you are all the women who came before you
you, with your hunger for love for light
for for for for
learning all the words so you can
talk about your famishment
you have been hungry for ages
when they invite you to the table
what is this table
you ask, eyes bigger than your shrunk stomach,
what is this table
littered with bones that the meat has been ripped
off from
the knives stained with the satisfaction
of fullness
there are no chairs to sit down
you are not here to eat
you stare at yourself in the half empty glasses
your body in bits, all over the table,
looks back at you
you are all the women who came before you
whisper all the women who come before you
when it is time to eat
you are devoured sinfully at the table
Solidarity for fiction
Maria Lugones in her definition of ‘coloniality of gender’ argues that it is the dichotomy of human and the non-human, which is central to colonial capitalist modernity. With the violent beginning of the colonization of the Americas and the Caribbean, began the era of colonial modernity where the strictly dichotomous distinction between men and women became the mark of civilization. Indigenous peoples of the Americas and the enslaved African peoples were categorized as ‘not human,’ and as they are ‘not human’, they lack gender— the European man is a Man, civilized, fit for rule; the European woman, not Man’s complement, but exists to reproduce race and capital, and becomes human in relation to Man. Thus, as a consequence of the coloniality of gender ‘colonized woman’ is an empty category, no women are colonized, and no colonized females are Women.
In a crude extension of the logic behind the term empty category, drawing from my embodied experience (if I kindly may), I begrudgingly conclude that ‘liberated Muslim woman’ remains an empty category. Through the eyes of the oppressor, no Muslim woman is liberated. However, more shockingly (or not) so, for the ‘liberators’ of Muslim women, for the allies to the poor, ghastly, downtrodden Muslim women, no woman that is ‘liberated’ is Muslim. The solidarity is therefore extended to a piece of fiction. The category of ‘liberated Muslim woman’ is forced to remain empty in a tug of war between Oppressors and Liberators, as the pillage of the world of Muslim women continues.
The act of keeping the category empty has historically been a colonial imperative and continues to be central to the politics of the empire and imperialism.
Leila Ahmed in her book, Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate, makes explicit how the ‘peculiar practices of Islam with respect to women had always formed part of the Western narrative of the quintessential otherness and inferiority of Islam.’ Historically, Western ideas about Islam amassed from the accounts of travelers and crusaders, were vague and often augmented by the lack of understanding of Arabic texts. It was in the eighteenth century that the travelers’ interpretations of texts became clearer. The Western observations about Islam started becoming more approximate to the male members’ views in these visited societies since the travelers had limited access to women and their interpretations.
Thus, with little to no dialogue with Muslim women, the peculiar view of Islam, with respect to its “oppression” of women, has long existed in the European narrative. However, the “issue” of women took center stage forcefully only in the nineteenth century as Europe began establishing itself as a colonial power in Muslim countries.
At the inception of European colonialism, Britain developed theories of race and social evolution, as per which middle-class Victorian England was the pinnacle of civilization. The “evidence” to these theories strongly also suggested the biological inferiority of women, which the Victorian establishment found useful to curb the rise of feminism in Britain. Ironically (or not), as the Victorian male establishment contested claims of feminism domestically, they appropriated the language and semantics of feminism in service of colonialism toward Other Men and Other religions and cultures, thus birthing— Colonial Feminism.
To that end, British colonial administrator Lord Cromer in British-ruled Egypt provides a striking example. Cromer, with his decided views on Islam, women in Islam, and the veil, believed that Islamic religion and society were inferior to European ones. He infamously wrote that while Christianity teaches respect for women and European men “elevate” women, Islam degrades them… it was to this degradation, most evident in the practices of veiling and segregation, that the inferiority of Muslim men could be traced.
He believed it was essential that Egyptians “be persuaded or forced into imbibing the true spirit of Western civilization” in pursuit of which it was most important to change the position of women in Islam, especially in relation to the veil. As he wrote and spoke in such contempt of Islam’s treatment of Muslim women, all his policies were severely detrimental to Egyptian women. Although, it is his convictions at home in Britain that reveal him for what he really was— ‘This champion of the unveiling of Egyptian women was, in England, founding member and sometime president of the Men’s League for Opposing Women’s Suffrage.’
European men were joined in their practice of colonial feminism by European women. An exploration of the written account of their work as Missionary women reveals many horrors. As archived by Leila in her book, ‘One wrote that Muslim women needed to be rescued by their Christian sisters from the “ignorance and degradation” in which they existed and converted to Christianity. Many missionaries, like Cromer, believed women were the key to converting backward Muslim societies into civilized Christian societies. One missionary openly advocated targeting women, because women molded children. Islam should be undermined subtly and indirectly among the young, and when children grew older, “the evils of Islam could be spelled out more directly.” Thus a trail of “gunpowder” would be laid “into the heart of Islam.“’
After the dissolution of European empires during decolonization in the late 20th century, the imperial core has now expanded and is heavily concentrated in the United States of America. The US empire currently sits atop its continued glory of the “War on Terror” where from the moment the US planned to invade Afghanistan in the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks, freeing Afghan women from Taliban rule and the burqa became the loudest legitimation for the US-led violent military intervention. The devastating structures and effects of this murderous gift of freedom still plague the people of Afghanistan, especially its women.
First Lady Laura Bush’s radio address on November 17, 2001, marked the beginning of the era of imperial feminism as we know it today when she declared:
“Because of our recent military gains in much of Afghanistan, women are no longer imprisoned in their homes. They can listen to music and teach their daughters without fear of punishment. The fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women.”
The violent sisterhood of imperial feminism with Savarna feminism
Today Imperial Feminism is the greatest arm of colonial violence worldwide— not an ad hoc tactic, but the actual violence. The demonization of Palestinian men, by the settler-colonial state of Israel, and its simultaneous ‘rhetoric’ of wanting to save Palestinian women and queer people, is a continuation of the ‘civilizational’ project led by Europe. European colonial empires ‘vouching’ to bring enlightenment to the dirty dingy third World and in pursuit of it pillaging everything for its own continued existence, holds a horrifying candle to the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and the broader settler-colonial occupation of Palestine by Israel.
Israel is not only sustained by the deployment of its own colonial feminism but emboldened by US imperial feminism. The US presidential elections between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, which the world is still left with making sense of, was on Harris’s seemingly ‘progressive’ front fought on the platform of her identity as the highest ranking African American and Asian-American official in the US history.
While the support rallied for Kamala by liberal feminists in the United States was actively challenged by critical feminist groups on account of Harris’s involvement in the incarceration of marginalized groups in the US and her complicity in the ongoing genocide in Gaza, there was lesser pushback on the weaponization of her identity as a woman of ‘Indian descent.’ Harris while a woman of color, is also a Brahmin (Hindu Oppressor Caste).
Liberal identity politics upon which Harris is bolstered as a revolutionary feminist icon is a somewhat shockingly stark manifestation of the revealing paradox of the extension of imperial feminism as Hindu Oppressor Caste feminism (hereby also referred to as Savarna feminism).
South Asian feminist scholarship remains indebted (and so do I) to the relentless work of anti-Caste feminists in drawing parallels between Western-centric imperial feminism and Savarna feminism, where Sunaina Arya says, ‘there are many instances in which we witness a reproduction of Eurocentric imperialist supremacy in the South Asian context… The problem of ‘saving to’ as an imperialist superiority is manifested here (India) in the form of a Brahmanical superiority complex.’ Arya instrumentalizes the Savarna feminist response to the Maharashtra government’s ban on bar dancing as a profession in 2005 to concretize her claims.
The ban was legitimized by the state as it ‘perverts the morals of our young men.’ The ban was opposed by Marxist feminists and was deemed as ‘moral policing’ from a liberal perspective. This perspective is emancipatory in some contexts such as that of the West where some white women in sexual services do not face as intense indignity and exclusion. However, Dalit-Bahujan (Oppressed castes) feminists contextualized the ban to their reality and welcomed it. They retaliated against the dominant narrative perpetuated by the nexus of Marxist-Liberal feminists, claiming that this occupation eventually leads women from marginalized castes into a miserable life of prostitution.
Arya very eloquently puts it when she concludes, ‘Unlike the privileged Savarna women, their (Oppressed Caste women) demand was not to rebuke the ban but to rehabilitate the women once they lost their job. The notable point is that the women who are employed in such professions themselves want a di?erent life than what Savarna women think is good for them.’
In another paper titled ‘Dalit or Brahmanical Patriarchy? Rethinking Indian Feminism’ Arya points at the lack of empirical knowledge which is depicted in the mainstream Savarna feminists’ vague conception of ‘Dalit patriarchy’. In offering a fitting critique to the hypocrisy of Savarna feminists who attribute patriarchy to the Dalit community, Arya asserts that the patriarchy in the Dalit community is actually ‘a Dalit manifestation of Brahmanical patriarchy.’
Thinly veiled sentiments
To extend the parallel between Savarna feminism and Imperial feminism is to find the harrowing reality of Muslim women, who become central to this global war on the ‘Lesser Woman’.
In legitimization of oppression of Other women, imperial feminism, look at the Native American, African-American, Black, and Muslim women as the racialized Other, in need of being ‘saved’. Here the White women and other women in service of the empire (the United States and allies) look at the ‘liberated Muslim woman’ as an empty category— meaning that no Muslim woman is liberated and that liberated women cease to be Muslim because they become incorporated into the fold of Whiteness and modernity.
Similarly, Savarna feminism and the solidarity that extends out of it is deeply disingenuous, cunning, opportunistic, and hollow. While Brahminical Patriarchy is well conceptualized, Savarna feminists consciously refuse to engage with it— and their reason for refusal stems from the naked truth that the framework of Brahminical Patriarchy forces Dominant Caste Women to view themselves as complicit in the system oppressing other marginalized women.
Their position, both as subjugators of Muslim women and Occupiers of Kashmiri women includes them in the fold of the imperial core as Oppressors.
Progressive Indian Writer and activist Arundhati Roy who was awarded the PEN Pinter Prize 2024, gave a very well-received acceptance speech. While most of the speech reads like a revolutionary tribute to the Palestinians in Gaza, there comes a point where Roy says, ‘I am acutely aware that being the writer that I am, the non-Muslim that I am and the woman that I am, it would be very difficult, perhaps impossible for me to survive very long under the rule of Hamas, Hezbollah, or the Iranian regime’
While only a passing comment in an otherwise solid flow of arguments, it is the light that passes through these little cracks in the solidarity of Dominant Caste women that shines the brightest on their unwillingness to unlearn their biases.
Constantly thinly veiled islamophobia passed off as poetic solidarity is not a coincidence. Amplifying the Islamophobic fiction of being a non-Muslim woman, living under Hamas rule, from a reality where Muslim women are obliterated by Hindutva (Hindu Nationalist movement) is a defining characteristic of the Savarna woman. Savarna woman who is an occupier. Savarna woman who is an oppressor.
Similar to their rabid ethnonationalist counterparts, these women base their entire analysis of the world and themselves as a reaction to Muslims. The reaction that supports the making of the Israeli nation-state, the Indian nation-state, and other ethnonationalist regimes. The reaction that legitimizes the bombing of the homes of the women it claims to save. The reaction that forces to unveil everything except its own bigotry.
