Feminism and Nationalism in India, 1917-1947

Feminism and Nationalism in India, 1917-1947
   Aparna Basu

   Journal of Women's History, Volume 7, Number 4, Winter 1995, pp. 95-107
   (Article)

   Published by Johns Hopkins University Press
   DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/jowh.2010.0459

       For additional information about this article
       https://muse.jhu.edu/article/363729/summary

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Feminism and Nationalism in India, 1917-1947

Aparna Basu

   Ferninism incorporates a doctrine of equal rights for women, an organ-
   ized movement to attain these rights, and an ideology of social trans-
formation 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 move-
ments 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 oppres-
sion 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 discrimina-
tory 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 mani-
fested 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 differ-
ences 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 nation-
building 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 educa-
tion, 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 seclu-
sion, 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 Wil-
liam 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 age of marriage, or permitting widow remar-
riage. Thus, the colonial government was perceived by the reformers as an
ally in its fight against tradition.
     By the end of the nineteenth century a few women emerged in the
reform movement to form their own organizations. Swamakumari Devi
of the Tagore family in Calcutta founded a Ladies Theosophical Society in
1882 and four years later the Sakhi Samiti, "so that women of respectable
families should have the opportunity of mixing with each other and
devoting themselves to the cause of social welfare___"l At the same time,
Pandita Ramabai Saraswati formed the Arva Mahila Soma) in Poona, and
in 1889 she started a home-cum-school for widows in Bombay named
Sharda Sudan. Women in Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, and even in smaller
towns like Poona and Allahabad, formed associations whose members
were drawn from among a small group of urban educated families. These
associations aimed at bringing women out of their homes and encourag-
ing them to take interest in public affairs. Some of these were practical
social reform organizations, while others were discussion platforms for
women.

1995             INTERNAnONALTRENDS=APARNABASU                             97

     From the very beginning membership of the Indian National Con-
gress was open to women. At its first session, Allan Octavian Hume asked
political reformers of all shades of opinion never to forget that "unless the
elevation of the female element of the nation proceeds pari passu (with an
equal pace) with their work, all their labor for the political enfranchise-
ment of the country will prove vain."2 The report of the 1889 session of the
Indian National Congress in Bombay notes "that no less than ten lady
delegates graced the assembly." Among them were Europeans, Christians,
one Parsi, one orthodox Hindu, and three Brahmins. Panita Ramabai
Saraswati was one of the delegates.3 In fact, the participation of women in
this Congress appears to have been mainly Ramabai's doing. Charles
Bradlaugh, a member of Parliament in Britain, suggested to her and many
others that women delegates should join the Congress from this time
forward, so that their concerns would be represented when the Congress
constituted free India's parliament.4
     Though the women delegates were allowed to sit on the platform,
they were not allowed to speak or vote.5 According to some, women first
spoke at the Congress sessions in 1890.6 Another writer puts the date ten
years later when Kadambini Ganguli, the first woman graduate of Bengal,
moved the customary vote of thanks to President Pherozeshah Mehta at
the sixteenth Congress session in 1900 at Calcutta.7 Sarala Debi Ghosal
(Chaudurani, 1872-1946), daughter of Swamakumari Debi, composed a
song urging people of different provinces of the country to join the free-
dom struggle and trained a group of over fifty girls to sing it at the 1901
session. The proceedings of the Congress at Ahmedabad in 1902 com-
menced with the singing of the national anthem by Vidya Gauri Nilkanth
and Sharda Mehta, two sisters who were the first two women graduates
of Gujarat.8 Respectable young women singing in public was itself a new
thing as singing before men was associated with courtesans.
      Prostitution was one of the first women's issues to be referred to by
the Congress, and their remarks shed some light on early nationalist
attitudes toward the question. At the 1888 session, the Congress resolved
to cooperate with English "well wishers" of India in their attempt for "the
total abrogation of laws and rules relating to the regulation of prostitution
by the state in India" and this was reiterated in 1892.9
     First steps to regulate prostitution had been taken by the British in
India at the turn of the eighteenth century to deal with venereal diseases
which British soldiers were thought to have caught from prostitutes. In
1864, the Contagious Diseases Act was passed making registration and
medical examination of prostitutes compulsory.
     Missionaries, evangelicals, and nonconformists in England opposed
the Act on the grounds that it legalized prostitution instead of eradicating

98                    Journal of Women's History                    Winter

it. This argument was taken up in India in the 1870s, but it was only one
of the arguments against the Act. It was also argued by the nationalists that
this gave the police the power to harass all classes of Indian women
mdiscriminately. In 1895, a government bill to expand the scope of police
surveillance over prostitutes was opposed by Surendranath Banerjee, a
nationalist leader, on the grounds that it threatened individual liberty by
giving the police unchecked power.10
     In the 1890s, the handling of plague operations by British soldiers in
Poona was criticized by nationalists on the grounds that women were
being dragged out in public and inspected before being taken to hospitals.
By the end of the nineteenth century, the issue of rape and racism were
interlinked, and this was used by the nationalists as a weapon against
British rule. Cries for the protection of "our" women against sexual attacks
by British soldiers abounded, especially in Bengal. Sarala Debi Ghosal, a
militant nationalist who edited Bharati, urged young men to become
physically strong to defend their women from molestation by British
soldiers.11 Nationalists were using rape as an example of imperialist bar-
barism, but they saw it as a violation of national honor rather than as an
act of violence against women. This became evident when they kept silent
in the case of the death of Phulmoni Debi, an eleven-year-old child bride,
killed in 1893 when raped by her adult husband.
     The partition of Bengal by Lord Curzon in 1905 infused a new spirit
of patriotism and was the beginning of women's participation in the
nationalist movement on a larger scale. The poet Rabindranath Tagore
announced his plan for observing rakhi-bandhan (tieing threads on wrists
of brothers) on "Partition Day" and women took part in it. Another rite
observed by women on this day was arandhan or not lighting the stove for
cooking. Protest meetings were held by women and about 500 of them
watched the laying of the foundation stone of the Federation Hall at
Calcutta on October 16, 1905—"Partition Day." Women organized
swadeshi melas and opened shops which sold only indigenous goods. We
read of women giving up use of foreign cloth and smashing their foreign
bangles.12
    Various revolutionary societies such as the Swadesh Bandhab, Anustlan,
Dawn, and others, sprang up during these years in Bengal and women
helped in circulating revolutionary leaflets and literature and maintained
liaisons between these groups. They contributed jewelry as well as money
to these societies. Sister Nivedita (Margaret Noble), one of Swami
Vivekananda's most ardent disciples, inspired many young men and
women. When Vivekananda's revolutionary brother, Phupendranath
Dutta, was arrested, Sister Nivedita stood surety for him, a Ladies' meet-
ing was held to honor him, an address of honor signed by 200 women was

1995               International Trends= AparnaBasu                       99

presented to him and his mother, and contributions were made for his
legal expenses. The Swadeshi movement was, however, largely confined
to Bengal.
     In Bengal, goddess-centered nationalist rhetoric gained new ground.
In the revolutionary terrorist groups which developed during the
Swadeshi movement, anti-British feeling was imbued with a Hindu
nationalism in which Kali, the goddess of strength, was repeatedly
invoked to liberate Mother India and become a beacon for her nationalist
sons. Worship of Kali, Durga, and Chandi became incumbent on many
young nationalists on the grounds that the "mother" would ease the path
to national liberation. For many the Mother Goddess was identified with
Mother India, and poems and songs were written about the motherland
whose image was worshiped in temples. Hindu worshipers of Shakti
looked upon women as the embodiment of power, energy, and action.
     The harnessing of Shakti to nationalism was not only a way of making
female power safer, by containing it, but also a way in which women could
find a role in the nationalist struggles. As the rhetoric of nationalism grew
mother-centered, more and more women became involved in nationalist
activities. Sarojini Naidu in her presidential address to the Indian National
Congress described India as a "house," the Indian people as "children,"
and "members of a joint family," and the Indian woman as "mother."
Women had to work hard to put the house in order.
     Bhikaji Cama (1861-1936), popularly known as Madame Cama, was
involved in the revolutionary movement both in India and abroad.
Among other activities she smuggled revolvers concealed in toys into
India. In 1907 she attended the International Socialist Congress in Stutt-
gart, where she unfurled the Indian National flag and persuaded the
Congress to support Indian independence. In 1909, her group started a
monthly journal, Bande Mataram, published from Geneva. She believed
that nationalist movements all over the world were linked by their anti-
imperialism. A staunch supporter of women's education, Madame Cama
held that Indian liberation movements would fail without the support of
Indian women. Statements to this effect were made by nationalists
throughout India. Women's education was necessary, it was argued, for
them to fulfill their roles as wives and mothers. "India needs nobly trained
wives and mothers, wise and tender rulers of the household, educated
teachers of the young___13 The power and strength of Indian mothers was
asserted, rather than their weaknesses. Education was a birthright and
those who denied it to women robbed themselves and the nation, for
Indian women were mothers of the nation. Education was not only a
birthright, it was what sons inherited from their mothers. The place of
Indian women in national life was as mothers—"the hand that rocks the

100                    Journal of Women's History                     Winter

cradle rules the world." As Sarojini Naidu said, women all over the world
were united by "the common divine quality of motherhood."14 Sur-
endranath Banerjee echoed this sentiment when he appealed to all Indians
"to sink their differences and unite under the banner of (the) religion of
motherhood."15
      In 1910 Sarala Debi Chaudhurani formed the Bharat Stri Mandai
(Great Circle of Indian Women) with the object of bringing together
women of all castes and creeds on the basis of their common interests in
the moral and material progress of India.16 Between 1910 and 1920 the
number of women's organizations grew rapidly. Called by various
names—Mahila Samitis, Women's Clubs, Ladies' Societies—they emerged
in the cities and towns of British India and native states. In 1917 the
Women's Indian Association (WIA) was established by Annie Besant,
Margaret Cousins, and Dorothy Jinarajadasa to start new branches as well
as affiliate societies already in existence. These Irish exsuffragists took up
the issue of votes for women, and when the Secretary of State for India,
Lord Edwin Montagu, came to India to discuss the demand for political
reforms, the WIA organized a delegation of Indian women to meet the
Montagu Chelmsford Committee. A memorandum was presented, writ-
ten largely by Margaret Cousins, asking that when the franchise was
widened women should be given the right to vote under the same condi-
tions as men. The Southborough Franchise Committee was initially reluc-
tant to give the vote to women because it felt that this would be premature
in a society which continued to enforce purdah and prohibit women's
education. But because of the sustained campaign launched by women's
organizations and the support given by the nationalists, it was finally left
to the provincial legislatures to decide the matter. Madras was the first
province to give voting rights to women in 1920, followed by Bombay in
1921. The franchise was extremely limited, and in the first elections held
under the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms less than one percent of the
female population could exercise the right to vote. In the suffrage move-
ment Indian women appealed to British suffragists for support. A delega-
tion went to England, campaigning through newspapers and meetings for
women's franchise. They met members of British Parliament and estab-
lished links with women's groups in Britain. Thus feminists were building
bridges across nations. In 1927, the All India Women's Conference was
established at the initiative of Margaret Cousins to take up the problem of
women's education. Women from different parts of the country as well as
from different religious groups attended the first session at Poona which
was a great success. The deliberations were in English, making clear that
those in attendance were educated. They also had to travel at their own
expense, marking them as members of well-to-do families. All India

1995                International Trends= AparnaBasu                  101

Women's Conference's initial concern was education, but it soon took up
issues such as child marriage and reform of Hindu law regarding divorce
and property. These reforms were opposed vehemently by orthodox Hin-
dus as posing serious threats to their religion but, of course, they chal-
lenged patriarchy also. Women's organizations carried on a sustained
campaign for these reforms.17
     While women's organizations were fighting for women's political
and economic rights and trying to improve their status by education and
social reform, the women's struggle entered a new phase with the arrival
in 1917 of Mahatma Gandhi on the Indian political scene. He claimed that
women were better than men in waging nonviolent passive resistance
because they had greater capacity for self-sacrifice and endurance, were
less self-seeking, and had more moral courage. With his experience of
South Africa behind him, Gandhi was aware of women's potentialities as
passive resisters. As he experimented with his weapon of satyagraha in
India, he realized that women could be effective participants. At first
Gandhi launched local demonstrations in Champaran (Bihar) against
indigo planters in 1917, in Kheda (Gujarat) for nonpayment of revenue in
1918, and in the same year, in the Ahmedabad textile workers strike in
which he was brought in by Anasuya Sarabhai, the sister of the textile
magnate, Ambalal Sarabhai.
     The involvement of really large numbers of women in the nationalist
movement began with the Khilafat and noncooperation movement in
1920s. Addressing public meetings in different parts of the country, Gan-
dhi appealed to women to donate their jewelry for the national cause and
help him collect money for the Tilak Swaraj Fund. He compared British
rule to Ravana-rajya and said that just as Sita did not cooperate with
Ravana, so the Indians must not cooperate with the British.18 He told the
women of India that he expected great things from them and that he had
enormous faith in their capacity to sacrifice and endure suffering. Sushila
Nayar, a close disciple of Gandhi, recalls a meeting at Rohtak where the
hall was filled to capacity with women in lehanqas and rustic clothes
and Gandhi, with outstretched hands, received money and jewelry for
the Tilak fund.19 Women in different parts of the country were drawn
to him by his magnetic personality, his unique naturalness, and trans-
parent sincerity.
    During the noncooperation movement (1920-22) Basanti Devi accom-
panied her husband, Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das, on his tours of Bengal
and asked women to boycott foreign goods. Women volunteers solà khadi
(homespun cloth) on the streets of Calcutta. Kasturba Gandhi, wife of
Mahatma Gandhi, presided over the Gujarat Provincial Conference and
appealed to women to take up spinning and weaving khadi. In Allahabad,

102                     Journal of Women's History                  Winter

Lahore, Bombay, Ahmedabad, and various parts of India women held
meetings advocating swadeshi and use of khadi.
    In the satyagraha in Borsad, a rural district of Gujarat in 1923-24,
women turned out in such large numbers that Gandhi remarked that he
had never seen such huge gatherings of women. Women displayed greater
courage than men when police confiscated their cows, buffaloes, and other
property.
      In the Bardoli Satyagraha of 1928, women soon outnumbered men in
political gatherings. Singing patriotic songs, they thronged Sardar Patel's
meetings. When the peasants refused to pay taxes to the government
women supported them fully. Bardoli set a new example, as this was the
first time that simple unsophisticated rural women participated in the
freedom struggle, though most of them belonged to the more prosperous
peasant groups.
      In February 1930, Gandhi announced that he would launch a satya-
graha by marching from Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad to Dandina
coastal village in Gujarat, and illegally manufacture salt there. Originally
no women had been included in the Dandhi March. Khurshedben Naoroji,
granddaughter of Dadabhai Naoroji, one of the founding fathers of the
Congress, wrote angrily to Gandhi about their exclusion.20 Margaret Cous-
ins protested in Sfri Dharma. Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya went to meet
Gandhi and asked him to make a special appeal to women. On the last day
of the Salt March, Sarojini Naidu joined it at Dandi and was the first
woman to be arrested.
      Women all over the country broke the salt law, organized processions
and meetings, and picketed shops selling foreign cloth and liquor. This
agitation marked a new level of participation by women in the nationalist
movement. "Women, young and old, rich and poor, came tumbling out in
their hundreds and thousands, shaking off the traditional shackles that
had held them so long."21 Special women' s organizations were set up to
mobilize and coordinate women's processions, picket prabhat pheris, and
spinning. Women hawked khadi and engaged in publicity and propa-
ganda. Over 80,000 persons were arrested during the Salt Satyagraha, more
than 17,000 of whom were women.22
    Thousands of women actively participated in the Quit India move-
ment of 1942. As the news of the arrest of Gandhi and other Congress
leaders spread, women spontaneously came out to hold demonstrations,
organize strikes, and court imprisonment. Many went "underground,"
helping parallel governments and leading illegal activities in the course of
which a few were even killed.
    While thousands of women joined the freedom movement in
response to Gandhi's call, there were some who could not accept his creed

1995              International Trends: Aparna Basu                    103

of nonviolence, preferring to join revolutionary or terrorist groups. Ideal-
istic and highly emotional and impulsive, these young girls' hatred for the
British was intense; their plan was to make attempts on European lives as
widely as possible. They believed in individual acts of heroism, not in
building up a mass movement. They were inspired by patriotism, not
feminist ideas.
     Most women joined the freedom movement because, like men, they
were inspired by nationalism and wanted to see the end of foreign rule.
An important factor was family influence. Women from families such as
those of Gandhi, Nehru, C. R. Das, Jamnalal Bajaj, and Lajpat Rai naturally
wanted to participate. Where the atmosphere at home was nationalistic
and fathers, husbands, or brothers were active, so usually were the
women.

     Books played a part in inspiring the educated. Annie Besant's autobi-
ography influenced Kamaladevi,·23 novels such as Saratchandra Chatterji's
Father Dabi, or Bankimchandra's Anand Math and Debi Chaudharani
inspired Bengali revolutionaries.24 Personalities were perhaps most
important—Subhas Bose in Bengal, Saradar Patel in Gujarat, Jawaharlal
Nehru, and above all Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi especially inspired confi-
dence in women. His use of religious symbols and simple language
appealed to ordinary unsophisticated women. His mode of struggle was
one in which women could easily participate. Gandhi's letters to his
women followers reveal that he understood their strength, ambition, and
hopes. He asserted that women were true satyagrahis, and without them
he could do nothing. The biographies and autobiographies of women in
the national movement reveal the tremendous impact he had on them.
Initially, political awakening among women was confined to the cities,
and largely to those who came from middle-class professional and busi-
ness families. By the 1930s, women from the working classes and peas-
antry were also involved. What did this political participation mean for
women and what were its consequences?
     Unfortunately, those who have written on women's participation in
the nationalist movement have opted for one of two simplistic views. On
the one hand, there is the widespread view that by their participation in
the political movement, Indian women helped their own struggle for
liberation, that in India, feminism and nationalism were closely inter-
linked.25 The merging of the women's movement with the Indian National
movement, it is argued, helped the cause of women and prevented the
development of hostility between the genders which is a characteristic of
Western feminist movements. Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya believes that
Indian women launched a struggle to fight not only for the country's
freedom but also for their own.26 There is the view that women's partici-

104                    Journal of Women's History                     Winter

pation in the Gandhian movement was in a sense an extension of their role
within the family.27 Women were traditionally supposed to sacrifice them-
selves, and participation in politics was internalized as a special form of
sacrifice in an essentially religious process. The language, imagery, and
idiom of nationalist protest remained steeped in tradition and religion as
self-conscious alternatives to alien Western norms. Many scholars, how-
ever, argue that while such traditional moorings permitted the political
involvement of thousands of women, it inhibited the extension of radical-
ization to other spheres. Gandhi and Congress are condemned for manip-
ulating women for political ends. These scholars ask whether the lack of
hostility between the genders is desirable? Was it absent because men
accepted gender equality or because women recognized male supremacy,
satisfied with the removal of some of the excesses of the patriarchal
system?
    The interaction between ferninism and nationalism was a complex
phenomenon. The activities of women in both local and national organi-
zations and the activities of thousands of women who joined the nation-
alist movement together made up the women's movement. The freedom
movement did not lead to a separate, autonomous women's movement
since it was part of the anticolonial movement, but it did generate a sense
of power among women who realized their own strength. While many
women who picketed shops selling foreign cloth or liquor, who marched
in processions, or went to jail did not question patriarchal values, political
involvement for others did spur their ferninism and commitment to
improving women's status. However, if patriarchal values had been chal-
lenged, women's participation might not have been so widespread,
because women could not go into the public sphere without the consent
of the men in the house.
    In the period from 1917 to 1947, charitable, philanthropic, and social
reform activities together with the nationalist movement constituted the
primary sources of the women's movement. The organizations for women
tried to remain apolitical but many of their members joined political
parties, participated in the nationalist movement, and even went to jail.
Sarojini Naidu, for instance, was involved in both movements. She was a
founding member of WIA and AIWC and also a frequent member of the
Congress Working Committee and its president in 1925. She urged women
to petition on issues which affected women's status but remain apolitical
in terms of party allegiance. The concern of women like her for women's
status manifested itself in petitioning, urging more educational facilities,
demanding legal changes in marriage laws, property rights, the franchise,
and so on. They represented urban, upper-class English-speaking women.
The nationalist movement also brought into its fold poor, illiterate rural

1995               International Trends: AparnaBasu                       105

and urban women. The political movement stressed the importance of
Swaraj. Women's organizations argued that uplifting women was neces-
sary, because they are the mothers of future generations. While they were
urged to come out and work for the nation, there was no rejection of the
traditional role of mother and wife. In fact, it was stressed that if they were
educated and widened their horizons, women would be good wives and
mothers. Women's organizations began by concentrating on issues of
social reform to "uplift" the status of women but with the rising tide of
nationalism, the country's freedom was given priority. Thus, caste, class,
and gender issues were not stressed in order to create solidarity against
imperial rule.
    The women's organizations had been pressing for the reform of
marriage and inheritance laws and a common civil code, but when the
government in the 1940s appointed a committee under the chairmanship
of Sir B. N. Rao to look into this matter, opinion among women was
divided as to whether they should cooperate with this committee, because
the Congress had launched the Quit India movement in 1942 and most
nationalist leaders were in jail. Some women opposed giving evidence
before the committee, whereas others argued that social equality was as
important as political freedom. The former argued that the nation's free-
dom could never oppose women's freedom.
     Women's active role in the freedom struggle together with their cour-
age and organizing ability led the nationalist leaders to grant women
political equality. At its session in Karachi in 1931, the Indian National
Congress declared that in independent India women would have com-
plete political freedom and equality. The National Planning Committee
appointed by the Congress in 1937 had a subcommittee on women
which made radical recommendations regarding women's equal status
which were accepted by the Congress. Yet the majority of men in the
Congress and others involved in the freedom struggle subscribed to
patriarchal values and resented any challenge to male authority within
or outside the family.
     Fighting for the country's freedom brought women out of their homes
and made them politically conscious but it did not emancipate or improve
the position or status of the vast majority. How else do we explain the fact
that despite this long history of women's struggle, Indian women today
are one of the most backward in the world with regard to literacy, female
work participation, and sex ratios. Changing societal attitudes towards
women and women's own self-perception which are deeply rooted in our
psyche and social structure is not an easy task. The Indian women's
movement thus has a long way to go in its struggle for bringing about new
values, a new morality, and a new egalitarian relationship.

106                           Journal of Women's History                         Winter

Notes

          1 Usha Chakraborti, Condition of Bengali Women Around the Second Half of the
Nineteenth Century (Calcutta, 1963), 148.
          2 J. Murdoch, comp., Twelve Years of Indian Progress, The Resolutions of its
Thirteenth Session (Madras, 1898), 36.
          3 Meera Kosambi, "Women's Emancipation and Equality: Pandita Ramabai's
Contribution to Women's Cause," Economic and Political Weekly 23 (October 1988):
WS-48.

          4 Sita Ram Singh, Nationalism and Social Reform in India: 1805-1920 (Delhi,
1967), 206.
          s Ibid.

       6 Pattabhi Sitaramayya, History of the Indian National Congress vol. 1 (Delhi,
1969), 114.
          7 Ibid., 51.
          8 B. B. Mazumbar and B. P. Mazumbar, Congress and Congressmen in the
Pre-Gandhian Era, 1885-1917 (Calcutta, 1967), 128.
          9 Kenneth Balihatchet, Race, Sex and Class under the Raj (Delhi, n.d.), 12-39.
         io Ibid., 123-143.
         11 Urna Chakravarti, "Whatever Happened to the Vedic Dasi? Orientalism,
Nationalism and a Script for the Past," in Recasting Women, ed. Kumkum Sangari
and Sudesh Vaid (Delhi, 1989), 62.
         i2 SumitSarkar, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, (New Delhi, 1973), 287-288.
         13 Sarojini Naidu, Speeches and Writings (Madras, 1904), 18.
         " Ibid., 100.
         15 Surendranath Banerjee, Speeches vol. 1 (Calcutta, n.d.), 21
         16 Sita Ram Singh, Nationalism and Social Reform, 190-191.
    17 Aparna Basu and Bharati Ray, Women's Struggle: A History of the All India
Women's Conference, 1927-1987 (New Delhi, 1991).
       18 Apama Basu, "The Role of Women in the Indian Struggle for Freedom,"
in Indian Women from Purdah to Modernity, ed. B. R. Nanda (New Delhi, 1976), 20-21.
         19 Ibid.
         2° Ibid.

         21 Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya, Interview, NMML Oral History Section,
72-73.

         22 P. J. Thomas, Indiana Women Through the Ages (Bombay, 1964), 331.
         23 Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya, Interview, NMML Oral History Section,
72-73.

1995                International Trends= Aparna Basu                         107

      24 Transcript of interview with Kamala Das Gupta, NMML Oral History
Section.

      25 Aparna Basu, "The Role of Women in Freedom Movement"; Lakshmi
Menon, "Women and the National Movement," in Indian Women, ed. Devaki Jain
(New Delhi, 1975).
      26 Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya, "The Women's Movement, Then and
Now," in Indian Women.
      27 Gail Minault, ed., The Extended Family: Women's Political Participation in
India and Pakistan (New Delhi, 1981).