Hindutva femonationalism vilified Muslims under garb of gender justice. The judiciary quietly aided this.

HINDUTVA HAS SIGNIFICANTLY SHAPED the Indian state and politics over the past decade. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Hindu Right* has not only consolidated power but also strategically employed gender justice rhetoric to further its majoritarian objectives. Despite its inherently conservative stance that resists progressive reforms and curtails women’s rights, the Hindu Right paradoxically portrays itself as a champion of Muslim women’s emancipation. This contradiction is most evident in its selective advocacy, where it claims to "rescue" Muslim women from the supposed oppression of Muslim men while remaining silent or complicit in broader gender injustices within Hindu society.

This article examines the Hindu Right’s contradictory approach through the lens of femonationalism—a framework analysing how right-wing movements exploit feminist rhetoric to justify exclusionary politics. I argue that the Hindu Right’s engagement with gender justice lacks genuine commitment to Muslim women’s rights, instead serving as a means of legitimising Hindutva’s supremacist project and vilify the Indian Muslim community. 

Crucially, I highlight  how constitutional Hindu biases—deeply embedded in India’s legal architecture—have been exploited by the Hindu Right to advance its agenda. This strategy is most visible in landmark decisions like Shayara Bano v. Union of India (2017)  and Aishat Shifa v. the State of Karnataka (2022) which reveal the Indian judiciary’s alignment with Hindutva’s national meta-narrative, prioritising majoritarian politics over constitutional norms and principles.

Hindutva and Femonationalism 

The Hindu Right’s vision of a Hindu Rashtra—a nation-state privileging Hindu identity—relies on constructing Indian Muslims as the “Other” while enforcing cultural assimilation and patriarchal norms. Hindutva ideology entrenches traditional hierarchies that marginalise women and gender minorities. 

Historian Charu Gupta writes, “In India, the Hindu right particularly has been a master at creating panics around expressions of love, be it Valentine’s Day, homosexual love, or inter-caste and inter-religious romance, posing them as one of the biggest threats to cohesive community identities and boundaries.”

The Hindu Right’s opposition to gender justice within Hindu society is evident in its resistance to equality-promoting legal reforms. Two key examples illustrate this contradiction.

First, the Hindu Code Bill (‘HCB’), aimed at granting Hindu women rights in property, inheritance, and marriage, was fiercely opposed by the Hindu Right, which called it an attack on “Hindu culture”. It strategically pushed for a Uniform Civil Code (‘UCC’) to conflate Hindu and minority personal laws, thereby stalling reforms. The backlash led to B.R. Ambedkar’s resignation as law minister. 

Though a diluted version of the Bill passed in 1955–1956, the episode underscored the Hindu Right’s prioritisation of patriarchal norms over gender equality. Nivedita Menon critiques this selective advocacy, arguing that “in the BJP’s majoritarian Hindu rendering of the UCC, only minority women need saving, because ‘we’ (Hindus) have already given ‘our’ women equal rights [through the Hindu Code Bill]”. It is pertinent to note that HCB was a codification, not a substantive reform informed by equality. The recently enforced UCC in Uttarakhand reflects this trend, casting Hindu women as needing protection from "beastly" Muslim men.

As a second example, the Sabarimala decision (2018) further reveals this contradiction. When the Supreme Court lifted the ban on menstruating women aged between 10 to 50 years from entering the Sabarimala temple citing gender discrimination and religious freedom, the Hindu Right orchestrated violent protests, framing the verdict as an attack on “tradition.” It was an  opposition that exposed the hollowness of their gender justice rhetoric, revealing the objective being mainly centred on policing women’s bodies.

While defending patriarchy, the Hindu Right simultaneously positions itself as the savior of Muslim women—an Islamophobic narrative designed to reinforce majoritarian dominance. Campaigns against triple talaq and the hijab are framed as “emancipatory” but strategically ignore the systemic oppression faced by Hindu women. 

This selective advocacy serves three functions: othering Muslims, normaliing authoritarianism, and deflecting attention from Hindu patriarchy.

Sara Farris’s concept of femonationalism provides a critical framework for understanding this paradoxical strategy. Although Farris’s work focuses on European nationalist movements, her insights are highly relevant to India. 

She defines femonationalism as a phenomenon that “refers both to the exploitation of feminist themes by nationalists and neoliberals in anti-Islam … campaigns and to the participation of certain feminists and femocrats in the stigmatisation of Muslim men under the banner of gender equality.” Far-right movements weaponise progressive rhetoric to mask xenophobia. For example, after their 2014 European Parliament victories, these groups displayed a “striking feature of the invocation [of] gender equality (and occasionally LGBT rights) within an otherwise xenophobic rhetoric”. Farris underscores that this co-optation is not contradictory but a calculated maneuver to legitimise exclusionary nationalism—a pattern evident in India today.

The Hindu Right’s deployment of femonationalism aligns with a broader global trend where right-wing movements instrumentalise progressive values to advance anti-Muslim agendas. This intersects with Jasbir Puar’s concept of homonationalism, which she describes as “an analytic category deployed to understand and historicise how and why a nation’s status as ‘gay-friendly’ has become desirable in the first place.” 

Right-wing forces selectively embrace LGBTQ+ rights, not out of genuine commitment but to portray the nation as “modern” while vilifying racialized Others. Aeyal Gross, discussing Israel, observes that homonationalism transforms queerness into a tool of state branding, stating, “The homosexual … has been transformed into someone who is perceived as integrated into the state and who distinguishes it from other states through its tolerance towards him.”

India’s uneven recognition of LGBTQ+ rights follows a similar trajectory. As Paola Bacchetta notes, visibility from Pride marches forced some recognition, but inclusion remains tied to neoliberal imperatives. Bacchetta writes, “This idea arose … in the present age of homonationalism at a time when India is massively inserted into capitalism and needs to prove its good treatment of queers if it is to avoid boycotts and compete in today’s world.” Here, rights are commodified as symbols of “progress” to enhance India’s global image rather than dismantle structural oppression.

Our brief discussion has attempted to juxtapose homonationalism with  femonationalism to show how right-wing forces exploit these discourses to justify minority persecution under the guise of gender justice and LGBTQ+ rights. Their rhetoric weaponises gender equality, portraying Muslim men as inherently misogynistic while casting Hindu nationalism as the savior of “endangered” Hindu women. 

The curious case of instant triple talaque 

Feminist literature critiques India’s personal laws—governing marriage, adoption, and inheritance based on religious traditions—for their discriminatory nature. However, the Constitution of India endorses them under legal pluralism, granting constitutional protection. Until the 1990s, Indian feminists analysed personal laws through a gender lens, later incorporating intersectionality. In the hijab judgment, the SC’s reasoning, aligning with the Hindu Right’s narrative, not only ignored feminist concerns but also raised serious doubts about the Constitution’s progressive claims and the Court’s neutrality.

The Indian SC’s approach to gender justice is steeped in glaring hypocrisy—a performative facade of progress that conceals institutionalised majoritarian bias. While the Court swiftly struck down Instant Triple Talaq (ITT) in 2017, condemning it as a violation of Article 14 for its arbitrary harm to Muslim women, its deliberate inaction on equally oppressive practices in Hindu and Parsi communities exposes a calculated double standard. 

The Court’s urgency in invalidating ITT—amplifying the Hindu Right’s narrative of Muslim men as “oppressors” and Muslim personal law as inherently “backward”—vanishes when non-Muslim practices are challenged. In Goolrokh Gupta v. Burjor Pardiwala, a Parsi woman challenged the denial of the right to perform her parents’ funeral rites solely for marrying outside her community in 2012. However, the case is yet to be adjudicated. 

Similarly, in Sunita Tiwari v. Union of India, a case that was filed in 2017, the Court has repeatedly deferred hearings on banning Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) among Dawoodi Bohra Muslims despite global condemnation of the practice as gender-based violence. The Court’s selective urgency reveals a chilling truth in matters of personal law: gender justice in India is not treated as a constitutional imperative but a political tool. 

The judgment invalidating ITT, while constitutionally sound, was weaponised as a political tool. The SC had already addressed ITT’s discriminatory nature in Shamim Ara v. State of Uttar Pradesh in 2002, rendering the practice legally void. Yet, the issue resurfaced in Shayara Bano. Flavia Agnes examined the political motives behind this re-litigation, highlighting how the SC, in Prakash v. Phulawati (2015)—a case concerning Hindu women's inheritance rights—initiated a suo motu reference to scrutinise discriminatory practices in Muslim law. Prompted by stray comments and media reports, the Court urged the formation of a special bench to address these issues, leading to Re: Muslim Women’s Quest for Equality. 

Thus, when Shayara Bano later filed her Public Interest Litigation against ITT, it was merged with the court’s pre-existing suo motu case. It should be noted that it was the judicial initiative—not Shayara Bano’s petition— that triggered the proceedings. This unusual urgency contrasts sharply the Court’s indifference towards Hindu and Parsi women’s grievances. The suo motu intervention also fueled a Hindutva-led smear campaign, reviving colonial stereotypes of Muslim men as “lusty predators”—a tactic Charu Gupta links to 1920s propaganda accusing Muslim men of “kidnapping Hindu women.”

Further, the Modi government’s 2019 law criminalising ITT—imposing up to three years’ imprisonment for Muslim husbands—exposed its Islamophobic agenda. Redundant, as  ITT was already invalidated in 2002 and 2017, the government ignored Muslim women’s demands, as surveys by the BMMA revealed. 

The law, moreover, fails to address the important issue of holistic support to women in the period following the incarceration of their husbands.  In the absence of a mechanism for relief, it is likely to exacerbate their socio-economic hardships, offering no state assistance. Meanwhile, cases like Goolrokh Gupta and Sunita Tiwari remain stalled. The Court’s reluctance to confront these discriminatory practices—despite their clear violation of constitutional rights—reveals a deliberate asymmetry. While Muslim practices face hyper-scrutiny, Hindu and Parsi customs enjoy a comparable judicial aloofness. This aligns with femonationalism: weaponising gender equality to target minorities while upholding majority privilege. The ITT saga was never about justice—it was a political spectacle. By fast-tracking Muslim cases and sidelining others, the Court signalled that constitutional accountability applied selectively: as a cudgel against Muslims and a shield for majoritarian groups.

Hijab ban and the question of agency

Under Modi, secularism has been hollowed out in India. The constitutional scales of “principled distance”—Rajeev Bhargava’s model of secularism in India whereby permitting state regulation of religion for public order—now tilts toward majoritarianism. Unlike Western secularism, which separates religion and State, India’s framework, eroded over a decade, empowers Hindu nationalists to marginalise Muslims, subverting equality among faiths. 

The controversy over hijab erupted in Karnataka, a state governed by the BJP, which issued a 2022 order prohibiting hijabs in classrooms. The government justified the ban as a measure to enforce “discipline” and “progress” by framing the hijab as incompatible with secular education. Critics challenged the order as a violation of constitutional rights—Articles 14 (equality code) and 25 (freedom to practice religion) of the Constitution. The Karnataka High Court, in Resham v. State of Karnataka (2022), upheld the ban, asserting that the hijab is not an “essential” Islamic practice and since classrooms, as “qualified public spaces” , the State could restrict religious expression.

Aggrieved by the decision, the judgment was challenged in the SC in Aishat Shifa (2022). The SC handed down a split verdict. When one reads the reasoning provided by the two judges separately, it reveals a stark ideological divide. 

Justice Hemant Gupta argued that hijabs foster “inequality” in secular spaces, while Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia prioritised girls’ education over disciplinary or religious concerns, asking, “What is more important—wearing a hijab or getting an education?” Notably, neither judge invoked the “essential religious practice test”, a legal doctrine developed by Indian courts to determine whether a religious custom merits constitutional protection under Article 25 of the Constitution.  Had this test been applied—examining whether the hijab is central to the Islamic faith—arguably the outcome might have differed. Effectively, the High Court’s ban remained operative, excluding hijab-wearing Muslim girls from education.

The BJP’s narrative framed the ban as “women’s liberation” alleging that Muslim men oppress hijab-wearing women. This rhetoric, however, ignored Muslim women’s voices and agency. During court proceedings, government lawyers conspicuously avoided centering the debate on educational access despite reports of girls withdrawing from schools post-ban. 

Madhvi Sunder, however, critiques this disingenuous framing, arguing that bans on religious attire should be analysed as cultural dissent—a suppression of minority identity under the guise of progress. For many Muslim women, the Hijab represents personal choice, cultural identity, or even resistance to assimilation. By dismissing these nuances, the State reduced a complex socio-religious practice to a symbol of “backwardness” thereby reinforcing stereotypes that Muslims are inherently regressive.

A pattern 

Discussion of the above case law reveals the troubling nexus of certain Supreme Court decisions  with the Hindu Right’s objectives, which has profound implications for India's Muslim community. This nexus, critics argue, has normalised majoritarianism under the guise of constitutionalism. 

Saumya Saxena highlights how the BJP, since 2014, has used the judicial route to “propagate its political and historical narrative, and for the fulfilment of election promises that could not be granted through legislative endeavours”. This phenomenon, however, is neither new nor unique. Legal scholar Ran Hisrschl observes that, "national high courts tend to adhere closely to prevalent worldviews, national meta-narratives, and the interests of influential elites when dealing with major political issues. Occasionally courts may deliver counter-establishment, groundbreaking rulings on fundamental political questions.” 

The judiciary’s co-option by the BJP exemplifies how constitutional institutions can become instruments of exclusion rather than guardians of equality.

The enabling Constitution and meta-narrative

The Hindu Right’s ability to weaponise gender justice to marginalise Muslims is not merely a rhetorical strategy but also deeply rooted in the structural and ideological framework of the Constitution. While often portrayed as a secular and progressive document, the Constitution contains implicit Hindu biases that enable majoritarian narratives to thrive. Furthermore, despite its promise of breaking away from the colonial rule, post-colonial Indian constitutionalism embodies an authoritarian   conception of power. As Uday Mehta observes, freedom in this framework functions merely as a “promissory note” rather than a fundamental and guaranteed right. 

This bias is even evident in the Constitution’s preference for group rights over individual rights, which plays a role in the alignment of judicial decisions and political institutions with Hind Right’s goals of national unity at the cost of gender equality. 

A stark example of this contradiction was witnessed during the debates on the HCB in 1950s. Reba Som highlights how the same leaders who had debated for  equality in the Constitution vehemently opposed the HCB, exposing deep-seated patriarchal and caste-based prejudices. 

The Hindu Right has used constitutional biases in the service of its agenda with the SC acting as a tool.  Ratna Kapur has shown that the judiciary legitimises Hindutva by endorsing its majoritarian religious framework. This extends beyond religion to gender justice, where the Hindu Right selectively condemns Muslim practices (such as ITT) as oppressive while defending Hindu patriarchal norms. Such selective outrage exposes a larger agenda of positioning Hindutva as India’s cultural foundation while eroding pluralism.

Conclusion

Hindutva’s gender paradox reveals a calculated strategy of weaponising feminist rhetoric to further majoritarian dominance while perpetuating patriarchal hierarchies within Hindu society. The Hindu Right’s selective advocacy—framing itself as a savior of Muslim women while resisting gender reforms for Hindu women—exemplifies femonationalism. Legal battles, including the ITT and hijab bans, demonstrate the judiciary’s extensive complicity in advancing Hindutva’s meta-narrative under the guise of gender justice. This essay underscores that the Hindu Right’s engagement with women’s rights is not about genuine emancipation but about consolidating its supremacist project through exclusionary politics.