Maitrayee Chaudhuri Fall 2015 Office: 244 Friday: 8.35 am -11.35 am Phone:514-398-3507 Leacock 210 Office hours: 2:00-4:00 Fridays Email: [email protected] COURSE TITLE GENDER AND PUBLIC DISCOURSE IN INDIA Course Description This course explores how the making of a modern Indian nation state entailed a remaking of gender identities. It will look at how colonialism led to the growth of an ambiguous attitude towards modernity and how tradition and culture became key sites of contention for gender issues. Through the analysis of specific debates in public discourse, in different historical junctures in colonial and independent India, the course will examine the intersections between gender, diversities and inequalities. The course will broadly be divided into four parts. Part 1 and 2 will look at some critical events during the colonial period, while Part 3 and 4 will focus on independent India. Central to this course will be attention to contexts, actors and the manner in which gender is played out in India’s public discourse. Part 1 and 2 therefore will look at the dynamics between the colonial state, communities, social reformers, nationalists and women’s organizations. Part 3 will look at the key actors in different phases in independent India: (i) the transformed character of the state and the way other actors get reconfigured in the postcolonial context; (ii) the wide range of social and political movements including a strong and diverse women’s movement (that has since become an important voice in public debates) in the 1970s; (iii) the rise of religious fundamentalism and its attack on gender equality and secularism in the 1980s. Part 4 centers on India’s economic liberalization from the 1990s and looks at the new actors that acquire prominence in India’s public discourse, such as the media, international institutions, corporate houses, public relation and advertising firms, and the Indian diaspora. The broader intent of the course here is to investigate the hyper- visibility of gender in public discourse even as the idea of ‘India’, its ‘public sphere’ and ‘democracy’ get redefined. The reasons for choosing this long period are three-fold: (i) the intersectional relationship of gender, caste, class and religion, evident in the early years has persisted. The past bears on the present even as contexts have redefined the contours of debates; (ii) it allows focus on concrete gender issues in different historical moments providing a vantage point to understand, on one hand, Indian society and its transformation and on the other, comparable issues of conflict, along the fault line of gender in an increasingly multicultural west; (iii) and given that some of the more influential scholarship on India has been historical and postcolonial studies have in a 1 sense rested on that, this course would facilitate a careful look at the empirical details to assess the conceptual limits and possibilities of this approach. Course Requirements Students are required to: 1. Write a note (four to five pages long, double spaced and typewritten) on a substantial amount of the required readings for any week of their choice. This has to be submitted before the relevant class discussion. 2. Participate actively in class discussions. 3. Make one class presentation on a 20 to 25 pages research paper concerning an important aspect of gender and public discourse in India. The paper topic and the date may be chosen in consultation with the instructor. 4. Research Paper Presentation November 27th and December 4th. 5. Last date for submission of paper December 4th. 6. The recommended readings are meant to help students begin to explore issues relevant to their paper topics in greater depth. Grading The grades will be determined in the following way: Note on the reading 20% Presentations & Class Participation 20% Paper 60% Aside from being worth 20% of the marks, class participation will influence the grades in cases where students are on the borderline between two letter grades. Format The class meets once a week for three hours. Each class consists of a short introductory presentation by the instructor followed with interactive debates and discussions involving students. This research seminar is articulated around students’ questions, concerns and discussions. It is absolutely essential not only for students to complete all the readings, but also to reflect about them prior to the course in order to fully benefit from discussions. McGill Policy Statements 1. "McGill University values academic integrity. Therefore, all students must understand the meaning and consequences of cheating, plagiarism and other academic offences under the Code of Student Conduct and Disciplinary Procedures (see www.mcgill.ca/students/srr/honest/ for more information).(approved by Senate on 29 January 2003) 2 2. “In accord with McGill University’s Charter of Students’ Rights, students in this course have the right to submit in English or in French any written work that is to be graded.” (approved by Senate on 21 January 2009 - see also the section in this document on Assignments and evaluation.) Readings PART 1 Social Reform and the Women’s Question in early modern India WEEK 1 Reading India’s Past and Present: Some Methodological Issues Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid “Recasting Women: An Introduction” Sangari and Vaid 1989 Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial India (New Delhi, Kali for Women) pp.1-26. Vina Mazumdar “Whose Past, Whose History, Whose Tradition? Indigenising Women’s Studies in India” Asian Journal of Women’s Studies, 7:1, 2001, pp. 133-53. Maitrayee Chaudhuri “Feminism in India: The Tale and its Telling "Décoloniaux Feminisms, Gender and Development ". Reveu Tier Monde (RTM) 209 (University of Paris) January March 2012. Pp. 19-36. Chakravarti Dipesh 1992 ‘Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History: Who Speaks for “Indian” Pasts?’ Representations No. 37, Winter. Pp.1-26. Joanna Liddle and Shirin Rai “Feminism, Imperialism and Orientalism: the challenge of the ‘Indian woman’” History Review, Vol. 7, No. 4, 1998. Pp. 495- 520. WEEK 2 Social Reform in 19th century colonial India Lata Mani “The Debate on Sati in Colonial India” in Sangari and Vaid 1989. Pp. 88- 126. Sumit Sarkar and Tanika Sarkar Women and Social Reform in Modern India: A Reader. Permanent Black, Ranikhet, 2007. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008). pp. 1-18. 3 Maitrayee Chaudhuri The Indian Women’s Movement: Reform and Revival (Delhi, Radiant, 1992) Reprinted 2011 (Delhi, Palm Leaf) pp. 1-68. WEEK 3 Social Reform in 19th century colonial India Uma Chakravarti “Whatever Happened to the Vedic Dasi? Orientalism, Nationalism and a Script for the Past” in Sangari and Vaid 1989 pp. 27-87. Tanika Sarkar “A Prehistory of Rights: The Age of Consent Debate in Colonial Bengal” Feminist Studies Vol. 26, No. 3, (Autumn, 2000), pp. 601-622. Sinha Mrinalini “The Lineage of the ‘Indian’ Modern: Rhetoric, Agency and the Sarda Act in Late Colonial India.” In Gender, Sexuality and Colonial Modernities, ed. By Antoinette M. Burton, London: Routledge. pp. 207-20. Joshua Cohen, Matthew Howard and Martha C. Nussabum ed. Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999. Pp. 9-24. Leti Volpp “Feminism versus Multiculturalism” Columbia Law Review, Vol. 101, No. 5 (Jun., 2001), pp. 1181-1218. Suggested Readings for Part 1 Sudipta Kaviraj The imaginary institution of India: Politics and Ideas (Permanent Black, Ranikhet, 2010) pp.1-84. Sumit Sarkar Modern India: 1885-1947, Delhi, Macmillan, 1993. Ramachandra Guha ed. And introduced Makers of Modern India Penguin, New Delhi, 2012. pp. 23-45. Maitrayee Chaudhuri “Reform, Revival and the Women’s Question at the Turn of the Century” in Chaudhuri The Indian Women’s Movement: Reform and Revival (Delhi, Radiant, 1992) Reprinted 2011 (Delhi, Palm Leaf) pp. 69-105. Patricia Uberoi (ed), Social Reforms, Sexuality and the State, Sage, New Delhi, 1996. Anand A. Yang “Whose Sati? Widow Burning in Early-Nineteenth- Century India” in Sumit Sarkar and Tanika Sarkar Women and Social Reform in Modern India: A Reader. Permanent Black, Ranikhet, 2007. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008). Pp. 21-52. O’Hanlon, R. Caste, Conflict and Ideology: Mahatma Jotirao Phule and Low Caste Protest in Nineteenth Century Western India, Cambridge University Press, 1985. Uma Chakravarti Rewriting History: The Life and Times of Pandita Ramabai. Zubaan 2012. 4 Wolpert, S.A. Tilak and Gokhale: Revolution and Reform in the Making of Modern India, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1961. Rammohan Roy “Tracts Against Sati” in Sumit Sarkar and Tanika Sarkar Women and Social Reform in Modern India: A Reader. Permanent Black, Ranikhet, 2007. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008). pp. 277-287. Rosalind O’Hanlon Tarabai Shinde and the Critique of Gender Relations in Colonial India Oxford University Press, New Delhi 1994 Introduction 1-77. Uma Chakravarti, ‘Gender, Caste and Labour: Ideological and Material Structure of Widowhood’, Economic and Political Weekly 30, 9 September 1995, pp. 2,248–56. Lucy Carroll “Law, Custom and Statutory Social Reform: The Hindu Widows’ Remarriage Act of 1856” in Sumit Sarkar and Tanika Sarkar Women and Social Reform in Modern India: A Reader. Permanent Black, Ranikhet, 2007. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008). Pp.113-144. PART 2 Nationalism and The Women’s Movement in Early 20th century WEEK 4 Aparna Basu “Feminism and Nationalism in India 1917-1947” in Renuka Sharma ed. Representations of Gender, Democracy and Identity Politics in Relation to South Asia Shree Satguru Publications, Indian Book Centre, Delhi. Pp. 23-38. Leela Kasturi and Vina Mazumdar “Women and Indian Nationalism” pp.1-33. www.cwds.ac.in/ocpaper/womenandindiannationalism.pdf Chattopadhyay, Kamaladevi. “Future of Indian women's movement” . IN Our causes: a symposium by Indian women /ed. by Shyam Kumari Nehru.- Kitabistan, Allahabad, 1952, p.385-402. Chattopadhyay, Kamaladevi “The Women’s movement - then and now”.