ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the contemporary debate concerning the possibility of promoting alternative perspectives on the position of women from within the compass of the Hindu tradition itself. This debate is contextualised in terms of the failure of earlier efforts by independent India to improve the position of women, in the light of which many women were moved to reappraise their methodology. It is shown that there are now a number of activists and academics who argue that the orthodox beliefs and practices which they criticise for condemning women to a subordinate status can be countered without casting aside the Hindu tradition. Some of the suggestions made by commentators for positive, or at least potentially positive, Hindu ideals, pre-Aryan India, heroines such as Sītā and Sāvitrī and the goddess Kālī, are explored in order to establish what these writers see as the prospects for change. Thus, the reasons given for referring to Hindu concepts and characters when stating the case for change are considered.
