20 Engendering Citizenship

Anurekha Chari Wagh

epgp books

 

 

 

Introduction:

 

Citizenship is a complex concept, which has universal appeal. As Faulks (2000) argues citizenship has both individualistic and collectivist elements appeals to people universally. Liberals value citizenship because of the right it bestows gives space to the individual not only to pursue their interests, free from interference and also enables them intervene in policy matters by presenting their views to the governmental institutions. The notion of duties and responsibilities embedded within the notion of citizenship to political communities and the natural environment appeals to conservatives while Socialists have emphasized the democratic potential of citizenship.

 

Further Faulks (2000) argues that while the Left initially perceived rights of citizenship imbued with a capitalistic logic, that legitimized private property and class inequalities, but over the years with the failure of communism, the decline of class organization and the realization that all inequalities cannot be reduced to ‘class’, have led left to reconsider their rejection of citizenship and demand for equal citizenship rights. Feminists have also found citizenship a useful conceptual category to analyze the nature of women’s oppression (Faulks 2000). Feminist analysis of ‘gendered citizenship’ draws attention to the question of the nature of the community in which citizenship is exercised. Thus poverty, discrimination and exclusion can all undermine the benefits of citizenship. The module is organized as follows: section 1: Introducing Citizenship: Inter-linkages between State and Democracy; section 2: Citizenship debate in India; Section 3: Differentiated Citizenship Rights in India and Section 4: Gendered Citizenship. This is followed by Conclusion.

 

Section 1: Introducing Citizenship: Inter-linkages between State and Democracy

 

At its core citizenship refers to the relationship between the “citizens” and the state within the context of rights and obligations and is based on the principles of “inclusion” and “exclusion” of members. The definition conceptualised by Kymlicka and Norman (1994: 369) incorporates both these positions: Citizenship is not just a certain status, defined by a set of rights and responsibilities, but also as an identity. While it is an expression of one’s membership in a political community, the membership is limited. Many groups, such as blacks, women, aboriginal peoples, ethnic and religious minorities, gays and lesbians, all feel excluded from the ‘normalized common culture’ despite possessing the common rights of citizenship (Kymlicka and Norman 1994, Lister 1997 and Yuval- Davis 1997). This exclusion leads to political inequality that limits their ability to exercise Thus political inequality operating through these structures limit the potentiality of actors engaging actively, for realizing their rights. Further the exclusions operate in connection with each other which hamper their ability to claim their rights (Faulks 2000).

 

Feminists have argued that the expansion of citizenship to women and the provision of conditions in which women could act as citizens have come as a result of a long struggle by women. Feminist critique is based on the assumption that the notion of citizenship is increasingly subject to social and legal differentiation, producing new forms of gradational or hierarchical citizenship. While citizenship appears to be an inclusive, universalistic concept, in reality all state citizenships are not equivalent nor are all state citizenships allocated in equivalent ways (Stasiulis and Bakan 2003). Discussion in the above highlights the complex nature of citizenship rights as though it promises universal rights, in experience it is exclusionary.

 

Further in theorization of citizenship ‘state’ and ‘democracy’ becomes the central focal point. Jayal (1999) argues that there is a strong link between the state and the democracy in context to citizenship rights. The first is the argument that without an effective state, there can be no democracy as the state alone can create conditions for the effective exercise of citizenship rights. The other argument is that it is the states, and not societies that destroy democratic institutions, thus there is a need for strong civil society, as a bulwark against potentially authoritarian societies. Granting and maintaining citizenship rights is rather a bureaucratic exercise. As Roy (2016) states, it is a challenging and long drawn out process of identifying, enumeration, putting in place efficient and effective identification regimes and documentation practices, which is in turn associated with the exercise of state power and state formative practices. Thus it is the state and its bureaucratic machinery that provides frameworks to decide who a citizen is and what are its rights and responsibilities.

 

Jayal (199) further highlights the six factors that put a limit on effective participation and exercise of citizenship rights. It includes:

  1. Binary construction of Public and private spaces, where the ‘private’ sphere is sometimes placed beyond the reach of state action, which limits the experience of citizenship rights by members such as women, children, elderly, disabled and many more.
  2. Dependence by the state on capitalists for effective capital accumulation, which curtails the role of the state in controlling capitalists and their policies that exacerbate inequality.
  3. Decline of ‘effective’ political parties. Political parties play out their policies and programmes in context of grabbing power. In this strategy they fail to address the concerns of citizens.
  4. Increasing concentration of power in the executive branch of the government, this does not allow for effective governance or for the realization of citizenship rights.
  5. Concentration of powers – executive, legislative and judiciary- leading to state intervention taking form of a multiplication of policy networks and fragmentation of implementing agencies.
  6. Expansion of the law and order and surveillance mechanisms. As Singh (2014) and Roy (2016) argue that for long various kinds of surveillance tools have been used to mark and locate citizens. Specifically Roy (2016:48) states that ‘in recent years digitalized and biometric identification systems have made identification regimes more efficient but also intrusive than the older paper based documentation regimes, for their potential for surveillance of citizens’.

 

Additionally on the societal front, the limits on effective democracy within society emerge from: inequalities in social and economic relations and caste, class, gender and ethnicity expressions. Social relations of dominance and subordination tend to distort democracy, such that the voices of the powerful erase the demands and concerns of the powerless. Their expressions gets expressed in the formal structure of democracy the elections. These singularly or in a combination can effectively reduce the experience of citizenship rights within society. Further the logic of democracy can also be a mechanism that could limit effective democracy. How does it happen? Jayal (1999) argues that while democracy creates a channel for political participation, it limits and controls their impacts. Extensive democracy makes democracy less sensitive to the secular democratic principles on which the nationalist elite grounded the state, as one of the major principles that democracy works on is majoritarianism, in the end a game of numbers. Such a context can be hugely problematic. Jayal (1999) argues that what these processes achieve is the effective disfranchisement of large sections of the citizens. Thus while all categories of citizens are constitutionally equal participants of the democratic polity, they do not exercise and experience rights of equal citizenship.

 

So the question that arises how does one analyze citizenship discourse in India? I believe that one has to begin with analyzing the State in India and its relationship with society, by situating it within: one, the socio-historical context, two, the paradigms of state intervention and three, the shifts in state strategy with regard to policy, plans and programmes in different periods. Such a contextualization is crucial as every government operates within a specific social matrix which circumscribes state action and determines the possibilities of change. Such historical positioning is important as the relationship between the state and the underlying social structures is a complex problem in nations having a colonial history, such as India.

 

Section 2: Citizenship debate in India

 

Within the citizenship debate in India, the important scholars who have made notable contributions include political scientists, sociologists and Feminists such as Rajni Kothari, T K Oommen, Partha Chatterjee, Atul Kohli, Sunil Khilani, Rajeev Bhargava, Gurpreet Mahajan, Niraja Jayal, Nivedita Menon, Neera Chandhoke, Anupama Roy, and many other scholars thus reflecting diverse group. It could be stated that the debate itself started from the mid 1980s within India and focused on four important issues:

  1. How has ‘citizenship rights’ got institutionalized within India,
  2. What is the nature of the Indian community that either enhances or curtails (depending upon the context) the experience of citizenship rights and
  3. The relationship of the state, with civil society and its implications for democracy and realization of citizenship rights.
  4. The experience of differentiated citizenship rights in India- conceptualized as gendered citizenship, citizenship of Dalits, tribes and citizenship

 

In the arguments it becomes clear that to understand how citizenship rights were framed within the Constitution of India, one has to analyze the politics of Constitutional framing, how democratic institutions were established within India, and how the socio-economic structures of the Indian society determined the manner in which the citizenship discourse was framed and experienced.

 

Roy (2005) focusing on the role of constitution argues that the ideas of justice, freedom and equality were included as the foundational principles of a democratic society- India- that is what the Constitution was expected to usher in within India. Roy (2005) states that the nationalist elite believed that ‘republican-democratic project’ would balance the precarious balance between the national-political community and social-cultural communities, on the one hand, and the abstract individual citizen, on the other. Such balance has been tested increasingly in the past years by claims emphasizing one over the other. As has been the case in Assam, Jammu and Kashmir and other parts of India where the contestations about citizenship has been a matter of concern (Roy 2016)

 

Roy (2005) further states that ‘there have been increasingly face-offs between the concept of citizenship embedded in the Constitution and the hegemonic project of nation-building, which she argues has continually defined membership of the nation in exclusionary terms. There are strict rules written and unwritten with regard to who are considered citizens’.

 

One could state that within the Indian state citizenship, was established as one, a legal status and two, as the organizing principle for a sovereign nation and democratic political society. Within this context, the identity claims of the cultural and religious community on the one hand and that of the national and political community on the other acquired has been in loggerheads leading to tensions in citizenship. Such tensions have seen its manifestations over the years after independence, in riots, clashes, movements and campaigns.

 

Why and how do such contestations happen? Khilnani (1999) states that to understand such contestations one needs to analyze how did process of democracy ushered in India. He argues that in India the constitutional democracy based on universal suffrage did not emerge from popular pressures for it within the Indian society. By this he means that ‘it was not wrested by the people from the state, it was given to them by the political choice of intellectual elite. The reason for such an argument is that the Constituent Assembly was an unrepresentative body: around 300 men, representing provincial legislatures, upper caste Brahmin elites within the Congress. It is important to note that the constituent assembly with many of the representatives of the dissenting voices was not a ‘sovereign’ body’.

 

As B R Ambedkar, in one of the Constituent Assembly debates mentioned that the Constitution of India was embedded in a fundamental contradiction; where in the political sphere Indian citizens would have ‘equality’ and in social and economic life they would have ‘inequality’. Thus in politics the principle of one man one vote would be recognized, whereas in social and economic arenas life would be structured on the lines of caste system, where people would face inequality. The caste system, a hierarchical system of ascriptively segmented occupational and endogamous castes, manifested differential distribution of power-privileges and alternatively disabilities, sanctified by the dominant (Brahmanic) religious tradition. Colonial intervention did not do away with the unequal structures, rather within the evolving structures of colonial rule, the upper/ruling strata of society, consisting of the Brahmins and other upper castes were empowered, enlarged and even nationalized. It is upon such unequal social, economic and political structures; democracy promising ‘political equality’ was established Aloysius (1997).

 

As with contestations over social, political citizenship rights, two other fundamental issues of tension in India’s politics. The first line of tension is between the powers of the central state-known popularly as the Centre and those of the provinces or the regional states. Extensive powers, relating to military, emergency provisions and fiscal domains were bestowed on the centre. The Constitution left the social and economic reform to the regional legislature, but unfortunately without necessary financial resources to implement them, thus rendering them vulnerable to the pressures of the local political, social and economic elites (Aloysius 1999). The second enduring contestation concerning ‘citizenship’ is the grant of universal rights to all was offset by recognition of historical injustice suffered by particular communities. This recognition was realized in form of principle of positive discrimination – policy of reservation of government jobs and educational places based on caste, gender disability and region.

 

What did such a policy imply? It implied that the language of rights in India was structured in groups and collectivities, who demanded particular interests within the nation. The effect of such policy was to weaken the pressure to accord universal rights and to encourage demands for special dispensations for selected groups. Indian politicians further followed the practice the policy of controlling public resources for personal advantage and for distribution to one’s followers. It was the regional legislatures that had the power to determine which groups and which interests; who exactly was eligible for the benefits of ‘reservation’, giving local politicians a limitless resource for political manipulation. The Constitution and the politics it sanctioned, thus reinforced community identities rather than sustaining a sense of common citizenship based on individual rights (Khilnani 1999). Such a policy was the bedrock of diverse experience of citizenship rights, where it was to be understood as graded, hierarchical and differentiated (Brass 1994).

 

The distinctiveness of Indian politics stems from different social forces within the Indian social structure that include: the issue of control over agrarian resources, including control over land and the work force, whereby rural dominant classes control the state; social fragmentation associated with caste which permeates Indian politics, and center-locality relation thus it becomes a necessity for those who wish to build power in state and national contexts to maintain direct or indirect links with those in control of local structures of power (Brass 1994).

 

As Roy (2001) argues that while pan Indian discourses of developmentalism and constitutionalism became the bases on which the nationalist elite staked its claims to usher the nation to a common destiny, it sought to preserve and reinforce community-centered social existence, recognizing the community (religious-cultural) as the autonomous social and political unit determining civic life in the nation. Community membership thus became a relevant consideration for differentiation among citizens. Social equality was sought to be achieved by assuring (by the state) that while the claims of the community to difference would be preserved, there would at the same time be an assurance of sameness among communities. But history has revealed that the Indian state has fallen short of its claims.

 

Bardhan (1984) argues that there are structural forces in Indian society, entrenched social classes, whose actions constrain the political elites from implementing policies against the former’s interests. These structural forces then limit and constrain the experience of citizenship and lead to increased political instability and violence. Thus social fragmentation of a heterogeneous society, the persistence of local structures of power independent of government control and the importance of inter-level linkages in Indian politics are powerful forces that prevent the experience of full citizenship rights of people (Chari Wagh 2009).

 

Pervasiveness of poverty limiting the experience of Citizenship

 

Jayal (1999) argues that ‘among the goals of social transformation prioritized on the state’s agenda at independence – secularism, development and welfare- are central to the discourse of citizenship. The philosophy of state welfare in India was, from it very inception was grounded in the ideas of charity, paternalism, and benevolence, and has therefore proved to be singularly unreceptive to challenges couched in the more egalitarian terms of claims of rights. The disjuncture between location of rights to liberty in the ‘justiciable’ Fundamental Rights chapter of the Indian Constitution and the location of welfare rights in the non-justiciable Directive Principles of State Policy reaffirms this perspective. The model of development adopted by India was at once economically iniquitous, environmentally unsustainable and politically less than democratic in its denial of the rights of equal citizenship. Experience over the decades since independence has shown that the ideology of liberal neutrality adopted by the state has proved to be hopelessly inadequate to the task of managing a culturally plural society’.

 

Indian economic development strategy did not address the issue of ‘poverty’ adequately until the 70s. Chari Wagh (2008) argues that the Indian ‘war on poverty’ included poverty alleviation programmes that failed miserably to address the issue. The reasons include: the programmes were ‘palliative’ by nature did not include programmes that could challenge the unequal structures of the society, such as landed caste elite. Policies were formulated in New Delhi, capital centres to be implemented at the state and local levels within the existing bureaucratic structures. The anti-poverty programs remained a supplement in a broader economic development strategy, which continued to avoid radical institutional solutions to poverty and inequality. A belief that benefit of growth and development will ultimately ‘trickle-down’ gradually to the poor remained institutionalised.

 

But the persistence of widespread, extreme and endemic poverty in India after more than sixty years of Independence raises fundamental issues regarding the nature of citizenship rights experienced. The poor include the urban informal unorganized labourer, rural poor, who are mostly intermediate and low caste status, landless agricultural labourer, and the small peasantry with ‘tiny plots’ of land with holdings that are inadequate to provide for a subsistence for the household population dependent on their produce. Within this population a large proportion is made of women, low caste and tribal population. It is argued that when state through its policies are not able to provide minimal needs of its population, then one starts questioning the nature of citizenship rights experienced by its ‘citizens’.

 

A set of arguments developed by Gurpreet Mahajan and Andre Betellie links the state and civil society with society and democracy. The state articulates laws that objectively would represent conditions necessary for promoting equal citizenship and civil society operates in accordance with the established system of laws and rights so as to promote claims of equal citizenship. In a society marked by systemic discrimination, strict adherence to the principle of formal equality and rule by impersonal laws may not be enough for promoting the ideal of citizenship. The latter entails the distribution of assets and opportunities in a way that diverse groups can have access to them. So long as socially valued assets remain the monopoly of some groups the principle of formal equality may hinder the realization of equal citizenship.

 

Section 3: Differentiated Citizenship Rights in India

 

Complexity within the concept of citizenship has lead to many of Indian political theorists including Jayal (1999) and Bhargava (2005) to have engaged critically with theorisation of citizenship rights where they argue that the presence of sharp economic disparities and inherited social inequalities such as class, caste, gender, ethnicity and language are major factors that restrict the full enjoyment of citizenship rights, thereby discussing the concept of “differentiated” citizenship rights.

 

For Bhargava ‘differentiated citizenship rights’ functions on the argument that though in principle citizenship entitlements are available to everyone, they are unequally distributed. One’s location within the social structures based on class, caste, gender, ethnicity, region, language limits the possibility of engaging actively in the public sphere and for accessing one’s rights. Whereas Bhargava (2005) locates his theorization of citizenship rights within the discourse of public sphere, Jayal (1999) structures it in terms of disenfranchisement of large sections of citizens.

 

According to him, in recent times citizenship theory necessitates debates on passive and active citizens and the idea of differentiated citizenship. On the passive-active citizen debate, Bhargava argues that, the passive citizen is a recipient of certain benefits from the state, which includes protection, basic necessities and liberties. A passive citizen hardly plays a role in the public sphere and is thus not a political citizen. The active citizen on the other hand positively engages with the state and the ruling elite to negotiate for its rights and thus is crucial for a vibrant public sphere. Idea of differentiated citizenship for Bhargava (2005) is based on the principle that citizenship entitlements are unequally distributed. Though passive citizenship entitlements are granted to everyone, one’s location within the social structures based on class, caste, gender, ethnicity, region, language limits the possibility of engaging actively in the public sphere, for accessing their rights.

 

According to Jayal (1999) to her the debates on the processes that undermine citizenship rights focus on two ways; one, the absence of public enforcement of universalistic legal order, where the state fails to ensure the enforceability of constitutionally guaranteed rights of citizenship and two, absence of the social conditions that make possible the effective exercise of citizenship. The presence of sharp economic disparities and inherited social inequalities is a countervailing factor (Jayal 1999: 28-29). Further to Jayal, the idea of differentiated citizenship implies disenfranchisement of large sections of citizens, through two interrelated process; one, the absence of a proactive state that could ensure the enforcement of constitutionally guaranteed rights of citizenship, and two, the absence of those social conditions that would enable one to exercise citizenship effectively. The experience of differentiated citizenship rights are located within the context where the state is unable to address the social conditions that make possible the effective exercise of citizenship rights – thereby rendering ‘formally equal citizens’ to experience unequal rights (Kymlicka and Norman 1994, Lister 1997 and Yuval- Davis 1997)

 

Section 4: Gendered Citizenship

 

Gendered citizenship has to be conceptualized as challenging the public-private divide. Feminist scholars have theorized that male domination and female subordination is structured by the strict separation of hierarchical spheres, male (public) and female (private). This notion based on patriarchal ideology is central to the understanding of gendered sexual inequality (Turbin 2003). Thus the rearticulating of the public-private divide within society provides one of the keys to challenging women’s exclusion at the levels of both theory and praxis. Such an analysis involves the disruption of its ‘gendered meaning’, recognition of the ways in which the public-private divide is socially and politically constructed. This binary is fluid rather than fixed; and acknowledges a feminist analysis, of how in practice each side impacts the other. Within nation-states, social divisions such as class, race, disability and sexuality (and caste) intersect with gender either to aggravate or modify its impact on women’s citizenship status and potential to realize it (Lister 1997).

 

Feminist critique of citizenship hinge on two issues; one the need to challenge the notion of community and two, the need to break the binaries of private and public which have structured the theorization of citizenship rights. On the first point, Ito’s (2005) argument is crucial. She suggests that citizenship studies of women, sexual minorities, disabled or ethnic minorities have made it clear that even within a community of ‘full members’ as defined by Marshall there are social and legal differentiations that make citizenship gradational or hierarchical. Feminists thus argue that the dominant conception of citizenship among others is gender blind. By focusing on uniform and equal application, it fails to take cognizance of the fact that modern societies are steeped in patriarchal traditions, which make for differential male domination and privileges. This analysis highlights the fact that citizenship operates on the principles of inclusions and exclusions of ‘citizens’. Specifically for women, membership of a community- even on the basis of the idealized and rarely realized liberal notions of citizenship rooted in individual rights- does not guarantee rights (Mukhopadhyay 2007: 33).

 

Further feminists have argued that citizenship operates on the binary principles of public-private, productive-reproductive, economic- cultural whereby it relegates women to the reproductive-private-cultural sphere and where the space of citizenship became increasingly identified with male and public activities. The binary of the public-private argues Yuval-Davis (1997), citing the theorizations of Pateman (1988) and Grant (1991) are historically created. Pateman (1988) has earlier stated that the classical theories of citizenship divide the sphere of civil society into private and public and that this has laid the foundation for common sense understanding of western social and political order. Women and the family are located in the private domain, which is then not seen as politically relevant. These set of ideas have in turn got reflected in theorizations of citizenship down the line. Grant (1991) adds to this analysis by arguing that the foundation theories of both Hobbes and Rousseau portray the transition from the imagined state of nature into orderly societies exclusively in terms of what they both assume to be natural male characteristics- the aggressive nature of men (in Hobbes) and the capacity for reason in men (in Rousseau). Women are not part of this process and are therefore excluded from the social and remain close to ‘nature’. Later citizenship theories followed these assumptions as given.

 

Thus Mahajan (2003) and Roy (2005) argue that while the public/private distinction was essential for the assertion of the liberal notion of citizen as autonomous individual, it also has led to the identification of the private with the domestic. Such a conception has played an important role in the exclusion and subordination of women. In particular Mahajan (2003) argues that identification of women’s interests with the private is used as a major mechanism of women’s historical subordination. As private and public are governed by patriarchal principles, demystifying and challenging the distinction is the first step towards women’s liberation.

 

Roy (2005) continuing this argument states that as citizenship has been for long exclusively viewed as the domain of men (of property) women’s identities and lives have either been excluded from or subsumed within a purview of state citizen relations. Their concerns have been examined instead primarily in relation to cultural institutions in the realms of family and community. Not only does this overlook the impact on women of political institutions of law and citizenship, it also fails to acknowledge how closely these institutions are regulated by state mechanisms. Thus the gendering of citizenship draws attention to the way the state constructs ‘women’—primarily in their difference from men by formulating laws and policies specific to them and also by differentiating between them (Yuval- Davis 1997)

 

Feminists have thus argued that citizenship rights of women should be analyzed by questioning their membership in ‘the community’ and assessing their group rights and social difference. Further, the ways the binaries of public/private and active/passive have been constructed has led to the differentiation between different kinds of citizenships (Pateman 1988, Yuval-Davis 1997, Lister 1997, Mahajan 2003, Stasiulis and Bakan 2003, Ito 2005, Roy 2005). Further the analysis should not be restricted to women’s relationship with men but also to their affiliation to local, regional, dominant or subordinate groups, their ethnicity, their material context, access to infrastructure, and place within household.

 

In order to assess the gendered understanding of citizenship,

‘it is necessary to move beyond an earlier ‘liberal and political science understanding of the ‘formal relation between the individual and the state. Citizenship should be seen to be ‘a more total relationship inflected by identity, social positioning, cultural assumptions, institutional practices and a sense of belonging’ (Yuval-Davis and Webber 1999:4, cited in Sunder Rajan 2003:2).

 

Such a broad based understanding of citizenship includes legal status but should not be seen to be reducible to it alone. It exists on a wide ‘spectrum’ involving a pool of rights that are variously offered, denied or challenged, as well as a set of obligations that are unequally demanded. Therefore the terms and conditions of citizenship rights and responsibilities are the product of active and ongoing negotiation (Stasiulis and Bakan 2003). Gendered citizenship is thus a product of negotiation with the state and is an important arena of contestation in India (Chari Wagh 2009).

 

Roy (2001) argues that articulation of women as ‘citizens’ in India was structured not only within the debates of liberty and equality, but also religious-cultural communities. Such process often leads to contesting markers of a persons’ identity as a citizen. What was happening was that the Indian citizen seemed to have two or multiple identities as a ‘citizen’; one identifying her to the National Community and the other to the particular religious/linguistic community she belonged to. Personal laws of respective religious communities governed natters relating to marriage, divorce, guardianship of children, inheritance, affecting women most critically1. Thus wherever women’s political rights as citizens clashed with ‘traditional’ laws of the community-women’s rights were sacrificed in the name of communal independence.

 

Gendered citizenship incorporates four aspects of understanding of rights for women.

  • First it involves an assessment of the binaries of private-public. Is ‘public’ only material? Is ‘private’ only cultural? Gendered citizenship questions the way ‘public’ is associated with material and private with cultural. It argues that the private, which includes family, involves distribution of resources and is as much a material part defining the public as is cultural. Gendered citizenship is concerned with the gendered access to infrastructure, housing and livelihoods.
  • Second citizenship rights of women are framed within the social structures of caste, class and ethnicity. These make ‘women’ experience rights differently.
  • Thirdly gendered citizenship involves the conceptualization of this differentiation through the theorization of multiple patriarchies. As feminists have argued, there is no one ‘patriarchy’. There are ‘multiple patriarchies’ based on the structures of caste, class, and ethnicity. Further in a country like India where uneven distribution of poverty and resources is related to regional unevenness, citizenship rights has a spatial dimension and are differentially experienced.
  • Fourthly in India, political citizenship is understood as having a right to vote. Does that make women a citizen? To what extent do the formal rights give women substantive rights as citizens? Also though women have found space in formal politics, to which class and caste do, they belong to? These are some of the questions that have to be addressed within the discussion of gendered citizenship.

 

Conclusion:

 

The debates on gendered citizenship raise four important issues. First, prevalence and persistence of structural inequalities of caste, class and gender that programmes and policies of the state do not seem to displace inequalities. For example poverty is a manifestation of structural inequality related to access and control of resources. The programmes of poverty alleviation based on ameliorative principles cannot displace these structures of inequality. Second, social structures of class, caste and gender that lead to structural inequality itself are unequally structured within each other. For example poor Dalit women would experience citizenship rights differently as compared to Dalit middle class women though both share same caste and gender. Thirdly, these inequalities are also reflected within the institutions such as the state that grants rights, thus raises the question can the state empower women? Lastly groups that organize the marginalized to demand for their rights are itself not sensitive to the patriarchal structural inequalities within its own policies and organizational structure. In this context the questions regarding, who can speak for whom and issue of creating spaces that can articulate rights of marginalized should be addressed. For groups that represent poor women, the recognition of these inequalities determines its effectiveness while negotiating for rights on their behalf. The sensitivity towards recognition of these structural inequalities becomes important in negotiating for gendered citizenship.

you can view video on Engendering Citizenship

References

  • Bhargava, R (2005): “Introduction” in R Bhargava and H Reifeld (ed.), Civil Society, Public Sphere and Citizenship Dialogues and Perceptions (New Delhi: Sage Publications).
  • Brass, R P (1994): The Politics of India since Independence. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge/Foundation Books: New Delhi)
  • Faulks, K (2000): Citizenship (London: Routledge).
  • Jayal G Niraja (1999) Democracy and the State: Welfare, Secularism and Development in Contemporary India. Oxford University Press: New Delhi.
  • Khilnani, Sunil (1999): The Idea of India, Penguin Books
  • Kymlicka, W and N Wayne (1994): “Return of the Citizen: A Survey of the Recent Work on Citizenship Theory”, Ethics, 194(2), pp 353-82.
  • Mahajan, Gurpreet (1999): Civil Society, State and Democracy. Economic and Political Weekly. Vol 32, No 49, pp 3471-3472.
  • Menon, Nivedita (2004): Citizenship and Passive Revolution: Interpreting the First Amendment. Economic and Political Weekly Vol 39, No 18, pp 1812- 1812.
  • Roy Anupama (2001): Community, Women’s Citizens and Women’s Politics. Economic and Political Weekly, Vol 36, no 17, pp 1441-1417.
  • __________ (2005): Gendered Citizenship historical and conceptual explorations. Orient Longman: Hyderabad