Indian Womanhood Research Articles

A Voice of Liberty and Protest: Exploring Binodini’s Identity Crisis, Power and Self-discovery in Tagore’s Chokher Bali (A Grain of Sand)

The cultural icon and trail blazer of Bengali Renaissance Rabindranath Tagore has experimented successfully upon some great female protagonists in his fiction who have managed to curve a niche for themselves in world literature. A master artist, he has also depicted with his dexterously professional brushstrokes a host of highly progressive and brave female identities with a strong voice of protest against all prejudices of the contemporary backward and prejudiced Hindu communities as well as against all conservative forces of fate and society. Tagore has portrayed extremely meticulously some female voices, attributing them to the strength of motherhood, the beauty of the beloved, and the strong power of womanhood, allowing them to develop their own individual status and identity in a stereotypical, male dominated, and patriarchal Bengali society. This paper undertakes to explore Binodini, a finely crafted character in the Novel ‘Chokher Bali’ by Tagore, who battles over her identity breaks a fresh ground for her own, and emerges as an uncompromisingly assertive woman with a voice and brand of her own. It explores that she is not terrified by the severity of the male gaze or trodden down by the repression of the male centric society in her journey through liberty and blossoms an individual very sure of herself by breaking the image of the traditional Indian womanhood.

Girmit, intimacy and sexual violence: indentured women on colonial sugar plantations, c. 1834–1917

ABSTRACT This essay investigates the sexual violence against Indian indentured women during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries on colonial plantations around the world through the lens of intimacy and labour. Beginning in the 1830s, Indian men, women, and children were brought to various overseas plantations by colonial planters under the indenture system, which was designed to fill the labour shortage that resulted from the 1833 abolition of slavery in the British Empire. This essay uses the petitions, depositions and letters of indentured women---available in colonial archives in both their native Indian languages and in English translation---to argue that the violence against women was not only perpetuated by plantation authorities but equally by Indian male indentured workers. The paper identifies two forms of violence on the plantations: colonial violence related to racial hierarchy and control over the subjugated subject and patriarchal violence related to Indian social control and domination. Each type of violence was related to intimacy, i.e. closeness of people on plantations. While colonial violence was enacted through power relations, the Indian male violence was enacted through imposition of the patriarchal norms.

Reading Harm and Repair in Joanne Joseph’s Children of Sugarcane

In this article we theorise the trope of harm and repair, teasing out its benefits and drawbacks in relation to gender-based violence in Joanne Joseph’s historical novel, Children of Sugarcane (2021). We conduct a close reading of this text to elucidate how the trope of harm and repair is represented in a contemporary South African historical novel. On the basis of this theorisation, we explore themes of gender-based violence in the novel and the specific harms of the colonial plantation for indentured women. Drawing on feminist thinkers Pumla Gqola and Eve Sedgwick, we propose that in the text reading is an act of resistance to the perpetuation of harm. Joseph’s novel offers a complex narrative structure across time and space to conceive of how legacies of harm, which span generations, may be repaired. In so doing, the novel resists the assumed causal relationship between harm (gender-based violence) and the processes of repair and (in)justice that follow in its wake. We conclude by considering the effectiveness of the harm-repair trope in Children of Sugarcane, and the promise of reparative reading that it offers.

Means and Measures of Modern Subaltern Feminism

For the past decade, subalterns all around the globe have been speaking out, in different forms, with different voices, shouting, and whispering, giving expression to a historically significant rebellion. Subaltern feminists across the continent are taking to the streets and public spaces to make their voices heard after feeling silenced for so long in the private, invisible spaces they have traditionally occupied. This unadulterated encounter has not only altered subalterns' day-to-day lives, but also their values and ideas about social and personal relations, thereby highlighting subalterns' antecedent resistance. The main objective of this paper is to understand how subaltern feminist indentured women’s cries, degradation and dehumanization, and the politics of change and control that impacted their social organization. Within the theoretical framework of subaltern studies, this paper analyzes and discusses secondary data gleaned from print and digital sources such as books, newspapers, and websites. The author takes a discursive approach, allowing readers to delve into Indian and Afro-American subaltern studies while also gaining access to multiple major perspectives on subaltern feminism. The paper tracks the resistance against oppression voiced by marginalized women in South America and India.

THE ‘CAST’ING CONVENTION: IMPACT OF INDIAN FILM MUSIC ON REINFORCING GENDER STEREOTYPES

The impact of Bollywood (the Indian Hindi film industry) on the national psyche as well as its international popularity cannot be overrated. So is the music that is an integral part of it. It outlives the movie and then becomes a part of the everyday life of people, being played in public places, at religious festivals, in personal and professional functions and interestingly being even adapted to other forms of expression (like bhajans/devotional music). At a more dangerous level, it surreptitiously births, embeds and reinforces stereotypes becoming the palimpsest that serves to define standards expected and exacted from women. This not only thus shapes the approach towards women but also significantly impacts women’s approach towards themselves. By referring to some of the popular and oft recalled Bollywood Hindi songs across the decades, this researcher would like to unearth the palimpsest and decode how it results in the ‘cast’ing convention and becomes the kaleidoscope through which Indian womanhood is viewed.

Narratives of Self-Discovery: Examining Kamala Das's Autobiography in the Context of Women's Empowerment

This research article examines the significance of autobiographical works as a means of self-expression and self-portrayal in contemporary society. The study explores the genre of autobiography, its historical development, and its psychological implications. The research focuses on Kamala Das's autobiography, "My Story," as a case study to analyze the themes of self-realization, self-assertion, and the struggles of Indian womanhood. The article highlights the role of autobiographies in challenging societal norms and advocating for women's rights and individuality. It explores how Kamala Das's autobiography defies patriarchal expectations and explores themes of love, sexuality, and personal growth. The research also addresses the impact of Kamala Das's work in reshaping feminine personas in Indian English fiction. Overall, the article contributes to the understanding of autobiographical literature as a powerful medium for self-exploration and social critique.

Book Review: Red chilli pickle and moonlit terraces: The making of Indian woman hood by S. Singh

Book Review: <i>Red chilli pickle and moonlit terraces: The making of Indian woman hood</i> by S. Singh

Myth, Tradition and Indian Beliefs in Shashi Deshpande's "The Dark Holds No Terrors"

Shashi Deshpande is one of India's most well-known novelists today. Women's writing in India has a shorter history than male writing, but we are seeing a rise in the number of women authors whose fiction is being recognized internationally. They have won a slew of national and international awards and grants, and it now appears that women's writing will rise to prominence shortly as they catch up to their male counterparts. While many other women authors, such as Kamla Markandaya, Nayantara Sehgal, Ruth Prawar Jhabvala, Anita Desai, Santha Rama Rao, Attia Hussain, Padmini Sen Gupta, Nargis Dala, Mrinalini Sarabhai, Gita Mehta, Arundhati Roy, Kiran Desai, enrich Indian English Literature, Deshpande occupies a special place She is one of the few authors working today who incorporates literary allusions, myth, and mythology into her work, effortlessly blending it with earlier results. &#x0D; Deshpande has used Indian myths, legends, and people in many novels as metaphors for events, incidents, happenings, and characters. In many of her books, she incorporates Western folktales. Shashi Deshpande's writings, especially her novel "The Dark Holds No Terrors" (1980), paint a startlingly vivid picture of Indian womanhood's inner world. For too long, it has been made to stay quiet. Deshpande's use of myth and folklore in her novels exemplifies the decolonization of the Indian literary imagination. These devices are handy to the author for illuminating the inner world of women's minds since many of her novels contain female protagonists.

Kamala Satthianadhan and the Indian Ladies' Magazine: Women's Editorship and Transnational Print Networks in Late Colonial India

The Indian Ladies' Magazine, launched in 1901 under the editorship of Kamala Satthianadhan, quickly evolved into a platform where the future of Indian womanhood was fiercely debated. Publishing anonymous writers alongside household names like Sarojini Naidu, it made a crucial intervention in the ongoing conversation about the public and private roles of Indian women at a time when both colonial rule and patriarchal notions of domesticity were being unsettled. This essay focuses on Satthianadhan's editorial persona and the first run of the magazine (1901–18), arguing that this first iteration provided the editor and contributing authors a significant platform for advocating social reform, creating a community of readers, and fashioning the New Indian Woman.

Nandini Sahu's Sita: Retelling Poetic Memoir of the Protagonist

The long poem on Sita is a retelling of the old mythical story of Sita in which Sita is every woman, with all their strength and all their weaknesses. The poet is much aggrieved by her grandfather's reaction to Sita's pleading with mother earth to take her back from this life. For her, Sita is not only Sita of Ramayana, but she has been an epitome of our culture and civilization and shaper of the whole Indian womanhood. Her Sita is the one who talks about her notions on love, care, joy dejection, humiliation and appraisal and generosity. Her assessment of the doings of Maryada Purushottam Rama is a biting one, which leaves the readers to think again about Sita and reframe their attitude about her, who was a true seeker of the truth.Hence, it is proper to admit that "It is penned rather as a poetic memoir of the heroine of the epic Sita told in the first-person narrative"

Reclaiming Ambedkar Within the Feminist Legacy

Historically analysing the presence of reformers and women’s liberators during the era of national struggle, Ambedkar emerges as a strong advocate of women’s rights in his times. This article discusses Dr B. R. Ambedkar’s role in empowering Dalit and caste-Hindu women through his social and legal strategies. The article begins with an analysis of Ambedkar’s sociological essay ‘Castes in India’ and his timeless analysis of ‘women as gateways of the caste system’. Furthermore, the article traces the national discourse on domesticity of Indian womanhood in Colonial India by analysing Ambedkar’s article in Bahishkrut Bharat on Grihalakshmification of the caste-Hindu woman. The article argues that Ambedkar’s advocacy for women’s entry into the public sphere through employment, as opposed to her domestication, redefined gendered labour within a modern caste society. Despite Ambedkar’s contribution to women’s rights in India, his acceptance in the mainstream feminist movement has been slow and reluctant. Ambedkar’s recognition in the mainstream feminist movement, I argue, results from constant effort and critique by Dalit women which has ruptured the elitist discourse of the mainstream feminist movement by pinpointing the prevalent caste-privilege and caste-blindness in these spaces.

Gender Discourses and the Making of the Indian Constitution

Indian democracy was constituted after a long struggle for self- determination, which ultimately culminated in the making of a constitution for independent India. This article seeks to revisit gender discourses during the constituent assembly debates when women members were seeking for complete gender equality to be written into the constitution. The nationalist discourses on ‘Indian womanhood’ prevalent during the years of the freedom struggle were articulated and reflected in the debates and impacted the writing of the text of the constitution. The final text contains gender progressive provisions on which consensus had been achieved during the nationalist struggle but excludes explicit provisions that would have challenged the roots of patriarchal structures. Thus, while the nationalist movement provided a platform for women to organise for their rights, it also constrained the agenda of transformation.

Bits, shillings, and dollars: slavery, indenture, and circulating silver in British Guiana, 1800s–1900s

ABSTRACT This article examines the use of coins by enslaved and indentured communities in nineteenth-century British Guiana and the visual imagery of these practices. Both Afro-Guianese and Indo-Guianese people appropriated the portability of coins for spiritual and aesthetic purposes as a response to the common experience of a violent plantation society. The development of photography during the migration of Indian indentured labour to British Guiana and the popularisation of the image of Indian indentured women wearing jewellery made from coins as representative of indenture at large, however, has overshadowed this shared history. By charting the afterlife of minted coins across economic, spiritual and aesthetic realms, this article offers a more nuanced understanding of worn silver and the people who wore it.

Feminism in Shashi Deshpande's That Long Silence and Anita Desai's Cry, the Peacock: A Comparative Study

Feminism is a rapidly developing critical ideology of great promise. In the words of M.K. Bhatnagar, "Feminism in the Indian context is a by product of western liberalism in general and feminist thoughts in particular". With the social and cultural change in post independence India, women find themselves standing at the cross-roads. On one hand it is the consciousness of a changed time and on the other, the socio-cultural modes and values that have given them defined role towards themselves, have led to the fragmentation of the very psyche of these women. Caught between two worlds, they need to define themselves, their place in society and their relationship with surroundings. Anita Desai and Shashi Deshpande have constantly sought to come to grips with these problems of Indian womanhood and vividly and realistically portrayed the 'women question' and 'feministic traits' in their novels. If comparative study is the study of literature across national, political and linguistic boundaries, feminism is the comparative work across boundaries of gender and culture. The main concern of this paper is to present a comparative study of the note of feminism in the best words of both these feministic writers, i.e. Anita Desai's Cry, The Peacock and Shashi Deshpande's That Long Silence.

The Mythical Courtesan

Abstract This article interrogates how and why courtesan identities are simultaneously embraced and disavowed by Brahman dancers. Using a combination of ethnographic and critical feminist methods, which allow the author to toggle between the past and the present, between India and the United States, and between film analysis and the dance studio, the author examines the cultural politics of the romanticized and historical Indian dancer—the mythical courtesan. The author argues that the mythical courtesan was called into existence through film cultures in the early twentieth century to provide a counterpoint against which a modern and national Brahmanical womanhood could be articulated. The author brings together a constellation of events that participated in the construction of Indian womanhood, especially the rise of sound film against the backdrop of growing anticolonial and nationalist sentiments in early twentieth-century South India. The author focuses on films that featured an early twentieth-century dancer-singer-actress, Sundaramma. In following her career through Telugu film and connecting it to broader conversations about Indian womanhood in the 1930s and 1940s, the author traces the contours of an affective triangle between three mutually constituting emotional points: pleasure, shame, and disgust.

“What kind of girl is she?”: good and bad diasporic daughters on social media

ABSTRACT Social media, such as Facebook and Instagram, act as online spaces where young migrants can engage in diasporic practices. This research captures the ways in which Indian young women living in Australia perform the “good girl” and “bad girl” on social media as a means through which to showcase their hybrid identities. With a focus on social media, the research stems from an investigation into the processes of identity construction for young migrants. The use of PhotoVoice and digital diaries were employed to assist with visualising the online identity performativities of the participants. The findings highlight the continued importance for the young women to be seen as good diasporic daughters who follow traditional roles of Indian womanhood; however, it will be shown how social media settings can be manipulated in such a way that the young women are able to contest these traditional roles and perform “bad” Indian behaviour.

The Advent of Ambedkar in the Sphere of Indian Women Question

Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar was a feminist at heart. Contrary to popular perception that he championed the cause of Dalits and dalit women, Babasaheb, as Ambedkar is fondly referred to, worked as a socio-political advocate for Dalit as well as upper caste Indian women concomitantly. In his quest to ensure freedom, equality, and individuality of Indian women, he resorted to the legalized mechanism and proposed sweeping constitutional provisions, famous as the Hindu code Bill, placing women at par with men in matters of inheritance and allowing them freedom to marry outside their caste. Contemplating the predicament and marginalized position of Indian women, he posited that caste and gender are intertwined. To maintain the system of caste, endogamy is a necessary condition that has an immense bearing on women. The imposition of endogamy was made compulsory by the Brahminical hierarchy, which was endorsed by Hindu religious scriptures to ensure women’s sustained subjectivity within the same caste groups or varnas. Ironically, the Bill, in Ambedkar’s own words was ‘killed and died unused and unsung’ following which he resigned from then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s cabinet in 1951 but the same bill was passed as four different bills between 1955 and 1956 during Nehru’s second term as prime minister (Elancheran, 2018). Unfortunately, Ambedkar’s contribution to the Indian women’s struggle has not been given its due. This paper attempts to explode the myth of the golden age of Indian womanhood and critiques the role of women reformist organizations in nineteenth century India as well as Ambedkar’s yeoman service to Indian women that has largely remained unacknowledged in public discourse.&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; Key Words: Ambedkar, Hindu Code Bill, Manusmriti, Indian Women, Dalit Women, Indian Feminism, Caste, Patriarchy&#x0D;

Mauritian indentured labour and plantation household archaeology

ABSTRACT This paper presents a case study of an African/Indian Ocean plantation located in Mauritius, focusing on the daily lives of indentured labourers during the nineteenth century. Bras d’Eau National Park was a sugar estate that functioned from 1786 to 1868. During the 1830s, colonial landowners shifted from a reliance on enslaved labourers, who came primarily from Mozambique and Madagascar, to indentured labourers primarily originating in South Asia. Four hundred and fifty thousand men, women and children travelled to Mauritius to live and work on sugar estates. Household excavations were conducted in the detached houses and line barracks that make up the plantation domestic quarter. Domestic artefacts from these village spaces, such as South Asian smoking pipes, glass bangle fragments, buttons from second-hand British military uniforms, cowrie shells, rice bowls and traces of a diet based on pulses-and-rice suggest a persistence in South Asian cultural practices while also demonstrating a creative engagement with material culture from across the region. Grounded in comparative plantation archaeology, this study of the landscape and material culture at Bras d’Eau represents one of the first full investigations of nineteenth-century indentured men, women and children’s daily practices.

A Study in the Short Stories of Kamala Das

The study has been able to ascertain and prove beyond doubt that Das’s prose works are of no less ranking than her poems and that she has effectively employed the short story form to present the predicaments of Indian womanhood and their quest for identity and self-assertion. The exhaustive evaluation and thorough scrutiny taking up various aspects of he stories right from her themes, structure and style, narrative techniques to her portrayal of Indian women, their status in society, and identity crisis have finally led to the emergence of the New Indian woman. Das’s feminist approach and overt outlook, along with the quest for a self-determined and self-affirmed identity for Indian women, have been well established through a methodical and exhaustive contemplation of the diverse women characters. The conclusion that emerges from this study undoubtedly corroborates and attests that Kamala Das’s name stands at par with the pioneer Indian woman short story writers. Das has efficiently and effectively used the short story genre as a document of social criticism and has established herself as a feminist crusader, campaigning to acquire for the Indian womanhood an independent identity and self-dignity. Das’s short story, with its innovative style and techniques, simple language, and concise form, has been brilliantly explored in discussing the problems facing Indian womanhood, especially her search for selfhood. Das has adeptly highlighted and presented her outlooks with the help of her characters. The fact that her English fictional work has remained obscure and un-honored is a sad story and a loss to literature.

Archetypal Motherhood and the National Agenda: The Case of the Indian Muslim Women

The grand narratives of Mother India posit women’s emancipation as the central concern, insisting on her public participation in the educational and economic sectors. The relegation of the archetypal motherhood to the national periphery is strictly rooted in the Hindu traditional culture. The schisms of caste, class, and religion in contemporary society are normalised whilst the gendered undercurrents of domestic violence, chauvinism and religious sensibilities are ignored. Such polished idealisms are, in fact, far from the living reality of most women and girls across all spheres in the country. By reviewing notable texts from past and present, this research problematises the position of Muslim women in India, specifically during the nationalistic discourse and post-independent era. The national freedom struggle movement assured a democratic constitution, which primed Mother India as the figurative Indian woman encrypting ideologies from socio-religious discourses. The grand narratives often become instrumental in politicising the vested interest of the hegemonic class. The struggles of Muslim women were foregrounded not only in the gendered disparity of the religious domain but also in the socio-cultural disparities which excluded them from the domain of Indian womanhood. Mainstream history, literature and even women development organisations deliberately typified Muslim women along with the religious discourse. Briefly, in this paper, we infer that Muslim women were rendered invisible in the limelight of the archetypal Mother India, denying their social, political, cultural and literary participation. They were thus subjected to constitutional othering by the mainstream socio-political entities (who subjected them) at the onset of nationalism, which continues to exist in post-colonial discourses where women are expected to constantly negotiate their religious identity over their national identity.