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Fakhri Haghani

South Asia

Although South Asia is segmented along various

axes of difference – ethnic, caste, class, gender, reli-

gion, language – the mobilization of these identities

is the result of particular configurations of local

and global political, social, and economic forces

and of the emergence of specific constituencies and

identity politics based on new forms of politicized

religion. Located in a broader crisis of modernity

and state legitimacy, identity politics based on

politicized religion are modernist with a clear polit-

ical project for control over the state and imposi-

tion of their agenda on others. This was seen in the

Islamization campaign during Zia ul-Haq’s regime

in Pakistan, under General Ershad’s rule in Bangla-

desh, and in the propagation of the Hindutva ide-

286 identity politics

ology espoused by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party

in India.

Since the 1980s a new configuration and redefin-

ition of the contours and boundaries of the state,

community, and the family in the region has

emerged. Multiple identities are being particular-

ized into singular religion-based identities imposed

through force as well as embraced through affinity.

Women in particular have been subject to contra-

dictory political, economic, and social pressures

and they have defined themselves, and have been

defined and redefined, in their identities as women

and as members of a nation, community, caste, and

class group. That these identities are often at the

cost of equal citizenship rights is epitomized by the

following statement by Nur Jahan, a working class

Muslim feminist from India: “If by making separate

laws for Muslim women, you are trying to say that

we are not citizens of this country, then why don’t

you tell us clearly and unequivocally that we should

establish another country – not Hindustan or

Pakistan but Auratstan [women’s land]” (Chhachhi

1994, 74).

The characterization of the emergence of politi-

cized religion in the region is contested. Analysts

continue to debate whether contemporary states

and particular religio-political identity groups

should be labeled fundamentalist, communalist,

nationalist, Islamist, majoritarian, fascist, or right-

wing – each characterization reflecting particular

political positionings. Although there are varia-

tions in the strength of politicized religion in each

country there are common features in the ways in

which the boundaries of the nation/community/

family are constructed, (re)defined and protected

with women/gender relations figuring as a crucial

marker and signifier of identity.

A key determinant of identity politics in the

South Asian region today is the role of the state in

mobilizing and reproducing politicized religious

identities. The process of the formation of India,

Pakistan, and Bangladesh was itself based on an

ideological mobilization that equated the nation

with a particular community identity, despite

avowals of secularism. The often forced recovery of

women abducted by both sides during Indian parti-

tion was cast within a discourse of protection/ con-

tamination/control over women’s bodies in which

citizenship was defined in religious community

terms. In India and Pakistan each side emphasizes

its difference through external discourses and inter-

nal processes of “othering” through the media, his-

tory textbooks, and popular discourses, often using

the masculine/feminine dualism to bolster a milita-

rized masculinity.