Women Marginalized

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter examines the marginalization of women from the Hindu Mahasabha from 1915 until 1951, both internally and electorally—including leadership and governance structures, a women’s wing, as candidates, and as subjects or objects of party platforms and political agendas. It examines newly uncovered archival documents on a women’s wing of the Hindu Mahasabha from 1935 to 1950: Jankibai Joshi of Pune worked ceaselessly but ultimately unsuccessfully to convince male party leaders to actively recruit Hindu women into the party. The marginalization of women corresponded with almost total political failure for the party. The ideological underpinnings and gendered discourses of Hindu nationalism constrained the vision of women’s possible roles in Hindu nationalist politics. The marginalization of women in the early, formative years of Hindu nationalist politics suggests that the participation of women in religious nationalist politics was not natural, or automatic, or inevitable, but had to be constructed over time.