Pseudo Feminism : A Termite Masquerading as Reform

A moment on a public panel revealed a deeper truth : we are increasingly uncomfortable hearing our own civilizational story. Drawing from history, scripture and lived experience, one questions the unquestioned adoption of ‘pseudo feminism’ in Bharat and asks whether empowerment without roots can ever lead to harmony. (Part 1)

The friction tearing through our society today is not out of any circumstances, it was engineered. The fraying trust between men and women is breaking families and children are growing up amid confusion and contradiction. At the root of this unrest lies the steady infusion of foreign ideologies; radical feminism, cultural self-hatred, civilizational guilt and perpetual victimhood, introduced to weaken social cohesion from within. The Hindu family structure now stands strained between conflicting narratives.

These ideas were deliberately pushed into Hindu discourse, casting Bharat as backward and its traditions as oppressive. In doing so, they have turned independence into separation, equality into conflict and empowerment into alienation.

Families that once nurtured generations are now pressured by narratives that erode trust, respect and love, leaving men and women unsure of their roles and children confused about values and traditions. A civilization built on harmony and Dharma has been pushed toward division, distrust and disintegration.

Chanakya warned that Nations collapse from within before they fall from outside. Today, ideological imports masquerading as liberation are corroding trust, family, and social order in Bharat.

Primarily a solo keynote speaker on culture, history, spirituality and environmental responsibility at forums that engage deeply with Indic thought, history and cultural continuity; I recently spoke at a literary festival. Though I engage in formats aligned with ‘complete civilisational narrative’ approach, I could not deny this invite and found myself in a panel nominally discussing ‘women’s empowerment.’ From the outset, the questions and the discussion revolved around narratives narrowly focused on victimhood; the responses of the other panelists largely followed the same line.

I attempted to offer a different perspective to broaden the conversation. I reminded the audience that Hindu society descends from a valorous lineage, one that defended the land, culture and Dharma for over fourteen centuries. I pointed out that we have been led to forget our own strength and to undervalue traditions that have always revered and honoured women, that history of courage and resilience has been overshadowed, leaving us with diminished pride in ourselves.

I highlighted that foreign-imported concepts of ‘feminism’ have disrupted this harmony, undermining a culture that has never discriminated between genders. The response that followed revealed how firmly such narratives have taken hold in public discourse.

While the audience reacted with openness and interest, which was encouraging, the other panelists and the moderator seemed uncomfortable engaging with this perspective. That moment made something clear to me; we are increasingly conditioned to view our society through lenses of inadequacy and guilt, while our deeper legacy of balance, dignity and valour remains largely unspoken. It was this experience that clarified the urgency of revisiting the origins and consequences of this ‘pseudo feminism’ in Bharat to understand how borrowed ideas have reshaped and, in many cases, strained our social fabric, families and collective self-understanding.

The framework of feminism and women’s empowerment did not emerge from Hindu civilizational thought, it is a product of historical conditions elsewhere. It developed specifically in Europe and North America as a response to legal and social restrictions placed on women by feudal laws, the Church and later industrial capitalism.

Western women were denied formal education, property rights, inheritance, political representation and economic autonomy. Confined to domestic roles and little opportunity for independent livelihoods, they were treated as dependents, legally subordinated to fathers or husbands rather than autonomous persons and had no voting rights. The word ‘feminism’ was coined to describe these struggles advocating modest but essential reforms, access to education, property, and political voice.

Even as feminism sought justice, its ideals were repeatedly co-opted by political and ideological forces. The French Revolution (1789-1795) radicalised these concepts by transforming rights into political claims. Most of these advances were rolled back after the radical phase of the Revolution ended. Marxist thinkers like Angela Davis (1944) fused feminism inside Marxist revolutionary ideology; framing the family as a site of oppression and economic dependency as the root of female subjugation. Women’s liberation was not about rights but about dismantling existing social structures.

Colonialism used feminist rhetoric more strategically as a justification for domination by portraying colonised societies as oppressive to women. In Bharat, the British authorities selectively highlighted sati and purdah to construct a narrative of native barbarism, positioning imperial rule as a moral mission to ‘save’ women from their own cultures.

The World Wars marked another critical phase in the political use of women. During both World War I and World War II, Western Governments invoked equality and emancipation rhetoric to mobilise women into the workforce. With millions of men conscripted into military service, states faced acute labour shortages and turned to women to sustain factories, munitions production, transport and agriculture.

Governments declared women equal citizens and framed labour participation as both national duty and liberation. However, this equality was strictly functional and temporary. Once the wars ended, women were systematically pushed back into domestic roles, wages declined and the rhetoric of equality disappeared. Equality was granted only when it served state objectives and withdrawn when it no longer did.

In socialist states, particularly the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the political use of women became more systematic and ideologically explicit; women’s liberation was framed through labour.

Marxist theory identified the family as an oppressive structure and economic dependency as the root of female subjugation. Work, therefore, was presented as liberation and the state positioned itself as the new protector replacing the family. Lenin and later Stalin argued openly that women had to be drawn into production to build socialism. Women were pushed into factories and collective labour while still retaining domestic responsibilities, creating a double burden rather than genuine freedom. This was not empowerment in any meaningful human sense, women were not liberated; they were reallocated.

By the 1970s, overt revolutionary language gave way to ‘women’s empowerment,’ formalized by the United Nations and development agencies. The UN International Women’s Year in 1975 and the UN Decade for Women from 1976 to 1985 marked the institutionalisation of this new terminology under Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim. Empowerment was deliberately chosen because it sounded progressive without being confrontational, moral without being radical and reformist without challenging foundational structures.

The World Bank, under President Robert S. McNamara, became the principal engine of this new development feminism. McNamara integrated women into a technocratic framework linking gender to productivity, fertility control, poverty management and human capital, viewed as economic inputs. Western development agencies, like United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the UK’s Overseas Development Ministry, promoted these ideas by tying them to aid programs. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) then spread the same language to other donor countries making ‘empowerment’ a standard part of international funding.

Empowerment need not come at the cost of family, dignity, or harmony. Detached from Bharatiya context, ‘Pseudo-feminism’ has reshaped social narratives !

(Meenakshi Sharan is a hospitality entrepreneur, an avid history buff, an independent researcher known for debunking false narratives and a civilisational activist. She is a contributing writer at various print and online publications.)

 Marxist thinkers framed the family as a site of oppression and economic dependency as the root of female subjugation !

Read in Part 2 of this Article

Whereas thousands of miles east, in Bharat, the position of women has always been fundamentally rooted in respect, and spiritual authority rather than subordination. Hindu society never regarded woman as inferior; it worshipped her as Shakti, honoured her as mother, protector, teacher and the very soul of the household. From the Vedic period onward, women were active participants in intellectual, spiritual and social life. The Rishikas – Gargi, Ghosha, Lopamudra and Apala composed hymns, engaged in  philosophical debates and were recognized as Brahmavadinis, standing on equal intellectual footing with men. Thirty such women are mentioned in the Rig Veda alone, a testament to their spiritual authority and unhindered access to sacred knowledge. Women studied the Vedas, philosophy, music and statecraft alongside men in gurukuls, decisively challenging any Western notion that women were historically subordinated or denied learning.