The Awakening Of The Indian Woman-The Mahatma Effect

Lexmipapan

4 May 2008, 13:43

[Interest in the FOTN is an inheritance from my father, the impressionable first half of whose life was lived in the Pre-Midnight era when Gandhi was a youth icon. This piece on his impact on women’s awakening was originally prepared for a speech at Mani Bhavan, Mumbai, as part of Oct 2 celebrations. Through Epic India I hope to attract wider attention to the ideas expressed here.]

The word ‘awakening’ makes us think of its opposite and we might ask the question: were the women of India sleeping? Well they were, in a sense. There is a state of existence which T.S.Eliot had aptly described as ‘living and partly living’. The average Indian woman was in that state in a political sense until a cyclone hit the coast. M.k.Gandhi landed on home soil in 1915 after his South African experience, and unleashed a wave that in its giant sweep across the country lifted her from humdrum domesticity and placed her centre stage as an important player in the struggle for the country’s freedom.

Quoting the famous lines of the poet William Wordsworth on the French Revolution, famous Gandhian, the late Dr.Usha Mehta said:

Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive
But to be young was very heaven.

We, the women of India today have various thrills, but the unique excitement of being an Indian woman of those times we can taste only vicariously through similar words spoken by warrior women like Usha Ben.

Early on in the fight, Gandhiji recognized the power behind the purdah. He had to unveil it to make Swaraj a reality, to make his revolution complete. Of course, the educated , urban women were already awakened to some extent by the earlier reform movements. They were, in fact, ready and waiting for a leader like the Mahatma. Through his speeches and writings in ‘Young India’ and ‘Harijan’ he made appeals to them and they came out in big numbers as volunteers for his programmes. Some of them, to quote Kamaladevi Chatopadhyaya, had been gently nurtured, had never looked upon a crowded street, and were used to walking only on Persian carpets.

But they threw off their gossamer veils and flung themselves into the blinding glare of day. They assumed important positions in the Congress organization. They took out processions, received lathi blows, went to jail. Annie Besant, Sworooprani Nehru, Sarojini Naidu and Aruna Asaphali were some of the legendary women who were at the vanguard of India’s struggle.

But Gandhiji was not satisfied with the involvement of only the upper crust. He devised unique methods to reach out to the rural women, the unlettered and the marginalized sections. He organized mass contact programmes where he met all kinds of women – women who spent their days in abject poverty and bondage in an unequal social and familial set up and women who had to sell their virtue to make a living, the ‘fallen sisters’ as he preferred to call them.

He listened to them with perfect understanding, restored their self respect and raised their morale to fight the evils of a male dominated society – the purdah, the dowry, the humiliating treatment of widows, sexual exploitation, the list was endless. They found a friend in him, a true female friend as one of them put it. He had an action plan for the lowliest of them. They could spin, make yarn and help themselves and further the cause of the Swadeshi movement.

The abuse of the female sex pained Gandhiji. Repeatedly he asserted that as souls, men and women are equals. If the husband is a god, the wife is a goddess, nothing less. Long before Indian women began to talk about feminism, he was a feminist. His socio-cultural philosophy was pro women and his unique fighting mode, namely Satyagraha, had a feminist, rather feminine dimension to it. ‘Satyagraha’ means holding on to truth. It is truth force.

Gandhiji called it love force and soul force as well. The readiness to love even the enemy, the capacity to suffer and offer passive resistance are its cornerstones. Let rivers of blood flow but it should be our blood, not the opponent’s, he had said. That was the order of the sacrifice required in Satyagraha for which women were far more suited than men. Traditional war was based on the masculine values of physical force, hatred, vengeance, violence and killing.

The spiritual guerilla that he was, Gandhiji subverted these macho ideals also in the process. Instead of asking women to be like men he asked men to be like women. For, the feminine virtues are the civilized virtues. Killing and looting are traits associated with barbarians. Conquest through love and ahimsa is the more refined and pacifist way which alone can resolve the conflicts of the modern world. Thus Gandhiji took the feminist cause much farther than the feminists themselves.

The awakening that Gandhiji tried to bring about touched upon every aspect of a woman’s life. He told Indian women that only they could help themselves. He urged them to develop courage, the courage to resist evil, and the courage to say’no’ to their own foolish whims and temptations.

He advocated a woman’s right to her body. He was against marital rape. Much as he cherished marriage, motherhood and the family, he held that marriage need not be the only or natural destiny of every Indian girl. If she so chooses, she should be allowed to devote her life to the service of society. According to him sisters were as much needed as wives.

About a certain type of what he called ‘modern girl’ he was a little dismayed in that she wants to play Juliet to half a dozen Romeos! Half a dozen has become half a million and more in the context of television, the internet and the ever multiplying prospects for vicarious gratification. I wonder how Gandhiji would react to all these influences. He, of course, condemned the Romeos, too .

And to the real victims of eve teasing and sexual harassment he had an apt piece of advice, “ God has given you nails and teeth. Use them.” He had made it clear that between cowardice and violence, he would choose violence. All his programmes, the political fight for freeing the mother land, the uplifting of the downtrodden and the untouchable or the awakening of the spirit of the women of India were marked by this element of pragmatism married to great ideals. No wonder they were such huge success stories.

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