Feminism and Nationalism in India, 1917-1947 Aparna Basu
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Feminism and Nationalism in India, 1917-1947 Aparna Basu Journal of Women's History, Volume 7, Number 4, Winter 1995, pp. 95-107 (Article) Published by Johns Hopkins University Press DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/jowh.2010.0459 For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/363729/summary [ This content has been declared free to read by the pubisher during the COVID-19 pandemic. ] Feminism and Nationalism in India, 1917-1947 Aparna Basu Ferninism incorporates a doctrine of equal rights for women, an organ- ized movement to attain these rights, and an ideology of social trans- formation aimed at creating a world for women beyond simple social equality. It is broadly the ideology of women's liberation, since intrinsic to it is the belief that women suffer injustice because of their gender. In recent years the definition of feminism has gone beyond simply meaning move- ments for equality and emancipation which agitate for equal rights and legal reforms to redress the prevailing discrimination against women. The word has now been expanded to mean an awareness of women's oppres- sion and exploitation within the family, at work, and in society, and conscious action by women to change this. However, in the first phase of feminism in India (1917-1947) with which this essay deals, the women's movement was primarily concerned with demanding equal political, social, and economic rights and for the removal of all forms of discrimina- tory procedures against women Although feminism was a middle-class ideology, it presupposed the idea of women as a distinct group, who despite their differences of class, caste, religion, and ethnicity, shared certain common physical and psychological characteristics and mani- fested certain common problems. Nationalism is a broad concept which includes many values but is basically a belief that a group of people sharing a common territory, culture, and history, and often, also a common language and religion, possess a common national identity and therefore are entitled to a nation state. This claim did not negate the fact that there were indigenous differ- ences of class, caste, and gender; but people were able to launch struggles which blurred these divisions and stressed the commonality of a national identity against the foreign enemy. A national movement in India can be said to have begun with the foundation of the Indian National Congress in 1885. The process of nation- building and the creation of a national identity was paralleled, in fact, preceded by the growth of social reform movements focusing on women's issues. Since the status of women in society was the popular barometer of "civilization," many reformers had agitated for legislation that would improve their situation. By the second decade of the nineteenth century, social reformers began deploring the condition of women. Under British rule, with its new agrarian and commercial relations and the introduction of English educa- tion, law courts, and an expanding administrative structure, an urban © 1995 Journal of Women's History, Vol. 7 No. 4 (Winter) 96 Journal of Women's History Winter intelligentsia which took up women's issues began to emerge in Calcutta, Bombay, and later Madras. The first man to publicly speak out against the injustices perpetrated against women was Raja Rammohan Roy, who in the early nineteenth century condemned sati, kulin polygamy, and spoke in favor of women's property rights. Roy held the condition of women as one of the factors responsible for the degraded state of Indian society. Thereafter, improving the position of women became the first tenet of the Indian social reform movement. Women's inferior status, enforced seclu- sion, early marriage, the prohibition of widow remarriage, and lack of education were facts documented by reformers throughout the country. These reformers were influenced by Christian missionaries such as Wil- liam Ward and Alexander Duff, East India Company's officers such as Charles Grant and James Mill, and travelers such as Tavernier, Barbosa, and Cranford, who were all critical of the position of women in Indian society. The Indian intelligentsia, therefore, focused its attention on women's issues. Inspired by Western Orientalists like Sir William Jones, H. T. Colebrook, H. H. Wilson, Max Müller, and others, they created the notion of a golden age in ancient India where women held a high position which subsequently declined. From a sense of humiliation as a subject people, they tended to glorify the past. Every measure of reform demanded for women was justified on the ground that it was sanctioned by religious texts. There was a link between these reformers and British officials and non-officials, because the former depended on the latter for enacting laws prohibiting sati, raising the age of marriage, or permitting widow remar- riage. Thus, the colonial government was perceived by the reformers as an ally in its fight against tradition. By the end of the nineteenth century a few women emerged in the reform movement to form their own organizations. Swamakumari Devi of the Tagore family in Calcutta founded a Ladies Theosophical Society in 1882 and four years later the Sakhi Samiti, "so that women of respectable families should have the opportunity of mixing with each other and devoting themselves to the cause of social welfare___"l At the same time, Pandita Ramabai Saraswati formed the Arva Mahila Soma) in Poona, and in 1889 she started a home-cum-school for widows in Bombay named Sharda Sudan. Women in Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, and even in smaller towns like Poona and Allahabad, formed associations whose members were drawn from among a small group of urban educated families. These associations aimed at bringing women out of their homes and encourag- ing them to take interest in public affairs. Some of these were practical social reform organizations, while others were discussion platforms for women. 1995 INTERNAnONALTRENDS=APARNABASU 97 From the very beginning membership of the Indian National Con- gress was open to women. At its first session, Allan Octavian Hume asked political reformers of all shades of opinion never to forget that "unless the elevation of the female element of the nation proceeds pari passu (with an equal pace) with their work, all their labor for the political enfranchise- ment of the country will prove vain."2 The report of the 1889 session of the Indian National Congress in Bombay notes "that no less than ten lady delegates graced the assembly." Among them were Europeans, Christians, one Parsi, one orthodox Hindu, and three Brahmins. Panita Ramabai Saraswati was one of the delegates.3 In fact, the participation of women in this Congress appears to have been mainly Ramabai's doing. Charles Bradlaugh, a member of Parliament in Britain, suggested to her and many others that women delegates should join the Congress from this time forward, so that their concerns would be represented when the Congress constituted free India's parliament.4 Though the women delegates were allowed to sit on the platform, they were not allowed to speak or vote.5 According to some, women first spoke at the Congress sessions in 1890.6 Another writer puts the date ten years later when Kadambini Ganguli, the first woman graduate of Bengal, moved the customary vote of thanks to President Pherozeshah Mehta at the sixteenth Congress session in 1900 at Calcutta.7 Sarala Debi Ghosal (Chaudurani, 1872-1946), daughter of Swamakumari Debi, composed a song urging people of different provinces of the country to join the free- dom struggle and trained a group of over fifty girls to sing it at the 1901 session. The proceedings of the Congress at Ahmedabad in 1902 com- menced with the singing of the national anthem by Vidya Gauri Nilkanth and Sharda Mehta, two sisters who were the first two women graduates of Gujarat.8 Respectable young women singing in public was itself a new thing as singing before men was associated with courtesans. Prostitution was one of the first women's issues to be referred to by the Congress, and their remarks shed some light on early nationalist attitudes toward the question. At the 1888 session, the Congress resolved to cooperate with English "well wishers" of India in their attempt for "the total abrogation of laws and rules relating to the regulation of prostitution by the state in India" and this was reiterated in 1892.9 First steps to regulate prostitution had been taken by the British in India at the turn of the eighteenth century to deal with venereal diseases which British soldiers were thought to have caught from prostitutes. In 1864, the Contagious Diseases Act was passed making registration and medical examination of prostitutes compulsory. Missionaries, evangelicals, and nonconformists in England opposed the Act on the grounds that it legalized prostitution instead of eradicating 98 Journal of Women's History Winter it. This argument was taken up in India in the 1870s, but it was only one of the arguments against the Act. It was also argued by the nationalists that this gave the police the power to harass all classes of Indian women mdiscriminately. In 1895, a government bill to expand the scope of police surveillance over prostitutes was opposed by Surendranath Banerjee, a nationalist leader, on the grounds that it threatened individual liberty by giving the police unchecked power.10 In the 1890s, the handling of plague operations by British soldiers in Poona was criticized by nationalists on the grounds that women were being dragged out in public and inspected before being taken to hospitals. By the end of the nineteenth century, the issue of rape and racism were interlinked, and this was used by the nationalists as a weapon against British rule.