Women's Fiction in Post-Independence India

WRITING GENDER, WRITING NATION

This book explores the gendered contexts of the Indian nation through a rigorous analysis of selected women’s fiction ranging from diverse linguistic, geographical, caste, class, and regional contexts. Indian women’s writing across languages, texts, and contexts constitutes a unique narrative of the post-independence nation. This volume highlights the ways in which women writers negotiate the patriarchal biases embedded in the epistemological and institutional structures of the post-independence nation- state. It discusses works of famous Indian authors like Amrita Pritam, Jyotirmoyee Devi, Mannu Bhandari, Mahasweta Devi, Mridula Garg, Nayantara Sahgal, Indira Goswami, and Alka Saraogi, to name a few, and facilitates a pan-Indian understanding of the concerns taken up by these women writers. In doing so, it shows how ideas travel across regions and contribute towards building a thematic critique of the oppressive structures that breed the unequal relations between the margins and the centre. The volume will be of interest to scholars and researchers of gender studies, women’s studies, South Asian literature, political sociology, and political studies.

Bharti Arora is a faculty member of the Department of English, Tagore Government Arts and Science College, Pondicherry, India.

WRITING GENDER, WRITING NATION

Women’s Fiction in Post- Independence India

Bharti Arora First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 Bharti Arora The right of Bharti Arora to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Arora, Bharti, author. Title: Writing gender, writing nation : women’s fiction in post- independence India / Bharti Arora. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2020. | Revision of author’s thesis (doctoral)—Jamia Millia Islamia (India), 2018, titled Writing gender, writing nation : a critical study of select women’s fiction in post-independence India. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019016025 | ISBN 9780815396178 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780367280529 (paperback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780429299421 (e-book) Subjects: LCSH: Indic fiction—Women authors—History and criticism. | Indic fiction (English)—Women authors—History and criticism. | Indic fiction—20th century—History and criticism. | Indic fiction— 21st century—History and criticism. | Indic fiction (English)—20th century—History and criticism. | Indic fiction (English)—21st century—History and criticism. | Women and literature—India— History—20th century. | Women and literature—India—History— 21st century. | Women in literature. Classification: LCC PK5423 .A76 2020 | DDC 891/.1—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019016025

ISBN: 978-0-8153-9617-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-28052-9 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-29942-1 (ebk)

Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC CONTENTS

Foreword vi Acknowledgements viii

Introduction 1

1 Women as ‘citizens’: gendered violence in Partition narratives by women 33

2 Feminist negotiation of autarchy: going beyond victimhood 68

3 Negotiating structural inequalities: marriage, domesticity, divorce, and widowhood in post-independence India 98

4 Economic liberalisation, cultural Ghettoisation, and their impact on the gendered contexts 133

5 Writings from the margins: Dalit and Muslim women’s narratives 163

Conclusion 199

Appendix 208 FOREWORD

Discourses about nations, states, citizenship, etc. are mostly dogged by a national patriarchy that assumes a certain level of gender-blindness. A structured exclusion of women from nation and national politics is owed to a masculine focus on the social and political analyses of modern states, citizenship, nationalism, revolution, and democracy, which are usually deemed as masculinist projects. In the process, women’s roles as citizens, as members of the nation, are either relegated to symbolic status or embedded in the narratives inscribed by men. To retrieve these roles mandates not only a focus on women’s lives, as many feminist projects propose to do, but also a foregrounding of gendered perceptions of the nation. Should women’s fiction be read differently from the rest? What strategies should be deployed in reading women’s fiction? Is it appropriate to sideline it as ‘domestic fiction’ that impinges little if at all on the making of the nation, as suggested by some critics? What relationship do the narratives of life experiences of women have with national dynamics? Is the category of gender extraneous to the idea of nation? Writing Gender, Writing Nation: Women’s Fiction in Post-independence India comprehensively engages with these crucial questions and paves the way for a gendered perspective of the nation. This book, backed by an insightful introduction, is a close analysis of select women’s fiction in post-independence India. Fundamental to this analysis is a sociological reconstruction attempted through the use of women’s fiction. Here fictional narratives are viewed not as mere aesthetic, mimetic entities but as endowed with cognitive character. Unlike generalised knowledge systems like science or history, this book assumes that fictional narratives open a window onto a specific set of experiences of a specific set of people. They are thus dis- tinguished by their preoccupation with localised knowledge. Moreover, since fiction embodies cognition through telling, fiction writers make cognitive interventions in the reality around them by reconstructing it from their own specific Foreword vii locations. This explains the cruciality of women writers’ fiction in any attempt at understanding the category of nation. Following Partha Chatterjee’s argument regarding the segregation between the home and the world, the private and the public, and the material and the spiritual involved in the nation-making process in India, most discussions about nation, nation-state, and citizenship have tended to ignore women’s articulation and cognition of nation. Contesting such a view, critics like Jessica Berman have posited that the domestic sphere is no less a politically charged space than the outside world and that women’s narratives make interventions in the discourses about the nation, “These narratives suggest that women need not leave the zenana to raise concerns of national import, and that their emerging modernity develops by way of their participation in traditional sites and rhetorical practices.” 1 The book takes up an incisive analysis of women writers from a range of Indian languages, like Amrita Pritam, Jyotirmoyee Devi, Mannu Bhandari, Mahasweta Devi, Mridula Garg, Nayantara Sahgal, Indira Goswami, Alka Saraogi, Usha K. R., Bama Faustina, and Salma. The selection exposes the range of women writers’ engagement with the issues of nation, state, citizenship, etc. through the unfolding of multiple histories. From the gendered violence often supported by the newly carved nation-state in the post-Partition scenario, to women’s reproductive health, marriage, widowhood, globalisation, and minority and Dalit experience: all find expression in writings by these women. The nuanced analysis in this important book stays clear of clichéd assumptions, like all women writing are feminists and so on. By reading the fictional narratives alongside state policy documents, the book brings into sharp focus the ambivalence between dominant discourses of the nation and the layered interventions made by women writers. I am convinced that the book will not only open up new ways of looking at writings by women but will also make us revisit state-sponsored dominant discourses leading to a gendered perception of the nation.

Nishat Zaidi New Delhi January 2019

Note 1 Berman, Jessica. Modernist Commitments: Ethics, Politics and Transnational Modernism. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011, p. 143. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A sense of happiness and achievement marks my engagement with this book. I have held this project close to my heart. It is based on my Ph.D. dissertation submitted to Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. Though it began as a Ph.D. dissertation, I did not want it to end at that. The suggestion of turning it into a book came from my supervisor Dr. Nishat Zaidi-Professor, Department of English, Jamia Millia Islamia – for the first time. She made me nurture this project as a dream and trained me to be rigorous, perseverant, and consistent so that the dream could turn into reality. However, I have also learnt something more, that is, this project has been seminal to my commitment as a feminist. It is through this project that I have learnt to question and unlearn the everyday gendered contexts of my life as a woman. Thus, my first and foremost thanks are due to Professor Nishat Zaidi. Thank you for your patience, encouragement, and rigorous feedback on this work. I also thank Dr. Simi Malhotra – Professor Department of English and Jamia Millia Islamia – for her constant support, encouragement, love, and for just being there, always. I would also like to thank Dr. Uma Chakravarti, Professor (formerly) Depart- ment of History, Miranda House, University of Delhi and Dr. Arindam Chakrab- arti, Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Hawaii, who gave their precious time, discussing so many aspects of this work and the ways in which I could make it better. The library sources at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, Janki Devi Memorial College, Delhi University and the Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi have helped me immensely in undertaking this research. Thus, my thanks are due to their respective librarians who have assisted me in finding relevant books, resources, and research material. Thanks Shrikanth for reading this work along with me and giving your valu- able suggestions and feedback. Acknowledgements ix

Thanks Ma and Papa for everything! I would like to thank the following publishers for kindly consenting to use modified versions of my articles published in the respective journals:

1. Arora, B. “Negotiating structural inequalities: Marriage, sexuality, and domesticity in Mridula Garg’s Chittacobra.” The Journal of Commonwealth Literature , published Online First, pp. 1–18. Copyright © 2016 by the Author. Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications, Ltd. < journals.sagepub.com/ doi/abs/10.1177/0021989416671172 > 2. Arora, B. “Mapping the Gendered Contexts of the ‘Glocal’ Nation: A Criti- cal Rereading of Alka Saraogi’s Kali-Katha: Via Bypass .” Indian Journal of Gender Studies (Volume 23, No. 2) pp. 286–305. Centre for Women’s Devel- opment Studies. Copyright © 2016 by the Author. Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications. 3. Arora, B. “Negotiating Structural Inequalities in Post-independence India– The Case of Deserted Women and Widowhood in Indira Goswami’s Neel Kanthi Braja and A Saga of South Kamrup .” Society and Culture in South Asia (Volume 3 Issue 1) pp. 1–23. South Asian University. Copyright © 2017 by the Author. Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications. https://journals. sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/2393861716674546 4. Arora, B. “Democratising the Language of Feminist Expression: English and Bhasha Contexts of Indian Women’s Writing.” In English Studies in India : Contemporary and Evolving Paradigms , edited by Banibrata Mahanta and Rajesh Babu Sharma. Singapore: Springer, 2019. pp. 109–120. Reprinted by permission of Springer. Bharti Arora

INTRODUCTION

Nations are often seen as masculine entities and nation subjects as homogeneous collectivities established by the modern state apparatus of citizenship, law, governance, etc. In the process, most theoretical formulations of nation tend to ignore or erase women’s experience of the nation. This book seeks to establish how post-independence women’s writing has been geared towards interrogating the category of nation and exposing various patriarchal alliances (and gender biases) underlying its framework. In fact, gender is not merely a thematic concern in the writings of women writers but a constitutive category. In the process of writing about gender relations, these writers comment and reflect on the larger socio-political, economic concerns of society and the nation. As Elleke Boehmer (2005) suggests:

Gender has been, to date, habitual and apparently intrinsic to national imagining. . . . The production of a unified, homogeneous entity such as [the nation] . . . hinges, to a large degree, on the determinate subject position of ‘woman’ for its articulation. . . . In short, national difference . . . is constituted through the medium of the sexual binary, using the figure of the woman as a primary vehicle. (5)

Thus, the asymmetrical power relations between men and women within the family are a product of and influence on the patriarchal and homogeneous nexus of the family, caste, community, and nation. Women’s negotiations with the nation are located at the interstices of the structural inequities of women’s daily existence. Their existence contests and is also determined by the dominant schema of nation-state manifested in terms of tradition, modernity, cultural assimilation, and state control on the one hand and welfarist drives 2 Introduction on the other. Thus, rather than focusing too much on the ‘women being victims’ syndrome, the book highlights the need to focus on how the nation gets inscribed when women take to writing and to telling their stories. Writings by the selected women writers, this book argues, discursively produce a narrative of nation that exposes the schematic omission of gender from the dominant discourses on nation or what Nira Yuval-Davis (1997) calls the “gender-blind theorizations of nationalisms” (3). The book thus proposes a reconstitution of the gendered habitus both at the level of micropolitics and macropolitics, interrogating women’s marginalised status within the patriarchal epistemology of the nation-state and its institutions.

Writing gender, writing nation The ideological constructions of gender within the nationalist paradigms, in both the colonial and post-independence period, have made it imperative to engage with the gendered contexts of the Indian reality. What is at stake here is the status of women as individual citizen subjects and how it is impinged upon by a structure of masculinism extant in both the domestic and the public sphere. Thus, it is significant to engage analytically with gender relations and the way they are implicated by nation and nation-states1 within the metanarrative of power relations, articulated subtly at the level of the family, kinship, sexuality, and tradition. This section will theorise the terms gender, nation, and nation- states, analysing how they affect the citizenship paradigm vis-à-vis women. A consideration of the category of gender allows one to reconstitute traditional epistemological hierarchies in the fields of history, culture, and politics, offering perceptive understandings of nation. Apart from reconstituting traditional epistemological hierarchies, it also foregrounds how differences are constructed between men and women. This entails ways in which sexual differences between men and women are constructed. Simultaneously, the category of gender allows one to re-engage with the procedures and functioning of the nation, which are constructed along gendered lines. The nation is a patriarchal enterprise, which structurally privileges men belonging to a certain class, caste, and/ or religion, along with their interests, notions of manliness and power in matters of family, state politics, war, and militarism. In fact, the language of patriarchal nationalism is so conspicuous that it ends up affecting the early years of an infant to a large extent. Deniz Kandiyoti (1991 ) and Joane Nagel (1998) have asserted that the formative experiences of the infant play a fundamental role in shaping her national identity and loyalty. In most cases, these formative experiences are contingent on an assumed heterosexual parenting and women’s responsibility as “custodians of cultural particularisms” (Kandiyoti 1991 , 435). As against the dominant ideology and discourses on childhood that perceive it as a universal and ahistorical condition, Kandiyoti states that children acquire language, emotions, identities through their mother and by extension the overall domestic/communal Introduction 3 site which train them into acquiring the language of nationalist passions and loyalties. Thus, domestic sites have a major role to play in the reproduction of nationalisms. Anne McClintock (1995) and Patricia Hill Collins (1998) have taken this argument further to explore how families function as sites of intersections between gender, race, and nation. Families draw their legitimacy not only from assumed notions of unity and solidarity but from what nations define as legitimate and illegitimate, that is, a heterosexual marital union, children born within wedlock, and contingent notions of inter-generational transfers, especially in the case of India, which ensures that sons are preferred to daughters in matters of inheritance. Within the said framework, the differential access to the resources of the nation- state is legitimised in the guise of hierarchies (of age, wealth, sexuality, gender, caste, and religion), which are nurtured within a familial setup. As McClintock observes, “the family image came to figure hierarchy within unity as an organic element of historical progress, and thus became indispensable for legitimating exclusion and hierarchy within non-familial social forms such as nationalism, liberal individualism and imperialism” ( 1995 , 45). The need to maintain this hierarchy involves actual or implicit use of force, violence, and ideological conditioning both at the level of family and nation. It is not surprising, then, that violence against women is rendered invisible in ways similar to how oppression and/or violence against peasants, minorities, Dalits, and tribals of the nation remain routinely overlooked. Thus, women’s location within the hierarchical grids of society and contingent divisions of sexual/social labour perform a major role in defining larger relationships among citizens of the nation and allied caste, communal, and gendered structures. Yuval-Davis rightly suggests that “gender relations are not to be reduced into being necessary effects of biological sexual difference. . . . Women’s oppression is endemic and integral to social relations with regard to the distribution of power and material resources in the society” (1997 , 7–8). The new paradigms of knowledge, thus produced, contest the private-public dichotomy, which excludes women from the masculinist discourse of nations and nationalism. Yuval-Davis further offers an insightful analysis in this regard, “The dichotomy of the private-public domains is fictional to a great extent as well as both gender and ethnic specific, and often this division has been used to exclude women from freedom and rights” ( 1997, 5). In fact, any study that aims to highlight the gendered contexts of nation has to renegotiate with the hegemonic narratives on nation. In fact, many influential theorisations on nation are contingent on the idea of collectivities, which betray exclusivist tendencies. For instance, Benedict Ander- son’s (1983) classic construction of nation as an imagined community is based on an understanding that, though technological innovations like print capital- ism are seminal to building networks of national linguistic communities, one’s membership in the nation is based on natural ties and not chosen ones, “Precisely because such ties are not chosen, they have about them a halo of disinterested- ness” (Anderson 1983, 143). Similarly, Ernest Gellner and Anthony Smith have 4 Introduction also emphasised cultural homogeneity and ethnic originality as important char- acteristics of nation making, “the ‘modern nation’ in practice incorporates several features of pre-modern ethne and owes much to a general model of ethnicity which has survived in many areas until the dawn of the ‘modern era’” (as quoted in Yuval-Davis 1997 , 18). Alternatively, Nira Yuval-Davis and Floya Anthias (1989 ), Deniz Kandiyoti (1991 ), and Joane Nagel (1998) underscore the pitfalls of identifying with collectivities. The construction of collectivities could be contingent on historical speci- ficities but it betrays an obsession with homogeneous ethnic/national projects. This has also been responsible for affecting citizenship rights of women. Their membership in ethnic and national collectivities is not only based on women’s structural locations within them, but it could also constitute what Amrita Chhachhi terms “forced identity” (as quoted in Yuval-Davis 1997, 11). The problem gets intensified when the collectivities feel threatened by ‘others’/hegemonic groups within a given space and time. Strict cultural codes are imposed on women in order to sustain the gendered boundaries of the collectivities. These ethnic boundaries often thrive on the myth of the other/stranger as a rapist. It is with this myth that women of the community are kept under strict vigil. Any deviation from the imagined norm of propriety, among women, is penalised. They become victims of everyday violence within families and communities. In fact, there is a need to focus on the idea of ‘common destiny,’ as proposed by Otto Bauer, which seeks to build bridges of solidarity among the citizens based on a vision for future:

It is oriented towards the future, rather than just the past, and can explain more than individual and communal assimilations within particular nations. At the same time it can also explain the dynamic nature of any national collectivity and the perpetual processes of reconstruction of boundaries which take place within them, via immigration, naturalization, conversion and other similar social and political processes. (as quoted in Yuval-Davis 1997, 19)

It could also lead to reconstituting the category of women as citizens, who are not merely burdened to reproduce the atavistic identities of the national collectivities but actively participate in shaping the common destiny. One of the ways this could happen is by taking cognisance of different social positionings of women, as well as their power and interests within the family and nation. Such a position perceives cultures as not fixed, ossified terrains but in the process of becoming, “continuously changing, full of internal contradictions, which different social and political agents, differently positioned, use in different ways” ( Yuval-Davis 1997, 67). This dynamic process also resists the tendency in nationalists to be what Nagel (1996 ) calls “retraditionalisers” (193), who often rely on reproducing the ethnic boundaries of the national collective, within which women are relegated to traditional roles of being symbolic border guards of the nation. Introduction 5

Furthermore, there are differences between the way men among men and women among women, as well as men and women, relate to the multiplex processes of power relations, both at the micro and macro levels. Connell (1987 ) asserts that nations and nationalist states are perfect venues for ‘accomplishing’ masculinity. The hierarchical struts of authority, all major decision-making positions, that is, the legislative, executive, and the judiciary within a nation, are often organised around notions of male domination and women’s subordination. They regulate sexual and social division of labour, legal domination of women’s sexuality, rights, which relegate women to marginalised positions within national culture. As Nagel asserts,

Terms like honour, patriotism, cowardice, bravery and duty are hard to distinguish as either nationalistic or masculinist, since they seem so thor- oughly tied both to the nation and to manliness. My point here is that the ‘microculture’ of masculinity in everyday life articulates very well with the demands of nationalism, particularly its militaristic side. (1998 , 251–252)

Faced with such constraints, women often, to deploy Kandiyoti’s (1988) terms, “bargain with patriarchy,” (283) assuming subordinate, traditional roles imposed on them by nationalists. These women often aid the patriarchal politics of their husbands/men of their communities, raising their children as per masculinist standards and serving as symbols of national shame, honour, and purity. These discourses on femininity cogently reflect the masculinist notions of women’s place within a nation. In order to analyse the impact of these multilayered structures, Yuval- Davis distinguishes nations from nation-states. She specifically cautions against the idea of nation-state, which is based on the hegemony of a particular group/community over all others, where the ideological apparatus of civil society and state are controlled by a particular community. This vision comes closer to deploying exclusionary tactics of racism, which construct “minorities into assumed deviants from the normal” ( Yuval-Davis 1997, 11) and systemically excludes them from access- ing resources of the state. In order to demystify such ideological and political constructs, one must highlight the myriad networks of power, which manipulate the differential access of differential collectivities to the nation-state. In so doing, one could contest the marginalisation of women, religious, ethnic, and sexual minorities who have been relegated to what Yuval-Davis terms “the marginal matrix of citizenship” ( 1997, 85). Pnina Werbner and Yuval-Davis (2005 ) define citizenship “as a more total relationship, inflected by identity, social positioning, cultural assumptions, institutional practices and a sense of belonging” (5). Citizenship, in this case, is not simply restricted to an individual’s access to his/her fundamental rights, which are granted by the state. 2 For instance, the Constitution of India, apart from granting individual citizens the rights to freedom and equality, also recognises the rights of 6 Introduction religious and cultural communities “to administer themselves in civil matters by their own ‘personal laws’” (Roy 2005 , 203). These rights of individual and communities in the Constitution show its “simultaneous commitment to both com- munityship and citizenship” ( Roy 2005 , 204). Thus, any theory on citizenship cannot overlook the importance of locating an individual’s autonomy and freedom within specific class-caste, community, and gender contexts, as well as civil society and state structures. According to Yuval Davis, citizenship is a “multi-tier construct” ( 1997, 68) wherein “people are not positioned equally within their collectivities and states, collectivities are not positioned equally within the state and internationally and states are not positioned equally to other states” (91). These theorisations on the stratified structures of citizenship and nation-state perform a major role in redefining citizenship, rendering suspect the widely held con- sensus and UN affirmation that nations are majorly characterised by the right to self-determination. In fact, Yuval-Davis’ critique of the discursive constructions of community identity and its impact on women’s rights is corroborated by Anupama Roy’s (2005 ) thesis on national identity, according to which the construction of national identity in India in the early 20thcentury has to be conceptualised in the context of both “the hierarchically organised scheme of social relations marked by ascriptive inequalities; and the dominance-subordination relationship between colo- niser and the colonised” ( Roy 2005 , 182–183). The nationalist leadership only concerned itself with the aspect of self-determination, seeking political representation and equality alongside the colonisers. They consistently betrayed what Roy terms, “their Brahminical-feudal, sectarian character” ( 2005 , 193) when it came to representing the social and economic concerns of the vast majority of social groupings (peasants, tribals, workers, communities, and women) in the country. In fact, social questions were seen as “divisive” ( Roy 2005 , 193) and the Indian National Movement’s (spearheaded by the Indian National Congress) primary objective was to attain political independence. The demands of peasant, labour movements, communities, and women were subsumed within the larger narrative of political sovereignty and self-determination. 3 It is significant in this light to re-engage with the naturalised assumptions about the sovereign nation and its ideological boundaries. This would highlight some of the major lacunas in citizenship theory that have restricted women from becoming full members of the nation. As research has shown, women have been deliberately excluded from the construction of abstract universal egalitarianism, which entitles men to democratic participation and citizenship rights in modern nation-states. The normative homogeneity, imposed in the name of building collectivity, suppresses particularity and difference, foreclosing possibilities of forging what Werbner and Yuval-Davis (2005 ) have called “a female emancipatory politics” (8). There- fore, it is important to problematise citizenship as defined by Marshall (1950 ), Introduction 7 who focusses on the role of citizen as a member of a community. Marshall char- acterises citizenship by a sense of belonging to the national community – a mark of enduring attachment. It is a multi-dimensional concept, wherein full membership in community becomes the moral basis of citizenship. However, such a conceptualisation of citizenship also operates in terms of a hegemonic system based on exclusion and inclusion. Only certain kinds/groups of members can become its full members. What happens to those who are outside the communitarian ambit, especially those who are settlers, refugees, and belong to a minority or indigenous group? There is a tendency to view the community membership model as an ideo- logically fixed and given natural unit. Any demand to retain collective cultural rights is considered highly suspect. It forecloses possibilities of constant negotiation and the struggle to widen the horizons of collectivities. This has severe implications for women’s citizenship rights both within and without the community. States often tend to accept the narrow and limited definitions of what constitutes a community and its patterns of membership, which conflate women’s needs with the cultural needs of the community. This goes on to curtail women’s rights in matters of education, marriage, and divorce, as well as other facilities for women. The problems with the communitarian model of citizenship get intensified when viewed through the prism of the private and the public sphere. A certain sense of insularity is imposed on the communities, wherein any right to invoke change/transformation of the statusquo rests exclusively with them. Therefore, it is pertinent to abandon the private-public dichotomy. Instead, one should “dif- ferentiate analytically between the state, the civil society and the family, treating them as three separate spheres if inter-related social and political spheres” ( Yuval- Davis 1997 , 14). Each of these spheres could never be homogeneous, which alerts us to their relative importance in the determination of socio-political and civil rights of the citizens. What is most interesting is how they may act in contradictory ways, affecting ethnic, class, gender, and other collectivities in society in different ways. The fact that they are never static leaves enough scope for negotiating citizenship rights. It would also resist the imposition of hegemonic notions of universal (male) citizenship, opening up spaces for creating a gendered epistemology of the nation-state. In this regard, transversal politics also aims to be an alternative to the universalism/ relativism dichotomy. Nira Yuval-Davis calls for cooperation and solidarity among feminists, who may be “positioned differently in different societies” (1997 , 125) but are willing to work towards achieving certain common goals. Here, dialogue becomes significant. An empowered knowledge could be created when the dialogue is informed by differential experiences of women. An effective dialogue is based on the principles of “rooting and shifting – that is being centred in one’s own experiences while being empathetic to the differential positionings of the partners in dialogue” (Yuval-Davis 1997 , 88). 8 Introduction

Gender politics and the woman question in colonial India The institutional and ideological construction of colonial modernity in India led to the recasting of gender relations in significant ways. It set up visible, rigid, and hierarchical distinctions between the colonisers and the colonised, which facilitated material and symbolic colonial authority over the subject people. This included, as Mohanty, Russo, and Torres (1991 ) point out, “the ideological construction and consolidation of white masculinity as normative, and the corresponding racialization and sexualization of colonized peoples” (15). This policy of the colonial regime, which was manifested in colonial institutions and structures, led to what Mohanty, Russo, and Torres further call “transforming indigenous patriarchies . . . and the rise of feminist politics and consciousness . . . within and against the framework of national liberation movements” (1991 , 15). As a response to this interplay between coercion and consent unleashed by colonial rule, the high nationalist historiography and the concomitant patriarchal structures in the 19th century made ‘home’ the discursive site of nationalist vic- tory and women as the reified keepers of the ‘spiritualised’ inner space, contesting colonial hegemony. 4 Critics like Sudhir Chandra (1992) and Meenakshi Mukherjee (1993 ) have suggested that this cultural regeneration of home was, ironically, an offshoot of pedagogic engagement with tradition. The tryst with colonial modernity was accompanied by its inherent fears, which could only be assuaged by a consciousness of an ahistorical past and a narrative of ‘glorious’ Indian antiquity. The nation was narrated as a form of mythology. Thus, the emergent nationalist movement, swaying between the poles of continuity and change, tradition and modernity, was discursively aligned to an epistemological ideology of a new familial-social design and moral imperative, demarcating the public sphere from the private spaces (andarmahal ) for women. Himani Bannerji (2001 ) describes in her work the process whereby women were implicated into the social moral agenda of patriarchal nationalist ethics and aesthetics. They were attired in the patriarchal folds of virtue and their sexuality tempered with “sweet sentimental- ity and mothering” ( Bannerji 2001 , 128). Thus, the nationalist discourse, since its very inception, was a gendered one. The nation in the making could not be conceived unless masculine and feminine identities were reinscribed within specific symbolic roles. While men, influenced by western epistemological constructs of progress, modernity, and enlightenment, embarked on an outward journey in search of an alternative political/nationalist history, women were led on a regressive inward journey, geared at appropriating the atavistic origins of the nation. Thus, exiled from the path of material history, women simultaneously became the spiritual guards/ goddesses and the victims of the nationalist negotiations of colonialism. As historians like Tanika Sarkar (2003) and others have exposed, the nationalist iconography of Mother India gave further impetus to this perception. It was possible for women to step out into the public sphere and attain economic Introduction 9 independence as long as they would not neglect their domestic duties. For example, when these ‘recast’ bhadramahilas/upper caste, middle class women formed their association, that is, the All India Women’s Conference (AIWC) in 1926, they inevitably became the spokespersons of the new ‘paternal’ nationalist iconography. This is borne out by the Presidential address delivered by Maha- rani Chimanbai Gaekwad of Baroda at the First session of the AIWC held in Poona from 5–8 January 1927. In her speech she too reiterated the conception of the Indian nation as Hindu and Indian womanhood being “as high as any that exists or has existed in any race or clime” (as quoted in Chaudhuri 2004b, 119). Women leaders extolled the virtues of motherhood and religious purity, emphasising women’s self-sacrificial virtues and traditional mythological ideal of Indian womanhood.5 The new woman, who had been trained and educated to be a companionate wife so far, was now entrusted with a novel responsibility of nurturing her children into brave and productive citizens of the country. Like women as mothers raised strong and able-bodied sons, mother India too was the ultimate benefactor of her sons. She would arm them against the foreign enemy. “While home is under the custodianship of the woman as mother, the nation as home is presided over by her archetype, Mother India” ( Ramaswamy 2010, 113). Thus, the invo- cation of women as the mothers of the nation was an offshoot of the political, social, and economic crises spiralled by the colonial institutions in the country. The emergent nationalist consciousness was suitably garbed in the revivalist/ traditional folds of the maternal in order to contest both the onslaught of colonial modernity as well as the recasting of indigenous patriarchy. Thus, women’s participation in politics remained contingent upon the needs of the nationalist discourse and what it expected of women in the public sphere. 6 Though, under the aegis of Gandhi, women were called upon to participate in political campaigns like the Non-Cooperation and Civil Disobedience movements and spread the message of satyagraha and non-violence, this newfound liberation in the nationalist movement could not politically emancipate them. 7 It delimited their engagement in the national cause within a particular idiom of religiosity. Geraldine Forbes asserts that the “patriarchal nationalist efforts to mobilize women in the name of dharma proved inadequate to the task of politi- cizing women, ensuring continued participation, or acting as channels for the expression of their own interests” (as quoted in Nijhawan 2012, 175). An analysis of debates on and about women in social-reform and nationalist movements in colonial India also reveals that there was a simultaneous pro- liferation of discourses about women and their marginalisation in these same discourses. The debates on women, whether in the context of sati, widow remarriage, or women’s education, clearly demonstrate that “women were neither subjects nor objects of the socio-cultural reform movements but merely the sites on which competing views of tradition and modernity were debated” ( Mani 1989 , 88). This ideological framework negated women’s negotiation of the new spaces available to them. Thus, unlike what Partha Chatterjee (1989) has claimed, the 10 Introduction nationalist politics did not lead to the resolution of the woman question in the early 20thcentury. Instead, it fell severely short of proposing a critical paradigm wherein women could be perceived as equal stakeholders in the nationalist movement. In fact, the spatial configurations should have been devised in a manner to call upon women to inhabit a new habitus from where they could engage with the “challenges and contradictions of the transitional period” (Gopal 2005, 63). They should have been equipped to engage in a “dialogic reconstitution of spaces and spatial divisions themselves” ( Gopal 2005, 62), enabling them to become equal participants in the socio-political and economic life of the nation. However, the vision of a new gendered habitus, as we know, could never materialise. Instead, women were treated as passive recipients of reform, being moved out from one place and benevolently situated at another, under the protection of recast patriarchy. Women’s subaltern status could never become a grave concern for the macropolitics of the nation. We can also approach the inadequacy of the nationalist horizon by referring to Nira Yuval-Davis’s (1998) useful analogy between nation and gender, highlighting the various dimensions of nationalist ideologies. It highlights the role of the symbolic heritage of language, tradition, and culture in the formation of the nation. Yuval-Davis argues, like Sudhir Chandra (1992), that the construction of an imagined community was deeply implicated and dependent on traditional social cohesive units. An individual’s loyalty to nation was assumed to be the highest point in her/his life’s journey, beginning from her/his primary obliga- tion towards her/his family, caste, and religion. Thus, nationalist consciousness was a logical extension of one’s religious and social consciousness. Within this logic, termed “Kulturnation” by Yuval-Davis (1998, 23), women became the cultural reproducers of the nation. The evaluation of Indian culture was done through the prism of woman’s status in the country. She was to be educated enough to contribute to the nascent spirit of nationalist enterprise but also ‘mod- est’ enough to be unassertive. All of this was done in the name of building up and asserting a sense of cultural authenticity and integrity of the emergent nation. Thus, both nation and nationalism are implicated in fostering disparate gender relationships. Further, an engaged study of these disparities would show how any discussion of gender in the Indian context is fraught with the pressing issues of class, caste differences, and religious practices extant in society. Thus, women’s oppression comes across as a product of unequal patriarchies, which get articulated in the form of dominant patriarchy and subaltern patriarchy, revealing how the former not only controls the caste-class dynamics in society but also affects sexual politics. Here, it becomes pertinent to dwell on a parallel engagement with the woman question in the form of the Self-Respect Movement, initiated by Peri- yar E V Ramasamy in Tamil Nadu in 1926. It called for a complete overhaul- ing of the structures of new patriarchy in the nationalist context. He identified marriage, family and monogamous matrimonial arrangements, and investing in women’s chastity as detrimental to women’s individual status in society. As Introduction 11 against the bhadramahila norm, which was entrusted with the task of upholding the spiritual integrity of the nation, Periyar exhorted women to give into the “claims of a free, self-validating desire, take on lovers, choose a life of economic self sufficiency, abjuring the responsibilities of motherhood” (as quoted in Geetha 2008, 196). The Self-Respect marriages were conducted with an express intention to not only defy the brahminical rituals and Hindu codes of marriage but also to inspire each other’s acceptance by the married couple as comrades and individuals rather than husband and wife, terms which smacked of patriarchal oppression. It might appear illusory to conceive of such roles for women in the late 19thcentury, but they actually had a strong potential to make women and men rethink the gender roles prescribed for them by society. Women could resist the nationalist efforts at reification, experiencing freedom to think, act, believe in their visions as individuals and, more than anything else, “look on their bodies as their own, as part of their being, so to speak” ( Geetha 2008, 197). Self-Respect activists like Minakshi and Neelavathi actively contributed to the Self-Respect journals, exhorting upper caste women to interrogate their subordinate existence under the aegis of new patriarchy and “be attentive to questions of caste difference and consider the problems faced by devadasis and adi dravida women as equally pertinent to the national struggle, as say the boycott of liquor shops” (as quoted in Geetha 2008, 191). The awareness that caste divided women, preventing them from coming together, could not be wished away. “Women had to consciously work at coming together, rather than assuming that they could, simply because they were sisters together in the nationalist struggle” (Geetha 2008, 191). I would like to place the Self-Respect Movement at the interstices of the new gendered habitus being forged in the late 19th and early 20thcentury. In fact, the Movement made viable interventions in the gender, class, and caste nexus of the nationalist patriarchy, preparing a terrain for reformulating the gender roles post-independence. This reformulation of gender roles is further tied up with the task of feminist historiography, which labours to expose the different ways and forms in which systematic marginalisation takes place not only of women but also of other sections of society. In this light, Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid (1989) have emphasised the need to problematise the grand construct of material and masculinist history:

Feminist historiography rethinks historiography as a whole. . . . [It is] not understood as one among competing perspectives but . . . a choice which can’t but undergird any attempt at a historical reconstruction which under- takes to demonstrate our society in a full sense (2).

The ‘choice’ offered by Sangari and Vaid does not provide any alternative method of enquiry but a conceptualisation of reality that is gendered in all its aspects. It is a constitutive tool, which must accompany any historical and political 12 Introduction analysis of the ideological apparatuses of society and nation. The field of historiography, as such, is made to acknowledge the viability of feminist intervention at both micro-social and macropolitical scales. Sangari and Vaid put forward a very strong claim that the feminist project cannot be considered complete or even sufficient unless it takes on the project of “‘feminization’ of the total field of historiography as such” (as quoted in Radhakrishnan 2001 , 193). This book will elaborate how Indian women writers appropriate the project of writing a feminist historiography to negotiate the hegemonic intellectual institutions of the nation. These histories from the gendered margins, including those of the subalterns, make way for a viable feminist politics, encouraging women to engage with the formation of a new gendered habitus, which would prepare them for a dynamic and dialectical re-engagement with the world around them.

Women’s movement in post-independence India The moment of independence witnessed the category of nation being a source of trauma for women. The extent and nature of violence they were subjected to in the wake of the Partition, reveals their asymmetrical relationship to nation and citizenship. The multiple patriarchies of family, community, and nation col- luded to treat women’s bodies as, in the words of Ritu Menon and Kamla Bhasin (1998 ), “territories to be violated, conquered, and claimed by the assailant” (43). The newly formed state was more interested in whetting the aggrandising appe- tite of interested people and parties, exacerbating existing inequalities, leaving women and other subjugated groups more marginalised than before. They were once again treated as objects, this time to be exchanged between the two newly formed nations. It was as if a homosocial pact was signed between the patriarchal communities, husbands, fathers, and the paternal nation-state. The social pact was in turn contingent on the sexual honour of women, who were perceived as the reproductive beings of the new nation. As Yuval-Davis (1997) asserts, “women’s positionings in and obligations to their ethnic and national collectivities, as well as in and to the states they reside in and/or are citizens of ” (26) often circumscribe their role to being the reproducers of the nation-state. If men could not be responsible for their women, it was assumed, how could they become responsible citizens of the country? Thus, the sovereign nation- state betrayed an inherent patriarchal bias towards reproducing the gendered politics of nationalism. It continued to “draw life from the family” (V. Das 2007 , 36). Thus, women were forcibly divided on the basis of their respective communities and restored to their ‘original homes’ (Resolution passed by the AICC, 17 November 1947). They were rendered victims of the brutal Central Recov- ery Operation initiated by the governments of India and Pakistan in November 1947. Ritu Menon and Kamla Bhasin underscore the gross irregularities inherent in the structure of this programme and its official adoption in Parliament:

The main objections related to . . . the virtually unlimited powers given to the police with complete immunity from inquiry or action and no Introduction 13

accountability at all; the denial of any rights or legal recourse to the recovered women; the question of children; the constitution of the tribunal; camp conditions and confinements; forcible return of unwilling women; unlimited duration for the Bill to remain in force. (1998 , 73)

As is evident, the displaced/refugee women were not recognised as individuals in their own right, let alone citizens. Even though the nation-state chose democratic form of government where one vote had one value irrespective of gender/ caste/class difference, the rights of these women were rendered suspect. The homogeneous/exclusionary vision of the nation was cemented by the genealogi- cal dimension of the nationalist project, termed “Volknation” by Yuval-Davis (1998 , 23). The family, community, and state in India drew their life from each other, reducing women to sites whereupon the exchange of power relations thrives. Here, I would contest Yuval-Davis’ proposal to view “state, civil society, and family as three distinct spheres of analysis” ( 1997, 14). She asserts that each of these spheres could never be homogeneous as they may act in contradictory ways, affecting ethnic, class, gender, and other collectivities in society in different ways. The fact that they are never static leaves enough scope for negotiating the citizenship rights. However, in the aftermath of Partition, women were devoid of their right to self-determination as citizen-subjects. While some of them were victimised by families and communities, which refused to take them back, others were forcibly recovered by the nation-state despite their unwilling- ness to get back. Therefore, the state, society, and family were linked together in a sort of continuum of violence against women. They were not only closely interrelated but also contingent on each other in the case of India. Alternatively, the women who survived the Partition trauma had to take up the responsibility of their broken and battered family members. They were burdened with familial responsibilities and the opportunity thrown by the circumstances could not empower them, so to speak. As Menon and Bhasin suggest, though, there was a significant rise in women-headed households and the emergence of working women immediately post-independence, but this was not liberating in any sense of the term ( 1998, 169). Nevertheless, these women and others, belonging to upper and middle classes, were among the first-generation beneficiaries of the newly found independent India. Their relatively easier access to higher education facilitated their participation within the academic and medical professions. The new employment opportunities within the service sector accommodated women heartily, strengthening what Mary E. John (2008 ) calls “the illusion of a rapid improvement in women’s conditions and achievement of equality by them” (25). The real question was, however, how Indian women were to transform into agents of their destiny, engaged in a dialectal relationship with contemporary cultural and historical processes being written immediately post-independence. Unfortunately, the role of women envisioned by the Karachi Resolution of the 14 Introduction

Congress in 1931(whereby they were considered citizens equal before law, irrespective of religion, caste and creed) could not materialise post-independence. 8 On 16 June 1939, the National Planning Committee (NPC) under the chair- manship of Jawaharlal Nehru appointed a subcommittee to look into women’s role in the planned economy and also passed some resolutions regarding the same, 9 but the subcommittee’s report “remained largely unnoticed in the debates in the post-independence period” ( Kasturi 2004 , 137). As the Towards Equality (1974) report describes, in the immediate post- independence scenario, the “Women in Development” model was institution- alised by the government, as it believed that the national growth models and development process would inevitably contribute to the improvement in women’s status. However, women’s status was essentially perceived as a social and cultural phenomenon. For instance, the First Five Year Plan particularly emphasised that there was a need to promote “adequate services in order to fulfill women’s legitimate role in the family and the community” ( Sharma and Sujaya 2012 , 224). Their problems were relegated to the Social Welfare Board, which identified women as “handicapped by social customs and values” ( Sharma and Sujaya 2012, 224) and therefore befitting recipients of welfare. The Board earmarked only a few areas under which it paid special attention to women’s development, that is, education, health, and family planning. In fact, it was not before the Sixth Five Year Plan that a separate chapter was included on women, titled “Women and Development.” Although it suggested a subtle shift in the conceptualisation of women as participants in the development process of the country rather than beneficiaries of it, things did not change at the ground level. For instance, the Sixth Five Year Plan, like the previous Plans, chose to focus on a family-centric poverty alleviation strategy. It suggested that since women were the most vulnerable members of the family, the economic emancipation of the family could only be possible if “women, education of children and family planning constitute the three major operational aspects” of this strategy ( Sharma 2012 , 23). Therefore, all other aspects of women’s identity were erased, affecting their rights as individuals and citizens, independent of the larger framework of family/community.10 The ideal of an egalitarian, just, and fair nation started to erode in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The campaigns against the stagnation of economy, price rise of essential commodities, and agrarian unrest saw the end of women’s acquiescence.11 Moreover, the increasingly deteriorating condition of women was perceived to be an offshoot of the materialist tendencies, manifested in the form of dowry deaths, rape, social atrocities, and a relapse of sati, so on and so forth. The new women’s movement not only resisted state tyranny (the Emergency being one of its hideous facets) but also marked a beginning of the contemporary phase of the women’s movement in India, calling for women’s participation in the political mainstream. It was triggered by the publication of Towards Equality: Report of the Committee on the Status of Women in India in 1974. The report was one of the first attempts to Introduction 15 engender the process of enquiry, mapping the gender governance equation in post-independence India. Vina Mazumdar (2008) rightly terms it a “founding text” (27), which facilitated a dialectical engagement between the Indian state and its women citizens. The report exposed how the Indian Constitution, despite its many secular pronouncements of equality between the sexes, had fallen short of offering women even a respectable status within the nation. The statistical data and figures outlined in the report showed how the condition of the vast majority of Indian women had been deteriorating since the 1950s, with the exception of upper middle class women’s entry into the academic and service sectors. More- over, the institutional structures of the nation-state systematically sidelined women from its policymaking and governance. The report arrives at this conclusion after a deeply engaged study and analysis of women’s status in society, law, economy, their educational development, political representation and status, and women’s welfare and development. The report was immensely successful in clearing the smokescreen effect produced by constitutional measures claiming socio-economic and political justice to women. From declining sex ratio to lower literacy levels of women, 12 the report revealed how women were like Sisyphus, burdened by the weight of social structures, cultural norms, and value systems on the one hand and religion, family, and kinship roles on the other. They not only delimited the scope of women’s participation in society on equal terms but also affected the realisation of their full potential as citizens of free nation. Although the first three and a half decades witnessed growth and expansion of education, evident in an overall increase in the enrolment of men and women, this fact could not capture the specific trends in the increase of women’s education post-independence. In fact, the provision of women’s education was an integral part of the post-independence planning initiatives, but it could not do much to eradicate the disparities in the education levels of men and women. 13 The report further suggested that women largely opted for a career in teaching at schools or colleges. There were two reasons behind it, as the Com- mittee on the Status of Women in India (which prepared the Towards Equality report) found out in their survey: firstly, in the prevailing social scenario, long-term professional training was only accessible to a minority among the upper middle class. Secondly, they felt teaching was accorded a high status in India, despite its low salary structure (Sharma and Sujaya 2012 , 159). In fact, the statistical indicators also reveal how the representation of women at the university level is relatively lower than their proportion at the primary and secondary levels. The Ministry of Education revealed in the year 1950–51 that the percentage distribution of women at different stages of educational system decreased from 82.4 per cent at the primary level to 12.7 and 0.6 per cent at the secondary and university levels, respectively. Though a marginal increase in the figures was witnessed for the latter stages in subsequent decades, by 1970–71 only 2.4 per cent of women could manage to get university education. This 16 Introduction reveals how unsuitable infrastructure (parents were apprehensive of sending their daughters to co-educational schools and colleges) and faulty curriculum (the disciplines taught were not related to practical work experience of people in villages) were some of the major causes that impacted women’s access to education. Next, within the economic sphere, the statistical data revealed that although women had benefitted from the increased employment opportunity in the service sector, their percentage in comparison to total women workers in India was only 6 per cent. However, as the Directorate General of Employment and Train- ing’s data revealed in 1970, teaching, medical and health, clerical, and telephone operators were the major fields of work in the public and private (organised sector) that witnessed the largest concentration of women workers. 14 However, the educational fields and employment opportunities expanded since the mid-1970s to the 1990s, owing to the liberalisation phase of the economy. Now women began opting for engineering, computer sciences, business administration, and management rather than being confined to courses in general education (science and arts). There are indications all the same which suggest that women graduates prefer marketing and human resource management as their areas of specialisation over systems, finance, or sales fields. Thus, women’s professional aspirations are restricted by gendered assumptions in the corporate sector, wherein they are considered more suitable for feminised fields like public relations, personnel management, advertising, telemarketing, and so on and so forth. Alternatively, the Towards Equality report revealed that the rest of the 94 per cent of women workers engaged in the unorganised sector of economy had no access to laws that sought to protect their insecure work conditions. Moreover, due to rapid development in the modern and organised sector of industry post- independence, the share of unorganised, household industries declined. Women were its greatest victims because the majority of them were illiterate and could only gain employment, if any, as unskilled and/or semi-skilled workers with no scope of further promotion. Many among them worked as unpaid family labourers, indirectly contributing to family income as helpers of men. The various rounds of the National Sample Survey (1958–62) revealed that unpaid family workers constituted between 41 and 49 per cent of the female workforce as against 15 to 17 per cent of the male labour force. It clearly reveals the unac- knowledged status of women’s work in the economic and social sector. Moreover, women workers could not bargain for better wages as compared to male workers because the state had no concrete action plan on equal pay for equal work until the completion of the Fourth Five Year Plan. 15 Also, the majority of the women who worked in factories, mines, and plantations were deprived of their basic rights like maternity benefits even after the state had passed the Maternity Benefit Act in 1961. It is evident from the small number of women employees (495) who received this benefit during 1960–70. Their benefits ranged from Rs. 46–117, which was low for the large majority among them Introduction 17

( Sharma and Sujaya 2012 , 147). All these grim issues were brought to the fore by the Towards Equality report, including how the “unequal employment status and opportunity for men and women were the direct result of a combination of factors, that is, the educational system, training, job-orientation and cultural conditioning” ( Sharma and Sujaya 2012, 165). More to the point, it was not until the Bodhgaya movement 16 started in 1978 in the Gaya district of Bihar that women’s equal rights over land received explicit attention. The women peasants actively fought for their independent rights over land, registering land in their name and conjoining their demands with an asser- tion of gender equality:

Equality can only strengthen, not weaken an organization, but if it does weaken our unity, that will mean that our real commitment is not to equality or justice but to the transfer of power, both economic and social, from the hands of one set of men to the hands of another set of men. (as quoted in Agarwal 2002, 9)

It was difficult to survive vis-à-vis the patriarchal structures of authority. These women peasants asserted themselves not only against domestic violence but also against the threats of beatings and rape by the hired ruffians of the math offi- cials, who had allegedly controlled 9575 acres of land, violating the land ceiling laws. Though the Chatra Yuva Sangharsh Vahini fought their case, it too did not pay any heed to women peasants’ exclusive land interests. The women peasants agitated in favour of their land rights and finally the government was compelled to undertake a redistribution of land in the name of women. The struggle also conjoined with contemporary feminist endeavours, enabling the women’s movement to realise how pertinent it was to build bridges of solidarity across the class-caste differences. However, the success of the Bodhgaya movement could not replicate itself in terms of a larger political involvement by women across classes. Unfortunately, as the Towards Equality report revealed, women’s political participation had consistently declined since independence. One of the reasons behind this was that the state’s proclaimed commitment to social justice and equality, Universal Adult Suffrage, and the delayed but satisfactory implementation of the Hindu Code Bill in 1955 led many among them, like their male counterparts, to put their faith in the fulfilment of national dream. While the euphoria of the independent nation-state and Constitutional promises of equality in opportunity encouraged women to exercise their franchise during the initial years between 1962 and 1967 (it increased nearly by 9 per cent in this period), it witnessed a downfall of 6.33 per cent in 1971, revealing the gradual disenchantment with political processes in the country. The equal status, political rights, and political equality promised to women by the Constitution still proved to be a far-fetched dream, rendering claims about women’s liberation suspect. “The overall statistics indicates that 18 Introduction women’s participation, though improving, is still so small as to be discouraging, particularly when compared with that of men” ( Sharma and Sujaya 2012, 211). Furthermore, the Towards Equality report revealed in its survey that women’s contribution to decision-making in families on matters of expenditure, sharing household work, educational career to be pursued, and marriage of children was relatively lower than that of men. More than 60 per cent of women respondents said that housework was primarily women’s responsibility and the “only decision where they take an active part is in buying food stuff for home” ( Sharma and Sujaya 2012 , 289). Almost 70 per cent affirmed that parents should fix the marriage of their daughter. However, an equal number of respondents also said that the practice of dowry is undesirable and should be stopped, reflecting a considerable improvement in societal concern for women. Moreover, 80.06 per cent of respondents agreed that “grounds for divorce should be the same for both husband and wife and 73.10 per cent said that the divorced wife must be supported by her former husband so long as she does not remarry” ( Sharma and Sujaya 2012, 302). When asked if daughters should be given rights in the parental property, 68.16 per cent responded that girls could be given “some share along with sons” (Sharma and Sujaya 2012 , 301). However, only “57.54 per cent felt that the daughter should have an equal share in parental property” ( Sharma and Sujaya 2012 , 301), that too in the southern states of Kerala, Pondicherry, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Assam. The respondents in Tripura, Manipur, and Haryana registered a particularly lukewarm response, ranging from 35.14 per cent to 44.44 and 44.97 per cent, respectively. Though during its research on the issues of divorce, marriage, domestic violence, and women’s right to property, the report dealt with women’s status in terms of their caste and religious positionings in society, it did not engage in any serious defiance of the brahminical rituals. Thus, the findings of the Com- mittee on the Status of Women in India were partially blinkered in terms of their discounting a nuanced analysis of the reasons that might have been responsible for such disparate responses to gender patterns witnessed across the country. More to the point, the issue of women’s health was never taken up seriously by the Social Welfare Board. Surprisingly, the CSWI also did not look into it in detail. 17 In fact, the Board performed a limited role in providing health care to women, focussing only on one aspect of it, that is, reproductive health care. However, reproductive health care is just a part of primary health care and han- dling it in isolation not only reduces women’s lives to performing biological and reproductive functions but also robs them of their dignity as individuals. In fact, it is this lopsided perspective, which is evident in the state’s adoption of measures focussed on contraception only, without any investment in the health care structure as a whole. For instance, Vineeta Bal, Vani Subramaniam, and Laxmi Murthy (2008 ) highlight that the state machinery along with the international funding agencies and drug companies have victimised lower caste/poor women by performing various contraceptive trials (involving Net-en, Depo Provera) on Introduction 19 them as part of family planning programmes. Thus, the reproductive health care has certainly not been pro-women. Moreover, a study of mortality data from the Model Registration Scheme of the government suggests how reproductive diseases are not the only health problems women face. It says that over the period of 1982–93, “deaths due to child births constitute 2.1 to 2.9 per cent of total female deaths” (as quoted in Qadeer 2008 , 384). In fact, women in the reproductive age group (15–44) died mainly due to communicable diseases, anaemia, and malnutrition instead of deaths caused by maternity. Other facts include lack of access to medical facilities, especially in the case of poor or peasant women who approach the health care system only as the last resort. A study conducted in 1987 reveals how “very little has been done to understand the changes in women’s health over the years and the complex manoeuvres that the health care system demands of users” (as quoted in Tharu and Lalita 1993 , 65). Thus, women’s health issues are to be located within a broader spectrum of problems and deficiencies experienced by them and not compartmentalised within the narrow framework of reproductive healthcare and family planning measures. The Committee on the Status of Women in India performed a commendable job in exposing the gap between women’s roles as perceived and recognised by society and those that they were actually capable of performing. However, the report was ridden with flaws in its basic assumptions. It never questioned the political dynamics of power and the patriarchal state that was responsible for women’s deplorable status even after 25 years of independence. It did not criti- cally engage with the Constitution. In fact, it was very idealistic in its emphasis on the Constitution as the standard against which the realities of socio-cultural setup and organisational structures were mapped. More to the point, though the report strongly critiqued the asymmetrical development process that had “reinforced patriarchal relations of inequality” ( John 1999 , 111), it failed to recognise the incongruity inherent in its own constitutional format. The authors who constituted the CSWI were upper caste, middle class women, educated and among the first generation beneficiaries of that very same unequal development process. 18 They critiqued the incongruity of policies and projects directed at rural/working class women, highlighting their invisibility in the emergent project of nation building. However, the members of the CSWI fell short of recognising the class, caste, and communal differences between themselves and working class women. Their upper class feminist politics was hierarchised, grounded in the politics of privilege, which perceived only poor, rural, and working class women as outside the ambit of Constitutional guarantees. No wonder the Towards Equality report comes across as a site of blinkered perspectives. Rajeswari Sunder Rajan (1999 ) rightly asserts:

Women are classed, caste and communal subjects, and both privilege and oppression may be grounded in identity recognised in those terms . . . at the same time in the interests of a transformative politics, difference must 20 Introduction

be managed, if not transcended. . . . Following from this, whether the women’s movement can serve as a ‘secular space’ for women outside the structures of their communities is a fraught question, even while feminists may be in agreement on its desirability and even necessity. (4)

The feminist agendas in the postcolonial nation-state are profoundly structured by the global imbalances unleashed by the socio-economic capitalist forces. More- over, within the contemporary processes of globalisation, culture too becomes a contested terrain that is manipulated differently by collectivities of people who are differently positioned within society. To begin with, the mainstream media co-opts the language of radical feminism, equating modernity with conspicuous patterns of consumption. More to the point, the New Indian woman is usually portrayed as urban, middle class, and educated, which becomes, in Rajeswari Sunder Rajan’s words, “a normative model of citizenship” ( 1993 , 131). Unfortu- nately, it not only leads to a systematic containing of Indian women within the parameters of patriarchy but also prevents other versions of Indian womanhood from gaining validation. If on the one hand, the financial institutions such as the International Mon- etary Fund and the World Bank have either directly or indirectly appropriated women’s labour to feed the contemporary neo-colonial structures unleashed by globalisation, on the other hand, the forces of liberalisation have contributed to the restructuring of welfare states as well. The emergence of international bodies which work alongside government’s welfare manifestoes have offered possibilities of improvement in women’s health, their working conditions, and lives in general. For instance, Nira Yuval-Davis (1997) talks about the need to club together the concerns of international women’s activism and grass roots organisations/ NGOs, depending on allied contingencies. These organisations have actively advocated for women’s rights at the 1993 Rio Conference on Environment and 1994 UN Cairo Conference. Yuval-Davis further gives examples of the “tribunals organised in Vienna, Cairo, Beijing around the slogan of ‘Women’s rights are human rights’ comprising various women’s organisations in the North and the South” (1997 , 121). Notable among them were the Peruvian Flora Tristan organisations, the Algerian Association for the Promotion of Equality between Men and Women, and the Shirkat Gah Centre in Lahore, Pakistan ( 1997, 121). But, at the same time, the weakening of the welfare state has had a negative impact on women’s negotiations with gender equality as well. As Yuval-Davis argues

many of women’s social rights which have been gained in earlier struggles are being lost, whether child care facilities, social security benefits or health care. . . . In practice, this means the exclusion of women from full participation in the democracy. (1997 , 123) Introduction 21

The pursuit of free market within the context of globalisation has altered gender relations, especially in the context of the middle class. With greater access to opportunities of employment, especially in the private service sector, it becomes imperative to analyse the way middle class women negotiate freedom, desire, ambition, and cultural roles expected of them in the contemporary scenario. Interestingly, there are two opposing tendencies perceived in this context: on the one hand, the new employment prospects have had a significant impact on man- woman relations within the home, with men contributing their bit to domesticity in ways more than one. On the other hand, we need to analyse the way the work place settings redefine the gendered relations for women. In fact, most of the time, serious cases of sexual assault are either misconstrued as consensual or as acts of “light hearted bantering.”19 This constant possibility of being unsafe also impacts women’s negotiations with cityscapes and the resultant experiences in their varied locations. There has been a regressive move towards syndicated Hinduism, threatening to embalm the country with the hegemonic potion of ‘culture’ and ‘civili- sation,’ suppressing alternative voices and any politics of subalternity. The late 1980s and early 1990s witnessed a revivalist nationalist politics which co-opted women into the Hindutva fold. They donned the mantle of aggressive sadhvis, neo-nationalist-communal bharatmatas , egging men on to the path of majority fundamentalism. Can this illusion of agency and political subjecthood contribute to larger rights of women? How detrimental could it prove for the Indian feminist movement, which is vigorously fighting for the liberal rights of an individual as well as the idea of modern secularism? Tanika Sarkar rightly asserts,

No feminist can possibly argue that the movement can contribute to the broad rights of women for its uncompromising orthodox compulsions as well as its decidedly fundamentalist tendencies. . . . It is no surprise that these women do not join contemporary women’s agitations for gender rights and justice. (as quoted in Chaudhuri 2004c, xxiv)

Moreover, the sense of illusory power experienced by these women needs to be problematised in the wake of altered socio-economic and political power structures in India during the late 1980s and 1990s. The government’s decision to implement the Mandal Commission Report in 1991 boomeranged as fault lines of caste and class within the civil society became visible. The demolition of the Babri Mosque in 1992 and the more recent communal carnage witnessed in Gujarat (2002) were serious blows to the secular, democratic, and welfare oriented aspects of the post-independence nation-state. Thus, it is within this variegated terrain of the nation that contemporary gendered contexts are shaped and negotiate the various formations of power. 22 Introduction

Towards a creative reforging of gendered habitus: women writers’ vision “The failure of the postcolonial nation-state can only be understood by looking at class, region, gender and other social formations and tensions in once colonized countries” (Guha, as quoted in Loomba 2005 , 170). Taking cue from this statement of Ranajit Guha, we can say that though women’s writing in India has been generally understood within the limited and limiting parameters of personal space and domestic fiction, one must not overlook the fact that within the larger schema of Indian nationalism, the personal has always been deeply embroiled with the political. The inherent complexities of colonial, neo- colonial, and nationalist structures have always had deep repercussions, often felt at more personal levels. Susie Tharu and K. Lalita (1993 ) rightly point out how the structures and institutions of power collaborate with global frameworks of economic, technological, and strategic growth, which ultimately “exacerbate existing inequalities and leave women and other subjugated groups more mar- ginalized than before” ( Tharu and Lalita 1993 , 59). Thus, the book aims to explore women’s narratives in post-independence India to retrieve from these narratives the embedded larger narrative of the nation, a narrative that has always been overlooked and smothered in the cacophony of dominant historiographies. It explores how writings by these women writers expose various patriarchal alliances underlying the framework of nation and hence can be read as narratives of alterity on the category of nation. The feminist and aesthetic standpoints of these women writers interrogate the dominant literary and aesthetic tradition, which has excluded, to use Kumkum Sangari’s (1991 ) words, “the whole range of social subalternities of which women are a part” (56) in the name of homogenising its abstract, universal assumptions as normative. The universalist assumptions of this tradition, as Sangari further asserts, “can scarcely be called an aesthetic” ( 1991 , 56). Women’s writings contest these exclusive tendencies, simultaneously exposing “the fiction of transgen- dered universality that is nothing but a euphemism for a universal masculinity” ( Ray 2000 , 4). In fact, the authorial concerns of male writers are often rooted in a sense of latent masculinism, which can only view the nation through a privileged, universalist, and psychologically-insular perspective. As Mee (2003 ) asserts, the national imagination of male writers betrays the socio-political implications of generations of “privileges to which Indian women do not easily gain access” (332). All this is rendered suspect in the select writings by women. Hav- ing said this, the book has no aims of glossing over the varied nuances involved in the writings of men and women authors, nor does it intend to build up a dichotomy of any sort between the two outside their situational contexts. This book aims to deploy a rigorous literary and critical analysis of select Indian women writers’ fiction, both in English and in translation. The texts under consideration are Amrita Pritam’s Pinjar (1950 Punjabi), Jyotirmoyee Devi’s Epar Ganga Opar Ganga ( The River Churning 1967 Bengali), Mannu Bhandari’s Aapka Introduction 23

Bunty (1971 Hindi), Mahasweta Devi’s Hazaar Churashir Ma (Mother of 1084 1974 Bengali), Mridula Garg’s Chittacobra (1979 Hindi), Nayantara Sahgal’s Rich Like Us (1985 English), Indira Goswami’s Neel Kanthi Braja ( Shadow of Dark God 1986 Assamese), Alka Saraogi’s Kali-Katha: Via Bypass (1998 Hindi), Usha K. R.’s Monkey-Man (2010 English), Bama Faustina’s Sangati (1994 Tamil), and Salma’s Irandaam Jaamangalin Kathai (The Hour Past Midnight 1995 Tamil). In fact, the process of finalising the writers’ list was time-consuming. The more I read, the more I realised that there are many evocative and powerful women writers who do not write in English, yet their response to nation is as consequential as the Indian English writers, even more so. However, the Indian English and regional women authors have been rarely clubbed together for literary analysis. One of the major reasons behind this is that Indian English and regional Indian literatures are considered two distinct disciplines. While one is considered too parochial, the other is assumed to be occupied with an elite’s point of view, going all the way ‘international’ by presenting an orientalist’s perspective on India and its so-called post-independence ‘muddle.’ In fact, as the choice of the women writers reveals, this book intends to delve into an engaged reading of bhasha texts alongside Indian English texts so that it may provide us with alternative visions, different voices of the nation, reori- enting our critical responses to the same. Moreover, taking into account women’s writings across the Indian linguistic spectrum would not only break the monotone and culture of ‘sacred English’ but may help to formulate an alternative strategy constituted by heteroglossia, pluralism, and cultural difference. Makarand Paranjape (2010) rightly affirms:

India is best seen, understood and experienced in the bhasha texts and not so much in Indian English texts. This becomes quite clear to us if we put the two beside each other. . . . We at once begin to see how the vernacular serves as the context for English. The English text is both underlined and undermined in the process. (99)

In fact, it calls for a process of dialogic coexistence, without forgoing one’s distinctive culture. A cumulative reading of the right contexts may not only help us deconstruct the narrower, exclusive, and ethnic renditions of the nation but also enable us to reach out to the Other. More to the point, the book also intends to establish that women’s fiction complements existing feminist endeavours in India rather than simply being a cultural artefact. In fact, this link has rarely been traced by critics dealing with the idea of gender and nation in their writings. Thus, I would locate the gendered contexts of the nation within the ambit of Indian women’s movement in the post-independence phase. It would facilitate a pan-Indian understanding of the concerns taken up by the women writers, showing how ideas travel across regions and contribute towards building a thematic critique of the oppressive structures that breed the unequal 24 Introduction relations between the margins and the centre. The book establishes how all these concerns are embedded in Indian women’s writing, exposing the chinks in the system and in the process staging a stiff resistance to the so-called pan- Indian homogeneous institutions and epistemologies of nation-state. It can be said that women’s literary works come across as postcolonial, post-independence acts of resistance. However, this book on post-independence women’s writing does not leave out of its praxis an important fact that all texts written by women need not be feminist. Sometimes, they are as much a product of ideological, social determinations, and role models prescribed for them as any other text. It is significant to trace the differences between diverse ideological strands witnessed in women’s writing because it is a product of, to borrow Rajeswari Sunder Rajan’s (2015 ) words, “changing historical conditions and [. . .] the divergent agendas of a non-unitary constituency conceptualised under the rubric of ‘women’” (40). In fact, women’s texts, both in their internalisation of patriarchal structures as well as in challeng- ing and subverting these structures of power, offer us a site to study the gendered patterns that construct and feed into the architectonicae of the nation-state. More to the point, Jasbir Jain (2011 ) identifies Indian Feminism on the basis of the difference between the feminist search for identity and self:

Identities can be dependent on men or on externals like class, status-both economic and married-caste and culture, while self is an internal consciousness of strength, awareness and ability. . . . It is a more significant conduit connecting the inner being with the outer reality. (283)

I could club this reading with one of the core ideas of my book, that is, transversal politics. My contention is to show how the selected women writers are engaged in a dialogue across difference. It is certainly different from identity politics, accommodating difference in gaze, location, perspective in all their nuanced intersections. However, I eschew here from deploying the term ‘sisterhood.’ 20 In fact, an accommodative study of women writers belonging to different contexts, social, economic backgrounds would not only enrich the gendered reconstruction of national history but also empower the disempowered to interrogate the official, mainstream epistemology and institutions. This would also facilitate an interrogation of the upper caste, middle class biases inherent in the standpoints of Indian women writers. As far as the varied locations and ground realities of these writers is concerned, I understand them as contingent on the contemporary socio-political concerns, a positivist idea that looks for a viable transversal politics among women writers across India. Moreover, this quest is supplemented by an informed understanding of the varied domains of the state, that is, family, civil society, the welfare state, and the capitalist technocrat nation-scape that may or may not function collaboratively but have diverse impact over the citizens of the nation, Introduction 25 particularly its women subjects. Since these spheres within the nation-state could not be homogeneous, how can one assume that their effect on different ethnic, religious, gender, class, and caste groups would not be conflicting? For example, proposals of implementing a Uniform Civil Code have been consistently challenged by numerous assertions in favour of the various personal laws extant in the country. Moreover, the choice of women writers is not to be misinterpreted as representations of any group, class, caste, religious, and ethnic category. Here too, one must acknowledge that the selections do not in any way capture or represent the issues concerning women in India in their entirety as this is not even the objective of the present work. Alternatively, since the primary theme of this book is to interrogate the gendered contexts of the nation, the selected texts act primarily as entry points to arrive at an understanding of the contemporary patterns of gender construction in socio-political, economic, legal, and cultural configurations of the nation. It opens up channels of enquiry to probe further issues like violence against women in states under the Armed Forces Special Powers Act or the struggles of lesbian women within and against the nation-state and their voices in the women’s movement. I eschew from suggesting a contingent politics of geographical and ideological location, supplementing Yuval-Davis’ (1997) argument that people who are similarly rooted can and do occupy diverse positions and points of view. She rightly suggests, “The transversal coming together should be not with the members of the (same) or other group en bloc , but with those who, in their different rooting, share values and goals compatible with one’s own” ( 1997, 130). In fact, the aim is to study how different texts written by different writers can be perceived as engaging in a dialogue. As Yuval-Davis further suggests, “Dialogue, rather than fixity of location, becomes the basis of empowered knowledge” ( 1997, 129). Thus one must be cautious of the lure of auto-identification and the debilitating and destroying effect it can have. Ultimately, differences have to relate with each other, otherwise it will lead to a kind of solipsism, discounting the possibility of any political efficacy embedded in what Radhakrishnan (2001) calls “dialogic relationship of mutual accountability” (191). In fact, neither strategies of radical separateness imbued in a sense of auto- identification nor those of hierarchical epistemological structures can claim to present the critique of post-independence dream and/or nightmare in total- ity. There has to be a solidarisation of various asymmetrical positions and their respective contestations against the nation to facilitate political efficacy. It can be achieved by reimagining one’s encounters with ‘others’ in ways that open channels of ethical representative strategies within the epistemological apparatuses of the nation-state. As Yuval-Davis and Stoetzler (2002) assert, “experience, made by the senses and mediated through the faculties of the intellect and the imagination, produces knowledge as well as imaginings. . . . Here lies rooted the possibility and indeterminacy of (or else the ‘freedom’ to) social change” (320). These alternative imaginings further facilitate “critical intimacy”21 with the other, 26 Introduction which is central to evolving meaningful cultural exchange among communities without seeking to assimilate or appropriate their extant differences. We realise how women writers from diverse contexts make a dent in the dominant discourse of the context to which they belong, thereby foregrounding an alternative vision of the gendered contexts of nation. Thus, the book will establish how Indian women writers belonging to different communities, economic-cultural, linguistic-social backgrounds, and identities can build coali- tions across borders to foreground the failure of the nationalist dream and critique neo-colonial power structures created at the level of both state and nation. I take the cue of this reading from Chandra Talpade Mohanty’s (2003) thesis, “In knowing differences and particularities, we can better see the commonali- ties because no border or boundary is ever complete or rigidly determining. The challenge is to see how specifying difference allows us to theorize universal concerns more fully” ( Mohanty 2003, 226). Thus, despite being determined by culture-specific parameters, women writers ensure that their subordinated subject-position would not necessarily imply total subjugation at the altar of dominant social forces. They are not merely acted upon but also act to offer viable alternatives to the statusquo. The revisionary subject-positions endorsed by them contain the possibility of interrogating the oppressive epistemological apparatuses in society. Thus, Indian women’s writing is a reaction against a certain sense of betrayal, which impelled them to respond and give their take on the nation. Simultaneously, this book explores how literature could provide a transformative agency to feminism as a discourse of empowerment. Despite being fictional, literary works have the potential to discursively grasp the relationship between social history and cultural history. Just as the actual political/epistemic institutions, literature is a product of extra-discursive social processes and ideological power structures. Reading literature and political contexts together enables an understanding of essential textuality of narratives. Though historical forces play a deterministic role in the making of a literary text, they can certainly not control how readers across racial, ethnic, gendered, caste, and religious differences seek to derive variegated meanings out of it. Literary works have a seminal relationship with the dominant discourses of their time in highlighting multiple and often contradictory subject positions and experiences. They innovate an episteme, which resists the totalising impulses of political and historical forces. These alternative paradigm(s) of knowledge facilitate our understanding of the gendered contexts of society and/or nation along with the ways in which these contexts are deeply implicated in patriarchal power politics. Literature, thus, becomes instrumental in bringing about change and extends beyond anticipating or mirroring social reality. It is pertinent to engage with the socio-political-economic and legislative- juridical discourses of the nation as they have actual consequences on the everyday lives of people, particularly women. The parliamentary debates/reports and political commentaries demonstrate the official consciousness of an epoch, Introduction 27 which both interacts with and impacts citizens’ everyday negotiations, modes of conformity, struggles, and resistances within their disparate and/or culture specific contexts. This book attempts to analyse women’s fiction in light of these political commentaries, exploring the gendered facets of the nation-state. The book highlights, through this, the patriarchal biases inherent in the conception and construction of the official reports, political processes, and commentaries, which aggravate the gendered contexts of women’s lives in myriad ways.

Notes 1 Rajeswari Sunder Rajan (2003) discusses the concept of nations and nation-state and how both draw life from one another, “But since states are inevitably linked to and inhere in geographical territories, it is also necessary to identify them in terms of nations in our analyses. . . . The idea of the nation is also the powerful legitimization of the state institution; and different ideologies of nationalism (anti-colonial, Nehruvian, and Hin- dutva inspired) have determined the projects and trajectories of the postcolonial nation state differently” (4–5). 2 Articles 14 to 24 within the chapter on Fundamental Rights ensure rights of freedom and equality to citizens. Articles 25 to 30 in the same chapter, collectively termed ‘cultural and educational rights,’ deal explicitly with the rights of religious and cultural communities and minority groups. 3 Anupama Roy (2005) describes how Congress, in the process of representing the masses, sought to regulate them within the nationalist ambit. Any voicing of dissent or demands of freedom from ascriptive inequalities were silenced and obscured. For instance, Congress ministries in the 1930s refused to recognise peasant activists as political prisoners.“Peasant leaders such as Pandit Karynand Mishra, Anil Mishra, Jagannath Prasad and Bramhachari Ramvrikasha went on hunger strikes for recognition as political prisoners. They were released, when on the verge of death without fulfilling their demands for political prisonerhood” ( Roy 2005 , 195). 4 Partha Chatterjee (1989) discusses this phenomenon in his essay “The Nationalist Resolu- tion of the Woman Question.”He proposes that the nationalists could now afford to imitate the West in the outer or material sphere while retaining the spiritual or the inner sphere as an uncolonised space wherein the essence of Indianness could be preserved (233–253). 5 In the First AIWC session, Miss Baladurje proposed that an emphasis on teaching the ideals of motherhood should underline the importance of teaching the ideals of father- hood as well (as quoted in Chaudhuri 2004b, 119). In the second AIWC session on Educational Reform (February 1928), Mrs. P. K. Sen emphasised the inclusion of “mothercraft and child welfare” in the development of a comprehensive education plan (as quoted in Chaudhuri 2004b, 120). In the post-independence phase, Indira Gandhi highlighted the importance of women as homemakers and mothers. In an interview with Meher Pestomji of Eve’s Weekly, she stated: “Her greatest fulfilment came from motherhood” (as quoted in Forbes 1998, 233). Sushma Swaraj, External Affairs Minister in the NDA government (2014–19), has also shared similar views about how she seeks her professional fulfilment by striking a balance between filial/maternal and political role. Raka Sinha Bal (1999) quotes her in a Life Review,“I always feel that if one is duti- ful towards the family then they will also support you” (12–13). 6 The leading, elite women members of the AIWC like Shuda Mazumdar and Mrs. P. Sub- barayan, among others, chose to ignore – overlook the internal fault line – demands for communal award and separate electorate by Muslim women, arguing that “women were all sisters under the sari”(as quoted in Chaudhuri 2004b, 130). They failed to perceive that women’s identities are intrinsically class/caste based and rooted in respective community identities. It can be understood through Yuval-Davis’s notion of intersectionality 28 Introduction

( 2011 ), which particularly engages with the way the “differential situatedness of differential social beings affects and/or is affected by any 1) politics of belonging and 2) social, economic and political project” (4). 7 Radha Kumar (1993 ) relates how, according to Gandhi, the experience of pregnancy and motherhood especially qualified women to spread the message of peace and non- violence. Gandhi created the image of the mother as repository of spiritual and moral values, as a preceptor for men ( Kumar 1993, 82). More to the point, even though he had called upon women to participate in the Civil Disobedience movement and satyagrah , he restricted their activity to mass picketing of liquor shops, drug shops, as to him, women were prime victims of their husbands’ endorsement of such shops. It was a matter of moral purity in personal life. Salt, on the other hand, was an issue related to economic hardships Indians endured under the British rule, so it was an issue relevant to public life and not considered suitable for women (83). 8 The Karachi Congress Resolution, 1931, prepared a draft of Constitutional rights, defining the role of the Swaraj government. It inscribed the category of women workers, emphasising “special protection of women workers as well as no disability in employment or trade or profession on account of religion, caste or sex” (as quoted in Chaudhuri 2004a, 134). 9 The Resolution reiterated the principle of women’s equality and recognised them as individuals who had “equal right to develop themselves and to improve their unsatisfac- tory economic status” ( Kasturi 2004 , 138). 10 Subsequently, the phrase ‘Gender and Development’ was deployed in the 1980s to fill up the earlier lacunas in the state’s approach to women citizens. It highlighted a structural concern with gender mainstreaming and sensitisation in the national policies. However, this led to nothing more than domesticating the term ‘gender’ for state’s proposed policies on women. There was possibly an attempt at co-opting the women’s movement by the state structure as well. 11 The feminist journal Manushi was started in 1979 to provide an effective voice to the emerging movement of women, seeking not simply to describe the realities of women’s lives but also to change them. Some of their activities involve discussing the ambiguities and nuances involved in implementing 33 per cent reservation for women, proposing a working out of ‘dowry boycott,’ and offering a discursive forum to women, enabling them to communicate with each other in an effective manner. 12 While in 1901, there were 972 females for every 1000 males, the ratio declined to 930 females per 1000 males in 1971 (Sharma and Sujaya 2012, 12). The Census of 1971 also revealed extremely low levels of literacy for women, that is, 18.7 per cent in comparison to 39.5 per cent for males ( Sharma and Sujaya 2012 ,20). 13 The Towards Equality report revealed that the total enrolment of girls remained relatively lower in comparison to boys at the primary, secondary, and university stages of education. During 1947, the “total number of boys enrolled at various levels of the educational system was 1,1,34,665 while the girls were only 35, 50, 503, indicating an excess of 75, 84,162 boys over girls” ( Sharma and Sujaya 2012, 183). Moreover, the situation did not improve much between 1947 and 1957. The National Committee on Women’s Education, 1959 said that only 36 girls were under instruction for every 100 boys at school and the disparity tends to widen in rural areas, where “the education of women had made very slow progress” (Sharma and Sujaya 2012,184). The extent of dropouts was higher in the case of girls, leading to lesser number of women at the higher education level. The Census of 1971 revealed that “there were 1342 illiterate women per 1000 males” ( Sharma and Sujaya 2012 , 20), especially in the cities with high proportion of Muslims, or Scheduled Castes and Tribes. 14 According to the Census of 1971, “the number of women teachers was 6 lakhs, whereas their numbers in other professions was negligible – physicians and surgeons 0.2 lakhs, nursing and other medical and health technicians 2,550, lawyers 1,700 and architects, engineers and surveyors 700, accountants etc. 2,700” ( Sharma and Sujaya 2012 , 157) and so on. Introduction 29

15 It was in 1976 that The Equal Remuneration Act was passed, which ensured “payment of equal remuneration to men and women workers and prevention of discrimination on grounds of sex against women in the matter of employment” ( Sharma 2012 , 9). 16 The Bodhgaya movement was a struggle by landless labourers and sharecroppers to gain rights in land, which they had cultivated for decades. The land, some 9, 575 acres spread over 138 villages, was apparently held by a Math (a monastery-cum-temple complex), much of it in violation of land ceiling laws. The movement emerged under the leadership of Chatra Yuva Sangharsh Vahini, a Gandhian-socialist youth organisation ( Agarwal 2002 , 8). 17 As Vina Mazumdar (2008) confesses in the essay, “We could not find adequate data. We were not even asked to look into women’s health. It is not even mentioned in the terms of reference. The word is missing. Consequently, no task force for health was set up” (29). 18 The members who constituted the Committee on the Status of Women in India were Prof. Leela Dube, Dr. Sakina Hassan, Dr. Phulrenu Guha, Prof. Lotika Sarkar, and Dr. Vina Mazumdar. 19 It is evident in a controversial case at the Tehelka office, involving Tarun Tejpal’s attempts to sexually assault one of the staff reporters. According to PTI’s (2013) report “Tehelka case: Prima Facie Evidence to Show Rape: Said Judge as She Rejected Tarun Tejpal’s Bail Plea: Tejpal was sent to custody on 1 December 2013, based on an email correspon- dence he had shared with the victim, terming the act ‘light hearted banter.’ The judge specifically problematised this aspect of the case in her order: “the insinuations that the victim was a consenting party or that the alleged act was only a light hearted bantering cannot be accepted.” 20 Such broad democratic alliances, as Yuval-Davis (1997) argues, are not always emancipatory. Moreover, it entails an innocuous belief in the “inherent reconcilability and limited boundaries of interest and political difference among those who are disadvantaged and discriminated against” (128). 21 I borrow this term from Gayatri Spivak (1999), who has deployed the concept of critical intimacy to suggest what it means to ‘speak to’ rather than ‘listen to’ or ‘speak for’ the subaltern.

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Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. 2003. “‘Under Western Eyes’ Revisited: Feminist Solidar- ity through Anticapitalist Struggles.” In Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practising Solidarity . 221–251. New Delhi: Zubaan. Mohanty, Chandra Talpade, Ann Russo, and Lourdes Torres, eds. 1991. Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism . New York: Indiana University Press. Mukherjee, Meenakshi. 1993. “Rhetoric of Identity: History and Fiction in Nineteenth Century India.” In Indian Responses to Colonialism in the 19th Century , edited by Alok Bhalla and Sudhir Chandra. 35–47. New Delhi: Sterling. Nagel, Joane. 1996. American Indian Ethnic Renewal: Red Power and the Resurgence of Identity and Culture . New York: Oxford University Press. Nagel, Joane. 1998. “Masculinity and Nationalism: Gender and Sexuality in the Making of Nations.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 21(2): 242–269. https://doi.org/10.1080/014198798330007 . Nijhawan, Shobna. 2012. Women and Girls in the Hindi Public Sphere . New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Paranjape, Makarand, and G.J.V. Prasad, eds. 2010. Indian English and Vernacular India . New Delhi: Pearson. Qadeer, Imrana. 2008. “Reproductive Health: A Public Health Perspective.” In Women’s Studies in India: A Reader , edited by Mary E. John. 381–386. New Delhi: Penguin Books. Radhakrishnan, R. 2001. “Nationalism, Gender, and the Narrative of Identity.” In Postco- lonial Discourses: An Anthology , edited by Gregory Castle. 190–204. London: Blackwell. Ramaswamy, Sumathi. 2010. The Goddess and the Nation: Mapping Mother India . London: Duke University Press. Ray, Sangeeta. 2000. En-Gendering India: Women and Nation in Colonial and Postcolonial Narratives . Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Roy, Anupama. 2005. Gendered Citizenship: Historical and Conceptual Explorations . New Delhi: Orient Blackswan. Sangari, Kumkum. 1991. “Discussion: ‘Women Writing in India’. By Susie Tharu.” Jour- nal of Arts and Ideas 20–21: 49–66. Accessed May 20, 2015. http://dsal.uchicago.edu/ books/artsandideas/pager.html?issue=2021&objectid=HN681.S597_20–21_051.gif. Sangari, Kumkum, and Sudesh Vaid. 1989. “Recasting Women: An Introduction.” In Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial History , edited by Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid. 1–26. New Delhi: Kali for Women. Sarkar, Tanika. 2003. Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation: Community, Religion, Cultural National- ism . New Delhi: Permanent Black. Sharma, Kumud, ed. 2012. Changing the Terms of the Discourse: Gender, Equality and the Indian State . New Delhi: Pearson. Sharma, Kumud, and C.P. Sujaya, eds. 2012. Towards Equality: Report of the Committee on the Status of Women in India . New Delhi: Pearson. Spivak, Gayatri. 1999. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Sunder Rajan, Rajeswari. 1993. Real and Imagined Women: Gender, Culture and Postcolonial- ism . London: Routledge. Sunder Rajan, Rajeswari. 1999. “Introduction.” In Signposts: Gender Issues in Post:Independence India , edited by Sunder Rajan. 1–16. New Delhi: Kali for Women. Sunder Rajan, Rajeswari. 2003. The Scandal of the State: Women, Law, and Citizenship in Postcolonial India . Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Sunder Rajan, Rajeswari. 2015. “Feminism’s Futures: The Limits and Ambitions of Rokeya’s Dream.” Economic and Political Weekly 50(41): 39–45. 32 Introduction

Tharu, Susie, and K. Lalita, eds. 1993. Women Writing in India, Volume-II . New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Werbner, Pnina, and Nira Yuval-Davis. 2005. “Women and the New Discourse of Citi- zenship.” In Women, Citizenship and Difference , edited by Yuval-Davis and Werbner. 1–38. New Delhi: Zubaan. Yuval-Davis, Nira. 1997. Gender and Nation . New Delhi: Sage Publications. Yuval-Davis, Nira. 1998. “Gender and Nation.” In Women, Ethnicity and Nationalism: The Politics of Transition , edited by Rick Wilford and Robert L. Miller. 21–31. London: Routledge. Yuval-Davis, Nira. 2011. “Power, Intersectionality and the Politics of Belonging.” Freia- Center for Gender Research . Denmark: Aalborg University 75: 1–16. https://vbn.aau. dk/files/58024503/FREIA_wp_75.pdf . Yuval-Davis, Nira, and Floya Anthias. 1989. Woman-Nation-State . London: Macmillan. Yuval-Davis, Nira, and Marcal Stoetzler. 2002. “Standpoint Theory, Situated Knowl- edges and the Situated Imagination.” Feminist Theory 3(3): 315–333. https://doi. org/10.1177/146470002762492024. 64 Women as ‘citizens’ narrative of emancipation and possibilities of constructing bonds of solidarities, compassion, empathy, sympathy, and other humane values. Thus, the birth of nation might be embroiled in a bloodbath yet one could invest an ideal of hope within this new beginning. For Devi, social transformation can emerge out of a dynamic and dialectical engagement of the personal with the political/cultural. Thus, Jyotirmoyee Devi, like Pritam, negotiates the category of nation via an overwhelming sense of surrender in the face of the grand chariot of history, which damages everything “beyond repair, replacing one king with another, crush- ing millions underfoot like insects” ( Devi 1995 , 104). Both the writers eschew playing the blame game, taking their narratives beyond and outside the narrow confines of communal conflict. Both deal with national casualties but from a marginal and gendered perspective. Thus, the women writers interrogate, cut across, overturn, and refuse to submit to the dominant narrative of a newly independent nation-state. Instead, they privilege their own subjectivities, private stories, personal memories, trauma, simultaneously exploring humane possibilities inherent in masculinities (both of men and the institutions of the nation) to contest the traditional narrative and the warped logic of the homogenised nation-state.

Notes 1 The Partition (1947) is characterised by the largest displacement of people in the Indian sub-continent. Some 12 million people were displaced in the divided Punjab and 20 million in the subcontinent as a whole. 2 Jasodhara Bagchi and Subhoranjan Dasgupta (2003 ) highlight the difference between the implications of the geographical division of the territories for the eastern and the western borders of India. It is interesting to observe that the Partition of Punjab was a one-time event characterised by colossal violence, human tragedy, and forced migration, which was restricted to the first three years between 1947 and 1950. However, the Parti- tion of Bengal turned out to be a continuous process. 3 Translated by author. Pritam, Amrita. Pinjar . New Delhi: Hindi Pocket Books, 2003. 4 Anis Kidwai was involved in social work with Muslim refugees in India. She writes of her experiences with Muslim women, “In all of this sometimes a girl would be killed or she would be wounded. The ‘good stuff’ would be shared among the police and army, the ‘second rate stuff’ would go to everyone else. And then these girls would go from one hand to another and then another and after several would turn up in hotels to grace their décor, or they would be handed over to police officers, in some places to please them” (as quoted in Butalia 1998 , 149). 5 In fact, self-annihilation and/or suicide have been majorly theorised as the only effective forms of protest women can resort to against patriarchal oppression. Rachel Giora (1997 ) in an essay suggests that “suicide and killing mark two stages of emancipation in the protest writings of women; they symbolize the way women deal with anger in the process of their liberation” (77). 6 As Datta notes, Amrita Pritam had “captured the tone of her times, for during the Partition violence the ‘rationale’ voice of a mad woman was reported in the Tribune” ( 2008 , 19). “In an atmosphere of choking communal madness in Multan” (2008 , 19),” as Datta further asserts, “the only person talking sense on the road was a mentally deranged woman, who was shouting near District Police Head Quarters thus: ‘Oh God, What has happened to these mad Hindus and Muslims! Why are they quarrelling and fighting like dogs?’” ( Datta 2008 , 19). Women as ‘citizens’ 65

7 Flavia Agnes (1999) describes the process whereby personal laws were introduced by the colonial legal system in India, The Warren Hastings Plan of 1772, provided for the establishment of civil and criminal courts in each district. The plan granted the Company jurisdiction right over the natives. The plan explicitly protected the right of Hindus and Muslims to apply their own personal laws in matters concerning inheritance, marriage, caste etc. But the charters were not clear whether the native laws of Hindus and Mus- lims referred to their religious laws or to the customary usages or to both. The communities were categorized on the basis of their religion. The customs and laws, which the English administrators had decided to save, were in turn deemed to be religious. This created a legal fiction that the laws of Hindus and Muslims are rooted in their respective scriptures and further that Hindus and Muslims are homogeneous communities following uniform laws. Furthermore, this provided no space for validating the role of customary law which has no scriptural basis and is evolved at the local level, transgressing boundaries of religious identities (43). 8 This could be further explained by referring to Dipesh Chakrabarty’s thesis in “The Difference-Deferral of (A) Colonial Modernity,” wherein he illustrates the socio-political processes, which led to the subordination of women in transition to modernity. He suggests that the institutionalisation of modern civil society in Bengal/India was accompanied by a distinction between the public and the private sphere. This distinction was pertinent in defining the role of citizen-subject in the emergent nation-state. However, in India, as Chakrabarty further reveals, “the project of creating citizen-subjects was/ is continually disrupted by other imaginations of family, personhood and the domestic” ( 1994 , 52). In fact, the civilising discourse, inspired by imperialist and later, nationalist thought, evolved certain techniques of the self, proposing how the “domestic was an inseparable part of the national” ( Chakrabarty 1994, 58). Thus, women as mothers and housewives acquired a central place within these discourses. They were entrusted with the responsibility of reconstructing the private space so that citizenship in public/ national space could be erected. In fact, it could be suggested that the independent nation-state sought to rely on these same distinctions, marginalising women within the communal, ethnic, and national collectivities. 9 Butalia refers to A. J. Fletcher’s (Commissioner, Ambala and Jalandhar divisions, and High Power Officer for Recovery of Abducted Women and Children, India) book entitled List of Non Muslim Abducted Women and Children in Pakistan and Pakistan side of Cease-Fire Line in Jammu and Kashmir State. The families had reported about their missing women. The book was published to facilitate recovery of abducted persons. 10 Article 38 of the “Directive Principles of the State’s Policy” aims to perform the welfare of citizen subjects.

References Agnes, Flavia. 1999. Law and Gender Inequality: The Politics of Women’s Rights in India . New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Aloysius, G. 1997. Nationalism without a Nation in India . New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism . New York: Verso. Bagchi, Jasodhara. 1995. “Introduction.” The River Churning . By Jyotirmoyee Devi. Trans- lated by Enakshi Chatterjee. xxv–xxxiii. New Delhi: Kali for Women. Bagchi, Jasodhara. 2003. “Freedom in an Idiom of Loss.” In The Trauma and the Triumph: Gender and Partition in Eastern India , edited by Jasodhara Bagchi and Subhoranjan Das- gupta. 17–29. Kolkata: Stree. 66 Women as ‘citizens’

Bagchi, Jasodhara, and Subhoranjan Dasgupta, eds. 2003. The Trauma and the Triumph: Gender and Partition in Eastern India . Kolkata: Stree. Boehmer, Elleke. 2005. Stories of Women: Gender and Narrative in the Postcolonial Nation . New York: Manchester University Press. Bradbury, Peter. 1992. “Sexuality and Male Violence.” In Men, Sex and Relationships: Writ- ings from Achilles Heel , edited by Victor J. Seidler. 155–170. London: Routledge. Butalia, Urvashi. 1998. The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India . New Delhi: Penguin Books. Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 1994. “The Difference-Deferral of (A) Colonial Modernity: Public Debates on Domesticity in British Bengal.” In Subaltern Studies: Essays in Honour of Ranajit Guha , Volume 8, edited by David Arnold and David Hardiman. 50–88. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 1996. “Remembered Villages: Representation of Hindu Bengali Mem- ories in the Aftermath of the Partition.” Economic and Political Weekly 31(32): 2143–2151. Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2002. “Memories of Displacement: The Poetry and Prejudice of Dwelling.” In Habitations of Modernity: Essays in the Wake of Subaltern Studies . New Delhi: Permanent Black. Chaudhuri, Maitrayee. 2004. “The Indian Women’s Movement.” In Feminism in India , edited by Maitrayee Chaudhuri. 117–133. New Delhi: Kali for Women. Chawla, Devika. 2014. Home, Uprooted: Oral Histories of India’s Partition . New York: Ford- ham University Press. Daniel, E. Valentine. 1996. Charred Lullabies: Chapters in an Anthropology of Violence . Prince- ton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Das, Veena. 1995. Critical Events: An Anthropological Perspective on Contemporary India . New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Das, Veena. 2007. Life and Words: Descent into the Ordinary . London: University of Cali- fornia Press. Datta, Nonica. 2008. “Transcending Religious Identities: Amrita Pritam and Partition.” In Partitioned Lives: Narratives of Home, Displacement, and Resettlement , edited by Anjali Gera Roy and Nandi Bhatia. 1–25. New Delhi: Pearson Longman. Devi, Jyotirmoyee. 1995. The River Churning . Translated by Enakshi Chatterjee. New Delhi: Kali for Women. Didur, Jill. 2007. Unsettling Partition: Literature, Gender, Memory . Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Giora, Rachel. 1997. “Feminist Awareness and Narrative Change: Suicide and Murder as Transitional Stages toward Autonomy in Women’s Protest Writings.” Israel Social Science Research 12(1): 73–92. Gopal, Priyamvada. 2005. Literary Radicalism in India: Gender, Nation and the Transition to Independence . New York: Routledge. Government of India. 1956. The Second Five-Year Plan . New Delhi: Planning Commission. Greenberg, Jonathan D. 2008. “Against Silence and Forgetting.” In Partitioned Lives: Nar- ratives of Home, Displacement, and Resettlement , edited by Anjali Gera Roy and Nandi Bhatia.255–271. New Delhi: Pearson Longman. Gupta, Charu. 2005. Sexuality, Obscenity, Community: Women, Muslims and the Hindu Pub- lic in Colonial India . New Delhi: Permanent Black. Kasturi, Leela. 2004. “Report of the Sub-Committee, Women’s Role in Planned Econ- omy, National Planning Committee Series (1947).” In Feminism in India , edited by Maitrayee Chaudhuri. 136–155. New Delhi: Kali for Women. Kaul, Suvir. 1995. “Separation Anxiety: Growing Up Inter/National in The Shadow Lines .” In The Shadow Lines . By Amitav Gosh. 268–286. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Women as ‘citizens’ 67

Kidwai, Anis. 2011. In Freedom’s Shade . Translated by Ayesha Kidwai. New Delhi: Pen- guin Books India. Menon, Ritu, and Kamla Bhasin. 1998. Borders and Boundaries: Women in India’s Partition . New Delhi: Women Unlimited. Mookerjea-Leonard, Debali. 2003. “Disenfranchised Bodies: Jyotirmoyee Devi’s Writ- ings on the Partition.” Genders Journal . University of Colorado 38(2003): n.pag. Accessed May 24, 2013. www.colorado.edu/gendersarchive1998-2013/2003/12/01/ disenfranchised-bodies-jyotirmoyee-devis-writings-partition . Mookerjea-Leonard, Debali. 2004. “Quarantined: Women and the Partition.” Compara- tive Studies of South Asia , Africa , and the Middle East 24(1): 33–46. Mookerjea-Leonard, Debali. 2005. “Divided Homelands, Hostile Homes: Partition, Women and Homelessness.” Journal of Commonwealth Literature, edited by Malashri Lal and Sukrita Paul Kumar 40(2): 141–154. Pandey, Gyanendra. 1994. “The Prose of Otherness.” In Subaltern Studies , Volume 8, edited by David Arnold and David Hardiman. 188–221. New Delhi: Oxford Uni- versity Press. Pritam, Amrita. 2003. Pinjar . New Delhi: Hindi Pocket Books. Roy, Anupama. 2005. Gendered Citizenship: Historical and Conceptual Explorations . New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan. Sarhadi Raj, Dhooleka. 2000. “Ignorance, Forgetting, and Family Nostalgia: Partition, the Nation State and Refugees in Delhi.” Social Analysis 44(2): 30–55. Sarkar, Tanika. 1991. “The Woman as Communal Subject: Rashtrasevika Samiti and Ram Janmabhoomi Movement.” Economic and Political Weekly 26(35): 2057–2062. Sharma, Kumud, and C.P. Sujaya, eds. 2012. Towards Equality: Report of the Committee on the Status of Women in India . New Delhi: Pearson. Srivastava, Sanjay. 2015. “Masculinity Studies and Feminism: Othering the Self.” Eco- nomic and Political Weekly 50(20): 33–36. Sunder Rajan, Rajeswari. 1993. Real and Imagined Women: Gender, Culture and Postcolonial- ism . London: Routledge. Tharu, Susie, and Tejaswini Niranjana. 1999. “Problem for a Contemporary Theory of Gender.” In Gender and Politics in India , edited by Nivedita Menon. 494–525. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Yuval-Davis, Nira. 1997. Gender and Nation . New Delhi: Sage Publications. Zamindar, Vazira Fazila Yocoobali. 2008. The Long Partition and the Making of Modern South Asia: Refugees, Boundaries, Histories . New Delhi: Penguin Books India. 94 Feminist negotiation of autarchy knowing and therefore resisting subject” ( Thapan 1996 , 11)? All these questions shall be explored in the next chapter.

Notes 1 There were a few women writers who moved beyond their personal pain and predica- ment to talk about the distortions in the system. Mannu Bhandari strongly asserts in the preface to her novel Mahabhoj (1979), “At a time when your house is set on fire, to get immersed in one’s inner world or to only publicise about that would seem divorced from social reality, humorous and to an extent vulgar.” 2 For instance, the data on the socio-economic profile of adivasis/tribals in India shows that “maternal mortality (between 8 and 25 per 1,000) among them is more than double the rates in the advanced regions of the country. Similarly, the infant mortality rates are between 120 and 150, which is more than double the all-India average of 55” ( Sagar 2006 , 3176–3177). 3 It is evident in the uprising in Punjab in the 1980s and Kashmir and the North East to date. 4 See Government of India. n.d. “The Fifth Five Year Plan.” Planning Commission . Accessed 12 June 2012. Planningcommission.gov.in. Also, the foreword to the Fifth Development Plan mentioned previously makes more sense in the light of Indira Gandhi’s broadcast to the nation on 26 June 1975. I am sure you are conscious of the deep and widespread conspiracy, which has been brewing ever since I began to introduce certain progressive measures of benefit to the common man and woman of India. In the name of democracy it has been sought to negate the very functioning of democracy . . . certain persons have gone to the length of inciting our armed forces to mutiny and our police to rebel. . . . The forces of disintegration are in full play and communal passions are being aroused, threatening our unity. . . . Any situation which weakens the capacity of the national government to act decisively inside the country is bound to encour- age dangers from outside. It is our paramount duty to safeguard unity and stability. The nation’s integrity demands firm action (as quoted in Tickell 1998 , 220). 5 In fact, it was triggered by the publication of the Towards Equality: Report of the Com- mittee on the Status of Women in India in 1974. As discussed in the “Introduction,” the report exposed how the institutional structures of the nation had systematically sidelined women from its policymaking and governance post-independence, affecting their already vulnerable status within the immediate familial and patriarchal setup. 6 This was especially witnessed when a band of revolutionaries, on the 18th of April, 1920, set out to capture police and destroy the Telegraph office, performing exemplary assassinations of Europeans by bombing their club. The romantic appeal of the club soon attracted women “who from this time onwards, are found assisting the terrorists as house- keepers, messengers, custodians of arms and sometimes as comrades” (Kumar 1993, 85). 7 In 1948, India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru instituted a subcommittee of the Assembly, entrusting it with the task of drafting the Hindu Code Bill. The first Law Minister of India, Dr B. R. Ambedkar, was nominated as the head of this committee. The Bill was submitted to the Assembly on 17 September 1951. The provi- sions of the Bill included “issues such as abolition of birth right to property, property by survivorship, half share for daughters, conversion of women’s limited estate into an absolute estate, abolition of caste in matters of marriage and adoption, and the principle of monogamy and divorce” (Rege, as quoted in Sarkar 2016 , 192). 8 As the debates on the institution of the Hindu Code Bill reveal, “The [members of ] All-India Hindu Mahasabha was quite vocal in their dislike of monogamy imposed upon the Hindu society as a law. Many of its members linked polygamy to the male issue by the first wife, ‘a man should be able to take a second wife, unless he has a male issue by the first wife. If he has a male issue, monogamy should be enforced’” ( Sinha 2007 , 55). Feminist negotiation of autarchy 95

9 According to Section 494 of the Indian Penal Code, a person guilty of bigamy shall be punished with simple or rigorous imprisonment for a term up to seven years, and shall also be liable to fine. But there are certain structural chinks in the law like bigamy being a non-cognisable offence, which makes it difficult to implicate the aggressor. 10 The CSWI has rightly observed that “secondary education, even now, is largely confined to the upper and the middle classes, in urban areas. However, some of the richer and more aristocratic families remain aloof to women’s education even today” (Sharma and Sujaya 2012 , 182). 11 The Towards Equality report notes, “During the debate in the Lok Sabha, Mitakshara coparcenery was described as a ‘tottering’ structure on account of the ‘shattering’ blows delivered to it by enactments from time to time and no useful purpose will be served by retaining it. The opposition argued that though ‘battered and bruised’ it could still play a useful role” ( Sharma and Sujaya 2012 , 103, footnote 221). 12 An amendment proposed by the Government spelt out the details more clearly as it suggested: ‘No Hindu shall have any right to or interest in (a) Any property of an ancestor during his lifetime merely by reason of the fact that he is born in the family of the ancestor, or (b) Any joint family property which is founded on the rule of the survivorship.’ (Sharma and Sujaya 2012 , 103) 13 Post 1975, the onus of family planning has been on women. Out of every 100 women following any so-called modern method, 75 have been sterilised. This also hints at the systematic policy initiatives of the donor bodies, which sponsored research and development, with the sole focus on making women responsible for family planning ( Bagchi 2005 , 34). 14 In fact, women are culturally trained to perceive certain conditions, like maternity, backache, body ache as “a natural state of being rather than conditions requiring medical attention and cure” ( Padma 2005 , 446). Thus, they tolerate suffering. 15 Kuldip Nayar (2011) recounts his experience of the Emergency in “Indira Gandhi’s India”: “At the instance of Sanjay Gandhi, Indira Gandhi introduced forced sterilisation. Many above the age of 65 were sterilised and even boys who had hardly entered puberty became victims” The Express Tribune 28 June 2011.

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Banerjee, Sumanata. 1984. India’s Simmering Revolution: The Naxalite Uprising . London: Zed Books. Accessed November 22, 2013. Tamilnation.org. Banerjee, Sumanata. 2002. “Naxalbari: Between Past and Future.” Economic and Political Weekly 37(22): 2115–2116. Bhandari, Mannu. 2010. Mahabhoj . New Delhi: Radhakrishna Publications. Bhattacharya, Malini. 1997. “Mahasweta Devi: Activist and Writer.” Economic and Political Weekly 32(19): 1003. Chakravarty, Radha. 2008. Feminism and Contemporary Women Authors: Rethinking Subjectivity . New Delhi: Routledge. Devi, Mahasweta. 2011. Mother of 1084 . Translated by Samik Bandyopadhyay. Calcutta: Seagull Books. Garg, Mridula. 2007. “Women as Society in Literature.” In Growing Up as a Woman Writer , edited by Jasbir Jain. 354–360. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi. Government of India. n.d. “The Fifth Five Year Plan.” Planning Commission. Accessed June 12, 2012. Planningcommission.gov.in. Government of India. 2013. “Naxal Management Division.” The Ministry of Home Affairs . Accessed December 22, 2013. mha.nic.in. Jain, Jasbir. 2011. Indigenous Roots of Feminism: Culture, Subjectivity and Agency . New Delhi: Sage Publications. Kapur, Promilla. 1970. Marriage and the Working Women in India . New Delhi: Vikas Publishing. Kaviraj, Sudipta. 2010. The Trajectories of the Indian State . Ranikhet: Permanent Black. Kishwar, Madhu. 1979. “Towards Redefining Ourselves and the Society We Live In.” Manushi Issue 1 . New Delhi: Manushi Trust. Accessed May 23, 2012. manushi-india.org. Kumar, Radha. 1993. The History of Doing . New Delhi: Kali for Women. Menon, Ritu. 2014. “Voice of Dissent: Nayantara Sahgal’s Battle with Indira Gandhi.” The Caravan: A Journal of Politics and Culture . Accessed March 13, 2016. caravanmagazine.in. Mohanty, Manoranjan. 2006. “Challenges of Evolutionary Violence: The Naxalite Move- ment in Perspective.” Economic and Political Weekly 41(29): 3163–3168. Mondal, Anshuman. 2003. Nationalism and Post-Colonial Identity . New York: Routledge Curzon. Nair, Janaki. 1996. “‘Social Reform’ and the Women’s Question.” In Women and Law in Colonial India: A Social History . 49–94. New Delhi: Kali for Women. Nanda, Mini. 1996. “Power Structure in Nayantara Sahgal’s Rich Like Us .” In Women’s Writing: Text and Context , edited by Jasbir Jain. 180–188. Jaipur: Rawat Publication. Nayar, Kuldip. 2011. “Indira Gandhi’s India.” The Express Tribune , 28 June. Padma, Rama G. 2005. “Perceptions on Safe Motherhood: An Analysis of Results from Rural Andhra Pradesh.” Economic and Political Weekly 40(5): 465–473. Sagar. 2006. “The Spring and Its Thunder.” Economic and Political Weekly 41(29): 3176–3178. Sahgal, Nayantara. 2010. Rich Like Us . New Delhi: Harper Collins. Sarkar, Moumita. 2016. “Gendering Caste through Ambedkar’s Writings.” In Women and Empowerment in Contemporary India , edited by Brati Biswas and Ranjana Kaul. 182–193. New Delhi: Worldview. Seidler, Victor. 1992. “Men, Sex and Relationships.” In Men, Sex and Relationships: Writ- ings from Achilles Heel , edited by Victor J. Seidler. 1–26. London: Routledge. Sharma, Kumud, and C.P. Sujaya, eds. 2012. Towards Equality: Report of the Committee on the Status of Women in India . New Delhi: Pearson. Singer, Michael. 1992. “Sexism and Male Sexuality.” In Men, Sex and Relationships: Writings from Achilles Heel , edited by Victor J. Seidler. 51–64. London: Routledge. Feminist negotiation of autarchy 97

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Notes 1 Justice Verma Committee was constituted on 23 December 2012. It was comprised of retired Justice J.S. Verma, retired Justice Leila Seth, and Solicitor General Gopal Subra- manian. The Committee suggested possible amendments in the criminal laws related to sexual violence against women. 2 Women would still give away their rightful share in the property in favour of their broth- ers. Srimati Basu states that “women’s decisions to give up their property rights implied that they were locked in a patriarchal system where they ‘maximised their short-term priorities at the cost of undermining their long-term material interests, and feelings of love and loyalty toward parents and the natal family were enacted in ways that bolstered male privilege’” (as quoted in Majumdar 2003 , 2130). 3 Seemanthini Niranjana has termed the process of constructing female sexuality within the hierarchical grids of gender roles as a ‘matrix of sexualisation’ in her essay “Bodily Matrices” in Mala Khullar, ed. 2005. Writing the Women’s Movement: A Reader. New Delhi: Zubaan. 4 Translated by author. Garg, Mridula. 2013. Chittacobra . New Delhi: Rajkamal Prakashan. 5 As noted by the Towards Equality report in its analysis of the Hindu Marriage Act 1955, “the various grounds on which a husband or a wife can obtain divorce are (a) living in adultery (b) conversion to other religion (c) insanity (d) incurable form of leprosy (e) venereal disease (f) renunciation, (g) where the respondent has not been heard of as being alive for a period of seven years or more . . . (h) failure to resume cohabitation for a period of two years after the decree of judicial separation” (Sharma and Sujaya 2012, 89). 6 On 30 April 2015, the then Minister of State for Home, Haribhai Parathibhai Chaudhary said in response to a written question by DMK’s K Kanimozhi in Rajya Sabha that the concept of marital rape does not apply in India. Press Trust of India reports Chaudhary’s comments in this regard: “It is considered that the concept of marital rape, as understood internationally, cannot be suitably applied in the Indian context due to various factors, including level of education, illiteracy, poverty, myriad social customs and values, religious beliefs, mindset of society to treat marriage as a sacrament.” See for details – Press Trust of India. “Marriage Sacred In India, So Marital Rape Does Not Apply: Gov- ernment.” NDTV.com . Accessed 17 August 2015. https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/ marriage-sacred-in-india-so-marital-rape-does-not-apply-government-759219 . 7 Virilocality is constructed as the norm, which necessitates women’s migration from one family to another and demands utmost sexual purity, accountability, and loyalty from women. “Constructed ‘feminine’ virtues are used to mask the politics of marital relationships, which are discriminatory and hierarchical” ( Dhawan 2011 , 159). 8 For instance, in the late 1970s and 1980s, most of the campaigns initiated by the Indian women’s movement dwelt on issues of domestic violence, dowry, rape, sexual assault, sex determination, female infanticide, so on and so forth, calling for suitable amendments in laws against such violence. Their weakness was evident in the way they sought solutions for such violence within the existing patriarchal framework, reducing women’s sexuality as an adjunct to major discussions on violence against women. It was rarely acknowledged that sexuality is integrally related to women’s expression of their self and identity. 9 Mridula Garg’s Chittacobra was banned in 1980 under charges of obscenity (Section 292 of the IPC). The novel was especially under the moral scanner of conservative section Negotiating structural inequalities 127

of the intelligentsia and writers as it was one of the foremost creative works, written by a woman writer to talk about women’s sexuality in a frank and honest manner. Police attempted to arrest her one Friday evening from her house. She was later granted bail. 10 “According to the Census of 1971, the total number of divorced or separated women in the country is estimated to be 8,70,700; of which 7,43,200 are in the rural areas and 1,27,500 in urban areas” ( Sharma and Sujaya 2012 , 88). 11 According to Amit Anand Choudhary’s report in The Times of India (3 December 2015), the Supreme Court has recently declined divorce by mutual consent to a couple who decided to part ways because the wife had breast cancer. The court stated that the husband is duty-bound to take care of his wife during difficult times. However, the court also ruled that this moral duty of the husband towards the wife emerges from the fact that marriage is a sacred institution. Choudhary relates, “To a Hindu wife her husband is her God and her life becomes one of selfless service and profound dedication to her husband. . . . Hindu marriage is a sacred and holy union of the husband and wife by virtue of which the wife is completely transplanted in the household of her husband and takes a new birth.” Thus, the institutions of the nation have not been able to deal with the deeper disparities in gender relations, thereby displaying a paternalistic attitude. 12 Translated by author. Bhandari, Mannu. 2012. Aapka Bunty. New Delhi: Radhakrishna Publications. 13 Nirmala Banerjee (1998 ) states in an essay that the official policies in independent India showed no interest in women as workers. “Instead the first plan resolved to provide women with adequate services necessary to fulfil what was called ‘a woman’s legitimate role within the family’” (WS-4). 14 After Independence, Nehru, in capacity of the first PM of the country went to address a girls’ college in New Delhi in 1950 and said in his speech, “Women are chiefly responsible for running the home and should know how to do this in an orderly and aesthetic way. Women’s education was important for making better homes, better family and better society” (as quoted in Banerjee 1998 , WS-6) . 15 This provision has been abolished in a landmark judgement delivered by the Supreme Court of India in September 2018. A five-judge Constitution bench upheld gender justice, declaring that “Adultery cannot and should not be a crime. . . . It’s time to say that husband is not the master of the woman” ( NDTV 27 September 2018). www.ndtv. com/india-news/adultery-law-is-arbitrary-says-chief-justice-dents-the-individuality- of-women-1922922 (last accessed on 20 January 2019). 16 Women are often denied alimonies on grounds that they failed to be ‘good wives’ (read loyal and self-sacrificing) and mothers. Section 10 of the Indian Divorce Act, 1869, pro- vides that a husband may petition for divorce on the basis of his wife’s adultery alone, but that a wife may only petition for divorce on the basis of her husband’s adultery coupled with desertion, cruelty, rape, incest, or bigamy. The judicial interpretation of this law reeks of its patriarchal bias and moral regulation of women’s sexuality (Kapur and Cross- man 1996 , 187). 17 Judith Butler (1990) highlights the performative aspect of gender thus: “The substantive effect of gender is performatively produced and compelled by the regulatory practices of gender coherence” (33). 18 The Towards Equality report also mentions this based on a survey conducted by the Committee: “In the middle classes, distinction between femininity and masculinity gets crystallized for the children in the pattern of domestic responsibilities, distribution of financial resources and planning for the future. Domestic work is the domain of women and in very few families, are boys asked to share it” ( Sharma and Sujaya 2012 , 64). 19 Nira Yuval-Davis (1997) offers a critique of the Malthusian discourse, which has not just been an “ideological discourse but has become a cornerstone of population policies in many Third World countries themselves, as a major strategy to try and solve those countries’ economic and social problems. There is a fear of destabilization of the economic and political system if the balance between the supply and demand for labour power is seriously threatened as a result of ‘uncontrollable’ growth in the population” (33). 128 Negotiating structural inequalities

20 According to the Towards Equality report, “Amongst the well-to-do also, the spheres of men and women are well-defined and separate. With domestic help, the burden of drudgery does not fall on the woman, but she is still expected to run the home and bring up the children” ( Sharma and Sujaya 2012 , 63). The report, surprisingly, does not take up any detailed analysis of the conditions of women who work as domestic help in the unorganised private sector of the economy. 21 Mary John (1998) proposes the idea of unequal patriarchies and disparate genders, suggesting how gender asymmetry is inflected by caste, class, and religion. 22 In fact, as research reveals, “widows had little choice. They were easy victims and a social eyesore – adultery, illicit relationships, increase in prostitution, abortion deaths were often associated with young widows. . . . Thus, they were sent to places of pilgrimage in Varanasi, Vrindavan, Mathura and Navadwip to live on small monthly allowances” (Ghosh 2000, 1151). 23 Manusmriti advocated for perpetual and celibate widowhood, Let her emaciate her body by living on pure flowers roots and fruits: but she must never even mention the name of another man after her husband has died. Until her death let her be patient of hardships, self-controlled and chaste and strive to fulfil that most excellent duty which is prescribed for wives who have only one husband . (as quoted in Chakravarti 1995, 2251) 24 It systematically trains women into believing that it’s somehow their fault and they must punish themselves for having lost their husband. Uma Chakravarti (1995 ) states, “The fate that befalls a widow is believed to be deserved. Expected to pray daily that she should predecease her husband, a woman if widowed is considered to be at fault. ‘It ate up its husband’ is what people would say. A symbol of inauspiciousness, she can no longer participate in the domestic ceremonies that form a part of women’s culture” (2254). 25 The 1980s witnessed a rise of the extreme right that led to curbing the rights of women and other minorities. Caste and communal identities were reinforced in the name of upholding tradition. For example, the head priest of Hindu temples at Benaras and Puri issued state- ments that Sati was one of the noblest elements of Hinduism (Kumar 1993 , 174). Thus, religious fundamentalists not only rationalised oppression of women but also mobilised others in support of the oppression. The Marwari funded Rani Sati Organisation (mis)appropriated the feminist discourse to propagate a cult of widow immolation from 1982–83. 26 The contentious interpretations of the Widow Remarriage Act (1856) led to an increase in the incidents of property retention. Prem Chowdhry (1989) explains this, saying that the chadar chadana / kareva was practised among the Jat community to retain the property within the family. Under the system of kareva , the brother-in-law/father- in-law could marry the widow. Britishers endorsed such acts because Jats were among the main communities of peasants who would deposit huge amounts of revenue. Inter- estingly, widow remarriage was more or less allowed as per indigenous customs of such communities. 27 The list of villages included two each in West Bengal, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala. 28 They would legitimise their stakes in the land under the Mitakshara coparcenary system and/or by offering excuses like they spent money on the widow’s husband’s death cer- emony or on her children’s maintenance ( Chen and Dreze 1995 , 2439). 29 The Widows in India conference was organised in Bangalore during March 1994. 30 As Marty Chen and Jean Dreze explain, “A comprehensive treatment of the inheritance rights of widows would have to distinguish between statutory law, customary law, and actual practice” ( 1995 , 2439). 31 The Towards Equality report mentions that there were six lakh women teachers as indi- cated by the Census of India, 1971. Nurses and midwives constituted to around 1.55 Negotiating structural inequalities 129

lakh. Moreover, their ratio to men was the highest in this field, that is, 72.7 per cent. Both these professions were accorded a high status in society and could elicit a greater degree of public cooperation ( Sharma and Sujaya 2012 , 159). 32 One of the reasons why respectability is attached to women who are teachers, as the TE report interestingly notes, “Middle class families prefer to see women in this profession more than any other. One of the reasons for this is perhaps, because it gives women comparatively more time for her household duties, with more vacations and limited hours of work” ( Sharma and Sujaya 2012 , 159). Alternatively, there are taboos attached to nursing and it includes night work also, but the fact that it is considered a noble profession, aimed at healing people, makes it not only acceptable but respectable as well. 33 The amendment passed to the Hindu Succession Act, 1956, in 2005 has ensured that daughters can also be coparceners and claim their right of inheritance in Hindu Undi- vided Family’s (HUF) property. However, other women members like mothers and daughters-in-law, who come into family by virtue of marriage, have no right to be coparceners and cannot ask for the partition of HUF property. 34 I have borrowed this title from the sequel to the Towards Equality report, which was published in 2001. It was authored by Sarala Gopalan. 35 According to Girija Vyas (2009–10), bhajan ashrams are a world unto themselves and some say that they are simply an encouragement for more women to flock to the city and for the management to convert their black money into white. The government authorities have no control over the operation of these bhajan ashrams. However, the government authorities have opened ration shops there as bhajan ashrams are key places for reaching this (widows’) population. The women go to bhajan ashrams in shifts of 6–10 a.m., 10–3 p.m., 3–7 p.m. For each four hours shift they receive Rs. 3 at the Bhagwan bhajan ashram and Rs. 3 plus 100 gm dal and rice at Balaji (Vyas 2010 , 6). Considering the fact that they received 37 paise in 1970s and 1980s, one can realise the extreme levels of destitution faced by such women. 36 The amount of monthly pension received at present is Rs. 300. One could imagine how much it would have been in the 1980s. 37 According to Aarti Dhar’s report in The Hindu on 8 January 2012, in a survey by the Dis- trict Legal Services Authority (DLSA) on the “Plight of Forsaken/Forlorn Women – Old and Widows Living in Vrindavan and Radius,” it was revealed how “the bodies of widows who died in government-run shelter homes in Vrindavan were being taken away by sweepers at night, cut into pieces, put into jute bags and disposed off as the institutions do not have any provision for a decent funeral. This, too, is done only after the inmates give money to the sweeper!” It is horrifying to realise that the concerns about widows, raised by Goswami in the novel, have not been sorted out till date and, in fact, have acquired hideous proportions in reality. 38 After the news report, highlighting the miserable plight of Vrindavan widows, was published in The Hindu , Justice Altamash Kabir, Executive Chairperson of the National Legal Service Authority, asked the U.P. State Legal Services Authority to survey the conditions of the women at Mathura, Vrindavan in Uttar Pradesh. Interestingly, the report Widows at Vrindavan published in 2009–10 focusses on the same problems that were highlighted by the CSWI in 1974. Thus there has been no major change in their deplorable circumstances. However, such an action, that is, abandonment of the women by their families or children is now actionable under Section 24 of the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act, 2007. 39 In addition to this, a study conducted by TN Kitchulu (1995) revealed that nearly 34.4 per cent widows have been experiencing general weakness in their health. 12 per cent are suffering from mental depression and 8.2 percent from mental tension. Many others complained of frequent headaches, blood pressure, disturbed sleep, asthama, and heart trouble, including fits ( Ranjan 2001 , 4091). 130 Negotiating structural inequalities

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Notes 1 Translated by author. Saraogi, Alka. 1998. Kali-Katha: Via Bypass . Haryana: Aadhar Prakashan. 2 “The ekatmata yajna organised by the Vishva Hindu Parishad in 1983 conducted 47 sub- sidiary yatras and it is claimed that participants number 60 million in India.” There was also international participation by Hindu communities in Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Mauritius who sent ‘holy water’ from their local rivers ( Deshpande 2000 , 203). 3 The socio-political implications of the Mandal recommendations unfurled the exclusionary biases inherent in the upper caste, middle class rung of society. Young women were out on the streets protesting against reservation on caste basis but this time their visibility signified a regimented, socially conservative engagement with the gendered habitus. They said they didn’t want to marry unemployed bachelors. It was a very clear stand for the endogamic stratification of society, exposing the caste-class biases that had been accompanying the development model. Similarly, the Anti-Sikh riots in Delhi, 1984, too could not be taken simply as a retributive measure in response to the assassina- tion of the former primeminister Indira Gandhi. It too was sutured to the new forms of politicisation and regionalism in which autonomy and resistance towards being “subsumed within the national frame” ( John 1996 , 3072) were implicit. 4 Usha K.R. mentions the popular belief in this regard: “It is believed that when Kempe Gowda was building the city wall, he found that they kept falling down again and again. The goddess, it was said, was displeased and would be pacified with nothing less than the sacrifice of a pregnant woman. Kempe Gowda was in a fix, and so his elder daughter- in-law Lakshamma offered to give herself and her unborn to the goddess. After that, the walls stood firm” (Usha 2010 , 31). 5 The aforesaid bill has lapsed. However, the Niti Ayog in a report (2016), submitted to the Prime Minister Office, New Delhi, has advocated to permit the entry of foreign education providers in India and suggested that a new law could be framed to regulate the operations of such universities in the country. Thus, the objectives and the vision of the lapsed bill and the newly proposed law appear to be similar in spirit. 6 “Despite the Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act 1994, prohibiting sex determination and sex selection, the use of ultrasound and sex selective abortion was pervasive, with local doctors, gynaecologists, radiologists and obstetricians, nurses, auxiliary nurse midwives and other medical personnel all benefiting monetarily” ( John et al. 2009 , 17). 7 One of such researches was conducted in the districts of Kangra (Himachal Pradesh), Fatehgarh Saheb (Punjab), Rohtak (Haryana), Dhaulpur (Rajasthan), and Morena (Madhaya Pradesh) in as late as 2003–05 by Mary E. John, Ravinder Kaur, Rajni Palri- wala, and Saraswati Raju. 160 Economic liberalisation

8 Though the mean age of marriage has increased over the years, it also entails the sheer lengthening of the period for which the natal family must support a daughter. “With persisting structures of patrilineal descent, patrilineal inheritance and post-marital resi- dence patterns, young couples got to live with the husband’s family; sons continue the family line and inherit property. . . . Daughters are not expected to support their parents materially, and certainly not married daughters” ( John et al. 2009 , 18). 9 According to Sona Mitra’s (2006 ) research on the pattern of women’s employment in urban India, The organised public sector employment growth rate dropped from 2.4 per cent between 1981–90 and only 0.3 per cent in 1990–2000. While there were increases in the rate of growth of employment in the private organised sector from about 0.3 per cent in 1981–90 to 1.3 per cent in 1990–2000, on the whole such increases were not enough to compensate for the loss of public employment. (5008) 10 Globalisation and SAP have brought in concerns about the feminisation of poverty, threatening to create economic and social divisions among women. “The rounds of the NSS done in the mid-1990s point to the growing disparities despite the high economic growth. Since the majority of women are in the informal sector, they are excluded from the new economic drive” ( Ghadially 2007 , 18–19). 11 A central feature of individualisation is the fact that employees do not have a collective identity as workers or as employees, nor do they collectively negotiate with management on common issues. The software engineers and IT workers can only deal with the consequent job insecurity by becoming “‘entrepreneurial’ workers . . . who fashion their own careers. . . . Under the new dispensation, workers are responsible for their own economic security and careers by continually re-outfitting themselves with new skills in order to be saleable in the job market” ( Upadhya and Vasavi 2008 , 24). 12 “To help them do this, most software companies offer ‘soft skills’ training programmes in subjects such as time management, self-actualisation, personality development, assertive- ness, emotional intelligence and communication skills” ( Upadhya and Vasavi 2008 , 25). 13 Estimates given by Sundaram (2001) reveal that the “overall share of retail trade in total employment in the service sector increased from 20 per cent in 1993–94 to about 27 per cent in 1999–2000 and the share of retail trade in women’s employment increased from approximately 20 per cent in 1993–94 to 24 per cent in 1999–2000. It can therefore be concluded that in the 1990s, the increased activities in the trade sector mainly revolved around retail trade. More often, in the case of women, this kind of retailing boils down to street vending and petty selling of a whole range of items from green vegetables to ‘paan,’ beedi and cigarette” (as quoted in Mitra 2006 , 5007).

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The analysis of the two novels reveals that both Bama and Salma expose the lateral connections and influences, which have kept women under aggressive, hostile, and oppressive patriarchal regimes. In inscribing their rebellion against the wider dialectics of political forces, these women writers demystify the dominant patriarchal constructions of the nation-state, thereby paving the way for an egalitarian future. Their writings also underline the need for a feminist engagement across religious, communal, and caste/class barriers. As Yuval-Davis (1997) suggests, it calls for cooperation and solidarity among feminists, who may be “positioned differently in different societies” (125) but are willing to work towards achieving certain common goals.

Notes 1 The term ‘Dalit,’ as defined by Lakshmi Holmstrom in the Introduction to Bama’s Sangati ( 2012) “comes from Marathi and meaning ‘oppressed’ or ‘ground down’” (xii). Though the term has its own issues, it has been appropriated for particular reasons: “it does away with reference to caste, and points to a different kind of nation-wide constituency; specifically it signals the militancy of the Dalit Panthers, their broad definition of ‘Dalit’ and their professed hope of solidarity with all oppressed groups” (xii). The 1972 manifesto of the Dalit Panthers, quoted in Tamil by Gail Omvedt’s “Dalit Peenterkal, Tamil ilak- kiyam, penkal” (“Dalit Panthers, Tamil Literature, women”), asserts: “ Who are Dalits?All Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, neo-Buddhists, labourers, landless and destitute peasants, women, and all those who have been exploited politically and economically and in the name of religion are Dalits” (as quoted in Holmstrom 2012, xii). 2 However, according to the latest development on this issue, as reported by TheIndian Express, dated 21 April 2015 in “Allow Christians to Divorce After 1-year Separation: Supreme Court,” the Indian Parliament has created a provision for divorce in the Chris- tian community “under Section 10 A (1) of the Divorce Act, which lays down that a petition for dissolution of marriage by mutual consent can be presented before a court only after a judicial separation of two years.” The Supreme Court, however, has stated in a ruling recently that “since the corresponding period for other communities is just one year, the Central government could consider bringing in necessary amendments” to this effect in the context of the Christian community as well. 3 These two statutes regulated Christian law in colonial India. As Tasneem Shahnaaz (2016 ) states, “The Indian Divorce Act recognised adultery as the only reason for dis- solving or annulling a marriage and the second, the Indian Christian Marriage Act 1872 recognised and regulated marriages” (131). 4 Veena Talwar Oldenburg (2002) has argued that in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, dowry was the only independent material resource over which women had partial, if not total control. It was perceived as a means of providing recourse to any emergency, besides securing the best possible match for the daughter. However, the voluntary aspect of dowry was soon turned into a catalyst for marital conflict and violence owing to the faulty colonial policy of privatising land ownership into exclusively male hands, thereby exerting intense economic pressure on the indigenous elite. Eventually, dowry became one of the core set of patriarchal arrangements, acceptable to all denominations among the propertied classes. 5 According to Sharmila Rege, “a Dalit feminist standpoint is seen as emancipatory since the subject of its knowledge is embodied and visible (i.e. the thought begins from the lives of Dalit women and these lives are present and visible in the results of the thought)” ( 1998 , WS-45). 6 According to Nambissan, “Personal narratives of dalits educated just three decades ago offer glimpses of untouchability blatantly practised in schools – SC students being asked 194 Writings from the margins

to sit separately from their classmates, refused drinking water or served in broken cups, made to dine separately and so on” (1996 , 1018). Moreover, their copies were not col- lected and corrected due to fear of pollution. 7 Article 17 of the Indian Constitution reads, “‘Untouchability’ is abolished and its prac- tise in any form is forbidden. The enforcement of any disability arising out of ‘untouchability’ shall be an offence in accordance with the law.” 8 Amartya Sen has differentiated between the idea of active and passive exclusion, “When exclusion is brought about through deliberate policy it is active and it is passive when it is an unintended consequence of social processes. So, for example, the deliberate exclusion of dalits and Muslims from good employment represents active exclusion, while their exclusion from jobs which need better educational qualifications than they posses represents passive exclusion” (as quoted in Borooah 2010 , 34). 9 The Muslim Women’s Survey (MWS) was carried out in 12 states, spread over 40 districts in India. Convened by Zoya Hasan and Ritu Menon in the year 2000–01, it sur- veyed 9,541 Muslim and Hindu women respondents – 80 per cent Muslim and 20 per cent Hindu; and 60 per cent urban, 40 per cent rural. 10 Razia Patel (2009) quotes Winsinck’s (1927) Handbook of Mohammedan Traditions in this regard: “In the course of time four schools of Sunnite law came into existence in Arabia proper, Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi’I and Hanbali” (45). As against the Hanafi school of Sun- naite law followed by majority of Muslims in India, the South Indian Muslims followed the school founded by Imam Shafi’l. She further adds: “Various countries have different influences, and have modified these laws in their own way. All Islamic countries also do not have uniform legal systems albeit claiming to be Islamic, and the local traditions and influences have been incorporated, resulting in diversity” (45). 11 This is corroborated by a study from Dharwar, Karnataka, which concluded, “Muslim family practices are quite similar to those of Hindus in everyday life . . . [Moreover] family patterns are common among all elements of society in India, given similar education and other social attributes” (as quoted in Hasan 1994 , xi). 12 On 23 April 1985, a five member Constitution bench of the Supreme Court ruled that a 75-year old woman Shah Bano was entitled to maintenance by her husband, Mohammad Ahmad Khan, who had divorced her after around 50 years of marriage. In 1978, she had filed an application in the Indore Magistrate’s Court, under Section 125 of the Criminal Procedure Code (Cr. P.C.) asking that her husband should be ordered to pay her maintenance. The Section 125 is especially meant for preventing vagrancy due to destitution and includes destitute, deserted or divorced women, including old aged parents. In the meantime, her husband decided to divorce Shah Bano, using the triple talaq provision. He deposited Rs. 3000 in court, claiming he was returning the mehr agreed upon at the time of marriage. The court, however, went ahead with the judgement and fixed the maintenance amount at Rs 25 per month, which was subsequently increased to Rs. 179.20 by the Madhya Pradesh High Court. Later, the case went to the Supreme Court of India after Shah Bano’s husband objected to this provision, claiming since he was a Muslim, the case should be decided upon by the All India Muslim Per- sonal Law Board and not by any court of law. 13 The Hindu Right wing forces often deploy the Shah Bano case to intensify their communal propaganda against Muslims, saying that the latter are against the idea of women’s emancipation. The discourse of equality is selectively manipulated to not only project Muslims as inward looking, conservative, and the ‘other’ but also to demand ‘legitimate’ rights of Muslim women who, like Hindu women, have the right to seek redressal through Constitutional means. 14 The Shah Bano incident, therefore, arrived as a reality check for the ‘mainstream,’ upper caste, middle class feminists against their efforts to bridge the gap among themselves and the women belonging to different caste, class, and religious backgrounds. They realised that it was difficult to work along similar ideological agendas as one could always fall into an allied communal politics. Moreover the Committee for the Protection of the Rights of Muslim women, which was formed to oppose the Muslim Women’s Bill did Writings from the margins 195

not let non-Muslim feminists join the agitation. This incident has proven fatal for subsequent negotiations pertaining to Muslim women’s issues within a secular, egalitarian framework. 15 The Supreme Court’s decision in Sarla Mudgal, president, Kalyani and Ors v. Union of India and Ors is a case in point. The judge went on to state that “Article 44 is based on the concept that there is no necessary connection between religion and personal law in a civilised society. The Hindus along with Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains have forsaken their sen- timents in the cause of the national unity and integration, some other communities would not, though the Constitution of India enjoins the establishment of a ‘common civil code’ for the whole of India” (as quoted in Kapur and Crossman 1996, 259). The judgement subtly alludes to how the Muslim community has been against the idea of national integration. The Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Ordinance 2019 was repromulgated by President of India Ram Nath Kovind, on 12 January 2019, after it was blocked in the Rajya Sabha twice. The Act declares pronouncement of triple-e- biddat or instant triple talaq void and illegal. Any Muslim husband who does so shall be imprisoned for upto three years, and is also liable to fine. In August 2017, the Supreme Court had also declared the practice of triple talaq to be unconstitutional. The irony of the procedure, whereby the Ordinance was made effective, is evident as it seeks to make triple talaq a punishable offence, which has already been declared unconstitutional by the apex court. 16 The Hindu communal politics, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, had led to various campaigns in the form of writing of tracts expressing Hindu patriarchy’s fears regarding catastrophic decline of their community. Charu Gupta (2009) quotes from a tract titled Humara Bhishan Haas (1924), “a number of Aryan women were entering the homes of yavana s and mleccha s (terms used for Muslims in such writings), reading nikah with them, producing gaubhakshak (cow-killers) children, and increasing Muslim numbers” (14). Moreover, in 2009 and as late as 2014, terms like ‘love jihad’ were popu- larised to invoke fears of Hindu women’s elopement and conversion at the hands of Muslims, leading to acrimonious debates on the responsibility of the Hindu community in safeguarding their women’s honour. Interestingly, none of the Right wing discursive engagements considered the possibility of women’s volition being involved in such cases. 17 A study conducted by the Centre for Development Studies, Kerala states, “Among the return emigrants of 2008, the percentage [of] unemployed decreased from 11.8 in 2008 to 3.2 in 2009. This is a very important trend that needs to be noted by policy makers in Kerala. Even in the absence of any rehabilitation programme on the part of the Gov- ernment, most of the return emigrants who wanted a job were able to get one within a period of one or two years” ( Zachariah and Rajan 2011 , 14) . 18 The Tamil-Sinhala riots that took place in Sri Lanka, 1983 are described as the Black July. The ethnic riots adversely affected the Tamil people’s businesses in Sri Lanka. The riots arrived as a link in the antagonistic relations shared between the two groups in the wake of a separate Tamil state in the northern part of Sri Lanka termed Eelam. A report (“Anti Tamil Riots and the Political Crisis”), published in Economic and Political Weekly states, “Within days rioting spread all over the island, a wave of mass murder, assault, arson and looting directed against Tamils engulfing almost all the township in the country and the plantation areas. For nearly a week, mob rule held sway and undisciplined violence against person and property was the order of the day” (1983, 1699). Around 1500 people were estimated to have been murdered and over 150,000 people were rendered homeless (1699).

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Notes 1 I refer here to Jasbir Jain’s Indigenous Roots of Feminism (2011). She draws on several indigenous resources to prove that Indian feminism(s) is not an idea imported from the West. However, in doing so, she betrays her upper caste, middle class biases. Jain exclusively singles out the Ramayana, the Mahabharata , Patanjali’s Yog Sutra ,and Samkhya philosophy to suggest how the Indian philosophical tradition has emphasised an archetypal image of subordinate women through the ages, depriving Indian women of any sense of agency. It appears a very deliberate construction of Hinduised history, falling short of offering a holistic analysis of the woman question in post-independence India. 2 Lata Pratibha Madhukar is a Dalit-Bahujan feminist writer, social activist, and researcher. She has published three books and several short stories, poems, and articles in Marathi, Hindi, and English periodicals. She has been active in various social movements for the past 35 years. These include the Chhatra Yuva Sangharsh Vahini, Stree Katha, Narmada Bachao Andolan, among many others. She is currently doing her Ph.D. on ‘Bahujan Women’s Role in OBC Movement.’

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One of the major thrusts of these writings is to contest the stereotypical images of Northeastern India as either a colourful contact zone of varied tribes, natural resources, or a hotbed of insurgent and/or terror activities. It is evident that these discourses are a product of mainstream media representations, which are intent on depicting India’s Northeastern region as a lucrative destination for tourism. The writings have been tirelessly contesting the homogenised narrative of nation, its rigid institutional structures, and the impact of their exclusionary politics of development on this region. Here, the ruthless implementation of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act in 1958 is a case in point. Irom Sharmila Chanu (1972–) has fought for the restitution of civil rights in the region and written poems that interrogate the abuse of authority, protesting the exploitation of the oppressed sections of society. Apart from these, there are various women-centric anthologies that have come out in the recent past. They span across various languages and include short story and poetry collections by women. They represent the nuanced and multilayered cultures of the country, highlighting the subtle literary transforma- tions that have taken place in the genre of women’s writing over time. Some of the noted anthologies by women include Katha (2007), edited by Urvashi Buta- lia, Five Novellas by Women Writers (2008), edited by Mini Krishnan, Ten Women Writers of Kerala: Short Stories and Interviews (2012), edited by Sreedevi K. Nair and Mary Nirmala, and Unbound: 2,000 Years of Indian Women’s Writing (2015), edited by Annie Zaidi.

Notes 1 Women writers like Rassundari Devi, Savithribai Phule (1831–1897), Tarabai Shinde (1850–1910), Swarnakumari Devi (1855–1932), Pandita Ramabai Saraswati (1858–1922), Lakshmibai Tilak (1868–1936), Ramabai Ranade (1863–1924), Rokeya Sakhawat Hos- sain (1880–1932), Lalithambika Antherjanam (1909–1987), and others reveal how they subvert the conventionally regressive representations of women in reformist literature and conduct books of the time. 2 Razia Sajjad Zaheer (1917–1979), Rashid Jahan (1905–1952), and Ismat Chughtai (1911–1991) were some of the prominent Urdu women writers of the Progressive Writ- ers Association (1936). Despite inhabiting the margins of the nation-state during the period of transition to independence, they managed to make pioneering inroads into the literary sphere by claiming for themselves and for other women the authority to speak about women’s productive role in society and the nation to be.

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