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The Women's Question in Contemporary Indian Politics(1)
Keywords
Social movements; politics; India; reservation; democracy; caste; class
Abstract
This paper deals with the articulation and manifestation of the women's question in Indian politics during the last two to three decades and the problems that have been consequently thrown up. The issues addressed here illustrate the complexity of the women's question and its embeddedness in the wider social and political matrix. They include questions about the Uniform Civil Code, reservations for the Other Backward Classes and political reservation for women. It is argued that the women's question has never been a women's question alone, but more than any other, reveals the intractability and intransigence of structures, both traditional and modern. And, simultaneously, it opens up possibilities for addressing the question of democratization of the social order.
Introduction
The women's question in contemporary Indian politics has acquired a kind of significance that at one level seems simple enough. But, at another level, the women's question bristles with complexities and in a sense is suffused with the very contradictions arising out of the intermeshing of hierarchy and diversity, both so characteristic of the Indian social structure. All across the political spectrum, there is a seemingly `common-sensical' consensus that women in Indian society have been victims of a patriarchal social order to a greater or lesser degree. And so it is high time that society acknowledges the injustices inherent in the social order and takes necessary steps so that women may take their rightful place in the society and polity. In this context, one needs to note that both hierarchy and diversity have never been static, but are continuously reconstituted and reconstructed by the operation of historical and social processes; their intermeshing has also been characterized by a similar dynamism and historicity. Thus, the women's question has never been a women's question alone. Nor are women's issues the exclusive concern of the women's movement. Perhaps, the women's question more than any other brings to the fore both the intractability and intransigence of structures, traditional and modern, and simultaneously opens up possibilities for addressing the question of the democratization of the social order.
In this paper, we propose to focus on the articulation and manifestation of the women's question in...