Name: Success Sibanda

Date: 11/12/2015
The Womens Question
A Bengali home in Faridpur. Its late November in the year 1893. Two women, deeply
immersed in conversation, sit on the verandah leading out of the lounge. One is Rashsundari
Debi, the mother of the homestead, and her counterpart is Tarabai Shinde. The two are so
engulfed in their exchange that they do not seem to notice the maidservant when she brings them
hot tea and corn on the cob.
TS: What is this that men say? Shall we believe that our bodies are vile temples, as they say?
No sister! I, Tarabai Shinde shall not accede to this. I shall always defend the honour of women
from all castes and families. Cant you see, Rashsundari, that our men, with the superior intellect
they claim to possess, keep us chained by making us practice pativrata with the pretense of it
being stridharma. We are meant to worship our husbands like gods! Your husband can kick you
and swear at you, keep his whores, get drunk, gamble until hes lost all his money, steal, commit
murder, be treacherous, slander people, rob people of their hard-earned income, or solicit and
accept bribes. He can do all this, but when he comes home he is Krishna himself!
RD:

But such is the will of God, so let us praise the custom.

TS: No, sister! That we cannot continue to accept. Tell me Rashsundari, why did you not find
another man to marry when your husband passed on? Was it by choice?
RD: Alas! Be he dead or alive, my place is and always was by my husbands side. Widow remarriage is out of question in our custom.
TS: This is ridiculous! Why is it that we, women, cannot have another when we have lost our
beloved? Have we not seen examples of women remarrying in the Vedas? Have you not heard of
Satyavati and Kunti? Each of them made a secret love marriage then went off and got married to
Shantanu and Pandaraja respectively! So what else were they doing but marrying a second time?
Does it say anywhere in the Mahabharata that no woman, whoever she is, can marry a second
time in this life, once shes lost her first husband? These men treat us like we have committed
some heinous crime for which we must atone with misery. I shall not even venture into the issue
of sati! Anger brims so within me when I do.
RD: Sometimes I think I was most unfortunate to have been born a woman. We, women, are
not at all free. We can take no initiative ourselves, I dare say we live in subjection, like caged
birds. Are we not akin to beasts of burden?
TS: Perhaps I am just a poor woman without any real intelligence, who has been rightfully
kept locked up and confined as traditional Maratha custom dictates. But allow me to ask this: If
the husband is really to be like a god to the wife then shouldnt he behave like one?
RD: What can I say? I also grew up knowing that being a woman I am merely an ignorant,
foolish, careless, helpless, wretched and weak person. I have only found comfort in Lord Vishnu,
for when I fear I pray to him.

TS: But even the gods are to blame for the condition that women find themselves in. Since
they are such heroes, why is it so impossible for them to pull poor widows out of this pit of
shame? Why cant they break some caste rules, put the kumkum back on their foreheads and let
them enjoy the happiness of marriage again? What it is that makes them so keen to keep women
shut up? Surely their doors should open the same to everyone!
RD:
(Rashsundari is uncomfortable with questioning the gods although she does hold
reservations against them , so she does not respond but instead calls out to the maidservant to
collect the tea-cups)
TS: Men do not seem to comprehend what this world would be like without women. Theres
no grace or beauty in anything without matching pairs. But just because men happen to be
stronger they label us, women, with all sorts of insulting names. They shut us up endlessly in the
prison of the home, while going about building their own importance, becoming Mr, Sir and so
on. It is sad that even you, Rassundari didi, lived a life of being shut up in purdah, frightened and
dominated as if you were a female slave. Men have maintained that learning is not for us women,
and we cannot go and come as we please. They have nurtured in us ignorance.
RD: The question of educating our folk pains me the most. Girls were not allowed to read or
write [in] the days of my childhood. I find it deplorable that I was not allowed to educate myself
because I was a woman. I had to go through much strife just to teach myself to read and write,
and in secret for that matter! How very lucky are girls of future generations! Those days, people
were convinced that it is sinful to educate women.
TS: I tell you, once a womans husband has died, not even a dog would swallow what shes got
to. Shes stripped and exposed in all sorts of ways as if she belonged to no one. Shes shut out
from going to weddings, receptions and all these auspicious occasions that married women go to.
Her face is not to be seen, it is regarded as a bad omen.
RD: (thinking to herself) Haa! As if I was ever allowed to go to any of those while my husband
lived. (Aloud) Indeed it is a great tragedy that one has to go away to a foreign land, leaving ones
mother, relatives and friends behind, to live under lifelong bondage. For the wedded woman,
visiting even her natal family is out of the question except in times of extremities as the
housework would be unattended to in her absence. It is sad that I could not be by my mothers
side when she lay on her deathbed because my in-laws would not let me leave my marital home.
Had I been a man, things would have been totally different!
TS: Women have become commodities. Many fathers marry off their daughters of ten or eleven
for a fat wad of rupees to some rich old man of eighty or ninety. Parents work hard to get their
daughters married into a good family. They strive to please their in-laws so that their daughters
find happiness and are treated well upon marriage. If good lucks on her side, everythings fine.
But what if it isnt? What must it be like for her whose father and mother never gave her the
slightest slap, when she feels the sharp blows of her husbands fist on her body? Women in this
world are forever putting up with all sorts of hard toil, difficulty, hunger and thirst, harassment
and beatings. A woman spends all her life with someone domineering over her, like a bought
slave. She has to bear up under the heaviest work in the house, suffer whatever the family say to

her. Yet she cannot say a word, or own anything. If any of them tries [to be willful], she loses the
skin off her back with a beating, a ration enough to make her remember it for six months or a
year.
RD: Sadly that is my story! I was married off at the age of twelve. Others girls were married of
at a younger age than I was! Our people believed that girls were born to become housewives.
With their faces hidden behind a veil, young brides were expected to work hard in their
homesteads without complaining, to be considered as good wives. I would start working at dawn,
and I would still be at it until well beyond midnight. I had no rest in between. In those days
married women had to single-handedly do all the housework in their households unless they
could afford to hire a maid. In extreme cases, even the unwell - like my aunt who had arthritis were not spared from this responsibility! Marriage is, for the woman, a life of labour. Any idle
moment a woman has is time to be at her husbands service, with meekness and humility.
TS: A mans wife has only to look at someone else with a bit of interest and hell work himself
up into the most furious rage. Then her family has to suffer in disgrace, and she gets beaten,
locked up and harassed. If only God would preserve this English government forever! Since it
began here, women have got the gift of education and their minds made strong enough to face all
sorts of mental and practical circumstances with courage. Men disguising themselves as
reformists have cried foul at the Englishs interference in our religious practices. Yet I ask, have
we not adopted their ways ourselves? How much of this religion [we call ours] is there left?
RD: Say no more sister. These issues are hot embers to my soul. Look, the chickens are coming
home to roost. Let us get inside the house before darkness envelops us.
(They leave the verandah and enter the house.)