ABSTRACT
https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9780203151631/f83e39f2-fb3e-4f6b-8067-30bae33d638e/content/icon_B.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>For a very long time, the identity of motherhood, revolving around the idea of bearing and rearing the male child, 1 played an important role in the socialisation process of Indian women. The social construction of Indian motherhood was influenced by customs and practices in which motherhood was assigned a sacrosanct space as a crucial determinant of the ultimate identity and worth of Indian women. The identity of motherhood thus completely overshadowed all other identities of Indian women and as a result, the Indian woman was raised in a culture that trained her to be an ideal mother from early childhood. Examples of such glorification of motherhood can be traced in Indian discourse from the distant past to the present. During the debate over the Hindu Code Bill in the Constituent Assembly, for instance, Pandit Thakur Das Bhargava, a member of the Constituent Assembly from east Punjab observed, ‘Women are mothers of the race. No race can advance till its women can be responsible mothers and conscious citizens. There has been a good deal of propaganda about educated women. A handful of educated women, it is said, want this Hindu Code or want this very halting and mild measure of reform. Sir, so far as women are concerned, it must be a handful because after all the educated element of this country is 15 per cent and the women who are educated are about 3 or 4 per cent even now. So, so far as the women are concerned, it must be a handful, but behind them are, not today only but from decades past, the large mass of enlightened and progressive men who stand behind them.’ 2 In a similar vein, in the clause by clause discussions on the Hindu Code Bill in the Parliament, Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya stated, ‘In Brahman society, the woman has been given the highest place, there is nothing higher than the mother.’ 3 In a similar manner, legislator Krishna Chandra Sharma noted, ‘Our mother is a respected being and our daughter is part of our life and blood. Is that not so? Why then do you raise the cry that this is something which will bring down Hindustan and that Hindu society will be crushed to pieces? There is nothing in religion, there is nothing in culture, there is nothing on the basis of Hindu society that is against these conditions and repugnant to them.’ 4
