Hindu Women Research Articles

Words of Her Own: Women Authors in Nineteenth-Century Bengal by Maroona Murmu

Reviewed by: Words of Her Own: Women Authors in Nineteenth-Century Bengal by Maroona Murmu Tara Puri WORDS OF HER OWN: WOMEN AUTHORS IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY BENGAL, by Maroona Murmu. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2021. 456 pp. $35.00 hardback. Maroona Murmu's Words of Her Own: Women Authors in Nineteenth-Century Bengal is a detailed and wide-ranging study of female authorship that combines a historiographic approach with meticulous archival and bibliographic work. The book brings to life the nineteenth-century cultural milieu that witnessed the emergence of Bengali women's writing in a variety of genres. Focusing particularly on middle- and upper-class Hindu and Bhramo women, Murmu argues that these writers fashioned themselves in relation to contemporary male writers as well as the reformist current that had brought new attention to women's private and public roles, thus creating a tradition of their own that documented women's experiences as well as the figure of the woman author in Bengali. Historians and literary critics like Tanika Sarkar, Meenakshi Mukherjee, Antoinette Burton, and Anindita Ghosh have shown us how women's writing in the late colonial period in India, and especially in Bengal, is central to understanding the history of printing, the publishing industry, and the construction of the bhadralok identity. Recovering forgotten writers, marginalized literary works, autobiographical writings, and networks of production and circulation, these scholars have provided correction to nationalist and literary histories that focused primarily on male figures. Murmu places herself in this critical trajectory, noting how histories that locate women's writings solely in the context of social reform and nationalist ideology "deny women writers the credit of being decisive agents of history-making" (p. 17). Her aim then is to analyze her chosen writers and their texts not just as reflective of their particular historical moment but as figures birthing themselves into authorship through their literary experiments. Beginning with the colonial archive as an institutionalized repository of evidence—based on the imperfect and problematic but still insightful statistics collected by colonial administrators—the first chapter, "Women in the Archives: Situating Women's Writings," sets the stage for the writers Murmu will go on to examine in detail. These official archives have been a valuable resource for scholars, but as Murmu recognizes, they [End Page 401] leave unmentioned everything about the ordinary experience of women's lives. The nuanced literary readings that follow fill up this absence, but this introductory chapter remains rather dry—exhaustive but also exhausting in its detail—and not entirely necessary for the overall argument. The subsequent chapters are organized by genre and focus on a particular issue through coupled case studies: discursive essays by Kailashbashini Debi and Swarnamayee Gupta that challenge and transgress conventional notions of domesticity; a diary by Kailashbashini Debi and an autobiography by Saradasundari Debi whose intimate, confessionary modes display an "I" that is "decentred and relational" (p. 132); two realist novels written at the end of the nineteenth century by Kusumkumari Roychoudhurani and Swarnakumari Debi that are cautiously conformist yet manage to smuggle in subversion by fusing romantic love with a higher religious ideal; and two very different travel narratives by Krishnabhabini Das and Prasannamayee Debi, who created a modern, colonial subjectivity by stepping out of the feminine space of the antahpur and becoming critical observers of a larger world. While Murmu situates these writers at a particular historical juncture in which Bengali Hindu social mores were being questioned by religious reformers who themselves were part of the larger project of nation-making, the last chapter, "Travel Writings: Her Travails and Negotiations" is where these ideas come together most productively. As Murmu acknowledges, the female travelers she discusses are the most singular of all the authors examined in the book since they wrote at a time when the genre of travel writing did not exist in Bengal and religious doctrine forbade travel overseas for fear of losing caste purity. Therefore, "acts of travel and their textualization constituted a new form of gender power for women in nineteenth-century Bengal" (p. 246). These travelogues not only offered their writers a new medium and new vantage point for considering their own selfhood in opposition to the...

Snapshots of Indian Otherness in Aparna Sen’s Cinema

Aparna Sen turned to film directing in 1980 after a highly successful career as an actor. Her debut film, 36 Chowringhee Lane (1981) highlights the loneliness of an elderly Anglo-Indian woman. One of her best-known films outside India is Mr & Mrs Iyer (2002), in which an upper caste Hindu woman saves the life of a Muslim stranger in an act of personal commitment with the Other. In 15 Park Avenue (2005), a film that focusses on schizophrenia, Sen shows how the female members of a family struggle to cope with mental illness. In this article I discuss how Sen explores different ways of being Indian in these three films and how she draws attention to values such as personal commitment and tenacity in the face of disability, ageing and communalism

Review Article on A Fragmented Feminism: The Life and Letters of Anandibai Joshee By Meera Kosambi, Ram Ramaswamy, Madhavi Kolhatkar & Aban Mukherji

A Fragmented Feminism: The Life and Letters of Anandibai Joshee is the seminal work on social history about the first woman doctor of India, Anandibai Gopal Joshee written by the sociologist Meera Kosambi and Edited by Ram Ramaswamy, Madhavi Kolhatkar and Aban Mukherji. It provides insight into the psychosocial impacts of culture on Indian women through the life of Dr. Anandibai Gopal Joshee, India’s first women doctor. The author collected the letters written by Anandibai, newspaper reports on her, her poems in Marathi and rare photographs of her to craft the biography of her life. This book resembles an epistolary style in its narrative quality accompanied by annotations and explanations by the author and Editors. Anandibai, who was graduated in western medicine at America, lived during the nineteenth century pre-independence India where access to basic education was a distant dream. This book stands as a witness to practices of child marriage, physical and emotional abusement on women. (Kosambi, 19) ‘In childhood the mind is immature and the body undeveloped. And you know how I acted on these occasions. If I had left, you at that immature age, as you kept on suggesting, what would have happened? (And any number of girls have left their homes because of harassment from mothers-in-law and husbands). I did not do so because I was afraid that my ill-considered behaviour would tarnish my father’s honour… And I requested you not to spare me, but to kill me. In out society, for centuries there has been no legal barrier between husband and wives; and if it exists, it works against women! Such being the vase, I had no recourse but to allow you to hit me with chairs and bear it with equanimity. A Hindu woman has not right to utter a word or to advise her husband. On the contrary she has right to allow her husband to do what he wishes and to keep quiet.’

Identifying the Catalysts for Systematic Deprivation of Hindu Women’s Right to Property: An Appraisal from the Political Contours of Bangladesh

Abstract Hindu women’s limited right to inheritance in Bangladesh is a story of state-sponsored deprivation; a frustrating legacy of the political authority’s systematic indifference and failure in protecting minority women’s right to property for nearly half a century. Bangladesh, from its early decades, has experienced the resurgence of religion as one of the driving factors behind gender and minority-sensitive policy formulation and implementation. Under the veil of constitutional secularism, religion has become one of the most pervasive tools in the hands of the political authorities for methodical marginalisation of religious minority groups especially of Hindu community. Consequently, Bangladesh has failed to move forward with appropriate legislative measures for improving the present status of Hindu women’s right to property. This article argues that the underlying reasons behind such failure is intrinsically intertwined with power-centric electoral politics rather than normative socio-religious practices.

Discrimination of vermilion (sindoor) using attenuated total reflectance fourier transform infrared spectroscopy in combination with PCA and PCA-LDA.

Vermilion (sindoor) is considered sacred in the Hindu religion, and it is used routinely throughout the world by married Hindu women along the line of hair parting during marriage ceremonies, religious rituals, and festivals. Owing to its esthetic appeal, it is sometimes illegally used as a food additive; leading to potential health risks. Therefore, due to the aforementioned reasons, vermilion can likely be encountered as trace evidentiary material during crime investigations, particularly in cases of sexual and physical offenses against women. Analysis of such evidence can provide a link between the criminal, the victim, and the crime scene and thereby be utilized as associative evidence in the court of law. In the present study, ATR-FTIR spectroscopy has been used for the examination of 37 different manufacturers of vermilion. Chemometric methods such as principal component analysis (PCA) and PCA-LDA were performed on the obtained spectra for objective interpretation of results. PCA delivered 99.06% discrimination of samples while PCA-LDA employed for classification purpose delivered 95.25% calibration accuracy and 88% validation accuracy. Afterward, the validity of the chemometric methods employed was tested by blind testing of samples. A preliminary study on the effect of selected substrates (cotton cloth, tissue paper, glass, and plastic) on sample analysis indicates that while sample stain on substrates could be linked to its parent source even after a month, linking an aged samples (after 8months) could be hindered due to evaporation of components present in vermilion. Overall, the current methodology utilized has a potential prospect in future forensic-casework.

Degos disease: a case report and review of the literature

BackgroundDegos disease is a very rare syndrome with multisystem vasculopathy of unknown cause. It can affect the skin, gastrointestinal tract, and central nervous system. However, other organs such as the kidney, lungs, pleura, and liver can also be involved.Case presentationA 35-year-old Hindu woman presented to our dermatology outpatient department with complaints of depigmented painful lesions. A skin punch biopsy taken from the porcelain white atrophic papules which revealed features of Degos disease.ConclusionThe diagnosis of Degos disease is usually based on the presence of the pathognomonic skin lesions and a tissue biopsy demonstrating a wedge-shaped area of necrosis with thrombotic occlusion of the small arterioles. No specific treatment is currently available for this disease.

Premchand’s shifting portrayals of womanhood in colonial North India: Between conformity and resistance

This article examines the nuanced and open-ended representations of women in the fictional works of Premchand, one of the most versatile and popular Urdu-Hindi writers of the 1920s and 1930s. By looking into a wide range of his writings, it argues that Premchand’s literary engagement with the women’s question cannot be summarily understood through such binaries as ‘conservative’ or ‘liberal/radical’. While the virtuous and compliant woman is valorised as an ideal within the domestic sphere in certain stories, Premchand’s narratives in the nationalist mode foreground an alternative set of ideals for the urban, educated and middle-class Hindu woman. Far from being formulaic, Premchand’s portrayals of womanhood seem to be shifting, tentative and thematically contingent.

Stigma and widow remarriage: experiences of Malaysian Tamil women

ABSTRACT Traditionally, widows are stigmatized in Tamil society. This research explores the challenges faced by Malaysian Tamil Hindu women in the process of remarrying after the death of their husbands. The data for this study were collected by conducting in-depth interviews with 13 women who have remarried. The findings were categorized into three main themes: the stigma of being a widow; remarriage as a transgression from the traditional notion of femininity; remarriage and women's bodies. Widows experienced social and self-stigma and were excluded from some cultural and religious rituals. Their involvement in courtship was seen as a transgression of the notions of a ‘good’ woman. For participants with children, the act of remarriage was seen as that of abandoning their responsibility towards their children. The decision to remarry was difficult for the women because they were criticized by others and felt conflicted due to the internalized stigma of widowhood and remarriage.

Birth Spacing in the Presence of Son Preference and Sex-Selective Abortions: India's Experience over Four Decades

Over the past four decades, the Hindu women in India most likely to use sex-selective abortions—well-educated women with no sons—had the most substantial lengthening of birth intervals and the most biased sex ratios. As a result, we now see cases that reverse the traditional spacing pattern, with some women with no sons having longer birth intervals than those with sons. Those least likely to use sex-selective abortions—less-educated women in rural areas—still follow the traditional pattern of short spacing when they have girls, with only limited evidence of sex selection. Because of the rapid lengthening in spacing, the standard fertility rates substantially overestimated how fast cohort fertility fell. Despite a convergence, cohort fertility is still 10%–20% higher than the fertility rate and above replacement level for all but the best-educated urban women. Infant mortality has declined substantially over time for all groups, with the fastest decline among the less educated. Short birth spacing is still associated with higher mortality, although considerably less so for the best-educated women. There is no evidence that repeated sex-selective abortions are associated with higher infant mortality for the child eventually born. Finally, it does not appear that the use of sex selection is declining.

NARRATIVES OF STRENGTH, PERSEVERANCE AND RESILIENCE IN TRADITIONAL MARRIAGES (FOCUS ON SINDHI WOMEN)

Resilience is the ability and knowledge of a person on what he/she can do when he/ she falls and learns how to get up. The aim of this paper is to understand the experiences and perceptions of diaspora Sindhi Hindu women in arranged marriages and how they dealt with the many challenges they faced in their martial homes whether in India or in Malaysia. Strength based theory (Saleeby, 2013) and Agency Favouring framework (Williams, 2000) are used to demonstrate their strengths and agency. The data is obtained from the written narratives of 5 women who married Sindhi men. Writing Is a powerful weapon for reminiscing and describing lived experiences of life in arranged marriages. The writing had to be analyzed for the themes that emerged after the initial codes were generated.

Vernacular Practice, Gendered Tensions, and Interpretive Ambivalence in Hindu Death, Deification, and Domestication Narratives†

AbstractThis article focuses on a Tamil Hindu woman named Aaru, who embodied the Goddess in possession performances from age thirteen, resisted marriage through her twenties, and committed suicide at twenty--nine. Grounded in ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with Aaru and her family conducted between 2006 and 2019, it analyses narratives concerning her untimely death, subsequent deification, and eventual domestication as a pūvāṭaikkāri. It highlights the hermeneutical challenges associated with three intersecting spheres: the dominant categories that shape the scholarly understanding of Hinduism; vernacular Hinduism as revealed in Aaru’s complex story; and the ethnographic research and writing process. I resist an arbitrary resolution of the gaps and seeming inconsistencies that abound in these accounts, arguing instead that we can enlarge and nuance our understandings of matters as diverse as ritual relationships with the dead, the nature of Tamil family deities, and the gendered tensions of the contemporary moment if we hold space for multiple interpretive possibilities. Indeed, Aaru’s case offers us significant resources for a fuller, more inclusive appreciation of the textures of vernacular Hinduism – Hinduism as it is experienced, lived, and practiced in particular places and contexts – and compels us to consider the limitations of prevailing interpretive paradigms and the fragmental and shifting nature of ethnographic knowledge.

Role of Woman in Political Sphere in Mughal Era and British Empire in the Sub Continent

In general, this research revealed the error of the common assumption that "a state of negativity, dependency and self-reliance has prevailed over the participation of Indian women in public life, and that she was suffering from marginalization and exclusion from participation in political, social and scientific life". In fact, woman played important role in political sphere and some important personalities have been taken into consideration to unveil their efforts in politics. Similarly, the Indian woman gained a great deal of political influence. She took responsibility for governing herself at times in managing governance affairs. This political role was not limited to Muslim women alone, but was also found among Sikh and Hindu women. This article appraises the role of woman in political sphere during Mughal Era and British domain.

The Paradox Between Universalism of Human Rights and Relativism of Culture

The rising tide of Honour killings against Hindu women and their justified murder in the name of culture by their parents/relatives, superficially reflects the tension between traditional and modern values in India. At a deeper level, cases of Honour killings represent the ongoing struggle between the universality of human rights and cultural relativism. Against this background, this article critically examines the role of universal human rights in relation to cultural relativism whilst assessing the values that claim to support honour killings in Indian culture. This article will examine the universalism of human rights and their influence on gender-based violence- especially relating to honour killings in North India. In addition, I will argue for an approach (drawing on the seminal work of Donnelly who proposed ‘relative universalism of human rights’) allowing the tension between universality and particularity/relativism can be reconciled.

Socio-economic and reproductive concomitants of abdominal adiposity and hypertension: A study on Bengali-speaking Hindu women of Habra, North 24 Parganas, West Bengal, India

Obesity and hypertension have become a global epidemic among the women, especially as they experience additional stressful events compared to men. The epidemiology of these two metabolic disorders is regulated by various biological, socio-economic, reproductive and lifestyle factors related to women. However, inconsistency in the nature and magnitude of the effects of these traits indicates exploring the areas where little emphasis has been given. In this context, the present study attempted to determine the effect of socio-economic and reproductive traits on hypertension and abdominal adiposity among women living in the North 24 Parganas district of West Bengal, India. Data on socio-demographic and reproductive traits were collected from 319 adult women from both rural and urban sectors of Habra block I. Anthropometric measurements and Blood pressure levels were measured following standard protocols. Results highlighted that the prevalence of obese individuals and hypertensive individuals were 73.4 and 50.5 per cent respectively. Women with low income (OR=0.51) were at lower risk and post-menopausal women (OR=1.71) were at higher risk of developing abdominal adiposity. The risk of developing hypertension increased with higher educational attainment (OR=2.43). Post-menopausal women (OR=0.46) and shifting workers (OR=0.40) were at lower risk of developing hypertension. The risk also decreased with increased age (OR=0.96). Present study revealed that menopause is a significant event to predict abdominal adiposity and hypertension among Bengali-speaking Hindu women.

Afrazul’s murder: Law and love jihad

In December 2017, Shambhu Lal Raigher (a Hindu), brutally killed a Muslim labourer named Afrazul Khan in Rajasthan, without any immediate or individualised cause. The reason for the killing is attributed to Raigher’s perception of Muslims as those who get romantically involved with Hindu women to lure them into Islam—what has been called the phenomenon of love jihad. In light of this case, this article discusses how the mythical campaign of love jihad—used as a justification for hatred and violence towards Muslim communities—motivates hate crimes. I also discuss how the current legal framework in India deals with hate crimes, as the existing law does not make a distinction between hate crimes and ordinary crimes. The article flags some of the complexities involved in incorporating a hate crimes legislation into the socio-political and legal context of contemporary India.

FAKTOR-FAKTOR PENYEBAB PEREMPUAN HINDU BEKERJA PADA INDUSTRI BANTEN

<p>Ceremonies in Hinduism are carried out by people in their daily lives or certain<br />days. This gives an opportunity for Balinese women to play a role in the preparation of ceremonies as a means of offering at the ceremony. In this era of globalization because many Balinese women work in the public sector as employees, lecturers, medical staff, and others, causing them to have less time in preparing the ceremony. This gives an opportunity for Balinese women who love and pursue upakara to do so. There are those who make offerings as a home industry and some who work on a shop that prepares services based on orders. Hindu women who work in the banten industry, one of them is in the Desa Pakraman Penatih Denpasar Bali as the center of the banten industry is driven by two factors, namely the presence of internal and external factors. The internal factor is to increase family income and the desire to be independent. As for the external factors because of the opportunities and opportunities also because of the husband. These factors make Hindu women who work in the banten industry earn their own income that can be used for their needs independently and also for family needs.</p>

Feminist Historiography with special reference of Pandita Ramabai and Tarabai Shinde

En el Maharashtra colonial, las mujeres intentaron conversar con ellas mismas y con la sociedad a través de biografías, autobiografías, artículos en periódicos, revistas e incluso escribieron libros, tratando de discutir los problemas de las mujeres que surgieron del sistema patriarcal de la sociedad en ese momento. Criticaron muy intensamente las costumbres sociales y la fe ciega en la religión de las mujeres. Sus escritos fueron teóricos y visionarios, y se destacaron creando una línea de base para la historiografía feminista; Aquí mis esfuerzos son para interpretar sus escritos desde ese punto de vista. La primera parte de este documento discute los esfuerzos de la historiografía feminista en su conjunto y la segunda parte se basa en el libro "La mujer hindú de la casta alta" y "Stri-Purush Tulana" de Pandita Ramabai y Tarabai Shinde, respectivamente.

Some aspects of social life of haryana from 16th TO 17th Centuary

Social history of a region generally endeavors to present the varied aspects of daily life of the inhabitants of villages, towns and cities in the medieval period. The dwelling houses were congregated together usually at a central site, with the land of the cultivators spreading around. The roofs of the houses were flat. The house of the poorer classes had a small courtyard and one room or two. The most common plan of the house of the well to do classes was that the courtyard was surrounded by a wall. The entrance served as a temporary cattle-shed and the men of the family frequented it to smoke and gossip. Usually, there was a detached sitting room, variously called diwan-khana or baithak. Female apartments were separate. The rooms were dark, damp and badly ventilated. The houses were of bricks and in lanes near to each other for the sake of shade. The sanitary condition was not proper but the inside of the houses were kept very clean. In the houses of the common people very little furniture was kept in the rooms. For lighting in the houses of the nobles and the rich men, other appliances and devices were in vogue. Ordinarily, the earthen pots (diya) filled with mustard oil with cotton wicks were used for light. The people of Haryana in general were vegetarian but in common high class people and the Muslims were non-vegetarian and used to drinking. Rrice, millet and pulses, milk and milk products were chiefly consumed in general in the rural areas. Khicheri was relished both by the gentry and commonalty. In the matter of diet, the Muslims were notoriously extravagant and fastidious. However, the diet of the peasants was much cheaper and they used pulses and vegetables. The imported fruits dry and fresh were costly and were used only by the rich. Common people used to eat seasonal fruits which grew wild in the jungles and were easily available and gathered for sustenance by the poor. Ice fetched a high price and used by the rich people. Indian dress varied from place to place and clan to clan and according to their social status and financial conditions. Indian dresses were chiefly determined by the geographical factors, climatic conditions and the changing needs and customs of the different areas. Clothes were generally woven by the village weavers with yarn spun by the peasant women folk. These garments except turban were made of ‘khaddar’, the rough cotton. The upper classes spent lavishly on their dresses and used silk, brocade and fine muslin according to their social status and financial conditions. Children used to remain naked till four to five years age. The peasants and the poorer classes tried their best to cut their dress requirements to the minimum. The love of ornaments was inherent in the human races. The love of jewellery was not confined to the people of any religion, sect or class. Various kinds of ornaments of gold and silver were worn according to their financial and social position. The Hindu women, except widows, were generally loaded with as much jewellery as their husbands could afford. Beside ornaments, the women decorated themselves by various kinds of ‘tawizees’ (amulets).

Sati and the Hindu Woman

Sati as a trope for the general status of women within certain portions of the Hindu cultures of India is examined, with a view toward clarification of its history and current context. The work of Sangari and Vaid, Banerjee and Mala Sen is cited, and the notion that sati is a misappropriated concept is analyzed.

Status of women in Indian society

Women are an integral part of an Indian society. In order to understand the spirit of a civilized society it is necessary to study the history of its women folk. Indian society is patriarchal society and women have been treated as subordinate and ascribed lower status to their man counterpart. In ancient times women enjoyed a position of respect and reverence and his role as a daughter, as a wife, as a mother and above all as a house maker was well defined. A change in the status of women had occurred as a sequel to the advent of Muslims in India. The social laws and customs which came to be evolved in the changed set-up of things created in them a sense of inferiority complex. The position of women as girls’ wives and widows were reduced to that of dependents and subordinates. The status of women in India has been subjected to a lot of changes over the past few millennia. Both Muslims and Hindus fell prey to the evil practices. Opportunity of receiving education was greatly restricted. After the advent of Muslims purdah was mainly confined to the rich and well to do class of both the communities. But the working class and peasant women were free from the bondage of purdah. Child marriage had become a feature of the social life. Dowry was an old custom and gradually it became rigorous. This system was prevalent more among the rich than the commoners. Divorce and remarriage were common amongst Muslims and were prohibited to Hindu women. The Hindu women had no choice to remarry; however, remarriage was common among the manial agricultural castes. Women were generally to marry through simple ritual of Chaddar-Pauna and Kareva. Sati was prevalent in almost all the parts of India. It had become a normal feature of the Hindu and Muslim society. Jauhar was popular among Hindus (especially Rajputs). However, Muslim women also adopted this custom when they found their honor in danger. Female infanticide was practiced in most parts of northern India. In some parts of India the devdasi was sexually