Feminism and Nationalism in India, 1917-1947

Feminism and Nationalism in India, 1917-1947 Aparna Basu Ferninism incorporates a doctrine of equal rights for women, an organized movement to attain these rights, and an ideology of social transformation aimed at creating a world for women beyond simple social equality. It is broadly the ideology of women's liberation, since intrinsic to it is the belief that women suffer injustice because of their gender. In recent years the definition of feminism has gone beyond simply meaning movements for equality and emancipation which agitate for equal rights and legal reforms to redress the prevailing discrimination against women. The word has now been expanded to mean an awareness of women's oppression and exploitation within the family, at work, and in society, and conscious action by women to change this. However, in the first phase of feminism in India (1917-1947) with which this essay deals, the women's movement was primarily concerned with demanding equal political, social, and economic rights and for the removal of all forms of discriminatory procedures against women Although feminism was a middle-class ideology, it presupposed the idea of women as a distinct group, who despite their differences of class, caste, religion, and ethnicity, shared certain common physical and psychological characteristics and manifested certain common problems. Nationalism is a broad concept which includes many values but is basically a belief that a group of people sharing a common territory, culture, and history, and often, also a common language and religion, possess a common national identity and therefore are entitled to a nation state. This claim did not negate the fact that there were indigenous differences of class, caste, and gender; but people were able to launch struggles which blurred these divisions and stressed the commonality of a national identity against the foreign enemy. A national movement in India can be said to have begun with the foundation of the Indian National Congress in 1885. The process of nationbuilding and the creation of a national identity was paralleled, in fact, preceded by the growth of social reform movements focusing on women's issues. Since the status of women in society was the popular barometer of "civilization," many reformers had agitated for legislation that would improve their situation. By the second decade of the nineteenth century, social reformers began deploring the condition of women. Under British rule, with its new agrarian and commercial relations and the introduction of English education , law courts, and an expanding administrative structure, an urban © 1995 Journal of Women's History, Vol. 7 No. 4 (Winter) 96 Journal of Women's History Winter intelligentsia which took up women's issues began to emerge in Calcutta, Bombay, and later Madras. The first man to publicly speak out against the injustices perpetrated against women was Raja Rammohan Roy, who in the early nineteenth century condemned sati, kulin polygamy, and spoke in favor of women's property rights. Roy held the condition of women as one of the factors responsible for the degraded state of Indian society. Thereafter, improving the position of women became the first tenet of the Indian social reform movement. Women's inferior status, enforced seclusion , early marriage, the prohibition of widow remarriage, and lack of education were facts documented by reformers throughout the country. These reformers were influenced by Christian missionaries such as William Ward and Alexander Duff, East India Company's officers such as Charles Grant and James Mill, and travelers such as Tavernier, Barbosa, and Cranford, who were all critical of the position of women in Indian society. The Indian intelligentsia, therefore, focused its attention on women's issues. Inspired by Western Orientalists like Sir William Jones, H. T. Colebrook, H. H. Wilson, Max Müller, and others, they created the notion of a golden age in ancient India where women held a high position which subsequently declined. From a sense of humiliation as a subject people, they tended to glorify the past. Every measure of reform demanded for women was justified on the ground that it was sanctioned by religious texts. There was a link between these reformers and British officials and non-officials, because the former depended on the latter for enacting laws prohibiting sati, raising the...