COMMENTARY
from Gujarat’s Garbha Vigyan Anusandhan
Garbha Sanskar and the Politics
of Masculinity in West Bengal
Sayantani Sur
Garbha sanskar is a
politico-cultural project to create
ideal Hindu, male babies towards
the creation of a strong nation
abetted by a superior progeny
who are mentally, physically, and
spiritually strong. This political
design of the Sangh Parivar seeks
to establish Hindu hegemonic
masculinity, by disrupting
existing forms of intellect-based
masculinity in Bengal.
Sayantani Sur (sayantani2006@yahoo.com) is
a doctoral fellow at the Centre for Studies in
Social Sciences, Calcutta (Kolkata).
20
[R]ashtra ko samartha banana hai, to hume
uske bachhe se hi sochna hoga…
(If you want a strong nation, you have to
start with strong children)
[B]achhe ka immunity power kaisa hona cha-
hiye, sense of humour kaisa ho, brain kaisa
ho, awaj kaisa ho, character, memory, pious-
ness ye sab hum pehle se plan kar sakte hai.
Jaise bhi chahe us tarah ki quality hum next
generation mein la sakte hai...Upanishad me
likha hai rashtra ko agar samartha banana
hai to bachhe ko smartha banana parega.
(Everything about a child can be planned
before hand—immunity, sense of humour,
intelligence, voice, character, memory, and
piousness. Parents can choose all these qual-
ities for the next generation. The Upanishad
says that in order to create a strong nation,
one has to produce strong children.)
T
he above quotes are from the
“Garbha Sanskar1 aur Dampati
Samikshan” workshop2 organised
by Arogya Bharati, the medical wing of
the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS),3
for married couples on 6 May 2017 in
Kolkata, West Bengal. This workshop dis-
cussed the various ways of practising
garbha sanskar, a set of medico-cultural
and religious practices, which when ad-
opted during conception and pregnancy
claims to produce su-santan or uttam san-
tan, that is a superior child or perfect child.
The perfect child would possess all the
qualities desired by the parents, grow up to
be an ideal child in the eyes of society and
state, and make the nation proud. Garbha
sanskar involves certain correctional
methods in diet and daily activities which
supposedly regulates the mind and body
of the mother, so as to give birth to a child
who is mentally, emotionally, physically,
and spiritually superior to the rest.
The Workshop: An Overview
The workshop pointed out that garbha
sanskar is aimed at the greater idea of
creating a samartha Bharat4 (strong India)
by creating a superior progeny who is
mentally, physically, and spiritually strong.
This workshop in Kolkata was imported
febrUARY 3, 2018
Kendra which conducts research and
development on Ayurvedic antenatal care.
Garbha sanskar is allegedly based on
garbha vigyan or “science of the womb”
and is popularised as an Ayurvedic for-
mulation. The project of garbha vigyan
was launched more than a decade ago in
Gujarat and brought to the national level
in 2015. The project claims to have given
birth, through garbha sanskar, to 450
babies that are holistically superior.
Garbha sanskar occupies an ambiguous
position in the sphere of reproduction.
What apparently looks like pregnancy
planning is actually a confluence of sexo-
logy, eugenics, cultural practices, and
maternal and child health. Garbha sanskar
aims at producing genetically superior
children by performing certain rituals and
practices within the body and outside it.
Garbha sanskar, therefore, occupies an
in-between status between medicine and
sociocultural practices; it is corporeal
as well as spiritual. Garbha sanskar is
stretched through four reproductive
stages: first, through preconception mea-
sures; second, through impregnation,
third; through antenatal care; and lastly,
by taking care of the foetus through the
mother’s body.
The workshop started off by advocating
atulya gotra (unbroken family line)5 and
went on to advise certain preconception
methods to invite achhi atma (good
soul)6 into the mother’s womb. Once the
achhi atma is placed in the mother’s womb,
it has to be taken care of by eating the
right kind of food and practising the right
attitude. Besides food, garbha sanskar lays
emphasis on daily activities like listening
to stotras (hymns) and chanting mantras,
doing yoga and feeding the gau mata
(mother cow).7 Such practises, apparently,
help in producing a spiritually developed
child with strong character. Garbha sans-
kar also advises knowledge transmission
from the mother to the foetus by making
the mother practise mental arithmetic,
sudokus, and puzzles at a particular time
during pregnancy, so that the child turns
out to be intelligent and smart. However,
it is not enough to take care only through
diet and daily activities; certain precau-
tionary measures need to be taken for
protecting the achhi atma inside the
vol lIiI no 5 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

womb. It is only by performing yagnas (a
ritual sacrifice) and keeping the cosmic
energies happy, that holistic develop-
ment of the child can be ensured, thereby
producing the “perfect” child.
Sangh Parivar in West Bengal
In recent times, the Sangh Parivar8 has
been trying to make headway in West
Bengal. While the political reverberations
of the Parivar are prominent in garbha
sanskar through idioms of achhi atma,
gau mata and sanskar, in a bid to make
their presence felt, the Parivar has mostly
taken up sociocultural and religious
agendas to make and mark a difference.
In 2017, West Bengal has celebrated
Hanuman Jayanti like never before.
Simultaneously, processions during Ram
Navami celebrations in the state have
seen an unabashed show of arms, where
boys and girls took to the streets in large
numbers in various cities and rural
areas, shouting the name of Lord Rama
(Bhattacharya 2017; Telegraph 2017).
The Sangh Parivar, through such public
displays of masculine clout and devotion,
is seeking to re-masculinise a so-called
effeminate and “emasculated” race (Sinha
1995) in hardcore Hindu ways. At this
stage, it is trying to manufacture a
certain brand of masculinity in Bengal
which celebrates physical strength and
power but at the same time encourages
being in control. The Sangh Parivar in
Bengal has, therefore, undertaken an
effort to cultivate a generation of reac-
tionary Hindus, if not “angry Hindus”9
(Chakraborty 2011: 168–96). Chandrima
Chakraborty (2011: 190) further observes,
The Hindu male body, always “under control,”
is posited as heroic, unlike Muslim and
Western male bodies that are assumed to be
“out of control.”
The agenda is to transform a “weak,”
“emasculated” body politic into physi-
cally strong and spiritually motivated
men who are ready to act for the nation.
Masculinity, thus, becomes a bio-moral
discourse of asceticism, celibacy, spiritu-
ality, strength, and vigour.
Garbha sanskar is very much a part of
this project, an effort to establish Hindu
hegemonic masculinity. Like any other
project of the Sangh Parivar, it is also
founded on ideas of a glorious, ancient
Economic & Political Weekly EPW febrUARY 3, 2018
past and a present-day crisis followed by
claims of revival. Interestingly, this sense of
crises does not simply hail from crises of
ancient literature, culture, and spiritual-
ity, but additionally points to a crisis in
masculinity. By continuously harping on
the idea, evident from the workshop, that
it is imperative to cultivate certain specific
characteristics in the future generation, a
sense of lack is cultivated. This sense of
lack emanates from a perceived crisis in
the idea of Hindu hegemonic masculinity.
The Sangh Parivar through garbha
sanskar has, thus, selectively appropriated
certain myths, incorporated history, and
evoked mythic–historical characters to
make sense of this crisis of masculinity
in Bengal, to be rescued through the
project of garbha sanskar. The workshop
referred repeatedly to personalities like
Swami Vivekananda, Bankim Chandra
Chattopadhyay, and Shivaji as exemplary
of su-santans. Through a haphazard mix
of history and myth, garbha sanskar tries
to organise and regulate the idea of what
it is to be a su-santan. By pointing out
specific physical and spiritual characteri-
stics (fair skinned, intelligent, smart, and
pious) and contextualising those charac-
teristics within the bodies and morale of
Indian heroes, garbha sanskar produces a
metanarrative of maleness. It inspires the
image of perfect male children. Normati-
vely feminised characteristic features like
beauty, poise and courtesy are ignored;
instead strength, leadership, spirituality,
and intelligence are highlighted. Garbha
sanskar is, therefore, a project to create
ideal Hindu, male babies and thereafter,
to establish Hindu hegemonic masculinity
in Bengal and elsewhere.
Bengali Masculinity vs
National Masculinity
Since the early 19th century, the Indian
Hindu male was regarded by the British as
effeminate and weak; the Bengalis found
themselves enumerated fifth in the cate-
gory of all physical types (Chowdhury
2001: 53). Cynthia H Enloe (1980) and
Mrinalini Sinha (1995) have pointed out
that two distinct Indian masculine
identities were marked—one was martial
(Gurkhas, Rajputs, Pathans, and Sikhs)
and the other non-martial (Bengalis).
Feminisation of the native Bengali male
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COMMENTARY
has been an ensuing theme in the works
of scholars like John Roselli (1980), Sinha
(1995) and Indira Chowdhury (2001).
Although such stereotyping found resist-
ance, during the Swadeshi movement
in the form of a physical culture of
bodybuilding and in violent attacks on
Britishers, it was short-lived and failed
to make an impact.
In the mid-20th century, a form of
“compensatory masculinity” developed in
Bengal which was based on the strength
of the intellect or buddhibal rather than
bahubal (physical power) (Chattopadhyay
2011: 275). Thereafter, in Bengal, mascu-
line capital has always been derived out of
intellect rather than the body.
The political design of the Sangh Parivar
disrupts and contradicts with this form
of intellect-based masculinity in Bengal.
It is in stark opposition with the Sangh
Parivar’s masculine agendas which are
directly corporeal or are articulated in
corporeal ways. The Parivar, in line with its
homogeneous Hindu politics, is striving
to take Bengali masculinity within the folds
of a national masculinity, as an intrinsic
part of Hindi–Hindu–Hindustan. Garbha
sanskar is one of the Parivar’s projects of
manufacturing such a brand of mascu-
linity among Bengalis; something which
Bengali masculinity has rejected with its
own form of “compensatory masculinity”
based on “buddhi” rather than “bahu”
(Chattopadhyay 2011: 275).
At present, with the “emergence of poli-
tical will” (Gwatkin 1979: 29–59) in pro-
pelling Hindu socio-religious and cultural
projects, the Sangh Parivar is attempting
to establish itself as an alternative political
party in Bengal. This has spawned an in-
teresting power politics as the Parivar
struggles to occupy the position, not of the
ruling party, but of the primary opposi-
tion party replacing leftist politics. The
question is—in contrast to the liberal,
progressive, and intellectual masculinist
tradition of the left, will the politics of
the Sangh Parivar based on articulations
of hardcore corporeal masculinity, as-
serting the vision of a martial, Hindu India
find feet in Bengal? Only time will tell.
Notes
1 Garbha sanskar is a Sanskrit term which means
education in the womb. It is composed of cer-
tain rites and rituals related to the womb
21
COMMENTARY
through which the foetus is said to connect
with the outer world.
2 This workshop was attended by the author, and
details presented on garbha sanskar in this
article have been drawn from lectures and
discussions at the workshop.
3 The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is
part of the Sangh Parivar—a Hindu nationalist
cluster organisation. The RSS is a political
organisation founded in 1925 by H B Hedgewar,
inspired by V D Savarkar’s idea of Hindutva.
The RSS, along with its branch organisations,
advocates Hindu nationalist agendas in socio-
cultural and political spheres.
4 Samartha Bharat is a project aimed at nation-
building. It pledges to transform Bharat (India)
by building a sustainable, strong society through
meaningful social and cultural initiatives. It
works through a series of campaigns like Vivek
Band, organised to mark the birth anniversary
of Swami Vivekananda to spread the message
of character-building, nationalism, and nation-
building among the youth.
5 The word “gotra” suggests lineage systems and
broadly refers to an unbroken family line.
Atulya gotra means unequalled or different
clan or family line which is, as prescribed in
Ayurveda, imperative for a healthy progeny.
6 The phrase “achhi atma” connotes a good soul.
However, in present circumstances, it also has
a political connotation. “Achhe din” or good
days are coming was the Hindi slogan of the
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2014 general
elections, after winning which Narendra Modi
22
became the Prime Minister of India. The slogan
was immensely popular and at present, any word
which is associated with “achhe/achha/achhi”
(good) is readily identified as being associated
with the BJP government. Reiteration of the word
“achhi atma” is to confirm and establish the
ideology of the party within the current context.
7 In Hinduism, the cow is considered a sacred
animal as well as a maternal figure, often re-
ferred to as gau mata. It is also considered aus-
picious to feed the cow.
8 Sangh Parivar refers to the conglomeration of
Hindu nationalist organisations and draws its
name from the RSS. This conglomerate works
in favour of Hindu rights, towards its goal of
transforming India into a Hindu rashtra (nation).
9 Chandrima Chakraborty (2011) has explained
how the image of an “angry Hindu” is exploited
by Hindu nationalist organisations. An angry
Hindu is an “awakened” Hindu, one who retaliates
in self-defence and is righteously angry because
of Muslim misrule. Acts of violence and aggres-
sion by Hindu right-wing groups can be, thus,
justified by the angry Hindu’s quest for justice
and for transforming India into a Hindu rashtra.
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