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Madhu Kishwar

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Indian activist and writer (born 1951)

Madhu Kishwar
Born1951 (age 72–73)
Alma materDelhi University,
Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi
Occupation(s)Professor, Activist, Author
OrganizationCentre for the Study of Developing Societies
Websitewww.manushi.in

Madhu Purnima Kishwar is an Indian academic and a Hindutva commentator. She is currently employed as a chair Professor in the Indian Council of Social Science Research. Kishwar along with fellow-academic Ruth Vanita co-founded the journal Manushi.

Whilst her earlier work were favorably received by the academia and fellow activists, her counterparts disassociated from her post the '90s, once she embraced the ideology of Hindutva.

She has been awarded the Chameli Devi Jain Award for Outstanding Women Mediaperson in 1985.

Early life and education

Kishwar was born in 1951 in Delhi, into a family of partition refugees from present-day Pakistan. Her father's family came from Lahore, while her mother's came from Peshawar. She graduated from Miranda House in Delhi, where she was the President of the Student's Union. She received her postgraduate degree in history from Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.

Career

She was a professor and a senior fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), until retiring in 2016. Following her retirement, she asserted that the institution was a chaotic fiefdom of the chosen few and alleged that the higher echelons of CSDS were ideologically biased towards left wing politics, and had treated her unfairly for years due to ideological differences, and supposedly, even robbed her of a legitimate government awarded scholarship. The institute rejected the allegations.

She then joined the Indian Council of Social Science Research as the Maulana Azad Professor. In 2017, she was appointed to the Academic Council of the School of Art and Aesthetics of Jawaharlal Nehru University. Students perceived her appointment to be politically motivated, and questioned her domain-expertise and protested in large numbers. Kishwar rejected the charges, describing them as whining of the leftist intellectuals, who were losing their clout.

Manushi and feminism

Kishwar, along with Ruth Vanita, were the founding-editors of Manushi, a highly acclaimed journal in the domain of women's studies in India. Established to bridge the gap between academic discourse and popular activism by raising awareness of gender inequalities through activism on the ground, it has been one of the longest-running and most-influential women's periodicals in South Asia to the extent of being heavily instrumental in setting the agenda for women-right-movements. Manushi has been described by Amartya Sen as "a pioneering feminist journal". Her books and miscellaneous writings in the topic area have been also quite favorably received.

Notably, Kishwar does not self-identify as a feminist. Kishwar's (self-proclaimed) reasons behind the disapproval of feminism aligns with that of the postcolonial feminist theory - perceiving liberal feminism as a monolithic western entity which discounts indigenous ways of life and actively incorporates a western framework.

Anita Anantharam, an associate professor of Women's Studies at University of Florida, writing over Feminist Media Studies in 2009, deems Kishwar to subscribe to a brand of aggressively nationalist feminism that takes a highly holistic view of the local society, culture and traditions. She notes that as the editorial board of Manushi thinned out over the years for varied reasons and the journal came under near-absolute stewardship of Kishwar, it chose to embrace the contemporaneous rise of the right-wing-nationalism through the realms of Hindutva. This led to the introduction of religious and communal discourses into a hitherto secular and non-polarized space which vocally urged for a return to a golden atavistic past and amplified the "hierarchies of "East" versus "West", Indian womanhood versus western feminism, and Hindu versus Muslim identity" from the lenses of religion and ethno-nationalism.

Kishwar has since criticized her fellow feminists urging for laws to prohibit the Hindu practice of Sati, instead focusing on the potential hampering of freedom to undergo death by a means of their choice and the implications of a secular state trying to regulate religious customs; she had also attacked other avenues of feminist activism from anti-dowry legislation to purported abolition of khaps and introduction of female quota bills, from within the Hindu way of life, arguing for a more nuanced and cultural approach, if at all. Her views have been challenged and rejected by numerous other feminists.

She was also one of the fiercest critics of the highly acclaimed film Fire, which focused a spotlight on the lesbian community in India. Deeming that film as the ramblings of a self-hating-Indian that was meant to stereotype and vilify Hindus, she mocked the queer rights movements as a Western import that leaned contrary to the ethos of Hindu public life and middle class values. Gradually, in the process, she joined a newly evolving group of Hindutva scholars in asserting biases in the western and Marxists scholarship of Indic religions.”Manushi”served as a reference during the California textbook controversy over Hindu history et al.—Anantharam notes a heavy intermingling of Hindutva and her works by the middle 2000s.

Anantharam notes that almost all contemporary feminists have since disowned their roles in the magazine to avoid any association with this hyper-nationalistic cum Hindu fervor.

Of late, Madhu Kishwar has been an emphatic critic of the newer waves of "western-derived" mainstream feminist movements in India; expressing the view that these are Fascist endeavors reeking of dominating and oppressing the male gender. She has lodged legal petitions arguing for dilution of anti-rape laws to mitigate bias against males and has been also highly skeptical of the motivations of foreign-funded NGOs working for the causes of women. Some scholars have now come to recognize Kishwar as a former feminist who has since turned into an ally of anti-mainstream-feminist causes.

Controversies

Politics and fake news

Kishwar has been noted for her adulation of Narendra Modi, to the extent of comparing him with Mahatma Gandhi. She had also written a book that absolved him, a then prime-ministerial candidate of any involvement in the 2002 Gujarat riots and praised him as a non-communal politician. Incidentally she used to be a vocal critic of Modi.

In 2020, Kishwar faced backlash on Twitter for her misogynistic remarks against actress Rhea Chakraborty. Critics condemned Kishwar for derogatory comments, such as labeling Rhea as a "fortune huntress mafia moll" and suggesting she was used as "sex bait to trap rich men" by her father.

Kishwar has been accused by left-leaning media outlets of aiding in the propagation of allegedly communal material and to have propagated fake news over numerous occasions, via her Twitter handle.

In July 2022, she was booked by Uttar Pradesh Police for spreading misinformation on social media using old video of a road incident from 2017.

Works

  • In Search of Answers: Indian Women's Voices (with Ruth Vanita, Zed Books, 1984). ISBN 0862321786.
  • Gandhi and Women (Manushi Prakashan, 1986). ASIN B0007BRY8S.
  • Women Bhakta Poets: Manushi (Manushi Publications, 1989). ASIN B001RPVZVU.
  • The Dilemma And Other Stories (with Ruth Vanitha, Manushi Prakashan, 1997). ISBN 8186573003.
  • Religion at the service of nationalism and other essays (Oxford University Press, 1998). ISBN 0195641612.
  • Off the Beaten Track: Rethinking Gender Justice for Indian Women (Oxford University Press, 2002). ISBN 0195658310.
  • Deepening Democracy: Challenges of Governance and Globalization in India (Oxford University Press, 2006). ISBN 0195683528.
  • Zealous Reformers, Deadly Laws: Battling Stereotypes (SAGE, 2008). ISBN 0761936378.
  • Modi, Muslims and Media: Voices from Narendra Modi's Gujarat (Manushi Publications, 2014). ISBN 978-81-929352-0-1.
  • The Girl from Kathua: A Sacrificial Victim of Ghazwa-e-Hind (Garuda Prakashan, 2023). ISBN 979-8885750929.

Notes

  1. In India, Hindutva is the predominant form of Hindu nationalism. According to the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics and International Relations, "Hindutva ... refers to the ideology of Hindu nationalists, stressing the common culture of the inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent. ... Modern politicians have attempted to play down the racial and anti-Muslim aspects of Hindutva ... but the term has Fascist undertones."
  2. Kishwar states that her mother's family lived in the Peshawar and Rawalpindi districts, and that during the 1947 tribal invasion of Kashmir her mother was airlifted from Srinagar, where part of her family lived, to a refugee camp in Delhi.
  3. She also rejects any static interpretation of religious scriptures in her bid of arguing for a highly elevated status of women in the Hindu culture.
  4. Kishwar believes that Indian society had been always far more comfortable with homoerotic strains of relationships in private than other civilizations or societies. Thus, although Indian society does not exoticize homoeroticism in the public sphere, there is no need for any radical activism in the domain.

References

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  6. ^ Mandal, Saptarshi (3 July 2014). "The Impossibility of Marital Rape". Australian Feminist Studies. 29 (81): 255–272. doi:10.1080/08164649.2014.958124. ISSN 0816-4649. S2CID 141826626.
  7. Brown, Garrett W.; McLean, Iain; McMillan, Alistair (6 January 2018). The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics and International Relations. Oxford University Press. p. 381. ISBN 9780192545848.
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  15. Scroll Staff. "JNU faculty 'confused' by pro-Modi scholar Madhu Kishwar's appointment to Academic Council". Scroll.in. Retrieved 30 August 2019.
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  22. Jantzen, Esther (1986). Kishwar, Madhu; Vanita, Ruth (eds.). "Book Review: Recommended for the Classroom". Women's Studies Quarterly. 14 (3/4): 74. ISSN 0732-1562. JSTOR 40003830.
  23. KarunaKaran, Chithra (2002). "Review of Off the Beaten Track: Rethinking Gender Justice for Indian Women". The Journal of Asian Studies. 61 (1): 293–294. doi:10.2307/2700263. ISSN 0021-9118. JSTOR 2700263.
  24. Farrell, Susan A. (1989). "Review of Man-Made Women: How New Reproductive Technologies Affect Women". Contemporary Sociology. 18 (1): 127–128. doi:10.2307/2071996. ISSN 0094-3061. JSTOR 2071996.
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  27. Shodhan, Amrita (25 July 2016). "Book reviews and notices : MADHU KISHWAR, Religion at the service of nationalism and other essays. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998. xix + 323 pp. Notes. Rs. 495 (hardback)". Contributions to Indian Sociology. 34 (2): 274–276. doi:10.1177/006996670003400206. S2CID 143490296.
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  30. Forbes, Geraldine Hancock (1996). Women in Modern India. The New Cambridge History of India. Vol. 4. New York, United States of America: Cambridge University Press. p. 8. ISBN 9780521653770.
  31. Kishwar, Madhu. "Why I do not Call Myself a Feminist" (PDF). {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  32. Rajan, Rajeswari Sunder; Park, You-Me (2007), "Postcolonial Feminism/Postcolonialism and Feminism", A Companion to Postcolonial Studies, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, pp. 53–71, doi:10.1002/9780470997024.ch3, ISBN 9780470997024
  33. "Hinduism Ancient and Modern", Hinduism and Modernity, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2008, pp. 33–46, doi:10.1002/9780470775707.ch3, hdl:2027/hvd.hnb659, ISBN 9780470775707
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  45. Johari, Aarefa. "Are India's anti-rape laws as draconian as Madhu Kishwar says they are?". Scroll.in. Retrieved 3 September 2019.
  46. Gopinath, Vrinda. "Madhu Kishwar interview: 'It is hard to understand why Modi has not punished the scamsters'". Scroll.in. Retrieved 30 August 2019.
  47. "The Monologue of the Modi Mausi". Outlookindia. Retrieved 30 August 2019.
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  49. Scroll Staff. "10 Madhu Kishwar tweets that explain how difficult it is to remain a coherent Modi supporter". Scroll.in. Retrieved 30 August 2019.
  50. Venkataramakrishnan, Rohan. "Five ways in which the Modi government has managed to disappoint Madhu Kishwar". Scroll.in. Retrieved 3 September 2019.
  51. Dahiya, Himanshi (28 August 2020). "Fake News, Sexism & Bigotry: Snapshot of Madhu Kishwar's Timeline". TheQuint. Retrieved 9 November 2023.
  52. "The 'New And Improved' Love Jihad Formula". Outlookindia. Retrieved 30 August 2019.
  53. John, Rachel (24 October 2019). "Zee sees 'conspiracy' against Hindus in Kamlesh Tiwari murder, News 18 goes after Pakistan". ThePrint. Retrieved 10 November 2019.



















  55. "Madhu Kishwar, Four Others Booked for Allegedly Spreading Misinformation". The Wire. 27 July 2022. Retrieved 27 July 2022.
  56. Nair, Sangeetha (6 April 2014). "Congress to blame for Godhra, says author Madhu Kishwar in her new book". The Times of India. Retrieved 23 April 2014.

Fake news spotted by fact checker websites

  1. Archis (13 June 2019). "Madhu Kishwar's Never-Ending Tryst With Fake News | | BOOM". boomlive.in. Retrieved 30 August 2019.
  2. Chaudhuri, Pooja (15 December 2018). "Madhu Kishwar's fake news spree: Defends misleading video with another misleading video". Alt News. Retrieved 30 August 2019.
  3. Desk, Alt News (29 May 2018). "J&K Police pulls up Madhu Kishwar for sharing fake news". Alt News. Retrieved 30 August 2019. {{cite web}}: |last= has generic name (help)
  4. Amanpreet Kaur (16 August 2019). "Fact Check: Madhu Kishwar tries to target Rahul Gandhi, falls for fake video yet again". India Today. Retrieved 30 August 2019.
  5. Newslaundry. "Newslaundry | Sabki Dhulai". Newslaundry. Retrieved 30 August 2019.
  6. "Fake tweet quoting Rana Ayyub goes viral again, she threatens legal action". Asiaville. Retrieved 30 August 2019.
  7. स्टाफ, द वायर (16 April 2018). "फ़ेक न्यूज़ फैलाने का आरोप लगाते हुए प्रशांत भूषण ने मधु किश्वर के ख़िलाफ़ केस दर्ज कराया". The Wire-Hindi. Retrieved 30 August 2019.
  8. "Madhu Kishwar Tweets DMK 2016 Manifesto, Claims Anti-Hindu Agenda". The Quint. 22 March 2019. Retrieved 30 August 2019.
  9. "Fake News Alert: No Muslim Men Have Been Arrested by Police for Attacking School Bus in Gurugram". The Wire. Retrieved 30 August 2019.
  10. "Breaking Down News: Truth or Snare". The Indian Express. 21 April 2018. Retrieved 30 August 2019.
  11. Grover, Priyamvada (14 December 2018). "Madhu Kishwar, Tarek Fatah share fake video of Muslim procession in Rajasthan". The Print (India). Retrieved 30 August 2019.
  12. Chopra, Rohit (23 February 2018). "A glimpse inside the secret Madhu Kishwarji Fan Club WhatsApp Group". The Print (India). Retrieved 30 August 2019.
  13. Sidharth, Arjun (10 February 2018). "Madhu Kishwar tweets a fake quote attributed to Kapil Sibal". Alt News. Retrieved 30 August 2019.
  14. Patel, Jignesh (16 September 2018). "Madhu Kishwar tweets fake quote from parody account ascribed to rape accused Kerala Bishop". Alt News. Retrieved 30 August 2019.
  15. Sidharth, Arjun (24 July 2019). "Old photos, false claim: Weapons recovered from a mosque in Gujarat". Alt News. Retrieved 30 August 2019.
  16. Sidharth, Arjun (17 June 2019). "Has CM of Andhra Pradesh appointed an evangelist to head the Tirupati Temple Trust?". Alt News. Retrieved 30 August 2019.
  17. Chaudhuri, Pooja (21 May 2019). "Mamata Banerjee's speech clipped to portray her as religiously biased towards Muslims". Alt News. Retrieved 30 August 2019.
  18. Patel, Jignesh (13 December 2018). "Tarek Fatah tweets old video falsely claiming Muslims waved Pak flags to celebrate Congress' victory". Alt News. Retrieved 30 August 2019.
  19. Chaudhuri, Pooja (19 October 2018). "Media analysis: How 'fanatic evangelism' was declared as motive behind Gurgaon shooting". Alt News. Retrieved 30 August 2019.
  20. Patel, Jignesh (31 August 2019). "Madhu Kishwar tweets photoshopped image of Amul Ad targeting Gandhi family". Alt News. Retrieved 1 September 2019.

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