Organizer and Chair: Amrita Basu, Amherst College
Nel Vandekerckhove, Conflict Research Group
For about twenty years, the Western part of Assam had been in the grip of
chronic violence and stern conflict. Bodo extremist groups, who initially
only carried out anti-state actions, started attacking numerous groups of Adivasi
forest dwellers and peasant communities, once brought into the region by
the British. In this so-called “indigenous-settler” dispute, by attacking
these settler groups, the militants hoped to acquire their “exclusive
Bodo homeland”. In 2003, the Indian and Assamese governments managed to
sign a Memorandum of Settlement with one of the militant groups, BLT. However,
during these talks, various opportunities to create a strong base for sustainable
peace had been terribly disregarded. The non-inclusive character of the talks
and the absence of sufficient power-sharing at all levels had cut its chances
to prepare a truly legitimate base for the new political institutions and
to start a worthy reconciliation process among the affected communities. This
paper will (1) discuss the origins of this exclusivist peace approach of the
Indian government; (2) analyze the unintended outcomes of these non-inclusive
talks for excluded groups in terms of ownership, legitimacy, and safeguarding
of minority rights; and (3) bring forward a number of policy recommendations
to help streamline future peace policies that bring in all parties, prevent
marginalization of certain groups, and halt conflict dynamics in which excluded
political entrepreneurs try to force their way into politico-economic, clientelistic
networks through anti-settler violence.
Gopika Solanki, Carleton University
Multi-religious and multi-ethnic postcolonial democracies evince ongoing
contestations between states and religious groups over the question of who
shall govern the family. Concerns of gender justice within the family animate
these debates as family laws govern the intra-household distribution of resources
and prescribe gender roles within the family. The universalists argue that
states should enact uniform laws to govern the family, as religious communities
often violate individual liberty of women members. Proponents of cultural pluralism
also agree to maintain the critical tension between religio-cultural groups’ claims
to autonomy and rights of women within these religious communities, as privileging
the former can buttress gender oppression within these groups.
In contrast to above approaches, my paper advances the claim that cultural
pluralism and gender justice need not be framed as antithetical to one another.
Instead, I outline conditions in which cultural pluralism can lead to gender
justice. I trace the Indian case of legal pluralism in recognition of religious
laws governing marriage and divorce. The Indian state has evolved a model
of “complex
autonomy” by which the state shares its adjudicative authority with religious
groups in regulation of the conjugal family. Using legal ethnography to examine
the micro-politics of adjudication in state courts and informal legal forums,
I demonstrate that this institutional arrangement creates a pluralized legal
sphere which allows multiple ways of “doing gender” and offers more
avenues for negotiating women’s rights.
Gautam Kundu, Georgia Southern University
“Neo-Hinduism” (or the so-called “Hindu Modernism”) involves “reinterpretation”—of
the tradition, of the interrelationship of the indigenous and the foreign, and
of what often has been termed as the “degree of receptivity (of India)
vis-a-vis the West”, etc. Swami Vivekananda (Narendranath Dutta, 1863-1902),
Sri Ramakrishna’s most well-known disciple, both at home and abroad, became
an influential shaper and propagandist of neo-Hinduism, an “exemplary exponent
of Hindu self-representation” during the early phase of Indian nationalism.
However, for all the seeming vigor and vision with which Vivekananda sought to
infuse his own brand of Hindu self-assertion, he lived and practiced a problematic
and ambivalent position that neo-Hinduism occupied in colonial India and the
West. While he criticized the materialism and secularism of the West, Vivekananda
also admired the energy and dynamism associated with the Western sense of (among
other things) national identity, and, ironically, by implication, religious nationalism:
Vivekananda’s belief that India’s special gift to the world was her
(Hindu) spirituality.
Tapan Raychauduri has claimed that Vivekananda’s “deep regard for
Islam was in a way [the] most striking expression of his faith in validity of
all religions”, and that Vivekananda’s highest prayer for the “good
of the Motherland was that she might manifest the twofold idea of ‘An
Islamic body and a Vedantin’s heart’”. But a closer examination
of Vivekananda’s writings reveal that such a “validation” of
Islam and of the Muslim Indian is more apparent than real, however. His vision
of a non-discriminatory future is undermined by its fatal ambivalence, and its
slide into the familiar (Orientalist) binary of Indian/Hindu/Bengali “effeminacy” and
the “manly/muscular virtues” of Islam (and the Muslim Other), etc.
Like Tagore, but unlike Bankimchandra and Savarkar, Vivekananda is more than
willing to concede that Muslims have made India their homeland through centuries,
but they continue to be the Other, if not quite the “first Outsider”.
Further, like Rabindranath, when Vivekananda discusses the glories of the Indian
past, it is almost always the ancient Aryan past. Over nine hundred years of
Islamic presence in India and its myriad contribution to the country’s “composite
culture” remains unacknowledged, if not ignored. When Vivekananda does
praise Islam (and Muslims), it is mostly for what he considered to be the robust
vigor of its “masculinity”; the ethical and metaphysical aspects
of Islam suffer a near-total erasure. Like other neo-Hindu religious cultural
and religious nationalists of his time, for Vivekananda, the Muslim Indian resides “outside
the fold”, as it were, of that which makes for a “true” Indian:
one who possesses a life of manas, not bahubal.
Ali Riaz, Illinois State University
One of the defining features of Bangladeshi politics, particularly for the
last 15 years, has been the “dynastic rule”. As power alternated
between two large political parties, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP)
and the Awami League (AL), the governments were headed by Khaleda Zia or Sheikh
Hasina. Both of these two leaders’ ascendance to prominence and power
is due to their lineage to slain leaders--Ziaur Rahman and Sheikh Mujibur Rahman,
respectively. Subsequently, they have attempted to groom their heir apparent.
But this trend went beyond these two individuals. Despite regular elections
between 1991 and 2006 and vibrant political activities reaching to the grassroots
level, heredity had become the only means of accession to power. It is now evident
that more family members of politicians are occupying the leadership position.
This paper maps the networks of relationships among the leaders of various political
parties. It examines the causes of the phenomenon and the impacts of these relationships
on political parties and political culture. The paper argues that the dynastic
politics and dependence on personal charisma have weakened the nascent democratic
institutions and vitiated the political culture. Both accountability and transparency
has been the casualty of this “dynastic” pattern of party operation.
Jennifer R. Coleman, University of Pennsylvania
This paper examines the debate over the passage, institutionalization, and
increasing popularity of anti-conversion legislation in India—policies
designed to regulate, if not prevent, religious conversions. These state-sponsored
bills (ironically entitled “Freedom of Religion” acts) are illustrative
of the ongoing Hindu nationalist agenda to problematize the question of “rational” behavior
and proper citizenship vis-à-vis religious choice and identity. The aim
of the legislation is to put the spiritual sincerity of conversions (specifically
to Christianity and Islam) in doubt, and highlights the extent to which religious
freedom remains demographically threatening to the “Hindu” upper-caste
hegemony and is conceptualized as hostile to Indian national solidarity as a
whole. The regulation of conversion, then, is an attempt to manage “legitimate” and “illegitimate” shifts
in religious identity, whereas the targets of “illegitimacy” and “irrationality” in
these bills are women, children, lower-caste Hindus, scheduled tribes, and
untouchables.
I explore the manner in which “Freedom of Religion” legislation
has shaped the meaning and content of the Indian secular project, focusing on
the ways in which the bills challenge the understanding of “freedom of
religion” as “freedom of conscience” and the role gender concerns
have played in these debates. Drawing broadly on the theoretical work of Gauri
Viswanathan, Talal Asad, Robert Baird, and scholarship linking the role of gender
to the construction of nationalism and secularism in modern India, I evaluate
recent policies and legal decision shaping the politics of conversion. I aim
to provide a more thorough and up-to-date understanding of the contest over
religious choice in law and policy, proposing that while Indian secularism continues
to be an evolving and dynamic process of negotiation and balance, the increasing
prominence of “Freedom of Religion” legislation will be a dramatic
pivot point influencing the future limitations and possibilities of Indian
democratic consolidation.
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