A PHILOSOPHICAL PROBE INTO THE FEMININE LIFE - WORLD A THESIS SUBMITTED BY C.ALICHETTI VENKATA PADMAJII I FOR THE AWARD OF THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN PHILOSOPHY UNDER THE GUIDANCE OF Prof. Dr. R. A. SINARI DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY GOA UNIVERSITY, GOA I SS- • 333 DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY eP\D/ P4-‘i GOA UNIVERSITY GOA - 403 203 r, 611 DECLARATION The contents of this thesis are the product of my research done under the guidance of Professor R.A. Sinari. I hereby declare that this thesis, or any part thereof, had not been published by me anywhere in any other form. The work has not been previously submitted by me for a Degree or Diploma of any university. Date : • , CERTIFICATE 0 As required under the University Ordinance (No.19.8(ii)), I certify that the thesis entitled "A Philo- sophical Probe into the Feminine Life-World" submitted by L.V,Padmaja for the Award of the degree of Ph.D. in Philosophy is the result of her own research done by her under my guidance and that it has not in any form been previously submitted by the candidate for any Degree or Diploma of any university. Date : 7. 413 (Prof. Dr. R.A. SINARI) Supervisor Dr, Ram pant Sinari Prof-Lor a Head rrilosophy Departnysnt r Univer.Aty Taletv,uoi PiateaU 4032401 P. 0. Bambohm, Goa CONTENTS Page Acknowledgements Introduction 1 Part One The Western Woman 1. The Wall Between Two Sexes - the Rationalist 13 and the Romantic Realities 2. The Feminine Feeling and the Concept of 30 Justice 3. Biological Distinctiveness of the Woman 36 4. Rousseau's Derision of Women 44 5. Woman in Bondage : the Socialist View 58 6. Hegel's Discriminating Eye 66 , 7. Woman as the Moral Conscience of the Family 74 8. Nietzsche's Chauvinism 85 9. Utilitarianism and the Feminine Rights 90 10. Women's Liberation Movement 97 Part Two Woman in India 1. Woman as Man's Ardhangi? 107 a) Glorification 107 b) Subordination 113 c) Religion 120 d) Marriage and chastity 123 e) Political status 129 f) Economic status 139 g) Education 149 2. The Problem of being a Woman in India 153 a) Sati 154 b) Dowry 168 Page c) The Widow 175 d) Devadasis 179 e) The Child marriage 181 f) Wife battering 183 3. Woman : Her Body as her Trap 184 a) The bonded sex 185 b) The oppressed minority 188 c) Some feministic remedies 194 d) Social legislation 199 e) The awakening 203 4. •Feminism in India 206 a) The beginning 207 b) Raja Rammohan Roy 211 c) Other reformers 213 d) Gandhi and women's rights 220 . e) Nehru and women's rights 229 f) The illusion of change 231 Part Three On her Way to Self-Identity 1. The Feminine Freedom 286 Part Four Conclusion 290 References and Bibliography 302 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I acknowledge my greatest of debts to my guide Dr. Ramakant A. Sinari, Professor and Head of the Department of Philosophy, of Goa University, for his encouragement and for the many illuminating discussions I had with him on the subject of this thesis. His suggestions and comments on my writings were of inestimable value to me. I am fortunate and feel it a privilege to have worked under the guidance of the eminent scholar Dr. R.A. My profound thanks are due to Dr. Raghu Rama Raju, Lecturer in Philosophy, Goa University, for the encouragement and the keen interest evinced by him in the completion of my thesis work. I am grateful to and am proud of my husband Dilip, who is one of the few ardent believers in gender equality and has provided constant help at home to me, inspite of his very busy schedule in public life. But for his help I would not have been able to pursue my research work. L.v.pcednicla CI.—.\*PADMAJA) INTRODUCTION In all ages and cultures, gender has been one of the most debatable subjects. Social scientists, philosophers, jurists, and litterateurs have in some context or other made it the main focus of their reflection. Whether one defends the superiority of the male and pushes the female to a status of subordination or one glorifies the female and regards her on a par with the male, one has not been able to ignore the crass historical fact that it is the male that has propelled the whole process of human civilization, started it and fuelled it, so to say. The power of the male has been the -re behind the origin of primitive technology, of science, of ancient Greek, ancient Indian, and ancient Chinese thought. It is man who designed ancient polity and government, arts, religions, and mystic cults. Even if the woman provided, in very many situations, the zeal for man's creativity and imagination, human civilizations and cultures carry print of the male as their progenitor. One of the greatest mysteries of our history is that between two sexes it is the male that has wielded authority over almost all institutions and it is the female that has remained at the receiver's end. The happenings in the history of the animal kingdom has not been different. The question which I wish to probe into is the raison d'être of the inequality between the two sexes. The inequality I want to explore is not biological. Although biological inequality between man and woman is of great significance whenever we reflect on the question of gender what is striking to a student of philosophy is that it is man who has exploited this inequality by, so to say, relegating her to a stage of subordination, by preying on her whenever opportunity arises, by curbing her will-to- equal-man, by being her unrestrained commander, by feigning blindness towards her suffering. In societies, Western and Eastern, which claimed to have well-knit organization, the male atrocity towards the woman has not been uncommon. History shows that kings, emperors, rulers, statesmen, politicians, parliamentarians, and law-makers have many a time been male chauvinists; they have not seldom shown utter intemperance while dealing with women; they have been the incorrigible embodiments of the male superiority. The feminine life-world is a highly intricate reality. There are certain factors basic to the woman's life-world, however diverse may be the cultures and social groups she may belong to. In all cultures and social groups, for instance, the male. phenomenologically as if, has carried an unmitigated sense of egotism, an awareness of being the master and the giver, almost an assumption that it is to him that the woman is finally accountable. In the socio- political structure of the human race, the law-making and law-executing authority of man has always been taken for 2 granted. Man has been looked upon as the owner, the captain, the superior self, the legitimate "user", and even the buyer and seller of the woman. In Part One of my thesis, I have portrayed the image of woman in some of the most important Western philosophers' writings. Philosophical thinkers who are known for their socio-political theories and whose influence on world's ideologies is unquestionable have seldom displayed neutrality of outlook towards the dignity of woman and woman's rights. Besides treating the views of individual thinkers such as Kant, Rousseau, and Nietzsche, I have tried to encompass rationalists', romanticists', socialists', and utilitarians' approach to womanhood. What seems to be intriguing about these philosophers and philosophical movements is that they invariably reflect extraordinary consciousness of the superiority of the male and the inferiority of the female. For Kant, for instance, woman's love and emotion-laden attitude towards things in the world have no role to play in the strict, rationally governed moral world that he would recommend. Perhaps the central question underneath the thinking of most of the Western philosophers is whether the feminine power and role in the society is of a category other than rationalist-political. While the role the male plays in the constitution and advancement of society is rationalist, 3 organizational, and political, the woman does something "romantic", that is, she, by her very nature, is the source of affection, warmth, compassion, friendship, and tolerance. The two-pronged human reality - reason-governed and emotion- governed, ruled-by-the-mind and ruled-by-the-heart, reflecting the rigour of intellect and the elegance of feeling - forms the undercurrent of my treatment of the ideas of the Western thinkers. As a matter of fact, the mutually opposed movements of rationalism and romanticism constitute the projection of the very opposition human reality is made of. Rationality and emotionality are two distinctive aspects of the same reality - they are two diagonally opposed expressions of the same human nature. While rationality figures as, the dominant countenance of the male and emotionality as the dominant countenance of the female, there is feminine element in the male and the rigour of reason in the female tlIough in a subdued way. The well-known concept of Ardhanarinateshwara in ancient Hindu mythology, meaningfully suggests that a human individual is a potential amalgam of the male and the female, of masculinity and femininity, of Shiva and Shakti, of the dance of creation and the love of upbringing and protection. The terms "male" and "female" are thus metaphorical in the sense that they are designations to indicate either of the two elements predominating in the 4 particular individual. By deriding woman the male has tried to overpower the female in him. This is a highly ambiguous process, and yet human history shows that the fury with which man has tried to suppress, subordinate, and victimise woman is basically the projection of a primordial split within the male psyche- the masculine in his psyche both loves and hates the feminine within it.