What Durga Bhabhi did next: or, was there a gendered agenda in revolutionary circles?

Abstract

The revolutionary movement in the United Provinces and Punjab, which peaked in activity in the years 1928–1932, is often thought in inherently gendered terms, and as being underpinned by a masculine agenda of retributive anti-colonial violence. This study attempts to peel back the layers of masculinity attributed to the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA), through a study of the life of Durga Devi Vohra (1907–1999), more popularly known as ‘Durga Bhabhi’, the young mother who famously assisted in the escape of the renowned HSRA member, Bhagat Singh, from Lahore following his involvement in the murder of a British policeman in 1928. The article pushes beyond this much-celebrated incident, to demonstrate the extraordinary roles played by women, not only as wives and mothers of male revolutionaries, but as activists in their own right. I argue that it was their capacity to manipulate highly gendered concepts underpinning the colonial regime's attempts to police them, which ultimately made them indispensible to the revolutionary movement.