Masculinity is, in the words of Raewyn W. Connell, a “gender project,” a dynamic and actively constructed social practice (“Gender as a Social Practice” 369). It is articulated on the site of the individual, the state, and more abstractly, ideologies and cultures. Not viewed from a biological lens as a pre-existing, natural, or static state of being, masculinity is shaped, contested, displaced, and performed. It is stratified through hierarchies of hegemonic and subordinated forms that transform with various historical processes. However, masculinities are also unstable categories, as they are constructed in opposition to an ‘other,’ often an abjected other, and are thus not inherently meaningful. As Judith Butler wrote in her pioneering text Gender Trouble, gender is a repetitive imitation, propagating an approximation of an ideal that is always out of reach because it does not exist (313). Constructions of masculinity in India are no exception. Defined in opposition to the effeminate, docile native, the hedonistic Westerner, and especially the depraved Muslim, Hindu nationalist (i.e., Hindutva) articulations of masculinity emphasize self-discipline, spirituality, and physical prowess to be used militantly against an abstract Muslim threat, with Hindu nationhood built on this very masculinist premise.
To understand contemporary constructions of masculinity as maintained by Hindutva organizations, it is important to recognize linkages with India’s anti-imperialist, nationalist struggle. British imperialism’s impact on pre-existing masculinities in India is an area of some contention. Historians challenge oversimplifying binaries of Western as opposed to traditional masculinities, especially since pre-colonial Indian constructions of masculinity were complex and stratified, as well as historically and regionally specific (Sinha 452). At the same time, British elaborations of masculinity were not merely imported to India; rather they were co-articulated along with native masculinities during the colonial period. This is consistent with Connell’s view that masculinities are actively constructed; “Masculinities do not exist prior to social interaction, but come into existence as people act” (“Masculinities” 42).
As masculinities are indications of relations of power, British domination and demilitarization of its colony, including the subjugation of native peoples into menial and clerical forms of work, had an emasculating effect (Sinha 449). Done as a form of colonial control, this led to the formation of a binary – the masculine Englishman and the effeminate Bengali – each mutually constituting the other (Connell, “Masculinities” 47; Sinha 454). Yet, “Indian nationalists located their own autonomous identity in the inner/spiritual world while conceding superiority to the West in the outer/material world” (Sinha 449). This offers insight into the forms of Hindu nationalist masculinities that would consequently arise. Projects of remasculinization were taken up to counter the hegemonic nineteenth-century British notions of rationality, competition, individualism, materialism, martial prowess, and physical strength (Sinha 448, Banerjee 64). Elite classes of particularly upper-caste Indians, having internalized this colonial feminizing of the nation, began to articulate hybrid masculinities that emphasized both physical prowess and Hindu spirituality.
With the burgeoning of Hindu nationalist organizations in the early 20th century, such as the Hindu Mahasabha and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), myths of an original and ideal Hindu masculinity were embraced as part of attempts towards “recuperating masculinity” and reclaiming “Mother India” (Blom Hansen 137). These myths were embodied by the seventeenth century Indian warrior and king Shivaji, who was eulogized as demonstrating “martial prowess, courage, muscular strength as well as the ability to be organized and efficient” (Banerjee 67). Shivaji is especially revered for his resistance to the Moghuls, which captured for many Hindu nationalists another struggle— that struggle against the threat of Muslim conquerors. Shivaji’s resurgence as an emblematic figure confirms Connell’s suggestion that it is not the case “that the most visible bearers of hegemonic masculinity are always the most powerful people. They may be exemplars,” she writes, and they can even be fantastical (“Masculinities” 373). Shivaji, as remembered and imagined by the Hindu nationalists, possessed martial strength that was symbolic of a masculine vigor felt to be lost or weakened by British imperialism. He represented a “heroic masculinit[y]” (Connell, “Masculinities” 370) that survived him, and so it will come as no surprise that images of Shivaji decorate the walls of men’s gyms for the Hindu right four centuries later (Blom Hansen 138).
Judith Butler’s notions of performativity and self-definition through differentiating the “Other” will be fundamental to understanding Hindu nationalist masculinities that developed in the 20th and 21st centuries (Butler 316). What will be attempted here is a reference to Butler’s concepts not only to analyze the gendered practices and ideology of Hindutva but also to extrapolate from her ideas to understand the formation of profoundly gendered national and religious identities. An analysis of the abjected others that underlie this masculine identity will be presented first, followed by a look at the ways Hindu masculinity is performed. Finally, the Indian state as masculine institution – this too as a category of disavowal – will be presented.
The project of recuperating Indian masculinity during and after British colonialism, then, involved an ambivalence towards modernity combined with an internalization of the Orientalism that had painted India as a spiritual, unchanging land that was “the antithesis to a materialistic, individualized, calculating West” (Hanson 142). What can be observed here is what Butler refers to as “redoubling” where “that ‘being’ gets established, instituted, circulated, and confirmed,” ultimately to be internalized by oneself (Butler 311). The “being” here is the notion of a native, feminine India, which was contrasted against the modern West, namely a powerful, masculine British empire (Blom Hansen 142). It is important to note that binaries of masculine and feminine peoples were engaged within colonized India as well, such as Sikhs being identified by the British as more masculine than Bengalis (Connell, “Masculinities” 47). As a result of the colonial influence, India’s reconstructed masculinities necessarily absorbed this Orientalist lens in articulating an ideal Hindu nation that boasted a combination of physical strength – to ensure it could no longer be colonized – and a superior spirituality, manifesting as self-discipline and self-reliance.
This serves as an excellent example of “disrupted” masculinities as described by Connell, who writes, “The varied course of resistance to colonization is also likely to have affected the making of masculinities” (“Masculinities” 47). Clear evidence of such is found in the book Bunch of Thoughts by M.S. Golwarkar, an ideologue for the Hindu nationalist organization RSS. His writing captures a masculinity crafted in resistance to British colonialism, as well as the internalization of the Orientalist lens by infusing the new, remasculinized India with both spirituality and physical strength:
We have to be so strong that none in the whole world will be able to overawe and subdue us. For that we require strong and healthy bodies…[but] character is more important. Strength without character will only make a brute of a man. Purity of character as well as the national standpoint is the real life-breath of national glory and greatness. (Golwarkar qtd. in Blom Hansen 145)
Golwarkar simultaneously exhorted young Indian men to exhibit strength of character and physical prowess. He emphasizes the latter in the following excerpt:
Let us shake off the present-day emasculating notions and become real living men, bubbling with national pride, living and breathing the grand ideas of service, self-reliance and dedication in the cause of our dear and sacred motherland…Today more than anything else, mother needs such men—young, intelligent, dedicated and more than all virile and masculine. And such are the men who make history—men with a capital ‘M’. (qtd. in Blom Hansen 146)
Prominent in Golwarkar’s writings are a rejection of the emasculated Indian man projected by the colonial power, and a call to superior manhood, or the “men with a capital ‘M’” as he refers to them. It is also worth noting that invoking motherhood in representations of the state offers an object on which Hindu masculinity could be practiced; that is, if Mother India needs protection, a protector must materialize.
As such, the threat from which Mother India required protection became an abstract and ever-present Muslim danger. Butler explains that “the self is from the start radically implicated in the ‘Other’” (316), and indeed this especially becomes the case in masculine articulations against the specter of a Muslim threat to a pure and unified Hindu nationhood (Blom Hansen 148). The contingency of one category upon another becomes readily apparent. Muslims become the “abject” (Butler 312), as they are reviled for their weakness (for having converted out of Hinduism), sexual dissipation (for practicing polygyny and producing many children), and aggression (due to global associations of Muslims with terrorism) – all of which coalesce to form a lesser masculinity subordinated to the hegemonic Hindu masculinity (Blom Hansen 152, Anand 263). The dangerously hypersexual Muslim man is invoked as a simultaneous threat to the chaste Hindu woman (Gupta 728) and to a homogenous Hindu nation (through excessive “propagation”)— both of which must be protected (Gupta 727). The risk of a Muslim takeover is invoked through a popular Indian family planning slogan, for example, which encourages Hindu men to marry only one wife and produce only two children ( “Hum do, hamaare do” or “We are two, and we have two”) but the derogatory equivalent for Muslims is “Hum paanch, hamaare pachis” or “We are five and we have twenty-five,” since one Muslim man is allowed four wives in India (Anand 260). Whereas Muslim men display uncontrolled sexuality, Hindu masculinity is instead restrained and judicious, selflessly limiting offspring in service to the state. In such ways, Muslims are portrayed as anti-national, a burden to the state, and therefore inferior in relation to the ideal Hindu man.
A note on gendered communal violence is warranted here as it serves to highlight the ways in which Muslim sexuality threatened and fueled the enactment of violent Hindu masculinity. During historical moments of agitation against Muslims (numerous examples abound, the most commonly documented of which is the Gujarat riots in 2002), Hindu men and women partook in violence in a number of ways. It is interesting to note, for example, that Hindu men who did not participate in communal acts of violence against Muslims were publicly labeled by Hindu women who distributed bangles to them, in effect “ridiculing them for their effeminacy” (Blom Hansen 153). Thus, their nonviolence towards the abjected other detracted from their masculinity, and their consequent shaming occurred when they were marked as feminine.
Also very telling are the slogans and chants heard during acts of communal violence, which captured the denigrated masculinities of Muslims. Specifically, Hindu nationalists often use the slur “landya,” which in Marathi means “something which has shrunk and become too small” but actually refers to the circumcision of Muslim men, a practice in which Hindu families do not engage (Blom Hansen 170). As Blom Hansen explains, this term “seeks metaphorically to reverse the myth of Muslim virility and sexual prowess by turning circumcision into a sort of castration” (170). Chants using this term range from symbolically violent to explicit calls to violence, all in ways that are fundamentally gendered. This includes “Landyabhai ko maro” or “beat/kill the circumcised man” (Anand 262). In a Gujarat publication in 2002, the Hindu uncircumcised penis was invoked in descriptions of rape: “We have widened the tight vaginas of the ‘bibis’ [Muslim women]…She enjoyed the uncircumcised penis” (Anand 264-5). Thus, a violent Hindu masculinity came to be articulated as communal violence spread throughout India, and Hindu manhood was asserted through the violation of Muslim women and the humiliation of Muslim men (Anand 264).
In order to prepare for such acts of violence, seen as protecting Mother India, and to render visible the prowess of Hindu masculinity, particular sites developed for men’s physical activities. This captures an explicit method for the performance of Hindu manhood. “Akharas” or men’s clubs for physical fitness, sprouting in 1923 and continuing until today contributed to a “cult of exercise”; early forms of such gyms involved “sword fighting, wrestling and ‘lathi’ wielding” (Gupta 730). More recent accounts offer greater detail. For example, Blom Hansen describes a routine in Thane, Mumbai:
Every evening, 40-50 men dressed in khaki shorts meet at the training ground and perform a series of physical exercises and martial training with long sticks (lathis). After the training they gather in the assembly hall in front of a large map of Akhanda Bharat (undivided India, i.e. pre-Partition India including present-day Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka), images of the god Ram, saffron flags and a statue of the founder of the organization. Here they collectively perform the patriotic Sanskrit prayer of RSS, promising life-long service to the regeneration of a pure Hindu Nation, while standing in rows with their hands stretched in front of their chests in a sort of military salute. (137)
Blom Hansen’s description of khaki shorts alludes to the use of a uniform in order to build a communal identity that engages in a collective masculinity. He then goes on to describe another training ground just footsteps from this camp, operated by Shiv Sena (named after the revered king Shivaji), which offers body building within walls decorated not only with images of Hindu warriors and war deities, but also “glistening American muscle-men” (138). This mishmash of Hindu/American imagery speaks to the modern-day global “arena of masculinity” which blends local and global, national and international gender constructions, all as part of a world gender order (Connell, “Masculinities” 49).
These expressions of masculinity are not confined, however, to male bodies. Hindu nationalist women, too, partake in camps in order to train for the protection of the Hindu nation, such as the women’s training ground organized by Durga Vahini. The renunciation of female sexuality is key to becoming a “virangana” (which translates to “brave woman”) or a “sister in arms” (Gupta 732). They too wear uniforms (saffron robes), suspend any acts of self-beautification, and are instructed to learn self-defense in order to protect their chastity and purity (Banerjee 69). “In order to enter the masculinized reality of Hindu nationalism sadhvis [virtuous women, NE] are highlighting their chaste and pure inner self by symbolically and practically shedding outer markers of their femininity” (Banerjee 69-70). With imagery of Hindu goddesses decorating the interior of their camps as well, the woman as a masculinized “citizen warrior” joins the fold of Hindutva masculinity to protect herself and the Hindu nation from threatening outsiders, namely Muslims.
It is at this juncture that the Indian state as enacting masculinity will be explored. This can be examined in two ways. One is the institutional masculinity which manifests not only in the gender of political leaders but also in the paternalistic policies and gendered practices of government operations (Connell, “Gender as a Social Practice” 370). Thus, insults to the state could also take on a gendered dimension, as Hindu nationalists may call the government “Shikandi,” a fictional character in the Hindu epic Mahabharata who is “a cowardly eunuch” and who dresses and behaves “like a woman” (Blom Hansen 170). Another way in which the state enacts masculinity is through a series of exclusions and disavowals, as alluded to prior. These include disavowals of any cultural traces of non-Hindu identity – a vexed pursuit given the overlapping and intricate shared histories between Hindu and non-Hindu identities. As they are mutually constitutive, or contingent upon one another, there is no essential, a priori Hindu masculinity. It is only constructed by virtue of its disavowals of the Other. As Blom Hansen explains, an object of ideology is “paradoxically produced by its effects” (149), which Butler corroborates when expressing that the need for perpetual repetition at all is evidence of the absence of an original (315). Thus, as Butler asks, “What does it mean to avow a category that can only maintain its specificity and coherence by performing a prior set of disavowals?” (310), it becomes clear that Hindu masculinity relies on “Muslimness” to continue defining itself against it, and the Hindu nation as “Hindustan” can primarily exist in opposition to a Muslim nation, often “Pakistan.”
Just as Butler draws from Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory, so too does Slavoj Zizek in articulating the antagonism of opposites as central to the imagination of nationhood:
National identification is by definition sustained by a relationship toward the Nation qua Thing. This Nation-Thing is determined by a series of contradictory properties. It appears to us as ‘our Thing’ (perhaps we could say cosa nostra), as something accessible only to us, as something ‘they’, the others, cannot grasp, but which is nonetheless constantly menaced by ‘them’. It appears as what gives plenitude and vivacity to our life, and yet the only way we can determine it is by resorting to different versions of an empty tautology: all we can say about it is, ultimately, that the Thing is ‘itself’, ‘the real Thing’, ‘what it really is about’, and so on. If we are asked how we can recognize the presence of this Thing, the only consistent answer is that the Thing is present in that elusive entity called ‘our way of life’. All we can do is enumerate disconnected fragments of the way our community organizes its feasts, its rituals of mating, its initiation ceremonies—in short, all the details by which is made visible the unique way a community organizes its enjoyment. (Zizek 52)
That which is “menaced by ‘them’” – an elusive, essential Hinduness – does not actually exist, and yet without the perception of this menace, the community itself disappears, for a “Nation-Thing” can only exist in the presence of its opposition. The quest for Hindu unity is only felt in opposition to the Muslim threat to that unity. The discipline sought by the Hindu man is most “his” and most meaningful when it is pursued while abjuring Muslim depravity. The social constructions of gendered, national identities are thus in relationships of dependency, with the hegemonic dependent on the subordinated for self-definition, and vice versa.
All in all, Hindu constructions of masculinity can be understood in conjunction to sexualities that are subordinated to it, namely threatening Muslim sexuality but also Western notions of masculinity and masculinist colonial powers that feminize India. As a hegemonic masculinity that has been shaped over multiple historical moments, the recuperated Hindu masculinity is actively performed and replicated at individual, state, and ideological levels, often with violent consequences. Witnessed through gender-specific training camps and read in Hindutva slogans and publications, Hindu masculine nationhood has largely developed in a series of disavowals, ultimately leading to a current articulation of performative self-discipline, readiness for aggression, and a Hindu spirituality characterized by selfless, patriotic devotion to Mother India.
Works Cited
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Banerjee, Sikata. "Armed masculinity, Hindu nationalism and female political participation in India: Heroic mothers, chaste wives and celibate warriors." International Feminist Journal of Politics 8.1 (2006): 62-83.
Blom Hansen, Thomas. "Recuperating Masculinity: Hindu nationalism, violence and the exorcism of the Muslim 'Other'." Critique of anthropology 16.2 (1996): 137-172.
Butler, Judith. "Imitation and gender insubordination." Women, knowledge, and reality: Explorations in feminist philosophy (1996): 307-320.
Connell, Raewyn. W. "Gender as a social practice." The new social theory reader (2008): 369-375.
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Gupta, Charu. "Articulating Hindu Masculinity and Femininity: 'Shuddhi' and 'Sangathan' Movements in United Provinces in the 1920s." Economic and Political Weekly (1998): 727-735.
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Žižek, Slavoj. "Eastern Europe’s Republics of Gilead." New Left Review 183.1 (1990): 50-62.
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