India has experienced a decade of political churning with little sign of abating. With the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2014, India’s conservative movement has found new wind in its sails. This rejuvenation has sparked a wave of cultural revivalism, reshaped party systems, altered caste equations, and prompted a shift toward mercantilist economic ideologies.
Adding to these winds of change, the past decade and a half has witnessed a remarkable increase in women’s political participation, which has led to a scramble among political parties to consolidate the “women’s vote” with varying degrees of success. This essay reviews India’s electoral history through a gendered lens, with a focus on contemporary India and the BJP’s persistent efforts to mobilize women. It examines how India’s dominant right-of-center ruling party has successfully incorporated women into political spaces by propagating politics through the moral concept of seva, or selfless service. This strategy, among others, has, over a relatively short period of time, helped reverse the party’s historical deficit with women.
Reversal of Fortune: Women’s Political Engagement
Globally, the political sphere has largely been the domain of men, with women trailing in terms of electoral turnout, political candidacy, activism, and engagement. In countries considered “first-wave democracies” (1828–1926), where democratic expansion led to male but typically not female suffrage, women faced innumerable arduous battles to secure their right to vote; suffrage movements were thus a critical first step in women’s mobilization.
In India, in contrast, universal adult franchise was enshrined in the constitution and ensured political equality for women from the moment of the country’s independence in 1947. Yet lived experience has not always measured up to that promised equality. When it came to voting, for instance, women’s turnout was significantly lower than men’s. In the 1962 elections, the first election for which voter data were disaggregated by gender, only 47 percent of eligible women voters cast their ballots, in stark contrast to 63 percent of men (see figure 1). Furthermore, even when women did vote, they were likely to be influenced or even directed by male family members. For instance, in the 1996 national elections, survey data revealed that 86 percent of women heeded their families’ advice when making their polling decisions.
However, there are clear signs of cracks appearing in this historically gendered narrative. As shown in figure 1, historically women’s voter turnout paralleled men’s in its fluctuations, but a divergence occurred in 2009: women’s participation increased even as men’s decreased. Since then, women have continued to exercise their right to vote in increasing numbers, with the gender gap entirely vanishing in the 2019 general elections. For the first time on record, women’s poll participation exceeded men’s.
Furthermore, the assumption that women simply vote in tandem with men is also coming under scrutiny. In the 2014 general election, only 61 percent of women said they followed their family’s advice when making their voting decision—a sharp decline from the past. Similarly, in 2021, the author surveyed 1,457 pairs of men and women living in the same household in Rajasthan—often considered among India’s most patriarchal states—and found that, although overall levels of support for the BJP and the Indian National Congress (INC, hereafter the Congress Party) were comparable among men and women, there was notable diversity within households. Only 65 percent of women shared the same political allegiance as the men living in their households, indicating significant intrahousehold heterogeneity.1
BJP’s Emerging Advantage Among Women
Much of this heightened engagement on the part of women has a partisan tilt. In recent state assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh (2022) and Madhya Pradesh (2023), exit polls conducted by Axis-MyIndia showed that the BJP received a larger share of votes from women than its opponents did.2 In Rajasthan, the author’s research showed that when women deviated from men in the political realm, women tended to lean toward the BJP.
In BJP-aligned households, 73 percent of women reported that they were also aligned with the BJP. However, in Congress Party–aligned households, only 68 percent of women followed men’s political preferences, with 25 percent aligning themselves with the rival BJP instead (see figure 2). Men’s ability to consolidate the household vote diminished further when they did not exhibit a clear preference; in these homes, the BJP was again the biggest gainer—with 48 percent of women aligning themselves with the party.
Although the findings were tentative, there are strong indications that women’s escalating political assertion poses a challenge for political parties in the Hindi heartland, especially those organized around caste lines. While caste has been the traditional linchpin of the Indian polity, the BJP is attempting to leverage gender as a vertical cleavage to counter traditional caste-based mobilization. Indeed, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s acknowledgment of this strategic approach was evident in a recent proclamation that for him, rather than traditional caste identities, women constituted one of the “biggest castes” alongside the poor, youth, and farmers.
There are signs that this strategy is paying off. For instance, in the 2020 state assembly elections in Bihar, a staggering 99 of the 125 seats (79 percent) secured by the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) were won in constituencies where women’s voter turnout exceeded men’s. The BJP’s traction among women was also pronounced in Uttar Pradesh—India’s most populous state—as evidenced by community-specific, gender-disaggregated patterns from exit polls conducted by Axis-MyIndia in that state’s 2022 Legislative Assembly election (see figure 3).
Among upper caste groups, the BJP’s advantage over the Samajwadi Party (SP), the most potent opposition force in Uttar Pradesh, aligns with expectations given that upper castes have long constituted a core element of the BJP’s support base. Here too, the BJP gains more from women than men. Similarly, the BJP’s disadvantage among Muslims and Yadavs—the latter a large backward caste that forms the key base of the SP—is also unsurprising. But what is remarkable is the BJP’s advantage over the SP among women belonging to smaller but electorally significant caste groups—so-called swing voters—such as Jats, Kurmis, non-Yadav Other Backward Classes (OBCs), and non-Jatav Scheduled Castes (SCs). Even among Jatavs, members of the Dalit community who have long supported the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP)—another important regional political front that emerged as a response to the hegemony of upper caste groups, the BJP’s core base—the BJP has an advantage over the SP when it comes to women.3
From Turnout to Active Participation: Women Within Political Parties
While the BJP has found some success in its attempts to mobilize women, other parties have not thrown in the towel. The preferred approach of nearly all parties, including the BJP, to solicit the women’s vote has largely been through targeted “pro-women” policies. The list of such offerings is long; it includes the Janata Dal (United)’s implementation of prohibition in Bihar, the All India Trinamool Congress’s Kanyashree conditional cash transfer program, and the BJP’s Ladli Behna unconditional cash transfer (in Madhya Pradesh) and Ujjwala gas cylinder subsidy (at the national level). Yet there is little evidence about the effectiveness of any one welfare program since competing parties often make similar promises.
Moreover, parties face hurdles in communicating these policy platforms to women because of disparities in political knowledge, networks, and socialization. Bridging this gap necessitates investing in a cadre of activists capable of engaging and mobilizing women through personal contact. While this investment can reap dividends for all parties, it is particularly crucial for parties rooted in social movements like the BJP, whose success relies not only on electoral triumphs but also on garnering broader support for its cultural and ideological objectives.
At the same time, gender mobilization presents a challenge for parties whose organizations are typically populated by male activists. In particular, the sex-segregated nature of social interactions means that male activists are typically restricted to interacting with other men in public spaces or living rooms of homes. Women, on the other hand, as I was told—and observed firsthand—several times, could access the “chulha” (private spaces) to speak with women voters. Thus, gender-based outreach requires parties to invest in recruiting women.
Against this backdrop, the BJP’s inextricable association with Hindutva (the common shorthand for Hindu nationalism, literally “Hindu-ness”) is often perceived as a masculine and muscular manifestation of religious nationalism, which may seem at odds with the party’s emerging success in recruiting women. However, the author’s analysis based on survey data from the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies suggests that women’s affinity for the BJP transcends mere voting preferences. Despite Hindutva’s association with masculine imagery, women who support the BJP exhibit levels of engagement in electoral activities comparable to or even surpassing those of women aligned with other political parties. In recent years, this trend has become increasingly pronounced, with the BJP outpacing its rivals in mobilizing female supporters. What, then, can explain the BJP’s seemingly paradoxical success in recruiting women and engaging them in the public sphere?
Domesticating Politics Through Seva
To understand why the BJP successfully mobilizes women voters, one must acknowledge the barriers that women face in entering political life. A critical obstacle is the widespread perception of politics as dirty and immoral, making it particularly unsuitable for women. This perception is ingrained in patriarchal societies, where women are often tasked with upholding family honor and social status. Consequently, any deviation that women pursue from established norms may incur reputational costs for themselves and social costs for their families, prompting household heads to gatekeep women’s political involvement.
But at the same time, when Indians are asked about what politics should be, a different narrative emerges—one centering on moral ideals rooted in the concept of seva, or selfless service. Here, seva not only connotes the material provision of goods and services but also embodies traits that citizens desire in their representatives—being accessible to constituents, empathizing with them, and supporting them in their hour of need. This narrative reverses, even if notionally and momentarily, the lived hierarchy between citizens and politicians.
Drawing on these moral conceptions, the BJP—particularly since Modi’s rise to power in 2014—has strategically framed its political discourse around the principle of seva. Modi has appealed to voters’ moral sensibilities, including by pronouncing himself as a pradhan sevak (prime servitor), celebrating his birthday through a seva saptah/pakhwara (service week/fortnight), and conducting coronavirus relief campaigns under the banner of seva hi sangathan (organization is service) and seva aur samarpan abhiyan (service and dedication mission). This aligns with the BJP positioning itself as a social service organization that serves as a crucial interface between state and society.
At the same time, seva is also a descriptively gendered norm portraying a hierarchical relationship characterized by women’s caregiving duties within the home. Although seva is not innately gendered, women bear a disproportionate share of the physical and emotional labor of caregiving in India, rendering seva a feminine-identified trait.4 Indeed, an aptitude for service (seva bhaav) is often used as an informal gauge of a woman’s character.
And here, the BJP’s emphasis on seva frames politics as role-congruent for women. Activists in the BJP Mahila Morcha, the party’s women’s wing, often described their motivations for joining politics in the norm-compliant terms of seva, portraying their own engagement and mobilization efforts as social service rather than politics. Their organizational outreach methods—organizing medical camps, blood donation and cleanliness drives, tree planting and wildlife conservation initiatives, religious and cultural celebrations, and cultural and moral education—mirror the seva frame. Moreover, these activities are carefully aligned with local cultures and historically revered women figures such as environmentalist Amrita Devi Bishnoi, with the goal of creating an affective connection with communities and helping draw women into the fold. In a survey of 128 women activists in Rajasthan conducted by the author, BJP activists classified 51 percent of events they organized within the seva rubric, compared to 37 percent for the Congress Party.
Crucially, this norm-compliant framing helps portray politics as an extension of women’s domestic roles and renders it acceptable to families that might otherwise be opposed to women’s transitions into the public sphere. In a discrete choice experiment conducted in 2021 with 1,457 pairs of women and male gatekeepers in the same household, the author found that women preferred norm-compliant seva as a means for political engagement compared to public meetings or norm-undermining protests.
When asked why seva was effective, a BJP councillor described how seva had helped her bridge the private and public spheres. “Politics,” she said, “is just like what we do at home. Even though men give the money to run the home, it is our hard work and sacrifice that keeps the family together. Now if we speak of politics, men contest elections and pursue higher office, but the sangathan (organization) and samaj (society) will fall apart were it not for our seva.”5
Simultaneously, women’s families and particularly men were also far more accepting of women’s political participation when it was framed as seva. This was evident not only in the discrete choice experiment, where men were more encouraging of women’s political participation when partisan engagement was framed in norm-compliant terms, but also in qualitative interviews, where seva was presented as a channel to access the public sphere, a conduit for party recruitment, and a lever to obtain familial acquiescence by downplaying personal ambition.
As one BJP councillor told the author, “I come from a BJP[-aligned] family as does my husband . . . I was interested in politics but got married after college. My in-laws were totally opposed [to me joining politics]. But they did say, ‘If you want to do samaj seva (social service) that’s fine with us.’ Then in 1995, we heard that seats would be reserved for women in the municipal elections. And because my seva had given me an identity, parties approached me. I knew my family wasn’t very interested, so initially I declined. But our Vaidya ji (traditional medical practitioner), who is a family friend, told my husband, ‘We always complain there are no good people in politics. Well, now you have an opportunity to change this. If your wife doesn’t contest, the wife of some other crooked politician will win, and we will keep complaining.’ My husband thought about this for a while and then discussed this with me and his parents. My in-laws respect Vaidya ji, and they also saw I had never been at the forefront of wanting to fight the election myself, so they thought this might, after all, be the right thing to do.”6 That men had stronger preferences about women’s participation than women themselves highlights the importance of considering social norms and familial gatekeeping when designing strategies to mobilize women.
The Way Forward
As the significance of women as pivotal political actors grows, political parties are updating their engagement strategies. The BJP’s electoral campaign in 2024, for instance, is strategically aiming to integrate itself into preexisting nonpartisan women’s mobilization channels, like the self-help group movement, by announcing initiatives such as lakhpati didi to encourage women in self-help groups to grow their earnings. But will mobilization necessarily lead to greater agency and representation? Much will depend on women’s ability to exercise their voices and advocate for their own interests, not to mention the responsiveness of their representatives. In an initial move toward addressing these concerns, the BJP government passed a legislation reserving one-third of state and national legislative seats for women, breaking through years of legislative inertia.
Notwithstanding this progress, the BJP’s tenure has been marked by contentious policies, including notifications that married women require their husbands’ consent to keep their maiden names and an indefinite delay in the actual implementation of women’s reservation across the country’s legislatures. The outcome of these developments remains uncertain, but considering how parties should adapt to women’s evolving roles—while accounting for domestic and social constraints that inhibit them—is critical for the prospects of political parties going forward.
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Notes
1 The survey was conducted in rural and peri-urban areas of Jaipur, Jodhpur, and Kota districts in Rajasthan. Therefore, it should not be interpreted as representative of these districts or the state as a whole.
2 Report on file with the author.
3 This finding should be seen as exploratory rather than confirmatory, because little public documentation exists about the sampling protocol and the number of respondents within each caste group.
4 The Central Statistical Organization’s 2019 time-use survey shows large gender disparities in time spent on the provision of unpaid caregiving (14 percent for men compared to 27.6 percent for women) and domestic services (26.1 percent for men compared to 81.2 percent for women). During an average week, a woman spends thirty hours on these activities, ten times what a man spends.
5 Interview by author in Jodhpur, Rajasthan, November 2019.
6 Interview by author in Jaipur, Rajasthan, March 2019.