CHAPTER-3 GENDER, CASTE & RELIGION

Feminist:
A woman or a man, who believes in equal rights and opportunities for women and men,
is called a feminist.
Feminist Movements are radical women’s movements aiming at attaining equality for
women in personal and family life and public affairs. These movements have organized
and agitated to raise channels for enhancing the political and legal status of women and
improving their educational and career opportunities.

Patriarchal society:
A patriarchal society is essentially male dominated. The line of descent is traced
through the father. Men are valued more in terms of work they do and the place they
hold in society. This gives them more power than women.

Communal politics:
When the demands of one religious group are formed in opposition to another and when
State power is used to establish domination of one religious group over the rest, this
manner of using religion in politics is called communal politics.

Communalism can take various forms in politics, as mentioned below:

1. The most common expression of communalism is in everyday beliefs that

involve religious prejudices, stereotypes of religious communities and belief in
the superiority of one’s religion over other religions.

2. A communal mind often leads to a quest for political dominance of one’s own
religious community.

3. Political mobilization on religious lines involves the use of sacred symbols,

religious leaders, emotional appeal and plain fear in order to bring the followers
of one religion together in the political arena.

4. Sometimes communalism takes its ugly form of communal violence, riots and
massacre. India and Pakistan suffered some of the worst communal riots at the
time of the Partition.
Secular State- India is a secular state. Some of the features of India’s Secular states are:

1. There is no official religion in the Indian state.

2. The Constitution provides to all individuals and communities the freedom to

profess, practice and propagate any religion or not to follow any.

3. The Constitution prohibits discrimination on grounds of religion.

 4. The Constitution allows the state to intervene in matters of religion in order to
ensure equality within religious communities. For example, it bans untouchability.

Discrimination against women:

 In studies girls mostly perform better than boys, but they drop out simply because
parents prefer to spend their resources on their boys’ education. A smaller
proportion of girls go for higher studies.
 On an average, a woman works more than an average man every day. Since much
of her work is not paid for, therefore often not valued.
 The Equal Wages Act provides for equal wages for equal work. But in almost all
areas of work
from sports to cinema, from factories to fields, women are comparatively paid
less.
 The child sex ratio (number of girl children per thousand boys) is very low. In India
the national average is 927. In some places it is as low as 850 or even 800,
because parents prefer to have sons so they get the girl child aborted before her
birth.
 In urban areas, women are unsafe. Even in their homes they suffer from beating,
harassment and other forms of domestic violence.

Caste inequalities in India:

Caste has not disappeared from contemporary India and caste division is special to
India. Even now most people marry within their own caste. The caste groups that had
access to education under old system have done well, whereas those groups that did
not have access to education have lagged behind. There is a large presence of ‘upper
taste’ among the urban middle classes in our country. The average economic status of
caste groups still follows the old hierarchy—the ‘upper’ castes are best off, the Dalits
and Adivasis are worst off and the backward classes are in between. The upper castes
are heavily over represented among the rich while the lower castes are under-
represented.

Caste in Politics-

Caste can take various forms in politics:

1. When parties choose their candidate or when governments are formed, political
parties usually take care that representatives of different castes and tribes find a
place in it.

2. Political parties and candidates in elections make appeals to caste sentiment to

 win the elections.

3. To gain support, political parties raise caste-based issues during elections to get
political support, as the ‘one man, one vote’ system or adult franchise has made
the voter very powerful.

4. Political Parties have made people belonging to lower castes conscious about
their rights to vote and their powers.

Status of women’s representation in India’s legislative bodies:

The one way to ensure that women related problems get adequate attention is to have
more women as elected representatives. To achieve this, it is legally binding to have a
fair proportion of women in the elected bodies.

 Panchayat Raj in India has reserved one-third seats in Local Government bodies
for women.
 In India, the proportion of women in legislature has been very low. The percentage
of elected women members in Lok Sabha is not even 10 per cent and in State
Assemblies less than 5 per cent. Only recently, in March 2010, the women’s
reservation bill was passed in the Rajya Sabha ensuring 33% reservation to
women in Parliament and State Legislative bodies.

Religion and politics in India:

Gandhiji said, “Religion can never be separated from politics”. By religion he did not
mean any particular religion like Hinduism or Islam, but moral values and ethics drawn
from religion to guide politics. Religion in politics is not as dangerous as it may seem to
us. Ethical values of each religion can play a major role in politics. According to human
rights groups, most of the victims of communal riots in our country are from religious
minorities. Government can take special steps to protect them. These instances show a
relationship between religion and politics.

Politics in Caste

Politics also influence the caste system and caste identities by bringing them into the
political arena. Here are a few points that support this;

1. Each caste group tries to become bigger by incorporating within its neighboring
castes or sub-castes.

2. Various caste groups are formed with other castes or communities, and then
they enter into a dialogue and negotiation.
 3. New kinds of caste groups have come up in the political arena, like ‘backward’
and ‘forward’ caste groups.

Reasons which have contributed to changes in caste system:

 Efforts of political leaders and social reformers like Gandhiji, B.R. Ambedkar who
advocated and worked to establish a society in which caste inequalities are
absent.
 Socio-economic changes such as: urbanization; growth of literacy and education;
occupational mobility; weakening of landlord’s position in the village; breaking
down of caste hierarchy; have greatly contributed.
 The Constitution of India prohibited any caste-based discrimination.
 Provision of fundamental rights has played a major role because these rights are
provided to all citizens without any discrimination.