ABSTRACT
This chapter charts the trajectories of Indian feminism during the course of the social reform movement and the early nationalist period, turning its attention from Christian women to Hindu women. It will be argued that both the awareness by Hindu women of the ‘condition of Indian women’, and its extension to consciousness-raising programmes, are critical to any consideration of how nineteenth-century Indian feminism evolved through women’s personal experiences, the building of separate female institutions, the growth of the Women’s Press and through the development of women’s subcultures-female networks, rituals and interpersonal relationships. Hindu women realized slowly that an important precondition for this was their own access to male spheres of influence, as the latter formed a vital source of support for them. This chapter will show that many Hindu women considered Hindu customs and practices the chief culprits for the lowly position of women rather than the religion itself, although a discerning few did argue that women’s subordination was a man-made situation. Hindu women’s critiques examined women’s oppression within Hinduism, but unlike their Christian contemporaries, did not extend to rejecting it.2 Approaching Indian history, particularly women’s history, through a framework that prioritizes the contest between nationalism and imperialism has led to distortions. Partha Chatterjee, for instance, remarks on the ‘relative unimportance of the women’s question in the last decades of the nineteenth
century.’3 Furthermore, he goes on to note that there is a ‘seeming absence of any autonomous struggle by women themselves for equality and freedom,’4 leading him to ask the question, why did the ‘women’s question’ disappear altogether in India at the close of the nineteenth century? His conclusion is that, in the absence of an autonomous women’s movement, nationalist discourse ‘resolved’ it by creating a sharp divide between the public/private spheres and by relegating women to the latter. Chatterjee’s assumptions are based on a reading of the situation in Bengal and ignores the crucial works on the tensions between the women's movement and the nationalist movement of scholars such as Geraldine Forbes, Gail Minault, Vijay Agnew, Neera Desai and Pat Caplan to name a few. This chapter will show that his fundamental premise that there was no autonomous women’s movement in India, whilst perhaps a more accurate reflection of the situation in Bengal, was not true for all India. As will be shown, in nineteenth-century Maharashtra in particular, women were not only engaged in an autonomous struggle for equality and better treatment but also continued to campaign, even after the arrival of Gandhi and the development of a supposedly all-encompassing nationalism. Further, throughout this period, the women’s movement was characterized by tensions between those women who wished to concentrate on women’s issues alone and those who saw national independence as a necessary step in the path towards equality. As will become clear, in Maharashtra at least, women were not banished to the ‘inner world’ of the home, but engaged openly in the public sphere to improve their status.5 Although women’s tactics varied from strategic accommodation to outright hostility towards men, common to all was an awareness of women’s subordination as a specific group, stri jati, and hence, the creation of the concept of sisterhood, bhaginivarg. Prominent feminists formulated theories that Hindu men had created new forms of subordination that could be attributed to different causes.6 To quote Kashibai Kanitkar, ‘…when we see the present degraded state of our bhagini [sisters], the mind is overcome by anger and displeasure and hence we retort back saying that this condition was brought about because men see us as inferior and harbour mean views about us.’7 This chapter will therefore include an analysis of the politics of
the women’s organizations of the age and their influence on feminist activists of the time. Finally, an attempt will also be made to examine the nature of Hindu women’s feminism. There were certain common preoccupations among women that served to bind them together, irrespective of caste and class differences. The chapter draws on women’s perceptions on a range of issues in order to show the commonalities that existed between them, as well as using them to demonstrate how the women’s movement existed as a distinct feminist entity within the wider socioreligious reform movements of the nineteenth century. Their woman-centric approach set them apart from other participants, a difference that will come under examination throughout this chapter. Commencing with an analysis of the growth of Hindu women’s consciousness on the issue of women’s subordination and their desire for their rights to be recognized, this chapter will demonstrate how it led to the consequent development of separate female organizations that possessed a distinct identity within the nationalist movement.
