No compromise with live-ins or gay rights, moral values supreme: RSS // AMU group extols purdah, ‘Islamic solutions’ on Women’s Day
NB - This is the kind of moral policing and regressive thinking that awaits us if we don't resist communal ideologies of every colour. What is essential to each of them is the claim to represent and speak for entire traditions and entire communities - and more ominously, to back up these claims with violence and intimidation, as they have done numerous times: DS
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, ideological fount of the BJP, has emphasized that it will not compromise on “moral values, social system and traditions in the name of individual freedom” when it comes to issues like “live-in relationships” and “homosexuality”. The RSS made its point during the presentation of the annual report of its activities for 2013-14 at a meeting that began on Friday at the Rashtrothana Vidya Kendra here.
Senior RSS leaders expressed hope that the political atmosphere in the country would change after the general elections, and took pride in the fact that the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi, who is being seen as the harbinger of change, was a swayamsevak. “In the near future, Lok Sabha elections will be held. This is a good opportunity for our countrymen. The credibility, honesty and commitment to the nation of the present government have become questionable. Today, the nation expects a change”, RSS general secretary Suresh Bhaiyyaji Joshi said during the presentation of the report.
“It is for us to play our role in assessing its implication correctly, so as to bring about the change that will reflect the will and aspirations of the common people,” he told delegates. Joshi said that “in the past year, two issues had come up for discussion before society — live-in relationships and homosexuality — which led to arguments, both in favour and against, on according legal sanction to such relationships”. “Before extending legality to such things, we have to keep in mind the long-time deleterious effect it will have on our social life. Law accords security to the individual. However, a society that goes by its traditions, conventions, culture and life-values, cannot be secured through law. Only guidance based on dharmic and social thought can ensure security to social life,” the general secretary said
Women students in flowing burqas talk about how purdah is the “purest form of existence for a woman”. They explain how capitalism — with its notions of financial independence or a career for women — is anti-women. Models are on display to help explain how purdah is to be observed. And then, apparently in a concession to more “modern” views, the women also speak about dowry, foeticide, sexual violence and women’s health. All this is part of a three-day exhibition that started on Friday at one of Aligarh Muslim University’s women’s hostels, Abdullah Hall, to — ironically — mark International Women’s Day. The exhibition, which apparently has the permission of the vice-chancellor, has been organised by a students’ group named ‘Students of AMU’.
Anam Rais Ansari, one of the organisers, and a student of law, said they were providing “Islamic solutions” to women’s problems. The group has organised a talk titled ‘Women Empowerment: An Alternative in Focus’, at Kennedy Hall on the campus on March 8. Fliers on campus, and a huge poster at the university gate, show senior lawyer and feminist Vrinda Grover as one of the speakers. However, when contacted, Grover said she had pulled out of the function after she came to know about the group and its activities. “I am no longer part of (the AMU) function. The views of the organisers are extremely regressive. They are trying to tell women how to dress and how to live,” Grover said. But Abdul Rauf, a representative of the group, who is a research scholar at the biochemistry department, said: “We have invited Grover. She will come.”
The other two speakers at the event are Zohra Asma, member of the Muslim Personal Law Board in Hyderabad, and Brother Yahya Nomani, founder of the Institute for Higher Islamic Studies in Lucknow. ‘Students of AMU’ was formed in 2010, and has significant influence on the campus now. It enjoys the support of some teachers and students and, apparently, of AMU authorities as well. The group is known for its regressive views on women and women’s rights. A recent post on its Facebook page reads: “Sisters, even though our brothers are responsible for their own gaze, we are responsible for what we give them to gaze at!!” One of the posts profiles four Western women who recently converted to Islam.
One of the over 30 lectures the group has organised in the past was titled ‘Hijab: The beauty of Islam’. The group is alleged to have recently scuttled an initiative to get men and women students of the campus together on a single platform to protest against the alleged molestation of a Kashmiri student by a teacher. A student of the law faculty said: “‘Students of AMU’ is subverting the secular discourse at the university, and is promoting conservatism on campus. They prefer to call themselves an Islamist body.” Attempts to contact the university V-C and registrar failed.
..every authoritarian society in history has policed sexual behaviour, from the enforced celibacy of the Catholic Church, to the neo-Puritanism of the American right, to female genital mutilation in patriarchal communities, the Third Reich’s attempt at exterminating LGBTQ people, and Mao’s Little Red Book recommendation to lie back and think of the People’s Republic.. Governments are spying on our sexual lives
