Can the Congress, which has turned a blind eye most recently to the activities of ethnic chauvinists such as the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena for instance, claim it has nothing to do with the growing power of the lumpen? And can the Sangh Parivar play innocent when not only do its constituents such as the Bajrang Dal specialise in this brand of moral policing but when it itself provides the ideological umbrella under which such incidents can take place? Indeed, the Mangalore incident has served to highlight an aspect of the Hindutva ideology customarily sidelined in the greater preoccupation with religion and anti-minorityism, which is its strongly patriarchal attitudes. 

Much has been written on the sexual underpinnings of the Hindu revivalist movement. Scholars like Paola Bacchetta have described the vividly sexual imagery of the movement — the idea of the country as a goddess in turn ravished and saved by men; others have commented on the sexual competitiveness that contributed to the horrific assaults on women during the Gujarat violence of 2002. Within the Parivar too, women, while they may enjoy a certain status as leaders, not granted even to women in the more progressive Left, are discouraged from developing a radical vision of womanhood.  

The Sangh way, writes Tanika Sarkar “does not confront them (women) with the larger problems of their socially exploited sister, so that the Hindutva women are never forced to choose between gender and their own class/caste privileges. It keeps them tied to family interests and ideology while spicing their lives with the excitement of limited but important public identity.”  

... contd.