Of course, markets imply marketing and drawing more and more consumers into the web of purchase through advertising and attempts to manipulate peoples’ tastes and choices. In this effort, advertising companies have notoriously used women as objects to purvey their products. The dual relationship with women, as objects to be used in selling goods, and as a huge potential market for goods, creates a peculiar process whereby women are encouraged and persuaded to participate actively in their own objectification. The huge media attention given to beauty contests, "successful" models, and the like, all feed into the rapidly expanding beauty industry, which includes not only cosmetics and beauty aids, but slimming agents, beauty parlours, weight loss clinics, and so on. Many of these contribute to the most undesirable and backward attitudes to both women and their appearance, such as the advertisements for fairness cream that emphasise that it is necessary to be fair to make a "good" marriage, which is in turn seen as the basic goal of a woman.

All this seems plausible enough, but many would argue that the link between all this and fundamentalism and violence is not all that obvious. I will argue that in fact these processes actively operate to strengthen patriarchy, encourage sectarian tendencies and add to factors making for social conflict and violence. Some of the mechanisms are described below.

The first mechanism comes from the sheer fact of greater material insecurity. As ordinary life becomes more volatile, insecure and unpredictable in various ways, people search for security in whatever ways they can muster. Precisely because some degree of certainty is seen as a comfort, often the more rigid a system is (whether it is a set of intellectual and spiritual beliefs, or a religious order, or a relatively close grouping claiming a particular special social identity) the more attractive it perversely becomes. This may explain why some of the more rigidly structured and sectarian religious and social groups have attracted large following in recent times.

These groups in turn contribute to the second mechanism, the use of such "religious" and sectarian sentiment as a means of political mobilisation. The Sangh Parivar, of which the ruling BJP is a part, has of course developed this to a fine art and science, but they are not the only ones using such particularist identities, rather than genuine class-based combinations, as a means of political organisation. The ruling parties have in turn seized on these to divert attention from their own shortcoming in basic governance, and their inability to prevent deterioration of basic material conditions for a significant proportion of the people. The pseudo-nationalism that is espoused (in which the relevant other is usually a neighbouring country like Pakistan or now even Bangladesh) serves as a way to channel and divert genuine anti-imperialist sentiments of people and convert them into simple and self-defeating war cries against neighbours.

Of course there is a strong undercurrent of violence in all this, which spews out into the open every now and then, as it did in the state-sponsored pogrom in Gujarat last year. The growing tendency towards violence of various sorts – towards other "communities" or caste groups, and especially towards women – can be seen as another reflection and result of the economic and social processes outlined earlier. The greater insecurity and sheer difficulty of ordinary life, the complications and worries involved in providing for basic needs, all make for much greater levels of everyday irritation in people. This can only rarely find an outlet in places of work, and requires other means of expression. In addition, the massive increase in inequality, the growth of rampant consumerism, and the explosion of new media that brings all the lavish new lifestyles into open public view, all serve to add to the resentment and frustration of have-nots. The gap between aspiration and reality becomes ever wider, and this creates a strong urge to somehow get at those who are seen as "responsible". Of course, the real agents of these processes – the unresponsive government, the large companies and multinationals, the foreign investors – are all too large, too distant and too powerful to be touched. How much easier, then, to direct one’s ire against those who are seen as more easily attacked – minority communities or lower caste groups, women within and outside the household, and so on. The substantial increase in violence against women is not just because of higher reporting of incidents, but because of this process which results in an actual increase in the number of such crimes.

Other factors also help once a climate of violence and incipient conflict has been created. Fear of retribution or of being the next target serve to ensure silence – if not complicity – among those who would not themselves directly engage in such violence. Such fear is all the more potent because the agencies of the state are increasingly used to protect the perpetrators of violence and to deny victims of violence the minimal degree of justice.

The other philosophy that is invoked and sought to be spread is that which lies at the heart of the reliance on markets – individualism. The "competitive spirit" is unleashed and used to make people feel that it is each man or woman for himself or herself, and that individuals can succeed in making gains at the expense of others in their own social group. This acts as another way of reducing attempts by people to forge groups for collective action to change the processes of liberalisation and corporate globalisation.

It is clear therefore, that market fundamentalism breeds religious and social fundamentalism as well, with disastrous consequences for ordinary people and especially women. Of course, all this helps both directly, and indirectly, the cause of imperialism and its domestic allies. However, there are recent signs that such a process is finite, and that there are limits to the extent to which rightwing fundamentalism can be used to counter and destroy progressive forces. The recent upsurge of people across the world against the US imperialist aggression on Iraq, and the coalescing of the antiwar movement with the anti-globalisation movement across the world, are very positive signs, which may indicate a turning point in international politics. It leads us to hope that even in India, we will soon get a reversal of these current very reactionary tendencies and the development of a genuine democratic and socialist alternative which will also fully recognise and protect the rights of women.