T
he irony cannot be more striking. Known for their fierceopposition to reforms in Hindu law that sought to ameliorate the conditions ofHindu women, Hindutva groups present themselves as ardent champions of Muslimwomen. The image of Muslim women as oppressed by their men and their religion iscentral to Hindutva discourse, buttressing their claim of Islam and Muslimsbeing inherently and unrepentantly ‘obscurantist’ and ‘barbaric’. Thisexplains the hypocritical defence by Hindutva ideologues of Muslim women’srights, while at the same time the pogroms they unleash lead to the death andrape of Muslim women.
While Hindutva ideologues present themselves as saviours of Muslim women fromwhat they describe as the ‘tyranny’ of Islam, they are fiercely opposed toany measures that might threaten Brahminical Hindu patriarchy. Thus, the coverstory of the last issue of
Organiser, the RSS’ official English weekly,protesting against a move to reform Hindu marriage, should come as no surprise.Titled, ‘A Mischievous Proposal to Tinker With Hindu Faith’, and written bya certain R. Balashankar, the article furiously denounces the proposal putforward by the Tamil politician, M. Karunanidhi, leader of theanti-Brahmin Dravida Munnetra Kazhagham, to allow for ‘self-respect’marriages that do without a mandatory priest, who is generally a Brahmin.
T
he article refers to a letter sent recently byKarunanidhi to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh demanding an amendment in the HinduMarriage Act, 1955 in order to legalise, at the all-India level, marriageswithout a priest. Presently, such marriages are recognized only in Tamil Nadu.This demand has been a long-standing one, and was first put forward byE.V.Periyar Ramaswamy Naicker, the pioneer of the anti-Brahmin movement in TamilNadu. Periyar was a bitter critic of Brahminical Hinduism, seeing it as athinly-veiled guise for Aryan, North Indian, ‘upper’ caste Hindu hegemony.He regarded Hinduism as a creation of 'wily Brahmins' to assert their controlover the ‘low’ caste majority whom they had reduced to servitude. Hebelieved that the non-Brahmins could effectively challenge Brahmin hegemony onlyif they developed a sense of self-respect and refused to consider the Brahminsas ‘gods on earth’, a status that the Brahmins claimed for themselves.