1
Interpreting the Relation between Women’s Movement and
Nationalist Movement1
Zhang Hong
Dalian University, China
ABSTRACT: This article examines the evolution of feminist historiography in India since 1970s, by
focusing on the reinterpretation of the relation between women’s movement and nationalist movement.
From 1970s to 1980s, Indian historians questioned the triumphal narrative of unilinear advance in the
status of women. Since 1990s, Indian historians have engaged their studies in exploring the agency of
Indian women, as well as concrete historical study. It demonstrates that both dismantling the
dominant nationalist discourse and focusing on the agency of women, are taking the West as
the criterion and the resultant of insensitivity towards actual Indian history, which not only leave
considerable areas in darkness but also offer only a partial and perhaps distorted understanding of
women’s history. It demonstrates that it is actually the shift of historiography concern from a
conversation with the West to the past, which facilitate Indian historians made the inconceivable
relation between women’s movement and nationalist movement understandable. Through exploring
concrete context of nationalist discourse on women’s issues, recent Indian historians have highlighted
the complexity and ambiguity of women’s questions and its relation with nationalism.
Introduction
Historically, almost without any exception, women’s movement has arisen in
the Third World in tandem with nationalist movements. There are almost no
feminist movements like the one in the West. Many historians, from all over the world,
have been perplexed by this phenomenon since 1970s, they coincidently attempt to
answer the same question: why there was no independent women’s movement2 in the
Third World countries? Historians who concern the history of Indian or Chinese
women’s movement are not exception. Much scholarship has been done in this regard.
As a Chinese historian, I am eager to look for some inspiration from Indian historians.
It is well known that Chinese women involve in the struggle for national liberation,
rather than waging separate women’s movement in earlier twentieth century. This has
been regard as the dominant position and strategy in the women’s movement in
pre-1949 China. There are enormous researches on this issue inside and outside China,
which have aroused lots of controversy. To large extent, these debates were
ideological and political, that is, the evaluation of women’s emancipation is closely
related to socialism in China. Until now, most of the debates around the evaluation of
women’s emancipation are among Chinese and Western scholars, and a deadlock
developed in these debates: is the “alliance” of women and communist revolution a
“failure” or not. While I am studying in Delhi, I find that Indian feminist
historiography, not only can open up fresh possibilities by providing new way of
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thinking, but also facilitate a rethinking of the feminist criticism.
My study is from within the scholarship of Indian feminist historiography recently,
and some comparison with China, that I pose the problem of rethinking the approach
of feminist historiography. This essay is a review of feminist historiography and not a
research study of history of Indian women’s movement. Furthermore, my intention in
this essay is not a whole picture of the feminist historiography, but focus on the
reinterpretation of the relation between women’s question and nationalism. One point on
which I would strongly argue is that while “why there was no independent women’s
movement in the Third World countries?” is sometimes thought to be a major issue it
is not in fact so. I contend that, in order to understand our history, historians should
have more conversation with past itself.
From eulogizing to criticizing
In nationalist grand narratives, the main theme was the creation of larger political unities:
the idea of India and the Indian. Indian nationalist historians seldom look at events that
do not directly flow from or into nationalism and nation-making process,3 to say
nothing of taking ‘gender’ as a analytic category. Moreover, in Indian nationalist
historiography, women were described either as beneficiaries or the contributors of
the nationalist movement. And till approximately three decades ago the dominant
view was that the nationalist leadership in the pre-independence period had played a
very positive role in the advancement of women’s emancipation. The main
information about women in nationalist history is how Indian women step out of the
confines of purdah, to join the independent movement and got equal rights under
the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi was hailed as the parent of the ‘India
women’s movement’.4
By the mid-1970s, such kind of complacency was shattered with the economic and
political crisis precipitated by the failure of development. Critical questions were
arising as to whose interests were being protected by the ‘integrity’ of the nation-state.
In 1974, the document known as the Towards Equality was published, it proved that the
living conditions of the vast majority of Indian women had actually deteriorated since
independence. Geraldine Forbes criticized that “laws were made but they were rarely
enforced; rights were granted but women had neither the education nor the necessary
access to the legal system to take advantage of them. That child marriage still exists,
only a few women fight legal battles to secure their inheritance, dowry prevails, and
widows are stigmatized.”5 It is now apparent that far from enjoying the benefits of so
called development, the majority of women have in fact been pushed to the margins of the
production process.6
Most of feminist historians assault upon nationalist histories, they criticize it is a male
discourse, and “the authorized view of women’s participation remained one of sheer
instrumentality.”7 It is worth to note that although the nationalist history has been
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criticized, the relation between women’s movement and nationalist movement had not
been questioned in the earlier period. For example, Mazumdar argued that “although
the women’s movement was elitist in class and caste terms, it had a broader perspective
than its Western counterpart because of its link with the struggle against British
colonialism.”8 Gradually, feminist historians not only attempt to made women visible
in history, but also become more critical in analyzing. The true reason of the women’s
political participation in the national movement as well as the result of the alliance has
been the subject of investigation and analysis over the past decades. Most concern the
question– “why nationalist support women’s participation in nationalist movement”, and
the most answer regard the alliance as the manipulation of male nationalist leaders.
According to Joanna Liddle and Rama Joshi, the inseparable links between the liberation
of women and national liberation was “imposed on”9 women, Geraldine Forbes point
out that “women could ‘come out’ because the house was on fire. The expectation was
that once the fire was out, women would go back inside the house.”10 It also has been
demonstrate that Indian nationalist were interested in making a nation state, rather than
women’s rights. The reason why they support women’s participation of the national
movement is because “Women’s participation legitimized the Indian National Congress
and Gandhian politics.” 11 There also some historians try to explore the reason of
women’s organization committed to a ‘harmonious alliance’ with the nationalist
leadership, Radha Kumar for instance, understand the relationship in terms of necessary
compromises with male-dominated nationalist leadership, she said “Both Besant and
Naidu made it clear that the role of women in the nationalist movement was
supplementary rather than leading. Perhaps this was a device to render women’s activism
acceptable, by making it appear unthreatening.”12
Feminist historians express their disappointment to the “alliance”, because Indian
nationalists had assured these women's groups they would support their reformist
agenda, but “fighting alongside men to achieve independence does not provide a
guarantee of women’s inclusion as equal citizens.”13 The reasons of legal changes
had little impact on common women was also attribute to the “strong historical
connection with the nationalist movement encouraged reliance on the male political
elite for the implementation of the changes.” 14 What has emerged is, broadly, an
understanding that the result of the alliance is not benefit to women. Actually, fighting
the women’s question on the platforms of nationalism political issues is regard as a
problem.15 Unlike earlier nationalist historians, who had been uncritical lauding of
women’s political participation in the national movement, quite different
interpretations of emerge from the literature. Indian feminist historiography
demonstrates that although women were drawn into politics, they were still defined
within the contours of their biological roles within the home. It is generally believed
that nationalism could not resolve women’s question, the relation between women's
question and nationalism have been problematical.
The crux of the controversy, indeed, is not about the “facts” of the close
relationship between women’s question and nationalism, but the interpretation of
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these “facts”, especially what does it mean to women and women’s movement. It
is wide recognized that women’s question was intricately tied up with nationalism.
Most historians agree that the Indian women’s movement was not like the Western
movement, was closely linked with the struggle for independence, and the connection
between women’s rights and nationalism in India was of long standing. 16 The
controversy raised by most of the feminist historians with regard to the rationale
behind the cooperation of women’s movement and nationalist movement, is largely
around the theory that nationalist movement dominated by male leaders retard women’s
movement, and the result is that the development of nationalist movement is at the price
of women’s interests.
Explore the agency of Indian women
While the critiques of nationalism extend in the field of women’s history studies,
some feminist historians are not satisfied with the two simplistic views: to see
women as “puppets (led out of purdah into political agitation) or dupes (tricked or
coerced into abandoning feminism for nationalism)”.17 As Geraldine Forbes argued
that neither “laudatory” nor “condemn” captures women’s experiences.18 Otherwise,
Padma Anagol argued that discourse analysis which has dismantled the dominant
ideologies of colonialism, nationalism and imperialism, has resulted in the obliteration
of women’s voices. She worried that “If Indian women are studied in scholarship as
mere ‘representations’ or ‘sites’ for the play of dominant discourses, they are in
danger of being completely erased from history.”19 The above discussion has opened
up a growing debate on the question of women’s autonomy, and to some extent, the
interest of studying the relationship between women’s movement and nationalist
movement has been put aside, and shift to the agency of Indian women.
‘Agency’,20 as a term, like a kind of touchstone, has been a key word in women’s
history studies. Many historians have drawn on women’s materials to the greatest
extent possible to demonstrate that Indian women have not been as silent as some
accounts portrayed. Some scholars tend to search India women’s agency in history,
some testify how women’s agency was oppressed by men. During the last three
decades there has been considerable scholarship in women’s agency, a fair amount of
descriptive and analytical understanding about some women contested the male
nationalist agenda.21 For example, Uma Chakravarti in Rewriting History: The Life and
Times of Pandita Ramabai, argued that Ramabai’s invisibility is the result of
suppressions.22 Vidyut Bhagwat described the change in this way: “Till very recently
Indian women were treated as a silent lot in Indian history. No one had expected them
to posses a voice of their own. The notion of recording their alternative conceptions
of culture and power simply did not exist. Nor was there any idea of studying Indian
women’s successive critiques of ideology for the purposes of the present. Almost
overnight we are experiencing a sea change. Anyone who wishes to study Indian
women is talking not only about their evergreen creativity but also about the vigour
and quality of their expression.” 23
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Indian historians claim autonomous not only from dominate nationalism, but also
from Western feminism. It has been pointed out that “not all issues of social reform
were engendered by the British encounter alone, though they were restructured by
it.”24 And a lot of Indian historians examine the agency of the Indians rather than
the influence of the West, they eager to demonstrate that “Women’s resistance to
oppression in India neither began nor ended with the British women’s intervention,
but had its roots in the Indian social structure and cultural heritage.”25 Contemporary
Indian feminist tend neither to see the women’s movement as part and parcel of the
movement to gain political independence, nor regard it as a parody of Western
feminism. It is interesting that many critics, while condemn the alliance of feminism
and nationalism, believe that Indian feminism is different from the West. ‘Western’
feminism still is identified as being ‘separatist’, 26 Some historians continue to
criticized ‘Western’ feminists for failing to make such links, for being introverted.27
Moreover, Indian women’s movements, when not ignored or dismissed outright as
derivative phenomena, have often been romanticized and idealized by feminist
historians whom “feel impelled to construct a positive and inspirational history”.28 As
Kiran Pawar said, “The feminist project of retrieving the agency of women from past
historical periods has often suffered from a degree of simplification produced through
the anxiety to recover a roster of independent or rebellious women and enter them into
liberatory schemes.”29 The problem of searching for women’s agency is that it not
only led to another kind of distortion, but also damages a basic principle of history
studies - the goal of studying history is to be faithful to the past rather than to justify
certain theory.
Demonstrate the complexity and ambiguity of women’s issue
Some keen historians such as Partha Chatterjee, Tanika Sarkar, Mrinalini Sinha etc.,
neither participate the debates between nationalist and feminist, nor shift their studies
to women’s agency. They explore the interconnection of gender, race, class/caste, nation,
or sexuality by digging deep into the past, marshaled concrete evidence to lend
respectability to their positions. Their studies help us go beyond the reductive chokes
offered in political critiques concerned only with colonialism and nationalism or
feminism and nationalism, and demonstrate the complexity of the relation. Unlike the
former studies, their studies start from some concrete historical events, rather than
certain assumption. A more meaningful way of locating relation of feminism and
nationalism is offered in their studies.
Partha Chatterjee started his search within the nationalist ideology itself. He attempt to
tell the inner logic of nationalism and women’s question, by looking more closely at the
way in which women’s questions were answered. He argued that the relative
unimportance of the women’s question in the last decades of the nineteenth century is not
the result of it was overshadowed by more priority task, in fact, nationalism had
resolved the women’s question in complete accordance with its preferred goals.30
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According to Chatterjee, nationalist resolution was built around a separation of the
domain of culture into two spheres —an “outer” or “material” realm, where it
acknowledged the superiority of European institutions, and an “inner” or “spiritual”
realm, where the autonomy and the true identity of the nation resided. Nationalism,
located its own subjectivity in the spiritual domain of culture, where it considered
itself superior to the West and hence undominated and sovereign. It could not permit
an encroachment by the colonial power into that domain. Women were symbolically
identified with the “inner” realm as the essence of the nation and where nationalists
claimed autonomy from colonial intervention. Chatterjee demonstrate that “in the
entire phase of the national struggle, the crucial need was to protect, preserve and
strengthen the inner core of the national culture, its spiritual essence. No
encroachments by the colonizer must be allowed in that inner sanctum. In the world,
imitation of and adaptation to western norms was a necessity; at home, they were
tantamount to annihilation of one’s very identity.”31 Unlike the early reformers, the
reform of women’s position was no longer left as a subject of debate with colonial
rulers. Instead, the discourse of cultural nationalism now claimed “autonomy” over
the women's question and consigned the agency for reforms for women to the internal
self-regulation of the community. As Chatterjee argues, nationalism advocated a “New
patriarchy” that “conferred women the honor” of new social responsibilities, while
binding “them to a new, and yet----legitimate, subordination”.32 Various scholars have
demonstrated that independence movement ended up inventing new ideologies of male
dominance that identify women with the traditional and men with the modern, women
with the home and men with the outside world.
Feminist scholarship has had little trouble in identifying the patriarchal gender system
that has sustained in various nationalisms. Yet feminist criticisms of the patriarchal
politics of nationalism have only scarcely begun to grasp the full implications of it.
Tanika Sarkar is not satisfied with the “parameters of feminist cultural studies which
have been reiterating the recast presence of patriarchy within male discourses in the
form of very similar images of women across history and geography.”33 In Hindu Wife,
Hindu Nation, Sarkar focus upon the development of Hindu cultural nationalism,
especially the fundamental transformation in the structures of political-cultural
sensibility that occurred in late-nineteenth century. She analyzed the debates around
colonial laws relating to women and marriage within early Hindu nationalism, and
pointed out the evolution of the discourse from social reformer to Hindu nationalists.
She found that in colonial India, the concern with domestic practice initiated much
discussion and debate in nationalism. Sarkar demonstrated the rejuvenation of
nationalism was through the medium of defence of an unreformed indigenous
patriarchy in late nineteenth-century. In the context of the gradual disillusionment
of Indian nationalists with the ‘public sphere as an arena for the test of manhood’,
‘Hindu’ conjugality and domestic social arrangements become a highly politicized
arena in colonial and nationalist conflicts. According to Sarkar, “In the Indian colonial
public sphere, questions of political justice and rights were articulated, and even
conceived of, very largely in and through discussions of the intimate sphere, of
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domestic arrangements, of the nature, virtue and ideals of different kinds of human
relationships. These were often a metaphor for the larger questions of the politics of
colonialism—whose effects were read and evaluated through the grid of power
relations between Indian men and women.” 34 Nationalists situate their emancipatory
project by enclosing a space that was still understood as inviolate, autonomous, that is
the “Hindu way of life”. Given this, both the Hindu husband and the Hindu marriage
system are generously exempted from blame and criticism. The more crucial point,
however, is Sarkar demonstrate that the contribution of nationalism to women’s
movement was far more ambiguous: for its rejuvenating through defence of an
unreformed indigenous patriarchy, which brought it into closer alignment with the
agenda of late nineteenth-century colonial rule.
In Colonial Masculinity, Mrinalini Sinha demonstrate that nationalist align with,
rather than challenge, colonial politics. “For, on the one hand, the colonial authorities
had conceded the indigenous domestic realm as an ‘autonomous’ site for native
masculinity; and, on the other, this construction of the domestic realm also fostered
nationalist skepticism toward the reform of the domestic realm as a threat to Indian
autonomy.35 In Specters of Mother India, Sinha start her study not from the purity
of abstract concepts but the messiness of a historical event. Sinha displays a
remarkable capacity to explore larger historical processes through a small point.
By tracing the process of Mother India as a event, she demonstrate the core
question of Indian women’s movement is how to construct a political identity for
women: “The central tension of this political formation, therefore, was between
women qua women versus women insofar as they belonged to, and “symbolized,”
competing communities.”36 The fragile political formation of women as subjects in
their own right was created against the identification of women as symbols of discrete
communal identities. Therefore most intractable choice of all in the debate on Indian
women’s suffrage was between the rights of women and the rights of minorities.37
During the Mayo controversy, women were prized from the tight embrace of
communities, and constructed as political identity, which legitimated a new language
of individual rights (beyond simply the collective rights of communities). This is the
contribution of women. Because “The particular convergence of social forces in the
controversy over Mother India had produced a precarious validation for a revised
understanding of the relationship between women, community, and the state in the
name of universal individual lights. This was the rhetorical context in which separate
personal laws governing marriage for different religious communities gave way, at
least temporarily, for the passage of the first uniform law directly regulating marriage
for all communities.”38 Yet, the abstraction of women from their implication in other
social identities is very short lived, women were assign once again to the “inside’ of
communities, they could not be kept out of the maelstrom swirling around the
framework of religious communities. As a result, bounded religious communities
were once again reaffirmed as the ground for political identity in India.
From different perspectives, Uma Chakravarti, Partha Chatterjee, Tanika Sarkar and
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Mrinalini Sinha have examined the formation of nationalism and its relation with
women’s issues. Their insightful studies are good examples of what careful,
historically focused, concrete analyses can accomplish. Indian scholars have
dismantled the dominant ideologies of colonialism, nationalism and imperialism by
discourse analyzing. They not only challenge the former dominant arguments, but also
construct new interpretations of history. Firstly, these historians have demonstrated
the tremendous importance attached to women’s issues in the construction of the
Indian nation. They have not only demonstrated the central position of women’s issue
in nationalism, but also highlighted that “the status of Indian women was made the
site for competing political agendas, none of the opposing sides were interested in going
beyond a narrow and self-serving model of female emancipation.”39
Secondly, these historians have taken much further to the understanding of Indian
womanhood, by demonstrating that the “superwomen” image of Indian womanhood
and its panacea role, were invented in nineteenth century. Since then, the task of saving
the nation: politically and spiritually has been commissioned to women. According to
cultural nationalism, Indian identity lay in the culture and more specifically in its
womanhood. It was the women, their commitment, their purity, their sacrifice, who
were to ensure the moral, even spiritual power of the nation and hold it together. But for
women in particular this heritage, the Indian womanhood and its panacea role, is
almost a burden. Because it not only rarely admited the real oppression of Indian
women, but also failed to attack the patriarchy system. Moreover, “it has led to a
narrow and limiting circle in which the image of Indian womanhood has become both
a shackle and a rhetorical device that nevertheless functions as a historical truth.” 40
Thirdly, they have transcended the simple and linear historical assumptions, which
regard Indian women’s issue were impelled by advanced ideas imported from Europe,
through highlighting the complexity and ambiguity of women’s questions and its
relation with colonialism and nationalism. It is generally known that the women’s
question was closely associated with the issue of India’s subordination as a British
colony, and with the problem of how Indians could regain control of their own
country. The so called influence from the West, is not in a kind of give and take
atmosphere, but in a situation which teemed with humiliation and struggle. From the
early years of 19th century women’s issues were used by colonialist as a means of
humiliating Indians and justify British rule; later, nationalists “solve it” by refusing to talk
women’s issue with colonial government. This and the fact that women’s issues initially
came from British humiliation has a long-term implication for the articulation of
women’s issue as well as the strategy of women’s liberation. The evolution of women’s
issue and women’s movement can-not be understood apart from this origin. Women’s
issue burst upon the scene at a critical moment of India falling into the colony of the
British, the evolution of women’s issue in India was contingent upon the colonial
policy and the construction of India as a new Nation, women’s issue was never
distinct from national question.
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Conclusion
After reviewing the recent feminist historiography, it is worth to note that, “West” used
to be unavoidable term in India, the academic questions which concern Indian
historians are always response to the West, agree or disagree, the audience always is
imagined as the West. While compared with the West, “absence” is a particular issue
bothering Indian historians. As a result, in much of the recent feminist historiography
in India, the women’s movement was described by many absences and voids – the
absence of an independent movement and women’s agency. Most of historians
attempt to divorce the “marriage” between women’s movement and nationalist
movement in India, and attempt to return women’s movement to feminism, to build
continuity between women’s movement in the earlier twentieth century and the one
since 1970s. In India, it is generally called the women’s movement in the earlier
twentieth century as the ‘first wave’, and the women’s movement since 1970s as the
‘second wave’. It is arguable both dismantling the dominant nationalist discourse
and focusing on the agency of women, is taking the West as the criterion. If I
could say the former regard Indian women’s movement as a kind of anomalies of the
‘pure’ feminist movement, then the latter try to demonstrate the Indian women’s
capability of rebellion like the Western women, through the existence of
indigenous feminism in India before encountering the West. Such kind of
historiography concern itself is a problem, because it is based on some unwarranted
assumption: there is a kind of “pure” women’s movement or “pure” feminism.
The result of taking the West as the only comparative object is that most studies show
insensitivity towards actual Indian history, thereby not only leaves considerable areas
in darkness but also offers only a partial and perhaps distorted understanding of
women’s history, which all but submerged the real problems confronting women. I
suggest that historians can ask why women’s movement allied with nationalist
movement, but should not ask why there was no independent women’s movement,
which imply that the alliance is a kind of inherent shortcoming; historians can explore
the concrete women’s history, but the goal of such kind of study should not be
demonstrating the agency of Indian women. In one words, the relation between
women’s movement and nationalist movement cannot be assumed on the basis of
various “isms”, it must be viewed on its own terms.
Indian historians have had more concrete historical studies on India than before,
and recent Indian history scholarship has great achievement in this regard. In my
opinion, it is actually the shift of historiography concern from a conversation with the
West to the past, which facilitate Indian historians made the inconceivable relation
between women’s movement and nationalist movement understandable. Through
exploring concrete context of nationalist discourse on women’s issues, Indian
historians have further our understanding, rather than stay at the level of scolding male
nationalist biases. According to nationalism historiography, it was nationalism which
helped Indian women go out of purdah, to take part in the public life, and finally
10
acquired the equal position with man. But feminist historians have demonstrated that
Independent India has not brought equality to women, actually women’s situation get
worse, then this often leads us to slip “back” into feminism. Feminist scholarship has
beyond the debate of its impact on women or of the history of women’s contributions
to nationalism, and has arrived it much more sophisticated analyses of the constitutive
role of gender in Indian nationalism.41 According to Mrinalini Sinha’s creative works ,
it is clear that in women’s history, the question facing Indian women was never
really the dilemma between feminism and nationalism, though quite often this is
how it was posed. The real issue was whether woman as category could
independently used or not. Rely on recent Indian scholarship, it is arguable that the
reason of women’s issue was closely link with the fate of India as a nation, could
neither be attribute to the manipulation of nationalists, nor an aberration of a real
feminism, but relate with the particular historical moment of its appearance. A
renewal of the struggle for the equality and freedom of women must imply a struggle
against the nationalist construct of womanhood, as well as a struggle against the
construct of feminism.
Unlike Indian feminist historians, Chinese counterparts have not obviously shift their
interest to concrete historical studies recently. Most of Chinese feminist scholars
(especially in the mainland China) look at history from the top to downwards, focus on
the political records of elites. Moreover, majority of Chinese feminist historiography
has not gone beyond the limitation of ideology, still framed in the structure of either
feminism or socialism, which either leaves the varieties of women’s history in darkness
or at surface level. For example, in the earlier twentieth century, not only socialist but
also bourgeois liberalist and colonist concern women’s issue, and there are tremendous
debates among them. However, the rich history is merely studied as separate fragments
by historians from mainland China, Tai wan, and Hong Kong, it has not been explored
in the way it deserved. In my point of view, Chinese women’s history not only has not
been located in a broad context, but also has not been studied from different
perspectives enough. Therefore, neither the complexities of Chinese women’s issue,
nor the historical and conceptual legacies in China has been explored and
assessed soberly. In China, some unwarranted assumptions are pervasive and
persistent. For example, Chinese women’s liberation has gone too far away that they
are more liberated than the Western counterpart, as a myth42 about Chinese women,
still dominate public discourse in China.
In China today, the goal of studying foreign countries (especially Western advanced
countries), is to learn advanced experience, link track with world trend. Likewise,
most of feminist historians tend to look to the West for inspiration, and there are a lot
of papers locate at translating and introducing feminism history in the Western
countries and the theoretical debates between radical, liberal, socialist Marxist
feminism. But most of Chinese feminist scholars have not shown the same zeal to
Chinese past and present. As a result, the evolution of feminism in U.S. and European
countries are more accessible than indigenous Chinese women’s information.
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Compared with Chinese counterpart, Indian feminist spend most of their time on
studying their own history and society with Western theory and methodology, rather
than studying the Western feminism history. And they have made great achievement
in this regard, and won world reputation and influence. I contend to strengthening
studying Chinese women’s history from below. Without a deep understanding of one’s
own land, how could expect to learn from the other.
I am not saying that Indian feminist historians have done enough.43 Actually, it is
only a beginning to get a richer and deeper view of women’s history, there are still a
lot unanswered question, and unasked question. The complexities of history
deserve greater scholarly attention both in China and India. I contend that, in order to
understand ourselves, our history must be accepted, and the shame feeling of lacking
certain kind of quality must be thrown away, and historians, should have more
conversation with past itself. This is the precondition for us to understand our
history.
Acknowledgements
This essay is one of the fruits of my project on Indian feminist historiography, supported by Asia
Scholarship Foundation. I am grateful to ASF. My Grateful thanks also to Mary John, Patricia
Uberoi, Uma Chakravarti, without their valuable suggestions and comments, I would not enjoy my
work in Delhi so much.
Notes
It is not precise to term the relation I discuss in the essay as the one between “women’s movement
and nationalist movement”. Because some concerning studies focus on the relation between “feminism
and nationalism”, some examine “women’s issue and nationalism” and certainly some about “women’s
movement and nationalist movement”. These topics are close related. Actually, to some extent, these
different terms signified the different ways of studying one issue. I don’t want to involve here in the
theoretical debates about the definition of feminism and women’s movement, in my opinion, without
put into a particular historical context, abstract theoretical debate is helpless.
2
The issue of the ‘independence’ of women’s movement is not new, it dates back to the early twentieth
century. But, how independent women’s movement is defined, and what the precise differences
between ‘independent’ and ‘dependent’ women’s movement, is still unclear. There are a lot of debates
what can legitimately be termed independent women’s movement. Generally speaking, when authors
use the term, what concern them are if women take decision for and by themselves.
3 Sarkar, Tanika. Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation: community, religion and cultural nationalism, New
Delhi: Permaments Black, 2001.p.54.
4
Kumar, Radha. The History of Doing: an illustrated account of movements for women’s rights
and feminism in India 1800-1990, New Delhi: Kali for women, 1993.P.2.
5 Forbes, Geraldine. Women in Colonial India: Essays on politics, medicine, and historiography, New
Delhi: Chronicle Books, 2005.p.26.
6 Sangari, Kumkum; Vaid, Sudesh. Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial History, New Delhi: Zubaan,
2006.p.2.
7 Basu, Aparna & Taneja, Anup. edited, Breaking out of Invisibility: women in Indian History, Indian
Council of Historical Research, 2002.p.161.
8 Liddle, Joanna & Joshi, Rama. Daughters of Independence: Gender, Caste and Class in India, New
Delhi: Kali for women, 1986.P. 22; Aparna Basu, “The role of women in the Indian struggle for
1
12
freedom”, in Nanda B R Indian Women: From Purdah to Modernity, New Delhi: Radiant Publishers,
1976.p.40; P.K. Sharma. Nationalism, social reform and Indian women, Janaki Prankashan, 1981, P.54.
9 Liddle, Joanna and Joshi, Rama. Daughters of Independence: Gender, Caste and Class in India, New
Delhi: Kali for women, 1986, p.18.
10
Forbes, Geraldine. Women in Modern India, New Delhi: Cambridge university press, 1998 P. 156.
11
For a more detailed analysis of it, see Sen, Samita “Towards a Feminist Politics? The Indian
Women’s Movement in Historical Perspective”, in Karin Kapadia. edited, The Violence of Development:
The Politics of Identity, Gender and Social Inequalities in India, Zed Books, London & New York,
2002.p.476.
12 Kumar, Radha. The History of Doing: an Illustrated Account of Movements for Women’s Rights and
Feminism in India 1800-1990, New Delhi: Kali for women, 1993, P. 57.
13
Wilford, Rick and Miller, L. Robert. Edited, Women, Ethnicity and Nationalism, New Delhi:
Routledge, 1998 P.3.
14
Liddle, Joanna and Joshi, Rama. Daughters of Independence: Gender, Caste and Class in India,
New Delhi: Kali for women, 1986 P. 38.
15
Ibid, p.18.
16 Forbes, Geraldine. “The Indian women’s movement: A struggle for women’s rights or National
liberation?” in Minault, Gail edi. The Extended Family: Women and Political Participation in India
and Pakistan, Delhi: Chanakya publications, 1981 P. 51.
17 Forbes, Geraldine. Women in Colonial India: Essays on Politics, Medicine, and Historiography,
New Delhi: Chronicle Books, 2005. P. 28.
18 Ibid, P. 28.
19 Anagol, Padma. The Emergency of Feminism in India 1850-1920, England: Ashgate, 2005.p.8.
20 In India, it is commonly assumed that women fight for women’s interest by themselves is the sign of
women’s agency or autonomous. A lot of academic issues derive from this assumption.
21 Mohan, Kamlesh. Towards Gender History Images, Identities and Roles of North Indian Women,
New Delhi: AAKAR, 2006.p.14; Chakravarti, Uma， Rewriting History: The Life and Times of Pandita
Ramabai, New Delhi: Kali for women, 2000；Vidyut Bhagwat, Marathi Literature as a Source for
Contemporary Feminism, in Maitrayee Chaudhuri edited, Feminism in India, New Delhi: Kali for
women, 2004.P.296.
22 Chakravarti, Uma. Rewriting History:The Life and Times of Pandita Ramabai, New Delhi: Kali for
women, 2000.
23 Bhagwat, Vidyut. “Marathi Literature as a Source for Contemporary Feminism”, in Maitrayee
Chaudhuri edited, Feminism in India, New Delhi: Kali for women, 2004.P.296.
24 Kumar, Radha. The History of Doing: an Illustrated Account of Movements for Women’s rights and
Feminism in India 1800-1990, New Delhi: Kali for women, 1993. p.9.
25 Joanna Liddle and Rama Joshi, Daughters of Independence: Gender, Caste and Class in India, New
Delhi: Kali for women, 1986, P. 49.
26 Kumar, Radha. The History of Doing: an Illustrated Account of Movements for Women’s rights and
Feminism in India 1800-1990, New Delhi: Kali for women, 1993. p.195.
27 Ibid.
28 Sangari, Kumkum & Vaid, Sudesh. Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial History, New Delhi:
Zubaan, 2006.p.18.
29 Pawar, Kiran. Women in Indian History: Social, Economic, Political and Cultural perspectives, New
Delhi: Vision & Venture, 1996.P. 25.
30
Chatterjee, Partha. “The Nationalist Resolution of the Women’s Question”, Sangari, Kumkum &
Vaid, Sudesh, Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial History, New Delhi: Zubaan, 2006.p.233.
31 Ibid, P.239.
32 Ibid, P.251.
33 Sarkar, Tanika. Hindu wife, Hindu nation: Community, Religion and Cultural Nationalism, Delhi:
Permaments Black, 2001.p.6.
34 Ibid, p.243.
35 Sinha, Mrinalini. Colonial Masculinity: the ‘Manly Englishman’ and the ‘Effeminate Bengali’ in the
Late Nineteenth Century, New Delhi: kali for women, 1995.p.141.
36 Sinha, Mrinalini. Specters of Mother India: The Global Restructuring of an Empire, New Delhi:
zubaan 2006.p.199.
37 Ibid, p.232.
13
38
Ibid, p.195.
Mrinalini Sinha, Colonial Masculinity: the ‘manly Englishman’ and the ‘effeminate Bengali’ in the
late nineteenth century, New Delhi: kali for women, 1995.p.46.
40
Uma Chakravarti, Whatever Happened to the Vedic Dasi? Orientalism, Nationalism, and a Script for
the Past, Sangari, Kumkum; Vaid, Sudesh, Recasting women essays in colonial history, Zubaan,
2006.p.28.
41
Sinha, Mrinalini. Colonial Masculinity: the ‘Manly Englishman’ and the ‘Effeminate Bengali’ in the
Late Nineteenth Century, New Delhi: kali for women, 1995.P.181.
42
After the establishment of People’s Republic of China, Chinese women not only acquired equality
legislatively, but also ‘hold up the half sky’, which meant they could now go out of home into society.
The broader economic, social and political transformations that have occurred in China have made the
unquestionable changes in the lives of women in China possible. Under this condition, most of Chinese,
from Chinese political leaders, intellectuals to common women, all believed that socialism had made
sweeping accomplishments in liberating women.
43 Although Indian feminist historiography have proved fruitful, they are by no means unproblematic.
39
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