ABSTRACT
Introduction The achievement of gender equality, which has historically focused on improving the status of women but has recently been expanded by some international development organizations and donor agencies to include the rights of sexual minorities, has consistently been identied as a key development goal. In the context of the rights of women and sexual minorities, religion has generally been viewed as a conservative force – one that acts as a hindrance to the achievement of gender and sexual equality. This has been no less true in India and Pakistan, where conservative groups across religious traditions have emerged as opponents of movements for gender equality. At the same time, religion has at times also been used as a means of supporting arguments for gender or sexual equality by those advocating equal rights. This chapter will explore the interaction between religious discourses deployed by a variety of actors and movements for gender or sexual equality specically in India and Pakistan (see also Tomalin, Chapter 13). Because South Asia is such a vast and diverse region, it is not possible to discuss it in its entirety, and therefore we have chosen to focus only on India and Pakistan. Both countries provide an interesting comparison, as the former is ocially a secular state while the latter is ocially religious. However, religion and politics have been closely intertwined in both countries, with similar detrimental eects on the rights of women and sexual minorities. In both settings the women’s movements tend to be secular in the sense of viewing religion as something that should not inuence politics (although private religious observance is acceptable) but may engage with religious values and actors strategically in order to achieve their goals.
