Resistance and Reclamation: Patriarchy as a Bargain

Introduction: Beyond Victimhood

The first two lessons of this module focused heavily on what was done TO South Asian men—how colonialism dismantled masculinities and created lasting trauma. But this is not the whole story.

South Asian men were not passive victims. They resisted, organized, fought back, and created new models of masculinity. Some forms of resistance were liberatory and anti-patriarchal. Others involved reinforcing patriarchal control as compensation for public powerlessness.

This lesson examines both: the inspiring resistance movements that challenged colonial rule, and the more problematic "patriarchal bargain" where men reclaimed masculine power by intensifying control over domestic and community life. Understanding both helps us see South Asian men as complex historical actors—neither purely victims nor purely oppressors.

Part 1: Forms of Resistance - Reclaiming Masculine Agency

The Ghadar Party: Revolutionary Masculinity

Historical Context:The Ghadar Party (Ghadar means "mutiny" or "rebellion") was founded in 1913 in San Francisco by Punjabi Sikh immigrants, primarily agricultural workers who had experienced racism and economic exploitation in North America.

Who They Were:

• Primarily working-class Punjabi men
• Laborers in lumber mills, farms, and railroads
• Denied citizenship, land ownership, and family reunification under U.S. exclusion laws
• Experienced both British colonial emasculation in India and American racist emasculation in diaspora

Their Vision:The Ghadar Party explicitly framed anti-colonial resistance as reclaiming masculine honor and dignity. Their newspaper, The Ghadar, published poems and articles that:

• Challenged British narratives of Indian weakness
• Called on men to fight for independence as a masculine duty
• Connected military resistance to restoring collective honor
• Explicitly rejected the "effeminate" stereotype

Example from Ghadar Poetry (1914):"The British call us weak, they call us slaves,They say we cannot govern, cannot fight.But we are the sons of warriors and sages,We will reclaim our birthright."

Why This Matters:The Ghadar Party shows South Asian men actively rejecting colonial emasculation through political organizing. They were not accepting British characterizations—they were fighting back.

Limitations:However, their vision of reclaiming masculinity was often conventionally martial and didn't necessarily challenge gender hierarchies within South Asian communities.

Gandhi's Radical Reimagining

A Different Model:Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948) offered a fundamentally different response to colonial emasculation—one that rejected both British masculine ideals AND conventional martial masculinity.

Key Elements of Gandhian Masculinity:

1. Non-violence (Ahimsa) as Strength:Gandhi argued that non-violence required more courage than violence. This directly challenged both:

• British claims that Indians were too cowardly to fight
• Indian nationalist claims that masculine honor required armed resistance

Gandhi wrote: "Non-violence is not a garment to be put on and off at will. Its seat is in the heart, and it must be an inseparable part of our being. It is the weapon of the strong, not the weak."

2. Brahmacharya (Celibacy) as Political Strategy:Gandhi practiced and advocated celibacy as a way to redirect sexual energy toward political goals. This was controversial but represented a deliberate rejection of:

• Victorian sexual anxiety and control
• The association of masculine power with sexual conquest
• The body as a site of colonial regulation

3. Spinning Wheel (Charkha) as Masculine Symbol:Gandhi made spinning cloth—traditionally women's work—a symbol of nationalist resistance and masculine dignity. This was radical because it:

• Rejected the association of certain labor with effeminacy
• Created economic self-sufficiency
• Made domestic labor politically meaningful

Assessment:Gandhi's reimagining of masculinity was liberatory in some ways (challenging violence, questioning sexual entitlement) but problematic in others (his experiments with celibacy involved troubling power dynamics with women, his asceticism was upper-caste coded).

Contemporary Relevance:Gandhi demonstrates that resistance to emasculation doesn't require embracing hyper-masculinity. Alternative masculinities are possible.

Military Service: Complicated Resistance

Many South Asian men served in British colonial armies. Was this resistance or collaboration?

The Complexity:

• Military service offered economic survival, especially for "martial race" communities
• It provided a masculine identity and honor in a context of general emasculation
• Some men saw it as serving their communities (sending money home)
• Others saw it as collaborating with oppressors
• During World Wars, some hoped military service would earn political rights (it didn't)

The Contradiction:South Asian soldiers fought for Britain while Britain denied them basic rights. They proved their martial capability while being told they were racially inferior. They enforced colonial rule over other colonized peoples.

Why This Matters:It shows how colonialism forced impossible choices. Men seeking to reclaim masculine dignity through military service were channeled into serving the system that emasculated them.

Part 2: The Patriarchal Bargain - Compensatory Control

Defining the Concept

The term "patriarchal bargain" was coined by sociologist Deniz Kandiyoti to describe how women negotiate within patriarchal systems. We're adapting it here to describe a specific phenomenon:

When men are systematically disempowered in public/political life, some compensate by intensifying control in private/domestic life.

This is not an excuse—it's an explanation of a psychological and social mechanism that has caused significant harm.

The Logic of Compensation

The Psychological Process:

1. Colonial Emasculation: British rule systematically stripped South Asian men of political power, economic autonomy, and masculine legitimacy in public life.
2. Psychological Wound: This created a deep wound to masculine identity and collective self-worth.
3. Need for Control: Human beings need to feel some sense of agency and power. When that's denied in one sphere, they often seek it in another.
4. Domestic Sphere as Available: The one sphere where colonialism didn't directly interfere was family/domestic life. Men could exercise authority here.
5. Intensification: Patriarchal control that existed pre-colonially became more rigid, more anxious, more compensatory.

Historical Examples

Heightened Restrictions on Women's Mobility:

Pre-Colonial Variation:Women's mobility varied significantly by class, region, caste, and religious community. Elite women in some contexts had significant restrictions; working-class women often had more freedom by necessity.

Colonial Era Shift:As British characterizations of South Asian men as "unable to control their women" or "lacking proper family structure" circulated, some communities responded by:

• Increasing purdah (female seclusion) practices
• Restricting women's education and public participation
• Heightening surveillance of women's behavior
• Making family "honor" (izzat) increasingly dependent on female behavior

Example:The controversy over the Age of Consent Act (1891), which raised the age of consent for girls from 10 to 12, was opposed by many Indian men who saw it as:

• British interference in domestic matters
• An attack on Hindu tradition
• An emasculating assertion that Indian men couldn't regulate their own families

What This Reveals:The resistance wasn't really about tradition—it was about defending one of the few remaining spheres of masculine authority.

Control of Female Sexuality as Cultural Purity:

The Logic:

• If we cannot control our political fate, we can control cultural purity
• Women's bodies and behavior become symbols of community honor
• Preventing "mixing" (intercultural relationships) becomes urgent
• Policing women's sexuality becomes a way to police community boundaries

Modern Manifestations:

• Restrictions on South Asian women dating outside the community
• Differential standards for sons vs. daughters
• Honor violence and honor killings
• Forced marriage practices in some communities

Mrinalini Sinha's Analysis: "Specters of Mother India"

Historian Mrinalini Sinha analyzed the 1927 controversy over Mother India, a book by Katherine Mayo that portrayed Indian men as sexual predators and oppressors of women.

What Mayo's Book Did:

• Used concerns about child marriage and women's status to attack Indian nationalism
• Portrayed Indian men as barbaric and unfit for self-governance
• Used feminism as a tool of colonialism

Indian Nationalist Response:Many male Indian nationalists:

• Defended practices they might otherwise have criticized
• Positioned women's reform as something Indians would do internally, not under British pressure
• Felt their masculinity was under attack

Sinha's Insight:The controversy revealed how:

• Women's status became a battleground for colonial politics
• Indian men felt trapped between colonial accusations and community expectations
• Reform of gender relations became associated with colonial humiliation
• Defending patriarchy became a way to defend against colonialism

The Tragic Result:Needed reforms to gender relations were delayed or opposed because they became associated with colonial interference and emasculation.

Part 3: Post-Colonial Intensification

The patriarchal bargain didn't end with independence. In some ways, it intensified.

Partition and Gendered Violence

The 1947 Partition of India involved massive gendered violence:

• Widespread rape and abduction of women
• Men witnessing but unable to prevent violence against female family members
• Women's bodies becoming symbolic battlegrounds between communities
• Some families killing their own women to "protect" them from rape

Psychological Impact on Men:

• Profound shame at inability to protect families
• Trauma around witnessing gendered violence
• Compensatory reassertion of control over women
• Inter-communal violence often justified as "protecting our women"

Long-Term Effect:Post-Partition generations inherited:

• Anxiety about women's safety
• Overprotectiveness as expression of unprocessed trauma
• Control framed as care
• Difficulty distinguishing between genuine protection and patriarchal control

Migration and the Patriarchal Bargain

Diaspora Dynamics:South Asian immigrant men in Western countries often face:

• Racism and economic marginalization
• Loss of social status from homeland
• Emasculation in Western contexts (stereotyped as non-threatening)
• Economic stress and underemployment relative to qualifications

Compensatory Patterns:Some respond by:

• Intensifying control over family life
• Restricting women's Western assimilation more than men's
• Defending "traditional" gender roles more rigidly than in homeland
• Expecting domestic service from wives as compensation for public humiliation

Example Pattern:"My father was an engineer in India. In America, he drove a taxi. He came home angry every day. My mother had a nursing degree but he wouldn't let her work. He said she needed to maintain our culture, keep the home traditional. Looking back, I think he needed one place where he felt in control, where his authority wasn't questioned. Our home became his kingdom because the world outside made him feel small." - Amit, 36

The Double Bind for Women

South Asian women experience a specific double bind created by this dynamic:

They face:

• Sexism from within community (patriarchal control)
• Racism from outside community
• Being positioned as symbols of community honor
• Being blamed for men's struggles ("if you were more traditional, he'd be happier")

When they resist:

• They're accused of being "too Western"
• They're blamed for breaking up families
• They're positioned as betraying their culture
• They face isolation from community support

Part 4: Understanding Without Excusing

This is the crucial distinction: We can understand the psychological origins of patriarchal bargaining without excusing the harm it causes.

Why Understanding Matters

For Intervention:If we understand that intensified patriarchal control often stems from:

• Historical emasculation and trauma
• Current experiences of racism and marginalization
• Lack of emotional processing skills
• Learned patterns from previous generations

Then we can design better interventions that address root causes rather than just symptoms.

For Men Seeking to Change:Many South Asian men recognize patriarchal patterns in themselves but don't understand where they come from. Understanding the historical context can:

• Reduce shame that prevents growth
• Create compassion for previous generations
• Identify specific patterns to interrupt
• Develop alternative coping strategies

For Communities:Understanding this dynamic helps communities:

• Have more nuanced conversations about gender
• Avoid simplistic blame narratives
• Create space for men to heal while holding them accountable
• Build solidarity rather than division

What Understanding Does NOT Mean

Understanding does NOT mean:

• Women should tolerate abuse because men are traumatized
• Patriarchal violence is excusable due to historical context
• Men are not responsible for their choices
• Change is impossible or shouldn't be expected
• Contemporary patriarchy is solely explained by colonialism (it has many causes)

The Both/And:

• South Asian men have been victimized by colonial emasculation AND
• South Asian men perpetuate patriarchal violence AND
• Both things are true AND
• Both things require response

Part 5: Breaking the Pattern

How do we interrupt the patriarchal bargain?

Individual Level

For Men:

1. Recognize the pattern: Identify when you're seeking control to compensate for powerlessness elsewhere
2. Develop emotional awareness: Learn to identify and express vulnerable emotions
3. Find healthy power: Build self-worth through growth, not domination
4. Seek therapy: Especially trauma-informed, culturally competent therapy
5. Practice accountability: When you harm others, take responsibility

Example:"I realized I was always trying to make decisions for my wife—where we lived, how money was spent, who she saw. My therapist asked, 'Where else in your life do you feel out of control?' Everything. My job, my extended family's expectations, how I'm treated as a brown man in America. My marriage was the one place I thought I could have control. But control isn't love. I'm learning to share power instead of hoarding it." - Vikram, 42

Community Level

Community Responses:

1. Create spaces for men to discuss trauma and mental health
2. Develop cultural narratives that don't equate masculinity with control
3. Challenge honor-based frameworks that police women's behavior
4. Build support systems for domestic violence survivors
5. Engage men in gender justice work

Structural Level

Addressing Root Causes:

1. Economic justice: Reducing economic precarity that intensifies stress
2. Anti-racism work: Challenging racism that emasculates men of color
3. Mental health access: Creating culturally competent, accessible services
4. Educational interventions: Teaching healthy masculinity models to youth
5. Legal protections: Enforcing laws against domestic violence and honor violence