All our goddesses are armed: Religion, resistance, and revenge in the life of a militant Hindu nationalist woman

Abstract

Recent scholarship on women and right-wing movements has attempted to explain women's participation in anti-Other organizations in a range of modes. Some of the earliest literature on the subject maintained that right-wing women are simply alienated from their own interests, and their actions represent coherency with the interests of their male counterparts. A second current put forth the notion that women join primarily out of a desire for community with other women who share their background, and not because they adhere to the anti-Other stance of the organization. In a third tendency, which I find the most pertinent, scholars see women's adherence as motivated by, in the words of Claudia Koonz, “conviction, opportunism and active choice.”