Organizer: Geraldine Forbes, State University of New York, Oswego
Chair: Barbara N. Ramusack, University of Cincinnati
Discussant: Ann Grodzins Gold, Syracuse University
The first histories of women in South Asia focused on women whose careers approximated those of men (e.g. Indira Gandhi) or those who aided the male-dominated nationalist project (e.g. Sarojini Naidu). In the 1990s, we have moved beyond adding "great women" to the narrative but still face two major historiographical issues. The first involves coming to terms with androcentric historiography whether of the nationalist variety or emerging from the subaltern group. Equally challenging is Western feminist historiography with its dichotomies: public/private, victim/agent, etc. and preoccupation with the individual The need is to find categories and theory suitable to further our understanding of how women living within patriarchal societies accomplish goals which are not supportive of patriarchy.
The panelists will discuss the lives of three South Asian women who worked to improve the world for women: Begum Rokeya (educationalist), Haimavati Sen (medical doctor), and Rameshwari Nehru (social worker/ Gandhian). All three negotiated two patriarchal systems: political and familial, to accomplish their goals. Along the way, each of these women accommodated/ compromised her 'feminist' principles. In analyzing the work and writings of these women we intend to demonstrate the importance of both the socio-political context and personal identity to an understanding of women's agency. Agency has too often been associated with rebellion, but as these papers demonstrate, agency can also involve compromise and accommodation.
Protest on the Job and Appeasement at Home: Haimavati Sen
Geraldine Forbes, State University of New York, Oswego
Haimavati Sen (c. 1866-1933) graduated from Campbell Medical School's program offering vernacular medical training to Bengali women. She entered this program in 1891 as a 26-year-old remarried widow, graduated in 1894, and became the "Lady Doctor" of the Hooghly Dufferin Hospital for Women in Chinsurah. Her medical career is chronicled in colonial documents which include yearly reports on her work as a medical practitioner. In addition, she wrote a lengthy and candid memoir.
Especially glaring for the modern reader is the contrast in Haimavati Sen's response to the two patriarchies which governed her life. She rebelled against the medical establishment which was male, credentialed, and legitimated by the Raj. Of significance is the fact that she opposed British officials on the grounds purdah patients must be treated by women doctors, arguments originally used by British women. At the same time she acquiesced when her husband demanded she behave like a 'proper' wife. In this case, she explained her actions in traditional terms.
The object of this paper is to look closely at the twin phenomena of rebellion and compromise. I suggest focusing attention on both context and identity to answer the question of why Haimavati Sen accepted male authority in her marital but not her professional life. This analysis of a late 19th century medical doctor's negotiation of the public and private complicates the discussion of agency in writing the history of Indian women.
Subversion and Accommodation in the Life and Work of Rokeya Sakhawat Hossein
Sonia Nishat Amin, Dhaka University
Rokeya Sakhawat Hossein was born in 1880 at Payraband, Rangpur (present day Bangladesh) into a rigidly conservative zamindari family. At a time when women from progressive Indian families were completing university degrees, girls from the Saber family at Payraband were discouraged from stepping out of the andarmahal. Rokeya was never allowed to attend school, but her elder brother and sister taught her the basics at home. Later in life she improved her English with her husband's help.
Widowed at an early age, Rokeya left her husband's home in Bihar and settled in Calcutta where she founded the Sakhawat Memorial Girls' School for Muslim girls in 1911. At the same time, Rokeya pursued her writing career-producing pieces of social criticism aimed at exposing patriarchal subjugation. Both activities made her unpopular with conservatives.
Throughout her career, Rokeya strategized to accommodate to existing norms and ideology. For instance, she wore the burqa and never appeared in public without this outer covering. She even wrote a piece in defense of the burqa and hence purdah which she was always careful to distinguish from abarodh or strict seclusion. Simultaneously she wrote against seclusion in Abarodhbasini. Her school syllabi included Muslim religious texts, although she wrote elsewhere that the great, revealed religious texts of the world were but the creations of men!
This paper will explore these contradictions as a conscious strategy adopted by Rokeya to ensure the success of her institutions.
The Unhappy Marriage of Feminism and Gandhism: The Case of Rameshwari Nehru
Mrinalini Sinha, Boston College
This paper is a study of the politics of Rameshwari Nehru, an early 20th-century Indian feminist. Nehru was a pioneer of many of the all-India women's organizations in the 1920s and 30s. After the 30s, however, she was better known as a Gandhian socialist and was most active in khadi development programs. The "feminist" and "Gandhian" phases of Nehru's career seem to be a study in contrasts.
Nehru's career appears to have paralleled that of many a leading Indian woman activist in the 20s and 30s. The trajectory of these careers has usually been seen in terms of the co-optation of feminist consciousness by the politics of nationalism. This paper, however, will make a case for much greater continuity between Nehru's feminism and Gandhian politics. Her particular brand of "Gandhian feminism," I will argue, was an early example of Indian feminists' efforts to develop an alternative understanding of feminism itself: one that understood feminism as much more than a movement for women's equality. Nehru's desire to combine feminism with Gandhism must be understood as part of an engagement with feminism itself.
From such a context, moreover, Nehru's efforts to evolve an alternative to "western" feminism in "Gandhian feminism" has important implications for us today. For the limitations of Nehru's enterprise raises similar questions about the viability of challenging the racism or ethnocentrism of a "western" feminism with alternative "non-western" or "Third World" feminisms.