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Chapter I la
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Feminist History Writing: An Overview
mGender in history
mContemporary women movement and feminist theories
in history writing
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mFeminity and historical writings in India

 Chapter I

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Feminist History Writing: An Overview

Writing the history of women in India was impossible until we

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began to search for, unearth, and preserve women’s documents.
Geraldine Forbes 1

The investigation of the dialectical relationship between structure and

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history is essential for a proper understanding of the nature and the
defining characteristics of any social formation in which sustainable
solutions are being sought to the encountered problems.
Istvan’ Meszaros’ 2

For the past couple of decades ‘women’s history’ as a subject has

come in the centre stage of historical analysis among western
academics. Understanding of ‘women’ as an important agency in
history writing, historians in recent years have attempted
highlighting the significance as well as role of half of the population
1
which is missing in the construction of human history. Kirit Shah in
his introduction to the volume ‘Gender and History’ underlines this
fact that the subject of women has not been recognized till recent
past. He refers that, in history writing, the second half of the last
century was prominently advocating what Carr has argued, history
as a dialogue between past and present to plan the future.3

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Gender in history

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It was obvious that in such a theoretical settings, the notion of
women or gender as a category in historical analysis in most of the
works did not find a reasonable space. This trend was quite visible
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even in Carr’s scheme of construction of the past too. In the 1980s, the
historical revisionists put forward the argument of rejecting the
economic and social determinism of the Carr era4. This notion of
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determinism was further sidelined, as the cultural history acquired
prominence to map the contours of cultural fields, particularly the
aspect of identity, consciousness and mentality.
The historical development of ideas suggest that until 18th
century the prevailing perception about gender, particularly
Aristotel’s assumptions of existence of only one sex and seeing
women as embryonic and uncompleted male, influenced the
common understand of the society. The dichotomy created by the
Christianity particularly in equating men with spirituality and
women with materiality,5 further strengthened this notion. In 18th
century, the two sex model was brought into discourse. It gave
2
decisive importance to biology through Darwinism and medical
science. However during recent decades, the most significant
development in historical research has been the emergence of idea of
women history. This gave a different approach to the historians for
the construction of past. It was seen as a new way to understand and
analyze the lives and experience of one and the same proportion of

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the population which had been ignored for a long in history.

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Elizabeth Fox-Genoverse in her writings asked to think about placing
women’s history into history. Examining the dialectical relationship
of patriarchy she argued that6:
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‘We must adopt gender system as a fundamental category
of historical analysis, understanding that such systems are
historically, not biologically, determined; that the forms of
male dominance vary historically and cannot be assimilated
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under the general rubric of patriarchy; that simply to
substitute women’s history for mainstream history leaves
us prisoners of precisely that pernicious status as ‘other’ to
which mainstream history has assigned us…. Our dominant
social theories have provided us with no adequate way to
assess the indispensable contributions of women to
collective life in society, including class and racial
dominance on the one side and the resistance of the
oppressed on the other...’
Similar arguments were put forward by Sally Humphreys where she
said that Women’s history is like other forms of ‘history from below’
such as ‘people’s history’. However it has challenges of showing that
it can transform and enrich the mainstream of historical traditions.
3
She said that in its early stages women’s study as well as history was
closely linked to the consciousness–raising polemics of women’s
movement and now it has taken a new turn of ‘history by women’,
history about women, and history written from a feminist point of
view7.

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With the changing perception it is realized that women and
man both are cultural rather than biological categories and any

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history based on this realization would be subject to searching
enquiry encompassing the entire gamut of woman–man relationship
in societies across time and space. Thus understanding gender as a
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historical construction, not as biological given, gender analysis in the
beginning focused on one gender, women and mostly served to
retrieve women’s historical role. The changed perception saw gender
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relations as hierarchically constructed. Various theories of patriarchy
were applied to explain men’s dominance over women. Using 18th
century contract theory on relationship, Carole Pateman gave a
different explanation to the gender understanding of past and
associated this phenomenon as relationship between state and
individual.8 Even the contemporary political thinkers such as Locke,
Hobbes etc. were also locating men in public sphere and women in
private thus portraying the image of men as a powerful political
agent. Contrary to it, historians such as Leonore Davidoff and
Catherine Hall contested this divide and argued that the dynamics of
interdependency of men and women with each other can not be
4
ignored in the social analysis9. The changing perception led to
looking at women as a social category such as class race ethnicity etc.
The concern of historians was to analyse the often silent and the
hidden operations of the gender that were defining forces in the
organizations of most of the societies. R.W.Connell suggests that
gender may be taken as a process where relations, situations and

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institutions are more or less gendered and may change over time.

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Thus Connell’s explanations gave a new dimension to the gender
analysis in historical context, it also added to the understanding of
prevailing historical phenomenon. Thus with growing debates
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historian have realized that for multiple understanding of women,
interaction of gender with class, race and ethnicity is also needed.
Thus in fresh investigations gender was viewed as a social structure.
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Further, it was recognized that women’s perception in codified
knowledge have always been missing. Consequently the new
thoughts were allowed to come in, opening window for the
developing feminist theories. Such epistemologies were based on the
recognition that existing methods of knowledge generation were not
capable of defining the life of ordinary women. The perception, as
often argued, grew partly because codified knowledge and
institutional structures for knowledge generation were historically
controlled by men from certain classes and partly from political aims
to perpetuate women’s subordination.10

5
 It is obvious that by engaging with gender arguments, scholars
of history have started acknowledging the reality that cultural,
political and religious history can be constructed broadly to
incorporate great portions of the historical narratives. In fact the
gender is informed by and enriches every branch of the historical
enterprise providing the kind of synthesis framework we have

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recently lacked.11

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As a matter of fact with the beginning of new millennium these
new concepts were brought within the discourse and this shift in the
perspective allowed the fresh understanding of the past. It also
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opened the way to go beyond the searching of causation and to the
making of meaning, beyond interpreting the available data to
decoding it. Thus it was accepted that gender was not merely a
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valuable, but indispensable category of historical analysis and
understanding. Linda underlined the significance of women’s history
and suggested that it is by definition critical history12. The
perspective of criticality was further expanded by Natalie Zemon
Davis. She narrated that:

‘Women’s history means including women in historical

records. If one is looking at history of agriculture, one sorts
out women’s work from men’s when these are different, and
talks of women’s training, tools, tasks and customs. If one is
writing about political movements one asks whether it has
women among its supporters and organizers, women’s
issues among its concerns’13

6
Relating the role of human agency, particularly women, in designing
larger architectural framework of human history, historians have
began stressing into the fact, if there has been common historical
experience for both men and women around the world or is there
some scope for difference. If the answer is yes, then what these
experiences might have been? Ida Blom in her arguments raised the

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questions of gender and asked, can such universal human experience

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approach necessitate new ways of thinking?14 Similar approach was
adopted by women historian Olwen Hufton too. In her writings she
has come out with an argument of critical enquiries on such history
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writings. While discussing women in history, she often raised the
question that “what is women’s history”? She broadens the scope of
her argument and questioned whether women’s history intends to
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write women back into the records or it wants to rewrite the past? Or
study the dynamics of power and oppression in the context of
women?15 In a critical note on women’s history Hufton illustrated
that:

‘For me women’s history implies a triple commitment.

The first and most obvious is to discern women’s past
role and situation- in this instance to locate them in the
social, economic, religious political and psychological
monde immobile of traditional society. The second is to give
history of the period a gender dimension: less grandly to
suggest relevant areas or the issues in the period under
review where the attitude or the position of women
differentiated perhaps by class or national group,
7
 influenced the course of the events., and hence to make
clear that to write the history without reference to gender
is to distort the vision. Thirdly the women did not live in
society in isolation. We are not merely looking at how
men conceived ‘the sex’ but also themselves. At this point
history of women becomes the history of mentalities16.
These interpretations obliged scholars dealing with history to move

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away from socio-economic determinism. Together with attempts at

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writing women’s history and weaving gender relationships into the
web of history, these developments worked a fundamental change
into the nature and methodology of historical enquiry.17 In an
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interesting review of Women, Work and Family Peter Laslett pointed
out that while one examines woman in history, the experiences
always remain varied according to class, area and time because there
was no simple, single record of a past women to present to represent
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all women.18

Opening with the argument that history is, and has always
been selective and represented a very narrow record of human past
in terms of time, space and numbers, she pointed out that much of
the present male bias is projected in the imaginative reconstruction of
the past. The invisibility of women in available historiography is
attributed to the fact that men held power and women appeared not
to have had the power to write about themselves. Disapproving of
the tendency of the historians to generalize from isolated references
to women in terms of their contribution Matraiye Krishnaraj says

8
‘women’s history is the history of women in society; one can not read
off the status. Likewise commenting on increasing popularity of
biographical narratives and associated use of oral accounts, she poses
the problem of building a bridge between the individual saga and the
broader social setting.19

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Contemporary women movement and feminist theories in
history writing.

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It is a well known fact that feminist arguments were emerged in
academia because of the contemporary women’s movement. These
movements played significant role in bringing ‘women’ as a subject
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in the foreground of discourse. The subordination of women was the
key issue in these movements. Shah points out that in early 1970s the
questions relating to subordination of women were first brought into
discussion by feminist scholars. They were asking if this
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subordination was a biological phenomenon or it was rooted in the

gendered socialization and if it was a social phenomenon than what
was the economic basis of such subordination?20 Was it driven by
sexual division of work? The feminist theories put forward diverse
explanations to this question using various ideological frameworks.
The initial queries were associated with acquiring missing
information to situate women in social domain. For instance, in
common perception Gupta period in Indian history was seen as a
period of progress of literature, art and architecture etc. However it
was also a period when women were denied education and sati was

9
practiced. Similarly many other questions could be asked with regard
to our understanding of history. What did women do when men
fought wars? How did women’s workforce participation and culture
shape societies? How and why did the prevailing misconceptions
about women’s bodies, mental capacities activities and achievements
arise? Apart from indicating the vulnerability and powerlessness of

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women in society, this enquiry indicated that the construction of

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codified knowledge was not devoid of the vested interests of
individuals and groups. It was obvious that such knowledge was in
fact justifying the ideological beliefs of men as a dominant factor. It
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was only as feminist theories developed greater insight into the
realities of women’s lives, that it critiqued the method of knowledge
construction used in main stream theories and sought to integrate a
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more holistic and interdisciplinary approach to knowledge.21 It
indicated that the habit of thinking in twofold hierarchical opposites
was responsible for the ‘othering’ of women22.

The gender construction refers to complex social processes that

determine the values, behavior patterns and norms of conduct which
govern roles and responsibilities of women and man as also their
interrelationships. Jane Lewis critiqued conventional historiography
and said, only by examining historical facts, it is not possible to
reconstruct the past without bias.23 The historiographical work
appeared in recent years in west suggests that during 19th century
due to dominance of scientific discipline in history, gender was
10
treated as an unchanging biological given. The shaping of the society
was linked to the activities of men and woman and was associated
with the biological task of reproduction only. Such understanding of
masculinity and faminity based on unchangeable biological facts, in
fact further pushed the gender concerns into sideline in the social
science research and made it a field for the natural and medical

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science24.

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During past decades, historians have challenged this paradigm
by tracing the historical construction and understanding of sexual
difference. Particularly to define the nation and nation state
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phenomenon. The limiting understanding of these fields of history to
a question of polarization as colonizer and colonized is not of much
interest to historians now and they are paying more attention to new
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concepts such as femininity. This may be observed in the arguments
of Ida Blom. Analyzing the dichotomy of femininity, Blom states that
male colonizers were constructing a notion of colonized women thus
representing true femininity serving and obeying men. This
construction could offer a male refuge from what was perceived as
the threat of western emancipated western womanhood25.

Feminity and historical writings in India

In India, the feminist writings may be traced to the rising anti
colonial feelings which brought women in the stage of social debate.
Taking the case of Indian women and how they were perceived by
colonizers, Mrinalini Sinha has shown how at the end of 19th century
11
masculinity became an important feature of British imperialist policy.
In the first half of the nineteenth century and even before
missionaries, administrators, travellers were extensively writing with
negative perception on Indian society, particularly portraying
Indians as ‘barbarians’ and ‘naturally inferior’. Writers like Mill,
Orme, Dubious, Macaulay, Bantinck were portraying the native as

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“frill, cowardly and soft bodied little people.” Said argued that

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colonial rulers deliberately represented the orient in distorted fantasy
structure. It was obvious that because of psychological advantage of
being ruler, colonial ideology was asserting their moral superiority.
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One of such area of demonstrating superiority was the gender
relations which they effectively used as a tool.
To establish the notion of higher morality, the imperial power
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deliberately highlighted the low status of Indian women in their
writings. For instance, in the colonial writings the Bengali middle
class men were visualized as small and physically weak with no self
control as witnessed through child marriage, in Katherine Mayo’s
accounts.26 In fact Mayo’s account created huge controversies.
Mrinalini Sinha critiqued such portrayal of Indian and argued that
the significance of women as opposed to the collective interest of the
community as a legitimate constituency in their own right for the
reform of Sharda Act. She wrote that to be sure the debates on the age
of consent and marriage regulation in colonial India were typically
more concerned with claims to modernity than with the position of

12
the women per se.27 Almost similar critique comes from Massani who
writes that contrary to western perception, life in the traditional
zenana or heram had not necessarily meant ignorance or
backwardness, as Tara Ali Baig reminds:

there was tremendous amount of sophistication even in

traditional families, within even an orthodox Hindu family,

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the amount of learning, that a woman might have was far

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grater then people recognized28
Perhaps Mill’s account was the first in portraying Indian social
customs as degenerated and barbaric. Mill projected Hindu
civilization as crude which was sunk in the lowest depth of
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immorality specifically in relation to women’s condition. He
described the Hindu women as:

‘in a state of dependence more strict and humiliating than

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that which is ordained for the weaker sex…….nothing

can exceed the habitual contempt which Hindus entertain
for their women….They are held in extreme degradation,
excluded from sacred books deprived of education and of
share in paternal property….That remarkable barbarity,
the wife held unworthy to eat with her husband, is
prevalent in Hinduism’29
A similar account on the condition of women in the past was
provided by M.C.Deb who combined elements of Mill’s approach.
Deb was describing Indian men as who always looked upon women
as household slave. It was apparent that all these accounts were to
establish the fact that, it was the Hindu ideology that degraded and

13
made condition of women so miserable. Thus for the colonial
masters, the dishonored conditions of women required both
‘intervention’ and ‘protection’ from the state.30 Partha Chattarjee
writes that ‘in identifying women as as "degenerate and barbaric,"
colonialist critics invariably repeated a long list of atrocities
perpetrated on lndian women, not so much by men or certain classes

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of men, but by an entire body of scriptural canons and ritual practices

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which, they said, by rationalizing such atrocities within a complete
framework of religious doctrine, made them appear to perpetrators
and sufferers alike as the necessary marks of right conduct.’ He
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further states that ‘by assuming a position of sympathy with the
unfree and oppressed womanhood of India, the colonial mind was
able to transform this figure of the Indian woman into a sign of the
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inherently oppressive and unfree nature of the entire cultural
tradition of a country.31

The British officials saw gender relations as a power for self

control and restraint to govern not only oneself but others32.
Interestingly this propensity of portraying men as womanish and
unworthy of political right and self determination by colonial powers
was existing in the French and the African colonies too.33 The
dichotomy of this perception was that, both the colonized as well as
the colonizer were seen as male. However on the other hand man
was visualized as an individual agency with a personality having
subjectivity. It is worth mentioning that in British colonial
14
conversations, women were figuring mainly as subject of male
governance in their own community and claimed as object of reform
by British state.34 It was because, as Chitnis argues, in the Asian
understanding of femininity, the women was seen as subservient to
father, brother, husband and mother in law, reflecting stressed
patriarchal dominance as well as the importance of generation to a

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much higher extent, while in western cultures such relations were

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dominated by the notion of individuality35. It was ironical that in
colonies women’s roles was idealized as wives and mothers,
obliterating some times colonized women’s importance in agrarian as
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well as in urban economies. Hufton states that in traditional societies,
as commercial wealth expanded; a great reservoir of young women
was taken into domestic service; therefore such phenomenon should
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not be ignored while constructing the past.36

Thus, all these developments in understanding of women’s

history challenged the basic assumptions of prevailing feminist
thoughts. Leaving apart the classical social theories of social cultural
order, these new perceptions opted for an analysis of the local and
culturally specific particulars to understand the heterogeneity of
human experience.37 Thus history writing grew within this backdrop
of understanding, started uncovering women’s lives not just as the
lives of those who were reflected simply as character in the annals of
the history, but also as the lives of ordinary women. The feminist

15
historiography was now focusing attention to understand women’s
every day concern.

Interestingly the development of subaltern approach, though it

considered gender as limiting factor in social analysis,38 in history
writing broadened the base of feminist historiography, thus allowing

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it to foreground the invisible voices and experiences of ordinary
population. Gayatri Chandrashekhar Spivak placed the argument of

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subaltern and addressed the problems of writing history of women in
“Can subaltern (women) speak”?, she argued that women have been
‘historicized subject’ for scholarship particularly western, as women
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under colonialism suffered not only the oppression of colonialism,
but also the patriarchy in their own time.39 Examining the question of
subaltern women she remarked:
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The question of women seems most problematic in this

context; can the subaltern women speak?.....Our effort to give
the subaltern a voice in history will be even more open to the
dangers run by Freud’s discourse….
As a product of these, I have put together the sentence–
white men are saving brown women from brown men….The
Hindu widow ascends the pyre of the dead husband and
immolates herself upon it. This is widow sacrifice. The rite
was not practiced universally and was not caste–class fixed.
The abolition of this rite is by the British has been generally
understood as a case of ‘white men saving brown women
from brown men’ against this is the Indian nativist argument,
a parody of the nostalgic for the lost origin’ the women

16
 actually wanted to die’ It is not easy to ask the question of
consciousness of subaltern women.40
Kamala Visweswaran took this argument further ahead and
suggested that it is possible to construct a subaltern female for
history by removing the preconceived nationalist picture, what she
saw as ‘point of erasure‘.41 Commenting on the historiography, Veena

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Poonacha points out that it was the dynamic interaction between

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people, activities and ideas that allowed the feminist research to
grow. Thus in other words feminist historiography by recovering
voices from the past, in true sense, sought to answer women’s current
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invisibility in mainstream history. It shifted the focus of history as a
narration of past politics to the multiple lived experiences of the
people.42 The new approach tried to view how changes impact
women’s life and also the gender relationship, particularly in the
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context of educational, health and economic opportunities and

political system.43 Such method of reconstruction of history as a
matter of fact, was drawing the theoretical framework from R.G.
Collingwood’s ‘The Idea of History’ that historical thinking is an
activity of the imagination.44

In India, the feminist writings may be traced to the rising anti

colonial feelings which brought women in the stage of social debate.
During this period the Indian intelligentsia was experiencing a dual
encounter with colonial ideology. On the one hand it was confronted
with the so called civilizing mission of imperialists who portrayed it

17
as savage; on the other hand it was contended with the orientalists’
portrayal of India as a great civilization. For instance, Max Mullar’s
description of India. It is worthwhile to mention that in his works too
women did not figure prominently. Like any other writer, Muller’s
writings mainly focused on valorizing Hindu civilization rather then
giving much significance to the status of women in the Indian

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society. Women were depicted merely to highlight the strength of the

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civilization. For instance, his mention of characters like Matrayie,
Gargi can be taken in this context. It does not mean that existence of
women was completely ignored. While describing the Vedic life, in
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certain instances, Muller recounted that despite women’s
participation in the Vedic rituals, they were acknowledged less to
Vedic knowledge. Chakravarty remarks that Mullar’s perception for
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women was mainly drawing logics from Greek writer Strabo, who
stated that:

Indian did not communicate their metaphysical doctrines to

women thinking that if their wives understood these
doctrines and learned to be indifferent to pleasure and pain
and consider the life and death as the same they would no
longer continue to be the slaves of others. (Muller Max,
History of Sanskrit Literature. (p.24)45
A similar endeavor in 19th century western writings may be seen in
the works of Mrs. Speier. In her work, Life in ancient India, Speier
valorized the womanhood in ancient India. She painted a virtuous
and interesting picture of women in India. She noticed that:

18
 Women appear to have been as free as Trojen dames or
daughters of Judaea. Hymens in Reg Veda mention them
with respect and affection……..We find in one of the
Upnishads a king holding a solemn sacrifice and inviting
his chief guest to state their opinion on theology. Amongst
these guests a learned female named Gargi is conspicuous.46
However in his descriptions Speier also mentioned that there was a

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decline in the status of women during that period. This glorification

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of womanhood was continued even in the writings of Clariss Bader.
Interestingly in both these approaches, historical consciousness and
women’s questions remained central to the enquiry. However Uma
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Chakravarty critiqued this supposition and pointed out that how a
few women participating in Vedic ritual tell us very little about the
majority of the moment of the period. She argues if there were
thousand dasies, how come we hear nothing about them. Does one
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Maitreyi or Gargi capture the lives of women of that time? To really

determine the status of women, one has to go into structures in the
society of the time, like the nature of state formation, religion and its
significance, family structure values in society, economic conditions
social hierarchies and women’s location in them. In other words,
women’s history is a history of women in society. Therefore without
putting into context the society one can not determine the place of
women therein.47 On the other hand Matreyie Krishnaraj criticized
the approach of Chakravarty in constructing the past. She argued
that Chakravarty adopted historical materialism approach in her

19
analysis of the problem and stated that it should also be viewed with
a mode of reproduction method. As the process of reproduction
involves larger issues such as domestic labour etc. which recreates
labour power. Krishnaraj comments that in their work, status is
measured in terms of presence or absence of sati, purdah, family
rituals.48

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Although the portrayal of women as subdued and asking for

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the protection from barbarity was made a tool by colonial power to
impose its ideology, in later years the same notion turned into an
important factor in the cultural conflict between ruling class and their
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subject. The potrayal of man as effeminate and their womenfolk as
slave received sharp reactions which started in reflecting in
vernacular writings.
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The first rejoinder to the negative image of Hindu civilization

came as early as in the 1840s. As a reaction, the writings on Hindu
women in 1842 Peary Chand Mitra responded with strong arguments
to colonial approach. He took up the aspect of education and female
seclusion as key contemporary issues in colonial writings and
provided the evidences that in the past women had access to learning
particularly Sanskrit.49 To validate his argument, he used ancient text
where it was shown that daughter should be ‘nursed and educated
with care’ and married to a learned person. In support of his position
Mitra used references from Kalidasa’s plays, Tamil literature and
other old texts. The initial writings on the condition of women in
20
India were in fact inspired by the feelings of nationalism which saw
Indian women as heroines.

In this context the most significant historical writing was of R.

C. Dutt’s History of civilization in Ancient India. In this work Dutt
strongly disapproves James Mill’s denigration of Hindu civilization

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and of low position of Hindu women within it. Dutt also outlined the
role of women in recent medieval past. He states:

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Do not such passages as these indicate that women were
honoured in ancient India, more perhaps than among any
other ancient nation in the face of globe? Considered the
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intellectual companions of their husband, as their
affectionate helpers in the journey of life, and as
inseparable partners in their religious duties, hindu wives
received the honour and respect due to their position’50
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The publication of Great Women of India, through a compilation of
names with a brief biographical sketch and included women from
mythology to the contemporary society further added to this notion.
However the changing perception on historical thinking moved steps
forward to uncover the story of women. In later years the life stories,
biographies and autobiographies of the women such as Pandita
Ramabai, Tarabai Shinde, Lakshamibai, Tilak etc. further added to
this endeavor. In this context writings of Kailashbhashini Devi may
also be cited here. Kailashbhashini Devi wrote on pitiable condition
of women in the second half of 19th century and described the
miseries of child marriage, purdha, polygamy and enforced

21
widowhood faced by women. However she argued that these evils of
child marriage and purdah were unknown in ancient times. Referring
to the prevailing condition of women she wrote the ancient women
were not only acquiring learning before they were married, they only
married after maturity. Interestingly they also continued learning
even after marriage without having superstitious fear of widowhood.

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Contrary to such portrayal of Indian women, woman like Ramabai

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came out with sharp criticism of valorizing the past. She strongly
contended with the nationalist approach of viewing women. In her
most remarkable work, The High Caste Hindu Women Ramabai gave
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insightful details of the status of women in the society particularly in
the high caste. She depicted the contradiction between custom and
religious principle and underlined the fact that how customs were
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acknowledged in actual practice. As a matter of fact Ramabai’s
descriptions differed from both, the orientalists and the nationalists
who placed women with high stature in ancient times. Ramabai
related woman’s agonies with the passing of three stages of her life-
childhood, married life and the widowhood with injustice and
oppression getting worse in each stage especially in high caste.
Ramabai portrayed that how miseries of widowhood begins with the
agony of mother even before a child is born. She writes:

In no other country is the mother so laden with care and

anxiety on the approach of childbirth as in India. In most
cases her hope of winning her husband to herself hangs
solely on her bearing sons ………..to ensure this women
22
 pray with herbs and roots...…and son giving gods are
devoutly worshiped (p.14)51
How woman was perceived in Hindu society, Ramabai refers
that in Hindu society girl comes as ‘ill luck or rather nature would
have it’. Chakravarty remarks that in relating the effects of the
condition of women upon society as whole Ramabai was much clear

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as compared to James Mill on the one hand and R.C. Dutt on the

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other. She adds that while Mill had related the low status of women
to the barbaric nature of the civilization and Dutt had established the
reverse, Ramabai made a remarkable correction in it by looking at her
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own story. Uma Chakravarty argues that such views were the
outcome of increased historical consciousness of people during the
first half of nineteenth century. However she suggests that nationalist
historians in their works have given more evidences to patriotism
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than to objectivity in relation to understanding women’s status.52

The study of women’s status takes us further to the question of

identity. It is evident from above description that in the nineteenth
century writings, the focus of attention had been on the high caste
Hindu women rather then to ordinary woman. Whether it was to
illustrate her high status in the past or reforming her declining status
in later years. Recent researches have put forward the argument of
dialectical relationship between status of women and their identity. It
is underlined that to create an identity of past was difficult without
reforming their status too. Further it was also associated with

23
humiliating image of male as effeminate. For the construction of new
and powerful image it was easier to adopt the models of womanhood
from the past. To constitute the image of glorious women, characters
from past were valorized, especially their spiritual potential and
heroic deeds to resist invader and even embrace death rather then
dishonor. Such characterization painted a new identity for women to

r
suit both present and the future. Thus nationalist project as a reaction

la
to the colonial construction of past ensured that Indian women were
portrayed as a combination of the spiritual Matrayie, the learned
Gargi, the suffering Sita, the faithful Savitri and the heroic
te
Lakshmibai. In this instance, the Sahadharmini model in particular
was made central to the idea of womanhood. It was perceived as a
major factor in the revival of nation. Bankim Chandra Chatterjee was
Es
the first to construct the national identity of women in this context.53

In recent years focus of writing women’s history has changed.

Despite the fact that reasonable space has been allotted to gender
discourse during colonial times-both by colonial rulers and by
nationalists, it has now shifted from conventional approach. Forbes
examines the early writings on women and argues that first time in
19th century the question of women was raised in colonial officials’
communications because of debated on the women’s relationship Vis
a Vis modernity.54 Forbes states that there were no appropriate
records of women until 1930s as most of the writings came from men
and were based on fantasy which usually glorified the past. Actually
24
in India, the detailed work to address the women’s question was
done in post independence era only. Particularly after the
development of second phase of women’s movement in 1970.

It is true that most of the literature that came out during 1950s
and 1960s was emphasizing the political achievements of women in

r
the struggle for freedom from colonial rule. It is in this context, that
Neera Desai’s work Women in Modern India was a proper social and

la
women history. Desai critiqued the existing descriptions that simply
narrated women’s participation in public life and acknowledged the
researches that explained how gender ideology is maintained and
te
reproduced. Forbes remarks that it was not only the first scholarly
history of Indian women but also a systematic scientific description
of women and critique of Indian society.55
Es

It was only after Desai’s work, the report of the Committee

constituted to examine the Status of Women was seen as significant
work to define the direction of women’s history writing in future.
This report was published with the title Towards Equality: the report
on the Committee on the Status of Women in India. The study
explicitly reviewed the position of women. It is said that the
publication remained successful in drawing the attention of
historians and influencing the course of women history writing in
future. In coming decades especially between mid 1970s and 1980s,
the historians focused on documents related to women, making
women visible and documenting the lives of non elite women.
25
However from 1980s, the trend shifted slightly. The history writing
now turned its attention to the phenomenon like colonialism and its
impact on women. For instance the project ‘Recasting Women’
reassessed the nationalist construction of women in the past and
questioned it. This approach, put forward by Sangari & Vaid with a
band of scholars proved immensely significant in defining the course

r
of enquiry in relation to women history.56 Uma Chakravarty was one

la
historian who did organize analyze the prejudices in this direction.
She tried to explain position of women in ancient India, particularly
their household, position, the connection between caste and control
te
over reproduction as an explanation of widowhood among the
different caste. She illustrated that low caste women were given more
freedom. In an inclusive examination of pre independence writing
Es
Chakravarty and Roy pointed out that depiction of women in ancient
India was drawn from insufficient and selective information. The
writers depended on sources mostly religious and thus ignored or
omitted significant aspects about woman and women’s life. Therefore
mere participation of some women in religious discourse can not be
taken as proof that they had enjoyed freedom in the public sphere.

The subaltern historian Partha Chattarjee explained how

nationalists’ writers constructed entirely different picture. He argued
that with the changing power women were controlled by the new
patriarchal notion.57 These explanations were further developed by
Tanika Sarkar relating it to social issues. She explained genesis of
26
urban families in 19th century.58 In Hindu wife and Hindu Nation Sarkar
associated nationalist construction of women to the image of mother
and son.59 On the other hand scholars such as Sonia Nisht Amin,
Swapna Banarjee and Judieth Walesh were bringing in the
domesticity debate in the colonial context. As a matter of fact during
this period scholars used the new historiography to re-explore the

r
existing resources. For instance Susie Taru and K.Lalita in their

la
translation of women’s writings from 600 BC discovered a different
image of women ancient time. Similar attempts were made by
Forbes. (Forbes translated memoirs of Sudha Majumdar, Manmohini
te
Zutsie Sahagal and Tankia Sarkar brought out Rashsundari Devi’s
memoirs.60 The historians dealing with women, especially after 1990s,
have brought in the argument of ‘nation’ to the history writing. Thus
Es
they have opened a new window for women history. For example
Urvashi Batalia in The Other Side of Silence has examined the status of
women within partition history. Similarly Swaminathan and Raman
have dealt upon violence against women. Bagchi in his work
examined the creation of Bharatmata as national icon, thus he added
another dimension of the nationalism through women’s study in
recent years.61

Thus to summarize the historical development of gender

discourse and feminist writing particularly in India, one can say that
available studies on women’s history have scantly touched the
aspects that what occurred in women’s life and even explored very
27
little on what happened to women’s status in different periods of
history. Another aspect of women’s history was to examine that how
men thought about women and what women thought about them
selves. As Desai has rightly critiqued, ‘available histories simply
celebrate women’s participation in public life and admire research
that explains how gender ideology is maintained and reproduced.

r
However to understand the human history scientifically and in its

la
totality it needs fresh investigations in the context of changing
dynamics in women’s status in a given society.

It would be appropriate here to mention that women’s history

te
necessitates explanations relating to non-elite women particularly
those living beyond the brahamanical sphere and adds regional
patterns as well as variation to history. Uptil now investigations
Es
regarding women’s history have been confined to main stream
society as represented in national history. The status of marginalized
women on the fringe has not received even a scant mention in larger
national histories. For instance, the position of women in Kumaoni
society reflects her diverse status, in various social groups and orders
be it tribal, non tribal, brahmanical or non-brahmanical. This also
reflects and puts forward the gradually changing status of women
and various historical forces that played significant role in
transforming her status and personality in social, economic and
political spheres of life. It is a paradox that in main stream historical
writings we do not find any mention of the region and women. Thus
28
the history evolved was an incomplete and biased construction of the
past. Another limitation we come across regarding women’s history
is that even in regional historical writings despite women playing
central role in social transformation, particularly during freedom
struggle and later in many other social movements she did not find
her due place.

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Thus in brief it may be said that women have found a very

la
insignificant place in historical writings both in national as well as in
regional history. It is a paradox, that the historians have ignored
writing about women who incidentally constitute nearly half of the
te
population and had been factor in social structure. Therefore it is
assumed that this work will add to the existing knowledge on
women’s history in regional perspective.
Es

***

29
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34