23 Women’s Movement Social Reform and Nationalist Movement

Jagritee Ghosh

epgp books

 

 

 

The chapter has three main sections and subsections under it. The Sections are

 

·      Section : Introduction

·      Section 2: Colonial Rule and Women’s question

·      Section 3: Nationalism and Women’s movement

 

Section 1

 

Introduction

 

Social reforms in India does not mean in the same way as it generally meant in the west. Indian social reform was a praxis of acceptance of newer western ideology and seeking solace in the Hindu belief. This kind of practice started with the educated upper caste upper class and percolated down to the lower caste and lower class. One of the ideals of the reform movement was to do away with the social evils of the society and Bhakti Movement emerged as a solution to it. But Vijay Nambiar argues that Bhakti movement has failed to heal “ the diseased condition of the Indian Social System” as the ideals of the Bhakti movement also in some way was based on the Hindu meanings of life (Nambiar 1964). Nambiar further argues that “Furthermore, in their attempt to ‘rationalise’ the Hindu religion, these reformers sought to distinguish the essential aspects of Hinduism from the nonessential ones, to separate the pristine religion from the subsequent accretions” (ibid). Till the First World War, social reforms in India can be divided into three stages. “The first stage was marked by efforts on the part of individuals to order their personal lives in accordance with standards adopted from the West. The archtype of such individual revolt and reform was Raja Rammohan Roy. The onset of the second stage was marked by the formation of subnational groups and the growth of a new desire for unity between the scattered and culturally diverse social groups. Politically this was the period when the first glimmer of nationalism appeared on the subcontinent. With the turn of the century, social reform came to mean a regeneration of the traditional spirit of the nation — a regeneration founded on religious revival and cultural xenophopia” (ibid).

 

The subsequent sections will carve out the detail of the colonialism, nationalism, social reforms and women’s question.

 

Section 1.1

 

Feminist reaction to social reform and nationalist movement

 

The terms nationalism, colonialism and women’s movement, point towards the idea of social reform. Social reform or the renaissance is the period when all the prejudices in the Indian society were challenged and meted out. This invariably brings to our mind the names of some of the social reformers of the period in our mind. Tanika Sarkar and SumitSarker in the introduction of their book ‘ Women and Social Reform in Modern India’ argues that colonial social reforms are routinized part of Indian school, colleges and University Syllabi and that these social reformers generally belonged to the upper class upper caste sections (Sarkar 2008). The scholars further argue that little is known about the social reforms amongst the Muslims or the lower caste. Thus, the social reforms were basically a upper caste upper class phenomena. With this back drop, two has to be understood- first the causes of the emergence of the reforms and the use of “women” as a carrier of nationalistic ideals. Hence, this module talks about the Women’s Movement Social Reform and Nationalist movement.

 

To quote Sumit Sarkar and Tanika Sarkar,the reasons for the emergence of socials reforms as

  • A new colonial education imposed by state and colonial missionaries, that altered and modernised the traditional perspectives
  • New religious movements that revived and consolidated older humanitarian impulses
  • Lastly the newly educated who wanted to save the weak and the helpless

 

Thus, the impact of particular time and space resulted in the formation of the young educated men, specifically belonging to the upper caste and upper class to think deeply about the then existing social problems. These socials reformers mostly men and few women trained in western education but influenced by traditional scriptures wanted to do away with the social evils. The influence of the traditional scriptures came as social reforms were influenced by the ideals of nationalism. Nationalism emerged as a reaction to Colonial rule and as a result there was a tendency to go back to everything that was thought to be indigenous. The idea was to contest everything that was western. It is at this juncture that the question of women comes in the nationalistic and reforms ideals. The reformers wanted to put an end to the socials evils and the same reformers who were nationalist leaders created the idea of homogenous Indian women.As a result, ‘women’ were used as symbols of Indian tradition and culture and as a carrier of nationalist ideology. Thus women’s movement in India started in 1920’s fuelled by 19th century social reform movement (Sen 2000). In the process these English educated nationalists not only voiced out against then prevalent social evils like Sati, child marriagebut also promoted widow remarriage. This kind of a movement is generally labelled as emancipatory. However, the feminists have questioned the way the reform leaders and nationalist have dealt with the women’s question. Feminists have pointed out how colonialism, nationalism and Women’s Movement are important in understanding the making of the Indian middle class women and reproduction of patriarchal structures.The nationalistic ideals are responsible for creating the homogenous category of Indian women. The following sections shall highlight as in why clubbing all women under one homogenous the category is problematic. Argues Samita Sen, that the women’s movement grew during the period of high nationalism and freedom struggle which further mouldedthe contours of the movement. She further argues that the constitutional guarantee of equal rights for womenand universal adult suffrage in independent India as two of its major contributions (ibid). However, she further argues that these guarantees did little to bring about social and material change in the lives of most Indian women. This chapter therefore question and critically analyses the nationalist ideologies, what led to those ideologies, the impact of those ideologies, how the existing societal norms impacted the ideologies of social reform. Therefore, to understand the complex interface of how nationalist movement and social reform is related to women’s movement the concepts of nationalism, colonialism, patriarchy and women’s movement has to be understood.

Colonialism- According to Enclyclopedia Britannica, Colonialism, Western, a political-economic phenomenon whereby various European nations explored, conquered, settled, and exploited large areas of the world. The age of modern colonialism began about 1500, following the European discoveries of a sea route around Africa’s southern coast (1488) and of America (1492). With these events sea power shifted from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic and to the emerging nation-states of Portugal, Spain, the Dutch Republic, France, and England. By discovery, conquest, and settlement, these nations expanded and colonized throughout the world, spreading European institutions and culture. The oxford dictionary of Sociology defines colonialism as the establishment of political authority over areas of Africa, Asia, Australia and Latin America as colonialism.

Patriarchy- Encyclopaedia Britannica defines patriarchy, hypothetical social system in which the father or a male elder has absolute authority over the family group; by extension, one or more men (as in a council) exert absolute authority over the community as a whole. Building on the theories of biological evolution developed by Charles Darwin, many 19th-century scholars sought to form a theory of unilinear cultural evolution. This hypothesis, now discredited, suggested that human social organization “evolved” through a series of stages: animalistic sexual promiscuity was followed by matriarchy, which was in turn followed by patriarchy.

The consensus among modern anthropologists and sociologists is that while power is often preferentially bestowed on one sex or the other, patriarchy is not the cultural universal it was once thought to be. However, some scholars continue to use the term in the general sense for descriptive, analytical, and pedagogical purposes.

Women’s Movement -The Oxford dictionary of Sociology, the term women’s movement refers to the mobilization of women around the project of changing and improving their position in Society. It is often used inter changeably with ‘Women’s Liberation Movement’ to describe the second wave of feminism from the 1970’s onwards (the first wave being 19th an early 20th century feminism culminating in the struggles for votes for women.

Nationalism- The oxford dictionary of Sociology defines nationalism as sentiment, aspiration and consciousness are all terms applied to what constitutes nationalism, or the valuation of nation-stateSati- Sati is the traditional practice of self immolation of a Hindu widow on her husband’s funeral pyre. The practice has stopped during the social reform and Indian freedom struggle in 19th century.

 

What have we learned?

 

·      Meaning of Nationalism, colonialism and women’s movement

·      Causes of emergence of social reformers

·      Causes of emergence of nationalist leaders

·      Importance women’s question is important in understanding nationalism and social reforms

 

Section 2

 

Colonial Rule and Women’s question

 

Talking about Colonialism, nationalism and women’s movement today is the discussion of a particular time and space. Therefore in such a study the it is very important to know about the existing social relation of that particular time. KumkumSangari and Sudeshvaid thus argue for a feminist historiography. According to Sangari and Vais, “ a feminist historiography rethinks of historiography as a whole and discards the idea of woeman as sumthing to be framed by acontext, in order to be able to think of gender differences as both structuring and structured by the wide set of social relations” (Sangari 2010). Mrinalini Sinha explains that this as not mere inclusion of women or participation of women in historical movements, rather it is the methodology of questioning of power equations of all historical reconstructions (Sinha 2008). Thus, argues Mrinalini Sinha that feminist historiography realises that all aspects of reality is gendered and the experiences of gender changes according to race, class/caste, nation and sexuality.

 

An Indian woman is not a homogenous category rather is a complex intersection of caste and class. Therefore, the experiences of patriarchy experienced by women across different caste and class and are fairly varied complex. Sangari and Vaid argue that structures of patriarchy are entangled with modes of social subjugation. For example the control of sexuality of upper caste women is one of the most important tool of maintaining caste endogamy. Therefore the upper caste upper class women cannot be placed at par with lower caste lower class women. Hence, the ideal Indian women created based on the nationalist ideals have to be critically analysed.

 

Undoubtedly the women in India had little self – existence as independent individuals.But it nationalism and the emergence of the nationalist leaders that had tried to constitute it in some sense. The male nationalist leaders enriched with modern education and liberal ideas had thought about equality of women and abolition of social evils like sati. The overwhelming preoccupation with women’s question began only in the nineteenth century social reform movement. The initial stages of discussion on women’s issues started in Bengal and Maharashtra. Sharmila Rege argues that the literature on nation and nationalism had rarely addressed the question of gender (Rege 2003). She further argues that it is only the feminist writings of the nineties that history has been re written, in a way to highlighted women’s active role in Indian nationalism and the cultural agenda that came to be imposed upon women. These writings have highlighted that the importance of women, not only as biological producers of sons, but also as carriers of cultural values have reconstituted and reproduced patriarchal structures in Colonial India. The body of the women became important, for controlling it meant keeping the cultural values intact and, as Rege argues, “women became sexed objects who needed to be saved from outsiders” (Rege 2003). Therefore, KumkumSangari and SudeshVaid, in the introduction to their famous book “Recasting Women”, question argue and debate about the regulation and reproduction of patriarchy across class and caste. Sangari and Vaid argue that the working of patriarchy in the present is actually determined by the social and the cultural processes that women’s question had undergone under the nationalist leaders during the colonial period. For example land pattern and tenure had changed under the colonial rule and it is imperative to understand how land systems had looked into the women’s question. Sangari and Vaidhas therefore highlighted how the land systems had affected women belonging to different sections differently. The following points will show how the colonizers produced differential land question and how it had a more negative impact on women.

  • Men had ownership of individual land rights and women just had secondary rights owing to their subordinate relation to men and this was further amplified during the colonial rule.
  • Land owning groups were re-empowered with land relations and market relations. Therefore, this further marginalised the tenants and the agricultural labourers. Hence, the lower caste lower class women were further marginalised owing their lower position to theirs fathers, brothers, husbands, sons and men in any other relation.
  • The Colonizers modified the rules on land settlement and hence the women who had little access to land had to depend on men.
  • The customary laws were codified which made custom law and gave jurisdictional sanction to certain practices regarding marriage, succession and adoption. Sangari and Vaidargues that this codification of the customary law has led to disadvantage of all Hindu women whether rural or urban. This formulation showcases how creating and accepting Indian women as one homogenous category is problematic.

 

These laws were more discriminating towards women than men and as a result the already marginalised women were further marginalised. This highlights how gender relations work with the intersections of caste and class. Therefore the homogenous category of the Indian women created by the nationalist and reform leaders based on the upper caste upper class Hindu ideology is problematic. The colonial laws are equally responsible in strengthening the patriarchal structures. For example the Custom of Karewa, a form of widow remarriage practiced in colonial Haryana (Chowdhry 2010). The codification of this customary practice karewa, reinforced patriarchal structures. It bought the lower caste women under the brahmanicalfold. Such a practice was doubly disadvantageous as it turned the brahminical patriarchal rules into laws for the already suffering upper caste women and also included lower caste women under its ambit. The result of this was male inheritance over control and property. Karewa was practiced as women were important in agriculture as agricultural labour as inability to pay dues were related to the marital status of a man. that a single man or a widower were not expected to perform agricultural duties (Ibid).“The importance of women in the Agrarian economy made marriage an economic necessity” (Chowdhry 2008). Therefore, the prospective bride had to be physically strong so that she could carry out the agricultural duties properly. This made possible the existence of bride price in Haryana. However, as bride price was related to shame it would not raise the status of women. Rather it placed a contrary situation of pride price and dowry existing together (ibid).

Bride Price- A sum of money or quantity of goods given to a bride’s family by that of the groom at the time of the marriage.

 

Dowry- A dowry is a transfer of parental property both in cash and kind at the marriage of a daughter. Dowry contrasts with the concept of bride price.

 

What have we learned?

 

·      How colonial regime has reinforced patriarchy

·      Changes in the land reforms has affected women of all the sections

·      Codification of the customary laws had a negative impact on women of both upper and the lower caste

 

Section 2.1

 

Social Reform, Nationalistic Movement and women’s Question

 

As already mentioned, in the earlier sections that the social reforms and the nationalist movement in India were influenced by the western ideology of equality but tried to base it on the Vedic literature. As the nationalist leaders generally belong to the upper class upper caste Hindus and trained and exposed to western ideals of equality and justice, it came natural to them to place the women’s question in that context. Therefore, the reform leaders are seen placing the women’s question in the context of culture and tradition. This emphasis on the culture and tradition was based on the nationalist ideals. For example, reform organisation like the Arya Samaj found common ground in it and legitimized the vedic age. Sangari and Vaid claim that this legitimisation of Vedic knowledge is an upper caste and upper class phenomena. They further maintain that this valorisation of the Vedic knowledge was done at the cost of the peasant women and other marginalised women. The question of women as dealt by the nationalist leaders shall be understood by using the conceptual position of two scholars. First the concept of “Bhadramahilla” by Sumanta Banerjee and “public sphere” and “Private sphere” by Partha Chatterjee.

 

Section 2.1.1

 

“Bhadramahilla” bySumanta Banerjee

 

The nationalist movement, therefore, did not take into account the different sections of the Indian Women. The women’s question of the nationalist movement therefore meant the women’s question of the upper caste upper class Hindu women. Sangari and Vaid argue, was the time for the educated middle class to form the ‘Hindu’ and ‘Indian Women’ as against ‘western women’. This was mainly the work of the upper caste English educated middle class men who formulated the idea of ‘Indian women’. The construction of bhadramahilla in Bengal is one such example where the idea of ‘Indian women’ was created. Sumanta Banerjee argues that to create sharper difference between the class new educated middle class women were placed in contrast to the women of the lower economic position as thus appeared the bhadramahila as opposed to the marginalised lower caste lower class women. As a result, the brunt of such ideals was felt by all sections of women at varying levels and degree. Moreover the emerging industrial sector also had its impact on the lower class women. Because of it they not only lost their traditional occupations and found little opportunities in the new textile and jute mills as they were unskilled labourers.

Bhadramahila: This is basically in Bengal where the upper caste upper class modern education enriched men wanted the women of their house to be educated and wanted them to behave in a particular way. This ideology was basically influenced by the Victorian ideology. For example the use of blouse as upper body garment in colonial Bengal came with this ideology.

 

Section 2.1.2

 

“Public sphere” and “Private sphere” by Partha Chatterjee

 

Partha Chatterjee presents before us the dichotomy of western ideals and ideals of indigeneity of the nationalist leaders. According to him the central problem of the nationalist leaders was the problem of modernisation based on western ideals and simultaneously retaining the “national identity”. This was basically done with the motive of gaining independent nationhood. Chatterjee argues that the nationalist leaders dealt with this binary of tradition and modernity by distinguishing the “spiritual from the modern” and the “inner from the outer”. This allowed the newly English educated nationalist to imitate the west in the outer space or the material sphere but retaining the inner sphere or the spiritual space as “uncolonised space” where the indigenous Indianness had to be located. Chatterjee claims that this dichotomy of western and the Indian were related to the socially prescribed roles for men and women. Men are socially supposed to do the work outside home and the women inside home and this gendered space of the public space shared by men and the private space shared by women was used as the space of negotiation by the nationalist leaders. As a result women, as the custodians of the inner/ private spiritual space, were considered as the embodiments of “Essentialised Indianness”. Thus KumKumSangari and SudeshVaid argue that the re-articulation of the Indian women for the claims of the nationalist leaders provided the base for modernising the existing indigenous patriarchal structures. Sangari and Vaid claim that different women emancipation ideals were related to national liberation and renaissance in 19th century. Sangari and Vaid also term this as recovery of the traditional Indian women.Thus, Partha Chatterjee’s concept of public sphere in terms of men and modernisation and private sphere in terms of women and indigenous spiritual sense helps us to understand nationalism and the women’s question.

 

Section 3

 

Nationalism and Women’s movement

 

This section would be a critical understanding, of the formation of the idea of modern Indian women. Basically, this section would sum up the nationalist movement, social reform and women’s movement. Maitrayee Chaudhuri argues that the Indian nationalism was a cultural critique of colonialism and an assertion of ‘national culture’. The category Indian women was created by the nationalist ideals. Indian women’s movement was started by nationalist men unlike women’s movement in other women’s movement. However, the way the nationalist leaders dealt with the women’s question was later questioned by the feminist. Maitrayee Chaudhuri argues that like modernity and capitalism, feminism too entered India through colonialism. Feminists argue that it is necessary to look critically at women’s question because it forms a collective identity of Indian women and the consciousness of women’s movement. Maitrayee Chaudhuri argues how the nationalist movement and later the Indian state imagined the role of the Indian women. The ways are-

  • Women as agents and recipients of development
  • Women’s political participation in the nation as equal citizen of a state that does not discriminate on the basis of gender
  • Women as emblems of national culture

 

The nationalist period restated the Hindu ideology. Women were compared and referred to Gargis and Maiyatris of the Vedas. Gender is always linked to religion. The literature on dalit feminism highlights and illustrates how gender roles are assumed by religion.

 

The markers of Hindu identity was used to form “Indian women” during the nationalist movement. The reform societies like the Arya Samajh went back to the Hindu ideology and vedas to construct the idea of Indian women The writings of the reform leaders addressed the geographical territory of India as Bharat Mata. The depiction of which is generally in the form of a goddess and hence religious. Another example of such a case when region was used to identify the rights of the women is the famous Shah Bano case. Mohd. Ahmed Khan vs Shah Bano Begum, a maintenance lawsuit in India is usually referred to as the Shah Bano case, Shah Bano, a 60-year-old Muslim women was divorced by her husband in 1978.

Shah Bano Case “The Shah Bano case was a milestone in the Muslim women’s search for justice and the beginning of the political battle over personal law. A 60-year-old woman went to court asking maintenance from her husband who had divorced her. The court ruled in her favour. Shah Bano was entitled to maintenance from her ex-husband under Section 125 of the Criminal Procedure Code (with an upper limit of Rs. 500 a month) like any other Indian woman. The judgment was not the first granting a divorced Muslim woman maintenance under Section 125. But a voluble orthodoxy deemed the verdict an attack on Islam”.-The  Hindu

 

Shah Bano, won the right to alimony in her Criminal law suit in the Supreme Court of India. The judgement which went in favour of Shah Bano received criticism from the orthodox Muslims. Qur’an was cited to show that the judgement contradicted the Islamic law. According to the national daily The Hindu, “ The Congress Government, panicky in an election year, caved in under the pressure of the orthodoxy. It enacted the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986. The most controversial provision of the Act was that it gave a Muslim woman the right to maintenance for the period of iddat (about three months) after the divorce, and shifted the onus of maintaining her to her relatives or the Wakf Board. The Act was seen as discriminatory as it denied divorced Muslim women the right to basic maintenance which women of other faiths had recourse to under secular law”. Therefore religion has always been important in the formation of women’s question and the basis of which is the nationalist movement.

 

But only criticising the nationalist ideologies and finding loop holes in the reform movement will not help rather it is important to question how and when these ideologies made their way into the women’s question. Feminists criticize the nationalist leaders and the reform leaders for trying to create one homogenous Indian women, who were made to behave as the carrier of Indian tradition and culture. Feminists have argued that the ideals of the reform leaders to abolish child marriage, sati, Kulin polygamy and to introduce widow remarriage wereall the issues of the upper caste upper class women. However the feminists have acknowledge the fact that the most positive outcome of the reforms are that they shaped women’s entry into the public sphere. But these reform ideals started by the nationalist men and followed by the upper caste upper class women starting from Pandita Ramabai to Tarabai Shinde form the basis of women’s movement in India. The protest by the upper caste upper class women against the Mandal commission proves that the upper class upper caste emancipation project, which was started by the nationalist leaders, had failed to actually address the women’s question. Moreover this also proves that one Indian homogenous women cannot address the exploitation and oppression faced by women belonging to different sections.

Mandal commission: The Mandal Commission was established in India in 1979 by the Janata Party government under Prime Minister Morarji Desai with a mandate to “identify the socially or educationally backward.” It was headed by Indian parliamentarian B.P. Mandal to consider the question of seat reservations and quotas for people to redress caste discrimination, and used eleven social, economic, and educational indicators to determine backwardness.

 

What have we learned?

  • Nationalism and women’s movement India are related
  • Nationalist leaders formed the one homogenous category of Indian women
  • The social evils that the nationalist leaders wanted to do away with were actually the social evils of upper caste society
  • Gender and religion are interlinked

 

Conclusion

 

Therefore what we have learned from this section is to look at the Indian reform movement and the nationalist ideologies from an alternative perspective. All women’s issues were not deals by the nationalist leaders and whatever was dealt the feminist have found it erroneous. This provides us with a methodology to understand any event in critically.This section has also helped us to understand that Indian women as not a homogenous category and the feminism of one section of women cannot deal with the oppression and domination of all section of the society.

 

Questions

 

Describe nationalism colonialism as crucial factors in the formation of the formation of “Indian women”

“ Indian women is not a homogenous category “ Explain.

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