The Mahila Agadi (Women's Front) is a women's movement in western India that claims to be the female political counterpart to India's Shiv Sena political party. Shiv Sena is a radical, Hindu fundamentalist, violence-prone, xenophobic alliance that effectively uses brilliant organization combined with generous doses of gangland thuggery to gain political and social advantages for those who espouse its rather controversial values. Found primarily in the Indian state of Maharashtra, Shiv Sena advocates violent opposition to the presence of the “foreign” (i.e. non-Hindu, especially Muslim, and non-Marathi-speaking) cadre of workers migrating to Maharashtra. It finds its most ardent expression in the Bombay slums, where unemployment is high and a resolutely cultivated, resentful intolerance of communities outside the Marathi-speaking Hindu fold is the presumed norm. Shiv Sena glorifies as virtuous and patriotic the oppression and persecution of “unworthy” groups, justifying the oppression with its selective reading of Indian history and a manufactured memory of the role in Indian history of their namesake medieval military hero, Sivaji.

What impresses this reader is the extent to which women in the Agadi have been able to expound values of violence and oppressive communalism while at the same time deriving from their involvement in the group singular feminist gains in local solidarity, female rights, prestige, and independence, both in the home and in the community. That right-wing fundamentalism on the one hand, and women's rights on the other, could be complementary values feeding off each other is an unusual proposition, but one that is deftly and sensitively described in this well-written, carefully researched volume. Though the author does not discuss to any extent the activities of men in Shiv Sena, she refers to them often enough by contrasting how the women's Agadi functions in contrast—and those contrasts are revealing. Men generally are the ones in the forefront of major riots, skirmishes, beatings, intimidations, mass demonstrations, and torture. Women understand their roles often as supportive in combat, as they urge their men on, denounce as “sissies” those who refuse to be violent, assemble homemade firebombs, and school the younger men in their responsibilities as gangsters who should feel empowered to prey on those the women designate as rightful victims. Generally, the men understand themselves to be soldiers in a war they wish to win by permanently eliminating the presence and competition of “foreign” labor and culture from the Maharashtra region. Women, on the other hand, have a high investment in prolonging the protracted conflicts because they derive their power from the sense of living in an emergency environment, in which crisis lurks around every corner and thus presents women with an opportunity to seize and justify (“for the sake of the cause”) their own forms of power.

To be sure, these women do not eschew violence. They do such things as organize a 400-strong demonstration at the home of a local employer who refused to pay his female day laborers if they will not offer sexual favors. Demonstrations can often lead to physical attacks on a home or a place of business, and often enough certain men have been attacked by these gangs of women, tossed into the filth of the sewers, or beaten unconscious. As a tightly organized “sisterhood,” the Agadi takes care of its own, and women know they can find companionship, understanding, and mutual commitment in the group. That poor women have such an association to which to repair when matters at home become difficult is also a source of real strength. In conservative Hindu communities, men are averse to permitting their wives to leave the home at any time for any reason. But when “the cause” is at stake, there is a transcendent justification. And occasionally the Agadi will organize a demonstration or a drubbing to be meted out to the husband of one of its own members, such as a husband who habitually uses violence to keep his wife in line. Within Shiv Sena, and outside it, the Agadi is a respected and feared group. It can muster an enthusiastic and committed army of “in-your-face” women at a moment's notice. The prospect of a huge traffic-stopping public demonstration in which hundreds of women hurl both rocks and invectives to make a point is a prospect many will want to avoid at all costs. Women of the Agadi know full well that blackmail, intimidation, and humiliation work much more quickly than legal or social processes. Even when their men are in danger of being beaten by the police, Agadi women show up in zealous groups to shield the men from police who could never afford to be seen publicly thrashing or even manhandling unarmed females. And, to be sure, to buttress their commitment to the cause, groups of Agadi women will isolate, torment, and beat Muslim women and children, claiming to be protecting the integrity of their neighborhoods.

This is compelling reading. The author is self-conscious about her role as fieldworker and friend to many Agadi women who are, at the same time, violence-prone criminals and bigots but who are also kind, thoughtful, and gracious human beings. Sen walks a fine line between inviting understanding and sympathy for these women while saying very clearly that the violence and bigotry have a tragic element. No single theoretical model prevails in this book. Sen refers to other theorists frequently, but usually in relation to specific points. She has articulately and cogently documented a women's movement unlike any we have seen in the West. Whatever else we might say of the movement, in terms of achieving women's rights, it is effective. Whether the effective is necessary and whether the necessary is right are two lingering questions with which this book leaves us.