Women Incorporated

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter explores how the BJP incorporated women immediately before and after the landmark 2014 election. Hindu nationalist politics has created some restricted spaces for women’s participation, bringing women into existing power structures without fundamentally altering them. This chapter draws on fieldwork between 2013 and 2016, including interviews, ethnographic observation of party events, and visual analysis of campaign materials. The incorporation of women has correlated with significant political success for the BJP. Yet the gendered ideologies of Hindu nationalism continue to tether women to the private sphere through tropes of “family support” and the kin-like structures of Hindu nationalism. The question of whether incorporation can empower women remains vexed: to deny it seems to deny women agency, but to support it remains anathema for many feminist scholars and activists. While incorporation empowers certain women in certain ways, it does not dismantle—but rather reinforces—broader patriarchal and oppressive social structures.