The Politics of Patriarchy in Indian Discourse
Walk into any Indian university seminar room and you will hear scholars dissect Manusmriti’s verses on women with surgical precision.
Ask the same room about verses in other scriptures that restrict a woman’s testimony, inheritance, or right to lead prayer, and the silence becomes its own data point.
This essay uses [real] social science theory (as talked by Marxist intellectuals and liberal scholars in the classes, twitter, and seminars), not slogans, to ask why the Indian intelligentsia applies one measuring tape to Hinduism and a different one to Islam and Christianity when it comes to patriarchy.
What Patriarchy Means and Where Consistency Breaks?
“Patriarchy”, in sociology, is a social system in which men hold primary power in family, religious, and political structures while women are structurally subordinated. Sylvia Walby’s classic definition identifies 6 structures: household work, paid work, the state, violence, sexuality, and culture.
A consistent feminist analysis should apply these across every religion.
In India, that consistency collapses the moment the religion shifts from Hindu to minority. Political theorists call this ‘asymmetric critique’. The same intellectual who frames Hindu temple entry restrictions as a caste-patriarchy nexus stays largely silent on mosque entry restrictions for women, still enforced in many places.
Trupti Desai’s 2016 campaign for entry into the Shani Shingnapur sanctum received wide liberal media praise. Parallel efforts by groups such as the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan for dargah entry received far less sustained solidarity.
Theories That Explain the Double Standard
Gayatri Spivak’s idea of “strategic essentialism” describes how minority groups sometimes unify around a simplified identity for political survival. Indian left intellectuals often extend this courtesy only to religious minorities, treating internal critique of Islam or Christianity as an attack on a vulnerable community rather than feminist scholarship. Applied to Hindus, the essentialism is dropped at once; Hindu identity is treated as inherently powerful, erasing its internal diversity and reformist voices.
Edward Said’s “Orientalism” warned against painting the East as a single backward block. Many Indian progressives invert that lens onto Hinduism itself, treating it as monolithic “Brahminical patriarchy” while insisting Islam and Christianity be read only through their most progressive interpretations.
Stanley Cohen’s concept of “moral panic” helps explain the next move. Criticism of practices such as triple talaq or unequal inheritance is recoded not as feminist concern but as majoritarian moral panic against minorities. Legitimate critique becomes bigotry, and the women affected lose advocates.
Leon Festinger’s “cognitive dissonance theory” accounts for the mental gymnastics. A progressive committed both to gender equality and to minority protection feels discomfort when a minority religious practice harms women. The easiest resolution is to reframe the critique itself as illegitimate, often by labelling it Islamophobic or an RSS talking point.
Henri Tajfel’s “social identity theory” adds another layer. People favour their in-group and forgive its flaws while judging out-groups more harshly. For much of the Indian left, upper-caste Hindus are coded as the dominant in-group, so criticism flows freely. Muslims and Christians are coded as the vulnerable out-group, so criticism is suppressed to avoid appearing majoritarian. This is a psychological explanation of bias, not a moral defence of it.
The soft bigotry of low expectations operates in the same space. Muslim and Christian women are implicitly told their patriarchal structures are too sensitive, too tied to community survival, to be criticised loudly. That is condescension dressed as solidarity.
Why Hinduism Becomes the Easier Target?
Hinduism lacks a single clergy, a single holy book, or a centralised enforcement structure. It is therefore structurally easier to criticise without organised backlash. Islam and Christianity, with more centralised authorities and, in some contexts, real safety risks for critics, are higher-risk targets. Risk aversion, not principle, often explains the imbalance.
Manusmriti’s patriarchal verses appear constantly in Indian classrooms and op-eds. Parallel verses in the Bible’s Book of Timothy on women’s silence and submission, or Quranic rules on inheritance ratios and testimony, rarely receive the same public dissection in mainstream liberal discourse. A consistent sociology of religion would treat all three scriptures as historical texts shaped by the patriarchal societies of their time.
Antonio Gramsci’s “idea of hegemony” shows how certain framings become “common sense” through media and academia. In Indian universities the common sense is that Hindu patriarchy is structural and systemic while patriarchy in minority religions is cultural and best left to internal reform. That asymmetry itself has become hegemonic.
The Catholic Church’s refusal to ordain women as priests, reaffirmed by successive popes, is a globally significant patriarchal structure affecting millions of Indian Christian women. Yet progressive discourse rarely centres it with the same energy it applies to restrictions in some Hindu temple traditions.
“Moral licensing” plays a role too. Having criticised Hindu patriarchy loudly, some intellectuals appear to feel they have earned enough progressive credibility to remain silent on other religions.
National Family Health Survey data show domestic violence and restrictive gender norms across all Indian religious communities. Media and academic framing, however, disproportionately link patriarchy to Hindu practices such as dowry and caste, while similar patterns elsewhere are framed as poverty or culture, rarely as religion.
“Subaltern studies” set out to recover excluded voices. Today, Muslim and Christian women reformers who criticise their own religious patriarchy often receive less academic and media space than Hindu reformist voices. The “Overton window” has widened fully for critique of Hindu religious patriarchy; the window for critiquing minority religious patriarchy without being branded communal remains narrow.
From Shah Bano to a Consistent Feminism
In 1985 Shah Bano, a 62-year-old Muslim woman, won a Supreme Court case for maintenance after divorce. The Rajiv Gandhi government, under clerical pressure, passed a law overturning the verdict. Progressive voices that would normally defend a woman’s economic rights largely stayed silent or supported the reversal in the name of religious autonomy. Shayara Bano’s 2017 challenge to instant triple talaq succeeded only after 3 decades and a right-leaning government’s push; the most consistent demands for reform often came from outside the traditional Indian left.
A social science lens built on theory rather than tribal loyalty would treat patriarchy as patriarchy regardless of the scripture behind it. bell hooks insisted “feminism must be for everybody, without political carve-outs.” Indian public discourse needs the same even application.
This reading of Indian left discourse is one side of a contested debate. Many on the left and among minority reformers argue their caution is strategic: criticising a numerical minority’s religion in a majoritarian climate risk feeding communal violence and narratives already amplified by the right. They note that Hindu reform movements often enjoy institutional space and safety that minority reformers lack.
Scholars such as Zoya Hasan and Flavia Agnes have argued for reforming personal laws from within minority communities without external majoritarian pressure, aiming to protect both women’s rights and communal harmony. Others maintain that focused critique of Hindu practices simply reflects Hinduism’s demographic and political dominance.
Both sides draw on real sociological reasoning, and the argument remains open in Indian academia and public life.
