Once only passive witnesses to public violence, Hindu Gujarati women have taken a prominent role in the ongoing attacks on Muslims in the state. While the roots of this phenomenon are complex, many of them emerged from the social-political context of the past twenty years — in particular, the anti-reservation riots of the 1980s.
A disturbing feature of the ongoing communal violence in Gujarat has been the fervent participation of entire Hindu families in acts of arson, looting and brutality. The active involvement of women, especially middle-class, upper-caste women, needs explanation. Ahmedabad has been witness to the changing nature of communal violence correspondingly accompanied by the geographical spread of violence beyond the traditional confines of the strifetorn walled city to middle-class locales.
For some years, particularly after the Ram Janmabhoomi movement, it has been clear that communal riots were not the spontaneous outpourings of mass rage manifested as random acts of arson and looting and untargeted murder. In the current Gujarat case, this element of spontaneity has been ruled out to the extent that the bloodshed is being referred to as a pogrom against Muslims or ethnic cleansing.
Indisputably, such violence is accompanied by planned mobilisation. However, is the mobilisation of Hindu women by the Sangh Parivar sufficient explanation for the extent of women's attendance in the unparalleled violence in the state? Tanika Sarkar and others have provided valuable insights into the emergence of a women's movement within the Hindu right and have explained to some extent the tenor of change in the cultural world of upper-caste, urban, middle-class life. This has led to a reassessment of comfortable assumptions about women's relationship with violence, religion and politics. The limitation of such analysis is that it is locked into the specificities of Hindu right-wing ideology and politics in India beginning from the early 1900s. While this study is helpful in illuminating the large-scale contribution of Hindu women to the Ram Janmabhoomi movement (including the destruction of the Babri Masjid), it does not explain the degree of their direct participation in violent activity in Gujarat. How then can we understand women in their nightdresses coming out on to the terraces of their houses, egging their menfolk on, throwing stones at the houses of Muslims and turning a blind eye to the horrifying extent of sexual violence perpetrated against Muslim women? (A compelling account of the last is The Survivors Speak, Citizen's Initiative, Ahmedabad, 16 April 2002.)