Anya Palkowski

Old Religion, New Society: The Advancement of Women in Public and Private South Asia

Geopolitics of South Asia | Professor Michael John Williams | Wesleyan University | 2011

The history of religious thought concerning the role of women in South Asian society has a rich and varied intellectual lineage. Advocates for both Islam and Hinduism as pillars of political governance claim that the foundations for a fully equal modern society are entrenched within traditional Islamic and Hindu thought – a view that is weakened by a long history of female oppression in both India and Pakistan for as long as religious doctrines have formed the basis of culture and society. The desire to use Muslim and Hindu heritage as a factor in South Asian modernity is founded in the well-intentioned desire to repurpose religious jurisprudence as a tool for women’s equality, but inevitable interpretations of male-dominated religious texts suggest that it would be nearly impossible to synthesize gender equality with traditional gender roles.

Though it seems unlikely given Pakistan’s current climate of female oppression, pre-Islamic civilization was largely matriarchal, and afforded women high importance in society. The beginning of patriarchal society and its eventual replacement of matriarchal social structures coincides with the adoption of Islamic doctrines as core determinants of nation building, lending credence to the view that the advent of religious adherence to Islamic law actually incepted and prolonged the male dominance of caliphal and post-caliphal society. As such, it appears more and more likely that interpretation of Islamic laws in favor of male domination of women is the product of a wholly logical interpretation of Qur’anic language.

Theologian and prominent scholar Sheikh Sayyid Abi’l-A’la Mawdudi is one of many traditionalist Islamic thinkers who influenced the adoption of traditional roles for women in modern society, advancing what some consider to be “dated attitudes that have no place in or relevance for modern society” in order to prevent women from reaching full equality with men. Mawdudi’s school of thought dichotomizes Western and Middle Eastern thought, condemning equality between men and women as a purely Western value and demonizing young women who lead unmarried lives as pursuers of sin and immorality. More controversially, he claims that women and men are equally human while simultaneously describing women as “submissive,” “timid,” and “incapable of function in spheres of life demanding ‘firmness and authority, resistance and cold-temperedness… and the exercise of unbiased, objective judgment and strong will-power’” (Roy Jackson 2011, 43).

Mawdudi’s writings were indoctrinated into Muslim societies as recently as 1972, and are by no means the first declarations produced by religious scholars preaching women’s subservience to men. Mawdudi’s intellectual legacy has formed a narrow and restrictive social history that continually confines women to the familiar roles of wives, mothers and housekeepers while men rise to the ranks of statesmen, administrators and heads of household. It is in this tradition that women continue to fight against traditional roles imposed by a long history of religious dogma-turned-state guidelines.

An unambiguous legal basis for gender equality has existed in Pakistan since its independence from India in 1947. With clauses demanding “equality before law and equal protection under the law” and “nondiscrimination based on gender alone,” the Pakistani constitution calls for full inclusion of women in all spheres of national life and sets a standard that was uncommonly progressive both for its time and for the region in which it was drafted (Bettencourt 2000, 7). In the same year, women gained suffrage as a part of the Pakistan Ordinance, and from 1956 to 1973, parliamentary quotas for female civil servants provided nominal checks on male domination of government.

Pakistan’s modest successes in gender equality continue with the election of Benazir Bhutto to the seat of Prime Minister in 1988: in a long parade of male heads of state with only marginal interest in advancing women’s rights, Bhutto distinguished herself as the first women ever to be elected as the head of state to a Muslim country.

Despite the nominally monumental nature of Bhutto’s election, her administration was again restricted by the policies of Islamization put in place by Zia-ul-Haq before her. General Zia’s rule serves as a classic example of the tendency of Islamic jurisprudence to retard progress towards modern ideals of social justice: an important mainstay of Zia’s political platform was “the return of Pakistani society to the moral purity of early Islam” as he vowed to return women to their former roles under Islamic law by condemning them to assume the domestic roles delegated to them by Islamic religious texts (Human Rights Watch 1999). In doing so, he instated martial law and suspended all tenets of Pakistan’s 1947 constitution that might have effected significant progress towards gender equality. Ultimately, Zia was able to capitalize on a long-standing culture of misogyny in Pakistan to “curtail women’s personal liberty, visibility, and participation in public life” (Human Rights Watch 1999).

Benazir Bhutto’s administration, rife with promises to restore equality for women but ultimately ineffective at implementing progressive reforms in a repressive Islamic climate, ended in 1997 with the election of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Sharif was quick to dispense with all potential progress towards women’s advancement in society, and declared a comprehensive return to Islamic law as the supreme law of Pakistan. As a result, Islamic precedents and legal arguments have been added to the national dialogue of justice and enforcement in Pakistan; this allowed for the government-approved dismissal of valid legal claims by women and the barring of women from public life as a matter of tradition and Islamic jurisprudence (Human Rights Watch 1999).

Examining Pakistan’s political history reveals that both Islamic principles and the power wielded by religious political factions have served as dire impediments to the advancement of women’s rights. Islamic religious commandments and their predominance in society have been used overrule secularly derived legal documents like Pakistan’s post-independence constitution, and despite the best efforts of activist groups like the Women’s Action Forum and the Prime Minister herself, the entrenchment of Islamic law in Pakistani society has made it nearly impossible to observe progress in gender equality.

It is difficult to designate any single view or treatment of women in traditional Hindu texts as religious canon. As such, Hinduism has often received less negative attention for its incompatibility with women’s rights than Islam. However, given the nature of religion to inspire sectarian loyalty and create irreconcilable rifts due to differences in interpretation, one might argue that the lack of clarity surrounding women’s role in Hindu society is exactly what threatens the viability of Hindu jurisprudence as a solid underpinning of modern governance.

The Hindu religious tradition recognizes female philosophers and thinkers more readily than does Islam, and can be considered similarly to many Western religions in terms of its historical treatment of the female point of view. However, despite the presence of women philosophers like Gargī and Maitreyī in Vedic antiquity, the primary authors of Hindu religious texts are men, and thus the writings of female theorists are often available only through masculinized secondhand accounts (Bose 2010, 7).

The Hindu religious canon is widely acknowledged as holding women and men in equal honor, and Vedic texts often extol the virtues of women over men. In this tradition, women are the benefactors of worship and spiritual praise, but just as in Islamic doctrines of all origins, women are rarely heralded as leaders, administrators or public figures of any kind. Despite the elevation of some women to the status of religious scholars, women are confined even in antiquity to the spiritual and domestic spheres.

As a counterpart to the heavily theocratic bent of Pakistan’s government, political India has long been a beacon of secularism surrounded by South Asian nations that have used religion to construct their national identities. Although Hinduism has been revisited during vital periods of national upheaval as a rallying point for nationalistic reunification of India, the Indian government is unique for the most part in its decision to minimize religion as a national objective. Despite the precarious nature of state borders and the tenuousness of its various intermingled ethnic groups, India’s religiously heterogeneous constitution has created an environment where nationality carries more weight than religious affiliation. However, this does not imply that religion has not had a deep impact on the formation of Indian society, and especially on the ongoing oppressions that women in India suffer into the present day.

Consciousness of women’s rights in India experienced a dramatic upsurge during the early- to mid-19^th century. This change in focus resulted in movements to address remarriage, polygamy, female education, purdah (the veiling of women), property rights, and sati.

Named for a goddess in Hindu antiquity who self-immolated when her husband was humiliated, the practice of sati is an endemic problem that has epitomized women’s oppression in India for centuries As a testament to its tenacity as a dated form of female oppression, sati was outlawed in 1829 and yet did not disappear from the social consciousness, instead continuing to demonstrate the deep impact that ancient Hindu traditions have had on the freedoms of women in a society built on religion. Far from acting as a post-feminist reclamation of independence and proof of reverence for traditional high culture, as Indian theorist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak claimed in “Can the Subaltern Speak?”, sati can be characterized as a vehicle of oppression, “ideologically cathected as ‘reward’” rather than an infringement of human rights, that is indicative of some of the more violent suppressions of women inspired by the Hindu tradition (Spivak 1988, 97).

Before the 20^th century, women generally were not organized or educated enough to form coalitions for their own advancement. As such, the reform movement was headed not by women discontent with their lot in society but by men seeking to improve quantitative measures of women’s equality in a globalizing society. Arguably the most important league formed for the advancement of women was the All India Women’s Conference (AIWC) in 1927, which did little to overturn traditional gender roles ascribed by Hinduism but worked to improve literacy, income and labor force participation of women in society (Walter 2000, 102).

Mahatma Gandhi’s administration served as India’s first true foray into the field of women’s rights. By equating women’s relationship to men with India’s subordination to Britain, Mahatma Gandhi simultaneously reinforced their subjugation in society and provided women a politically legitimate vehicle through which to break through religiously established gender roles. However, his ultimate position on women in society remained that their roles as mothers and wives were most important, and that in matters of national importance, they were to serve only as advisors and never as leaders. Development throughout the remainder of the 20^th century took the disconcerting form of fair-weather activism, whereby “as long as the enemy was external, women received support, but as soon as male privilege in the home was threatened, the women’s movement was not supported” (Walter 2000, 103). Recent political developments have seen the elevation of women to important political offices, such as that of Pratibha Patil to President of the Republic of India in 2007 and that of Meira Kumar to Speaker of the Lok Sabha in 2009, but such cases are largely the result of political instability rather than long-term reformation of deeply entrenched social beliefs.

The influential and well-documented Prime Ministership of Indira Gandhi belies the actual frequency of women serving in public offices in India, as real participation in the public sphere has been relatively low in India. Within the public sphere of law and politics, India’s constitution grew to nominally claim full equality for women, but the actual implementation of parliament and electoral politics remained staunchly misogynistic. Female composition of the Indian national parliament reached a mediocre peak of 10.8% in 2011, which is inferior even to Pakistan’s 22.2% (World Bank 2011).

Given the lack of progress of women in Indian society, it seems that India’s renouncement of religious doctrines as underpinnings of political organization appears to have had little impact on its development as a modern society. Only as recently as 2005 have Hindu laws regarding women’s inheritance of property from their parents been revised to include full equality for women, and countless other infractions against women’s rights are denounced by official laws but perpetrated behind closed doors in the impenetrable private sphere.

This is not to say that India as a nation has not advanced farther than Pakistan in the allotment of basic rights to women. Both social services and economic participation have maintained a steady advantage over figures in Pakistan: Indian women have participated in the labor force of India at 33% of total workers since 1980, whereas Pakistan’s participation rate rose from a dismal rate of 11.7% to a mediocre 21.7% in 2009. Health policies in India have improved the percentage of births attended by skilled health personnel from 34.2% in 1993 to 52.7% in 2008, whereas Pakistan languishes at 38.8% as of 2007 (World Bank 2011). In the case of advancement on fronts of gender equality, India’s development seems to mirror that of Pakistan: real public involvement of women in India is noticeably low while social services for women have been moderately successful, while Pakistan has achieved higher levels of political participation but comparatively dismal provision of social and economic services to women.

Determining whether or not Islam and Hinduism, or even religion as a whole, can act as the basis for a modern society requires that one first provide guidelines and definitions for what modernity means in a globalized world so prone to philosophical difference. Especially in the post-colonial mindsets of Pakistan and India, where time-honored customs risked being overturned by Western encroachment, fundamentalism has arisen with the veiled, subservient woman as its symbol in opposition to what is viewed as a uniquely Western social system of liberal thought (Mernissi 1992, 166).

At the risk of promoting cultural imperialism, it is necessary to acknowledge that the equality of women and men is a historically regional ideal that emerged as a dominant mindset in the developed world only in the last few centuries. “Modern gender equality,” and indeed “modernity” itself, are subjective terms, and it may be that a Western feminist applying universal normative expectations to the development of women’s status in South Asian society is as misguided as her intentions are good. However, for the purpose of this argument, South Asian societies can be measured against a larger global society that is becoming more defined by the year: that is, the coalition of the United Nations, which first pioneered observance of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a necessary requirement for modernity.

That theorists like Sheikh Sayyid Mawdudi and social customs like the Hindu Smriti have caused Muslim and Hindu societies to adopt misogynistic practices cannot be denied. That said, scholars of religion are fully aware that dogmatic statements undermining the equality of women and men are often the constructions of society over time, and are not necessarily direct outgrowths of religion itself. Various schools of feminism in South Asia hold that fundamentalist thought in South Asian societies derives from an old and ingrained culture of patriarchy, and that this purely social construct has resulted in the deterioration of women’s freedom. Although Islam has received more negative attention for its customs than other religions, followers of all creeds have chosen to interpret texts and religious documents in very different ways while building societies. Mostly all religious societies have incurred repressive effects on the freedoms of women, and thus Islam and Hinduism themselves are not necessarily the original oppressors of women in Islamic and Hindu societies.

Nawal el-Saadawi of Egypt, an influential Muslim feminist, attributes the suffering of women in the modern era to the establishment of social constructions such as the patriarchal family structure, male-dominated land ownership and a sharply stratified class system (el-Saadawi 1997, 73). This interpretation can be extended to most societies in which patriarchal oppression has halted the progression of women towards modern ideals of equality, including the societal offshoots of medieval Indian culture. El-Saadawi’s interpretation traces Arab women’s gradual loss of agency back to “socioeconomic changes taking place in society” and details the triumph of “class privilege, male domination and feudal oppression” over the forces of social equality (el-Saadawi 1997, 79).

El-Saadawi’s view is complicated by a lack of explanation as to how purely socioeconomic factors might have come to favor men when pre-Islamic society so favored women. Although this discrepancy can be shallowly explained by the widening of the wealth gap between the peasant and wealthy classes having disproportionately represented male interests over time, the consistent development of paternalistic practices from a basis of Islamic thought suggests that societal developments arose from a misogynistic tradition embedded within the religious doctrine itself.

Another study that attributes the development of misogynistic society in Islamic nations to a legacy of powerful men is that of Moroccan theorist Fatima Mernissi. Writing on the possibility of adapting Muslim traditions to modernity as defined by the developing world, Mernissi attributes the poor treatment of women not to the influences of Islam itself but to the polarizing effects of Western ideas and the deeply misogynistic caliphal culture of the early 1900s. She advances the familiar argument that the persistence of traditional roles for women in society is the responsibility of “an anachronistic regime that [hid] its archaisms only by veiling them with the sacred” and, in keeping with her defense of Islamic thought as a workable basis for gender equality, suggests that Islamic traditions provide women with “riches for constructing [their] modern identity” (Mernissi 1992, 161).

Mernissi also acknowledges the long-defunct caliphate as an early determinant of female oppression, and considers it a primary factor in the rise of fundamentalism in the 20^th century. Caliphal patriarchy considered women the “gravediggers of dynasties” and believed that women’s participation in politics and society corresponds to the fall of great Muslim empires, giving rise to the institutionalization of women as a destructive temptation to society (Mernissi 1992, 156). Scores of Muslim rulers, including those of Pakistan, have moderated political crises by curtailing women’s freedom as a rallying point for Islamic unity, these archaic viewpoints. Mernissi succinctly characterizes the forerunners of Islamic as informed by “centuries of misogyny, cultivated as a tradition in the corridors of caliphal despotism” (Mernissi 1992, 156), and holds that it is for this reason that fundamentalists in the modern era continue to blame modern female thinkers for distorting the ideal male-dominated Arab culture.

Whether or not they developed independently of religious thought, patriarchal society and male-dominated class structures have certainly contributed to the institutionalization of misogyny in many Islamic and Hindu societies. In Pakistan, Zia-ul-Haq’s and Nawaz Sharif’s usage of archaic Islamic traditions during their lengthy administrations surely prolonged the fundamentalist rejection of equality for women, but there can be little doubt that the traditions set by Islamic law and history have tended to self-perpetuate. Similarly, post-Gandhian regimes in India did little to overturn inequalities in the language of inheritance and marriage laws, instead allowing patriarchal structures to dictate women’s economic and social fates through the present day.

While patriarchal society-building can shoulder much of the blame for women’s suffering in South Asia, even a cursory examination of the language (and implications, etc.) of passages in Islamic texts, and ways in which they have influenced the formation of Muslim societies, suggests that state-building with Islamic roots inevitably inspires the subjugation of women by misogynistic male social structures. Women in India and Pakistan are gradually gaining opportunities for social advancement and establishing organizations for dealing with unfair treatment – in fact, women in societies across the Middle East that are guided by religious ideology have achieved small measures of political visibility – but Islamic jurisprudence as based on literal interpretations of Qur’anic verses cannot legitimately be interpreted as an equalizing force for women. Hinduism, although more ambiguous in its designations of women as the benefactors of care and protection by men, has proven similarly restrictive of women when applied as a state-building mechanic.

Using Nawal el-Saadawi’s cited verses and historical cases as examples, key Qur’anic passages state unambiguously that men are “one step above” women; men alone are awarded the privileges of polygamy, control of the household, and legal dominion over children (el-Saadawi 1997, 84). Further statements expound on the intellectual deficiency of women, and their inability to make rational decisions. El-Saadawi often praises female figures in Islamic history, such as Muhammad’s wives Laila Bint El-Khatim and ‘Aisha, for meting out superficial resistance to male domination, to the suspicion of modern proponents of gender equality: although the translation may be imperfect, the direction of power is clear with each passing reference to woman as the possession of man. Even the spirited women who challenged Muhammad’s authority possess little agency; they are defined by their relationships to men and their interactions with male societal privileges. Just as Muhammad “gave his women the right to stand up to him, rebuke him, or tell him where he had gone wrong,” so too do all of el-Saadawi’s cited anecdotes imply that the right to speak freely is not innately possessed by women, and must instead be granted by men (el-Saadawi 1997, 75). While el-Saadawi uses these historical accounts as examples of empowering forces for women, they do more to objectify women as the passive recipients of male charity.

The greater benefits of adherence to Islamic doctrines are not as great a point of contention as Islam’s applicability to women’s equality; it is plain to see that guidelines for virtue, community and goodwill are present in many Qur’anic verses. However, examinations of the original text against the backdrop of international society’s increasing concentration on human rights do more to discourage the use of Islamic thought as a viable force for the rehabilitation of women than to uplift it as a foundation for gender equality.

Taking into account the origins and applications of Islamic and Hindu influences on Pakistani and Indian society, one can conclude that the subjugation of women by fundamentalist religious actors in society has been engineered by a combination of religious law and patriarchal society. However, that both countries lag behind the developing world in terms of gender-related outcomes implies that religious language and canonical texts themselves have sown the seeds of misogyny in any societies they help to build. Likely due to the ongoing reliance of Pakistani society on religious fundamental thought, the struggles of women against a long history of patriarchal oppression may be more of an uphill battle than in parts of the world that have abandoned religion as an underpinning of state and government.

It has been shown that objective scrutiny of Qu’ranic and Vedic verses presents compelling evidence that it is impractical to integrate traditional Islamic female roles with the globalized world’s idea of the emancipated woman. Even Fatima Mernissi’s main point – that a chauvinist political tradition is primarily responsible for making the subordination of women a mainstay of political maneuvering – does not preclude the idea that such societal structures were made possible by the denigration of women moralized by the religious text itself. It has already been shown that Qur’anic verses on gender relations in fact advocate an objectivist view of women that innately dictates their subservience to men.

While it is difficult to pass judgment on religious thought itself as ultimately compatible or incompatible with women’s rightful equality in society, the varied applications of South Asian religions to societies over time have only tended to push women further back into the dark ages of oppression. The compatibility of Islamic and Hindu religious doctrines with gender equality is further complicated by the fact that many Eastern and Western societies based on similarly disdainful religious treatment of women have begun to cast off traditional prejudices against female participation in the national sphere. In fact, European countries built on centuries of religious tradition have largely cast off the veil of religious restrictions to form the vanguard of an international modern society. As such, there may be some merit to attributing modern-day oppression of women to the gradual development of South Asian society as opposed to the religious tenets on which they are based.

As it stands, however, religiously sanctioned oppression of women in India and Pakistan is far from being phased out of national society. Both the social histories and the literary canons of India and Pakistan suggest that religious thought is too prone to differences in interpretation and descent into fundamentalism to be reasonably integrated with modern ideas of equality in the larger international community.

Citations

Bettencourt, Alice (2000). “Violence Against Women in Pakistan.” Prepared for the Human Rights Advocacy Clinic.

Bose, Mandakranta (2010). Women in the Hindu Tradition: Rules, Roles and Exceptions. London: Routledge.

El Saadawi, Nawal (1997). “Women and Islam.” The Nawal El Saadawi Reader: 73-92.

Human Rights Watch (1999). “III: Background.” In Crime or Custom? Violence Against Women in Pakistan.

Jackson, Roy (2011). “Mawdudi, Purdah and the Status of Women in Islam.” In Islam and the Veil, eds. Theodore Gabriel and Rabiha Hannan. London: Continuum International Publishing Group.

Mernissi, Fatima (1992). “Women’s Song: Destination Freedom.” Islam and Democracy: Fear of the Modern World: 149-171, 187-189.

Spivak, Gayatri (1988). “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture: 271–313.

Walter, Lynn (2000). “India: Women’s Movements from Nationalism to Sustainable Development.” In Women’s Rights: A Global View. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

World Bank (1997). World Development Indicators. Last modified 1997. Accessed December 14, 2011.