Shiv Sena Women Violence and Communalism in a Bombay Slum (Zubaan)

Shiv Sena Women Violence and Communalism in a Bombay Slum (Zubaan) Book Description

This fascinating book, based on Atreyee Sen's immersion in the low-income, working-class slums of Bombay, tells the story of the women and children of the Hindu right wing party, the Shiv Sena, in Western India. The women's front of the Sena, known as the 'Mahila Aghadi', has been instrumental in creating and sustaining communal violence, and the infamous Hindu-Muslim riots in Bombay (1992-3) brought them into the limelight.



Sen charts the Aghadi's transformation from a support group into a militant and partially autonomous women's task force. She also reveals how poor women and children use violence and 'gang-ism' in the volatile social environment of the slums and how the Aghadi's popularity was pegged to an unofficial and brutal law-enforcing system which offers speedy retributive justice to women who were victimized by men. Sen's book turns feminist scholarship on its head by documenting a situation where women have become the primary retainers and perpetrators of a violent nationalistic discourse, acquiring social and economic status either by default or as reward.


Contents


Acknowledgements

Introduction

Urban Alienation and the Birth of Women's 'Gangs'

The Mumbai Riots and Women's Agency in Violence

Mobilisation and Organisation

Sena Boys and 'Survival'

Women, History and the Future Samaj

Conclusion

Bibliography

Index

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