When Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi invited Taslima to live in safety in his state, it raised many eyebrows.

Yes, on the face of it, its seems hilarious and incredulous that a staunch Hindutva leader like Modi could be talking about the safety of a Muslim Woman. After all the engineering of mass killings and rapes and daily terrorising of Muslim women in Gujarat, here is Modi now inviting Taslima to live there!

Not just Modi, but the BJP national leaders too have been speaking about Taslima’s rights, safety and urging the UPA at the Centre to give her citizenship. Suddenly, her criticism of Islamic fundamentalism and the Sangh’s outright hatred for Muslims seem to have converged in a ludicrous moment. But are these not very different stances that emerge from two very disparate notions of identity?

While Taslima’s writings (sometimes poignantly and sometimes rather shoddily)  highlight the authoritarianism and the anti-women leanings among Islamic fundamentalists, she is not disowning Islam or Bangladesh. Rather, she is  questioning the way the religion has been interpreted in Bangladeshi society and polity.

From the Taslima incident (and Imrana and Shah Bano’s) it seems that for hardliners, membership or acceptance in the community is dependent on absolute  surrender to community norms as articulated by its leaders. Is dissent then seen as a sin and total allegiance a virtue? Surely, this is untenable for any community as it could spell doom, stagnation and an  unhealthy obsession with its supremacy or righteousness.

While Islamic hardliners’ intolerance towards dissent from within the Islamic community is making news, let us not forget how Hindu fundamentalists have treated dissent  from within — be it artists, film makers or others.

While Modi is busy making mileage out of Islamic fundamentalism, we can hardly forget that Hindutva’s cooption of women into its brand of Hindu nationalism is even more lethal.

Not only are large numbers of women active as members of Shiv Sena, Sevika Samiti, other Sangh bodies and scores of affiliated smaller organisations, their orientation towards women’s rights and democracy have been contorted in such a way that they even protest against efforts that seek to highlight women’s oppression in the name of Hinduism.

Hindutva ideologues take great pride in the fact that women have been out on the streets building a new Hindu Rashtra, championing Hindu women’s duties and honour, establishing a Hindu community identity through an aggressive religiosity, sometimes defying the “state”. They boast that women of all castes have participated in the shilanyas movement to collect bricks for the Ram temple at Ayodhya and have been  active as kar sevaks.

Without references to Muslim  “barbarism” and sworn enmity, the Hindu nationalist project would lose much of its moorings as it also presents a gendered community identity — with Bharatmata as divine mother, Hindu community as feminine, tolerant and victimised and Muslim community as aggressive, rapacious and masculine!

As a result of such construction, Hindu women have been  conditioned into thinking that threats to their dignity and honour come from “outside”, ie Muslim men, thus externalising the enemy and dismissing any problems that Hindu women could face from Hindu men. There is a focussing on “invasions” as processes that reduced women’s status or humiliated/emasculated the Hindu male and justified restrictions on women — cleverly legitimising patriarchal tendencies as necessary in the face of “external” threat.

Not only does such conditioning  prevent women from acknowledging domestic or intra community issues, it projects Hindu women as homogeneous and “united” category to dismiss differences of class or exploitation in the name of caste.

To make matters worse, the use of iconography in the construction of womanhood has been replete with powerful imagery ridden with tensions and multiple meanings. Durga, Sita, Ashtabhuja and Rani of Jhansi have all been used to tell Hindu women that they can integrate piety with the role of the warrior, be both submissive wife and devoted mother at home and fierce warrior outside by transforming political tasks into religious missions, and taking on violent roles alongside men —without threat to their femininity!

So when Modi made his invitation to Taslima, he was trying to portray Hindutva forces as her friends, while Islamic fundamentalists had turned against her. Yet what is left unsaid is the commonalities between Muslim and Hindu fundamentalists.

Both are intolerant towards any criticism even from insiders, both don’t hesitate to eliminate outsiders who are seen as being critical. Both treat women as property of a community, both have coopted women in the name of culture and identity and both are threats to democracy.

Healthy debates about gender issues, economic equality, cultural diversity and democracy even within the broad categories of “Hindu” or “Muslim” are much needed. Such a process would strengthen moderate and secular voices to not only build bridges across religions, but would also open up spaces to address oppressions and dogmas within.