Raman Women in India a Social and Cultural History
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Women in India India Physical Map Courtesy of Natraj A. Raman Women in India A Social and Cultural History Volume 1 SITA ANANTHA RAMAN PRAEGER An Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC Copyright 2009 by Sita Anantha Raman All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Raman, Sita Anantha. Women in India : a social and cultural history / Sita Anantha Raman. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978 0 275 98242 3 (hard copy (set) : alk. paper) ISBN 978 0 313 37710 5 (hard copy (vol. 1) : alk. paper) ISBN 978 0 313 37712 9 (hard copy (vol. 2) : alk. paper) ISBN 978 0 313 01440 6 (ebook (set)) ISBN 978 0 313 37711 2 (ebook (vol. 1)) ISBN 978 0 313 37713 6 (ebook (vol. 2)) 1. Women India. 2. Women India Social conditions. I. Title. HQ1742.R263 2009 305.48’891411 dc22 2008052685 131211100912345 This book is also available on the World Wide Web as an eBook. Visit www.abc clio.com for details. ABC CLIO, LLC 130 Cremona Drive, P.O. Box 1911 Santa Barbara, California 93116 1911 This book is printed on acid free paper Manufactured in the United States of America YOKED OXEN Pipes played, drums rolled the chant of mantras cleansed the air as showered with flowers we took seven steps together, you and I two oxen, one yoke Since that day pebbles on my path became petals on a rug For dear Babu CONTENTS Volume 1: Early India Preface ix Introduction xi Abbreviations xxi 1. Region, Environment, Gender 1 2. Vedic Goddesses and Women 23 3. Mothers and Wives in the Smriti Texts 45 4. Buddhist and Jaina Nuns and Laywomen 75 5. Women in Classical Art and Literature 103 6. The Divine Feminine: Devis, Yoginis, Taras 127 7. Queens, Saints, Courtesans 155 Bibliography 197 Index 213 Volume 2: Later India Preface ix Introduction xi Abbreviations xxi 1. Muslim Women in Premodern India 1 2. Women in the Colonial Era 43 3. Male Reformers and Women’s Rights 101 viii Contents 4. Feminists and Nationalists 135 5. Conclusion: Women in India Today 189 Bibliography 225 Index 249 PREFACE This history is really dedicated to the numerous women whose narratives I have tried to record as accurately as possible. On a personal plane, I thank the inspirational teachers, stimulating colleagues, and close family who watched over me as I wrote this book. I deeply regret that a lack of space precludes my acknowledging each by name. Two inspirational gurus at UCLA shared their vision of history as truth with me years ago. Mentor and friend Stanley Wolpert steered my research directly to the study of women and gender in India. Damodar SarDesai broadened my understand- ing of Asia and encouraged me in my early career. My fascination for wom- en’s history thrived in conversations with my good friend Brenda Ness of Santa Monica College. At Santa Clara University, I shared innumerable hours of enjoyable discussion on women and world history with Barbara Molony, Jo B. Margadant, Thomas Turley, and Timothy O’Keefe. My many students gave me insights into how to make this complex region and its multifaceted women comprehensible. I specially thank Mini Krishnan of Oxford University Press in Chennai for having promoted my work in India. Praeger editors Brian Foster and Hillary Claggett helped to breathe life into these two volumes. Christy Anitha, Haylee Schwenk, Diana Andrews, Val- entina Tursini, and Anthony Chiffolo of ABC-CLIO gave them their final look and shape. I acknowledge the assistance of archivists at the Theosophi- cal Society, Adyar, Tamil Nadu, the Government of Tamil Nadu Archives at Chennai, the National Archives of India at New Delhi, the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Museum and Library at New Delhi, the Madras Institute of Development Studies at Chennai, and the research librarians at Santa Clara University, UCLA, and University of California at Berkeley. I thank Shilpa Sankaran, Nandita (Sankaran) Geerdink, and Sonya Sankaran for allowing me to put their picture in Bharata Natyam dance pose on the cover of Volume 1. I especially thank my dear husband Natraj Raman for his two valuable maps, as well as for his patient humor and perceptive comments. I dedicate the book to him, and to my sons, daughters-in-law, granddaugh- ters, sisters, brothers, nieces, nephews, and friends. INTRODUCTION It is not surprising that women in India are often described as having two sharply contrasting aspects. In a region famous for goddesses with multiple visages, identities, and functions, the first fac¸ade is of the serene, primordial mother Great Goddess (Devi), Primal Energy (Shakti), and Nature (Prakriti), a gentle boon-giver who also slays demons. The other is the clouded face of the domestic handmaiden trailing behind men in life expectancy, nutrition, health, education, pay, and other rights on the subcontinent.1 However, behind this colorful essentialization of Indian women lies the complex real- ity of myriads of feminine personas in a sea teaming with self-sacrificing her- oines like Sita in the epic Ramayana, modern feminists in the guise of Shakti, and the victims of gender, religious, caste, and class inequalities. This poses several dilemmas to the historian. What could an engendered history then include, which female narratives would one recount, and how does one retrieve the voices of the apparently voiceless? A work of this scope cannot cover all the narratives, since such a vast undertaking would lose its critical edge, and its diluted or descriptive litany may be unreadable. Due to the longevity of Indian history, this study of women is therefore divided into two broad chronological sections, i.e., the premodern era from antiquity to the early medieval Hindu kingdoms and the later era under Turko-Afghan and Mughal dynasties, colonial rule, and the independent state after 1947. The four interrelated themes focus on gender and female sexuality, viz., premodern social, religious, cultural, political paradigms of women in male-authored texts; their later resurrection by men and women for contemporary political and social purposes; women’s narratives in their social contexts; and the contentious issues of female agency and objectification. TEXT, CONTEXT, AND RE-CREATED TEXTS No matter how unassailable texts and material artifacts appear to be, the historian views them as contested territory. This work attempts to be critical xii Introduction in its assessment of the primary evidence from literature, art, and archaeol- ogy, as well as of secondary scholarship on women in Indian history. As it is almost impossible to read all the archaic texts entirely in their original lan- guages, some scholarly translations have been used judiciously. However, it is clear that within ancient meanings lie embedded the unconscious biases of later translators steered by their own theoretical or cultural reasons to retell India’s history. The values they attributed to ancient gender norms were often remodeled in later eras for contemporary purposes, and these crystal- lized into paradigms for modern women. Therefore, in order to trace the evolution of gender norms, it is imperative to reexamine India’s complex his- torical tapestry and to re-create a new narrative concerning its women. Ancient and classical texts reveal that in the preeminent interface between Aryan and local Dravidian-aboriginal cultures, the core value crystallized across the subcontinent. This was the high honor given to female chastity, a virtue whose luster almost exceeded that of women’s natural intelligence in archaic texts, and there were numerous ambiguities, as the texts were composed by multiple male authors separated by centuries. Moreover, the genres of hymnal, epic poetry, and shastra (scripture, religious manual) facilitated several typologies of women as divine, heroic, maternal, saintly, victimized, lustful, or manipulative. The divine maternal appears early (ca. 3000 BCE) in pre-Aryan artifacts of the Indus Civilization, and it also appears in the Sanskrit scriptural Vedas (1600–300 BCE). In the early first millennium BCE, society also began to accord high respect to male and female celibate hermits (sanyasins). Thus, the utterances of the woman sage Gargi and the questions of Maitreyi to her sage husband Yajnavalkya were carefully recorded in the Brihad Aranyaka Upanishad.2 Unlike the Vedas, the popular epics Mahabharata and Ramayana contain socially pertinent messages on the honor given to faithful wives. Thus, while Indians celebrate the Maha- bharata heroine Savitri for outwitting Death, the annual fast by Indian wives is a reminder that their chastity ensures the husband’s longevity. Similarly, the Ramayana makes it clear that male strictures on female sexuality were paramount, so that even guiltless Sita had to be punished for residing as a hostage in Ravana’s fortress. This schizophrenia about women became more rigid in the classical era (250 BCE–500 CE) when India witnessed waves of immigrants and conquer- ors. The newcomers jostled for a high rung on the Sanskritic caste ladder and took local women whose husbands and male kin agonized over the lost ‘‘purity’’ of caste lineages. New texts by elite men reined in mortal women’s sexuality, but exalted the feminine divine as the Devi. As local cults to divine female guardians were subsumed into the traditions of Devi worship, the Sanskrit hymn Devi Mahatmya celebrated the supreme goddess Durga’s martial triumphs over demons. An echo of semidivine female fury also occurs in the Tamil epic Silappadikaram in which a chaste wife Kannaki sets Madurai city ablaze as a malediction for the unjust killing of her husband.