. It calls attention to the crime of rape as intrinsic to the military
in and out of combat as a constant threatening reality for women in the areas
of military presence, and indeed within the military.
Rape is seen not only as
a form of sexual violence but also as a method to show power and domination, In
the famous legend, Mahabharata, which saw the public humiliation of Queen Draupadi
being disrobed by the wicked Dusshasana, it was notably believed that
Dusshasana, a weak and fable man who could never win even a small fight against
others, used his opportunity to show his might and ability by humiliating a
woman.
In the Dalit massacres, like the
Bhotmange’s incident, wherein the women of the house were publicly raped by
members of the village, rape was used as a way of humiliating and bringing to
notice the fact that the victims were Dalits who did not deserve education,
agricultural prosperity or a well-dignified life. When on one hand men are
brutally killed, women are gang raped and then killed as rape is considered as
worse than death for a woman and in turns her family, her community.
It is axiomatic to say that the war system
impoverishes human security. When the object of armed conflict is genocide and
it implements include rape, sexual mutilation, sexual slavery and forced
pregnancy, the battleground is women’s bodies and the stakes can be survival of
a whole people.
Many women are raped in the
presence of the family members both to increase the woman’s sense of
humiliation and to underline the powerlessness of victim’s husbands and
fathers. In other words, sexual violation of women is a means of communicating
defeat to men of the subordinate ground. When, out of their own feelings of
shame, men abandon their families and communities, the subordinate groups,
social structures is further weakened.
Women are also raped in front
of the whole villages, again increasing their violation while also intimidating
the onlookers thereby all villagers to flee. In as much as the object of
genocide is not so much the physical death of a people, as it’s social and
territorial death, rape in public is a powerful tactic. For most people.
National identity encompasses not just intangibles such as language and
religion, but also physical connection with a particular place. When that place
becomes a site of torture, it ceases to be a home and instead becomes a place
of horror, to be fled both in fact and in memory. Compared to rapes by an
individual, gangrape can be more violent, more injurious and more humiliating
for the victim. It can also serve to forge bonds among the gang members,
heightening their sense of themselves as both sexually and ethically dominant.
Dalit Feminism[4]
There
is a major difference between the Dalit women and the Hindu Dominant castes
hierarchical women. Since these very women are unable to understand segregation
{Apartheid}, Untouchability, Slavery, Massacres and regular atrocities. The
same is reflecting on the Feminists particularly on those who are hailing from
the Dominant castes. But Dalit women and the women of the productive and food
security relations with natural resources. These women are skilled, productive
and knowledgeable in livelihood productions.
When we look at Dalit
woman, she has the knowledge of crafts, food grains, land for agriculture,
whereas the Hindu Dominant castes women are not skilled enough to produce such
things but they have skills only in managing the lands as property and
ownership including bossism on the untouchable agricultural labourers,
including women. Feminists hailing from dominant castes in India are not
considering all these factors even to this day.
The question of
reproductive rights and democratic space within the family system rather than
subjugation of women is the central issue in the Feminist Movement in India.
Women should be able to enjoy democratic rights within the family. Discussion
on these particular issues was started by dominant –caste Feminists, yet the
vey reproductive rights, social, productive rights always remained part of
Dalit and also artisan community women’s life. The position taken by Dalit
Feminism is that these particular rights of Dalit women and families in
particular are controlled by the Hindu Dominant caste system. And this is going
on in all the villages in India as the Dalit families, work under them as
labourers since it is the Dalits who only have all the productive agricultural
knowledge. So, it is mostly Dalit women for whom the reproductive rights are
necessary for their family, community, and for social production for entire
society rather than for mere Dalit family.
Fight
Against Brahmanical Patriarchy
For
a Dalit woman, apart from herself, her husband is also a slave and both of them
including the children and the entire family and entire Dalit community are untouchables
and become victims in the hands of dominant castes all the time according to
the Varna Ashrama Dharma system, whereas Hindu Dominant caste women fight
against their Head of the family{that is her husband, her father- in-
law,etc}.And those who benefit from Brahmanism in spite of opposing patriarchy
do not fight the Hindu Brahmanical patriarchy. In the Varna Caste system, no
individual is allowed to live individually. The Hindu Brahmanical patriarchy
within the Varna caste system not only deprives all the Dalit and Artisan
castes including its women but also denies them basic livelihoods and
sustenance only to push them into slavery, untouchability and segregation. Thus,
the oppressed castes fight against the Brahmanical patriarchy and Varna dharma.
HEALTH[5]
“What
for example is the cause’ of death of a starving person caught in a civil war,
who ends up in a refugee camp and then dies of measles?”-W.P.Falcon and
R.L.Naylor
Health is fundamental to
the human experience. It is also the outcome of human experience; humans work
to create and use resources that result in health and wellbeing, such
as
food education or leisure. Positive endeavor lead to greater social, capital,
success and even positions of social dominance thus increasing the overall
wellbeing and life expectancy for both individuals and communities. In
situations where freedoms are denied, education not provided, work not done or
environments in which violence, inequity and exclusion are common, there are
often negative effects on health.Thus, health becomes a lot more than just a
product of medicine-it becomes an
outcome of the effects of these social and environmental ‘determinants’ of
health. For health and development workers, this represents a paradigm shift in
thinking to improve health; we need to challenge the underlying injustices and
social conditions which lead to poor health outcomes.
In establishing a connection
between poverty, inequality, exclusion and violence, health can be analyzed not
as a medical problem, but as a human security issue. The consequences of
violence-injuries, preventable deaths,torture,effects on the environment, food
and water, livelihoods and social exclusion-have profound effects on the health
of communities.
Recently, there was news of the
death, of a mother who died due to ignorance of the medical authorities after
giving birth to her child at Thane. This news serves as an eye opener to the
lack of medical facilities that the lower classes and the greater victims i.e.
the women of those families are receiving by the state. On one hand, we have
celebrities getting special attention in cases of swine flu and on the other
hand, every day there are increasing numbers of people dying out of it in government
hospitals.
THE STATE
[6]V.Spike Peterson’s analysis of the state as a gendered
institution opens up a discussion on the subject of security that has long been
assumed to be primarily within the realm of the nation state. By looking at the
historical processes of the state system promises, Peterson {1992} examines the
relationship of state and security by identifying the state as so gendered as
to account for the systemic insecurity of women.
Muscular
Nationalism
When
we end up singing our national anthem ‘Jana-Gana-Mana’it has become like a
reflex action to shout instantly,’Bharatmata Ki Jai’. Well, how did this
concept of ‘Bharat Mata’ come up? Who determined India was preferably ‘she’
rather than a ‘he’? These questions bring us to the interesting and important
concept of muscular nationalism.
Motherhood, the
virtuous wife, and the cowardly man are all entangled in a particular story of
gender and nation-muscular nationalism. Briefly put, muscular
nationalism...nation. This gendered binary remains stable as long as women do
not act to challenge the expectations of chastity. It centers man versus chaste
woman.
·
[7]In 1974, the Indian government
published a report, towards equality, that puts status women forcefully on the
national agenda by arguing that the position of Indian women had declined, not
improved since 1911{Committee on the status of women,1974}. As a
result, development and progress
became gender issues. Data on gender discrimination in employment, education,
land distribution, inheritance, nutrition and health became impossible to
overlook.
Women’s issues entered
the fields of culture, religion and law, of family and community structures, of
the problems of official responses to population, poverty, illiteracy, labor,
and the new social movements of Dalits, environmentalists, tribals, anti-dam
activists, peasants and trade unions.
Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, taking
stock of the first 50th independence celebrations, comments that in
all these discourses, disciplines and sites of action, gender began to figure
as an ‘issue’ as well as category of analysis. {Rajan 1999:3}.
The primary identity of an
Indian male or female is citizenship whose basic definition offers a promise of
equality and justice within the nation’s democratic constitutional framework. Repeatedly;
however, this promise is undermined by the masculinity, of nationalist ideology
fiction of citizenship and the malleability of law. Instead of offering an
alternative space, the nation often simply functions as an extension of family,
caste and community structures and defines women as belonging in the same way
as their structures. This belonging definition is contradictory, implying both
“affiliated with” and “owned by”. The first interpretation connotes voluntary
participatory membership, the second a secondary functionalist and symbolic
status. And both are constantly overlooked because social, political order is
defined through women’s ownership by and place in structures of family and
community.
Human
Security In The Militarized State
A
feminist concept and framework of security to challenge the militarized state
security system, calls attention to the gendered effects of that system as they
impact particularly women. Through study of the gender experience of women, a
feminist perspective also sheds light on the ways in which human security s
destroyed by armed conflict and is systematically weakened by all forms of
militarized security.
The three major problems with the
present international security system that prevent it from assuring the
conditions of comprehensive human security are: it is dominantly masculine
rather than fully human in conception, it is designed to achieve the security
of the state rather than that of persons or human groups and what is most
readily evident, it addresses only one of four fundamental sources of human
wellbeing-a life-sustaining environment, fulfillment of needs for survival and
health, respect for individual and group dignity and identity and protection
from the most severe effects of those harms the society will take care to
mitigate the consequences thereof. That dominant masculinity concept-that is men’s
gendered perspective-of security emphasizes protection of the state from harm
by other states at tragic cost to the other three sources of human
security.
So,
we see the need for a profound change in thinking and for widening the pool for
the educated, striving, for greater sophistication of security thinking for
greater sophistication of weaponry. However, we seek to shift the thinking from
contemplation of greater potential for destruction to contemplation of greater
potential for human well-being.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
·
THE
GENDER IMPERATIVE: HUMAN SECURITY VS STATE SECURITY - BETTY A. REARDON, ASHA
HANS
·
MUSCULAR
NATIONALISM: GENDER, VIOLENCE,AND EMPIRE IN INDIA AND IRELAND ,1914-2004
–SIKATA BANERJEE
·
SEEING
LIKE A FEMINIST: NIVEDITA MENON
1. IN CONVERSATION WITH SHYAMALA GOGU,
DALIT FEMINIST WRITER, POET AND ACTIVIST FROM TELEGANA- ELIGEDI RAJKUMAR
2. Redefining and Feminising
Security-Rita Manchanda, Economic and Political Weekly , Vol. 36, no.22
(JUN.2-8,2001),pp.1956-1963
3. Every day (In)security/(Re)securing
the everyday: Gender, policing and violence against women in Delhi –Natasha
Elise Marhia (The London School Of Economics and Political Science)
4. Sisters in Crisis: Violence against
women under India’s Armed Forces Special Powers Act- Jo Baker
5. Beyond Border Security: Feminist
Approaches to Human Trafficking- Jennifer k.Lobasz
6. India’s Security Challenges at Home
and Abroad- By C.Raja Mohan and Ajai Sahni
Article Information
Internal Security Of India-A Feminist Perspective (By-Manasi Ahire)
Authors: Manasi Ahire
- Journal IJLRA
- ISSN 2582-6433
- Published 2022/07/15
- Volume 2
- Issue 7
About Journal
International Journal for Legal Research and Analysis
- Abbreviation IJLRA
- ISSN 2582-6433
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