Sadhvi Rithambara (born 31 December 1963) [1] is a Hindu Vestal (Sadhvi), public speaker and nationalist ideologue[2][3][4][5][6][7] who is the founder-chairperson of Durga Vahini, the women's wing of the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), established in 1991.[8][9][10][11][12] She gained national prominence with VHP in the late 1980s through the Jan Jagran Abhiyan, and in the 1990s during the run up to the Babri Masjid demolition. Subsequently, she was named an accused in the Liberhan Commission report, though later acquitted by the CBI court in 2020.[1][13]
She got her diksha from Swami Paramanand, at the age of sixteen and having become his disciple, followed him to his ashram in Haridwar and then, in his tours across India, while being primarily trained in spirituality.[15][16]
Rithambara gained public prominence through her roles in the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP).[15] She being a Sadhvi who renounced the world and living a life of ascetics (incl. herself) she never went into mainstream politics, she went for a reconstruction of Hinduism through selective reading of Bhagavad Gita.[17][18]
Speeches
During 1989–1992, Rithambara disseminated several public-speeches that urged for waging a war against Anti Nationalists;[a] cassettes of those vitriolic outbursts were played at numerous temples and public places in India. Filled with rage and shrillness, the speeches heavily borrowed from gendered imagery; portraying the Hindu nation as a female body undergoing desecration by non-Hindus (and thus losing her morality), she drew parallels with rapes of Hindu women during partition[20] and appealed to Hindu masculinity for reclaiming their lands, attracting large numbers of men, in the process.[15][21][2][22]
Equating the Muslims with lemon in milk to comparing them with flies, who were allegedly mass-breeding to out-populate the Hindus.[15][17] With historical sketches subsumed various classes and castes under a common banner of Hindu nationalism; some scholars have identified this agglomeration as the most valuable objective, fulfilled by Rithambara and associate women.[15]
Rithambara has been widely noted to be the single most powerful voice behind the whipping up of anti-Muslim sentiments across the nation, in the run-ups to the demolition of Babri Masjid; there was an overwhelming sense of passion, urgency and spontaneity, oft-accompanied by dramatic physical posturing, which instilled a non-rational collective feeling, among the audience.[17][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30] She was one of the three key women leaders of the movement, the other two being Uma Bharati and Vijayaraje Scindia; their leadership was largely responsible for the involvement of women in the movement and the form it took.[31]
Scholars note that she operated far outside the traditional boundaries of feminine domains.[citation needed]
Election campaigns
Rithambara's skills at oratory made her a star-campaigner for Bharatiya Janata Party in both the 1989 and 1991 Lok Sabha elections and several state-legislature elections.[32]
Rithambara was present during the demolition, cheering the crowd[35] whilst standing atop the terrace of the Masjid.[36][b] Three days after the demolition, she was arrested on grounds of inciting communal tension.[28]
Legal Trials
The Liberhan Commission that probed the Babri Masjid demolition held Sadhvi Ritambhara along with sixty-eight others of being individually culpable for leading the country "to the brink of communal discord" for their role in the demolition of the Babri Masjid on 6 December 1992.[38]
A CBI court framed criminal charges against Rithambara in May, 2017.[39]
On 30 September 2020, she along with other 32 accused people, were acquitted in the Babri Masjid Demolition Case by CBI special court.
Later activities
She retreated from her public role, soon after the demolition and kept a relatively low profile for a few years.[15]
In 1993, Sadhvi Rithambara attempted to establish an ashram near Vrindavan and Mathura on land that the Uttar Pradesh BJP government had granted her for a minimal fee.[16] However, the proposal fell through as the Kalyan Singh-led government was dismissed, and she was not allowed to take possession of the land by the subsequent Mulayam Singh Yadav led state government. In 2002, the state government led by Chief Minister Ram Prakash Gupta granted 17 hectares of land in the area, valued at Rupee 200 million, to her Paramshaktipeth trust for 99 years for an annual fee of one rupee for this philanthropic cause.[40][41] Besides cultivating devotion in women, the Vrindavan Ashram has also imparted training in karate, horse-riding, handling air guns and pistols, with the stated aim of relieving the women from their traditional societal roles and making them confident and self-reliant.[42] She also runs ashrams for unwanted infants, ladies and widows in Indore, Delhi and Himachal Pradesh.[41]
In April 1995, Rithambara was arrested in Indore for inciting communal passions, after she referred to Mother Teresa as a "magician", in the course of a speech denouncing Christian missionaries, who she alleged were converting Hindus. Rithambara's address sparked off a riot and led to several arson, leading to the arrest of 169 people. During the 1995 Gujarat elections, she returned to the campaigning fold for BJP and alleged about a Hindu-phobic attitude of Congress (I); this helped in mobilizing public electoral sentiments, especially since VHP was banned in Gujarat.[28] She was arrested, soon after.[32]
As of 2024, she continued to run an ashram, ‘’Vatsalya Gram’’, at Vrindavan, Uttar Pradesh, for orphans, widows, and the elderly.[1] On 31 December 2023 to mark her 60th birthday, Chief Minister of Haryana, Manohar Lal Khattar released a book in Vrindavan, based on her role in the Ram Janmabhoomi agitation.[43] In January 2024, she along with fellow leader Uma Bharti was one of the invitees at the consecration ceremony of the Ram Mandir at Ayodhya.[44][1]
Notes
^One of her speech had called for those who did not pay tribute to their ancestors shall quitt India (read:Hindus).[19]
^Contemporary news reports noted her exhorting Hindu volunteers through sloganing -- 'Ek dhakka aur do, Babri Masjid tor do [Give one more push, bring down Babri Masjid].[37]
Bibliography
नर से नारायण: आध्यात्मिक उन्नति का मार्ग (Hindi) by Sadhvi Rithambara. Prabhat Prakashan. 2024. ISBN9355217188.
^Sangari, Kumkum (1993). "Consent, Agency and Rhetorics of Incitement". Economic and Political Weekly. 28 (18): 877. ISSN0012-9976. JSTOR4399675.
^Sugirtharajah, Sharada (2002). "Hinduism and Feminism: Some Concerns". Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion. 18 (2): 104. ISSN8755-4178. JSTOR25002442.
^JAFFRELOT, CHRISTOPHE (2010). "Abhinav Bharat, the Malegaon Blast and Hindu Nationalism: Resisting and Emulating Islamist Terrorism". Economic and Political Weekly. 45 (36): 51–58. ISSN0012-9976. JSTOR25742046.
^Kapur, Ratna (1996). "Who Draws the Line? Feminist Reflections on Speech and Censorship". Economic and Political Weekly. 31 (16/17): WS19. ISSN0012-9976. JSTOR4404055.
^Cossman, Brenda; Kapur, Ratna (1996). "Secularism: Bench-Marked by Hindu Right". Economic and Political Weekly. 31 (38): 2627. ISSN0012-9976. JSTOR4404599.
^Navlakha, Gautam (1995). "Politics of Silhouetted Anger". Economic and Political Weekly. 30 (7/8): 367. ISSN0012-9976. JSTOR4402404.
^ abJaffrelot, Christophe (1999), "The Vishva Hindu Parishad: Structures and Strategies", in Haynes, Jeff (ed.), Religion, Globalization and Political Culture in the Third World, Palgrave Macmillan UK, pp. 191–212, doi:10.1007/978-1-349-27038-5_9, ISBN9781349270385
^Banerjee, Sikata (2005). "In the Crucible of Hindutva: Women and Masculine Hinduism". Make me a man! : masculinity, Hinduism, and nationalism in India. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. ISBN1423743857. OCLC62750461.
^Basu, Subho; Das, Suranjan (2005), Friedman, Max Paul; Kenney, Padraic (eds.), "Knowledge for Politics: Partisan Histories and Communal Mobilization in India and Pakistan", Partisan Histories: The Past in Contemporary Global Politics, Palgrave Macmillan US, pp. 111–126, doi:10.1007/978-1-137-09150-5_7, ISBN9781137091505
^Niranjana, Seemanthini (1 March 1999). "Off the Body: Further Considerations on Women, Sexuality and Agency". Bulletin (Centre for Women's Development Studies). 6 (1): 1–19. doi:10.1177/097152159900600101. ISSN0970-5899. S2CID144543435.
^Loomba, Ania (1993). "Dead Women Tell No Tales: Issues of Female Subjectivity, Subaltern Agency and Tradition in Colonial and Post-Colonial Writings on Widow Immolation in India". History Workshop (36): 223. ISSN0309-2984. JSTOR4289259.
^Bharucha, Rustom (1995). "Dismantling Men: Crisis of Male Identity in 'Father, Son and Holy War'". Economic and Political Weekly. 30 (26): 1611. ISSN0012-9976. JSTOR4402945.
^Chakravarti, Uma; Chowdhury, Prem; Dutta, Pradip; Hasan, Zoya; Sangari, Kumkum; Sarkar, Tanika (1992). "Khurja Riots 1990-91: Understanding the Conjuncture". Economic and Political Weekly. 27 (18): 951. ISSN0012-9976. JSTOR4397832.
^Lama-Rewal, Stéphanie T. (September 2004). Femmes et politique en Inde et au Népal (in French). Paris: Karthala Editions. ISBN2-84586-556-2.
^ abDyke, Virginia Van (1997). "General Elections, 1996: Political Sadhus and Limits to Religious Mobilisation in North India". Economic and Political Weekly. 32 (49): 3150, 3151. ISSN0012-9976. JSTOR4406155.
