CLASS X POL.SC. CH-4 ' GENDER,RELIGION,CASTE'

CLASS X

POLITICAL SCIENCE

CH-4 GENDER, RELIGION, CASTE

Gender and politics
Public/private divisions:

1. Boys and girls are brought up to believe that the main responsibility of women is housework and bringing up children.
2. This is reflected in a SEXUAL DIVISION OF LABOUR in most families: women do all work inside the home.
3. When these jobs are paid for, men are ready to take up these works. Most tailors or cooks in hotels are men.
4. In urban areas, poor women work as a domestic helper in middle-class homes, while middle-class women work in offices.
5. The result of this division of labour is that although women constitute half of the humanity, their role in public life, especially politics, is minimal in most societies.
6. Women in different parts of the world organised and agitated for equal rights.
7. More radical women’s movements aimed at equality in personal and family life as well. These movements are called FEMINIST movements.
8. We now find women working as scientists, doctors, engineers, lawyers, managers, managers and college and university teachers which were earlier not considered suitable for women.
9. In Scandinavian countries such as Sweden, Norway and Finland, the participation of women in public life is very high.

10. In our country, women still lag much behind men despite some improvement since independence.
11. Ours is still a male-dominated, PATRIARCHAL society.
12. Women face disadvantage, discrimination and oppression in various ways:
a) The literacy rate among women is only 54% compared with 76% of them.
b) On an average Indian woman works one hour more than an average man every day. Yet much of her work is not paid and therefore often not valued.
c) In almost all areas of work, from sports and cinema to factories and fields, women are paid less than men, even when both do exactly the same work.
d) In many parts of India, parents prefer to have sons and find ways to have the girl child aborted before she is born.
13. Urban areas have become particularly unsafe for women.
14. They are not safe even within their own home from beating, harassment and other forms of domestic violence.

Women’s political representation:

1. Yet issues related to women’s well being or otherwise are not given adequate attention.
2. One way to ensure this is to have more women as elected representatives.
3. In India, the proportion of women in the legislature has been very low.
4. The percentage of elected women members in Lok Sabha has never reached even 10% of its total strength.
5. In the government, cabinets are largely all male even when a woman becomes the Chief Minister or the Prime Minister.
6. One way to solve this problem is to make it legally binding to have a fair proportion of women in the elected bodies. This is what the Panchayati Raj has done in India.
7. There is more than 10 lakh elected women representatives in rural and urban local bodies.
8. Women’s organizations and activists have been demanding a similar reservation of at least one-third of seats in the Lok Sabha and State Assemblies for women.
9. A bill with proposal has been pending before the Parliament for more than a decade.
10. Gender division is an example that some form of social division needs to expressed in politics.

Religion, communalism and politics:

1. Let us now turn to a very different kind of social division, the division based on religious differences.
2. Many countries including India have in their population, followers of different religions.
3. Consider the following:
a) Gandhiji used to say that religion can never be separated from politics.
b) Human rights groups in our country have argued that most of the victims of communal riots in our country are people from religious minorities.
c) Women’s movement has argued that FAMILY LAWS of all religions discriminate against women.

Communalism

1. The problem begins when religion is seen as the basis of the nation.
2. Communal politics is based on the ideas that religion is the principal basis of social community.
3. Communalism can take various forms in politics:
a) The most common expression of communalism is in everyday beliefs.
b) A communal mind often leads to a quest for political dominance of one’s own religious community.
c) Political mobilization on religious lines is another frequent form of communalism.
d) Sometimes communalism takes its most ugly form of communal violence, riots, and massacre.

Secular state

1. Communalism was and continues to be one of the major challenges to democracy in our country.
2. Secularism is not just an ideology of some parties or persons.

Castes and politics

We have seen two instances of the expression of social divisions in the arena of politics, one largely positive and other largely negative.

Caste inequalities

1. Unlike gender and religion, caste division is special to India.
2. In most societies, occupations are passed on from one generation to another.
3. Caste system was based on the exclusion of and discrimination against the ‘outcaste’ groups.
4. Partly due to their efforts and partly due to other socioeconomic changes, castes and the caste system in modern India have undergone great changes.
5. Large scale URBANISATION, the growth of literacy and education, OCCUPATIONAL MOBILITY and old notions of CASTE HIERARCHY are breaking down.
6. Now, most of the times, in urban areas it does not matter much who is walking along the next to us on a street or eating at the next table in a restaurant.
7. Yet caste has not disappeared from contemporary India. Some of the older aspects of caste have persisted.
8. Effects of centuries of advantages and disadvantages continue to be felt today.

Caste in politics

1.     As in the case of communalism, casteism is rooted in the belief that caste is the sole basis of social community.
2. Caste is one aspect of our experience but it is not the only relevant or the most important aspect.
3. Caste can take various forms in politics:
a) When governments are formed, political parties usually take care that representatives of different castes and tribes find a place in it.
4. Thus, it is not politics that gets caste-ridden; it is the caste that gets politicized.
5. This takes several forms:
a) Each group tries to become bigger by incorporating within it neighboring castes or sub-castes which were earlier excluded from it.
b) Various caste groups are required to enter into a dialogue and negotiation.
c) New kinds of castes groups have come up in the political arena like ‘backward’ and ‘forward’ caste group.

Sexual Division of Labour:

A system in which all work inside the home is either done by the women of the family, or organised by them through the domestic helpers.

Feminist Movements: Various movements which are aimed at ensuring equal rights for women are called feminist movement.

Political expression of gender question helped a lot to improve women’s role in public life. Although the Indian society is still a patriarchal society, yet women are now working in many fields.

Women face disadvantage, discrimination and oppression in various ways:

1. The literacy rate among women is only 54 per cent compared with 76 per cent among men.
2. The percentage of women in highly paid jobs is still very small. At many workplaces, women are paid less than men for the same job. An Indian woman usually works more hour than an average man on a daily basis.
3. Many Indian parents prefer to have a male child. A girl child is killed before her birth in many cases. This has led to an eschewed sex ratio in India.
4. There are many reports of harassment against women; both on the domestic front and outside the home.

Women’s political representation:

The political representation of women had been very poor in the Indian legislatures. Even in the cabinet, the number of women ministers is very low.

One-third of seats in local government bodies have been reserved for women candidates. This has helped in increasing women’s representation in panchayats and municipalities.

A bill for providing one-third reservation in the Lok Sabha and State Assemblies has been pending in the Parliament for more than a decade. Political parties are yet to arrive at consensus on this issue.

Religion & Politics:

Religion also plays an important role in politics. In some countries, politicians promote the cause of the majority religious group at the cost of the minorities. This produces a dangerous trend of majority tyranny.

Communalism: When one religion is pitted against another; by the political class, this is called communalism or communal politics.

Communalism can take various forms in politics:

1. Many people think of their religion as superior to all other religions. Such people often try to dominate the people from other communities. This can result in people from the minority community to form a separate political unit.
2. Sometimes, sacred symbols, religious leaders, emotional appeal, etc. are used to instill a sense of fear among people of a particular community. This is done with an attempt to polarize people on communal lines.
3. Communalism can also take the ugly form of communal violence, riots and massacre.

Secular state

1. The Constitution of India declares that India is a secular state. Unlike some of the neighbouring countries, there is no official religion for the Indian state.
2. The constitution gives the people the freedom to practice a religion of their choice. The Constitution prohibits discrimination on grounds of religion.
3. The Indian constitution, however, allows the state to intervene in the matters of religion whenever there is a need to ensure equality within religious communities.

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Caste and politics

Social division on the lines of caste is unique to India. The caste system of the present has evolved from the varna system which was based on occupations and on the principle that an occupation passed from one generation to another. Members of a particular caste usually have a sense of belonging to their own community. Some castes are accorded a higher status compared to many other castes.

Current Status of Caste Related Prejudice:

• Due to various socio-economic changes, social division on the basis of caste has been blurring in recent times. Economic development, large scale urbanization, literacy, occupational mobility and weakening of the position of landlords in villages have helped in blurring the caste-based divisions.
• Caste is still an important parameter when it comes to finalizing marriages. But in most of the other spheres of life, caste effect is apparently waning in India.
• People from the upper caste had traditionally better access to the education and hence they have done well in economic development. People from the oppressed castes are still lagging behind in socio-economic development.

Caste in Politics

1. Most of the political parties keep the caste calculation in mind while fielding a candidate from a particular constituency.
2. Each caste group is trying to get a bigger pie of the political power by asserting its identity in various ways.
3. Since there are so many castes, hence various caste groups have also evolved their own coalition to get leverage in political bargaining.
4. The caste groups can be broadly divided into ‘backward’ and ‘forward’.
5. Exclusive attention to caste can produce negative results. Caste divisions often lead to social conflict and even violence.

Caste inequality today

1. Economic inequalities exist on the basis of caste. The upper caste people are usually well off, the backward classes come in between and the dalits and adivasis are at the bottom.
2. The percentage of people below poverty line is much higher among the lowest castes.

Percentage of Population Living Below Poverty Line

Caste	Rural	Urban
Scheduled tribes	45.8%	35.6%
Shceduled castes	35.9%	38.3%
Other backward castes	27%	29.3%
Muslim upper castes	26.8%	34.2%
Hindu upper castes	11.7%	9.9%
Christian upper castes	9.6%	5.4%
Sikh upper castes	0%	4.9%
Other upper castes	16%	2.7%
All	27%	23.4%

 Questions:

1. What do you mean by division of sex?

2. What do you mean by Feminism?

3. What do you mean by communal politics?

4. Mention any two constitutional provisions that make. India a secular state?

5. What sexual division of labour?

6. State different forms of communal politics with one example each.