Nepali’ Women of Darjeeling

INDIA’S NATIONALIST MOVEMENT AND THE PARTICIPATION OF ‘NEPALI’ WOMEN OF DARJEELING A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH BENGAL FOR THE AWARD OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN POLITICAL SCIENCE By KALYANI PAKHRIN UNDER THE SUPERVISION OF DR. RANJITA CHAKRABORTY DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH BENGAL DARJEELING, INDIA-734013 MARCH, 2017 Dedicated to my parents D E C L A R A T I O N I declare that the thesis entitled “India’s Nationalist Movement and the participation of ‘Nepali’ women of Darjeeling” has been prepared by me under the guidance of Dr. Ranjita Chakraborty, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of North Bengal. No part of this thesis has formed the basis for the award of any degree or fellowship previously. KALYANI PAKHRIN Department of Political Science University of North Bengal Darjeeling: 734013, West Bengal, India. Date:07/03/2017 UNIVERSITY OF NORTH BENGAL Raja Rammohunpur Dr. Ranjita Chakraborty P.O. North Bengal University Department of Political Science ENLIGHTENMENT TO PERFECTION Dist. Darjeeling, 734013 West Bengal (India) Ref. No……………………………. Date: …………………….……… C E R T I F I C A T E I certify that Miss Kalyani Pakhrin has prepared the thesis entitled “India’s Nationalist Movement and the participation of ‘Nepali’ women of Darjeeling” for the award of Ph.D. degree of the University of North Bengal, under my guidance. I also certify that she has incorporated in her thesis the recommendations made by the Departmental Committee during her pre-submission seminar. She has carried out the work at the Department of Political Science, University of North Bengal. Dr. Ranjita Chakraborty Associate Professor Department of Political Science University of North Bengal Raja Rammohanpur Darjeeling: 734013, West Bengal, India. Date:07/03/2017 A B S T R A C T There are a number of questions posed about the nature of involvement of the so called marginal people in the freedom movement of India. Were they at all touched by the grand project of freedom movement or remained aloof from the movement? If at all touched by the movement what/how had/has been their association with the project of nationalist movement in India? Historians while recording the stories of the freedom movements have been generally oblivious to the contribution of the so called marginal people. In the absence of appropriate focus on them by the so called mainstream writers and researchers, certain regions and the contribution of the people residing therein has not been adequately recorded. The region under focus for my study is such a region that has not received adequate focus. Darjeeling was famous for its exotic beauty with the colonial regime as well as with the rest of India but the other side of the story that of the people, their role in the nationalist movement and especially that of the women of the region has not received focus. The colonial authorities created Darjeeling as a misty hill station for serving military cantonment, headquarter for the Governmental activities during summer, as a social recreational resort for the British officers and their families and a place for education of British children. The Lepchas and Bhutias were the aboriginal inhabitants lived in inaccessible tract of forest with very scanty population. The British incorporated them within the greater colonial framework and these people found themselves in a new set up merging with the pouring migrants from surrounding regions. The British brought with them new ideas, institution e.g. renowned schools and colleges, hospitals etc. for an overall improvement in the standard of living in the region. The inhabitants of Darjeeling were involved in seeing, observing and participating directly or indirectly in these activities that served for them as the source of learning new and valuable things. The migrant hill women came along with their husbands to settle down and to work to maintain their livelihood. The Darjeeling hill station became cosmopolitan in character and the contact with the European helped the local settlers to modernize. The colonial and the Christian Missionaries encouraged the policy of modernizing of the Indian Society and culture. The participation of women in the limited colonial space be it health, education or economy was a process in their v awakening and development. It was based upon their own customs and tradition that were largely shaped by the colonial experience. The British considered the hill station their preserve and decided to give it a civilized construct by establishing numerous educational institutions along with a massive growth of population. Mainstream perception has been mainly biased and skeptical about the role of the people of the region under focus in the nationalist movement of India. Historically women have been ‘otherized’ and denied a space in the political life of the community. Even if they had a role to play, that was not recognized as worth noting. The same can be said to the role played by the women of the region. When historians started to the injustice they did so by rewriting history through the incorporation of the omissions. Later not just recording of omissions but also through an analysis through the lens of gender a new history or rather ‘her’story started its journey. The problem however was that or still is women in the margin especially of the region under focus have not been adequately focused upon. The study would try to humbly record the exploits of these hidden faces and through their stories and memoirs would decipher and deconstruct the process of the politicization of the private spaces. The Nationalist Movement of India would be incomplete without mentioning the names of few Nepali women freedom fighters who sacrificed their lives for the greater cause. The contribution of these women from the region occupies the foremost position in the India’s struggle for freedom. The participation of women in the movement provided an additional impetus to the freedom struggle. However, there were regional differences and variations in the intensity of the involvement of women and their nature of activities. There were many women who did not participated directly in any public national activity due to social constraints. But within the domestic sphere their lives were affected by political changes in the public sphere. The women could not confront or change their circumstances through formal channels but contested those limiting spaces by doing what they wanted to do by aligning that contestation for the benefit of the nationalist movement. They developed a political awareness of their own abilities as mothers, sisters and daughters but within the disabling structures of patriarchy. However, the nature of these dynamics involvement and forms of contestation varied from household to household. vi On the other hand there were few women who participated in the nationalist movement equally with men despite of the fact that the society they were situated in was an equally oppressive social order. When the Congress led the struggle especially in the wake of Gandhi’s pre-eminence on the Political scene in the post 1919 era there were an increase in the proportion of women’s involvement in the movement. The women actively participated in the process of reproducing and modifying their roles as well as being actively involved in controlling other women. Since, the nationalist significance of symbolic representations facilitated the politicizing of the domestic sphere along with the domestication of the public sphere. Therefore, very little part of the Gorkha history is known especially about the women of this region who equally participated with men in the nationalist movement of India. The present study attempt to record and analyze how the Gorkha lady and the heroine of the movement of India challenged not only the imperial order but also the social order of the day. The hill women were greatly influenced by ideology of Gandhi who portrayed the struggle against the British as a moral battle in which the moral and spiritual strength of women was supreme. Gandhi constructed a moral stance that cut across class, communitarian and rural-urban differences in order to create an anti-imperialist front. The public participation of women helped to dispel British stereotypes of their downtrodden and degenerate status. Besides, there were women who participated throughout the nationalist phase until India’s independence in 1947. Thus, the prevailing political environment and values seems to have positively encouraged the activities of women to move beyond traditional roles. In a nutshell, there was a shift in the roles of women from supportive auxiliaries to direct participation and there was a conversion of leadership that women were coming as leaders. The mobilization of women in the post independent era was a continuity of legacy of the past women leaders who participated and sacrificed their life in liberating the country from the colonial regime. This helped in sensitizing the women of today about their rights and gender justice in the post colonial period. This is vigilant in the form of women presently holding various port folios and exercising power and influence in the hill politics today. However, the women appeared in great number exceeding men in the freedom movement. They successfully initiated the programmes of the party they were vii associated with. But equally it is true that no role they could take part in decision making of all these programmes. The male leaders have the supremacy in deciding the future strategy of the party. It is due to lack of intelligence and incapability of women to direct the movement, who can attend the higher level meetings at Kolkata and Delhi. Though the women leaders are invited to attend the meetings and provide advices and suggestion yet their advices are not obligatory to accept.

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