Refashioning Mother India: Feminism and Nationalism in Late-Colonial India

Author(s): Mrinalini Sinha

Source: Feminist Studies , Autumn, 2000, Vol. 26, No. 3, Points of Departure: India and
the South Asian Diaspora (Autumn, 2000), pp. 623-644
Published by: Feminist Studies, Inc.

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3178643

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 REFASHIONING MOTHER INDIA:
FEMINISM AND NATIONALISM IN
LATE-COLONIAL INDIA

MRINALINI SINHA

When U. S. journalist Katherine Mayo wrote her infamous

polemic against Indian self-rule, she aptly titled her book M
India.' The title referred to a central chapter of the book, w
depicted in gruesome detail the horrors to which the I
mother was subject during childbirth, as well as to the po
nationalist iconography of the nation as Mother India.2 M
she explained in her subsequent book on India, Slaves of the
had chosen the title deliberately to awaken the women of
by contrasting the actual treatment of women with their glori
tion in nationalist discourse.3 Yet, contrary to Mayo's expectati
the representatives of the women's movement in India sha
the general nationalist outrage against Mother India and
helped fashion nationalist India's successful reversal of
imperial propaganda.4 It is, indeed, ironic that a book that
been conceived primarily as an attack against Indian nationa
and that was from the very beginning nurtured by British off
through "official" and "unofficial" means, became the cataly
revitalizing the nationalist project in India in the interwar p
What followed in the wake of the imperialist-nationalist co
versy over Mother India was a nationalist refashioning of M
India mediated specifically through a new discourse of
Indian feminism.
The role of Indian feminist agency in the reconstitution of the
nationalist project, however, has not received the kind of attention
that it deserves. To be sure, scholars have examined the emer-
gence of an independent women's movement-dominated by
three major all-India women's organizations, the Women's Indian
Association (WIA), the All-India Women's Conference (AIWC),

Feminist Studies 26, no. 3 (fall 2000). @ 2000 by Feminist Studies, Inc.
623

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 624 Mrinalini Sinha

and the National

war period.5 Yet
increasing depen
dominantly male
underestimate th
nism in the ear
repudiation of fe
nent woman in the nationalist and women's movements of the
time, has served to overshadow the extent to which a small, but
highly influential, section of the leadership of the early women's
movement framed their contribution to the nationalist project
precisely in the discourse of liberal feminism.6 It must be
acknowledged that the relation between feminism and national-
ism in India-as elsewhere-was certainly complex.7 Even so, the
politics of liberal Indian feminism found a relatively open, if not
uncontested, space in the interwar reconstitution of Indian
nationalism.
What a full recognition of the significance of Indian feminism
for Indian nationalism demonstrates, therefore, is that the incor-
poration of women in the nationalist project was not confined
simply to the gendered logic of a "derivative" colonial national-
ism.8 Partha Chatterjee's important work on cultural nationalism
in nineteenth-century Bengal has provided the most influential
paradigm for the gendered logic of Indian nationalism.9 The
belated and "derivative" history of nationalism in the colonial
world, Chatterjee argues, posed a fundamental dilemma for the
counter-nationalisms of the colonial world. For, as counter-
nationalisms, they confronted the dilemma of establishing them-
selves as "different but modern" in relation to the West."o The dis-
course of "official" nationalism in India responded to this consti-
tutive contradiction by elaborating a sharp demarcation between
an inner or spiritual realm of the nation (in which nationalists
claimed superiority to and autonomy from the West) and an outer
or material realm (in which nationalists acknowledged the subor-
dination of the nation to the West). Thus, the primary and real
originality of Indian nationalism, according to Chatterjee, lay in
the cultural project of fashioning an inner identity where the "dif-
ference" and autonomy of the nation could be located. The bur-
den of representing the inner and authentic realm of the nation in
nationalist discourse fell largely on the figure of the "modern

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 Mrinalini Sinha 625

Indian woman." The discourse of Indian nationalism thus offered

new subject positions to women as the signifiers of an essential-
ized "Indianness." This nationalist construct of the modem Indian
woman was defined as distinct from, on the one hand, orthodox,
lower-caste and lower-class women in India and, on the other
hand, from Westernized or Western women. The cultural-nation-
alist project of fashioning the modem Indian woman, therefore,
necessarily included some limited emancipation of, and even self-
emancipation by, women within its own gendered logic.
Yet when organized women's activism in the interwar period is
incorporated simply within the gendered logic of a "derivative"
Indian nationalism, the full ramifications of liberal Indian femi-
nist agency in the nationalist project is elided.1" Chatterjee himself
concludes that "unlike the women's movement in nineteenth- and
twentieth-century Europe or America, the battle for the new idea
of womanhood in the era of nationalism [in India] was waged in
the home."12 Following Chatterjee, scholars have tended to dis-
count the agency of organized women and of middle-class Indian
feminism in the outer or material world in favor of the supposed-
ly more autonomous, if fragmentary and isolated, agency of
women removed from the public world of national and imperial
politics. This neglect of women's agency in the outer world of
nationalist politics not only underestimates the discourse of
Indian feminism in the early women's movement, but it also
freezes the gendered logic of Indian nationalism to a single
moment supposedly defined by the singular problematic of the
assertion of national cultural "difference" from the West.
The significance of organized women's mobilization in the
wake of the Mother India controversy, however, is best understood
in the context of the impact of interwar international and domes-
tic politics on the transformation of the nationalist project in
India.'" By 1917, official British policy had conceded for the first
time the principle of self-government for India. Although the
nature and the pace of this change was still to be strictly in British
hands, the Government of India Act of 1919 embodied an impor-
tant shift in official British policy. The project of Indian national-
ism itself underwent significant changes over the next decade.
Under the leadership of M.K. Gandhi, the nationalist movement
had been transformed for the first time into a mass movement.
The attention of the Indian National Congress (INC), the umbrel-

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 626 Mrinalini Sinha

la organization o
turned increasing
for example, th
Dominion Status
political independ
politics of Indian
within India. Se
anticaste Self-Re
tionalist movem
caste, and gender
Hindu-Muslim c
vision of an "Ind
tics and the dem
period called for
preexisting relig
Whereas religiou
erto marked the
nation now had to be reconstituted as unmarked and neutral.
The reconstitution of the gendered logic of cultural nationalism
in the interwar period thus answered to a more complex prob-
lematic: an ideological battle-against both British colonialism and
rival indigenous political movements-to claim an abstract and
universal modernity for Indian nationalism in late-colonial India.
In this crucial period when the political and social profile of the
new nationalist project was up for grabs, liberal Indian feminists
played a pivotal role in the fashioning of a "bourgeois" liberal
Indian modernity. The politics of liberal Indian feminism, indeed,
signaled the emergence of new subject positions for the modem
Indian woman. The discursive figure of the modern Indian
woman, once the signifier of national cultural difference, was
now rearticulated in the discourse of liberal feminism as the
model for the citizen of a new nation-state. The contribution of
organized women to the refashioning of Mother India thus went
beyond the nationalist construct of the modemrn Indian woman as
the signifier of an essentialized Indianness for the assertion of cul-
tural difference from the West. Rather, and more importantly,
organized women's contribution to the nationalist project lay in
making the discourse of liberal feminism available for the reartic-
ulation of the modem Indian woman as the agent of, and model
for, an abstract nationalist Indian modernity.

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Mrinalini Sinha 627

One contributio
the Mother India
the "woman ques
colonialism and I
fication of Britis
role as a moderni
of women in In
already begun to
British as benevo
woman question
and nationalism
Mother India. T
after World War
the impact of In
British Empire. T
fore, supported v
ty of Indian nati
journalist Kather
ject to present th
embraced by Briti
Mayo's writings
in liberal and fem
superiority of a
establishment ag
shevism" at hom
ble imperialist c
alliance in the p
book, The Isles of
ment.20 Mayo go
Mother India-the
nity on the cond
the Indian Politi
secretive operati
abroad.21 Mothe
imperialist propa
women against th
Although neithe
India were entire
cultural-national
prevalence of bac

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 628 Mrinalini Sinha

not merely som

argued, such pra
enjoined by, an i
repudiated cultur
Hindu culture an
favorable positi
enjoy such a pos
Mayo's depiction
Hindu culture,
backward and re
pable of addressi
siderable intern
women and childr
the newly forme
the recent enfra
British women's
woman's burden,"
in the colonies, as
wide publicity su
effect even on those in the United States and Britain who hitherto
had been relatively sympathetic toward Indian nationalism.25
It was not sufficient for nationalist India to respond to Mother
India by simply referring back to some supposedly glorious
ancient Hindu past.26 It was thus on the same terrain of moderni-
ty that Mayo had used to such devastating effect in her attack
against Indian nationalism that Mayo's nationalist critics now
sought to rehabilitate Indian nationalism. Even though Mayo's
book did produce numerous defensive patriarchal and tu quoque
responses in India, her more serious nationalist critics recognized
immediately that they could not afford to deny the prevalence of
the backward social practices that Mayo had found in India.27
Many leading nationalists and social reformers in India, such as
Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sarojini Naidu, and K.K. Natarajan,
were thus careful to acknowledge the need for social reform in
India even as they criticized Mayo's imperialist agenda.28 This
embrace of modernity as rhetorical highground in the nationalist
riposte to Mother India was made possible precisely through the
ideological intervention of organized women in the Mother India
controversy.
The unprecedented campaign orchestrated by the early wom-

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Mrinalini Sinha 629

en's movement fo
Act, or the Sarda
Harbilas Sarda, co
women to Mother
was ritually defe
tice of getting gi
widespread amon
India. The officia
in the age of cons
cent of girls in Ind
The negative impa
women and childr
and women in Ind
reformers and w
the three all-Indi
front in calling f
reformist Indian
and boys and to p
as organized wom
reform called for
flawed as a legisla
Yet organized wo
nerstone of natio
paganda.31 If imp
captured in the
brown women fro
macy for British
then its rearticul
woman question h
priation of a new I
Much to Mayo an
on behalf of the S
rassment for the
the myth of ben
which at least sin
nervous about alie
servative religiou
legislation to refo
tionist role of th
decades of the tw

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 630 Mrinalini Sinha

including age of
neered by Indian
were defeated rou
ing bloc in the as
in the assembly
rounding child m
controversy, whic
the bill. The colonial state found itself confronted with a dilemma:
while official support for the bill would jeopardize the political
alliance of British colonialism with orthodox Muslim and Hindu
loyalists in India, the withholding of official support for the bill
would sacrifice British colonialism's claims as an agent of moder-
nity before the eyes of the world. The colonial state thus respond-
ed by first adopting various dilatory tactics in the hope of killing
the bill prematurely in the assembly; and later, after being forced
to assent to the passage of the bill in the assembly, by undermin-
ing covertly the efficacy of the Sarda Act.35 This was hardly the
kind of fallout for which Mayo's imperialist backers had hoped
from the publication of Mother India.36
Caught by the contradictions of its own policy, the colonial
state could not deploy the "woman question" to buttress the colo-
nial project. Even "nonpolitical" activists in the Indian women's
movement were dismayed by the attitude of the colonial state
toward the Sarda Bill. Muthulakshmi Reddi, who had warned
that an antigoverment stance might be premature for the nascent
all-India women's movement, found her patience sorely tried by
official policy toward women's reforms.37 Her speech, "Govern-
ment's Attitude towards the Women's Movement and its Respon-
sibility in Social Reform Movements," at the annual meeting of
the Indian National Social Reform Conference in Madras in
December 1927 expressed the deep frustration that many s
reformers and women activists shared about the future of wom-
en's reforms under a colonial state.38 The colonial state and the
British-controlled press, she complained, were bolstering the
orthodox opposition to social reform in India for the sake of polit-
ical expediency instead of encouraging progressive Indian public
opinion as represented in the all-India political parties and the
independent women's movement in India. When British imperi-
alist-feminist Eleanor Rathbone tried to edit Reddi's criticism of
the colonial government from an essay that Rathbone had solicit-

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Mrinalini Sinha 631

ed from Reddi for

stood firm in her cr
a one-time support
advocate of the su
forced to concede
in India that the c
contemporary posit
tive of some measu
carried out by the
that henceforth th
to imperial propag
way as it had been
The broad national
cal, was a reflectio
able to impart to l
the initiative of o
Central Legislative
that the passage of
Indian nationalism
male politicians, su
Jinnah, were caug
that Kamaladevi C
delegates of the A
tors for the Sarda
organized women t
male Central Legis
lic meetings, the p
various political pa
articles, and the
underscored the si
nationalist modernit
bly, in fact, compla
the women supporte
ident of the Madras
en recalcitrant na
Mayo's if they faile
then, the deliberat
acute awareness tha
for nationalist clai
the most vocal opp

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 632 Mrinalini Sinha

articulate his opp

the shastras (sacr
authority of supp
of delayed sexua
secretary of the
1929 as "one of t
freedom," she w
which the woma
India was ready t
world.46 Nationa
was now used to
the universal mod
Another import
nized women wa
Indian nationalis
nism. To be sure,
en's movement a
tural nationalism
fiers of an essentialized Indianness. Yet the discourse of liberal
Indian feminism, however fragile and incomplete its realization
in late-colonial India, disrupted one set of claims that allied wom-
en's actions and loyalties with cultural-nationalist invocations of a
glorious ancient past and projected women as themselves the
agents of a new Indian modernity. On this basis, then, liberal fem-
inists provided crucial ideological tools for a reconstituted nation-
alist project in the interwar period.
The discourse of Indian feminism provided an alternative to
cultural-nationalist invocations of a "golden age" in the past to
justify certain limited reforms for women in the project of Indian
nationalism. Even though women activists and national social
reformers continued to justify support for the Sarda Act on the
authority of the shastras and the restoration of the status that
women supposedly enjoyed in some ancient glorious past, orga-
nized women's activism on behalf of the act registered the grow-
ing frustration of women activists at a discourse that linked the
fate of women's reforms only with sentimental invocations of the
past. So when Kamalabai Lakshman Rau, a member of the wom-
en's delegation that lobbied for support of the Sarda Bill among
the leaders of the major political parties in India, confronted an
argument against the bill based on the shastras, she did not hesi-

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 Mrinalini Sinha 633

tate to reject the

creation of "new
men's laws for u
make laws for ou
women activists a
Indian National So
Society of India, a
perhaps, the mos
from the project
charter went bey
en's reforms by d
work, maternity
divorce, and equ
reformed India.48
that was enunciat
at best, a relatively
nationalism. Later
nationalist backlas
the women's mov
eral feminist demands of the Women's Charter could be articulat-
ed within a modernizing nationalist framework was a testimony
to the strategic expansion of the nationalist project in the interwar
period to accommodate the agency of liberal Indian feminism.
The espousal of legislative reforms for women, as shown in many
an article from the 1920s and 1930s in the Stri Dharma, the leading
feminist journal in India, was no longer dependent for its nation-
alist credentials only upon the sanction of the past. "Our laws as
ordained and drawn up by the ancients," as one contributor to the
Stri Dharma in June 1927 wrote, "were satisfactory enough for the
men and women of the old days. But they do not satisfy us today.
We must agitate and get them changed or get new laws intro-
duced."''49
Significantly, the emerging discourse of Indian feminism
offered a new nationalist framework for women's reforms justi-
fied on the modernizing potential of a representative national
government. During the campaign for the Sarda Act, therefore,
organized women introduced a new argument that contrasted
unfavorably the record of the alien colonial government in British
India with that of progressive princely states in India and of
national governments in Turkey, Japan, and China that had

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 634 Mrinalini Sinha

undertaken bold
It was in the na
activists, in fact,
nationalism. "As
tive enactment f
during the Sarda
political instrume
nal of the WIA, t
and social reform
by women activi
AIWC, the larges
retain its constit
decade, the libera
allied the women's movement with the establishment of a mod-
em nation-state in India.52
Finally, and most importantly, the nature of organized women's
mobilization provided crucial ideological support for the con-
struction of an allegedly neutral and unmarked citizen-subject.
The liberal feminist commitment to the "unity," and underlying
sisterhood, of women supplied a concrete example of the modem
"neutral" universal citizen whose preexisting regional, religious,
and caste identities could be bracketed in the public sphere. This
liberal feminist construct of "woman" fueled the outrage of the
Indian women's movement against the imperial government's
proposal to extend the franchise and political representation in
India to women along sectarian, "communal," lines. In contrast to
many of the male-dominated movements in colonial India, the
early women's movements deliberate cultivation of an interna-
tionalist as well as insistently antisectarian orientation gave
weight to organized women's objections to the latest imperial
onslaught that forced the "communal virus" on an unwilling con-
stituency. "There has not been one instance on record," wrote
Maya Devi Gangulee to Eleanor Rathbone in 1932, "in which the
women of any community have sought to disassociate them-
selves from being members of one great national sisterhood. The
women of all communities, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Depressed
Classes and Untouchables, have been working hand in hand in
the nationalist movement without the least hint of communal dis-
affection.""53 As Indian feminists quickly recognized, political rep-
resentation of women only as members of one or another suppos-

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 Mrinalini Sinha 635

edly organic com

didates selected
assumptions eith
women selected on a communal basis would also be unable to
address the disabilities that all women suffered across the bound-
aries of discrete communities; for, as Radhabai Subbarayon put it,
"when a woman has to depend on the whims of a communal elec-
torate for her success, she is obliged to be first a communalist,
then a woman, if she wants to win."54 It was, therefore, as mem-
bers of a putative national community-"as citizens and not as
members of any particular community"-that organized women
sought political representation for women in India. Shareefah
Hamid Ali, an Indian Muslim and an advocate for joint elec-
torates for women, considered it "degrading" to be elected "as a
'Muslim' only" and "not as an 'Indian.' "55 The universalist logic of
liberal feminism thus reinforced nationalist objections against the
political constitution that the imperial state offered India. When
organized women in India, therefore, rejected the advice of the
dominant wing of the British women's organization to accept the
communal franchise for women, they did so less to assert cultural
difference than to affirm the liberal feminist ideals of the underly-
ing sisterhood of women.
Nowhere, perhaps, was Indian feminism more transformative
than in offering the modem Indian woman as herself the proto-
type of the modem Indian citizen. During the deliberations over
the proposed Government of India Act of 1935, which was meant
to arbitrate the terms for the political representation of various
groups in India, the position adopted by the major Indian wom-
en's organizations offered the modern Indian woman as the
model citizen."5 The leading women's organizations in India
backed the nationalist demand for universal adult suffrage. The
leadership of these women's organizations adopted a firm stand
not only against communal representation and communal elec-
torates but also against any special qualifications for women's
franchise. Although several women activists had once favored
some form of special qualification for increasing women's fran-
chise in India, by the 1930s the official position, at least of the
leading women's organizations, was against any form of special
concession for women. The Memorandum on the Status of Indian
Women in the New Constitution, supported by the three major all-

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 636 Mrinalini Sinha

India women's or
have no desire to
themselves provi
recognized in prac
that the women's
suffrage-against
stark contrast to
resentatives of v
Round Table Conferences on constitutional reforms for India. The
"Minorities Pact," a joint effort favoring separate electorates by
delegates of several minority groups at the Round Table Con-
ference on Indian constitutional reform, was hailed by the British
for covering about 46 percent of India's population against the
Congress's demand for joint electorates and universal adult fran-
chise. The implications in this context of the stand taken by the
all-India women's movement was noted by Gandhi in his
response to the Minorities Pact: "[Y]ou have had on behalf of the
women of India a complete repudiation of special representation,
and as they happen to be one half of the population of India, this
forty-six per cent is somewhat reduced."58 The Stri Dharma simi-
larly affirmed the dominant position of the women's movement
in India: "[W]hen the Secretary of State says that the Communal
Award was forced on His Majesty's Government by all the com-
munities in India, we would remind him, in all humility, that
forty-seven per cent of the population of India were never a party
to it and will never accept it."59 It was through the agency of orga-
nized women that the potential of the national citizen-subject was
now increasingly represented. Reddi, herself a non-Brahman,
explained the position of the women's movement thus:
[T]he only way to bring the Brahmans, the women and the pariahs together on
a common platform is by enfranchising the women and the depressed classes
on equal terms with others. If the women and the depressed classes are given
freedom, power and responsibility, I am sure that they would very soon learn
how to rectify the present social evil.60

The women's movement, indeed, was uniquely positioned to

espouse the alleged universality and neutrality of the new citizen-
subject in nationalist discourse.
In as much as liberal feminists helped normalize the construct
of the universal citizen-subject, their very success implicated
them in bolstering an official nationalist Indian modernity against

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Mrinalini Sinha 637

critics from both

Indian modernit
charge of being i
movement, for e
offered in the lib
adequate to addr
Indian society. Th
alternative subalte
tion of previous
posed neutrality o
stantive equality
restructuring of s
of women's eman
challenge to the c
yar), the leader o
and control of w
and regulation of
had been content
nationalist invoca
Self-Respect movem
In this context th
liberal Indian fem
formed an impor
alternative subal
ments as the Self
best. This account
women's moveme
Mother India cont
critical of the cla
nationalist Indian m
India. The critiqu
series of articles in
ment, and was l
(Mayo's charges: t
combined gender
made it especially
eral bourgeois Ind
Mother India. In th
sympathetic than
nationalist claims

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 638 Mrinalini Sinha

of the Non-Brah
name in support
social reform con
ruptive by libera
Reddi, as organiz
inviting all organ
the non-Brahman
continued to defe
she was no more
implications of h
ly glossed over in
for the Sarda Bil
the Mother India
alist Indian mode
but also against a
tours of a recons
the Self-Respect
understood as sim
nism occupied a h
of Indian nation
indeed, provide
modernity from
and class hierarchies.
What the refashioning of Mother India demonstrates, then, is
the importance of the new discourse of liberal Indian feminism in
the interwar nationalist project. Above all, it signals a modifica-
tion, and even a transformation, of the discourse of Indian nation-
alism as it was deployed socially in the particular historical condi-
tions of the interwar period. For, as Miguel A. Cabrera reminds
us, a discourse is after all a "social phenomenon." It is a social
phenomenon not "in the sense that it reflects social structure ...
[but] in the basic sense that it gestates and transforms within
social practice."66 The agency of organized women's activism and
the significance of the discourse of Indian feminism that now
became available to the project of Indian nationalism needs to be
understood in this context. It was in the stark contingencies of the
interwar circumstances that organized women were able to alter,
reshape, and re-create the nationalist construct of the "modern
Indian woman" in the nascent discourse of Indian feminism. It
was this discursive rearticulation of the modern Indian woman,

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 Mrinalini Sinha 639

moreover, that se
the new nationalis
modernity in late
this moment, the
in the world of p
course itself to a
Mother India, ho
embattled contour
bution of organiz
interwar period w
modem nationalism in India to accommodate the new universal-
ist vocabulary of Indian citizenship.

NOTES

A version of this article was delivered at the "Women and Human Rights: Social Justi
and Citizenship" conference of the International Federation for Research in Women'
History/Federation intemationale pour le recherche en histoire des femmes, 30 June
July 1998, University of Melbourne, and at the "International Workshop on Gender a
the Transmission of Values and Cultural Heritages in South and Southeast Asia," 23-2
May 2000, Belle van Zuylen Instituut, University of Amsterdam. I would like to than
the organizers and participants at these events. My thanks also to the reviewers f
Feminist Studies and to Clement Hawes for comments on earlier drafts. I have develop
some of the individual arguments in this article in the following published articles, "T
Lineage of the Indian Modern: Rhetoric, Agency, and the Sarda Act," in Gend
Sexuality, and Colonial Modernities, ed. Antoinette Burton (London and New Yor
Routledge, 1999), 207-21; and "Suffragism and Internationalism: The Enfranchisement
British and Indian Women under an Imperial State," Indian Economic and Social Histor
Review 36 (October-December 1999): 461-84.

1. Katherine Mayo, Mother India (London: Jonathan Cape, 1927). For the political age
da of Mayo's book, see Manoranjan Jha, Katherine Mayo and India (New Delhi: People
Publishing House, 1971).
2. For the nationalist iconography of India as Mother India, see Jasodhara Bagch
"Representing Nationalism: Ideology of Motherhood in Colonial Bengal," Economic an
Political Weekly 25, nos. 42-43 (20-27 Oct. 1990): WS65-WS71; Tanika Sarkar, "National
Iconography: Images of Women in Nineteenth-Century Bengali Literature," Economi
and Political Weekly 2, no. 47 (21 Nov. 1987): 2011-15; and C.S. Lakshmi, "Mother
Mother-Community, and Mother-Politics in Tamil Nadu," Economic and Political Week
25, nos. 42-43 (20-27 Oct. 1990): WS72-WS83.
3. Katherine Mayo, Slaves of the Gods (New York: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1929), 237.
4. See editor's Introduction and select responses of Indian women to Mother India
Selections from Katherine Mayo's Mother India, ed. Mrinalini Sinha (Ann Arbor: Universi
of Michigan Press, 2000).
5. For some accounts of the early women's movement in colonial India, see Jana Matso
Everett, Women and Social Change in India (New Delhi: Heritage Publishers, 1978); Rad
Kumar, The History of Doing: An Illustrated Account of Movements for Women's Rights a

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640 Mrinalini Sinha

Feminism in India, 180

The New Cambridge H
University Press, 1996)
6. Sarojini Naidu had v
women's movement in
her presidential addre
1930. See Indian Social R
136-39. The term "fem
about, the early women
177-80; and Amrit Ka
Rather than enter into
nism" in the context o
the term to distinguish
on women. In this cont
India," Working Paper
University, Bombay, 19
7. For the problematic
Louis A. West, ed., Fem
Gender and Nation (Lo
Nationalism in the Thir
8. See Partha Chatter
Discourse? (London: Zed
9. For elaboration of th
the Women's Question
Kumkum Sangari and
1990), 233-53; and mor
Colonial and Postcolonia
10. The above formulat
Colonial Modernity: Pu
Journal 36 (autumn 199
11. See, for example,
krishnan, "Nationalism
Andrew Parker et al. (N
12. Chatterjee, Nation
Sarkar, Writing Social
cally gendered critique
Hegemony: Towards
Question,' " Economic a
thetic to the issues rai
hope will be evident in
the gendered discourse
13. For a discussion of
India: 1885-1947 (New
Jalal, Modern South As
Press, 1998), 126-55.
14. The leader of the
known as Periyar, ma
despite his work for "u
to denounce the found
sion of this system, th
Mangalamurugesan, Sel
Publishers, 1981); and
With Reference to the S

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All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Mrinalini Sinha 641

15. For the politics of

Communalism in Colon
Chandra, Communalism
16. See A.R.H. Copley
Century Moral Imperi
Calcutta Historical Jour
Joshi, "Gender and Imp
147-65; and Lata Mani, "
Cultural Critique 7 (1987
17. See Richard J. Pople
ca, 1905-1915," in Intel
Andrew and Jeremy N
ligence and Imperial Defe
1924 (London: Frank C
counteract publicity in
bassies, and Consulates: U
115/2597, 1920, Public R
18. I remain indebted i
between Mayo and the
India.
19. For Mayo's investm
Cossack to Trooper: Man
no. 3 (spring 1995): 565-
20. Katherine Mayo, Th
Gwyer, 1925). The Briti
of the major architects
early twentieth century
21. Mayo herself ackno
her by J.H. Adams. See
181, series 4, box 34,
Adams deputation with
see Public and Judicia
London; and Home Depa
India (NAI), New Delhi
Indian self-rule via a d
from Katherine Mayo's M
22. The attempt of som
cerned with the plight o
examples, see Mary Da
Beacon Press, 1979), esp
Sons (New York: Rando
Speak? Katherine Mayo
of Indian Philosophy 25
23. For cultural-nationa
Happened to Vedic Da
Recasting Women, 27-
Brahminitude: Arrival of
1995): 1768-79.
24. For the early invest
course of the uplift of I
Feminists, Indian Wom
North Carolina Press, 1994). Also see Barbara Ramusack, "Cultural Missionaries,
Maternal Imperialists, Feminist Allies: British Women Activists in India, 1865-1945," in

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All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 642 Mrinalini Sinha

Western Women and I

Nupur Chaudhury (Blo
Jayawardena, The Whi
British Colonial Rule (N
25. See, for example, th
49, a journal that had
the review by Edward T
September 1927, 323.
26. See Chakravarti.
27. For the most famous tu quoque response, see K.L. Gauba, Uncle Sham: The Strange
Tale of a Civilization Run Amok (Ludhiana: Times of India Corp., 1929).
28. See M.K. Gandhi, "Drain-Inspector's Report," Young India (15 Sept. 1927), in The
Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (Ahmedababd: Navajivan Publishing House, 1969),
34: 539-47; and K.K. Natarajan, Miss Mayo's Mother India: A Rejoinder (Madras: G.A.
Natesan & Co., 1928).
29. See Sinha, "Lineage of the Indian Modern."
30. See Report of the Age of Consent Committee, 1928-1929 (Calcutta: Government of India,
1930).
31. For the limits of the Sarda Act, see Geraldine Forbes, "Women and Modernity: The
Issue of Child Marriage in India," Women's Studies International Quarterly 2, no. 4 (1979):
407-19; Barbara Ramusack, "Women's Organizations and Social Change: The Age-of-
Marriage Issue in India," in Women and World Change, ed. Naomi Black and A.B. Cottrell
(London: Sage, 1981), 198-216; and Judy Whitehead, "Modernising the Motherhood
Archetype: Public Health Models and the Child Marriage Restraint Act of 1929," in
Social Reform, Sexuality, and the State, ed. Patricia Uberoi (New Delhi: Sage, 1996), 187-
210.

32. The phrase is from Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak "Can the Subaltern Speak? Specula-
tions on Widow Sacrifice," Wedge 7-8 (winter-spring, 1985): 21.
33. For the history of social reform in colonial India, see Swaminath Natarajan, A
Century of Social Reform in India (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1962); and R.K.
Sharma, Nationalism, Social Reform, and Indian Women: A Study of the Interaction between
Our National Movement and the Movement for Social Reform among Indian Women (Patna:
Janaki Prakashan, 1981).
34. Alexander Muddiman, the Home Member of the Government of India, had
announced in 1925 that the policy of the government of India was to block the passage
of social reform legislations in the assembly. See note by A.P. Muddiman, 11 July 1927,
Home Department, Judicial Proceedings, 382/27, 1927, NAI.
35. For the continued discomfort of the government of India over the Sarda Act, see
Home Department, Judicial Proceedings, 570/29., 1929; 946/29, 1929; and 9/31, 1931, NAI.
36. Harbilas Sarda, the initial sponsor of the act, saw the passage of the Act as a major
blow to imperialist propagandists such as Mayo; see his "Child Marriage Act," Stri
Dharma 13, no. 3 (January 1930): 77-78. Also see Sarda to K.V. Rangaswami, 10 Dec.
1946, Harbilas Sarda Papers, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML), New
Delhi.
37. For Muthulakshmi Reddi's initial wariness about adopting too close an identifica-
tion with nationalist activities, see her letters, speeches, and writings collected in the
Muthulakshmi Reddi Papers, NMML. For a discussion of Reddi's politics, see Mrs.
Reddy (also frequently spelled "Reddi"), Autobiography of Dr. (Mrs.) S. Muthulakshmi
Reddy: A Pioneer Woman Legislator (Madras: M. Reddi, 1964); and Aparna Basu, ed. The
Pathfinder: Dr. Muthulakshmi Reddy (New Delhi: AIWC Publishers, 1987).
38. Muthulakshmi Reddi, "Government's Attitude towards the Women's Movement
and Its Responsibility in Social Reform Movements," presented at the Indian National
Social Reform Conference, Madras, December 1927. See "Speeches and Writings," vol. 2,

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 Mrinalini Sinha 643

pt. 2, Reddi Papers.

39. See Muthulakshmi Reddi to Eleanor Rathbone, 14 Feb. 1920; and Reddi to Alice
Caton, 24 Feb. 1930, Eleanor Rathbone Papers, box 92, folder 1, Fawcett Library,
London.
40. Eleanor Rathbone, Child Marriage: The Indian Minotaur (London: George Allen &
Unwin, 1934). Here Rathbone had clearly changed her views from her previous, "Has
Katherine Mayo Slandered Mother India?" Hibbert Journal 27 (January 1929): 193-214.
The change in her views was a response both to her exchange with Indian women
activists, like Reddi, and her own experiences in raising questions about the Sarda Act
as member of parliament in Britain. For a sympathetic biography of Rathbone, see Mary
D. Stocks, Eleanor Rathbone: A Biography (London: Victor Gollancz, 1949).
41. See the recollection of the women's deputation in Margaret Cousins, "Impressions of
the Second All-India Women's Conference," Stri Dharma 12, no. 5 (March 1928): 67-69.
Also see Motilal Nehru's speech in Extract from Legislative Assembly Debates, 11 Sept.
1929, Home Department, Judicial Proceedings, 570/29, 1929, NAI.
42. See Sinha, "Lineage of the Indian Modem."
43. See the complaint by M.K. Acharya, Extract from Legislative Assembly Debates, 4
Sept. 1929, Home Department, Judicial Proceedings, 570/29, 1929, NAI.
44. Subject File, "Social Welfare Measures, 1927-1928," Reddi Papers, file no. 8, pt. 1.
45. For an exposition of Acharya's views, see esp. M.K Acharya, Indian Marriage Systems
or Siva-Shakti Unity in the Light of Western Science (Madras: All-India Brahmana Maha
Sabha, 1929). Acharya's son even complained to Reddi that she had misrepresented his
father in attributing his views to an unreconstructed Hindu orthodoxy. See M.K.
Acharya to Muthulakshmi Reddi, 20 Oct. 1929, Subject File, "Social Welfare Measures,
1927-1928," Reddi Papers, file no. 8, pt. 1.
46. Malati Patwardhan, quoted in Press Clippings (1927-30), Reddi Papers, file no. 10.
47. Kamalabai Lakshman Rau, quoted in Stri Dharma 9, no 5 (March 1928): 67-69 and 14,
no. 5 (March 1931): 178.
48. For the charter, see Stri Dharma 9, no 3 (January 1928): 33. For the subsequent con-
troversy, see Stri Dharma 13, no. 3 (January 1930): 79-80.
49. See Kamalabai Lakshman Rau, "The Law of Inheritance and Indian Women," Stri
Dharma 10, no. 8 (June 1927): 117-19.
50. For one example, see Reddi's review of Rathbone's book on child marriage in India
in "Social Welfare Measures," Reddi Papers, file no. 8, pt. 2.
51. See Stri Dharma 9, no. 12 (October 1928): 305. The Stri Dharma was expressing a view
that was quite prevalent in the inner circle of the WIA, the oldest all-India women's
organization. The AIWC, however, retained the directive against political involvement
in its constitution for several years more. See Aparna Basu and Bharati Ray, Women's
Struggle: A History of the All-India Women's Conference, 1927-1990 (New Delhi: Manohar,
1990).
52. On this point, see the presidential address at the 1937 annual conference of the
AIWC, cited in Bulletin of the Indian Women's Movement, no. 12 (January 1937): 1-3.
53. Maya Devi Gangulee to Eleanor Rathbone, 27 Aug. 1932, Rathbone Papers, box 93,
folder 4. For the fear that on a "communal ticket," women would become "puppets" in
the hands of communalists and would be forced to be loyal to that community, see also
Stri Dharma 16, no.1 (September 1933): 553.
54. Radhabai Subbarayon to Eleanor Rathbone, 16 Sept. 1932, Rathbone Papers, box 93,
folder 4.
55. Shareefah Hamid Ali to Eleanor Rathbone, Rathbone Papers, box 93, folder 9.
Eventually Begum Shah Nawaz was alone among the women representatives to appear
before the various government committees on the franchise question to support com-
munal electorates for women. Shah Nawaz recognized that it was impossible for
Muslim women to support political representation for themselves in a form that was
substantially different from that demanded by the men of the community. See Shah

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 644 Mrinalini Sinha

Nawaz to Eleanor Rathb

56. See Amrit Kaur, "T
Stri Dharma 18, no. 2
"Suffragism and Intern
57. This memorandom
12, NMML. The view
Bulletin of the Nationa
Joint Declaration on W
15, no. 5 (March 1932): 2
58. Gandhi, quoted in B
Oxford University Pres
59. See Stri Dharma 16,
60. Muthulakshmi Red
"Reserved Seats: Wome
Review 20, no. 1 (Januar
61. On the distinction
tive equality, see M.S.
my's Political Discourse
and V. Geetha, "Periya
Weekly 33, no. 17 (25 A
tion, see also Vidhu Verma, "Colonialism and Liberation: Ambedkar's Quest for
Distributive Justice," Economic and Political Weekly 34, no. 39 (25 Sept. 1999): 2804-10.
62. See E.V.R. Periyar, Self-Respect Marriages (Madras: Periyar Self-Respect Propaganda
Institute, 1983). For the "woman question" in the movement, see S. Anandhi, "Women's
Question in the Dravidian Movement c. 1925-1948," Social Scientist 19 (May-June 1991):
24-41; Natalie Pickering, "Recasting the Indian Nation: Dravidian Nationalism Replies
to the Women's Question," Thatched Patio 6 (May-June 1993): 1-20; and Prabha Rani,
"Women's Indian Association and the Self-Respect Movement in Madras, 1925-1936:
Perceptions on Women," in Women and Indian Nationalism, ed. Leela Kasturi and Vina
Mazumdar (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1994), 94-109. Babasaheb Ambedkar,
the most prominent leader and theorist of the non-Brahman movement from Maharash-
tra, also theorized the link between gender, caste, and sexuality; on this point see
Sharmila Rege, "Dalit Women Talk Differently: A Critique of 'Difference' and Towards a
Dalit Feminist Standpoint," Economic and Political Weekly 33, no. 44 (31 Oct. 1998): Ws39-
Ws46; and Chhaya Datar, "Non-Brahmin Renderings of Feminism in Maharashtra: Is It
a More Emancipatory Force?" Economic and Political Weekly 34, no. 41 (9-15 Oct. 1999):
2964-68.
63. On this point, see Pandian.
64. Kovai A. Ayyamuthu, Meyo Kutru Moyya Poyya (Mayo's charges: true or false) (Kan-
chipurum: Kumaran Printing Press, 1929). See the English translation of an extract from
the book in Selections from Mother India, 293-98.
65. The controversy led to a fallout between Reddi and the local Congress representa-
tive, 0. Kandiyar Chetty. See "Speeches and Writings," Reddi Papers, 2, p. 2.
66. Miguel A. Cabrera, "Linguistic Approach or Return to Subjectivism? In Search of an
Alternative to Social History," Social History 24, no. 1 (January 1999): 82.

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