Wandana Sonalkar's 'Why I Am Not a Hindu Woman' is a quest for liberation

Avijit Pathak

I feel a statement needs to be made from a woman’s standpoint, not just from an intellectually or ethically feminist standpoint. The misogyny that is deeply rooted in Hindu patriarchy cuts across castes, and is sustained by caste. — Wandana Sonalkar

A book of this kind — written with heightened sensitivity and intellectual honesty — is not just yet another ‘academic’ text. Sonalkar’s narrative is bold and lucid. It engages the reader, and gives us the courage to interrogate the world we tend to take for granted: the socio-cultural practices implicit in organised Hinduism or political Hindutva, the violence of patriarchal Brahminism, and the act of degrading the ‘other’ — marginalised castes, minorities and above all, women. At a time when political Hindutva with its ‘war hysteria’ and hyper-masculine nationalism is becoming hegemonic, Sonalkar reminds us that ‘the shift from Hinduism, whatever that may be, to Hindutva would not have been possible without the profound inequalities that are part of everyday, lived Hinduism’.

From Jyotirao Phule to Kancha Ilaiah, we see a politico-intellectual tradition that comes with a hammer, critiquing organised Hinduism, to make us see its inherent violence. Well, the defenders of Hinduism can argue that it is essentially about profound reflections on life and death, or maya and moksha; it gives us saints like Mirabai, Ramakrishna Paramhansa and Ramana Maharshi; and it is about the elasticity of Gandhi’s politico-spiritual consciousness and ahimsa. From Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan’s ‘The Hindu View of Life’ to Shashi Tharoor’s ‘Why I am a Hindu’ — the story of sanitised Hinduism is qualitatively different from the dictates of Manusmriti, or what the likes of Savarkar and Golwalkar pleaded for. Even though I am not altogether indifferent to this interpretation, I still agree with Sonalkar’s central thesis. As everyday Hinduism is practised in our families and caste groups amid the heavy burden of ritualism, patriarchal norms and tyranny of priestcraft, it tends to devalue women, and rob them of their creative agency. From dowry death to domestic violence — the culture of everyday/lived Hinduism does by no means indicate our quest for self-dignity, spiritual growth and intellectual freedom.

What has enriched Sonalkar’s book is her honesty to tell a ‘personal story’ — say, the way she saw her mother’s trauma and father’s ‘affair’ in the process of growing up in a ‘dysfunctional’ family, and realised the hollowness of the mythical construct of a ‘happy’ Hindu family. Furthermore, even though she belongs to a privileged caste/class, and Marxian radicalism or feminist discourse is her intellectual capital, she refuses to forget the kind of questions that Dr BR Ambedkar and his disciples raised with reference to the violence implicit in patriarchal Brahminism with its misogyny and graded inequality. No wonder, she engages quite meaningfully with the likes of Gopal Guru, Sharmila Rege and Uma Chakravarti, reflects on feminism and the caste question, and raises a deep concern:

Is Dalit feminism something that concerns only ‘them’ directly, and ‘us’ only through empathy? Or does what feminists from a Dalit-Bahujan social location are saying calls for revisiting our understanding of feminism in India?

With its five chapters, the book is likely to arouse the radical imagination of those who dare to engage in a self-reflexive quest. As a reader, you can see her as a feminist; you can find her as a political sociologist who critiques sharply the violence of Hinduism and Hindutva; and you can also see her as a cultural theorist who makes you see the ideology of patriarchal sexist violence in epics like the ‘Ramayana’ and the ‘Mahabharata’.

Her critique cannot be undermined by giving a counter-argument: neither Islam nor Christianity is emancipatory for women, and hence, it is unjust to blame Hinduism for all evils! In fact, as an empathic reader, I would love to imagine that her refusal to see herself as a ‘ Hindu woman’ would eventually enable her to realise her oceanic abundance — beyond all ‘isms’ including left-Ambedkarite feminism. After all, our ultimate salvation is beyond all politico-academic categories.