Author: Ophelia Benson

In the past two years the debates on religious conversions, caste and communalism have gripped India in a serious imbroglio which is fallout of the present nature of state politics in the country. The years 2007-08 have been the most volatile ever since the anti-Godhra riots in the state of Gujarat in 2002, which exposed the role that the governments in India have played in arousing communal passions through state machinery. These are difficult times, and the time that would follow poses more complex challenges for state-politics in India. We can trace the beginnings of these events in the year 2007, though hypothetically, to a controversy in Punjab: the chief of Dera Sacha Sauda (a religious sect founded 1948, which has a large following among dalits), Gurmat Ram Rahim, supposedly emulated Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth Guru of the Sikhs, at a religious ceremony in Sirsa; this has led to often violent exchanges between the two groups. Since then the states of Punjab, Haryana and some districts of Rajasthan are boiling in religious tensions, reminiscent of the crisis between Akalis and Nirankaris in 1978. This year India is already in the midst of a communal backlash against Christian converts in Orissa, primarily among tribals, in the wake of the killing of Swami Lakshmananda of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), who had been spearheading an anti-conversion campaign in the tribal belt of Khandamahal. The fire has now spread to Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and other parts of India.

There is another issue of terror-strikes which has rattled major Indian cities this year. Fortunately it has not as yet led to any communal reaction against Muslims. But that is merely on the surface, as discrimination against Muslims in India is at an all-time high, which has now been transformed into a large-scale social discrimination. Since educated Muslims have now allegedly been framed in these events of terror, it only reflects how deeply religious discrimination in India now touches a class which was earlier related to the mainstream Indian elite. A prominent film and theatre personality like Shabana Azmi has come up with these startling revelations of denial of a residential flat merely because she is a Muslim. Even states like Punjab have reported a case of expulsion of a daughter-father duo from a school in Phagwara, because it was discovered that despite his name, Mangat Chaudhary, the father was a Muslim. (The name ‘Mangat’ is rare among urban Muslims of Punjab, both east and west.) The trend of branding ordinary Muslims as terrorists or sympathisers has serious implications for Indian democracy as the real issues underlined in the Sachar report on social exclusion among Muslims are undermined.

The most significant aspect of the religious conflicts in recent times is that they now reach out to rural India, a domain which was earlier considered a symbol of communal brotherhood. Communalism in India is extending its tentacles. It is no longer an urban phenomenon and in this era of globalisation the anxieties of growth and economic security have started spreading its tentacles to the crude representation of religious identities. The fundamental right to practice the religion of one’s choice has been guaranteed in Article 25 of the Constitution of India. But violent and forcible closures of Dera naam charchas (religious congregations) and Christian congregations in various parts of India remind us that we are heading towards a new complexity where religion has become an instrument to fuel social tensions. The debate on conversion in India has generally been viewed as an expression against religious orthodoxy and its deep rooted social discrimination against dalits and tribals, but it also strikes at economic backwardness and lack of access to better ways of livelihood. The latter should be seen as the failure of the Indian state to reach out to the poor and needy.

Poverty and social alleviation has been an integral part of Indian governance in the post independence period, but has become a farce in this era of globalisation, and it is precisely against this backdrop that we need to understand the claims of religion and re-conversion in India. India has traditionally been and continues be a caste-ridden society, where maintenance of caste-based hierarchies has been instrumental in defining the power structures. And this power-structure has traditionally been maintained by keeping dalits and tribals in a state of permanent economic dependency. Owing to the post-independence initiatives of the state for the socio-economic alleviation of dalits and tribals, and their political resurgence in the wake of the Mandal recommendations in 1980, national and regional politics in India today banks heavily on ‘politicised’ caste. But the question remains whether these developments brought any tangible change in the lives of the people. The dominant dalit and tribal politics in India is as elite as any other electoral politics in the country. The state and electoral politics has failed to have an impact upon the lives of the depressed among dalits and tribals.

If we go through the organisation of these Deras in Punjab and missionaries’ institutions in various parts of India we are indeed struck by the infrastructure, primarily educational (both schools and colleges), hospitals and programmes for poverty alleviation (micro-credit, agriculture innovations, etc.) undertaken by them in the interior parts of India. The appreciable part of these programmes is that these interventions do create an impact on the lives of the poor and marginalised. Conversions have to be looked at from this perspective too. It is not inducement or force to convert but the force to bring about change in their living conditions that has been crucial to shifting religious identities. Here again, we see the near total absence of state infrastructure, the space which is continuously being taken over by non-state actors.

Significantly the changing socio-economic condition of dalits and Christians has also given them political expression at the local level. It is pertinent to note that the forceful political articulation of Dera-followers, against the recent anti-Dera agitation by the various Sikh groups, has been the most significant expression of dalit politics of Punjab and Haryana. The incidents of forceful closure of naam charcha continue unabated in the rural parts of the Malwa region of Punjab, yet there is also opposition (often violent) to such incidents by the Dera-followers who are primarily dalits, Sikhs and Hindus. The Jat-dominated Gurdwaras have gone to the extent of announcing a social boycott of dera-followers, and have refused to give them access to the holy Guru Granth Sahib for their social and religious ceremonies. Conversely there have been instances of dalits adopting novel ways of marrying, for instance, by circumambulating the photograph of Bhagat Singh, a revolutionary Punjabi martyr of pre-independence India who is revered throughout India. Increasing instances of clashes between Sikh Jats and dalit-Christians in rural areas is a similar expression of social tensions in this region.

The vocal and articulate assertion of dalits and tribals, and converts among them, has also led to a reactionary mobilisation of upper castes, for instance against Dera-politics in Punjab or religious conversions throughout India. The shifting economic base of dalits from agriculture, the tensions of the traditional rural structure, and articulation of ‘disobedient dalit subjects’ have important implications for the communal scenario in India. These debates are significant for an understanding of the future of democratic politics in India. Some scholars have suggested that the violent communal scenario at the present time is a result of the shrinking secular space in India. I would add that the failure of secular institutions of Indian democracy to reach out to the poorest and the needy has led to the growing menace of communal disharmony in this country. The decay of the rural infrastructure of schools and primary health centres has inadvertently led to the shrinking space of secular politics in India. This is the greatest challenge that Indian democracy faces today in a neo-liberal era of globalisation.

Yogesh Snehi has been contributing to the broadening of debates on historical aspects of northern India, especially Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh, and has worked on areas such as conjugality, gender and social reform, development and literacy movements. His interest in social history has enabled his contribution to the understanding of popular syncretism and sufi shrines (dargahs) in Punjab. He is also critically engaged with the rhetoric and reality behind debates on female infanticide and foeticide in Punjab. Presently he is working on the issues of communalism in the popular history textbooks of Punjab. He teaches History and is working at DAV College, Amritsar.

In general, where religious values are dominant, gender discriminations remain influential at all levels in society. The monotheistic religions – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – not differently from the primitive or undeveloped cultures, adamantly conserve their gender biases. In this article, I argue that gender inequalities in Islam go beyond the gender biases of other monotheistic religions.

The main reason for gender inequalities in Islam has roots in a traditional division of society into the two groups of “mahrams” and “non-mahrams.”: the mahram group contains the non-marriageable adult people who are close members of family, whereas the non-mahram group refers to the rest of people.

Asserting of non-mahram dogma in Islam is not initially unrelated to the Prophet’s concerns about his harem. As described by Ali Dashti, an Iranian scholar, in his book “Bisto-Seh Saal” (23 Years), “the Prophet Muhammad used Koranic verses of Surah Ahzaab to consolidate his authority against his much younger wives and to force them into absolute obedience and chastity.” However, the two sources of Islam, namely the Koran and “Hadith” (sayings of the Prophet) have not fixed a dress code decreeing an Islamic standard of clothing for women.

To the Islamic morality, touching, seeing, and being alone with a non-mahram woman may lead to uncontrollable or passing temptation and immorality for a man. Therefore, a Muslim woman should not show her beauty, adornment, and dress to a non-mahram man. As a solution, the form of head-to-foot hijab with a black cloth, which is not transparent, is today recommended by Mullahs in Iran.

Non-mahram is not limited to Islamic hilab; in addition a series of social norms and attitudes have emerged in relation to the dogma of non-mahram. Norms have been created which have no real equivalence in non-Muslim cultures. They go too far to implicitly define a man’s moral right and duty to defend the taboo red lines around the body of his mahram circle (mother, sister, wife…) when those are violated or even threatened by a non-mahram. This “moral right” may even lead to honour punishments or even crimes routinely committed in Islamic communities.

Non-mahram is therefore a very influential dogma in character formation at the level of a collective culture from which we can retrace the footsteps even in Islamic architecture – palaces, mosques, madreseh (traditional school), and today, the women-only parks which have been inaugurated in some Iranian cities. All of these misogynistic measures are based on a division of mahrams from non-mahrams. Everywhere, non-mahram’s taboo values are recognised, from Iranian post-Islamic art to literature and to any domain of public life, the red line of non-mahram dogma around the woman’s body remains the impenetrable line separating a Muslim woman from a non-mahram visual and acoustic field.

For example: a typical Muslim house is built around a central, mostly rectangular, courtyard. The interior space is important, not the outside. Part of the house is separated for females. The men’s reception room tends to be located next to the entrance lobby of the house so that non-mahram visitors do not meet the females. The windows face the inside not the outside of the house so that eye contact between non-mahrams does not happen. In the big house where several generations can dwell together measures are taken so that the contact between non-mahrams, like cousins or brother/sister-in-law of opposite sex dwellers, does not lead to temptation.

More strictly than in a traditional Islamic house, segregation was in the past in Islamic palaces where no access of non-mahram to the harem area was possible – except for castrated servants. Paintings, frescos, three-dimensional imaginary or real sculpture, any female figure or representational visual imaginary on display have been unacceptable. Also, in such places, there was no official role for a female as an artist, singer or musician.

When Shah Isma’il Safavid decided to impose the Shi’ite sect on the Iranian people at the beginning of 16th century, he had to import Shiite Mullahs from Arab countries to help the process of Shi’itisation. Facing his rival of the Sunnite Ottoman Empire, the process was for the Shah existentially important. As a state religion, Shi’ism was violently established with the guidance of the imported Mullahs, who allegedly were the descendants of the Prophet Muhammad. Because influential Mullahs enjoyed living among the urban population as an elite class under both the Safavid and Qajar dynasties, their Sharia-based teachings of Islam affected directly urban women rather than rural women. Therefore, rural and tribal life in Iran remained relatively intact from the invasion of non-mahram side-effects.

As Nikki R. Keddi described in Modern Iran, in Iran and the Middle East, nomadic tribeswomen do most of the tribe’s physical labour. They are unveiled and are less segregated than urban women. Rural women also do hard physical work and “reports from the nineteen century indicate that they were mostly unveiled. Veiling has been mainly an urban (and hence minority) phenomenon.” As mentioned, the separation of men and women is not a tradition of Iranian culture, but until today a product of Islamic-based ruling states.

Under the dynasties of Safavid and Qajar, Iran was as late introducing modern secular education as it was in introducing gender equality. The educational system was monopolised by clerical power. Teaching was Islamic, limited at lower levels to reading, writing, and learning the Koran and religion. At the end of the Qajar dynasty, the madreseh (a higher school to teach the basics for Arabic and theology) only received boys.

Nikki.R. Keddi writes “Many functions that in modern states are governmental were carried out in Qajar Iran, as in most traditional Muslim societies, by the ulama (Islamic scholars). These included all levels of education, most forms of judicial and legal activity, and social and charitable services.” A combination of social attitudes, values, and a cognitive behaviour system are made of this long period of religiosity which still influences the mind-set of most contemporary Iranians. Today, for the IRI, a return to this archaic system is vital to prevent any secular and democratic understanding of the world.

Based on the morality of non-mahram, premarital love between a man and a woman passes the level of decency. Despite many love stories and much romantic literature in Iranian history, love is considered as a feeling incompatible with Islamic culture. In this context, marriage is arranged by the families rather than being based on mutual love and harmony of the two partners. Love and harmony may appear after the marriage, or may not. Arranged marriage, with no premarital love and harmony, also favours “Sigheh” (temporary marriage). Sigheh flourishes in Shi’ite pilgrimage centres where Mullahs could be intermediaries; the affair is often regarded as legalised prostitution. It temporally removes the non-mahram barrier between the two non-mahrams.

The idea of love associated with sin is not completely different from the other established monotheist religions. The idea implies that women have by nature the desire to be looked at, adored and cherished, while men are disposed to non-mahram women.

Love is rather associated with sin and lust than wisdom and emotion; a pious follower of Jesus – a priest or bishop – would not share his life and emotion with a woman. Early Christianity invented the idea that not only Eve herself but also all daughters of Eve were full of sin, therefore man was better off not to marry. Since this would be the end of mankind the same people found apparently a compromise and virtually decided that only the impious men marry. Legitimate love seems the one for the Truth and Devotion with a spiritual path. This is the level of lifetime love to God. Such an ambiguous comprehension of love is allegedly guided by a force greater than a feeling of inter-human relation. Such a love, despite its level of illusion and even perversion, is presented in the Iranian post-Islamic mystics and lyrics and has considerably influenced Muslims’ mindset. Love for a non-mahram, especially from a woman to a non-mahram man, is regarded in Islam as similar to an act of indecency.

Although, woman’s rights in Islamic societies are more limited by restrictions of non-mahram, no other monotheist religion permits a woman to be ordained a religious higher rank as a “Mujthaid” (a qualified Shiite religious scholar to interpretation of scriptures), an “Alim” (an Islamic scholar, mainly in Sunnite Islam), a Rabin for Jews, or a bishop for Christians. These remain in the domain of men. The Catholic Church refuses to even talk about ordinary women as priests. Many Protestant traditions and denominations have done the same, says Jim Seers in his book, The Religion Book. However, no other religion except Islam considers women excluded from their “non-mahram” environment.

For many foreign observers, especially the Western analysts, who know little about the concept and influence of non-mahram dogma, a vision of an Islamic society has been, mechanically, amalgamated with the Islamic hijab. They do not understand the deeper phenomenon beyond hijab which is a tool separating non-mahrams. So, the division of society into mahram and non-mahram imposed gender-segregation whose Islamic hijab is simply a by-product.

In my opinion, non-mahram dogma is the morality-based philosophy of gender-inequalities in any Islamic societies. Although the Islamic hijab is a symbol and blockade to woman’s freedom and gender-equality, it is not more than a simple product of the dogma. As long as we cannot recognise its origin, we will not be in the right position to free women from this traditional yoke. If we tackle the problem correctly, then we will be able to influence the entire attitude structure of our society to remove all the inequalities from which our women suffer, including Islamic hijab.

Non-mahram dogma remains today the main barrier against woman’s rights for freedom and equality. An identifiable change in peoples’ values with the criteria of non-mahram must start with recognition of this dogma, which is so complex that it easily can go beyond any obvious understanding.

The long-term effects of reluctance and apathy of Iranian intelligentsia toward gender-related issues deprived our women of any serious support. So, today the ruling Mullahs can invade people’s minds with the norms, values, and criteria of their Gender-Apartheid. Gender-based segregation in public life was institutionalised after the inception of the Mullahs’ regime in Iran.