Modi’s ‘biopolitics’

Indian PM, Narendra Modi, seems to have crafted a new, humanistic and feminist strategy for managing the Muslims of India. He recently sympathised with Muslim women for their subjection to divorce via unilateral pronouncement (triple talaq) and has pledged legal reforms against this practice. This has caused anxiety for the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) and some Indian feminists.

Modi’s altruism is suspect since it was under his governance and guidance that the wombs of the same Muslim women who now move his compassion, were being gutted in Gujarat in 2002. So clearly, the real drivers of Modi’s ‘Muslim feminism’ are the larger Hinduvta project and a political opportunism that wishes to take advantage of fratricidal splits in the Samajwadi party. But, could this be a window of opportunity for the larger goals of equality and women’s progress according to genuine feminist ideals? The tensions over exceptionalism regarding Muslim personal laws under India’s secularity have been a matter of historical debate. The tipping point was the 1985 Shah Bano case where Muslim patriarchy trumped secular rights. Under Congress rule, the ‘anti-Sharia’ right to post-divorce alimony, as prescribed under the uniform civil code, was denied to Muslim women.

So why do several Indian feminists support the AIMPLB’s recent protests against the Modi government’s Law Commission’s intent to reform the triple talaq? Seemingly an unlikely alliance, both groups acknowledge that this form of divorce is anti-women. However, Muslim groups object that a secular state has no right to interfere in Sharia rules or personal laws. The feminist argument is that the sudden saviour complex of the BJP is a fake mask for their larger agenda to melt and merge minority laws under what will amount to a Hindu and not, uniform civil code. Both argue that reforms must happen within the existing Muslim laws and by their own representatives.

There is a split amongst India’s Muslim women’s opinions and a reported 50,000 Muslim women have filed an online petition calling on the Commission to arbitrate reform of the triple talaq. Other surveys report that some 92 per cent of Indian Muslim woman are against the unilateral divorce. The Indian Supreme Court is hearing several petitions by Muslim women challenging this form of divorce. All this marks a potentially competitive struggle between religious rights and gender equality. Colonial powers in the 19th Century used biopolitics to stabilise their global rule. They introduced a method of racial govern mentality that depended on separating and compartmentalising people according to their ethnicities and belief systems. The British archives show how colonisers were advised to keep racial groups separated in terms of sexual, intellectual contact, as well as their labour. This was then marketed as natural, scientific or divine difference.

Biopolitics as a form of control over women’s bodies, oppressed subjects and minorities is a colonial legacy that the BJP government has viciously instrumentalised. Unfortunately, Pakistan’s rape-politics of 1971 and defensive reprisals by Bangladesh make for a shameful archive in the history of subcontinental biopolitics.  It may just be time for women of the region to break the mould of biopolitics that depends on segregating them across religious and ethnic identities at the cost of gender equality. One example illustrating historical missed opportunities is the Child Marriage Restraint (Sarda) Act of 1929. This was the first law on marriage in India that was universally applicable across different religious communities, each with their own separate laws. Both Hindu and Muslim women supported this legislation in a rare demonstration of gender unity where women crossed communal lines qua women.

However, this universalist liberalism was short-lived. Soon after, under the 1935 political reforms, Muslim women broke away from the proposal of supporting joint electorates and threw their support behind the Muslim male demand for reserved seats on a communal basis. The colonial “solution” was to accede reserved seats for special interest groups on a communal basis and reinstate communal patriarchies.

Recently, some analysts insisted that child marriage laws in Pakistan could not be reformed unless recommended through debate and ijtehad within the Islamic framework. They were proven wrong. The amendments to the law were passed in light of universalist principles (albeit not fully improved). The difference between India’s secular pluralism and Pakistan’s secular resistance to religious politics invites different approaches for feminist strategic politics. Despite being vocal supporters of pro-democracy civilian rule, Pakistan’s women’s movements have had a history of negotiating rights under dictatorial regimes to their advantage. Seemingly contradictory and ethically problematic yet, an honest assessment shows that this strategy has yielded benefits for women’s rights in the long run.

Indian Muslim women face the challenge of not succumbing to false loyalty to Muslim men who either postpone or are simply not committed to equal rights for women. This may be an opportunity for urgently expediting reform of property, divorce and marriage under the Muslim personal law. Then, they may confidently reject Modi’s ‘Muslim feminism’ by pre-empting it with their own legitimate brand.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 7^th, 2016.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.