Women in India [2 volumes]: A Social and Cultural History 0275982424, 9780275982423

Table of contents :
Cover
About the pagination of this eBook
Contents
Volume 1: Early India
Preface
Introduction
Abbreviations
1. Region, Environment, Gender
2. Vedic Goddesses and Women
3. Mothers and Wives in the Smriti Texts
4. Buddhist and Jaina Nuns and Laywomen
5. Women in Classical Art and Literature
6. The Divine Feminine: Devis, Yoginis, Taras
7. Queens, Saints, Courtesans
Bibliography
Index
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
I
J
K
L
M
N
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
Y
Volume 2: Later India
Preface
Introduction
Abbreviations
1. Muslim Women in Premodern India
2. Women in the Colonial Era
3. Male Reformers and Women’s Rights
4. Feminists and Nationalists
5. Conclusion: Women in India Today
Bibliography
Index
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
P
R
S
T
U
V
W

Citation preview

How to go to your page This eBook contains 2 volumes. It contains an Index at the end of each set. The front matter and content of each book have their own page numbering scheme, consisting of a volume number and a page number, separated by a colon. For example, to go to page 18 of Volume 1, type “Vol1: 18” in the "page #" box at the top of the screen and click "Go." To go to page “123” of Volume 2, type “Vol2: 123” or to go to page “vii” of Volume 1, type “Vol1: vii” ……and so forth. Please refer to the eTOC for further clarification.

Women in India

India—Physical Map

Courtesy of Natraj A. Raman

Women in India A Social and Cultural History Volume 1 SITA ANANTHA RAMAN

PRAEGER

An Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC

Copyright 2009 by Sita Anantha Raman All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Raman, Sita Anantha. Women in India : a social and cultural history / Sita Anantha Raman. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–275–98242–3 (hard copy (set) : alk. paper) — ISBN 978–0–313–37710–5 (hard copy (vol. 1) : alk. paper) — ISBN 978–0–313–37712–9 (hard copy (vol. 2) : alk. paper) — ISBN 978–0–313–01440–6 (ebook (set)) — ISBN 978–0–313–37711–2 (ebook (vol. 1)) — ISBN 978–0–313–37713–6 (ebook (vol. 2)) 1. Women—India. 2. Women—India—Social conditions. I. Title. HQ1742.R263 2009 305.48’891411—dc22 2008052685 13 12 11 10 09 1 2 3 4 5 This book is also available on the World Wide Web as an eBook. Visit www.abc-clio.com for details. ABC-CLIO, LLC 130 Cremona Drive, P.O. Box 1911 Santa Barbara, California 93116-1911 This book is printed on acid-free paper Manufactured in the United States of America

YOKED OXEN Pipes played, drums rolled the chant of mantras cleansed the air as showered with flowers we took seven steps together, you and I two oxen, one yoke Since that day pebbles on my path became petals on a rug For dear Babu

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CONTENTS Volume 1: Early India Preface

ix

Introduction

xi

Abbreviations

xxi

1. Region, Environment, Gender

1

2. Vedic Goddesses and Women

23

3. Mothers and Wives in the Smriti Texts

45

4. Buddhist and Jaina Nuns and Laywomen

75

5. Women in Classical Art and Literature

103

6. The Divine Feminine: Devis, Yoginis, Taras

127

7. Queens, Saints, Courtesans

155

Bibliography

197

Index

213

Volume 2: Later India Preface

ix

Introduction

xi

Abbreviations

xxi

1. Muslim Women in Premodern India 2. Women in the Colonial Era 3. Male Reformers and Women’s Rights

1 43 101

viii

Contents

4. Feminists and Nationalists

135

5. Conclusion: Women in India Today

189

Bibliography

225

Index

249

PREFACE This history is really dedicated to the numerous women whose narratives I have tried to record as accurately as possible. On a personal plane, I thank the inspirational teachers, stimulating colleagues, and close family who watched over me as I wrote this book. I deeply regret that a lack of space precludes my acknowledging each by name. Two inspirational gurus at UCLA shared their vision of history as truth with me years ago. Mentor and friend Stanley Wolpert steered my research directly to the study of women and gender in India. Damodar SarDesai broadened my understanding of Asia and encouraged me in my early career. My fascination for women’s history thrived in conversations with my good friend Brenda Ness of Santa Monica College. At Santa Clara University, I shared innumerable hours of enjoyable discussion on women and world history with Barbara Molony, Jo B. Margadant, Thomas Turley, and Timothy O’Keefe. My many students gave me insights into how to make this complex region and its multifaceted women comprehensible. I specially thank Mini Krishnan of Oxford University Press in Chennai for having promoted my work in India. Praeger editors Brian Foster and Hillary Claggett helped to breathe life into these two volumes. Christy Anitha, Haylee Schwenk, Diana Andrews, Valentina Tursini, and Anthony Chiffolo of ABC-CLIO gave them their final look and shape. I acknowledge the assistance of archivists at the Theosophical Society, Adyar, Tamil Nadu, the Government of Tamil Nadu Archives at Chennai, the National Archives of India at New Delhi, the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Museum and Library at New Delhi, the Madras Institute of Development Studies at Chennai, and the research librarians at Santa Clara University, UCLA, and University of California at Berkeley. I thank Shilpa Sankaran, Nandita (Sankaran) Geerdink, and Sonya Sankaran for allowing me to put their picture in Bharata Natyam dance pose on the cover of Volume 1. I especially thank my dear husband Natraj Raman for his two valuable maps, as well as for his patient humor and perceptive comments. I dedicate the book to him, and to my sons, daughters-in-law, granddaughters, sisters, brothers, nieces, nephews, and friends.

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INTRODUCTION It is not surprising that women in India are often described as having two sharply contrasting aspects. In a region famous for goddesses with multiple visages, identities, and functions, the first fac¸ade is of the serene, primordial mother Great Goddess (Devi), Primal Energy (Shakti), and Nature (Prakriti), a gentle boon-giver who also slays demons. The other is the clouded face of the domestic handmaiden trailing behind men in life expectancy, nutrition, health, education, pay, and other rights on the subcontinent.1 However, behind this colorful essentialization of Indian women lies the complex reality of myriads of feminine personas in a sea teaming with self-sacrificing heroines like Sita in the epic Ramayana, modern feminists in the guise of Shakti, and the victims of gender, religious, caste, and class inequalities. This poses several dilemmas to the historian. What could an engendered history then include, which female narratives would one recount, and how does one retrieve the voices of the apparently voiceless? A work of this scope cannot cover all the narratives, since such a vast undertaking would lose its critical edge, and its diluted or descriptive litany may be unreadable. Due to the longevity of Indian history, this study of women is therefore divided into two broad chronological sections, i.e., the premodern era from antiquity to the early medieval Hindu kingdoms and the later era under Turko-Afghan and Mughal dynasties, colonial rule, and the independent state after 1947. The four interrelated themes focus on gender and female sexuality, viz., premodern social, religious, cultural, political paradigms of women in male-authored texts; their later resurrection by men and women for contemporary political and social purposes; women’s narratives in their social contexts; and the contentious issues of female agency and objectification.

TEXT, CONTEXT, AND RE-CREATED TEXTS No matter how unassailable texts and material artifacts appear to be, the historian views them as contested territory. This work attempts to be critical

xii

Introduction

in its assessment of the primary evidence from literature, art, and archaeology, as well as of secondary scholarship on women in Indian history. As it is almost impossible to read all the archaic texts entirely in their original languages, some scholarly translations have been used judiciously. However, it is clear that within ancient meanings lie embedded the unconscious biases of later translators steered by their own theoretical or cultural reasons to retell India’s history. The values they attributed to ancient gender norms were often remodeled in later eras for contemporary purposes, and these crystallized into paradigms for modern women. Therefore, in order to trace the evolution of gender norms, it is imperative to reexamine India’s complex historical tapestry and to re-create a new narrative concerning its women. Ancient and classical texts reveal that in the preeminent interface between Aryan and local Dravidian-aboriginal cultures, the core value crystallized across the subcontinent. This was the high honor given to female chastity, a virtue whose luster almost exceeded that of women’s natural intelligence in archaic texts, and there were numerous ambiguities, as the texts were composed by multiple male authors separated by centuries. Moreover, the genres of hymnal, epic poetry, and shastra (scripture, religious manual) facilitated several typologies of women as divine, heroic, maternal, saintly, victimized, lustful, or manipulative. The divine maternal appears early (ca. 3000 BCE) in pre-Aryan artifacts of the Indus Civilization, and it also appears in the Sanskrit scriptural Vedas (1600–300 BCE). In the early first millennium BCE, society also began to accord high respect to male and female celibate hermits (sanyasins). Thus, the utterances of the woman sage Gargi and the questions of Maitreyi to her sage husband Yajnavalkya were carefully recorded in the Brihad Aranyaka Upanishad.2 Unlike the Vedas, the popular epics Mahabharata and Ramayana contain socially pertinent messages on the honor given to faithful wives. Thus, while Indians celebrate the Mahabharata heroine Savitri for outwitting Death, the annual fast by Indian wives is a reminder that their chastity ensures the husband’s longevity. Similarly, the Ramayana makes it clear that male strictures on female sexuality were paramount, so that even guiltless Sita had to be punished for residing as a hostage in Ravana’s fortress. This schizophrenia about women became more rigid in the classical era (250 BCE–500 CE) when India witnessed waves of immigrants and conquerors. The newcomers jostled for a high rung on the Sanskritic caste ladder and took local women whose husbands and male kin agonized over the lost ‘‘purity’’ of caste lineages. New texts by elite men reined in mortal women’s sexuality, but exalted the feminine divine as the Devi. As local cults to divine female guardians were subsumed into the traditions of Devi worship, the Sanskrit hymn Devi Mahatmya celebrated the supreme goddess Durga’s martial triumphs over demons. An echo of semidivine female fury also occurs in the Tamil epic Silappadikaram in which a chaste wife Kannaki sets Madurai city ablaze as a malediction for the unjust killing of her husband.

Introduction

xiii

Meanwhile, ordinary women were kept in their domestic place by the misogynist authors of Manu Smriti, which may have been simply a normative manual but which some later Hindus regarded as their sacrosanct law code. The long experience of gender inequality on the subcontinent prevents its dismissal as mere feminine fancy. Despite the persistence of local pockets of aboriginal and Dravidian matrilineal societies, and enclaves of Buddhist, Jaina, and Hindu nuns, the many layers of mainstream patriarchal society were cemented by adopting Sanskritic values (or ‘‘Sanskritization’’) due to foreign invasion, immigrant settlement, and internecine feudal wars. These occurred centuries before Islam and European Christianity infused their own patriarchal features into Indian society. However, women did rebel quietly through nonconformism and loudly through religious literature. The most famous examples are the Kannada hymns of Akkamahadevi (twelfth century), a woman saint who rejected caste and gender inequality; the padas (songs) in three languages of Rajput saint Mira (sixteenth century) who cast aside prescribed norms of feminine and royal behavior; and the yakshagana folk songs of the Telugu widow Tarigonda Venkamba (nineteenth century) who was compelled by society to be a recluse. Other women worked from within the patriarchal order to negotiate with elite men through their writings. Betrayed in love, Chandrabati (sixteenth century) composed Bengali ballads against unjust social laws; the Mughal princess Gulbadan Begam (sixteenth century) wrote Humayun Nama, a biography of her brother in Persian; and courtesan Mahlaqa Bai Chanda (eighteenth century) composed Urdu ghazal poetry. Exotic, Colonial Accounts of Sexual Mores During tumultuous, colonial wars over hegemony in India (seventeenth to nineteenth century), women retreated further into private courtyards and zenanas, constrained further by earlier child marriage, bigamy, widow abuse, and a widow’s enforced immolation on her husband’s funeral pyre (sati). Colonial evangelical commentaries based on a bird’s eye view of misogynist customs fueled Victorian complacency over Western superiority. In 1829, Governor-General Bentinck passed a law outlawing sati, partly influenced by Utilitarian James Mill’s popular The History of British India (1826). Although Mill had not visited India, he described its civilization as ‘‘rude’’ and its women as ‘‘generally degraded.’’ He smugly concluded, ‘‘Nothing can exceed the contempt which Hindus entertain for their women.’’ 3 These initial images of India left an indelible mark upon Europeans. Colonial officials and a growing elite class of Indian reformers drew upon Orientalist translations of Indian texts, missionary accounts of Hinduism, colonial statistics, and the summations of Western anthropologists about

xiv

Introduction

tribal and matrilineal societies in India. Indian reformers felt abashed by their partial truths, but they did not discard them easily. If scholarly Orientalists revealed the common origin of Aryan languages, pseudoscientific Social Darwinism cataloged linguistic groups as separate ‘‘races.’’ Racial theory validated European imperialism for having brought material advancements, and as being genetically the fittest to rule. A corollary deemed the high-caste ‘‘Aryan’’ Indian as a heathen ‘‘brown stepbrother’’ to Europeans; but it delegated darker Dravidian and aboriginals to the ranks of the least civilized on the subcontinent. Twentieth-century discoveries of sophisticated, pre-Aryan cities at Mohenjo Daro and Harappa on the Indus river compelled a reexamination of these colonial fantasies. While Victorian anthropologists assiduously cataloged India’s manifold tribal and Dravidian matrilinies, and the worshipers of indigenous goddesses, many were dismissive of their religions and sexual norms favorable to women. A rare scholar was Verrier Elwin (1902–64) who lived among the matrilineal Gonds and sympathized with their ‘‘melancholy’’ when their forests were confiscated by the colonial state. Elwin married a Gond wife in a sensational public marriage, but callously discarded her once the novelty wore off.4 E. B. Thurston (1855–1935) documented his personal fascination for non-Aryan tribes and castes who performed ‘‘primitive’’ blood sacrifices to goddesses. W. H. Rivers (1864–1922) focused on exotic matrilineal and ‘‘promiscuous’’ customs among the Todas of south India.5 Higher-caste Hindus were a trifle higher on the scale of civilization, as their peculiar practices included female subjugation, caste, and the worship of strange deities. Victorian prudery was especially shocked by the uninhibited views on sexuality in precolonial India. A century of imbibing Raj attitudes in schools and offices resulted in greater sexual puritanism among elite-caste Indians who often lauded the chastity of high-caste women and decried lower-caste female promiscuity. Thurston’s assistant K. Rangachari argued that ‘‘primitive’’ tribalism must ‘‘evolve’’ into a more refined, brahmanical Hinduism. A. S. Altekar echoed this in his authoritative work, The Position of Women in Hindu Civilization (1938), and he exaggeratedly praised ancient Hindu women with these words: Women were honored in ancient India, more perhaps than among any other nation on the face of the globe. They were considered the intellectual companions of their husband.6 Both India and Indian women were the objects of male political contestations during the Raj. While Indian aspirations for a national renaissance were more commendable than British imperial ambitions, Eastern and Western patriarchs selectively read classical texts to arrive at diametrically opposing views on Indian women. Evangelicals exaggerated women’s abject condition to justify their conversion; while Indian reformers used women’s

Introduction

xv

customary constraints to negotiate their own place in the Raj, making women fodder for the nationalist engine, while improving female literacy and legally restricting sati and child marriage. Nationalist Hindu ‘‘matriots’’ lauded Indian epic women as the paradigm for modern womanhood, maternal and chaste, educated companion and activist, the pure soul (jivatma) of goddess Mother India.7 These appear in Bankim Chandra Chatterji’s Bengali hymn Bande Mataram (1882), C. Subramania Bharati’s Nattu Vanakkam (1907) in Tamil, and Abanindranath Tagore’s painting of Mother India (1905) as an ascetic four-armed goddess with white lotuses at her feet. These sentiments were expanded by nationalist-feminists like Sarojini Naidu in Ode to India (1904).8 Hindu and Muslim nationalists tried to improve female literacy and social life, but they simultaneously reified patriarchy and religious identities. Thus to counter Western contempt for Hinduism, Swami Vivekananda (1863– 1902) idealized ancient Aryan mores of universal tolerance. Yet, neoconservatives later distorted his inclusive philosophy to advocate Hindu superiority and majority rule. B. G. Tilak hoisted the petard of militant Hindu patriarchy when he vehemently attacked feminist Pandita Ramabai for ostensibly preaching Christianity and when he opposed a moderate law to raise the female age for marital sex.9 Religious extremists in the Arya Samaj supported female education, but also anti-Muslim drives. Modern Muslim consciousness was similarly divisive when it came to women’s education and seclusion through the veil (pardah). Thus, Maulana Thanawi’s Bihishti Zewar (Jewelry of Paradise, 1906), a conservative guideline for modern Muslim women, defused feminism by supporting women’s education and also the veil.10 In the present era, defensive, resurgent Islamic movements often curtail women’s rights and social spaces. To what extent then can we accept the narratives of colonial, nationalist, and postmodern Western scholars? Western educated scholars sometimes use the colonial-nationalist dialogue as a benchmark to gauge women’s status, often relying on Western models and theories without cultural specificity for India. For example, in their anxiety to declare war on religion and capitalism, some Marxists fault Hinduism, its caste system, and patriarchy for delaying the dialectical process in India. However, recent studies on the emergence of capital prior to colonial rule have undercut these theories.11 Some liberal histories describe reformers as indebted to Western secular and Christian thought, without reference to their early education in humanist Indian scriptures.12 Several downplay sectarian coexistence without serious conflagrations in early India. Yet, it is well known that Indian reformers would cite Hindu-Muslim-Buddhist-Jaina ideas on universalism to implant recent ideas from the West on social equality. For example, Tamil reformers Vedanayakam Pillai and A. Madhaviah frequently quoted the Jaina sage Tiruvalluvar (ca. 100 CE) on gender and caste equity, as well as the Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire on equality.13

xvi

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Despite their championship of Indian feminism, Western feminists have sometimes interpreted Indian texts using Western models. VictorianEdwardian women wrote rosy biographies of saint Mirabai and princess Gulbadan Begam (sixteenth century), but they infused their lives with contemporary European ideals on feminine virtue. Recent Western feminist translations of Indian texts are considerably more sophisticated, and they shed light on the multiplicity of female narratives. Yet, even these scholars either do not place the texts within the social context of India’s living traditions or read early texts through the lens of modern Western feminist theory. This reminds us that historians must be cautious when applying Western models upon studies of Indian women, and second, avoid attributing modern value judgments to premodern societies.

SHAKTI, SAINT, OR SLAVE? Were all Indian women saints and powerful agents, or hapless victims throughout history? This history attempts to avoid simplistic portrayals of victims and heroines of mythical courage, as these are socially dangerous. It notes that women are subordinate in India from the evidence of a declining sex ratio, lower literacy rates, poorer nutrition, and higher mortality rates than for men. However, it suggests that women have been both objects and agents, occasionally both on different fronts. It will show examples of their active resistance, avenues for self-expression, negotiations with patriarchy, and even their support of oppressive traditions. It is also worth noting that before the emergence of feminism in Europe over two centuries ago, women asserted themselves in India and other cultures. Moreover, the idea of a universal sisterhood gained credence only in the last century, and today’s feminists highlight sisterhood as a bond transcending parochial and national boundaries. Some scholars suggest that in view of its importance in determining women’s social and domestic roles, gender is the sole marker of feminine identity, and that it bifurcates the horizontal stratifications of caste, class, and ethnicity, each with its regional, religious, or chronological variations. However, I suggest that women have multiple identities besides being female, and that they are often dissuaded from uniting in a generic sisterhood due to their strong loyalties to family, caste, class, nation, or religion. It must also be remembered that women’s loyalties have been historically more local and communal, than national or international. Not all women are ardent feminists; some sit on the fence, some are even misogynist. Women have often quietly accepted domestic constraints either because they wish to protect the family even at cost to themselves, or because they are relatively powerless in specific situations, or because in the domestic pecking order, even lowly daughters-in-law can eventually become powerful mothers-in-law.

Introduction

xvii

Despite their multiple identities, such a study is validated simply because, historically, women’s experiences have been uniquely their own, whether in segregated female spaces or integrated public forums. Their agency or objectification is specific to each era, region, culture, economy, polity, and religion. Thus, this book examines the narratives by and about Indian women in the context of their regional history. To study India’s women, we must come to terms with Indian patriarchies and the region’s contradictions of power and pathos, beauty and ugliness, compassion and cruelty, serenity and chaos. OUTLINE OF CHAPTERS Volume 1 contains chapters 1 through 7. Chapter 1 introduces the subcontinent, its women, and its ethno-linguistic matrix of pre-Aryan aboriginal, Dravidian, and Sanskritic cultures; polyandrous, matrilocal, and matrilineal societies; local goddesses and their influence on mainstream societies; Indus Valley artifacts and influence upon later Hinduism. Chapter 2 discusses the coming of the Indo-Aryans, the Vedic era, and effects on women’s education and roles; Vedic goddesses and women as authors of scriptures; the mergers between Aryan and local non-Aryan cultures; the connections between caste, gender hierarchies, and gender norms. Chapter 3 is on non-Vedic scriptures (smritis) like the epics Ramayana and Mahabharata, and their paradigms of motherhood, female sexuality, and education. Chapter 4 is on Buddhism and Jainism, nuns, lay devotees and donors. Chapter 5 examines women’s representations in Hindu and Buddhist art, Sanskrit and Tamil literature during the classical era; the making of Indian society through streams of immigrants, their implications for gender and caste, elite responses in The Laws of Manu, and its resurrection by colonialists and nationalists. Chapter 6 is about Devi traditions in mainstream Hinduism, Tantric Hinduism, and Vajrayana Buddhism; images of Devi in Hindu, Buddhist, Jaina literature and art. Chapter 7 is on medieval devotional (bhakti) women saints and their hymns; feudal norms of sati and domesticity; philanthropic queens and courtesans in north and south India. Volume 2 begins with Chapter 1 on Islam, its textual references to women; arrival and history on the subcontinent; women’s involvement in Shia and Sufi festivals; Turko-Afghan and Mughal princesses and courtesans till 1700. Chapter 2 is on colonial rule (sixteenth to nineteenth century), the impact of hegemonic wars, sexual intermingling between Europeans and Indian women; nineteenth-century missionary impact on education for girls and boys; Victorian influence on elite Indian men and women, and dual patriarchies; legal changes affecting women. Chapter 3 is on Indian male reformers and nationalists and their views on women; female victimization and agency; attempts to pass laws favorable to women on sati, marriage, and divorce; male reformers’ work to educate Hindu, Christian, Muslim

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women; working-class women. Chapter 4 is on Indian feminism, suffrage, Indian nationalism, women nationalists, feminists in international forums and as freedom fighters alongside Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. Chapter 5 is on postindependence issues such as declining sex ratio, violence, globalization, and key political and legal controversies; women’s education and employment; postmodern feminism; women in environmental and working-class struggles; women in politics and the arts; conclusion. NOTES 1. The ratio of females to 1000 males declined from 945 (1991) to 927 (2001) in all states, except for Kerala and Pondicherry, despite the Prenatal Techniques Regulation and Prevention of Misuse Act (1994). The highest decline was in Punjab (874), Haryana (860), Chandigarh (773), Gujarat (921), Delhi (820), vide, Government of India, Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, Census of India 2001, Series 1, India, vol. 4 (Primary Census Abstract, and Total Population Table A-5), vol. 9 (Report and Tables on Age C-14), New Delhi: Controller of Publications, 2003; Asha Krishnakumar, ‘‘Doomed in the Womb?’’ The Hindu, December 14, 2003, 14. Cities with a steep decline in the sex ratio are Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Amritsar, Patiala, Ambala, Gurgaon, Faridabad, Kurukshetra, Ahmedabad, Vaddara, Rajkot, Jaipur, Satara, Nagpur, Salem, Tiruchi, Cuddalore, and Vellore, vide, Shefali Vasudev, ‘‘Missing Girl Child,’’ India Today 28, no. 45, November 10, 2003, 16–22; T. K. Rajalakshmi, ‘‘A Dangerous Trend,’’ Frontline 20, no. 23, November 21, 2003, 95–96. Female literacy rates rose significantly, but women’s education still lags behind men. 1947

India Kerala (highest) Rajasthan (lowest)

6%

1991

2001

39.19% (f)–64.13% (m) 54.28% (f)–75.96% (m) 86% (f)–93.62% (m) 87.86% (f)–94.20% (m) 20.44% (f)–54.99% (m) 44.34% (f)–76.46% (m)

See Sita Anantha Raman, ‘‘Walking Two Paces Behind: Women’s Education in India,’’ in Ananya: A Portrait of India, ed. Sridhar Rao and Nirmal Mattoo (New York: SUNY Press, 1996), 375–96. 2. The Brhadaranyka Upanisad (Chennai: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 2000), chap. 4, 6, and 8. 3. James Mill, The History of British India (1826), 2 vols. (New York: Chelsea House, 1968), 309–10. 4. Verrier Elwin, Leaves in the Jungle (1936; repr., London: Oxford University Press, 1968); Ramachandra Guha, The Unquiet Woods: Ecological Change and Peasant Resistance in the Himalaya (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 57. 5. Edgar Thurston, Castes and Tribes of Southern India, assisted by K. Rangachari, vols. 1–7 (Madras: Madras Government Publications, 1909); W. H. Rivers, The Todas (repr., Jaipur: Rawat Publications, 1986).

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6. A. S. Altekar, The Position of Women in Hindu Civilization (1938; repr., Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1999). 7. Personal communication with Vasantha Surya, author of A Word Between Us (Chennai: Sandhya Publications, 2004). 8. The watercolor painting on paper with the Rabindra Bharati Society, Calcutta is depicted in Vidya Dehejia, Indian Art (London: Phaidon, 2002), 410. 9. Meera Kosambi, At the Intersection of Gender Reform and Religious Belief: Pandita Ramabai’s Contribution and the Age of Consent Controversy (Bombay: Research Centre for Women’s Studies, 1993). 10. Barbara Daly Metcalf, ‘‘Islamic Reform and Islamic Women: Maulana Thanawi’s Jewelry of Paradise,’’ in Moral Conduct and Authority: The Place of Adab in South Asian Islam, ed. Barbara Daly Metcalf (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984), 184–95; Shaheeda Lateef, Muslim Women in India: Political and Private Realities, 1890s–1980s (New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1990), 55–94; Gail Minault, ‘‘Women, Legal Reform and Muslim Identity in South Asia,’’ in Jura Gentium: Centre for Philosophy of International Law and Global Politics, ed. Claudio Augustino, Anil Mishra, and Antonella Roninone (1998), http:// www.juragentium.unifi.it/en/surveys/rol/minault.htm. 11. K. N. Chaudhuri, Asia before Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 12. Ainslie Embree, ed., Sources of Indian Tradition: From the Beginning to 1800, vol. 1; Stephen Hay, ed., Sources of Indian Tradition: Modern India and Pakistan, 2nd ed., vol. 2 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988). 13. Sita Anantha Raman and Vasantha Surya, A. Madhaviah: A Biography and a Novel (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005); also Sita Anantha Raman, ‘‘Old Norms in New Bottles: Constructions of Gender and Ethnicity in the Early Tamil Novel,’’ Journal of Women’s History 12, no. 3 (Fall 2000): 93–119.

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ABBREVIATIONS AIADMK

All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam

AIWC

All India Women’s Conference

AS

Arya Samaj

BJP

Bharatiya Janata Party

BS

Brahma Samaj

INC

Indian National Congress

ML

Muslim League

NA

National Archives, New Delhi

NMML

Nehru Memorial Museum and Library

PS

Prarthna Samaj

SEWA

Self-Employed Women’s Association

TNA

Tamil Nadu Archives, Chennai

TSA

Theosophical Society Archives

VS

Vedanta Society

WIA

Women’s Indian Association

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1 REGION, ENVIRONMENT, GENDER

In that very sky, he (Indra) encountered Uma, daughter of Himavat (Himalayas), a superbly beautiful woman with golden ornaments. He asked, ‘‘Who is this adorable being?’’ Kena Upanishad 3.121 INDIA: ECOLOGY AND GENDER Historically called India, the South Asian subcontinent today comprises the independent nations of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, and Afghanistan.2 The peninsula is geographically diverse with high mountain ranges like the Himalayas, tropical seacoasts, rivers fed by glacial snows and monsoons, arid deserts and plateaus, Asia’s second tallest waterfall, the world’s wettest zone, and luxuriant forests. The region is home to more than a billion people of disparate ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups. Narratives of women and gender are thus closely interwoven into the larger historical tapestry of the subcontinent as an evolutionary crucible marked by extensive genetic and cultural fusions. These mergers are reflected in gender norms, which vary across sect and caste but may have regional similarities. Urban civilization originated in the Indus Valley Civilization (7000–1650 BCE) some of whose pre-Aryan legacies, including views on sexuality and maternal potency, still prevail in the region. Society was initially forged by the genetic and cultural mergers of three broad groups. These are the aboriginals (Adivasis) of various ethnicities and languages who are sometimes matrilineal and matrilocal; speakers of Dravidian languages with a history of female power and goddess veneration; and patriarchal groups speaking Indo-Aryan languages descended from Sanskrit. Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, and other syncretisms evolved on the subcontinent; Islam, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, and Judaism arrived later in history. Over three hundred Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, Tibeto-Burman, Austro-Asiatic, and unspecified languages are spoken in South Asia. Gender and caste hierarchies were crystallized by subsequent infusions of Asian, Arab, European, and east African

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Women in India

settlers, who were often men who had relations with local women.3 Modern women’s education, health, and legal status have been both assisted and molded by colonial rule, a national democratic state, industrialization, and globalization. In recent decades, women’s public roles have notably expanded in India, but female sex ratios have simultaneously plummeted across caste, class, sectarian, and regional lines. Such anomalies cause grave concern, validating more studies of women.4 India is named for the snow-fed Indus river, which countless immigrants crossed before settling on the subcontinent. The most ancient Hindu scripture in the Sanskrit language is the Rig Veda (ca. 1650 BCE), which refers to the Indus and its tributaries as ‘‘sapta-sindhu’’ (seven rivers). The Persians called these ‘‘hepta hindu,’’ which later Greek immigrants termed ‘‘indos,’’ so that the local inhabitants became known as Hindus, regardless of religious belief. Geographical boundaries of mountains, rivers, and seas either promoted or inhibited invasions by male armies and internal trade settlement, which in turn shaped gender attitudes. The northwestern IndusOxus zone has been a social cauldron from which have spilled waves of armies and immigrants, while its land bridge fostered trade with ancient Asia and Europe. Sri Lanka’s proximity to the southern peninsula has interwoven gene pools, cultures, and polities. The extensive coastline has washed ashore numerous sea farers, especially during the annual monsoon rains. Maritime excursions up to the Persian Gulf probably first took place in small boats hugging the coastline. Once the seasonal flow of the monsoon (mausam) was understood, Indians ventured on sturdier vessels across the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal to trade with Arabia, Persia, east Africa, Europe, and Southeast Asia. Land and river routes facilitated internal trade and migrations within the subcontinent, especially after 1000 BCE. These were used by peaceful monks and merchants, and also by marauding, largely male armies with camp followers, thus resulting in the cross-fertilization of gene pools and language, and of ideas on religion, gender, sexuality, and art. Climate has also seminally shaped India’s societies and religions through which ideas on sexuality and gender were expressed. Intense tropical heat and the monsoon promoted agriculture, while lush vegetation gave value to notions of female fecundity and male procreative power. Each year, scorched summer vegetation returns miraculously to life, seeded by rain clouds that drench the western coast and the northern river plains, and are then deflected south by the Himalayan peaks. This pendulum of ecological decay and renewal is recorded in popular songs and festivals, and shaped an early belief in karma, the doctrine of the soul’s transmigration through a cycle of physical birth and death. Tropical greenery inspired an archaic veneration of fertility, and nature was identified with a female creative force. From such elemental beliefs there later developed more sophisticated theologies on maternal and male sexual potency. The mystical union of these dual sexual energies was deified and lauded in hymns, religious practices, art, and literature.

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EARLY HISTORY Prehistory: Migration, Sexuality, and Goddesses Paleolithic stone tools have been found across the subcontinent from the Soan Valley in Pakistan to southern Tamil Nadu. Genetic studies also now show that all human populations can be traced to a single female mitochondria from Africa. South Asia’s first human hunters and foragers arrived via the Arabian Sea, hugging the coastline on small rafts and crafts. They were probably the ancestors of the Onge and other tribes who speak AustroAsiatic languages in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.5 Recent studies also indicate that another dispersal from Eurasia occurred ca. 30,000 years ago. Complex migration patterns at this time meant the exchange of gene pools when settlers cohabited with locals. Mesolithic cave sites dating from 30,000 to 10,000 years ago in northern Bhimbetka, Madhya Pradesh, and southern Kurnool, Andhra Pradesh, contain paintings of early women, men, and children in daily life and work. The earliest evidence of goddess worship is from a Paleolithic Age shrine to fertility in Baghor, central India (ca. 9000 BCE). The site consists of a rubble platform with a triangular natural stone resembling the vulva/womb of the goddess, later called yoni. Across India today, there are similar platform altars with a triangular yoni as an aniconic representation of female energy as goddess Shakti. It clearly testifies to the persistence of a goddess tradition and to the worship of icons at sacred sites from the Stone Age.6 Other artifacts relating to fertility were uncovered in the Indus Civilization’s rural sites in Kulli and Nal (ca. 3000 BCE) and across northern and central India. Stone symbols of the phallus (lingam) and the uterus/vagina (yoni) indicate the worship of fertility, an important aspect of Hinduism even today across India. Terra-cotta seals depict rites around trees whose spirit beings and priests were probably female. Indus Civilization and Its Legacies The rural and urban sites of the Indus Civilization (2800–1600 BCE) shed light on the ideas of sacred sexuality in early India, as the denizens believed in goddesses, zoomorphic totems, and arboreal worship. The transition from Neolithic village to town occurred at Mehrgarh (7000 BCE) near the Bolan river in Pakistan, and here copper tools were first used to manufacture beads and polished jewelry. Although most of the 1,400 sites were located on the banks of this river and its tributaries, this civilization extended over a thousand square miles to the Himalayan foothills, Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Maharashtra. The semiautonomous cities included Harappa and Mohenjo Daro (Pakistan), Dholavira, Kalibangan, Rakhigarh, and the port of Lothal (India). A central agency planned the cities uniformly on a grid with intersecting streets, public buildings and two-story homes, drainage

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systems, and warehouses for grains, as well as standard weights and measurements. They thrived on local and international trade with Mesopotamia, the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, and Tibet. Foreign merchants arrived by camel and ox carts, river and coastal boats, sometimes staying for long periods within Indus city walls. Evidence from graves indicates an ethnically plural society. Small steatite seals probably used by local merchants employ a common script and religious emblems. The script has yet to be deciphered, but the language was probably proto-Dravidian that may have been akin to Elamite in Mesopotamia. Rule was probably by a male oligarchy of merchants and priests, judging by the single powerful image of a male leader in Mohenjo Daro. The important personage has a robe with an impressive trefoil pattern over his shoulder, and eyes half-closed in apparent yogic contemplation. A large hall with a large adjacent pool, possibly used for ritual baths, has been unearthed, with adjacent rooms for bathers, monks, priests, or traders from other Indus cities, peripheral and foreign regions. Despite high citadels, there was probably social and sexual intermingling, with visitors staying within city walls or outside in camps. Continuities with later eras are evident in houses and artifacts. Open courtyards in the homes in Harappa, Mohenjo Daro, and Dholavira indicate that families met in this central section and that family life was cherished. However, there were no separate quarters for women and men, as in later Indian society. There is an abundance of toys with movable parts, some humorously depicting animals with moving parts. This indicates a fondness for children that persists today. Similarly, there was a fondness for elegant and ornate bangles and necklaces for women, as well as jewelry for men in Indus culture. The civilization finally collapsed due to climatic changes, ecological catastrophes, and a decline in trade.7 Goddess Figurines We know considerably more about notions of sexuality and religion in these sites, as their echoes linger today. Artifacts from early Baluchi village cultures at Mehrgarh, Kulli, Zhob, and Nal (ca. 3000 BCE) reveal that they worshipped icons of the goddess and also phallic symbols. These artifacts are immensely pertinent to the study of Indian religion and sexuality, as they echo the later iconic worship of goddesses and of the lingam, the phallic symbol of the later Hindu god Shiva. Mehrgarh reveals terra-cotta and bone female figurines with small waists, delicate hips, and full breasts. The Kulli figures predate those from Zhob, but both are of torsos above the waist, with small breasts, nose, and other features made by adding little clay lumps to the icon. They have flat bases, possibly for easy placement on a shelf or altar, an important suggestion that icon worship originated in prehistoric India. Some images show a nurturing mother and child, but they are crudely

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contrived. Zhob figurines have bulging eyes and slits for mouths, and their fierce mien resembles that of Indian village goddesses today, like Mariamman who guards Tamil villages by devouring demons and plagues. Thousands of terra-cotta goddess figurines have been found scattered in the rubble around homes in some Indus cities, suggesting that the icons were discarded after prayers. This is similar to current Hindu practice of fashioning new clay images for festivals, after which they are immersed into the river or sea. On each side of the head of goddess images from Harappa and Mohenjo Daro are elaborate coiffures with lamp-like protuberances with sooty remnants from lamps. This resembles the custom of lighting clay lamps in Hindu, Buddhist, and Jaina rites to icons (puja). One Mohenjo Daro goddess bears an uncanny resemblance to a terra-cotta goddess dated from the first millennium in Ahichchatra near Mathura and other later village sites.8 The domestic worship of icons, especially of goddesses, with lamps appears to be a legacy of the Indus Civilization. Interestingly, after 2000 BCE, goddess figurines are absent in Kalibangan where large fire hearths have been discovered. Some scholars, therefore, surmise that the Indus cities were constructed by the Indo-Aryans, harbingers of Sanskritic civilization whose scripture, the Rig Veda, revolves around rituals (yajna) around fire altars. While the Veda makes a brief mention of potsherds along the Indus, the authors lived in wattle and daub huts, and they did not apparently know of large walled cities. They may have grafted their ideas of fire sacrifice onto the Indus religion, although they did not initially worship icons as did the Indus denizens. One scholar even questions if the Kalibangan hearths were ritual altars at all, since the earlier cities of Mehrgarh, Kot Diji, Harappa, and Mohenjo Daro do not contain hearths. Moreover, pre-Aryan folk worship of goddess icons lingered in the countryside after the cities declined, and similar statues dating a thousand years later have been unearthed on the Ganges plains. The Indus cities do not have large temples, but a large city hall at Mohenjo Daro may have been used for public gatherings. Around Harappa and several other sites, archaeologists have also discovered many small images, including circular stones with a central hole like the vulva/womb (yoni); phallic images like the lingam of Shiva, the later Hindu god; and bull figures later associated with Shiva’s virility. There are numerous etchings on seals of the pipala leaf whose tree is revered even today for promoting fertility. One seal shows a flowering bush with an emergent female figure similar to later tree nymphs (yakshis) in Buddhist, Jaina, and Hindu art. Another seal depicts a figure in a horned headdress, in a yogic, perhaps phallic posture. He is surrounded by animals like later depictions of Shiva as Lord of the Beasts, and his horned headdress resembles Shiva’s trident.9 One seal depicts a horned being emerging from a tree and surrounded by seven, possibly female priests.

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Other statues (ca. 3000 BCE) show astonishing continuities with later classical visions of the female and the male, yoga, love of dance, and aesthetics of sculpture. Three male torsos indicate that the people practiced yoga, while a bronze nude female figure suggests that dancing may have a religious, yogic significance. The finished bronze figure was sculpted through the ‘‘lost wax process’’ known to later Indian artists. It is of a pert young woman with Austro-Asiatic tribal features and bangled arms akimbo, as if in a dance pose. A statue of a male priest or leader with a trefoil design shawl has a dignified bearing, his eyes semi-closed as if in meditation. The figure resembles classical images taut with the inner breath (prana) as in yoga, as described in classical manuals of art. Also apparently filled with prana is another male torso of polished red stone with neck and shoulder sockets for the attachment of head and arms. Another small gray statue of a dancer also apparently had separately attached limbs, probably in dance gestures. The sculpture closely resembles later depictions of Shiva as the Hindu Lord of Dance (Nataraja). Recent excavations near the Yamuna-Ganges, in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu near the river Kaveri have brought to light other cultures using copper tools. Excavations at Ahar, Rajasthan (3000 BCE) reveal bull figurines associated with Shiva. At Dangwada in Madhya Pradesh, hundreds of humped bull figurines, and fertility icons of lingams and yonis in conjunction with each other, seem to prove that the yoni and lingam were Dravidian-aboriginal emblems. The large town of Daimabad (2000 BCE) in Maharashtra contains a public hall with an agate lingam in a hearth, Indus seals, and another seal inscribed with a horse-drawn chariot, indicating contact with incoming Indo-Aryans. SOCIAL MATRIX The oldest pre-Aryans were Adivasis who speak diverse languages and the speakers of Dravidian languages whose ancestors may have been akin to West Asians. Adivasi tribes include speakers of Austric-Mons languages, Tibeto-Burman speakers who dispersed via the northeast (ca. 3000 BCE), speakers of minor Dravidian dialects, and some isolated Indo-Aryan speakers. While hunters and gatherers inhabited the forests, the Neolithic era witnessed village settlements with domesticated sheep, cattle, and goats, and small farming. Women sowed wild seeds, practicing a rudimentary form of horticulture, and artisans produced small pottery. Their artifacts have been unearthed in Kashmir; in Indus sites like Mehrgarh; and in Baluchistan, Haryana, Gujarat; at later Gangetic chalcolithic sites like Koldihwa and Mahagara; in the Deccan Plateau; and in the Godavari and Krishna river valleys. While Adivasis are often forced today to mainstream into Indian society and its globalized economy, a few tribes still practice shifting agriculture (jhum). Moreover, while some Adivasis smelt and forge copper and iron, a few tribes still prefer stone tools.

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India’s natural landscapes have long inspired legends about divine mountain abodes, tree groves, and fecund river goddesses, colorful notions that continue to hum in the popular imagination. 10 The existence of a preAryan matrilocal tradition is mentioned in the Kena Upanishad (see the quote at the beginning of this chapter), which states that the Himalayas are venerated as the natal home of goddess Parvati whose husband Shiva resided with her. The worship of female nature deities is notably common among Adivasis and some Dravidian cultures. These divinities include the earth goddess of the Austro-Asiatic Paraja tribe in Orissa; 11 river goddess Garhaera venerated by the Mundas of Bihar;12 Sarna-Burhi, goddess of groves of Oraon tribes in the northeast;13 Jair-Era, forest goddess of the Santhals of Bengal;14 and Peyaacchi Amman of the maruda tree worshipped by some Tamils.15 Other worshippers of goddesses were the Indo-Aryans who settled near the Indus and the Saraswati (Ghaggar-Hakra), a tributary that later submerged.16 This is seen in the Rig Veda’s prayers, which describe goddess Saraswati as the ‘‘mighty flood,’’ a river who ‘‘illuminates, brightens every pious thought.’’ The Rig Veda praises Prithvi or ‘‘the broad’’ Mother Earth or ‘‘the broad one’’ and later refers to nature as the female force Prakriti. Fed by Himalayan snows, the Indus, Ganges, and Brahmaputra rivers were not only ancient highways, but as they ensured the fecundity of the northern plains, they became goddesses in the popular imagination. The Ganges is revered as a mother (Ganga Mata) who sustains the dense population of northern India. In the south, the monsoon-fed rivers Narmada, Tapti, Mahanadi, Godavari, Krishna, Tungabhadra, and Kaveri were arterial routes for migration and settlement, giving birth to mixed communities. Rivers were naturally revered as mothers who sustain life. If the frigid Himalayan peaks deterred prehistoric central and east Asians from entering the subcontinent, a few hardy groups filtered in some 3,000 years ago through the hill passes near Burma, along paths near the Brahmaputra river. However, the most significant routes lay in the northwest Hindu Kush passes, the Khyber, Gomal, and Bolan. India’s Adivasi hunters, gatherers, pastoralists, and farmers settled on the slopes of internal ranges like the Vindhya, Satpura, Aravalli, Western and Eastern Ghats, and on the Deccan and Chota Nagpur plateaus. These hilly regions inspired Adivasi legends, beliefs, and economies but fragmented local cultures. There is thus a wide array of gender norms, and also patrilineal, matrilineal, and bilateral lineages and inheritance patterns. Unlike the Gangetic or Kaveri river plains, the harsh arid environments of the Thar Desert in Rajasthan, the Deccan Plateau, and the dry zones of southern Tamil Nadu are less populous and also inhibited political unification. Yet, early settlers attributed mythic elements even to such harsh habitats, which they saw as divine domains. Thus, Dravidian Tamil prosody of the classical Sangam era (ca. 200 BCE–400 CE) describes five ecological zones

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(tinais) and their respective divinities. The most ancient were guarded by two pre-Aryan deities, i.e., a fierce goddess Korravai or Chuli with a spear who inhabited the sun scorched desert (palai) and her beguiling son Murukan whose sacred sites were the flowering hills (kurinci).17 Korravai gave life to Murukan and humans whom she defended from natural and demonic enemies. Stone and bone relics from the third millennium BCE across various Indian sites attest to the propitiation of such elemental goddesses. Genetics and archaeology also confirm the settlement of Indo-Aryans from Central Asia, after an initial dispersal from the Caucasian steppes. The Indo-Aryans profoundly shaped Indian religious and social mores, including those of gender. Later waves of immigrants have added to India’s ethnic and linguistic diversity. Geneticists point out that while some migratory groups were isolated due to geographical constraints, others were male dominated with fewer females, resulting in interactions with local women. This genetic imprint is evident in the subcontinent, and it seems to confirm the theory that there are few racially ‘‘pure’’ groups, since sexual and social intermingling were pervasive and routine through the millennia. As an amalgam of thousands of distinct and syncretic ethnic, linguistic, and religious communities, the subcontinent is truly an anthropologist’s paradise. However, this diversity masks a broad social matrix fused initially by the Adivasi, the Dravidian, and the Indo-Aryan Sanskritic components, each of which will be examined more closely in this chapter. Adivasis belong to several ethnic strains and speak languages from the Austro-Asiatic, Tibeto-Burman, Dravidian linguistic families, while a minority speak some unspecified languages. 18 The presence of some tribes who speak minor Dravidian dialects indicates that a proto-Dravidian language was once spoken widely on the subcontinent. Dravidian Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, and Telugu are now largely spoken in south India, while languages derived from Sanskrit are spoken mainly in northern India. However, linguistic, ideological, and gender interactions have occurred for over two thousand years to form the core of the South Asian ethno-social matrix. To add further complexity to this social tapestry, other immigrant streams forged together in the making of India, with the majority of new arrivals being men who had sexual contact with local women. In the classical era (300 BCE–600 CE), waves of immigrants from Asia, the Mediterranean, Arabia, and east Africa entered through the northwestern land passages or by sea. Under political or social duress, invaders and peaceful traders shared genes, ideas, and gender mores with local inhabitants. Similar transformations occurred after the seventh century CE when Islam arrived through Arab, Persian, Turkish, and west African Muslim rulers, soldiers, merchants, clerics, writers, artists, and artisans. In the last few centuries, western European adventurers, traders, missionaries, and colonists have also imprinted their gender norms and genes on South Asian society. In each

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case, as few wives accompanied immigrant men in the premodern centuries, sexual contact with local women made India an ethnic ‘‘stew.’’ A. K. Ramanujan described the subtle and overt cross-fertilizations of ideas and ethnic strains as seepages across the ‘‘permeable membranes’’ of ethnicity, caste, class, gender, and religion. Such osmosis resulted in cultural and genetic similarities within South Asian populations, despite the region’s exterior social diversities.19 Adivasis The earliest strata is that of the Adivasis who speak languages from different families and are also ethnically diverse, having different facial features, hair texture, height, bone structure, and skin pigmentation. There is also considerable cultural differences on gender norms, belief systems, and social organization. While some Adivasis are descendants of Paleolithic and Neolithic peoples, others later trickled in from Tibet and Burma to live as far north as Nepal and south in Sri Lanka. Adivasis constitute about 7 percent of India’s population, but they form up to 50 percent of the population in the northeast. Adivasis largely reside today in the wooded areas of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura, the Himalayan foothills in Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, and Himachal Pradesh. They also live in the Chota Nagpur Plateau in Bihar, in Bengal, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Goa, Nagar Haveli, in the Nilgiri Hills of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, in Andhra Pradesh, in Kerala’s Western Ghats, and in the Andaman, Nicobar, and Lakshadweep islands.20 Once found across the subcontinent, they were probably pushed into hilly enclaves by Dravidian and Indo-Aryan societies. The first cultural encounters occurred between some Adivasi and Dravidian communities, many of whom worship goddesses and some of whom have women priests and leaders due to the customs of matrilocality, matriliny, or polyandry. Some Adivasis who speak Dravidian languages are matrilocal; many Adivasis worship forest and earth goddesses; and some TibetoBurmese groups are matrilineal and polyandrous. The Bhils of Gujarat and Rajasthan are Adivasis who speak an Indo-Aryan language. Folk Religion and Gender Oral traditions on the mainland and Sri Lanka refer to some early inhabitants as nagas, or those who venerate zoomorphic totems like the snake (naga), or trees and plants.21 Similar myths and totems still prevail in Kashmir and among tribes like the Nagas in the northeast, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Sri Lanka. These mystical beliefs remain popular and resilient, and have seeped into Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. The elite-caste male composers of sacred Hindu texts like the Atharva Veda, Aranyakas, Upanishads, Ramayana, and Mahabharata lauded Indo-Aryan culture.

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Yet, these works indicate extensive social and ideological mergers with nonAryans ca. 1000–300 BCE. Folk beliefs probably penetrated high-caste religion through the mediation of wives and mothers. Thus, sage Aitareya who composed Aitareya Upanishad had a low-caste mother who worshiped the goddess; and the Mahabharata was composed by Vyasa, son of a shudra woman and a kshatriya prince. Adivasi-Dravidian veneration for arboreal and zoomorphic totems seeped into Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism as practiced by all castes/classes. Even today, upper- and lower-caste women in Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu annually celebrate the festival of Naga Panchami by offering fruits and flowers (puja) to votive stone icons of snakes on platforms placed under banyan, pipala, and sal trees. Hindu, Buddhist, and Jaina temples often have a space for a sacred tree (sthala vriksha).22 Female tree nymphs (yakshis) and male dryads (yakshas) are also sculpted on shrine walls. Hindu legends of zoomorphic deities associated with an anthropomorphic divinity appear in the Purana texts. They include elephant-headed Ganesa, son of Lord Shiva and the fount of knowledge; Hanuman, the monkey god and Lord Rama’s greatest devotee; Adisesha (Original Serpent), Lord Vishnu’s boon companion; and a guardian naga coiled around Shiva’s neck. Besides offering substantive puja rites to trees, stones, and animal totems, some Adivasis venerate a high spirit god, ancestors, and benign spirits to propitiate malignant spirits, and others have women priests. Folk religion was also influenced by Sanskritic ideologies controlled by high-caste men, who in turn selectively allowed for widely popular practices like iconic puja to penetrate their complex rituals. Not surprisingly, India’s religious tapestry is so well meshed together that some ideas even seeped into Islamic practices on the subcontinent. The Parajas of Orissa have women priests but call them Gurumai, Sanskrit word for religious mother-teacher; and although they believe in a high spirit divinity (Sing-Bonga), they also worship a stone god (Pathar Buda/Munda). Paraja goddesses bear Sanskrit names—e.g., the agricultural goddess Jaker Debi (devi) and the earth mother Dharani Mata.23 The Monpas of Arunachal Pradesh follow Tibetan Buddhism, but retain some Bon animist beliefs. The Lahaulas (Lalungs) of Himachal Pradesh are Buddhist-Hindu, but they also worship spirits through animal sacrifice. The Gujjars of Jammu and Kashmir are Sunni Muslims, but retain unorthodox Hindu beliefs. These mutual exchanges reveal that the Adivasis cannot be seen as prehistoric relics. Linguistic and religious interface with Indo-Aryan speakers of north India and the Dravidian speakers of south India expanded vocabularies and changed their views on women’s roles, especially in the recent eras. While some Adivasis staunchly resisted mainstream norms, others interacted with other tribes and people from the plains, sometimes to their advantage.24

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Gender in Adivasi Societies While it is important not to romanticize Adivasi societies as matriarchies in which women wield total power and men are the ‘‘second sex’’ by default, it is notable that many Adivasi groups have more egalitarian attitudes than do mainstream Indians. Economic patterns of foraging and farming shaped ideas of sexual rights, marriage, and divorce. Many groups traditionally allow women significant personal freedoms, and they also do not have a caste hierarchy. Although many groups have specific female roles in the household, others have women priests and community leaders. Many tribes abide by customs of female lineage and residence, while women have inheritance and sexual rights. These include descent and inheritance through either the eldest or the youngest daughter; women’s usufruct rights in a family; agricultural plots for each daughter; maternal avuncular jural rights over matrilineal property; matrilocality; uxorilocality in which husbands live with the wife’s maternal family; simple polyandry; levirate polyandry in which a woman is married to all the brothers; premarital sexual freedom; maternal over paternal rights; female divorce and remarry; and bilateral systems allowing both genders rights of residence, descent, or inheritance. However, the adoption of Sanskritic patriarchal customs along with Western and modern norms has adversely affected Adivasi women and the environment.25 The advent of the modern state has meant the loss of forest spaces, which has reduced hunting populations, while some others acquired farming techniques that increased food supply. In recent decades, the benefits of modern medicine have lowered death rates, but economic and cultural changes have meant the loss of some matrilineal inheritance rights. For example, women’s rights among the polyandrous Lahaulas of Himachal Pradesh and Todas of Tamil Nadu have eroded as they have adopted some patriarchal norms, but women retain primal rights of divorce and remarriage. While the Todas and some others give women certain sexual autonomy, there is a growing decline of these rights in the present era. Wet paddy cultivation brought prosperity to the Garos of Meghalaya, but conversion to Christianity has ended communal land ownership and matrilineal succession. Despite the diversity in gender norms, patriarchy and patrilocality have eroded egalitarian ideas in Adivasi societies which are under pressure by the modern state and economy. Patriarchal inheritance has led to a growing preference for sons, so that there is an imbalance in the ratio of females to males. In earlier centuries, the Oraons and Hos of eastern India had embryonic ideas of patriarchy, but during the colonial era when patriarchy was legally institutionalized, it became easier to adopt Sanskritic ideas of male land rights.26 Adivasi economies today still range from hunting and foraging, pastoralism, subsistence farming, weaving, and metal craft. Subsistence agriculture practices could involve either working on settled plots or through rotational

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horticulture (jhum) in which the field was left fallow for a few years. It is probable that in early nomadic society, women were the first foragers, while men hunted big game. This is evident among Adivasis like the Gharos and Khasis of Meghalaya whose women use the hoe in small jhum plots. The need to remain close to a base camp during pregnancy and motherhood may have led them first to experiment small farming with the hoe, in order to feed the family. However, with the later invention of the plow, men probably took over agriculture, and this new technology resulted in larger farms and food surpluses that were stored in urban centers.27 Thus for millennia, Adivasis hunted, foraged, and practiced jhum horticulture in which communal and female rights are markedly greater than among Adivasis like the Santhals and Mundas who practice settled agriculture. The settlement of Dravidian and Indo-Aryan language groups near rivers probably confined Adivasis to the hills, but with seasonal migration to the plains to barter forest products like honey and medicinal herbs. After India’s independence in 1947, such interactions between Adivasis and plains dwellers have increased. Moreover, as many Adivasis now practice settled, wet agriculture with cash crops, land ownership has become privatized. The property is often in male hands, while female property and usufruct rights have declined. Gender divisions are socially imposed through usage, rituals, and taboos, and they are sometimes shaped by sexual differences. The most egalitarian are the tribes that do not own private property. There is a great variation in the patterns of lineage, marriage, residence, and gender division of labor, which is also partly true of some Dravidian mainstream communities of south India and Sri Lanka. The Birhor and Korwa Adivasis of Jharkhand in Bihar practice gender divisions in hunting. Birhor men hunt large game and refrain from sex during the hunting period, while women tackle smaller animals except during menstruation. They are peripatetic hunters who still resist the plow, and they do not own either private or communal property. Although patrilineal and patrilocal, their women sit on tribal councils. Gender division of labor is enforced through ritual taboos based on bloodletting and menstruation. The Korwa hunters have more recently taken to farming, but they allow women to sit on the village councils. There are diverse practices on marriage and property ownership. For example, the Rabhas of Arunachal Pradesh are monogamous and patriarchal, but the Monpas practice both polygyny and polyandry. In Himachal Pradesh, the Kinners are polyandrous, but property is carried down the male line. The Lahaulas have no caste system, maternal rights supersede the paternal, women have premarital sexual freedom, and they can divorce and remarry. The Todas of Tamil Nadu trace lineage through matrilineal clans, but property is transferred through men. They practice polyandry, women can have multiple partners, and they have maternal rights over children. Some Adivasis frown upon marital infidelity, others are more tolerant, while

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some practice levirate polyandry. Tribal sexual norms differ from tribe to tribe, as seen in the censure of extramarital relationships by the Parajas, but its acceptance by the Todas of Tamil Nadu.28 The first Sanskrit textual reference to levirate polyandry (niyoga) in Indo-Aryan society occurs in the epic Mahabharata (800–300 BCE). The period marked rapid expansion of Sanskritic society to regions once occupied by Dravidian and Adivasi communities. The heroine Draupadi was married simultaneously to five Pandava brothers, indicating that this nonAryan custom was cautiously introduced into Aryan society. While polyandry does sanction some sexual freedom for women , allowing women to remarry and thus to avoid the stigma of the inauspicious widow in mainstream society, it does not guarantee equality or social advantage to women. In colonial Punjab, heavy agricultural tax led many Jat men to emigrate permanently for work or to join the army. The wife/widow remained with her husband’s brother who would marry her if the joint family needed her dowry or an heir. In this form of niyoga, widows were not ostracized, and her husband’s line continued after his death. Yet, as the women had little choice and they were viewed as family property, abuse and rape were fairly common. Women have far greater rights among Adivasi groups than in mainstream Indian society. For example, matrilineal, Austric-Mons language groups like the Khasis of Meghalaya allow women to be high priests, the youngest daughter inherits family land, and all daughters have usufruct rights over trees. Sons belong to the maternal clan, while husbands live in the wife’s maternal home, but holding some village jural rights. Khasis accept premarital sexual freedom, but do not condone postmarital adultery for either sex. Originally jhum agriculturalists, their economy has now been transformed, and women’s rights have eroded.29 Tribal marriages and matrilineal inheritance patterns are being transformed, often irrevocably in the consumer economy. Some changes are beneficial, while others reduce the woman into an object. Among polygamous tribes, co-wives shared the burden of household and field work. Today, monogamy has meant greater gender parity, but more confinement to the household. There is a healthy resistance among the Parajas of Orissa to their former customs of bride capture and marriage between a girl and her maternal uncle. However, the earlier tradition in which a groom paid a bride-price in kind or as service to her parents has been reversed. Today, the parents of Paraja brides pay the groom a dowry, and also undertake all wedding expenses. Among the Bondas and Saoras of Orissa, the bride was traditionally older than her groom, in order to give her a stronger hand in the household; but increasingly, men are older than their wives, leaving her at a disadvantage. Many Tibeto-Burman- and Dravidian-speaking Adivasi women have considerable freedom of movement and sexual rights. They work outside the

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home as farmers and traders, and negotiate family settlements. Some TibetoBurmese in India include the matrilocal Boros of Assam; the uxorolocal Garos of Meghalaya; and the Kinners and Lahaulas of Himachal Pradesh, who practice levirate polyandry. Nepali groups like the Newar, Limbu, Gurung, and Tamang do not regard women as economic burdens, but allow them to initiate divorce, to return to the natal home, and to remarry with the clan’s consent.30 Dravidian Adivasis resemble mainstream Dravidian communities that value female power. Thus, the tribal Oraons of Bihar worship a mother goddess as do the people of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Kerala. The tribal Gonds of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, and Orissa are polyandrous like the Nayars of Kerala, and Gond women practice jhum agriculture. Tribal women’s rights have been marginalized during the colonial and postindependence eras. Whereas women make decisions among hunters and gatherers, and in jhum agriculture, farming in settled plots often entails the reduction of female property rights. The trend to mainstream Adivasis today means the adoption of patriarchal customs that reduce female status, so that the girl child becomes unwelcome. Thus, the Santhals and Oraons of Jharkhand now practice the custom of female dowry and place taboos against widows. In many regions, the sex ratio of women to men has decreased in conformity with the rest of Indian society. However, the decrease in tribal sex ratios is not as severe as among affluent, often educated Indians in cities like Delhi where they have access to medical technology for female feticide. Such cities have a negligible tribal population. In 1930 Adivasis acquired the legal status of Scheduled Tribes of India (ST), and after independence in 1947, they were given special reservations in government schools and offices. Despite tribal matrilineal structures and women’s right to sit on councils, their position has been hampered by the patriarchal biases of modernization and by India’s economic liberalization. The nation’s policies have fluctuated between total neglect and overzealous interference by mainstreaming Adivasis. Although Article 14 of the Indian Constitution guarantees equal rights for all and Article 15 (3 and 4) tries to safeguard women and children, tribal women are the most marginalized persons who are ripe targets for sexual exploitation and violence. Other problems stem from the diversity of Adivasi property rights. Thus, despite women’s usufruct rights among Khasis, Garos, Rabha, and Jaintia, men largely control jural rights over property. Since only unmarried women and widows have managerial rights over property among the Santhals and Ho tribes, women increasingly remain single, and their birthrate has been lowered. Nagas have begun to view women as property, and their traditions of bride capture and bride-price have now deteriorated into blatant kidnapping. Other unhealthy social practices include polygyny among the wealthy, marriages between older men and underage girls, and the prostitution of

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wives to offset a husband’s debt. Few tribal women sit in legislative bodies in India, and when they do attend meetings, they are physically deterred by men. 31 Since Santhal women had the freedom to choose their sexual partners, rape was not a social problem until recently, when dominant non-tribal groups have regarded them as sexually permissive, and thus prey. Dalit and tribal women have been similarly raped across the centuries by dominant-caste men. Santhals have also been cheated of their communal land by such dominant groups who entice the tribals to borrow beyond their means. The mass rapes accelerated in the 1970s immediately after Santhals protested the alienation of tribal land on the instigation of civil rights feminist groups like Stri Sangharsh.32 For decades, the All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA) has documented cases of rape of women from Adivasi or ST, and Scheduled Castes or Dalits (SC). Dravidian Legacies Dravidian language speakers constitute 23 percent of India’s population. The majority are from the south, and they speak Tamil (in Tamil Nadu), Telugu (in Andhra Pradesh), Kannada (in Karnataka), and Malayalam (in Kerala). Tamil is the oldest Dravidian language, and the antiquity of Dravidian culture has been proved by burial urns at Adichanallur, Tamil Nadu (ca. 800 BCE).33 During the Tamil Sangam classical era (200 BCE–400 CE), men and women poets gathered in Madurai at conferences hosted by the Pandya kings. The ancient Tamil literary corpus consists of the grammatical work Tolkappiyam, poetic anthologies, five epics, books of aphorism, and early Hindu devotional (bhakti) hymns by women and men. Dravidian culture lauded female power based on chastity, and one of its prime and probably most archaic divinity was the mother goddess. That Dravidian speakers form an archaic strata is evident in the presence of Adivasis who speak Dravidian languages, e.g., the Konds, Oraons, and the Brahuis of Baluchistan, Pakistan. The Adivasi-Dravidian imprint on Hinduism has been profound, especially visible in the iconic worship of a mother goddess, and her personification as energy (shakti). These ideas were incorporated later into Sanskrit scriptures by brahman priests. Implicit in Dravidian folk culture are the veneration of animals, forests, hills, rivers, mountains, and stones, and the belief in spirit beings immanent in nature. These beliefs are now central to Hinduism and are especially visible in the folk practices of rural and forest dwellers.34 Most Dravidian communities are patrilineal and patrilocal, but there are also high- or low-ranking caste matrilineal, matrilocal, or polyandrous groups, which can be Hindu, Buddhist, or even Christian. Dravidian culture in south India allows women greater freedom of movement than women in the north. Cross-cousin marriages are common, and great honor is given to the maternal uncle whose jural responsibilities are especially sacrosanct.

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The most stunning examples of Dravidian matrilineal communities are in Kerala, where the former kings received the throne from the maternal line. Polyandry was common among the high-caste, landed community of Nayars, and the working-caste Ezhavas frown on polyandry but follow matrilineal succession. Until the mid-twentieth century, Nayar men served as elite warriors for local rajas, and Nayar women formed a polyandrous ‘‘connection’’ (sambandham) with brahman Nambudiris whose first wife was Nambudiri. In their joint matriliny (marumakkatyam), descendents of a matriarch and her brother (known as karnavan) lived under one roof (taravadu). Women shared property equally with men, but it was managed by the matriarch and karnavan. Nambudiri brahman men sometimes had a sambandham with women from the matrilineal Tiyya community, which allows women divorce. These customs eroded in the colonial era and have almost disappeared in modern India whose laws favor patriarchy. 35 However, matriliny has been recently reinforced among the Ezhavas due to short-term migration to the Persian Gulf where the community has reaped new wealth after centuries of poverty. Male workers diligently remit savings to India to the father-in-law who invests in matrilineal property.36 The impressive range of gender norms indicates that it is unwise to ‘‘essentialize’’ Indian mores as ‘‘traditional’’ and static, or to equate matriliny simply with sexual freedom for women. Some groups like the Sri Lankan Tamils lay great value upon marital fidelity and premarital female chastity, but they follow matrilineal or bilateral descent or inheritance. The Chettis of Tamil Nadu are matrilineal with maternal avuncular rights, while the Muslim Mappilas of Kerala are matrilineal and matrilocal. However, they strongly venerate female chastity and see it as an empowering virtue, while strictly censuring its loss.37 High-caste Tamils are patriarchal and religiously conservative, yet even here there are some exceptions. The Tamil brahmans of Kalladaikurichi village share liberal inheritance customs due to proximity to Kerala. While most Tamil brahmans inherit land through the father, and women are only given movable property in the form of jewelry or household goods, Kalladaikurichi brahmans give the daughter a household plot to grow rice (pazhaidu kaani), thus ensuring her economic independence even after marriage. The daughter resides with her parents and visits her husband every day at a specified time.38 Lastly, the Brahuis of Baluchistan are a pocket of Dravidian speakers among Aryan language peoples. The Baluchi Hills contain some of the early rural sites of pre-Harappan culture that flowered into the great cities of the Indus Civilization. The cultures at Zhob, Nal, and Kulli (ca. 3000 BCE ) worshipped images of the goddess, the bull as an emblem of male virility, and fertility as represented by the pipala fig tree. The presence of Brahui Dravidian speakers among an Aryan language populace today suggests that this region was the original home of proto-Dravidian speakers, until IndoAryan Sanskrit became dominant after 1800 BCE. In view of the millennium

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of trade between Mesopotamia and the Indus cities, it has been suggested that proto-Dravidian was related to the language of Elamite in ancient Persia and Mesopotamia.39 Fertility worship was common in all these civilizations, as were icons of goddesses. As trade involves exchanges of ideas, language, and gene pools, as well as of goods, these civilizations probably shared some common features. Indo-Aryan or Sanskritic Legacies The most significant mergers were between Dravidian cultures and that of patriarchal Indo-Aryan clans who spoke Sanskrit. The Indo-Aryans settled around the Indus and its tributaries ca. 1800 BCE. Over time, they spread to the east and south, merging along the way with local groups. Sanskrit is the ancestor of most north Indian languages spoken by 75 percent of India’s population. It has also had a profound impact on Dravidian languages, society, and religion. India’s ethnic and social fusions resulted in a dominant Sanskritic paradigm infused with pre-Aryan ideas. This is embodied in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. The Indo-Aryans brought a pantheon of gods and goddesses, but the Vedas (Books of Knowledge), a compendium of Hindu hymns, liturgies, and philosophy, were almost exclusively by male priest bards (brahmans) for fire rituals (yajna). The Indo-Aryan influence on religion, gender, and caste will be examined in the next chapter. NOTES 1. My translation of the Sanskrit verse, ‘‘Sa tasmin eva¯ka¯ se striyama¯jaga¯ ma bahusobhama¯na¯muma¯m haimavatı¯m; ta¯mho va¯ca, kimetad yaksamiti,’’ in Swami Sarvananda, ed., Kenopanishad (Madras: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1970), 30–31. 2. For the period before 1947, the term ‘‘India’’ refers to the South Asian subcontinent; thereafter to the modern nation of India. 3. See M. N. Srinivas, ‘‘A Note on Sanskritization and Westernization,’’ Far Eastern Quarterly 15 (1956): 481–96; Srinivas, Social Change in Modern India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 6–45; Srinivas, ‘‘Varna and Caste,’’ in Social Stratification, ed. Dipankar Gupta (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1991), 28–34. 4. Census of India 2001 reports the sex ratio as 933 (f) per 1000 (m), but 10 districts of Punjab and Haryana have lower rates, e.g., 766 in Fatehgarh Sahib. See also Kalpana Sharma, ‘‘No Girls Please, We’re Indian,’’ The Hindu, August 29, 2004, 1–3. 5. On caste and ethnicity see Iravati Karve, Hindu Society—An Interpretation (Poona: Deshmukh Prakashan, 1961). Recent genomic studies confirm waves of settlement and ethnic mingling in West Asia, South Asia, and Europe; see Mark Shwartz, ‘‘People from Distant Lands Have a Strikingly Similar Genetic Traits,’’ Stanford Report, January 8, 2003, http://www.stanfordu.edu/dept/news/news/ 2003/january8/genetics-18.html; Partha Majumdar, ‘‘Indian Caste Origins: Genomic Insights and Future Outlook,’’ Genome Research 11 (2001): 931–32,

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http://genome.cshlp.org/content/11/6/931.full; Genetic Chaos, http://vetinarilord .blogspot.com/2005/04/y-chromosome-lineages-trace-diffusion.html; V. N. Mishra, ‘‘Prehistoric Human Colonization of India,’’ Journal of Bioscience 26, no. 4 (November 2001): 491–531, vide, 494–500; Kumarasamy Thangaraj and others, ‘‘Genetic Affinities of the Andaman Islanders, a Vanishing Human Population,’’ Current Biology 13, no. 2 (January 21, 2003): 86–93, http://www.cell.com/current-biology/ abstract/S0960-9822(02)01336-2. Notable studies are by Marcus Feldman of Stanford University with U.S., French, and Russian scientists; Michael Bamshad of the Eccles Institute of Human Genetics, Utah with scientists at Andhra University, Visakhapatnam, India and Anthropological Survey of India, Chennai; and Kumarasamy Thangaraj at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad, India on Adivasis in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. 6. Dilip K. Chakrabarti, India, An Archaeological History: Paleolithic Beginnings to Early Historic Foundations (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003), 82–88; Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, J. D. Clark, J. N. Pal, and G. R. Sharma, ‘‘An Upper Paleolithic Shrine?’’ Antiquity 57 (1983): 88–94. 7. Gregory Possehl, The Indus Civilization: A Contemporary Perspective (Walnut Creek: Altamira Press [Rowman & Littlefield], 1990); Gregory Possehl, The Indus Age: The Writing System (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996); Asko Parpola, Deciphering the Indus Script (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Richard Allchin and Bridget Allchin, Origins of a Civilization (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997); R. E. Mortimer Wheeler, Civilization of the Indus Valley and Beyond (London: Thames and Hudson, 1966); Chakrabarti, India, An Archaeological History; B. B. Lal, ‘‘The Indus Civilization,’’ in A Cultural History of India, ed. A. L. Basham (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), 11–19; S. R. Rao, ‘‘From the Indus Civilization to the Golden Age,’’ in Ananya: A Portrait of India, ed. S. N. Rao and Nirmal Matto (New York: Association of Indians in America, 1996), 35–62; Shereen Ratnagar, The End of the Great Harappan Tradition (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000); M. Rafique Mughal, Ancient Cholistan: Archaeology and Architecture (Lahore: Ferozsons, 1997); George Dales and Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, Excavations at Mohenjodaro, Pakistan: With an Account of the Pottery from the 1950 Excavations of Sir Mortimer Wheeler (New York: Prehistory Press, 1991); Kenoyer, Ancient Cities of the Indus Valley Civilization (Karachi: American Institute of Pakistan Studies and Oxford University Press, 1998); B. V. Subarayappa, Indus Script: Its Nature and Structure (Madras: New Era Publishers, 1995). 8. Vidya Dehejia, Indian Art (London: Phaidon, 2000); Roy Craven, Indian Art: A Concise History, 2nd ed. (London: Thames and Hudson, 1997); Benjamin Rowland, The Art and Architecture of India: Buddhist, Hindu, Jain (Baltimore: Penguin, 1953); David Kinsley, Hindu Goddesses: Visions of the Divine Feminine in the Hindu Religious Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988). 9. Chakrabarti, India, An Archaeological History, 217–36. 10. Cynthia Humes, ‘‘Vindhyavasini: Local Goddess Yet Great Goddess,’’ in Devi: Goddesses of India, ed. John Stratton Hawley and Donna Marie Wulff (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 49–76; Diana Eck, ‘‘Ganga: The Goddess Ganges in Hindu Sacred Geography,’’ in Devi: Goddesses of India, Hawley and Wulff, 137–53; William S. Sax, Mountain Goddess: Gender and Politics in a Himalayan Pilgrimage (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).

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11. Jaganath Dash and Subodh Kumar Mohanty, ‘‘Religion and Crises of Life among the Paraja of Koraput District, Orissa,’’ in Tribal Transformation in India, Tribals of India, ed. Buddhadeb Chaudhuri, vol. 5 (Delhi: Inter-India Publications, 1992), 12. 12. Kunal Chakrabarti, Religious Process: The Puranas and the Making of a Regional Tradition (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001), 174. 13. Ibid., 174–77. 14. Pupul Jayakar, The Earth Mother: Legends, Ritual Arts, and Goddesses of India (San Francisco and New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1990), photographs 1–14 of prehistoric female signs and figurines. 15. Sita Anantha Raman, ‘‘Popular Pujas in Public Places: Lay Rituals in South Indian Temples,’’ International Journal of Hindu Studies 5, no. 2 (August 2001): 165–98. 16. Rajesh Kocchar, The Vedic People: Their History and Geography (Delhi: Orient Longman, 2004), 118–40. 17. The five Tamil regions (tinais) and their deities were hills (kurinci) guarded by Murukan; deserts (palai) of goddess Korravai; forest pastures (mullai) of Krishna, the northern god whom Tamils call Tirumal; coasts (neytal) of god Varuna; and the river agricultural tracts (marutam) of Valiyon/Balarama. George L. Hart III, The Poems of the Ancient Tamil: Their Milieu and Their Sanskrit Counterparts (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1975); A. K. Ramanujan, The Interior Landscape: Love Poems from a Classical Tamil Anthology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967); Raman, ‘‘Popular Pujas in Public Places.’’ 18. Indo-Aryan languages include Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali, Rajasthani, Oriya, Kashmiri, Tulu and tribal dialects like Bhili (over 75%); Dravidian Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and tribal languages like Gondi, Oraon, Khond, Kurukh (22.5%); Austro-Asiatic tribal languages like Santali, Ho, Khasi, Mundari, Korku, Savara, Kharia (1.1%); Tibeto-Burman languages like Manipuri, Bod-Buro, Tirpuri, Garo, Lughal, Karbi, Po, etc. (.96%); Arabic and other languages (rest). 19. A. K. Ramanujan, ‘‘The Indian Oedipus,’’ in Indian Literature: Proceedings of a Seminar, ed. Arabinda Poddar (Simla: Institute of Advanced Study, 1972), 127–37; see also Wendy O’Flaherty, Tales of Sex and Violence: Folklore, Sacrifice, and Danger in the Jaiminiya Brahmana (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 11. 20. Census of India 1981 states that the largest tribal groups are in Lakshadweep (93% tribal), Mizoram (93%), Nagaland (80%), Arunachal Pradesh (70%), Manipur (30%), Sikkim (25%), Madhya Pradesh (23%), and no tribals in Haryana, Punjab, Delhi, and Pondicherry. See also Buddhadeb Chaudhuri, Tribal Transformation in India, vol. 1, ix. 21. See Iravati Karve’s lucid deconstruction of the Mahabharata entitled Yuganta: The End of an Epoch (Delhi: Sangam Books, 1974), 94–106. Karve examines the story of the burning of the Khandava forest by Arjuna and Krishna as sanctioned by Vedic priests and the death of non-Aryan Nagas in the forests, indicating the advance of Aryan culture on non-Aryan terrain. 22. On rites near trees, see M. Amritalingam, Sacred Trees of Tamilnadu (Chennai: C. P. Ramaswami Environmental Education Center, 1998); Bansi Lal Malla, Trees in Indian Art, Mythology, and Folklore (New Delhi: Aryan, 2000);

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Michael Meister, ed., Encyclopaedia of Indian Temple Architecture: South India, Lower Dravida Desa, 200 BCE–CE 1824 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983); K. R. Srinivasan, Temples of South India (Delhi: National Book Trust, 1973); Rama Sivaram, Early Chola Art: Origin and Emergence of Style (Delhi: Navrang, 1994); Raman, ‘‘Popular Pujas in Public Places.’’ 23. Dash and Mohanty, ‘‘Religion and Crises of Life among the Paraja of Koraput District, Orissa,’’ vol. 5, 12–13. 24. Buddhadeb Chaudhuri, ed., ‘‘Preface,’’ in Tribal Transformation in India, viii–x. Other articles on tribal gender, sexuality, and religion in this five-volume collection: Malabika Dasgupta and Asis Banerjee, ‘‘Jhuming as the Way of Life of the Jhumias: An Analysis of Data from Tripura,’’ vol. 1, chap. 3, 28–36; A. K. Adhikary, ‘‘System of Exchange among Tribals: A Case Study of the Santhal in a Village of Bhirbhum, West Bengal,’’ vol. 1, chap. 7, 75–87; Geeta Menon, ‘‘Socio-Economic Transition and the Tribal Women,’’ vol. 1, chap. 8, 88–109; Dash and Mohanty, ‘‘Religion and Crises of Life among the Paraja of Koraput District, Orissa,’’ vol. 5, chap. 1, 3–22; Stephen Fuchs, ‘‘The Religion of the Indian Tribals,’’ vol. 5, chap. 2, 23–51; Jaganath Dash and Subodh Kumar Mohanty, ‘‘An Analytical Study of Witchcraft among the Mundas of Midnapur,’’ vol. 5, chap. 12, 153–78; Biswantha Banerjee, ‘‘Religious Practices in a Santhal Village in West Bengal,’’ vol. 5, chap. 6, 95–100. See also Bina Agarwal, A Field of One’s Own: Gender and Land Rights in South Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 82–151; Anthony R. Walker, The Toda of South India: A New Look, Studies in Society and Social Anthropology (Delhi: Hindustan Publishing Corporation, 1986); Christoph von Furer-Haimendorff, Tribes of India: The Struggle for Survival (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981). 25. Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. H. M. Parhley (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1952). 26. Shashank Shekhar Sinha, Restless Mothers and Turbulent Daughters: Situating Tribes in Gender Studies (Kolkata: Stree, 2005). 27. Agarwal, A Field of One’s Own, 267, 307; Govind Kelkar and Dev Nathan, Gender and Tribe: Women, Land, and Forests in Jharkhand (Delhi: Kali for Women, 1991). 28. Walker, The Toda of South India, chap. 3. 29. Agarwal, A Field of One’s Own, 101–9. 30. Ibid., 138–315, vide, 267, 307; and personal interview with Bina Agarwal, October 2000, Santa Clara University. 31. Tiplut Nongbri, ‘‘Gender Issues and Tribal Development,’’ in Tribal SelfManagement in North-East India, ed. Bhupinder Singh, vol. 2 of Antiquity to Modernity in Tribal India, Tribal Studies of India Series No. T183 (Delhi: Inter-India Publications, 1998), 221–43. 32. Radha Kumar, The History of Doing: An Illustrated Account of Movements for Women’s Rights and Feminism in India, 1800–1900, ‘‘Appendix A: A Mass Rape in Santhal Parganas’’ (Delhi: Kali for Women, 1997), 139–42. 33. T. S. Subramanian, ‘‘Urn-Burial Site Found at Adichanallur,’’ The Hindu, Sunday, March 14, 2004, 11. The author quotes Dr. T. Satyamurthy, Superintending Archaeologist and Director of the excavation, who describes the urn burial as similar to those described in the Sangam texts Narrinai, Purananuru, and Patittrupattu. See also Romila Thapar, Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002), 95.

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34. Kamil V. Zvelebil, Tamil Traditions on Subrahmanya-Murugan (Madras: Institute of Asian Studies, 1991); Thomas B. Coburn, Devi Mahatmya: The Crystallization of the Goddess Tradition, 3rd ed. (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1997); Raman, ‘‘Popular Pujas in Public Places’’; Friedhelm Hardy, Viraha-Bhakti: The Early History of Krsna Devotion in South India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983); David Kinsley, The Sword and the Flute—Kali and Krsna: Dark Visions of the Terrible and Sublime in Hindu Mythology (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1975); Kinsley, Hindu Goddesses; David Dean Shulman, Tamil Temple Myths: Sacrifice and Divine Marriage in the South Indian Saiva Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980); A. K. Ramanujan, trans., Hymns for the Drowning: Poems for Vishnu by Nammalvar (New York: Penguin, 1981), 95. 35. Agarwal, A Field of One’s Own, 109–33, 171–76; G. Arunima, There Comes Papa: Colonialism and the Transformation of Matriliny in Kerala, Malabar c. 1850– 1940 (Delhi: Orient Longman, 2004). 36. Prema A. Kurien, Kaleidoscopic Ethnicity: International Migration and the Reconstruction of Community Identities in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002), 105–32. 37. Agarwal, A Field of One’s Own, 141. 38. Sita Anantha Raman, Getting Girls to School: Social Reform in the Tamil Districts, 1870–1930 (Calcutta: Stree, 1996), 106. 39. Kamil Zvelebil, The Smile of Murugan: On Tamil Literature of South India (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1973); Zvelebil, Tamil Traditions on Subrahmanya-Murugan.

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2 VEDIC GODDESSES AND WOMEN

Aditi Aditi Aditi Aditi

is the heaven, Aditi is mid-air, is the mother and the sire and son is all gods, Aditi five-classed men, all that has been born and shall be born. Rig Veda 10.1291

INDO-ARYANS: LANGUAGE, ETHNICITY, AND GENDER The pre-Aryan motifs of maternal power and sacred sexuality in Indian thought were expanded by the Indo-Aryans whose hierarchical norms of gender and caste became the social grid for India. These tribes had originally dispersed from the Caucasus with other Aryans (arya or noble) who shared mythic legends and spoke related languages like Avestan (ancient Iranian), Greek, and Latin. Most akin were the Sanskrit and Avestan speakers who first migrated into Central Asia (ca. 3000 BCE), after which the Avestans moved into Persia. The Indo-Aryans migrated to Afghanistan, and then trickled into the Punjab, settling beside the Indus as herders and small farmers (ca. 1800 BCE).2 Sanskrit-Avestan affinities are evident after separation in their scriptures, the Hindu Rig Veda (ca. 1700–1000 BCE), and the Zoroastrian Zend Avesta (ca. 1000 BCE).3 The two groups venerated fire and initiated boys and girls in rites called upanayana (Skt.) and navjot (Av.) rites. However, around 500 BCE, Sanskrit patriarchs began to discontinue women’s upanayana, which allowed them to learn the Vedas and conduct fire rituals. As knowledge is commensurate with power, women in India therefore suffered a serious setback.4 Horse bones and representations indicate the Indo-Aryan presence near the river Amu Darya (Oxus) and in Afghanistan.5 Their presence in India is first indicated at Daimabad (1700 BCE) where a cylindrical seal etched with an image of a horse chariot has been discovered, evidence of trade with some pre-Aryan towns in the post–Indus era. The Rig Veda makes a rare reference to potsherds, but the authors apparently did not know of the large,

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sophisticated Indus cities or of their use of seals in commerce. The IndoAryans lived in pit dwellings in Afghanistan, and in wattle and daub huts in Punjab, relying chiefly on barter for trade.6 Although all Aryans share Eurasian genetic markers, the term ‘‘Aryan’’ is primarily a linguistic definition, rather than one of ‘‘race’’ as suggested by European colonialists, since the Aryans exchanged traditions and gene pools with local inhabitants at each step of their long journeys. This was evident in India where the expansion of a dominant Indo-Aryan society meant that non-Aryan communities often adopted Sanskrit cultural ideas, perhaps mediated by women with offspring of mixed ethnicity. Fearing dilution of caste purity and lineage, elite Indo-Aryans guarded their women’s chastity, although the men married or cohabited with local or lower-caste women. Despite these norms on sexual behavior, genetic evidence points to complex ethno-social interactions that began 4,000 years ago in India.

VEDAS: TEXT AND CONTEXT Knowledge as Salvation and Power The more notable Indo-Aryan contributions were Sanskrit and the sacrosanct Vedas (Books of Knowledge), which Hindus regard as revelation (shruti). The Rig Veda hymnal (samhita) stems from the early era near the Indus (ca. 1700–1000 BCE ). The Sama, Yajur, and Atharva Vedas, and the Vedic subsections of liturgy (Brahmanas), esoteric forest books (Aranyakas), and mystical philosophies (Upanishads or Vedanta) were composed on the Ganges plains in the later Vedic era (ca. 1000–300 BCE). Except for a few hymns in the feminine voice, the Rig Veda’s authors were largely priest bards (brahmans), but it is conceivable that these men appropriated some women’s verses. The priests chanted the prayer verses (mantras) to nature divinities at fire sacrifices (yajna/homa) in the land of the ‘‘seven rivers’’ (sapta-sindhu), namely the Indus and its tributaries, one of which was the Saraswati or Ghaggar-Hakra, which submerged ca. 1700 BCE.7 We, therefore, deduce that the Indo-Aryans arrived prior to this catastrophe and composed the early Rig Vedic verses soon afterward.8 Women were initially taught the Vedas, but by the end of the later Vedic era, they were largely excluded from this body of knowledge. Varna and Patriarchy Indo-Aryan society was based on patriarchal lineage and residence, and the occupational division based on ritual color (varna). The three initial classes of brahmans, kings and soldiers (kshatriya/rajanya), and common folk (vaishya) were distinguished by their varna, i.e., yellow, red, and brown, respectively. This initial varna system was nonhereditary, as seen in

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this Rig Vedic hymn to Soma. The bard here describes his father as a healer and his mother as a farm worker: Various indeed are our concerns, And men’s vocations manifold: The carpenter and leech desire A break; the priest a Soma rite. The smith, with dry wood on his hearth, With wings of birds to fan the fire, With anvil and with glowing flames, Desires a patron rich in gold. A poet I: my father a leech, Mother the upper millstone turns With various aims we strive for wealth, As if we followed after kine. RV 9.1129

The varna system was transformed after Indo-Aryans absorbed local nonAryans as the menial shudra caste when their Sanskritic community spread to the Yamuna Basin, east on the Ganges plains, and south in the peninsula (1000–300 BCE). The origin of the shudra is first described in the Purusha Sukta, a later Rig Vedic hymn (RV 10.91) about creation, including the origins of the varnas through a primal sacrifice of Purusha (Primal Man Being). The explicit assumption is that the first human was male, and the highest varna was the brahman who emerged from Purusha’s head, while the kshatriya emerged from his arms, the vaishya from his torso, the shudra from his feet. Shudras were allotted the lowest status, and their origin in Purusha’s feet probably indicated their menial functions, while their ritual color of black possibly referred to darker skin pigmentation. The shudras were needed for labor as Indo-Aryan society expanded, and women were necessary to reproduce the community. However, as elite society feared miscegenation, birth (jati) became central to the varna system, as were the behavioral norms for elite women and the shudra. However, while Sanskritic society frowned on relations between high-caste women and low-caste men, high-caste men were not bound by these rules. Moreover, while non-Aryans were inducted into society but denigrated as shudras, folk beliefs were absorbed and elevated through Sanskritic terms and values. Geographical expansion led to large kingdoms and towns marked by occupational complexity and ethnic pluralism. Endogamous, hereditary subgroups (jatis) proliferated. The varna-jati or caste system developed regional specificities when India was later flooded by diverse immigrants from Asia, Arabia, and Europe (200 BCE–500 CE). While the Vedas represent a predominantly male vision of divine and mortal females, until about 500 BCE, some Vedic women etched their personalities and concerns upon the scriptures, which were orally transmitted and

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written down at this time. Gifted women and shudras were initially invested with the sacred thread at their upanayana, which allowed them to study and chant the Vedas. After this period, however, upanayana became the exclusive prerogative of men from the three elite castes who became known as the ‘‘twice born’’ (dvija). Elite-caste mundane ambitions for royal power and material advancement were glorified by Brahmana liturgies. Territorial contentions led to the exaltation of female chastity, and women retreated into the household. Meanwhile, dissident sages (rishis) proclaimed the irrelevance of caste and gender for mystical salvation in the Aranyakas and Upanishads (700–300 BCE). While society revered their humanistic ideals, few women could shed domestic duties to become forest ascetics.10 Women who married across varna lines took on their husband’s caste. Despite Aryan dominance, pre-Aryan practices were transferred through social and sexual contact, so that they actively shaped hybrid SanskriticHindu culture. For example, sage Aitareya, author of Aitareya Brahmana, Aranyaka, and Upanishad, had a shudra mother named Itara whose matrilineal pre-Aryan heritage helped to identify Aitareya (CU 3.16.7).11 Neglected by his brahman father during a ritual, Aitareya called upon Goddess Earth, his mother’s tutelary deity, to inspire his composition of the Aitareya Upanishad.12 It is also intriguing that although the Purusha Sukta states that the shudra emerged from Purusha’s feet, Aitareya Upanishad symbolically describes this male being as Cosmic Intelligence quickened by the Life Force (Brahman) entering through his feet.13 The Chandogya Upanishad also indicates that not all shudras became menials, and that shudra sages were respected as brahmans. Thus, sage Satyakama Jabala, the illegitimate son of a servant woman, was accepted by an uppercaste mentor as his worthy disciple (CU 4.4.1–5).14 Clearly, some Vedic texts by elite-caste men challenged the varna hierarchy, and history points to gifted shudra men respected as brave kshatriya rulers, wise men, or individuals with useful skills. However, the equation of fair skin with the Aryan ‘‘race’’ and ritual purity condemned most shudras of pre-Aryan or mixed descent to become rural serfs who ensured the success of new Aryan colonies, or urban menials who served towns like Hastinapura and Varanasi. Ironically, over time, pre-Aryan ritual taboos against the spilling of blood and body fluids were used to restrict women from public rituals during menstruation and childbirth. Low-caste hunters, tanners, butchers, cremation workers, and scavengers were largely deemed unfit to hear or chant the Vedas.15 Intercaste marriages were more frequent when the three higher varnas shared traditions. With the arrival of fresh immigrants from Asia, Europe, and Arabia after 200 BCE, classical texts placed the onus of maintaining caste purity on women who were cautioned against foreign men. Yet, intercaste marriages remained common as late as the tenth century CE, according to

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the Muslim visitor Alberuni.16 Recent genetic studies indicate that the Eurasian component is greater among the high castes, but that society was forged by Indo-Aryans, pre-Aryans, and later immigrants. 17 With each merger, the rights of ordinary women were jeopardized, but female divinities were exalted. RIG VEDIC RELIGION AND SOCIETY (1700–1000 BCE) The Rig Veda consists almost entirely of a hymnal of 1,028 metrical verses or mantras arranged in ten books (mandalas). Mandalas 2–8 comprise the nucleus; mandala 9 is addressed to Soma, god of the hallucegenic juice of the ephedra plant; 18 and mandalas 1 and 10 were composed last (ca. 1000 BCE). Among the 33 nature divinities were goddesses Aditi the primordial mother; Ushas (dawn); Prithvi (mother earth); Ratri (night); Aranyani (forest); Vak (speech); Saraswati (inspiration, the river); Virutri (guardian of cattle). The chief gods were Agni (fire); Indra (lightning and war); Soma; Dyaus-Pitr or Father Heaven; sun gods like Savitr, Surya, Aditya; Varuna (healer, dispenser of justice); and Vayu (wind).19 Male brahmans and some learned women (brahmavadinis) and female ritualists (hotris) superintended the sacrifices in which Agni served as the messenger from the supplicant to the gods.20 Men often prayed for earthly boons like children, health, longevity, or prosperity, or mercy from transgressions like ‘‘wine, anger, dice, and carelessness’’ (RV 7.86.6). The giver of mercy was father Varuna who maintained Rta, the cosmic-moral order that was later equated with moral laws, religion, and justice (dharma). The mantras were carefully enunciated and rendered, as an improper ritual would result in moral/material disorder (anrta/adharma). Few female supplicants asked for mercy for sins, but prayed for children, as motherhood was highly valued in this small community. Women also jointly initiated sacrifices with their husbands, since their prayers as a ‘‘moral wedded couple’’ (dharma pati-patni) were highly esteemed. Rig Vedic Goddesses Although the deities are nebulous in their anthropomorphism, their sexuality and gender are explicitly expressed in the hymns. Goddesses are described as chaste matrons and wives who were often lauded as the cow, much cherished by Indo-Aryans for its dairy products, beef, leather, and use as currency. Goddess Ushas is described as ‘‘a dancing girl’’ who ‘‘puts on bright ornaments’’ and ‘‘uncovers her breast as a cow reveals her swollen udder’’ (RV 1.92.1–18). Mother Earth Prithvi is ‘‘the broad one’’ who bears life and sustains all things (5.84; 1.185). Male divine masculinity is also explicit. Rudra is the ‘‘brown and white bull,’’ ‘‘mighty,’’ ‘‘brown-hued,’’ ‘‘fair lipped’’ (2.19.5–9), wielding the lightning bolt, driving a steed,

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fertilizing the earth. Indra the ‘‘thunderbolt wielder’’ who slew demon Vrta (1.32) is the virile impetuous hero, seducer of women, ‘‘the mighty bull’’ whose seven reins caused the seven Indus rivers to flow (2.12.12). Vedic women expressed sexual desire candidly. Some conversational hymns between divine, semidivine, and ordinary women and men describe desire and rejection. Nymph Urvashi rejects her lover Pururavas for sex and taunts him for having forcibly ‘‘pierced’’ her with his ‘‘rod three times a day’’ (RV 10.95.1–18). Another dialogic hymn describes the transformation of spinster Apala into a desirable woman (RV 8.91.1–7). In a third hymn, Lopamudra desires sex and progeny from her husband the sage Agastya who wishes to be a hermit seeking enlightenment. The poet comments that ‘‘the foolish woman sucks dry the panting wise man,’’ but that Agastya is successful in ‘‘both ways,’’ namely as husband and ascetic (1.179).21 Western scholars have emphasized that the Rig Vedic hymns are largely to male deities and that ‘‘Goddesses play an insignificant part in the Rigveda.’’22 A recent woman scholar describes it as ‘‘a book by men about male concerns in a world dominated by men.’’23 While the accusation is partly justified, since male bards appear to have loved gods Indra, Varuna, Agni, and Savitr, they also highly esteemed matronly goddesses like Ushas and Aditi. Moreover, surely the chief measure of a deity’s importance cannot be the numbers of hymns in his/her name. Even among the gods, there was a struggle for power between father confessor Varuna (12 hymns), who was the arbiter of justice through Rta, and virile Indra the seducer of women who received 250 hymns, one fourth the total number. Indra’s heroic victory is evident in RV VII.83, but it was dramatically played out for the populace who probably preferred tales of his lightning defeat of demon Vrta over staid stories about father confessors. Other popular gods include Soma who represented a narcotic drink (an entire mandala of 120 verses); Agni, the great fire messenger (200); the exciting storm gods Maruts (33 hymns); the Aswins, twin horsemen of the sunrise (50 hymns) chiefly because of their equine nature. Yet, the sunworshiping Indo-Aryans gave their chief solar deity Surya a mere 10 hymns; and Savitr whose name means ‘‘enlightenment’’ and whose sacred Gayatri Mantra (RV 3.62.10) is still chanted daily got just 11 hymns.24 A society that venerated motherhood created maternal goddesses. While Aditi did not receive a single hymn entirely to herself, she was praised as mother of all the gods and humans through her womb, the unlimited Source, and Eternity. She is identified with Mother Earth Prithvi in 6 hymns (e.g., 1.185; 6.49.2), one of which praises her as ‘‘matchless, beneficent, illustrious, and honored.’’25 Aditi is also identified with Ushas or Dawn whose 20 hymns are the most received by a goddess (e.g., 1.113.19). Aditi has no male consort, as she is the primal mother (2.27) and cosmic cause (9.74.5). 26 A later hymn (RV 10.92) describes primal Aditi crouching (Aditi Uttanapad) to give birth to the sun Martanda and seven other

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gods, and how she gave birth to Daksha, the first male being. 27 A poet mystically speaks of Aditi and of ‘‘Our kinship in the Mother’s womb’’ (RV 8.72.8).28 Another hymn is ostensibly to Aditi’s sons, the 12 sun gods Adityas, but largely beseeches her thus (RV 8.18.4–7): Aditi, guard our herd by day, Aditi, free from guile guard by night Aditi, ever strengthening, save us from grief! And in the day our hymn is this: May Aditi come nigh to help with loving kindness, Bring us weal and chase our foes.29

In Aditi one detects the seed of later monism in the Upanishads (700–300 BCE) as the apex of ancient Indian thought. One Indian scholar calls Aditi the unborn maternal principle (RV 10.119.4), ‘‘father, mother, child, begetting.’’30 Yet strangely, Westerners have ignored the possibility that Aditi was the first Vedic glimmer of a single feminine principle in the universe. The Upanishads later stated categorically that behind myriad deities lay a single, cosmic, neuter, eternal principle (Brahman) who was identical to the individual essence in all things (Atman). The seers cautioned that the veil of sensory perceptions prevented our understanding of this Unity as Reality. The seeker was asked to sacrifice the senses in the razor’s path of ascetic yogic meditation. The reward was enlightenment and freedom (moksha) from the cycle of birth and death (karma-samsara). It is strange that some scholars have failed to detect the incipient monism of a hymn (RV 10.129), which lauds Aditi as heaven and sky, mother, father, son, all deities, and human society in the past and future.31 If virile gods inspired hero-worship, goddesses were revered as embracing and honorable, chaste matrons and blessed daughters. While few goddesses received entire hymns except for Ushas, the hymns were reverential and potent. A single hymn is accorded to Mother Earth Prithvi (RV 5.84), although she is praised jointly with her spouse Dyaus (Father Heaven) in six hymns. Ushas’s sister Ratri (Night) has one glowing mantra (RV 10.127) about night’s power to ward off evil and bring rest, and it is still chanted at Hindu funerals. Forest Aranyani has a single, but evocative hymn about wooded mysteries (RV 10.146) that may have lured later ascetic seers. The hymns to goddesses are few, but their functions were so important that one cannot dismiss them as insignificant to the Indo-Aryans. Clearly, we need to read between the lines of these hymns, and not just count the lines. For example, although men composed and chanted most of the hymns, inspiration and speech were goddesses. This intriguing fact points to the presence of women bards and ritual chanters. Although goddess Saraswati is as yet a nebulous divinity equated with the river and without a single Rig Vedic hymn addressed solely to her, in several hymns the bards ask her

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to sit beside them as a witness to the fire sacrifice. One mantra vividly praises Saraswati, Ila (guardian of cattle), and Mahi (great goddess) equated with Vak (speech and learning) as ‘‘three Goddesses who bring delight,’’ and exhorts them to ‘‘be seated, peaceful on the grass’’ (RV 3.13.9) beside his altar.32 Ila protected their cattle from death and disease, a matter of importance to cattle herders. Similarly, Virutri vigorously guarded their flocks, suggesting that shyness and docility were not Vedic feminine ideals. Matrons were powerful, as seen in this verse ostensibly to wind god Vayu, but directly honoring a merged vision of Saraswati–Vak. The poet acknowledged their inspiration and asked them to accept a rite that would restore the moral order Rta: Wealthy in spoil, enriched with hymns, May bright Saraswati desire with eager love, our sacrifice Inciter of pleasant songs, inspirer of all gracious thought, Saraswati accept our rite! Saraswati, the mighty flood—she with her light illuminates She brightens every pious thought. RV 1.3.10–1233

This honor is especially due to Vak, the spirit behind sacred utterances who evolved into an aspect of Devi, the Hindu Great Goddess. Vak proclaims her grandeur in the Rig Vedic hymn, Vak Ambarni or Devi Sukta (RV 10.125), whose eight mantras are chanted by Hindus. The use of the first person singular has led some scholars to surmise that the author was a woman. The goddess proclaims that she supports the Vedic gods Varuna, Indra, Soma, and Mitra (verses 1–2), and draws mighty Rudra’s bow to kill the enemies of the sacred (6). She alone gives men wealth if they offer sacrifices (2); she makes both brahman and sage powerful (5). She calls herself ‘‘queen’’ of all, wise and worthy of reverence (3), and declares that he ‘‘who eats food: sees, breathes, hears the spoken word does so through me’’ (4). Her origin lay in the waters and ocean; she gives birth to the father on the summit of the world (7), perhaps in a reference to the Himalayas. Her breath is the wind (8), and the world originated through her sound/sacred speech. This last idea is remarkable, as it became a central Hindu doctrine that creation was accompanied by the primal sound, Om.34 Vak Ambarni Sukta is revered as one of the most powerful chants. Mortal Women in the Rig Veda Education A significant Vedic legacy was its emphasis on knowledge as salvation, an ideal that most Indians accept implicitly, regardless of religious affiliation. Since knowledge was empowerment, the brahman priest was venerated even

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in poverty, and the literate male kshatriya ruler, brahman minister, vaishya banker enjoyed mundane authority. Women have struggled for equal access to these higher circles of power. At first, upper-caste women enjoyed social advantages. They were invested with the sacred thread in the upanayana rite, which gave them the authority (adhikara) to study the Vedas and to perform large public sacrifices (srauta). Indian tradition attributes certain Rig Vedic mantras to two female seers, Apala (RV 8.91) and Ghosha (RV 10.40). Using the evidence of an early Sanskrit commentary, one Indian scholar also argued that the Rig Veda contains 20 feminine verses (e.g., RV 1.179; 5.28; 8.91; 9.81; 10.39–40), including two conversation hymns by Lopamudra (1.179) and Vishvavara (5.28).35 Some Western feminists question this, arguing that as women could not directly invoke the gods, the mantra hymns attributed to Apala and Ghosha were likely to be male compositions. 36 A third school argues that there is ample evidence that gifted women and shudras were initiated in the Vedas, and therefore, they too could have authored some mantras. The Vedas mention women priestly invokers (hotris) of the gods at sacrifices, although there were mostly male invokers (hotr), chanters (udgatr), and ritualists (adhvaryu). Ordinary women also joined their husbands in some public rituals, the woman being the female sacrificer (yajamani), the man being the principal sacrificer (yajamana). When the couple formally donated through a ritual, it was imperative for them to recite mantras together. When undertaking a sacrifice requesting children even today, married couples recite this important Rig Vedic fertility hymn together (RV 10.183). The wife begins the invocation with praise for her generous, virtuous husband; he then describes her virtue and desire for motherhood; finally, the priest likens the earth’s fertility to her latent maternal capacity and prays for the couple.37 While women’s ritual roles were certainly secondary in this patriarchal society, women were crucial for rituals for family longevity and community survival. For over a century, scholars have analyzed the Rig Veda to understand its norms on gender and caste, and there is a consensus that women’s early religious and social rights had largely eroded by 200 BCE. Vedic women certainly initiated public rites, as well as domestic life cycle rites at birth, marriage, death; in the annual homage to patrilineal ancestors; and when making gifts.38 The first grammarian Panini (fifth century BCE) noted the presence of various learned women whose upanayana marked them as ‘‘twice born’’ (dvijas) in their own right. The most eminent were ascetic female sages (rishikas), like male sages (rishis).39 Others were women scholars (brahmavadini), teachers (acharya), and preceptors (upadhyaya), who studied the Vedas in depth and lit the sacrificial fires. They lived with their families, but sustained themselves through alms or fees from students. Less scholarly were the sadhyovahas who received the upanayana, but did not pursue further Vedic studies.

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Still others were the learned wives of male teachers or preceptors (acharyani or upadhyayani).40 The Atharva Veda (AV 11.5.18) advised parents to educate their virgin daughters before marriage.41 It is remarkable that some women conducted certain public sacrifices after 1000 BCE in an era marked by elite-caste men’s mundane ambitions. Kshatriya kings fought over territory and dominated local non-Aryans; brahmans consecrated dynasties with ritual fanfare and rose to power as ministers; wealthy vaishya bankers lent money to kings. Clearly, Vedic society had initially valued learned women, but with the induction of potentially gifted non-Aryans, elite men faced competition from both women and the lower castes. By denying education to these subordinate groups, the pattern of control and marginalization was in place by 200 BCE. Sexuality and Marriage Hymns attributed to Apala (RV 8.91) and Ghosha (RV 10.40) concern female sexuality. Sickly Apala is transformed into a beautiful woman after intercourse with Indra; Ghosha is fulfilled through marriage. Other conversational hymns are candid in their dislike of unsolicited heterosexual advances by either men or women. In a conversation between the primal siblings Yama and Yami, Yama rejects his sister’s sexual invitation to procreate the world, on the grounds that incest was immoral (RV 10.10.11–12).42 Another legend shows that Indo-Aryans decried marital rape. The beautiful nymph Urvashi angrily rejects unfaithful Pururavas by saying: ‘‘Indeed, you pierced me with your rod three times a day, and filled me even when I had no desire.’’ In a third hymn, Lopamudra wants children, but her husband Agastya seeks spiritual fulfillment as a hermit. Here, the woman entices, and the man rejects sex. Male Gaze, Female Bodies? One scholar suggests that the male authors saw women like Lopamudra as lustful and earthy, whereas men’s aspirations were spiritual. While this is true in some texts, not all Rig Vedic poems portray women as sirens and men as noble ascetics. Rather, both men and women pursue partners and are rejected. Descriptions of women do stem from the male gaze, as the Vedic poets were largely men. However, these scriptures do not generally demean women as objects created for male enjoyment, as in later misogynist Indian works. It is also misleading to read archaic scriptures too literally or out of the Indian social context. Heroines and heroes in ancient Indian literature were commonly described as subhaga (having physical beauty). However, some scholars apply modern values of sexism to this archaic society by focusing on the Vedic descriptions of nymph Urvashi and others. Moreover, Indian cultures viewed a woman’s outward beauty (subhaga) as a reflection

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of her inner auspiciousness/good fortune (subhagya) based on sexual maturity and readiness for motherhood. Even today, elders bless young women with the boon of subhagya, but never with subhaga.43 This early sexual candor may have stemmed from the small community’s need to multiply. The Indo-Aryan legacy has been that life is arid without sexual fulfillment and offspring, especially sons. Marriage was a central goal, as seen in the many Vedic verses on its importance for the community. It was the parents’ duty to find spouses for their daughters and sons. Monogamy was largely the rule, but polygamy was also practiced by the wealthy. Polyandry and incest were censured, but some verses indicate incest among siblings. In the Rig Vedic era, marriages were conducted for sexually mature couples, but virginity was highly prized. However, in later Indian history, the age of marriage for girls became lower and closer to her puberty. The Vedic literature describes young couples who pined from their sexual separation. Marriage rituals involved the father’s ‘‘gift of the virgin’’ (kanya daan) to the bridegroom, indicating that the bride was mature enough to have intercourse and that she would live in her husband’s home. A later Vedic text advises the couple to wait four days before consummation, in order for each to understand the other.44 While there were single women, and unmarried women who grew old in their parental homes, later Rig Vedic verses indicate that society believed in marriage as essential for women, even those eager to pursue study and more public roles. One verse advises the father of an intelligent daughter to find her a husband equal in learning (RV 3.55.16). The ‘‘marriage hymn’’ (RV 10.85) urges an intelligent new bride to remain involved in public affairs and to address the village assembly boldly ‘‘as a commander’’ (10.85.26).45 Marriage was a social sacrament whose duties were holy rites (10.85.24). The groom took a vow to be as steady as the North Star, and bride vowed to be as chaste as the star Arundhati, named for the virtuous wife of a sage. Women handled their parents’ property in the absence of sons, even in this patrilineal system. Deaths were common in the clashes among Indo-Aryans and non-Aryans, pastoralists and small farmers over cattle and grazing rights. Courageous kshatriya chiefs (rajas) and warriors were lauded, and widows were urged to remarry in hymns that reflect awe over women’s reproductive power, which also ensured the community’s survival. Thus, a funeral hymn (RV 10.18) asks a young widow who grieved on her husband’s corpse to arise and resume a normal life, perhaps even remarry. This display of spousal grief probably became a symbolic act by widows at their husbands’ funerals. However, Rig Vedic Aryans did not compel a widow to immolate herself on her husband’s pyre as a true wife (sati), a custom that developed a millennium later in the fifth century CE . The later Atharva Veda (AV 10.5.27–28) indicates that around 500 BCE, Sanskritic society practiced levirate marriage (niyoga) in which a widow married her deceased husband’s

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brother who adopted her children.46 However, the growing adulation of wives who remained forever chaste (pativrata) led to a later stigma on widows, who were prevented from remarrying in the classical era. The Rig Veda describes women and men as farmers near the Indus and the Yamuna. In these early centuries when labor was in short supply, they sowed, reaped, and ground crops like corn and barley (yava). They plucked and pressed the soma plant for the ritual drink; spun, dyed, and embroidered cloth. Some women fashioned arrows, others served as domestic labor; some were singers and chanters. After 1000 BCE, large-scale conquests of preAryans provided their society with agricultural workers. This reduced the pressure on Indo-Aryan women to labor on farms, but the focus shifted to domesticity and reproduction, especially among the high castes. Frequent textual references to procreation indicate anxiety over maintaining IndoAryan blood lines, which was also threatened when high-caste men pursued ascetic goals. Thus, Agastya finally succumbed to Lopamudra’s pleas, before leaving for the forest. The filial duty to perform funeral rites for parents was also a cultural deterrent to men who wished to become hermits in the later Vedic centuries.

LATER VEDIC ERA: BRAHMANAS AND UPANISHADS Sanskritization, Varna, and Women In India’s second major urbanization, kshatriya leaders and warriors first expanded their base to Hastinapura (1000 BCE) on the Yamuna river near Delhi, and then colonized the Ganges plains, facilitated by the discovery of iron. Hastinapura and the Ganges towns of Kaushambi, Varanasi, and Shravasti (800 BCE) contain evidence of Painted Grey Ware (PGW) pottery associated with a chalcolithic culture.47 A few centuries later, Black Polished Ware (BPW) fired during the smelting of iron at Ganges delta sites indicate that Aryan society had breached the frontier to the region rich in iron ore, which is also found south near the river Krishna. Trade with south India and Sri Lanka expanded, especially after the third century BCE. While Sanskrit norms spread through Aryan hegemony, Dravidian and tribal cultural and religious ideas were woven seamlessly into an evolving Sanskritic civilization. Some pre-Aryan ideas included yoga, karma, and possibly puja (flower offerings to a deity), and local terms like the Munda word for plow (langala). 48 Although caste became increasingly fixed at birth, sexual mingling was common, as evident in the Sanskrit epics Mahabharata (MHB) and Ramayana (RMY). The MHB describes various high-ranking shudras as sutas, men of intercaste marriages and morganatic relationships such as the author Vyasa, the royal advisor Vidura whose brothers were kings, valiant Karna whose brothers were princes. 49 Prolonged relations among Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, and tribal cultures

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resulted in similar physical features among Indians over time. This was in marked contrast to the Rig Veda’s initial disparagement of pre-Aryan dark skin and blunt features, and the local worship of Shiva as lingam. The seers (rishis) and bards who completed the Sama, Yajur, Atharva Vedas, with Brahmana liturgies, Aranyakas, and the Upanishads, were often high caste, but gifted shudras were also inducted as brahmans. This often meant that women with mixed ethnic offspring were cultural mediators over the millennia. The Brahmanas contain coronation and other public rituals conducted by brahman priests for kshatriya kings after conquests. The sacrificial conflagrations depleted the forests and cleared the land for Indo-Aryan settlement. They also uprooted forest dwellers who became shudra serfs or fled to sparsely populated hills. As territorial expansion required more priests, shudras, like wheelwrights, and Adivasi hunters (nishadas) were invested with the sacred thread during upanayana, according to the Mahabharata (4.60.36) and two sutra texts (AS 1.19.9; KS 12.11.11). As the ‘‘twice-born’’ upper castes, they were now entitled to chant the Vedas.50 However, some concessions to gifted non-Aryans probably strengthened conservative control over caste women, since elite castes feared miscegenation. This was most likely when an expanding economy brought communities together and new jatis emerged.51 This is also seen in Tamil regions where brahmans ventured ahead in small Sanskritizing vanguards but, fearing sexual contact with locals, became strict in their patriarchal rules. Scholar Kamil Zvelebil thus wisely cautions against taking ‘‘a rigid dichotomic view’’ that equates language with race or culture, as these are interactive factors in history.52 Over time, Sanskritic culture became identified less with ideas of racial purity and more with religious and cultural excellence. Recent studies inform us of genetic variations within even apparently cohesive, regional groups, so that what appear as outward signifiers of ‘‘race’’ often mask the inner evidence of genetic mingling.53 However, elite-caste women bore the brunt of censure for relations with non-Aryans. Hybrid society was marked by some beneficial cultural innovations that empowered women, while other syncretic norms constrained women. Thus, Sanskrit and Dravidian-Tamil praise for chaste women became a meeting point for ideas of the divine feminine and women’s latent energies. Pre-Aryan ideas on female chastity expanded Aryan paradigms of the chaste wife (pativrata) as semidivine. However, pre-Aryan taboos on menstruation and the spilling of blood seeped into Brahmana liturgies that restricted women’s public ritual spaces. Non-Aryans who adopted Sanskrit texts also accepted its strictures against widow remarriage. Non-Aryan kings validated their authority through Brahmana rites and incidentally shed older habits of matrilineal succession. Local mystics adopted the grand ideals of the Upanishads and also its ideas of ascetic restraint that frowned upon women as potential sexual threats. This may explain why the Rig Veda

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frankly discussed female sexuality and the later epics MHB and RMY (1000–300 BCE) exalted chaste women as akin to goddesses. Patriarchs were awed by Dravidian notions of unleashed feminine power, especially when the woman was unjustly widowed. Women in the Brahmanas and Upanishads The Brahmanas represented patriarchal triumph, but this was counterbalanced by the social equity of Upanishadic seers. Rig Vedic sacrificial hymns came to be supported by complex liturgies like the Aitareya and Satapatha Brahmanas, which show the cementing of patriarchy under powerful kings and priests. Public fire rituals (srauta) included coronation (rajasuya), the horse sacrifice (asvamedha), and others to purify conquered territories. In this climate of military expansion, women were safeguarded from rape within the household, through paradigms of female honor and chastity. Upper-caste women now played a noticeably minor role in public rites. Meanwhile, their work on farms became redundant after the conquest of the Ganges region, since conquered non-Aryans were inducted into the caste system as menials. Some Brahmanas highlight women’s inferiority, as seen in these lines: ‘‘Woman, the shudra, the dog, and the crow are something wrong’’ (SB 14.1.1).54 Such extreme misogyny was balanced by the conviction that nature and society operated through male and female forces. This led the authors to weave cosmic sexual imagery into mundane ritual acts, but their language subordinated women. This is seen in the Satapatha Brahmana, which compares the sizzling of the sacred fire through libations of melted butter (ghee) to thunderbolt strikes and the sexual taming of women: And just in the same way, he beats and weakens now the women with thunderbolt, with the ghee; and thus beatened and weakened, they have no claim to their own body or to a heir. SB 4.2.1355 In a mellower verse, another author accepted that women were ‘‘one half’’ of men, but women alone gave men immortality through progeny: When he was about to climb up, he addresses his wife with the following words: ‘‘Wife, we will climb up to the heaven.’’ The reason for his addressing his wife thus is as follows—She, the wife, that is indeed his own half; therefore as long as he has no wife, he does not procreate himself. SB 5.2.1.1056 Other secondary texts like the Grihya Sutras (ca. 800–300 BCE) contain household liturgies that highlight women as central to family rituals during birth, confirmation, marriage, pregnancy, death. The brahmans had

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succeeded in subordinating women’s religious authority (adhikara), but women kept a hold over their vestigial rights over authority within the household. Domestic pressures upon upper-caste women must have been reduced by their active role in these rites. The Grihya Sutras also describe four watershed life stages. These were of the ritually initiated celibate student (male brahmacharin/female brahmacharini) of the Vedas; the householder (grihasthin/grihasthini); the middle aged forest contemplative (vanaprasthin/vanaprasthini); and the yogic recluse (sanyasin/sanyasini). Women participated in all four stages. The last two promoted a powerful movement by sages who renounced the world affirming doctrines of the Brahmanas. Their discoveries are located in the Aranyakas and Upanishads (700–300 BCE). Upanishads: Spiritualism and Yogic Ideals Maitreyi said, ‘‘If the wealth of this whole earth is mine, honorable sir, will it make me immortal?’’ ‘‘No,’’ said Yajnavalkya, ‘‘Your life will be exactly that of those endowed with materials, but there is no hope of immortality through wealth.’’ Maitreyi replied, ‘‘What will I do with that which does not make me immortal? Tell me, honorable sir, that which you know to be the only (way to immortality).’’ Yajnavalkya said, ‘‘Ah, beloved, you have always been dear to me, and now you have said what is dear to me. Come, sit down, and I will explain it to you, but concentrate.’’ Brihad Aranyaka Upanishad 2.4.2–4 and 4.5.3–557 Tradition considers 12 Upanishads to be major, and one has liturgical importance in life rituals, but there are reputed to be 108 texts in all. The sages broke free of the Vedic gods and brahmanical rites as the lesser path, and instead advocated sacrifice of the senses and yogic meditation. Their central doctrine was that behind all manifest divinities lay a neuter, transcendental Cosmic Being (Brahman) whom they identified with the inner essence (Atman) in all beings. This single Truth is captured in the phrase Tat tvam asi (That thou art), as taught by a sage to his student (CU 6.8–6.16).58 Despite the rejection of Vedic rituals, their insights led to the incorporation of the Upanishads into the Vedas as their final section (Vedanta). The texts state that social distinctions like gender and caste cloud knowledge of Brahman. The sages of many castes included men (rishis) and women (rishikas) like Maitreyi and Gargi. Their goal was spiritual enlightenment which brought freedom (moksha) from the cycle of births and deaths (karma-samsara). Other heterodox dissenters rejected Vedic religion and caste. The most notable were the agnostics Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha (563–486 BCE) and the Jaina sage Vardhamana Mahavira (540–468 BCE) whose emphasis

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on ethical conduct (dharma) attracted nuns and monks. Others were the atheist Ajivikas led by Gosala Maskariputra, the materialist Lokayatas led by Carvaka, and the nihilists by Ajita Kesakambalin. 59 Although male ascetics often felt that women were obstacles to their vow of abstinence, persistent women managed to cross this barrier. In this climate of monastic experimentation, women carved out a female meditative space, and their challenges to patriarchal monopoly over spiritual matters are evident in the dialogues of Gargi and Maitreyi with Yajnavalkya in the Brihad Aranyaka Upanishad. Despite the spiritual insights of Upanishadic seers, male monasticism redefined stereotypes of women and their sexuality. First, the escape of ascetic men from family duties placed a great onus on women at home. This meant that the public activities of higher-caste women dwindled, while working women shouldered the burdens of labor both within and outside the home. Moreover, the renunciation of sexuality by aspirant yogis meant that women’s desires became suspect, even when they merely wished for children in accordance with Indo-Aryan patriarchal custom. Wives were necessary for progeny, but they were also perceived as nagging females obstructing men’s spiritual aspirations. Non-Vedic texts in this period often depicted seductive nymphs who tried to distract meditating sages; although only someone as wise as the Buddha could resist the wiles of the vixen Mara. The Mahabharata has a minor tale about the beautiful princess Shanta who seduced sage Rsyasringa (MHB 3.110–113). Despite sage Vishvamitra’s noble intentions in the Ramayana, his desire was kindled by the nymphs Menaka and Rambha (RMY 1.51–65). Sages frequently resided with their wives during the early phase of meditative life, until they were ready for the final spiritual journey. For example, in the Brihad Aranyaka Upanishad (BAU 2.4.1–14; repeated in 4.5.1–15), Yajnavalkya lived in the forest with two wives, Maitreyi and Katyayani, before his final renunciation. In a subplot in the Ramayana on desire, male yogis, and divine mercy, sage Gautama’s curse on his unfaithful wife Ahalya turned her into stone, until Rama’s healing touch restored her to life. However, no such forgiveness was meted to her errant lover, devious Indra, who was punished with the appearance of numerous vaginas all over his body (RMY 1.48–49).60 Interesting examples of female ascetic speculations appear in the Brihad Aranyaka Upanishad through three conversations initiated by women who wish to obtain supreme knowledge of Brahman. The first conversation is by Maitreyi with her husband sage Yajnavalkya, and this is elaborated later in a lengthier chapter (BAU 2.4.1–14; 4.5.1–15). Maitreyi asked Yajnavalkya to answer her questions about Brahman before departing as a hermit on his final spiritual quest. Delighted at her curiosity, the sage taught her with great tenderness. In the next discussion, a learned woman student Gargi, daughter of Vacaknu, asks Yajnavalkya a barrage of questions in a single, long-winded stanza. The sage answered at first, but tired by her mode of

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questioning, he retorted that if she persisted thus, her head would fall off (3.6.1). Some scholars have therefore quickly accused the sage of male chauvinism, but this is an erroneous and incomplete reading of the Upanishad. Yajnavalkya not only resumed his discussion with Gargi two chapters later (3.8.12), but he answered without condescension and in complete seriousness as she now probed more calmly and deeply into the mystery of Brahman. Yajnavalkya’s final reply reiterates that Brahman was neuter, devoid of all sexual and other qualifying characteristics, and Gargi was silenced by this invincible wisdom. This is the verse: Yajnavalkya: ‘‘Verily this Absolute, O Gargi, is never seen, but is the Seer; It is never heard, but is the Hearer; It is never thought, but is the Knower. There is no other seer than It, there is no other hearer than It, there is no other thinker than It, there is no other knower than It. This very Absolute, O Gargi, pervades the unmanifested ether.’’ Gargi: She said, ‘‘Venerable brahmanas, you should consider it enough if you can get off from him with a salutation. Certainly none of you can ever defeat him in expounding Brahman.’’ Then the daughter of Vacaknu kept quiet.61 A life of austere yogic contemplation in the quiet forest surroundings now became the highest ideal of the ancient Indians. While hermit life was regarded as necessary for the middle aged, the new social trend of philosophical retreat and speculation among young people was a serious disruption of family life. Several reasons probably inhibited most women from taking the path of asceticism until menopause. Women’s domestic dharma tied them firmly to the home as caretakers of the young and the aged, since virtuous acts as daughters, wives, mothers were considered essential for salvation. Moreover, Brahmana texts stipulated that women were ritually polluted during menstruation, pregnancy, and childbirth. These taboos probably also hindered women who showed an interest in an ascetic life of yogic meditation. Moreover, the belief that ascetics could not attain the worlds of the ancestors and gods and the social emphasis on male children to perform funeral rites for the parents indicate that women were expected to bear children regularly during their reproductive years. Few women could easily shelve social domestic duties (dharma) for personal fulfillment (moksha), and this made spiritual equality elusive at first. A woman’s greatest chance to lead a contemplative life lay in marrying a man who also aspired to be an ascetic, as she could then retreat with him into the forest. Women’s ascetic restrictions appear in the Upanishads (700–300 BCE), in secondary Sanskrit texts (smritis) like the epics, and in heterodox Buddhist and Jaina texts. Even the compassionate Buddha (563–483 BCE) initially objected to nuns in his order, though they were led by his wise mother Pajapati.

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Not until 70 BCE did the monks who compiled the Buddhist canon include the nuns’ hymns as the Therigatha into their scripture.62 At the end of the Vedic era, the new trend toward a devotional Hinduism merged popular folk beliefs into a Sanskritic framework based on the Vedas. The practices were sanctioned by the Bhagavad Gita (ca. 300 BCE), and they are also evident in the Mahanarayana Upanishad. This later Upanishad is liturgically important to Hindus, as it contains mantras to Rig Vedic goddesses Aditi (MNU 28), Indra (1.52), and Varuna (1.55–57), and also to Hindu deities like goddess Durga (2.2) and gods Vishnu (13.4) and Shiva (24).63 However, women’s authority to initiate public sacrifices was eroded, so that only male brahmans chanted Vedic hymns at weddings, funerals, and auspicious ceremonies. In a culture that prized sacred knowledge, the denial of Vedic learning subordinated women whose identity was largely defined by marriage and motherhood. However, Hindu and Buddhist women carved new ritual spaces within their domestic altars through devotional worship (bhakti-puja). This was an avenue that empowered women in a gendered Sanskritic society. NOTES 1. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, ed., A Sourcebook in Indian Philosophy (1953; repr., Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), 22–23. 2. J. P. Mallory, In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology and Myth, 3rd ed. (London: Thames and Hudson, 2001), 35–56; Wendy Doniger, Splitting the Difference: Gender and Myth in Ancient Greece and India (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1999). 3. T. Burrow, ‘‘The Early Aryans,’’ in A Cultural History of India, ed. A. L. Basham (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 20–28. Recent discoveries in Central Asia have disproved some of Burrow’s theories. 4. A. S. Altekar, The Position of Women in Hindu Civilization: From Prehistoric Times to the Present Day (1956; repr., Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1999), 200–201. 5. Michael Witzel, ‘‘Early Indian History: Linguistic and Textual Parameters,’’ in The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia: Language, Material Culture and Ethnicity, ed. George Edrosy (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1995), 98. 6. Rajesh Kocchhar, The Vedic People: Their History and Geography (Delhi: Orient Longman, 2000), 76–86, 118–36. 7. Thapar, Early India, 107–17. 8. G. L. Possehl and M. H. Raval, Harappan Civilization and Rojdi (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989); Chakrabarti, India, An Archaeological History, 157–60; B. B. Lal, ‘‘Kalibangan and Indus Civilization,’’ in Essays on Indian Protohistory, ed. D. P. Agrawal and D. K. Chakrabarti (Delhi: B. R. Publishing House, 1979), 65–97. 9. Anthony Arthur Macdonell, Hymns from the Rigveda, Heritage of India Series (1897; repr., New Delhi: Y.M.C.A. Publishing House, 1966), 90; Maurice Winternitz, A History of Indian Literature, trans. (from German) V. Srinivasa Sarma, vol. 1, 5th ed. (1907; repr., Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2003), 102. I have omitted the refrain, ‘‘Flow, Indus, flow for Indra’s sake.’’

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10. These are the Aitareya, Brihad Aranyaka, Chandogya, Isa, Katha, Kena, Kausitaki, Mandukya, Mundaka, Prasna, Svestasvatara, Taitirriya Upanishads, and the later Mahanarayana Upanishad which is considered minor due to its liturgical emphasis. 11. Swami Swahananda, ed., The Chandogya Upanishad (Sanskrit with English translation; Madras: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1980), 238. 12. Swami Sarvananda, ed., Aitareyopanishad (Sanskrit with English translation; Chennai: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 2001). 13. Ibid., 1–6. 14. Swahananda, Chandogya Upanishad, 276–81. 15. Hart, The Poems of the Ancient Tamil, 93–119. 16. Altekar, The Position of Women in Hindu Civilization, 72–79. 17. Partha Majumder, ‘‘Indian Caste Origins: Genomic Insights and Future Outlook,’’ Genome Research 11 (June 1, 2001): 931–32, http://genome.cshlp.org/ content/11/6/931.full. 18. Kocchhar, The Vedic People, 100–102. 19. Macdonell, Hymns from the Rigveda, 9; R. T. H. Griffith, trans., The Hymns of the Rig Veda (1892; repr., Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1973); Swami Ashudoshananda, ed., Vedic Mantras (Veda Mantrangal) in Tamil (Chennai: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 2003); T. V. Kapali Sastrikkal, ed., Rig Veda: Hymns to Agni (Rig Vedam: Agni Sutramkal) (Tamil and Sanskrit), 3rd ed. (Bangalore: Institute of Vedic Literature, 2001); Swami Amritananda, ed., Rg Vedic Sukta: Gayatri and Others, A Contemplative Study (Sanskrit with English translation; Chennai: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 2003); Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty, ed., The Rig Veda: An Anthology (New York: Penguin, 1981). 20. A. L. Basham, The Wonder that Was India (1954; repr., Delhi: Rupa, 2000), 137–88, 332–56; Rama Shankar Tripathi, History of Ancient India (1954; repr., Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1999), 49–51, 75–76; Altekar, The Position of Women in Hindu Civilization; Thapar, Early India; Burrow, ‘‘The Early Aryans,’’ 20–29. 21. O’Flaherty, The Rig Veda, 245–81. 22. Macdonell, Hymns from the Rigveda, 13. 23. O’Flaherty, The Rig Veda, 245. 24. The Gayatri Mantra states: ‘‘May we attain to the excellent glory of God Savitr that he may illuminate our thoughts (‘Om; tat savitr varainyam; bhargo devasya dhimahi; diyoyonap prachodayat’).’’ Ashudoshananda, Vedic Mantras, 162–70; Amritananda, Vedic Suktas, 1–37; Macdonell, Hymns from the Rigveda, 33. 25. Macdonell, Hymns from the Rigveda, 67–69. 26. Kinsley, Hindu Goddesses, 9; Kumkum Roy, ‘‘Vedic Cosmogonies: Conceiving/Controlling Creation,’’ in Tradition, Dissent and Ideology: Essays in Honour of Romila Thapar, ed. R. Chamapakalakshmi and S. Gopal (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996), 9–19. 27. O’Flaherty, The Rig Veda, 37–39. 28. Griffith, The Hymns of the Rig Veda, 451. 29. Ibid., 407–8. 30. Sarvananda, Aitareyopanishad, 17. 31. Radhakrishnan, A Sourcebook in Indian Philosophy, 22–23. 32. Macdonell, Hymns from the Rigveda, 8. 33. Ibid., 3.

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34. Ashudoshananda, Vedic Mantras, 162–70; Griffith, The Hymns of the Rig Veda, 450; Coburn, Devi Mahatmya, 255–56 (English translation); Kinsley, Hindu Goddesses, 11–13. 35. Altekar, The Position of Women in Hindu Civilization, 10. Altekar attempted to validate precolonial gender traditions, but he idealized Vedic society, and blamed later invasions for India’s ‘‘fall’’ into misogyny. This was a missionary influence on nationalist reformers. A Western feminist viewpoint is O’Flaherty, The Rig Veda, 256–67. 36. O’Flaherty, The Rig Veda, 245–46, 264, 266. 37. Griffith, The Hymns of the Rig Veda. 38. Stephanie Jamison, Sacrificed Wife/Sacrificer’s Wife: Women, Ritual, and Hospitality in Ancient India (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 45–47; Mary McGee, ‘‘Ritual Rights: Gender Implications of Adhikara,’’ in Jewels of Authority: Women and Textual Tradition in Hindu India, ed. Laurie L. Patton (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001), 32–50, vide, 41–45. Roy, ‘‘Vedic Cosmogonies,’’ 9–19. 39. Shakuntala Rao Sastri, Women in the Vedic Age (Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1969), 23–29, 117–22, 191. 40. Katherine K. Young, ‘‘Om, the Vedas, and the Status of Women with Special Reference to Srivaisnavism,’’ in Jewels of Authority, ed. Laurie L. Patton (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001), 84–121, 88 (115 n. 35). 41. Altekar, The Position of Women in Hindu Civilization, 9–10. I have translated the Sanskrit verse: ‘‘brahmacharyena kanyaan yuva vidante patim.’’ 42. O’Flaherty, The Rig Veda, 248. 43. Ibid., 247–81. 44. Altekar, The Position of Women in Hindu Civilization, 49–51. 45. Burton Stein, A History of India (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 55–56. 46. Altekar, The Position of Women in Hindu Civilization, 150–51. 47. Thapar, Early India, 114–17; D. N. Jha, Ancient India: In Historical Outline (Delhi: Manohar, 1997), 52–55. 48. Thapar, Early India, 92–93, 116. 49. Karve, Yuganta, 1–6, 37–162. 50. Apastamba Srautasutra (1.19.9) states that kshatriyas, vaishyas, and shudras lit the fire. Katyayana Srautasutra (12.11.11) states that a shudra wheelwright and tribal hunter were ritually purified to perform sacrifices. 51. Young, ‘‘Om, the Vedas, and the Status of Women,’’ 91 (vide, 84–121). Young connects women’s status to that of the shudras, but there was probably a reverse effect. 52. Zvelebil, The Smile of Murugan; and Zvelebil, Tamil Traditions on Subrahmanya-Murugan. 53. Chakrabarti, India, An Archaeological History, 29–40. 54. Winternitz, A History of Indian Literature, 190–91. 55. Ibid. 56. Ibid. 57. Ramakrishna Math, ed., The Brihad Aranyaka Upanishad (Madras: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 2000), 141–43, 384–86. The translation is mine of BAU 4.1: ‘‘Saa hovaaca Maitreyi, ‘Yunnu ma iyam, Bhagoh, sarvaa prithvi vittena purnaa syaat katham tenaamrita syamiti?’ ‘Neti,’ hovaca Yajnavalkya, ‘Jivitam thathava jivitam syat; amritatvasya tu nashasti vitteneti.’ ’’

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58. Swahananda, Chandogya Upanishad, 453–78. 59. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, Indian Philosophy, vol. 1 (1923; repr., New York: Macmillan Company, 1958), 274–85; Radhakrishnan, A Sourcebook in Indian Philosophy, 227–49; Basham, The Wonder that Was India, 294, 297. 60. Swami Venkatesananda, trans., The Concise Ramayana of Valmiki (Albany: State University of New York, 1988), 28–29. 61. Ramakrishna Math, The Brihad Aranyaka Upanishad, 241–53. 62. Susan Murcott, The First Buddhist Women: Translations and Commentary on the Therigatha (Berkeley: Parallax Press, 1991), 13–29; Susie Tharu and K. Lalitha, Women Writing in India, 600 BC to the Present, vol. 1 (New York: Feminist Press, 1991), 65–69. 63. Swami Vimlananda, ed., Mahanarayanopanishad (Mylapore: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1957), 71–93, 159, 179–80, 192–94.

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3 MOTHERS AND WIVES IN THE SMRITI TEXTS

Sita immediately replied: ‘‘Surely, I shall abide by your advice, mother. A vina without a string is no vina, a cart without wheel is no cart, and a woman without husband even if she has a hundred children has no happiness here. For her father, brother and son give only a little happiness to a woman; but the husband gives her illimitable happiness. How then will she not worship him?’’ Ramayana 2.39–401 SMRITI TEXTS (1000 BCE–600 CE) A common theme in the twentieth-century Indian nationalism was that of a pristine Golden Age of Hindu-Buddhist-Jaina civilization prior to Islam’s arrival in the seventh century CE. Its unique features included a Sanskritic religious framework, shared gender norms, aesthetic models of art and literature, patterns of kingship, and a premodern economy based on occupational castes. However, the theory of an unbroken indigenous tradition is problematic, since culture is rarely static in history, and as India has been a crucible for the complex mergers of immigrant and local groups. Many traditions had their genesis in pre-Aryan or Vedic culture, but India’s cultural and ethnic parameters largely crystallized in a ‘‘classical’’ era (200 BCE–600 CE) of benevolent rulers and extensive immigration. Gender norms were further modified through interactions with Muslims in later centuries and reinvented in the colonial era. This study examines this millennium through the grid of two phases based on a profusion of secondary or ‘‘remembered’’ texts (smritis) whose elite male authors enunciated Indian paradigms of femininity. Although less sacrosanct than the Vedas, the smritis were profoundly influential as they were available to all castes. The first phase was commensurate with the later Vedic era (1000–300 BCE ). The chief smritis of this period were the

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Ramayana and Mahabharata; the Bhagavad Gita (Divine Song) interpolated into the Mahabharata (ca. 300 BCE); and liturgical sutras (ca. 800–300 BCE) such as Srauta Sutras for public rituals like coronations and Grihya Sutras for domestic life cycle rites (samskaras). They reveal that by 400 BCE, few women could study the Vedas or initiate public rites. The second or classical phase was notable for Hindu smritis. Rules on female inheritance were stipulated in law codes (dharma shastras), such as the Artha Shastra or Science of Wealth/Polity (300 BCE–300 CE), and the Manu Smriti (100 BCE –200 CE ). The Puranas (200 BCE –1000 CE ) contain Hindu legends of the goddess Devi and the gods Vishnu and Shiva, and the Agamas contain prayers for their iconic worship. The aesthetics of feminine and masculine representation were delineated in the Shilpa Shastras on sculpture and Natya Shastra on dance, music, and drama (100 BCE–100 CE).2 Non-Hindu texts include the Buddhist and Jaina canons, also composed by men, with the single exception of the Therigatha, an anthology by Buddhist nuns (see next chapter). Despite theological differences, Hindu, Buddhist, and Jaina male authors shared Sanskritic assumptions about women’s dharma, sexuality, and beauty. If there were women composers, their names are no longer known, partly as it was customary to give credit to the teacher (guru), but also as their names may have been erased. Historical Context By 500 BCE , Ganges settlements thrived due to flood waters, which ensured multiple harvests of wet rice and other staples. Agriculture expanded with canal irrigation, the iron plow, and the planting of mango and other fruit trees. The people raised cattle, sheep, goats, pigs. The use of non-Aryan serfs to clear forests and till virgin soil reduced dependency on caste women’s labor, and the smritis increasingly exalted female domesticity, chastity, motherhood, and patrilineal descent. 3 Kashi, Kaushambi, Vaishali, and Pataliputra developed from strategic river and overland trade routes that spread into the Deccan, the south, and Sri Lanka. Prosperous vaishya merchants sold rice, barley, millets, wheat, sugarcane; while shudra and vaishya artisans crafted goods of iron, copper, bronze, gold, silver, wood, ivory, and precious stones. Their trade enriched north India’s 16 monarchies and oligarchies (mahajanapadas).4 Meanwhile, brahmans penetrated Dravidian-Tamil regions with Sanskritic norms, and local rulers adopted kshatriya titles. Polygamy promoted sexual mingling across ethnic and caste lines.5 After 500 BCE, India’s porous borders invited peaceful settlers and invaders. Persians collected tribute from northwestern India (506 BCE), and in 326 BCE , Alexander led his Macedonian-Greeks into Punjab. India’s Mauryan rulers (324–180 BCE) protected their vast empire, but its decline precipitated invasions by Persians and Graeco-Bactrians, followed by

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Shakas and Kushanas from Central Asia (200 BCE–200 CE ). Meanwhile, knowledge of the monsoons brought diverse seafarers who cohabited with local women. Although the smritis frowned on the women and such relationships, fresh gene pools seeded Indian society. LATER VEDIC ERA SMRITIS (CA. 1000–300 BCE) Epic, Women, and Caste Disillusioned by transient royal ambitions and wealth, the sages of the Upanishads (700–300 BCE) retreated into the forests to reflect on a immutable reality. The era also witnessed the composition of secondary Vedic liturgies (sutras), the Sanskrit epics Ramayana and Mahabharata, and the scriptural Bhagavad Gita.6 The Ramayana is attributed to the aboriginal hunter poet Valmiki, and its more cohesive narrative is set in the eastern Ganges region. The Mahabharata is the larger epic with 100,000 verses, and the main narrative is the dynastic struggle for Hastinapura near modern Delhi. The author is the mythical sage Vyasa, son of a fisherwoman and a brahman sage, but its multiple legends indicate it had many authors. The epics reveal the extensive mergers of Aryan and non-Aryan societies. The theme of the struggle between dharma and evil is enacted in the Ramayana and Mahabharata with examples of both heroic and frail women. They contain some archaic kshatriya legends of brave and virtuous women, core narratives of resilient women, and later misogynist verses from the classical era. As smritis, the epics were transmitted by both learned and ordinary folk, including women and shudras who were often denied access to the Vedas.7 Thus, elegant Sanskrit literature was enriched by a vibrant oral tradition in which women took an active part. The epics were regarded as Hindu scriptures ca. 300 BCE, when Rama and Krishna became venerated as incarnations of Vishnu. The later Puranas describe Vishnu’s evolution from a minor Rig Vedic sun god (RV 1.54.1–6) into the Creator-Preserver who takes ten incarnations (avatars) to reestablish justice/law/morality (dharma). The epics have been sung as ballads, rewritten in vernacular languages, enacted in plays, sculpted, and painted.8 There are regional language versions of these epics by Hindus, Jainas, and Buddhists in India and Southeast Asia, including the one narrated by Muslims in Indonesia. 9 The versions by Indian women include the oral Sitayanas sung by Telugu brahmin and non-brahman women and the Telugu Molla Ramayanam by poet Atukuri Molla (sixteenth century CE).10 Regional accounts reveal local contemporary culture, as seen in two masterpieces by male poets. These were Kampan’s Tamil Iramavataram (ninth century CE) and Tulsidas’s Ramcharitramanas in Hindi (sixteenth century CE). Kampan’s highly lyrical Iramavataram emphasizes Dravidian-Tamil belief that

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women’s chastity (karppu) empowered everyone. Thus, when accosted by the demon Ravana, Sita retorted that her karppu would triumph over his sinful lust.11 Although upper-caste women were blamed for diluting Aryan purity, widespread sexual mergers across caste are evident in the Mahabharata, some of whose kshatriya princes had non-Aryan shudra (or suta) mothers.12 King Santanu married Satyavati, a fisherman’s daughter whose son from an earlier liaison with a brahman sage was Krishna Dwaipayana Vyasa, the revered author of the epic. Vidura, uncle and wise advisor to the blind king Dhritirashtra, was the son of a kshatriya prince and a shudra maid. As the prescient suta Sanjaya could see distant events, he became the eyes through which Dhritirashtra visualized the war. Brilliant Karna’s father was the sun god Surya, and his mother was queen Kunti, making him a kshatriya brother to the Pandava princes. Yet, he was taunted for being raised by a shudra charioteer. Varna attitudes changed as some brahmans became affluent royal advisors, kings took loans from vaishya bankers, and the state depended on revenues from shudra farmers and artisans. Aims, Life Stages, and Gender Roles The smritis enunciated broad principles that came to govern many Indians. Foremost was a belief in the four virtuous goals of man (purushartha), obviously with man as the normative index, but also applying to women. The goals were first morality/duty/justice (dharma), material wealth or happiness (artha), sexual love (kama), and spiritual emancipation (moksha). Dharma stems from the root to sustain (dhr), as morality is the foundation of religion and society, and it is superior to ritual acts. A person with dharma seeks spiritual knowledge/salvation (moksha) by speaking the truth and placing social and family duties above personal desire. These aims were interwoven into four watershed stages (ashramas) as described by the Grihya Sutra. The first life stage was that of the celibate student or brahmacharin (m)/ brahmacharini (f) after ritual initiation. The student was taught the Vedas in preparation for his/her spiritual salvation. In the second stage, the householder or grihasthin (m)/grihasthini (f) enjoyed the worldly pleasures of wealth (artha) and sex (kama) for progeny. The third and fourth ashramas prepared the individual for eventual spiritual enlightenment or freedom (moksha) from the cycle of birth and death (karma-samsara). The middle aged forest contemplative or vanaprasthin (m)/vanaprasthini (f) would venture periodically into forest retreats; and a few became complete yogic recluses or sanyasin (m)/sanyasini (f). Domestic responsibilities prevented ordinary women to attain the last stage, although there were women recluses in Indian history. Moreover, these Sanskritic principles in the Hindu smritis were shared by Buddhists and Jainas.13

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The integration of dharma, artha, kama, moksha into the four life stages was relevant, especially to literate caste women and men. The Srauta Sutras on public rituals (ca. 800 BCE) inform us that women and some shudras were initially allowed to study the Vedas and to take part in sacrifices. Manava Srauta Sutra describes women laying bricks for the altar, pounding rice for the ceremony, lighting the fire, and chanting Vedic hymns.14 Apastamba Sutra (1.19.9) states that shudra men lit the sacred fire in the rainy season; Katyayana Sutra (12.11.11) states that tribal hunters and shudra wheelwrights also performed sacrifices.15 However, with the spread of more stringent notions of female sexual honor, girls were often restricted from attending forest schools to study the Vedas alongside elite-caste boys. As this later prevented them from initiating public sacrifices, the classical text Manu Smriti described the ashramas as normative only for men. While the smritis glorified women’s roles to reproduce and care for the patriarchal family, the Grihya Sutra offered them opportunities to initiate household ceremonies for birth, confirmation, marriage, pregnancy, and death. Ordinary women used these niches to expand their sphere of influence beyond nursery and kitchen, while powerful women either silently disregarded or openly breached harsh patriarchal constraints on their education and opportunities to attain moksha.16 Education and the Celibate Student A young celibate student studied the Vedas and other skills with a teacher (guru) in a forest retreat. References to educated and courageous brahman and kshatriya women who performed fire sacrifices appear in the Upanishads, Mahabharata, Ramayana, and the sutras. However, few are women sages with the exceptions of Maitreyi and Gargi of the Brihad Aranyaka Upanishad. Gargi’s persistence and brilliance stumped even her veteran teacher Yajnavalkya (see Chapter 2). By and large, educated women were praised as chaste wives and mothers. An example was heroine Sita of the Ramayana (RMY 5.15.48) whose devotion to Rama has led modern feminists to describe as overdocile. Yet, Sita’s daily routine involved chanting the auspicious and powerful Rig Vedic Gayatri Mantra, which later became the sole preserve of caste men. The Mahabharata’s educated kshatriya heroines include Savitri, Kunti, and Draupadi, but none remained celibate for long. In the Savitri- Satyavan legend (MHB 3.291–297), Savitri is depicted as a prescient, virtuous, and courageous princess. She searched the country for her ideal mate until she found Satyavan, an exiled prince now living as a lowly forest woodcutter. Even though she knew of the loss of his fortune and of his imminent death, Savitri simply garlanded him, and they were married. When Death claimed him, she trailed after this redoubtable foe and outwitted Death to reclaim Satyavan’s life.

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Learned Kunti acquired magical boons for her service to a sage, but she childishly used up one to call the sun god Surya, he appeared, and she had an illegitimate son Karna. Through her later marriage to the ailing king Pandu, she had five heroic sons, but she discovered that Karna had been raised by a shudra charioteer. Still later, the chaste widowed Kunti followed her sons into forest exile where she learned Vedic mantras from sage Atharvasiras.17 The Grihya Sutras prescribed household rituals to be conducted by uppercaste women and men who had some knowledge of the Vedas. The Paraskara Grihya Sutra (3.2) shows that women enacted household rites, but other sutras began to dismiss women and shudras as ignorant and incapable of studying the Vedas. Women’s mastery may have lessened when household rituals became more complex, and their domestic duties became more onerous. This decline is seen in Sankhyayana Grihya Sutra (2.17.13), which states that Vedic rites once initiated by women in the husband’s absence were now being performed by sons and brothers-in-law.18 Sage Jaimini’s Purva Mimamsa Bhashya (400 BCE) and the Bhagavad Gita also indicate that women were excluded from initiating fire rituals due to lack of knowledge.19 The upanayana for girls was reduced at first to a symbolic rite without adequate Vedic verses, and then not performed at all.20 Jaimini could therefore declare: ‘‘Men are unparalleled, and there is no comparison with women. The male sacrificer is learned; his wife is ignorant’’ (PM 6.1.24).21 A few centuries later, the Manu Smriti (MS 2.67) equated the marriage rite for women in lieu of their upanayana, which meant that they studied household arts, and men learned the Vedas. Moreover, theologians now highlighted the importance of female chastity, premarital virginity, and marriages for girls soon after puberty, and there was greater gender separation in youth. This curtailed girls’ education, as few girls attended forest schools with boys to study with a male guru. Some studious single women attended classes but resided at home, as the integrated forest schools were regarded as fraught with sexual dangers for women. Early marriage and hence more children meant that women had no time to master the Vedas, so that women lost this source of intellectual empowerment. Few women could therefore become forest recluses. The later authors who added to the Manu Smriti thus declared maliciously: There is no ritual with Vedic verses for women; this is a firmly established point of law. For women, who have no virile strength and no Vedic verses, are falsehood; this is well established. MS 9.1822 Artha and Kama When instruction ended, young men and women entered the stage of the married householder or grihasthin/grihasthini. The householder was

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allowed to enjoy marital sex or kama, and reap wealth or artha, neither of which was considered unnatural to the human condition. As long as a husband or wife cared for parents and performed their life cycle rituals, they were expected to enjoy a sexually fulfilled life with children. As most women lived entirely as grihasthinis, this was described as their highest dharma, and women sought comfort largely from meditation at their domestic altars. Few middle aged women could embark on the third or fourth stage in the forest, but history informs us of some exceptional sages who were neglected wives, widows, or single women. An example was the powerful Tamil devotee of Shiva, Karaikkal Ammaiyar (fifth to sixth century CE) whose yogic powers frightened away her husband. A virtuous woman’s dharma was to remain a virgin (kanya) until marriage, to be loyal to her husband (pativrata) until her death, and to be a dedicated mother. Noble mothers were exalted in literature and loved universally. Rama’s mother Kausalya first wept for her son’s abstemious life in exile, before she cried poignantly for herself: Without you, Rama, the fire of separation from you will soon burn me to death. Nay, take me with you, too, if you must go. RMY 2.2423 She finally ceased her tears when Rama reminded her of her duty to his father. In a moving benediction, she asked wayfarers, shrines, forest birds and animals to protect her son; the elements, oceans, and skies to be propitious to him; the sages, gods, and Vedas to guard him. She kissed his forehead and let him leave. Noble Mothers in the Epics Despite patriarchy, motherhood endowed women with one splendid source of authority. The mother has been revered even above the father, as evident in this Sanskrit verse (mantra): ‘‘I salute the Guru as god, mother as god, father as god, guest as god.’’ Her love is considered superior to all others, the loss of a child is bemoaned as the greatest sorrow. Widowed Kunti accompanied her Pandava sons into a harsh forest exile in the Mahabharata. When forced to leave them before the end of the 13 years, she told Krishna that this grief was akin to death: ‘‘O Madhava, I do not suffer so much as a widow or in poverty, as I suffer from the loss of my sons’’ (MHB 5.90.69).24 Mothers were forgiven for even dishonorable acts undertaken for their children. In the Ramayana, Rama’s stepmother Kaikeyi manipulated her husband Dasaratha to grant the crown to her own son Bharata and to send Rama to the forest for 14 years. Others blamed her, but Rama declared that he would not judge his stepmother, as she was weak out of excessive maternal love.

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The Mahabharata also contains the side tale of a man whose fury over his wife’s infidelity leads him to order his son Chirakarin to kill her (MHB 12.265). The boy desisted from this ultimate sin, but he explained his reason for filial disobedience in these lines that describe a mother’s love as superior to the father’s affection, and a son’s greater duty to the mother who gave birth to him: As long as one has a mother, one is well-protected; if she is lost one has no protection. Even if one has lost all wealth, no worry oppresses, no age wearies him who can call out ‘‘Mother’’ when entering the home! If one has sons and grandsons, when beside his mother, even when he is a hundred years old, he behaves like a two year old child. A man is then old, becomes unhappy, finds the world empty when he has lost his mother. There is not cooling shade like the mother, no refuge like the mother, and no beloved like the mother.25 Although girls were cherished in the main epic narratives, exemplary honor was bestowed on the mothers of sons, not of daughters, even when the women were personally reprehensible. The Vedas, including the Atharva Veda (3.23; 6.11), contain prayers asking for sons, not daughters, as the former gave women authority in a patriarchal family.26 Wise queen Gandhari had one hundred evil sons from her blind, vacillating husband Dhritirashtra in the Mahabharata. This gave her the power to advise him when he illegally held on the throne of the Pandavas. Polygamy, Polyandry, and Patriliny The epics contain many tales of desire and lust in men and women, as sexuality was considered inherent to humans and animals. Polygamy was common among kings and the upper castes, but the Ramayana is a paean to monogamy. Polygamy meant jealous strife in royal households. However, it also created a gendered world and a strange sisterhood of women thrown together out of compulsion. Rama’s mother Kausalya was the highly respected first queen, but she lived amicably with the second wife Sumitra whose sons she considered her own. They also lived in comparative peace with beautiful Kaikeyi, Dasaratha’s third and favorite wife. However, jealous Kaikeyi demanded that Dasaratha exile Rama and declare her son Bharata as the crown prince. Although Rama honorably upheld his father’s vow, the griefstricken king died. Kausalya thus angrily asked at Kaikeyi: ‘‘How can a chaste woman survive her husband’s death?’’ (RMY 2.65–66).27 The words indicate that although widow immolation (sati) was not a common practice in the Vedic era, a woman’s life was irrevocably bound to her husband’s existence. An unfortunate corollary was that this patrilineal society esteemed mothers of sons, above those with daughters. Only male progeny inherited landed

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wealth and performed the last rites for parents. The classical text Manu Smriti declared women and shudras too incompetent to light the sacred fire, even for final obsequies for parents. Sons were valued as parents depended on them in old age. However, daughters were loved, but poignantly lost to their husbands’ families. North Indian village exogamy rendered patriarchy even more harsh as a girl’s marriage often meant a virtual break with her own family. The Mahabharata contains one striking example of a polyandrous relationship, indicating that this non-Aryan custom of levirate marriage (niyoga) had filtered into Aryan society. The heroine Draupadi was married jointly to the five Pandava brothers, but she lived with each in turn in serial monogamy. A chaste and powerful wife, she was highly respected by all, including kinsman Krishna who was Vishnu incarnate. When their enemies Dushansana and Duryodhana disrobed Draupadi in public before the royal assembly, Krishna answered her prayer with a miraculous, continuous stream of unwoven cloth (sari). In a subplot of the Ramayana, Lakshmana angrily cut off the nose and ears of Surpanaka, a female demon who tried to seduce Rama. Her punishment was for lust and for being a demon, not for being a woman. However, later retellings described Surpanaka as the epitome of female lust. The epic also relates the tale of Ahalya, virtuous wife of sage Gautama, who was inadvertently seduced by the philanderer Indra in the guise of her husband. When Gautama returned, he cast a spell transforming Ahalya into stone. However, as she was more sinned at than a sinner, Rama’s touch redeemed her. As Indra’s crime was beyond redemption, he became permanently impotent. Yet later classical retellings twisted the initial myths to portray women as temptresses of even great yogis. The first authors of the Mahabharata exalted women as superior to their husbands in many ways, and the Pandava Yudhishthira decried men who vilified women as fickle and wicked. Yet, later interpolated texts describe women as naturally sensual (MHB 1.4.39, 78)28; sexually insatiable (MHB 5.30.6);29 and eager to ensnare men (MNB 13.40.4).30 Society lauded the fecund woman for continuing the blood line. However, this led to the perception of women as tied to the material world of artha and kama. Moreover, the merger with Dravidian and aboriginal societies led brahmans to adopt their taboos on blood to restrict menstruating and pregnant women or after childbirth, as well as shudra menials, from rituals and sacred discourses.31 In the first millennium BCE, the idea gained root that women were weakened by menstruation and childbirth, perhaps initially as a protective measure. However, the new belief also validated male religious restrictions on women. The Aitareya Brahmana instructed women not to talk to men during rituals; and the Aitareya Upanishad (AU 2.1) told pregnant women to retire from a philosophical discourse on gestation.32

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Moreover, people came to believe that spiritual insights were most common to celibate men (brahmacharin). In contrast, the perception grew that women’s monthly discharges and childbirth were sensory anchors that inhibited spiritual growth. Thus, the Manu Smriti advised priests not to eat food prepared by a menstruating woman (MS 4.208). The text also terrified men with predictions of insanity if they had sex with a menstruating woman (4.41), and listed the following pollutants for a priest: Neither a ‘‘fierce’’ Untouchable, nor a pig, a cock, a dog, a menstruating woman, or an impotent man should be watching the priests dine. MS 3.23933 Monogamy and Love Legends Several women in the Mahabharata command our attention, beginning with Kunti, the widowed mother of the Pandava heroes, and their polyandrous wife Draupadi. However, this epic also contains archaic legends about three loving couples. In a sea of legends about polygamous kings, these few stories are paeans to monogamy. The Forest Book (MHB, Vana Parva, 3.4; 3.12; 3.147.11) contains the seed story of Sita-Rama, probably an ancient Indo-Aryan legend later given separate stature in Valmiki’s Ramayana. Chaste Wife: Sita The central theme in the epics is of the battle between justice as dharma and evil (adharma). This struggle envelops women and men, gods and demons. Every act has an irrevocable consequence, and so women protagonists are actors, not simply victims. Valmiki clearly identified Sita as earthly fecundity, as she was the daughter of Mother Earth, and her name means ‘‘furrow’’ in the ground. Sita was also later identified with Lakshmi, goddess of good fortune for Hindus, Jainas, and Buddhists, so that Lakshmi’s image is carved on a railing of the Buddhist monument (stupa) at Bharhut (150 BCE ). In a picturesque analogy, Rama was scion of the dynasty descended from the sun god, while his wife Sita brought agricultural productivity to his kingdom. Her abduction by demon Ravana left him shattered. All of nature mourned, the forests lost their leaves, animals and birds were distraught (RMY 3.49–50). The lovers pine for each other, he by visiting their familiar haunts, she remaining unkempt, fasting, weeping, resisting Ravana’s lust. Despite the epic battle in which Ravana is killed, Rama receives her coldly, advising his brothers that he cannot take her back after her long sojourn in another man’s home. Chilled by his suggestion of her impurity, Sita asks for a fire ordeal, in which she was rescued unscathed by god Agni. Rama declares he had to prove her innocence to the populace, and Valmiki’s tale ends with their coronation in Ayodhya, where the trees thrive with undying roots (Ramayana 6.131).34

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However, in the classical era of social pluralism, the Ramayana was modified by adding a seventh chapter, the ‘‘Uttara Kanda’’ (Last Book). This chapter rakes up contemporary male anxieties about whether Sita could have remained impeccable during her abduction. To satisfy his subjects, Rama suppressed his faith in her integrity to his royal dharma. Pregnant Sita then retired into the forest under the care of sage Vishvamitra where she lived austerely with sons Lava and Kusha. When grieving Rama, who had never remarried, saw his sons recite their epic, he asked for her return. However, Sita proudly refused and reentered Mother Earth. As Hinduism evolved, Rama and Sita were deified as the two perfect halves, husband (pati) and wife (patni), manifestations of primal Purusha (RV 10.90), and elaborated later as Purusha-Viraj (BAU 1.4.3).35 However, Sita’s travails open up the Pandora’s box on misogyny and patriarchy in ancient India. Was she a docile victim or a strong woman? Sita’s agency is apparent throughout the epic, as she chose her husband and went to exile willingly; resisted Ravana’s predations, although he saw her as an object. In the epic battle between dharma and adharma, Rama could destroy Ravana only because Sita remained chaste. Courageous till the end, she resisted evil men’s wish to demean her a second time by returning to the Earth in dignity.36 Sita is the emblem of female suffering and its redemptive power. In the twentieth century, Mahatma Gandhi referred to Sita’s purified courage, when he called upon Indians to sacrifice for the nation’s freedom. Savitri and Damayanti The Mahabharata’s ancient legends of other loving pairs include those of Savitri-Satyavan, Damayanti-Nala (3.54), and Shakuntala-Dushyanta (1.62–69).37 Like Sita, Savitri and Damayanti were learned kshatriya princesses who were brave and loyal. Sita and Damayanti were won by their heroes in a svayamvara contest of skill and bravery held by the brides’ fathers. Although the tests were won by the heroes, the women loved their grooms whom they garlanded in a monogamous marriage to last beyond death. In Valmiki’s Ramayana, Sita met Rama only after he had bent and broken Shiva’s mighty bow in the contest. However, in Kampan’s later Tamil epic, she gazed at Rama when he entered her city, and they fell in love upon first sight.38 Damayanti’s lover Nala is a Nishada tribal prince whom she garlands in the svayamvara contest. Each romantic legend depicts a woman admired for faithfulness to her husband. Later Hindus respect them as pativratas (wives who have taken a vow of fidelity), and this ideal has been one of the most resilient female paradigms in Indian history. In the story of Savitri, the god of death Yama arrived at his stipulated time to carry Satyavan away, but Savitri resolutely stalked them. Impressed by her persistence, Yama then granted her three

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boons. Savitri cleverly outwitted Yama by restoring not only the family’s lost fortunes but also Satyavan’s life. The legend of Savitri the pativrata is told in elegant poetry charged with drama. Although technically a widow since her husband was dead, Savitri took special vows of celibacy and fasting (vrata), which custom later decreed could only be conducted by married women. The story’s impact on women has been profound, as seen in the annual festival savitri vrata. Wives fast for the husband’s long life and tie an auspicious red thread as proof of their virtue.39 A whole array of female prototypes appear in the epics. They include the wise matrons Kunti and Gandhari (MHB), and Kausalya (RMY); the jealous mother and manipulative wife Kaikeyi (RMY); monogamous Sita and Savitri; the outspoken wife Draupadi (MHB); the demon Surpanaka mutilated for trying to seduce Rama; 40 the fallen wife Ahalya redeemed by Rama’s divine grace; designing crone Manthara who caused Rama’s exile; vengeful Amba reincarnated as an androgyne (MHB); low-caste devotee Sabari who received Rama’s divine grace. Polyandry, Premarital Sex, Widows, and Sati Draupadi’s polyandrous marriage caused consternation among other Aryan princes, indicating the elite men feared it would encourage female promiscuity. The Mahabharata shows that Draupadi had power over her husbands; and in Dravidian south India and Sri Lanka, she is invoked as a goddess.41 The Mahabharata also indicates that premarital sex was known in ancient India. Intelligent Kunti helped her father to play host to the short-tempered sage Durvasa. Impressed by her hospitality, the sage taught the virgin girl sacred verses to five gods to be recited only after marriage. Her hurried invocation to the sun god Surya shocked her as it made her into an unwed mother. She placed her son Karna into a casket and sent him downstream where he was rescued by a shudra charioteer. Kunti could not acknowledge him to her princely husband Pandu or to their five Pandava sons received through the sacred verses. When she finally spoke of her secret to Karna, the tragic consequences had already befallen. Kunti’s legend also includes her sisterly affection for her husband’s second wife Madri. As Madri was childless, Kunti shared her last prayer with Madri who had twin sons. On Pandu’s death, Madri ascended the funeral pyre as a true wife (sati) in order to allow widowed Kunti to care for their sons. Despite this example of royal sati in the Mahabharata, Madri not only chose her own fate, but Kunti who lived as a widow was the epic’s greater heroine. However, medieval society seized on this scriptural validation to compel innocent widows to die as satis. Both Kunti and Draupadi deviated from the patriarchal norms requiring sexual restraint. Kunti experimented before marriage; Draupadi had five husbands in a society where female monogamy was lauded, but male

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polygamy allowed. The inclusion of their stories in a largely male martial epic suggests that such women were not uncommon in ancient India. Those who listened to the tales regarded them as heroines who selectively broke some strict laws on female behavior. Were such women only victims of elite men’s laws, or agents and occasional renegades? Obviously there were other women like Kunti and Draupadi, as the patriarchs felt the characters were real enough to include in this dramatic epic. Bhagavad Gita, Dharma, and Women’s Puja Although the epics are smritis, they are cherished almost above the Vedas because their folk legends on dharma apply to all. Hindus venerate the Bhagavad Gita as the fifth Veda because of its elegant, inclusive message in poetry that everyone can understand. Although an addendum to the Mahabharata’s main narrative, the Gita is theologically independent. Its 18 chapters contain a synthesis of ideas from the Upanishads, other later Vedic theologies, and substantive devotional rites to deified icons (bhakti-puja) borrowed from Dravidian-aboriginal cultures. The epics reveal that women were defined by their roles as mothers, wives, and daughters, and that their dharma consisted of unselfish service to the patriarchal family. The Gita emphasizes the dispassionate performance of duty, depending on one’s stage in life and occupation (varnashrama dharma; 3.35).42 While everyone’s chief dharma is to seek moksha, it became increasingly difficult for women to escape alone to forest hermitages. They then took another path to moksha through the domestic altar and devotional worship (bhakti-puja), as decreed by the Gita. The Gita’s preceptor Krishna declares that he is Vishnu’s incarnation (avatar) and a manifestation of Supreme Brahman, and that the soul or Atman is indestructible. Krishna also teaches that the Upanishadic goal of enlightened salvation (moksha) was available to everyone through unselfish action (karma yoga) and love for the Divine (bhakti yoga). Krishna declares his compassionate love for all, even the disfranchised like women and shudras. All that was required was devotion to God and flower offerings to icons (bhakti-puja). This marks the trend toward iconic rites in Hinduism. These rites echo domestic rituals to goddesses in pre-Aryan Indus cities (3000 BCE) where numerous images have been found. Their presence near homes indicate women were largely involved in these rites, as they are today in Hinduism. The Indus goddess images contain lamp-like objects on either side of the head, and their sooty residue suggests burnt oil wicks, also common in Hindu puja today.43 Three verses from the Gita make pointed reference to puja. They indicate that dominant-caste men were swayed by the persistence and power of female and folk rites to absorb them into Hinduism. The first describes iconic puja, the second shows inclusion through bhakti, and the third speaks of women and shudras whom brahmans had excluded from Vedic rites.

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Whoever offers a leaf, a flower, a fruit, or water to me in devotion, That devout offering I accept from the pure of heart. BG 9.26 I am the same in all beings, none to me is more hateful or dear, but Whoever worships me with devotion, I am in them and they are in me. BG 9.29 O, Partha (Arjuna)! Whoever takes refuge in me goes to the highest path, even those born in the womb of sin, or women, vaishyas, even shudras. BG 9.3244 Forest Dweller and Hermit: Moksha The third ashrama was available in middle age after the birth of grandchildren. Men and women then retreated into the forest as contemplatives. Vanaprasthini (f)/vanaprasthin (m) left worldly desire for kama and artha, and focused on attaining moksha, which released one from the cycle of karma-samsara. As it was often more difficult for women to shed male authority and family obligations for even temporary retreats, elderly women contemplated, prayed, or read scriptures in a quiet section of bustling households. There were probably fewer sages like Gargi of the Brihad Aranyaka Upanishad. The majority of women accompanied their husbands or even families into forest retreats, as seen in the epics, and most were honored as noble mothers and chaste wives.45 In the Ramayana, Sita accompanied her husband into the forest. In the Mahabharata, widow Kunti lived with her sons in exile; and fiery Amba who resisted a forced marriage performed penance in the wood before wreaking revenge on Bhishma who had kidnapped her for his ineffectual brother. The universal goal of moksha was difficult for most women and also men, but the last phase of the sanyasin/sanyasini was particularly harder on women. Most retreats catered to men, so that the few women aspirants were sexual prey or suspected of preying upon men. Women remain vulnerable even today in largely male hermitages. 46 There were powerful women sages like Auvaiyar (third century CE), but even the Kannada bhakti saint Akkamahadevi (twelfth century CE) had to prove her sincerity to Basavanna, leader of the Virashaiva sect.47 Women and Property in the Smritis The Vedic Satapatha Brahmana (5.3, 1, 13) bemoans those without male children, as funeral oblations were conducted by the sons.48 The theme of reproduction as central to a marriage is found also in the epics that reiterate the need for women to have children to maintain the lines of patrilineal descent, since sons largely inherited their property. In the absence of a direct

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son, girls sometimes inherited property, but the adoption of male heirs was not yet in vogue, although in the medieval era, adoption became more common. Daughters brought in a bride-price to augment their parents’ wealth, and although the daughters of wealthy fathers, e.g., Sita and Draupadi, brought expensive gifts such as horses and jewels to their husbands’ families, the dowry system was not popular in ancient India. In the absence of a son, the Mahabharata advocated an equal division between a daughter and the secondary claimant, and so did the law book, Yajnavalkya Smriti (ca. 400 BCE). However, by 200 BCE, most theologians had begun to oppose women’s right to inherit property as daughters and wives.49 The two epics briefly express such anxieties even among loving fathers (MHB 1.173.10; RMY 2.119, 35–36) as society valued premarital virginity. These anxieties, as well as codified laws that curtailed women’s economic independence, reduced the status of daughters in classical India. However, in the context of the regional and ethnic diversity of Indian traditions, these Sanskritic laws remained codified ideals that non-Aryan Adivasis and Dravidian language populations often ignored with impunity. Moreover, despite patriarchal traditions, the Sanskrit epics did not bemoan the birth of daughters, but actually praised them as cherished ‘‘gems.’’ Thus, King Janaka took great pride in his daughter Sita. Kunti was loved by her father Raja Kuntibhoja for having saved him from the curses of the temperamental sage Durvasa. Raja Drupada cherished his daughter Draupadi, as did Savitri’s father. Yet, some misogynist prejudices were later interpolated in the Mahabharata. Within these domestic parameters, royal women were depicted as capable of influencing their husbands and sons, although the patriarchal order ensured that ultimate power lay in male hands. If in the Rig Vedic era, the bard urged a young bride to speak aloud before the citizen assembly, royal wives now voiced their opinions in the privacy of the inner palace rooms. While higher-caste women are praised for their modesty, they do not appear to have worn veils. In the epics, men of dignity were expected to observe the rules of modesty and etiquette by not gazing at married women. In the Ramayana, Lakshmana could only identify Sita’s anklet, but not her other ornaments that she had discarded from the air while being abducted, since Lakshmana had never looked upon her face. The absence of a veil for women in ancient India is in marked contrast to references to veiled women in medieval India, especially in the north.

CLASSICAL ERA SMRITI (250 BCE–500 CE) Women’s Property Rights in the Smritis In the story of Draupadi’s humiliation in the Mahabharata, the author strongly condemned treating women as property or pawns in a dice game.

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However, such attitudes became more popular after the classical text Manu Smriti (ca. 100 BCE–200 CE) became the preeminent Hindu law code. This work cataloged women with jewels and other possessions (MS 2.240), and described them as worthless without men (MS 4.213). 50 Manu Smriti (chap. 9) also declared women untrustworthy, and urged men to guard their wives ‘‘zealously, in order to keep his progeny clean’’ (MS 9.9). It recommended that as it was impossible to restrain a woman forcefully, she should be kept busy ‘‘attending to her duty, cooking food, and looking after the furniture’’ (MS 9.10–11). It advised: Men must make their women dependent day and night, and keep under their own control those who are attached to sensory objects. Her father controls her in childhood, her husband guards her in youth, and her sons guard her in old age. A woman is not fit for independence. MS 9.2–3 Women, especially should be guarded against addiction, even trifling ones, for unguarded (women) would bring sorrow upon both families. MS 9.5 The bed and the seat, jewelry, lust, anger, crookedness, a malicious nature, and bad conduct are what Manu assigned to women. MS 9.1851 However, not all classical authors shared this view. Astronomer Varahamahira, author of Brithat Samhita (sixth century CE), declared that both genders were subject to the same flaws.52 Examples of misogyny in Hindu, Buddhist, and Jaina texts were balanced by more humane voices that suggested that carnal desire was strongest in men, and that even monks were swayed by lust. Some shastra law codes fueled male anxieties about women’s inheritance rights, so that some parents began to view daughters as an overwhelming encumbrance.53 Despite this, however, India’s great regional and ethnic diversity has meant that Adivasi and Dravidian cultures often ignored or circumvented Sanskritic law codes. An early Rig Vedic bard had urged a young bride to speak before the citizen assembly, and in epic, heroines Sita, Kunti, and Draupadi were cherished by their fathers, and not afraid to express their opinions. In the later centuries, women’s public voices became muted, but they continued to speak up in private chambers. Kings often made the final decisions, but history reveals that royal women influenced their husbands and sons. Social etiquette demanded modesty from both sexes, but women moved about freely and did not wear the veil in early India. Rather, men were cautioned against staring directly upon married women, even within families. The poet of the Ramayana states that as Lakshmana had never gazed

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directly upon Sita’s face, he could only identify her anklet, but not her other ornaments discarded from the air when she was abducted. The female veil came into wide use, especially in north India, during the tenth century. Trade, Ethnic Mergers, and Women After Alexander’s brief invasion and retreat in 326 BCE, Chandragupta Maurya established an empire that soon stretched across the subcontinent. Asoka Maurya’s Second Rock Edict refers to Tamil and Kerala kings, Sri Lanka, and Graeco-Bactrians. 54 The Graeco-Bactrian ambassador Megasthenes made the first reference to Dravidian matriliny when he described a ‘‘Pandaean [Pandya] nation governed by females’’ and their queen as a daughter of Hercules.55 Classical Tamil texts from the Sangam era (200 BCE–500 CE) reveal a vibrant culture penetrated by brahmans and Sanskrit ideologies.56 Sanskrit, Pali, Prakrit, and Tamil texts, sculpture, and painting reveal that feminine paradigms crystallized in the classical era. Other sources for this era include architecture, numismatics, epigraphy, and Greek, Latin, and Chinese accounts. The Mauryan decline (ca. 180 BCE) precipitated invasions by armies of Persians, Graeco-Bactrians, Shakas, and Kushanas. Meanwhile, the peninsula received waves of seafarers due to general knowledge of the monsoon winds. Sailors, merchants, and other men docked at Bharukakaccha on the Gulf of Cambay, Muziris on the Arabian Sea, Pumpuhar on the Kaveri, and Tamralipti on the Bay of Bengal. Romans, Egyptians, Arabs, Hebrews, Christians, Africans, Chinese, and Malays assimilated into Indian society by cohabiting with Indian women. Tamil and Sanskrit texts called them yavanas (Ionian), but the broad category included dark foreigners. Indian kings like the Guptas (319–500 CE) valued their trade.57 There were clear expressions of initial xenophobia in Indian texts. The Tamil works describe yavana guards and artisans as speaking strange, harsh dialects.58 The Manu Smriti disparaged them as outcastes (mleccha) who seduced wayward wives; and it urged Indian men to abide by endogamous caste rules and strictly control their women. However, such cultural anxieties probably reduced when immigrants took local wives and mistresses who disseminated Sanskritic ideas through their children of mixed ethnicity. Inscriptions in the Deccan indicate that Shaka yavanas became Hindu or Buddhist. The brahman composers of Vishnu Purana (third to fourth century CE) prided themselves as being the transmitters of Sanskrit refinement outside India, a land fringed by the Himalayas and three seas. In Southeast Asia, vaishya merchants and brahmans took local wives and spread Hinduism and Buddhism. Indian merchants also lived in Alexandria, the Persian Gulf, and the Red Sea according to potsherds and papyrus contracts.59 Although misogynist texts laid the guidelines on gender roles, female sexuality, and racial purity, these were not always regarded by those who

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assimilated into the Indian social mosaic. The varna-jati system was still porous, and the multiplicity of subcastes (jatis) indicates that cross-caste liaisons were often discretely ignored. Royal brides were exchanged by Shaka and Telugu Shatavahana rulers; and powerful Guptan queens were low caste; a floating population of hybrid Indians, Chinese, Persians, and Greeks lived in the Kushana empire. Mixed groups were categorized as anuloma (a high-caste father and a low-caste mother) and pratiloma (a low-caste father and a high-caste mother), but skilled, literate shudra artisans from powerful guilds commanded respect in this era.60 However, gender and caste hierarchies became more inflexible when immigrants adopted Sanskrit ideas on female chastity, patriarchy, and racial purity. Shastras: Women’s Rights The classical smritis were the Hindu Shastras, Puranas, and Agamas. Of the 18 Maha Puranas (200 BCE–1000 CE) on Hindu divine legends, the most relevant here are the Devi Mahatmya hymn in the Markandeya Purana, the Devi Bhagavata Purana, and the later Hindu scriptures for the Great Goddess Devi (examined in a later chapter). The Natya Shastra’s manual on music and dance defined women as dancers and musicians over the millennia. The Shilpa Shastras contain artistic rules on the depiction of women in sculpture. The shastras that delineated norms of female behavior, right to inheritance, age of marriage, and other gender issues were the Manu Smriti and the Artha Shastra. The former was composed by multiple authors honored by the mythical name of Manu (ca. 100 BCE–200 CE). The Artha Shastra was begun by Kautilya (a.k.a. Chanakya), chief advisor to Chandragupta Maurya (321–297 BCE), but expanded later and completed ca. 250 CE.61 The two texts reflect upper-caste anxiety over miscegenation. By the end of the sixth century CE, elite Hindus saw a woman’s chief function to be motherhood, and their daughters were married close to puberty to enable them to reproduce large families. These shastras enshrined rules for the behavior of women and the castes. However, their repeated emphasis on types of intercaste marriages shows that these were common occurrences. The Artha Shastra (3.2) is the earlier, and it is fairer to those of mixed caste, namely the anuloma and pratiloma. The text states that ‘‘Offsprings of mixed castes shall have equal divisions of inheritance.’’62 Widowhood came to have a stigma in Indian society. An early Rig Vedic (RV 10.18) hymn had urged an earlier widow to ‘‘rise up, woman, into the world of the living,’’63 and the Mahabharata portrayed the widow Kunti as a guardian of her sons and progeny. In the classical era, male relatives came to view the widow as a threat, as she could either inherit her husband’s property and reduce their share, or she could be entirely dependent upon them.

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In sexual terms, young widows potentially attracted outside male advances or posed a threat to the family men. Despite some references to widow immolation, it does not seem to have been a common or sanctified act (sati) until the fifth century CE. Women often remarried, sometimes more than once. The Artha Shastra does not mention sati, and it indicates that widow remarriage was common. It describes living widows, their property rights, and their rights upon remarriage. Apart from her personal property from her father (stridhana), inheritance from a deceased husband was used for their children’s upkeep. If she remarried, their sons received this property, and in the absence of sons, daughters were the heirs. The Artha Shastra states: If a woman has many male children by many husbands, then she shall conserve her property in the same condition as she had received from her husbands. Even that property which has been given her with full powers of enjoyment and disposal, a remarried woman shall endow in the name of her sons. A barren widow who is faithful to the bed of her dead husband may, under the protection of her teacher, enjoy her property as long as she lives: for it is to ward off calamities that women are endowed with property. On her death, her property shall pass into the hands of kinsmen (Dayada). If the husband is alive and the wife is dead, then her sons and daughters shall divide her property among themselves. If there are no sons, her daughters shall have it. AS 3.264 In some communities levirate remarriage or niyoga allowed the family access to her property. Some classical texts describe widows negatively as preying upon men or susceptible to attractive foreigners. Non-Aryans and low castes eager to rise in the caste ladder often adopted elite-caste rules against widow remarriage. The Manu Smriti also does not mention sati, but it praises the celibate widow who lives frugally (MS 5.156–169) declaring unequivocally: ‘‘nor is a second husband ever prescribed for virtuous women’’ (MS 5.162). This convinced many Hindus that the shastras prohibited widow remarriage.65 Sati emerged as an ominous trend among royal women ca. fifth century CE. A pillar inscription at Eran, Madhya Pradesh commemorates the death of a brave king Bhanu Gupta whose wife, ‘‘loyal and loving, beloved and fair followed close behind him into the flames.’’ 66 However, it became more frequent only after the eighth-century arrival of the Rajputs whose ancestors were the Shakas of Central Asia. The Rajputs became the staunch supporters of a feudal, patriarchal, martial form of Hinduism.67 The Artha Shastra (3.2, 7) and Manu Smriti (chap. 9) give specific attention to women’s property rights, place in society, marriage, and to caste

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rules. While the older text Artha Shastra has more lenient rules on crosscaste marriages and women’s maintenance and property, its patriarchal biases are also evident. The Artha Shastra sanctions polygamy if the husband provided care for all his wives, but it does not recognize polyandry. Men’s sexual rights over women were accepted as normative, as their sexuality was an independent force, unlike that of women which stemmed from the need to procreate. It thus states: Having given the necessary amount of sulka [i.e., bride-price] and property even to those women who have not received such things on the occasion of their marriage with him, and also having given his wives the proportionate compensation and an adequate subsistence (vrtti), he may marry any number of women; for women are created for the sake of sons. AS 3.268 The Artha Shastra stipulates that women were entitled to property, but that men were their guardians, men had judicial rights over that property. The Artha Shastra declares that ‘‘it was to ward off calamities that women were endowed with property’’ and that ‘‘whoever justly takes a woman under his protection shall equally protect her property.’’69 It also stipulates that a bridegroom should pay a bride-price, and that if she became a ‘‘pious’’ widow, she should receive the remainder of the sums and her jewelry for her sustenance. If she married again outside the consent of her father-in-law, she would forfeit those rights. This might indicate that widow remarriage was possible through niyoga and that a woman’s dowry remained in her deceased husband’s family. The author describes various interpretations of women’s right to their children, and he compares the woman to a plowed field: My preceptor says that the seed sown in the field of another shall belong to the owner of that field. Others hold that the mother being only the receptacle for the seed (mata bhastra), the child must belong to him from whose seed it is born. Kautilya says it must belong to both the living parents. AS 3.770 Both the Artha Shastra and the Manu Smriti were considered authoritative by the first or second century CE when Indian society was noticeably fearful of the immigrant deluge. Puranas and Classical Hinduism Theism became central to Hinduism due to the Bhagavad Gita, and fire sacrifices became secondary to iconic worship of goddesses and gods. Village

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religion consisted of the worship of images of goddesses, but now icons of Vishnu/Krishna and Shiva were also worshipped in small shrines. The new rituals and their liturgies were compiled by brahmans, and these were known as the Agamas. The theologians also compiled compendiums of divine myths in the 18 Maha Puranas (Great Old Works) between 200 BCE and 1000 CE. Although the Gita had specifically included devout women and shudras as eligible for Hindu iconic rites, later texts like the Manu Smriti and Puranas excluded them from initiating rites to Hindu icons in shrines. Manu Smriti declared ‘‘there is no ritual with Vedic verses for women’’ (MS 9.18) and cautioned against ignorant priests, women, and impotent men (MS 4.205).71 Some Puranas also lumped high-caste women with shudras as ‘‘ignorant’’ (Bhagavata Purana 1.4.29) and ‘‘unfit’’ to hear the Vedas (Devi Bhagavata Purana 1.3.21), even when chanting to the Goddess Devi.72 Yet, sacrifices were impossible without wealth, a fact which allowed royal women to perform rites. Thus, epigraphy shows that a queen named Nayanika in the Deccan performed rituals ca. 300 CE.73 However, these injunctions in the smritis effectively stalled women’s education for centuries, especially among the lower classes, although women’s premodern writings indicate that misogynist strictures were sidestepped in order to teach daughters. While the Upanishads were the foundation of esoteric Hindu thought, popular religion entailed the loving worship of icons of goddesses and gods with flowers and fruits and the burning of lamps. Such bhakti-puja is advocated in the Bhagavad Gita (BG 9.26).74 Classical Hinduism was a merger of pre-Aryan and Vedic divinities, Brahmana liturgies, and Upanishadic doctrines. An impersonal neuter Brahman was made accessible through a gendered vision of Divinity in which female counterparts to male deities were the unifying elements of the Hindu Trinity. The chief functions were to create, preserve, and destroy the material universe. Gods

Goddesses

Brahma (Creator) Vishnu (Preserver/Creator) Shiva (Destroyer/Creator)

Saraswati Devi (Knowledge) Lakshmi/Sri Devi (Fortune) Shakti Devi (Energy)

Devi the Mother Goddess Hindus accept all things as inherently divine, as the myriad aspects of the universe are manifestations of a divine Brahman who is not limited by name or form. Brahman’s manifestation could be visualized and worshipped in any form that was pleasing. In classical Hinduism, Vishnu, Rudra-Shiva, and Devi became the most popular. Brahma’s functions were usurped by Vishnu and Shiva, but Saraswati as Knowledge remained a powerful concept to be

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venerated, as were Lakshmi as Fortune and Shakti as Energy. The female deities took myriad local and Sanskrit names, and merged into a central idea of Devi the Great Goddess in the third century CE. The Atharva Veda indicates in the merger of non-Aryan and Aryan religions, worship of the Goddess as Mother was gaining popularity in Sanskrit society. The poet praised Mother Earth (Prithvi) as the motherland, the queen of the four directions, the fecund mother who gave grain and medicinal plants, the nurse who fed cattle that produced milk, and the being from whose navel all things emerged.75 Nebulous Vedic goddesses now began to coalesce with non-Aryan female deities into a great goddess Devi glorified in Sanskrit hymns like the Devi Mahatmya (ca. third century CE). Devi now represented Hindu Trinity as Saraswati, Lakshmi, and Shakti/Durga, knowledge, fortune, energy incarnate. Her origin lay in Rig Vedic Aditi (Limitless) as the abstract mother principle that probably shaped the ideal of Spirit Brahman in the Upanishads. This may explain Devi’s theological importance in Hinduism and her popularity in public and domestic rituals. Among the most revered Rig Vedic hymns enacted in temple rites are the Purusha Sukta (RV 10.8.90) and three prayers to goddesses, i.e., Devi Sukta (RV 10.8.125), 76 Ratri Sukta (RV 10.127), and Sri Sukta (RV 5.871).77 Rig Vedic Sri is goddess of fortune, her color is golden, she resides on a lotus, and she is garlanded with this auspicious flower. These descriptions are identical to those of Vishnu’s wife in classical Hinduism. Although the Rig Veda has few hymns entirely for these goddesses, the existing hymns and the female deities became central to the Hindu pantheon and liturgy. This fact proves that Vedic goddesses had an auspicious power that made them popular throughout India’s history. Clearly, modern scholars have misinterpreted this abstruse, archaic text when they concluded that goddesses were unimportant to this patriarchal society. The medieval importance of Devi in Tantric Hinduism will be discussed in a later chapter. Tales of Vishnu’s incarnations as Krishna in the Mahabharata and as Rama in the Ramayana were elaborated in the classical Harivamsa and Vishnu Purana. Vishnu’s popular appeal increased when he was identified as the Creator or Rig Vedic Purusha, and described through his ten incarnations (avatars) to preserve dharma. Meanwhile, Vedic Rudra merged with pre-Aryan ideas of Shiva as male procreative power in the lingam. The Svetasvatara Upanishad (SU 6.7) hailed Shiva as Great God (Mahesvara), a manifestation of Brahman.78 The most magnificent myth later portrayed Shiva as the Cosmic Dancer (Nataraja) who supervised Time, destroyed illusion, and extended his mercy to devotees. Courtesans and Prostitutes Cities like Kaushambi, Varanasi, Vaishali, and Rajagriha now attracted skilled artisans, bankers, officials, and female courtesans (vesyas) whose

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dance and music amused the rich. Some scholars surmise that the breakup of tribal clans during urbanization led to the ‘‘alienation’’ of some women.79 Buddhist texts refer to courtesans in Vaishali who charged high rates, and that the king appointed the courtesan Ambapali to supervise. Interestingly, while the male authors of the Hindu sutras slight courtesans and advise brahmans not to accept food from them, the Buddha was won by Ambapali’s generosity to his monks. Ambapali was no sordid prostitute, but a gifted and respected woman, who became a Buddhist nun. Her wise poem is included in the Therigatha (TG 252–70).80 As in later eras, courtesans danced or sang for clients irrespective of caste or ethnicity, as their livelihood depended on fees. This could have been a factor in social mergers. The classical guilds (srenis) for artisanal, merchant, and banking professions may also have had guild dancers and musicians, as in later eras. Women were weavers and artisans, but men dominated the thriving industrial srenis of goldsmiths, silversmiths, engravers, chariot makers, bead and ivory workers, and masons and sculptors. Excavations at Lauriya Nandangarh reveal some of their artifacts, including the earliest images of goddesses in Sanskritic society. They include small gold images of Lakshmi Devi. Lakshmi also appears in carvings on the walls of Buddhist funeral mounds (stupa). The worship of a female deity in nature also appears in images of tree nymphs (yakshis) at stupas in Bharhut and Sanchi. These images helped to develop Indian notions of the divine feminine and of feminine representations in art. Royal Marriage Treaties Polygamy was common among kings and the wealthy. Political treaties were often sealed by marrying the daughter of a former foe, whatever her caste, sect, or ethnicity. Kshatriya princes sometimes married several tribal or foreign princesses, while lower-caste kings with ambitions assumed kshatriya status after marrying a kshatriya princess. As the monarchy evolved, women became pawns in the quest for political power among the kings of Kashi, Kosala, Magadha, and the Vrijji confederacy. However, as noble mothers or chaste wives the princesses were socially empowered, and opportunities for political influence rose. The status of even ordinary women rose through these feminine paradigms, so that they were nurtured by all women. India’s first king and Buddha’s key patron was Bimbisara of Magadha (fifth century BCE) who sealed alliances with neighboring states by marrying three princesses. They were Chellana from the powerful Lichchhavi confederacy, Khema from Madra, and the sister of Kosala’s king Pasenadi who claimed descent from Rama of the epic. Magadha became a preeminent state, and its benefits accrued to its virtuous queens.81 Women acted as cultural bridges in cross-ethnic marriages for political expediency. Some examples were the marriage of a Shatavahana princess and the powerful Shaka king Rudradaman (150 CE), and Chandra Gupta I’s

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rise after marrying Kumaradevi, a tribal Lichchhavi princess. So important was Kumaradevi that Gupta coins depicted her face along with his. 82 Marriages with local princesses enabled immigrant kings to assimilate and become Hindu or Buddhist. Royal dowries (stridhana) consisted of territory and money, which the women controlled themselves. The queens often donated to religious and artistic causes of one sect, while their husbands gave to another. Inscriptions at the Buddhist stupa at Nagarjunakonda in the Deccan indicate that Shatavahana queens Camti Sri, Adavi Catisri, and six others donated money for the monument.83 Similar inscriptions from the Amaravati stupa and from Buddhist monastic caves in western India reveal that the donors were Shaka queens and wealthy women.84 In south India, later Chola queens like Sembiyan Mahadevi built Hindu temples, and dowager mothers became regents for underage sons. Dowager Prabhavati Gupta, a daughter of the Guptas and widow of the Vakataka king in central India (390–410 CE), acted as regent for over a decade.85 Early medieval records from the Deccan and south India show that aristocratic women were religious benefactors and trustees of property. NOTES 1. Venkatesananda, The Concise Ramayana of Valmiki, 72. 2. Radhakrishnan, A Sourcebook of Indian Philosophy; Swami Nikhilananda, The Upanishads: Aitareya and Brihadaranyaka, 2nd ed. (New York: Ramakrishna and Vivekananda Center, 1997); Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty, ed., Hindu Myths, 5th ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 1982); Sri Ramakrishna Math, Pursha-Suktam and Narayana-Suktam (Chennai: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1993); Sarvananda, Aitareyopanishad; Swami Sarvananda, ed., Isavasya Upanishad (Sanskrit text, English translation; Chennai: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1998); Swami Madhavananda, ed., Brihad Aranyaka Upanishad (Chennai: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 2000); Swami Ashudoshaananda, ed., Veda Mantrangal: Mantrangal, Shanti Mantrangal, Suktangal (Sanskrit and Tamil commentary), containing commentaries on Purusha Sukta, Devi Sukta, Sri Sukta, Ratri Sukta (Chennai: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 2003), 83–111, 164–70, 177–206, 224–29. 3. D. D. Kosambi, The Culture and Civilization of Ancient India in Historical Outline (repr., Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1994). 4. Jha, Ancient India, 64, 78–91; and Thapar, Early India, 138. The states were the trans-Indus kingdoms of Kambhoja and Gandhara (capital Takshila); Kuru near Delhi (Hastinapura); Panchala and Matsya in the Yamuna Basin; Shurasena (capital Mathura); Avanti (capital Ujjain); Chedi (capital Eran); Kosala (capital Ayodhya); Kashi (capital Varanasi); Vatsa on the Ganges; the oligarchic republics of Vrijjis and Mallas; Magadha (Pataliputra); Anga in Bengal; Asmaka in the Deccan. 5. Excavations at Adichanallur, Tamil Nadu reveal burial urns (ca. 800 BCE), 500 years before Asoka Maurya’s edict (third century BCE) on the Pandya, Chera, and Chola kingdoms of the Tamils. Skeletons excavated by T. S. Satyamurthy predate the southern megalith era by several centuries. T. S. Subramanian, ‘‘Skeletons, Script Found at Ancient Burial Site in Tamil Nadu,’’ The Hindu, Wednesday, May 26, 2004, 12.

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6. Important sutra composers were Gautama, Baudhyayana, Vasishtha, Katyayana, and Apasthamba. 7. Venkatesananda, The Concise Ramayana of Valmiki; Robert P. Goldman, ed. and trans., The Ramayana of Valmiki: Balakanda, vol. 1 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984); Sheldon I. Pollock, trans., Ayodhyakanda, vol. 2 (1986); Pollock, trans., Aranyakanda (1991). Also Swami Tapasyananda, ed., Sundarakandam of Srimad Valmiki Ramayana (Sanskrit with English translation; Madras: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1983). 8. Winternitz, A History of Indian Literature; A. L. Basham, The Wonder that Was India, vol. 1, 3rd ed. (Delhi: Rupa, 1967); Alf Hiltebeitel, The Cult of Draupadi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988); Hiltebeitel, Rethinking India’s Oral and Classical Epics—Draupadi amongst Rajputs, Muslims, Dalits (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999); Vanamala Bhawalkar, Woman in the Mahabharata (Delhi: Saujanya Books, 1999). 9. Paula Richman, ed., Many Ramayanas: The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), these essays: Richman, ‘‘Introduction,’’ 3–21; A. K. Ramanujan, ‘‘Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translation,’’ 22–49; Frank E. Reynolds, ‘‘Ramayana, Rama Jataka, and Ramakien: A Comparative Study of Hindu and Buddhist Traditions,’’ 50–63. Velcheru Narayana Rao, ‘‘A Ramayana of Their Own: Women’s Oral Tradition in Telegu,’’ 114–36. 10. Tharu and Lalitha, Women Writing in India, 1:94–98. 11. V. V. S. Aiyar, Kamba Ramayanam: A Study (Delhi: Tamil Sangam Publication, 1950), 321; K. S. Srinivasan, Ramayanam as Told by Valmiki and Kamban (Delhi: Abhinav Publications, 1993), 184–95. 12. Karve, Yuganta, 1–6, 37–162. 13. Asvalayana Griha Sutra (1.5.1–3; 1.19.1–13; 6.1–8; 20.1–7; 21.5–7; 22.1–5), Yajnavalkya Smriti (1.97–105, 115–116), Manu Smriti (6.1–3, 8, 25, 33, 42, 87–89), Gautama Dharma Sutra (8.14–26) cited by Embree, Sources of Indian Tradition, 1:224–31. 14. Jamison, Sacrificed Wife/Sacrificer’s Wife, 36–37, 45–47, 55; McGee, ‘‘Ritual Rights,’’ 42–43, 49 nn. 25, 28. 15. V. Varadachari, Agamas and South Indian Vaisnavism (Triplicane: Rangachari Trust, 1988), 47. 16. Embree, Sources of Indian Tradition, Manu Smriti (3.55–57; 9.3–7, 11, 26); Wendy Doniger and Brian K. Smith, trans., The Laws of Manu (New York: Penguin, 1991), 34–82 (chap. 2–4), 117–27 (chap. 6), 197–225 (chap. 9). 17. Young, ‘‘Om, the Vedas, and the Status of Women,’’ 84–121, 91. I thank Katherine Young for her reference to the Mahabharata’s Forest Book (3.305.20), 116 n. 62. 18. Paraskara Grihya Sutra (3.2) and Sankhyayana Grihya Sutra (2.17.13) cited by Altekar, The Position of Women in Hindu Civilization: From Prehistoric Times to the Present Day, 202–3. 19. Jaimini states: ‘‘Atulya hi stri pumsa. Yajamanah puman vidyamscha; patni stri avidya cha,’’ in his early sutra, Jaiminiya Mimamsabhashya (ca. third century BCE). See also S. Radhakrishnan and Charles Moore, eds., A Source Book on Indian Philosophy, 3rd ed. (1957; repr., Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), 486; and McGee, ‘‘Ritual Rights,’’ 32–50.

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20. Altekar, The Position of Women in Hindu Civilization, 203–5. 21. I quote Jaimini’s Purva Mimamsa from Altekar, The Position of Women in Hindu Civilization, 205. 22. Doniger and Smith, The Laws of Manu, 918. 23. Venkatesananda, The Concise Ramayana of Valmiki, 62. 24. Altekar, The Position of Women in Hindu Civilization, 100–101. The Sanskrit verse reads: ‘‘na mam Madhava vaidhvyam narthanasho na vairita; tatha shokaya bhavati yatha putrairvina bhavah.’’ 25. Quoted by Winternitz, A History of Indian Literature, 399. 26. Altekar, The Position of Women in Hindu Civilization, 3. 27. Venkatesananda, The Concise Ramayana of Valmiki, 88. 28. Altekar, The Position of Women in Hindu Civilization, 320–21. 29. Basham, The Wonder that Was India, 1:182. 30. Altekar, The Position of Women in Hindu Civilization, 324. 31. Hart, The Poems of the Ancient Tamil, 132–35. 32. Sarvananda, Aitareyopanishad, 59. 33. Doniger and Smith, The Laws of Manu, 68, 78, 93. 34. Cornelia Dimmitt, ‘‘Sita: Fertility Goddess and Sakti,’’ in The Divine Consort: Radha and the Goddesses of India, ed. John Stratton Hawley and Donna Marie Wulff (1984; repr., Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1995), 210–23. 35. Madhavananda, The Brihadaranyka Upanishad, 46–49; O’Flaherty, Hindu Myths, 34. 36. David Shulman, ‘‘Fire and Flood: The Testing of Sita in Kampan’s Iramavataram,’’ in Many Ramayanas, ed. Richman, 89–113. 37. Winternitz, A History of Indian Literature, 365–67, 382–84, 482; Chandra Rajan, trans., Kalidasa: The Loom of Time, A Selection of His Plays and Poems (New York: Penguin Books, 1989), 80. 38. Srinivasan, Ramayanam as Told by Valmiki and Kamban, 20. 39. John B. Alphonso-Karkala, An Anthology of Indian Literature, 2nd ed. (1971; repr., Delhi: Indian Council for Cultural Relations, 1987), 58–76, with Edwin Arnold, trans., Indian Idylls (London: Trubner & Co., 1883). 40. Kathleen M. Erndl, ‘‘The Mutilation of Surpanakha,’’ in Many Ramayanas, ed. Richmond, 67–88. 41. Alf Hiltebeitel, The Cult of Draupadi, 2 vols. (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1988 & 1991). 42. I have translated the Bhagavad Gita (3.35). Shakuntala Rao Sastri translated dharma as religion, in Shakuntala Rao Sastri, ed., The Bhagavad Gita (Sanskrit text and English translation), 3rd ed. (Bombay: Bharatiya Vidhya Bhavan, 1982), 163, 173. Radhakrishnan, A Sourcebook on Indian Philosophy, 115, 117, more appropriately translated dharma as law, meaning that it was preferable to perform one’s own law to another’s, however well; and that God created the four castes on the basis of occupations. Compare this with Embree, Sources of Indian Tradition, 1:286. Embree sweepingly equates dharma with caste function (varnashrama dharma). To prove his theory, Embree juxtaposes two separate verses (BG 3.35 and 4.13) with several stanzas from elsewhere into a single long problematic verse. This is expanded in a footnote (p. 334) that inserted words not in the text, like svadharma (one’s own dharma) and lokasamgraha (social solidarity). However, stanza 4.13 simply reads: ‘‘The four castes were created by me according to the separate strands of earthly

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qualities (gunas) and works (karma); Though I am the Creator, know me to be the immutable non-doer’’ (‘‘Caturvarnyam maya srishtam guna karma vibhagashah; tasya kartarampi mam vidhya kartaramavyayam’’). 43. Raman, ‘‘Popular Pujas in Public Places,’’ 165–98. 44. The three verses from the Bhagavad Gita read: ‘‘Patram pushpam phalam toyam yo me bhaktya prayacchati; tadaham bhaktyu prahartamashnami prayatatmanah’’ (BG 9.26); ‘‘Samo’ham sarva bhutesu na me dveshyo’sti na priyah; Ye bhajanti tu mam bhaktya mayi te tesu chapyaham’’ (BG 9.29); ‘‘Mam hi Partha vyapasritya ye’pi syuh papyonayah; striyo vaishyastatha shudraste’pi yanti param gatim’’ (BG 9.32). 45. O’Flaherty, The Rig Veda; Roy, ‘‘Vedic Cosmogonies,’’ 9–19; Frederick Smith, ‘‘India’s Curse: Varuna’s Noose, and the Suppression of Women in the Vedic Srauta Ritual,’’ in Roles and Rituals for Hindu Women, ed. Julia Leslie (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1992), 42–48. 46. Lynn Teskey Denton, Female Ascetics in Hinduism (Albany: State University of New York, 2004), 137–66. 47. A. K. Ramanujan, Speaking of Siva (New York: Penguin, 1973), 112. See also Tharu and Lalitha, Women Writing in India, 1:77–81; Embree, Sources of Indian Tradition, 1:349–51. 48. Altekar, The Position of Women in Hindu Civilization, 100–101. 49. Altekar quotes Apastamba Dharma Sutra, Vasistha Dharma Sutra, and Gautama Dharma Sutra, 237. 50. Doniger and Smith, The Laws of Manu, 42, 94, 198. 51. Ibid., 197–98. 52. Altekar, The Position of Women in Hindu Civilization, 324–25. 53. Ibid., 5. 54. Radhagovinda Basak, ed., Asokan Inscriptions (Calcutta: Progressive Publishers, 1959), 5–9. The Persian emperor Darius collected tribute from north India in 506 BCE. Curious about the source of the Indus, Darius ‘‘subdued the Indians and made regular use of the southern ocean,’’ according to Herodotus, The Histories, trans. Aubrey de Selincourt (1954; repr., New York: Penguin, 1979), 284–85. 55. Excerpt from Megasthenes’s Indika in K. A. Nilakanta Sastri, Foreign Notices of South India: From Megasthenes to Ma-Huan, 3rd ed. (1939; repr., Madras: Madras University, 2001), 41; J. W. McCrindle, Ancient India as Described by Megasthenes and Arrian (Calcutta: 1877), 62–63. 56. Thapar, Early India, 156–60. 57. Sailors’ tales are repeated by Greek geographers Strabo and Ptolemy, and the Roman historian Pliny. However, the most valuable is an unknown ship’s log, the Peripulus of the Erythraen Sea (first century CE), listing Indian ports and goods. Hoards of Roman gold and silver coins show that they lived in Tamil emporia ports of Puhar and Arikamedu. Phoenicians, Arabs, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Persians, east Africans landed in India, as did Jews, early Christians like St. Thomas the Apostle, and Chinese Buddhist monks like Fa-Hsein who sailed from Java. See R. Champakalakshmi, Trade, Ideology and Urbanization: South India 300 BC to AD 1300 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996), 105–13; K. A. Nilakanta Sastri, A History of South India: From Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar, 4th ed. (1955; repr., Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1975), 68–145. 58. Champakalakshmi, Trade, Ideology and Urbanization, 109.

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59. Thapar, Early India, 234–44. 60. Avvai Natarajan and Natana Kasinathan, Art Panorama of Tamils (Madras: State Department of Archaeology, 1992), 15–18; Raman, ‘‘Popular Pujas in Public Places,’’ 165–98; R. Nagaswamy, Studies in Ancient Tamil Law and Society (Madras: Institute of Epigraphy and the Tamil Nadu State Department of Archaeology, 1978), 84–88. 61. Thomas Trautmann, Kautilya and the Arthashastra: A Statistical Investigation of the Authorship and Evolution of the Text (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1971); and Stanley Wolpert, A New History of India, 7th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 55–59. 62. Alphonso-Karkala, An Anthology of Indian Literature, 313. AlphonsoKarkala relies on R. Shama Sastry, trans., Kautilya’s Artha Sastra, 8th ed. (1915; repr., Mysore: Mysore Printing and Publishing House, 1967), 174–77. 63. O’Flaherty, The Rig Veda, 52. 64. Alphonso-Karkala, An Anthology of Indian Literature, 310–11. 65. Doniger and Smith, The Laws of Manu, 115–16. 66. I quote Basham, The Wonder that Was India, 1:188. Basham cites Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, vol. 3 (London: 1888–1929), 92. 67. Paul Courtright, ‘‘The Iconographies of Sati,’’ in Sati, the Blessing and the Curse: The Burning of Wives in India, ed. John Stratton Hawley (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 27–48; Vidya Dehejia, ‘‘Comment: A Broader Landscape,’’ 49–53; Lindsay Harlan, ‘‘Perfection and Devotion: Sati Tradition in Rajasthan,’’ 79–90. 68. Alphonso-Karkala, An Anthology of Indian Literature, 312. 69. Ibid., 307–14. 70. Ibid., 312. 71. Doniger and Smith, The Laws of Manu, 93, 198; Altekar, The Position of Hindu Women in Indian Civilization, 205. Altekar quotes the Sanskrit text to show the decline in women’s education after 200 BCE; and Georg Buhler, The Laws of Manu (1886; repr., London: Dover, 1969), 330. 72. R. C. Hazra, Puranic Records on Hindu Rites and Customs, 3rd ed. (1940; repr., Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1987). 73. McGee, ‘‘Ritual Rights,’’ 34–35. 74. Sastri, The Bhagavad Gita, 272. 75. R. T. H. Griffith, trans., The Hymns of the Atharva Veda (1896; repr., Benares: E. J. Lazarus, 1957), 93–101. 76. Coburn, Devi Mahatmya, 256–58, 258–64. 77. Ashudoshananda, Veda Mantrangal, Sanskrit texts and Tamil commentaries on Purusha Sukta, 83–111; Devi Sukta, 164–70; Sri Sukta, 177–206; Ratri Sukta, 224–29. 78. Swami Tyagisananda, ed., Svetasvatara Upanishad (Chennai: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1987), 118. 79. Jha, Ancient India, 75. 80. Basham, The Wonder that Was India, 1:184, 456. 81. Jha, Ancient India, 82. 82. Thapar, Early India, 227, 285, 328; Romila Thapar, Ancient Indian Social History: Some Interpretations, 5th ed. (Delhi: Orient Longman, 1998), 109–36.

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83. Sukumar Dutt, Buddhist Monks and Monasteries of India (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1962), 128–31. 84. James Burgess, The Buddhist Stupas of Amravati and Jaggayyapeta (Varanasi: Indological Book House for the Archaeological Survey of India, 1970), 37–38, 48, 53, 55, 58, 63; Vidya Dehejia, Indian Art (1997; repr., London: Phaidon, 2002), 75; Vidya Dehejia, ‘‘Collective and Popular Basis of Early Buddhist Patronage: Sacred Monuments 100 BC–250 AD,’’ in The Powers of Art: Patronage in Indian Culture, ed. Barbara Stoler Miller (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992), 35–45. 85. Altekar, The Position of Women in Hindu Civilization, 185–87; also Jha, Ancient India, 81–84, 119, 149; and Thapar, Early India, 148–50, 285.

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4 BUDDHIST AND JAINA NUNS AND LAYWOMEN

Free, I am free. I am free by means of the three crooked things, mortar, pestle, and my crooked husband. I am free from birth and death and all that dragged me back. Mutta, Therigatha, ca. sixth century

1 BCE

DISSENT IN EARLY INDIA: BUDDHISM AND JAINISM Indian civilization was transformed by widespread religious dissent between 800 and 300 BCE, when many intellectuals rejected prosperity for a celibate, homeless existence with rudimentary possessions. Seeking answers to ultimate, philosophical questions, the ascetics ranged from transcendental monists to heterodox atheists convinced of material causation. At the crux of their revolt was opposition to fire sacrifices that depleted forests and destroyed life, and to social distinctions of gender and class. The Upanishadic monists proposed that the highest sacrifice consisted not in the ritual, but in the burning of sensory desire through yogic meditation (tapas) to attain beatific understanding (moksha) of cosmic unity. However, as they believed that rituals and gods were the lesser path, the Upanishads were absorbed into the Vedas (see Chapter 2). In contrast, various atheists and agnostics rejected rituals, gods, and the Vedas. The most notable were the Jainas who accepted women hermits, and the Theravada Buddhists who first rejected but later included nuns. More extreme radicals were the atheist Charvakas (ca. 700 BCE ) and Ajivika fatalists (ca. 500 BCE ) who accepted women hermits and were

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lenient on celibacy.2 The Theravada text Vinaya Pitaka states that there were 62 heterodox groups with women ascetics at this time.3 Despite theological differences, many ascetics shared certain Indian beliefs, namely that desire and social distinctions were illusory, actions (karma) determined future birth and death in the samsara cycle, and meditative yoga was redemptive.4 The monists regarded moksha as freedom from samsara, while Jainas and Buddhists described it as the ‘‘cooling’’ cessation (nirvana) of samsara. This elevation of spirit over flesh represented a high point in Indian thought, but some male ascetics equated women with the flesh and viewed them as a threat to salvation. Powerful royal patrons included the Jaina emperor Chandragupta Maurya (321–297 BCE) and Asoka Maurya (268–232 BCE) whose Theravada missionaries included his daughter and son who introduced Buddhism to Sri Lanka. Kushana emperor Kanishka (first century CE ) promoted the spread of Mahayana Buddhism across Asia; and Shatavahana queens (ca. third century CE ) supported Buddhist monasteries. Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana (Tantric) Buddhism declined in India by the eleventh century CE when many female orders became defunct. However, in the modern era, lower-caste Tantric and Dalit Buddhist women and men have resuscitated their religion, and new monastic groups have emerged.5 Homelessness, Celibacy, and Gender As ascetics were highly respected for forgoing worldly pleasures, religious mendicancy was incorporated into the third and fourth life stages (ashramas), namely, that of the part-time forest dweller and the complete hermit. Sanskrit titles for ascetics include sanyasini (f)/sanyasin (m), yogini (f)/yogi (m), sadhvi (f)/ sadhu (m), and bhikshuni (f)/bhikshu (m). Buddhist texts in Pali refer to homeless poverty as ‘‘pabbajatti’’ and to nuns as bhikkhuni and monks as bhikkhu who begged for food, owning nothing but a begging bowl and the clothes on their backs.6 Some Buddhist and Jaina monastics also carried a razor to shave their heads, signifying rejection of gender roles in preparation for the asexual goal of nirvana.7 From the beginning, women had a space in Jainism and Buddhism, and their efforts actively helped to propagate these religions in India. Jainism evolved from the earlier sect of Sramanas/Nirgranthas (‘‘bondless ascetics’’) who vehemently opposed fire sacrifices. Founder Vardhamana Mahavira (538–463 BCE) was the last of 24 Jaina preceptors or tirthankaras (ford crossers), also called Jinas (spiritual victors). The 19th tirthankara was probably a woman named Malli. The 23rd Jina Parshvanatha belonged to the sect of the Shvetambara (‘‘white clad’’), and he inducted women ascetics and laywomen. Mahavira belonged to the Digambara (‘‘sky clad’’) sect, and he established the first order of Jaina nuns.

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Mahavira’s contemporary Siddhartha Gautama or the Buddha (566–483 BCE) initially objected to women celibates. His hesitation probably stemmed less from doubts over female spiritual weakness than from anxiety over the continued celibacy of his monks. However, his mother Pajapati persuaded him to sanction the first order of Theravada Buddhist nuns. Senior Buddhist and Jaina nuns provided leadership to younger nuns and instructed laywomen and laymen in the community of celibates and laypersons (Sanghas). Respecting the strict celibacy upheld by Buddha and Mahavira, nuns took advantage of these new religious spaces at a time when Hindu women’s ritual authority had diminished significantly.8 The religions challenged the intellectual monopoly by brahman and kshatriya men. Due to strong convictions on nonviolence (ahimsa), Buddhists and Jainas rarely pursued farming as potentially harmful to minute soil creatures. Instead, many became traders, bankers, artisans, professions requiring literacy and accounting. The sects attracted women of all varnas, affluent vaishya bankers, non-Aryan kshatriya kings and aristocrats, and marginalized plebeian shudras and poor brahmans. Wealthy Buddhist and Jaina women have left records of their donations to their communities of monks, nuns, and women and men lay members.9 Some laywomen and laymen would temporarily adopt a renunciant’s life, serve the community, and return to household life, chastened by the abstinent experience, thus helping to integrate the Sanghas.10 Although women and non-Aryans eagerly embraced these religions, monks dominated nuns, laywomen, and laymen in their communities. They flourished in northern republican states whose non-Aryan populations were more equitable on gender and in the south where Dravidian women sages were honored, according to Tamil literature.11 Followers were attracted by the emphasis on morality (dharma) and nonviolence (ahimsa) over rites, Buddhism proving more popular due to less stringent rules. In contrast, Jaina ascetics undertook severe penances, some monks went nude, and practiced slow starvation to avoid killing microorganisms. In contrast, Buddhist monks and nuns ate frugally once a day, and homelessness merely involved separation from the family. When some monks questioned the Buddha about the value of incessant roaming and ‘‘trampling down the new grass, distressing the plants, and hurting so many little creatures,’’ the sage decreed that during the annual rains, they would reside in sheltered groves (vassa) donated by philanthropists.12 It is likely that seasonal settlement attracted some women to Buddhism. While each sect practiced homelessness slightly differently, ascetics largely agreed that celibacy was integral for nirvana. Buddhist and Jaina texts expressed contempt for monks who succumbed to desire, by reiterating the maxim that the body was decaying matter, and that women and possessions were obstacles to nirvana. A general suspicion of women is evident even in

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Mahavira’s advice to his young disciple Gautama, although he actively supported nuns: When your body grows old, and your hair turns white, all your powers decrease. Despondency, the king’s evil, cholera, mortal diseases of many kinds befall you; your body wastes and decays. Gautama, be careful all the while! Cast aside from you all attachments, as the (leaves of) a lotus let drop off the autumnal water, exempt from every attachment. Gautama, be careful all the while! Give up your wealth and your wife; you have entered the state of the houseless; do not, as it were, return to your vomit. Gautama, be careful all the while! Uttaradhyayana Sutra 10.26–2913 Scriptures and Women’s Hymns The religions were initially popular partly due to charismatic founders whose sermons and scriptures were in folk dialects, rather than in Sanskrit. Since women were often less educated, oral transmission was important in gaining their support. Buddha and Mahavira addressed followers in Ardha-Magadhi, a local dialect (Prakrit) derived from Sanskrit. The Jaina canon was orally transmitted in Ardha-Magadhi till inscribed ca. 450 CE.14 The Theravada canon or Tripitaka (Three Baskets/Books) with its subsections of Vinaya (Discipline), Sutta (Sermon), and Abhidhamma (Metaphysical) was verbally transmitted in Pali, and later transcribed ca. 70 BCE. However, after the first century CE, Mahayana Buddhist and Jaina texts were often composed in Sanskrit. Interestingly, the Tripitaka contains the oldest corpus of female hymns in India, and possibly the world. This is the Therigatha (Hymns of the Elder Nuns), whose 522 hymns are found in the Khuddha Nikaya section of the Sutta Pitaka. Some hymns date from Buddha’s life, but were later inscribed with the canon around 70 BCE.15 Moreover, other sections of the canon contain information on nuns or offer parables relevant to all. Dhammapada (Way of Righteousness) in the Sutta Pitaka contains the famous parable of the mustard seed. In this text, Buddha taught Kisa Gotami who grieved unceasingly for her dead child that sorrow is universal and how to rise above it.16 Patriarchal attitudes are revealed in Vinaya Pitaka’s Culla Vagga (10.1–6) on how the first nuns’ order was formed and Bhikkhuni Vibhanga (Nuns’ Section) which states that nuns had to abide by 311 rules, unlike monks with just 227 rules, as stipulated in Bhikkhu Vibhanga (Monks’ Section).17 This will be discussed later in this chapter.

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Gender and Salvation Despite women’s space in these religions, Indian patriarchal norms prevailed here as well. The founders were male sages, hence monks became the paradigm, and nuns the ‘‘Other.’’ Moreover, as most theologies were male constructions, women’s subordination became scripturally ordained. Senior Theravada monks (theras, bhikkus) could instruct nuns (theris, bhikkunis) and laywomen, but nuns rarely taught monks. Learned women (acharyis) instructed other nuns, but even male novices rarely accepted women teachers. Sangha hierarchies clearly mirrored lay patriarchal norms. The nuns’ quarters were subject to paternalistic supervision, although some rules were benign and intended to address issues like menstruation. One scholar conjectures that female subordination led to the decline of Buddhist nuns’ orders in India.18 The canon contains words attributed to Buddha who apparently ordered nuns to keep their place. However, these words may have been later interpolations by zealous monks eager to reiterate their own strictures on monastic celibacy. Buddha was the ‘‘Compassionate One’’ who respected women as mothers, and it is unlikely he was a petty patriarch. His advice to monks to cultivate the unselfish kindness of mothers is evident in his verse still chanted by Theravada Buddhists: Just as the mother at the risk of life, loves and protects her son, her only son, So let him [the monk] cultivate this boundless love To all that live in the whole universe . . . When he lives with perfect insight won, He surely comes no more to any womb. Sutta Nipata 14819

Despite entrenched patriarchy, early Hindus and Buddhists did not question women’s right to salvation. The Hindu belief in virtue and dharma, powerful goddesses, and a neuter Brahman show that gender is a trivial distinction on the path to moksha. Buddhists believe that nirvana is available to all virtuous individuals, irrespective of social condition, as seen in the Culla Vagga: Then the venerable Ananda spoke to The Blessed One as follows: ‘‘Are women competent, Reverend Sir, if they retire from household life to the houseless one, under the Doctrine and Discipline announced by The Thathagata, to attain to the fruit of conversion, to attain to the fruit of once returning, to attain to the fruit of never returning [to samsara], to attain saint-ship?’’ ‘‘Women are competent, Ananda, if they retire from household life to the houseless one, under the Doctrine and Discipline announced by the Thathagata, to attain to the fruit of conversion, to attain to the

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fruit of once returning, to attain to the fruit of never returning, to attain saint-ship.’’ Culla Vagga, in the Vinaya Pitaka, 10.320 As in other ancient civilizations, women’s roles as mothers and wives were seen as a natural result of their anatomy, and many did derive pleasure from these functions. Yet, single women rarely bypassed domesticity for the ascetic path, although society honored exemplary widow hermits and female saints.21 However, Tantric Hindu and Vajrayana (Tantric) Buddhist traditions differ, as they acknowledge women’s spiritual and sexual potential and do not require celibacy or homelessness for nirvana. Instead of becoming forest recluses, meditative yoginis (f)/yogis (m) reside at home.22 Fortunately in South Asia, parallel practices evolved outside the male textual doctrines. Hindu, Jaina, and Buddhist women often carved out their own ritual or meditative spaces not dictated in the texts, and they thus commanded spiritual authority. Therefore, despite a lengthy debate among Jaina monks on women’s nirvana, women expanded their religious spaces by celebrating devotional festivals almost in contradiction to theological guidelines. Many Jaina, Hindu, and other women today perform public rituals despite male textual strictures against women priests. 23 Indian women’s authority is also derived from the cultural veneration of the mother, which extended to the worship of creator mother goddesses. This is seen in Hinduism, in Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism, and in atheistic Jainism. JAINISM AND WOMEN Vardhamana or Mahavira (Great Courageous Sage), the last tirthankara or Jina, was born a kshatriya prince of the Jnatrika clan in Bihar. Vardhamana left his mother Trishala, a princess of the powerful Lichchhavi oligarchy, and his wife and child to become a religious mendicant. He is described in Theravada Buddhist texts as a Digambara or ‘‘naked ascetic’’ of the Nirgranthas.24 Jainism is based on three principles (Three Jewels), viz., Right Views, Actions, Faith, and five cardinal rules, viz., nonviolence (ahimsa), truth (satya), non-stealing (asteya), celibacy (brahmacharya), and non-attachment to possessions (aparigraha). While lay members practice sensory restraint, monks and nuns observe strict celibacy, poverty, and nonviolence. Jainas uphold reason and material causation, but two principles stem from mystical intuition rather than logic. The first dogma that all living and nonliving things have a soul (jiva) allows Jainas to embrace nature with empathy. Jivas range from the most complex with multiple senses like humans, in varying grades to include those with no sense organs, e.g., microorganisms and plants, and even nonliving organic matter like metal and stone. Since the earth pulsates with innumerable souls, the highest morality and quintessential ideal is nonviolence. Moreover, as Jainas implicitly accept

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the principle of karma-samsara, violent acts result in the jiva’s rebirth in a reduced life form. Buddhists and many Hindus also embrace the central dogma on ahimsa, and like Jainas, they hold that logic is needed for mundane knowledge, but enlightenment is an intuitive transformation attained by few ascetics. Jainas believe that enlightened sages (kevalin) have an extrasensory consciousness of jiva. 25 The Sutrakritanga text describes some beliefs: Earth and water, fire and wind, Grass, trees, and plants, and all creatures that move, Born of the egg, born of the womb, Born of dung, born of liquids— These are the classes of living beings (jiva). Know that they all seek happiness. In hurting them men hurt themselves, And will be born again among them Sutrakritanga 1.1–926

Jaina sub-sects of the Shvetambaras and Digambaras took root in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu. Most nuns were Shvetambaras, as clothing protected them from unwanted sexual attention. Digambara nudist monks traditionally rejected nuns in their midst. However, in the present era, nuns and laywomen have increased in Jainism, even among the Digambaras. Jainism has a new appeal today due to its emphasis on reason, human rights, and safeguards for the environment.27 Female Preceptors, Doctrines, and Salvation There are historical references to tirthankara Parshvanatha who possibly lived a century before Mahavira, but the lives of earlier preceptors are cloaked in legend. What is clear is that Nirgrantha-Jaina teachings stemmed from non-Aryan perspectives and that legends about several tirthankaras honor women. The Shvetambaras believe that the 19th tirthankara Malli was a woman, although Digambara monks argue that this was a monk named Mallinatha. A Shvetambara myth also offers a female origin for the cosmos through a single sensed soul (nitya-nigoda), from whom sprang goddess Marudevi, mother of Rshabha, the elusive first tirthankara (ca. 750 BCE). Marudevi has also been called the first Jaina woman ascetic and Mahavira’s great-grandmother, as well as ‘‘the First Lady of the First Family of our times.’’ Medieval statues show Marudevi with Rshabha on her lap.28 Rshabha was a Nirgrantha who resisted brahman fire sacrifices that celebrated kshatriya conquests. In the ensuing forest conflagrations, aboriginals and animals were decimated, as seen in the Mahabharata tale of the burning of the Khandava forest.29

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Jainas probably imbibed respect for women shamans from aboriginal groups. A legend states that Rshabha’s daughters Brahmi and Sundari bypassed married life to become ascetics, although this myth incidentally emphasized prior virginity for nuns. Rshabha is believed to have fathered children, but his successor Nemi and his fiance Rijimati were celibate.30 Tirthankara Parshvanatha was dark skinned, perhaps indicating nonAryan ancestry. He was a Shvetambara monk who believed in nirvana for women hermits (sadhvis) whom he appointed as administrators. Parshvanatha’s encouragement to women probably led to the Jaina adage, ‘‘Women too can attain perfect liberation (nirvana),’’ according to an eminent scholar.31 His successor tirthankara Mahavira was a Digambara, but he began the first order of nuns in Jainism. Such egalitarian ideas proved popular among the pre-Aryan republican clans of the Jnatrikas in Bihar and the Lichchhavis in Vaishali. 32 Perhaps the idea of a world teeming with unseen jivas attracted women to Jainism, as they could relate to the miraculous growth of the fetus within the womb. It is also possible that aboriginals were drawn by the theology of multiple jivas in the world, which resembled the innumerable life forms existing in the forest. Nuns were clearly rejected by many Digambaras, especially after the deepening sectarian schism with the Shvetambaras ca. 300 BCE. Some abstemious Digambara monks then voiced their opinion that women could not attain nirvana due to their flawed anatomy, which harbored microscopic mites and lice in their bodies. As women unintentionally killed these creatures, they broke the cardinal rule on nonviolence (ahimsa).33 This led to a longstanding debate on women’s nirvana in the classical era. The extreme practice of ahimsa also meant that some Digambara monks avoided traveling in the monsoons as it meant trampling upon insects and plants. The text below emphasized nudism and ahimsa for nirvana, but it was a reminder to the monks that women were outside its purview: If on his daily begging round he receives no alms, he should not be grieved, But think, ‘‘I have nothing today, but I might get something tomorrow!’’ When a restrained ascetic, though inured to hardship, lies naked on the rough grass, his body will be irritated, and in full sunlight the pain will be immeasurable. But still, though hurt by the grass, he should not wear clothes. When his limbs are running with sweat, and grimed with dust and dirt, in the heat of summer, the wise monk will not lament his lost comfort. He must bear it all to wear out his karma, and follow the noble, supreme Law. Until his body breaks up, he should bear the filth upon it. Uttaradhyayana Sutra 2.24–3734

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Fearing the presence of nude nuns, some Digambara monks declared women incapable of attaining nirvana on moral and anatomical grounds. This debate escalated ca. 150 CE when some misogynists argued that as female bodies harbored invisible mites, they could not renounce the sensory world to attain nirvana.35 Digambara thus also rejected those who wore garments as this negated the fifth Jaina principle of non-ownership (aparigraha). It was also argued that clothes reflected false modesty and the inability to control sexual desire.36 In the medieval era, the Yapaniya sub-sect (ninth to fifteenth century CE) combined some Digambara and Shvetambara ideals to declare females as spiritually and anatomically ‘‘inferior,’’ but eligible for nirvana.37 Despite such examples of male antipathy, not all Digambaras can be faulted with cruelty to women. Mahavira was a Digambara, but his compassion to women was proverbial. He encouraged women to debate publically on spiritual issues and inducted the first Shvetambara order of nuns. The Shvetambaras believe that simple clothing and strict morality lead women to nirvana. Without prohibiting nudity for either sex, this sect holds that nudity simply distracts the ascetic from his/her own meditational focus.38 The emphasis on celibacy led to sermons on the body as a lump of decaying matter, and women as a distraction from a spiritual focus. While such monastic didacticism indicates a deep fear of female sexuality, it is important to state that the highest Jaina legacy were the ideals of ahimsa and compassion for all visible and microscopic beings, irrespective of gender. In this medieval era, Shvetambara laywomen expanded their religious spaces by celebrating devotional (bhakti) festivals in which they still sing hymns, offer flowers in puja rites to images of tirthankaras, and refer to Mahavira as ‘‘bhagwan’’ or divine being. This is a startling title for the founder of a theology that rejects a Creator. It shows that women and laypersons have shaped religious practices in India, and these often deviate from textual dictates.39 Jina Malli and Female Salvation Despite the negative comments on tirthankara or Jina Malli and her gender in the above debates, Jaina nuns’ orders continue today in India. The Shvetambara text, Nayadhammakahao (An Account of the Jnatrikas), has a section entitled Malli Jnata (I.8), describing Jina Malli as a woman. This work also notes that the birth of a female Jina was one of the world’s rarest events.40 The legend states that in her previous life, Malli was a devious king Mahabala who performed great penances to win spiritual merit. For his evil motive for virtuous ends, he was reborn as a beautiful girl, flawless as a jasmine flower (Malli).41 Malli perceived the moral flaws in her suitors and became a virtuous ascetic who reached enlightenment as a kevalin who became a Jina, but Digambaras claim that this was the male Jina Mallinatha.42 Around 150 CE,

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Padmanandi Kundakunda, a prominent Telugu Digambara monk, argued that women could never attain nirvana in his Prakrit text, Suttapahuda (Gifted Treatise). This classical work contains the misogynist attitudes in the Hindu Manu Smriti. Kundakunda’s words on women’s salvation are provocative: 1. The supreme Lords of the Jinas [i.e., the highest authorities] have taught that there is only a single path of moksha (salvation) characterized by total nudity and hands alone used as a bowl for receiving alms. All other modes of mendicancy are not true paths. 5. The third emblem is that of women. She is called arya [Noble Lady, i.e., a nun] and eats only one meal a day and wears a single piece of cloth. But the female novice (ksullika), who keeps two pieces of clothing wears only one while eating. 6. According to the Teaching of the Jina, a person wearing clothes cannot attain moksha even if he be a Tirthankara. The path of moksha consists of nudity; all other paths are wrong paths. 7. In the genital organs of women, in between their breasts, in their navels, and in the armpits, it is said [in the scriptures that] there are very subtle living beings. How can there be mendicant ordination for them, since they must violate the vow of ahimsa? 8. Women have no purity of mind; they are by nature fickle-minded. They have menstrual flows. Therefore, there is no meditation for them free from anxiety. Suttapahuda43 Shvetambara patriarchs wrote an apologetic defense more insulting to women. They argued that Malli’s femaleness was irrelevant, as she became a nun before puberty. Lingering feminine traces were erased on attaining nirvana and her rise to the status of a Jina. Some teachers defended Malli’s femaleness and women’s nirvana. Yet by constructing the legend of her previous birth as a man, they obviously felt women were inferior. A new twist was initiated by the Yapaniya sub-sect, which adopted notions on clothing and nirvana from both Digambaras and Shvetambaras. In the Sanskrit text, Stri Nirvana Prakarana (Exegesis on Women’s Salvation), the author Sakatayana argued that nirvana was possible for those wearing clothes if they had no sense of ownership or vanity.44 Yet, this monk listed three genders, i.e., male, homosexual, and female, with women ranking lowest. Homosexuality was considered natural; men with female desires were considered both spiritually and anatomically higher than women who had female bodies and desires.45 The Shvetambaras dispute this argument. A single black stone sculpture of a full breasted nude female tirthankara in meditation at Unnav, Uttar Pradesh is believed to represent Jina Malli.46 Others dispute this, as she has long, braided hair, where a nun’s hair would

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have been completely shorn.47 However, one can argue that if a female Jina was a radical departure from the all-male tirthankara pantheon, could she not also have departed from the rule on shorn hair for celibates? Although not a goddess like Hindu Devi or the Vajrayana Buddhist goddess Tara, Jina Malli is the closest to the divine feminine in Jainism. Since Jainas followed Indian aesthetic norms, their artistic representation may have fallen in line with full-breasted, long-haired Hindu-Buddhist goddesses. The history of Jainism is a poignant narrative of women who continuously strove to break the ceiling on spiritual authority. It also reveals that liberal men resisted numerous didactic opponents, and artisans carved freeflowing visions in sculpture. Finally, it is clear that Jaina women reshaped textual doctrines through orthopraxy. Female agency in religion has never really been in doubt, despite the dull weight of patriarchal censure. Jaina Nuns and Laywomen Tirthankara Nemi, Parshvanatha, and Mahavira were more favorable to women than the Buddha was to the first Theravada nuns.48 Legend states that Rijimati was engaged to Nemi, the 22nd tirthankara, but became a nun with his approval. Parshvanatha’s support of women is now well known. Mahavira founded the first Shvetambara nuns’ order after his discourse with his female disciple, Ajja Candana. The texts state that Candana was the leader of thirtysix thousand nuns whose numbers were three times higher than those of monks and that there were twice as many laywomen (314,000) as laymen (159,000).49 Even if these numbers were idealizations, the male authors clearly sought to prove that women favored Jainism. Sakatayana’s ninth-century discourse on women’s salvation describes some important nuns: 28. How can that be? For [the women] who have reached the shore of the ocean of good conduct have plenty of steadfastness. 29. The chief nuns—namely, Brahmi, Sundari, Rijimati, and Candana—were worshipped even by gods and demons and are famous on account of their good conduct and sattva. Stri Nirvana Prakarana50 The Jaina canon also refers to the historical Queen Jayanti of Kosambi, who became a Jaina nun after speaking with Mahavira. Her philanthropy clearly gave a boost to early Jainism. Despite constraints on female property rights in classical India, royal and middle-class women owned property and were benefactors to Jaina, Buddhist, and Hindu organizations. Jaina Puja and Goddesses By the last centuries BCE, Hindu, Buddhist, and Jaina practices changed dramatically from asceticism to personal substantive rites of devotional worship

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(bhakti-puja) to sacred images housed in domestic altars and public shrines. In atheistic Jainism and Buddhism, new divinities were constructed from the folk veneration of exemplary humans. Hindu veneration of Devi or Mother Goddess drew upon folk legends of local female divinities (ca. first century CE). This was echoed in Jainism and Buddhism, as seen in the statue of Jina Malli. Jainas also venerated Marudevi as the Divine Mother and the first woman Jaina nun/saint or sadhvi.51 Among the honored Jaina mother figures are Vama and Trishala, the Jina Matas or mothers of Parshvanatha and Vardhamana, and other ‘‘perfected mothers’’ or Mahasati Matas who represent role models on womanly virtue.52 Jaina women also began to pay homage to the ‘‘eight mothers of teaching’’ (Vidyadevis) like the Hindu goddesses Saraswati and Lakshmi. Jainas invoke these revered divinities represented in images in household altars and shrines. Once valued for their benign magical powers, Matas and Vidyadevis are now meditative emblems. Such early feminine deities appear as tree nymphs (yakshis) and male dryads (yakshas) on Buddhist funerary monuments at Sanchi (third century BCE), Bharhut (second century BCE), and Amaravati (first to second century CE). A popular Jaina yakshi is Ambika, a benevolent mother goddess with a fierce form in south India. Regional influences are seen in the Jaina goddess Jvalamalini popular with Digambaras in south India, and Sachiyamata in Rajasthan. Jainas also worship local clan goddesses along with Hindus in western Indian villages. Such devotional practices, partially shaped by women’s rights, and visions of the feminine divine integrated Jainas, Buddhists, and Hindus in India.53

BUDDHISM AND WOMEN Buddha and Theravada Siddhartha Gautama was born a prince of the kshatriya Shakya clan to King Suddhodhana and Queen Maya of Kapilavastu, Nepal. Buddha was initially respected as an enlightened monk, and not as a divinity. However, myths soon circulated around the miraculous conception and birth of this extraordinary individual. The myths related that a sacred elephant impregnated his sleeping mother from her side and that she gave birth to Siddhartha not vaginally, but also from her side under an asoka tree in Lumbini Gardens. This episode is sculpted on the railing of the Buddhist reliquary (stupa) at Bharhut (second century BCE), which predates the 70 BCE Jataka (Birth stories) in Sutta Pitaka (Sermon Basket). The Jataka also states that Queen Maya died after his birth and that his aunt and stepmother Maha-Pajapati raised him with her own son and daughter. The legend is also sculpted on a later Mahayana Buddhist panel from Gandhara (first to second century CE). Disturbed by Siddhartha’s melancholy in the midst of luxury, his father confined him to the palace, but on a rare visit to the city, the thirty-year-old

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prince witnessed old age, sickness, death, and an ascetic. The contrast between sorrow and sensual palace existence deeply disturbed Siddhartha who now left his wife Yashodhara and son Rahula to become an ascetic. Six centuries later, the monk Ashvaghosa wrote a hagiography, Buddhacharita (Life of the Buddha), in which he described Siddhartha’s farewell. While some believe that this account proves Buddha’s dislike of women, it may be a false interpretation. Composed centuries after Buddha’s death, the hagiography mixes legend with real events, as its purpose was theological, rather than factual. Ashvaghosa portrays the virile prince consciously conjuring up repulsive images of sleeping harem women to reaffirm the transitory nature of pleasure. Whether or not Ashvaghosa intended to degrade women, he showed that Siddhartha viewed them as objects of desire and disgust, a message not lost on monks and laymen. Ashvaghosa wrote: The loveliest of women waited on him . . . but even music played on instruments like those of celestial beings failed to delight him. The ardent desire of that noble prince was to leave the palace in search of the bliss of the highest good. Whereupon the Akanistha Gods, who excelled in austerities, noting the resolution of the prince, suddenly cast the spell of sleep on the young women, leaving them in distorted postures and shocking poses . . . Another with well-developed legs lay as if sprawling in intoxication, exposing what should have been hidden, her mouth gaping wide and slobbering, her gracefulness gone and her body contorted . . . Seeing this, the prince was disgusted, ‘‘Such is the real nature of women in the world of the living—impure and loathsome, but deceived by dress and ornaments, man is stirred to passion for them.’’ Ashvaghosa’s Buddhacharita54 The Jataka (1.68–76) has an earlier account of Siddhartha’s meditation under a bodhi tree near Varanasi and how Mara, the male dryad (yaksha) of temptation and death, tried to seduce Siddhartha with wealth and power. The Buddha repulsed him by invoking Mother Earth, a scene often depicted in sculpture.55 The text states, ‘‘The mighty earth thundered, ‘I bear you witness!’ with a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand roars, as if to overwhelm the army of Mara.’’ 56 Mara then asked his daughters Desire, Pleasure, and Passion to seduce Siddhartha who rejected them and attained enlightenment.57 Scholars argue that the Sangha’s misogynist monks described women as temptresses in texts like Angutarra Nikaya (II.80, III.67–68) in Sutta Pitaka.58 However, the primary purpose of such parables was not patriarchal but was theological in order to describe monk Siddhartha’s grand conquest of desire. As the order initially comprised only monks, pleasure and passion were conceived as seductresses. For contemplative nuns, the tale

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would involve male seducers, as when Mara appeared himself to disturb the meditations of the bhikkhuni Soma. Mara derided Soma’s femaleness with ‘‘a two-finger wit’’ used to obstruct women from attaining nirvana. However, wise Soma saw through his guile and remained steadfast, thus proving she was unshaken by worldly gender distinctions. Mara fled on hearing her retort: Am I a woman, or Am I a man, or what not am I then? To such a one is Mara fit to talk? Samyutta Nikaya59

In his first sermon at the Deer Park, Buddha taught the Middle Way between rigid penance and indulgence, and compassionately offered salvation to all. He delineated Four Noble Truths as causes and effects the first being universal sorrow (dukkha). The second is that sorrow emanates from desire out of ignorance that the world is transient (anicca) and the soul nonexistent (anatta). The third explains that each disease has a cure; and the fourth describes the cure as the Eight Fold Path. The sermon is related in the Samyutta Nikaya in the Sutta Pitaka: Thus have I heard. Once the Lord was at Varanasi, at the deer park called Isipatana. There he addressed the five monks: There are two ends not to be served by the wanderer. What are these two? The pursuit of desires and the pleasure which springs from desire, which is base, common, leading to rebirth, ignoble, and unprofitable; and the pursuit of pain and hardship, which is grievous, ignoble, and unprofitable. The Middle Way of the Tathagata avoids both these ends. It is enlightened, it brings clear vision, it makes for wisdom and leads to peace, insight, enlightenment, and Nirvana. What is the Middle Way? . . . It is the Noble Eight Fold Path—Right Views, Right Resolve, Right Speech, Right Conduct, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration. This is the Middle Way. Samyutta Nikaya 5.42160 Maha-Pajapati’s Quest The canon records that the Buddha equated unselfish motherly love to the compassion of an enlightened sage (arhant). Yet, Maha-Pajapati’s struggle for an order of nuns was arduous, and once established, bhikkhunis faced institutional restrictions. This is poignantly recorded by a Theravada monk in the Culla Vagga of the Vinaya Pitaka (Discipline Basket). Buddha’s foster mother Pajapati’s three appeals to him were rejected. She finally made a last attempt, journeying across many miles, and arrived with painful feet with

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five hundred women dressed in saffron and with shaven heads like ascetics. They included widows, those whose male relatives had died in battle, the devout, and those who simply followed Pajapati.61 Buddha sanctioned the bhikkhuni order after being persuaded by his gentle cousin Ananda who sympathized with the women. He pointedly asked the Buddha if women could become arhants who reached nirvana. The Buddha agreed that women were eligible for this highest state, whereupon Ananda pressed his case. After two refusals the Buddha agreed in view of her maternal love and service for him in childhood. Yet, Buddha’s anxiety over his monks’ continued celibacy led him to stipulate eight ‘‘weighty laws’’ for nuns. The text states: And standing respectfully at one side, Maha-Pajapati the Gotamid spoke to The Blessed One as follows: ‘‘Pray, Reverend Sir, let women retire from household life to the houseless one, under the Doctrine [Dharma] and Discipline announced by The Tathagata [One who has gone forward, i.e., the Buddha].’’ ‘‘Enough, Gotami. Do not ask that women retire from the household life to the houseless one, under the Doctrine and Discipline announced by The Tathagatha.’’ [A second and a third time Pajapati made the same request in the same words and received the same reply.] Then thought Maha-Pajapati the Gotamid, ‘‘The Blessed One permitteth not that women retire from household life to the houseless one, under the Doctrine and Discipline announced by The Tathagatha;’’ and she was sorrowful, sad, and tearful, and wept. And saluting The Blessed One, and keeping her right side toward him she departed. Then The Blessed One, after dwelling at Kapilavatthu as long as he wished, departed on his wanderings toward Vesali, and wandering from place to place, he came to where Vesali was. And there The Blessed One dwelt in Vesali, in Great Wood, in Pagoda Hall. Then Maha-Pajapati the Gotamid had her hair cut off, put on yellow garments, and with a number of Sakka women departed towards Vesali; . . . And Maha-Pajapati the Gotamid with swollen feet and covered with dust, sorrowful, sad, and tearful, stood weeping outside in the entrance porch . . . [Ananda:] ‘‘ . . . consider, Reverend Sir, how great a benefactress Maha-Pajapati the Gotamid has been. She is the sister of the mother of The Blessed One, and as foster-mother, nurse, and giver of milk, she suckled The Blessed One on the death of his mother. Pray, Reverend Sir, let women retire from household life to the houseless one, under the Doctrine and Discipline announced by The Tathagata.’’ [Buddha:] ‘‘If, Ananda, Maha-Pajapati the Gotamid will accept eight weighty regulations, let it be reckoned to her as her ordination.’’ Culla Vagga 10.162

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The Bhikkuni Vibhanga describes the nun’s stages from novice to senior bhikkhuni and the rules governing her life. Compassion decreed that the monks take note of women’s specific menstrual needs. However, as a patriarchal institution, the ‘‘Eight Special Rules’’ ranked senior bhikkhunis below the youngest male novices, and nuns were subject to monks’ criticisms, but not vice versa. Care was taken to weed out novice nuns whose health was unsatisfactory, whose morals were suspect in any way, or if they used ‘‘magical’’ techniques and potions in abortion or childbirth.63 Although nuns and monks received similar teachings, novice nuns had to be at least 20 years old and to have parental permission. Novice nuns needed the approval of monks, but male novices did not require support from bhikkhunis. Nuns confessed their wrongs before an assembly of monks and nuns; monks confessed solely to other monks. Even senior nuns had to bow low to male novices, a demeaning rule that led Pajapati to appeal through Ananda for its reversal.64 Unfortunately, the Buddha is reputed to have dismissed it as ‘‘impossible.’’65 Some texts like Angutarra Nikaya point to Buddha’s suspicion of women in the Sangha, but some verses may have been interpolations into the Pali canon when it was compiled ca. 70 BCE. A verse in tune with Buddha’s personality shows Ananda asking the sage how to treat newly ordained nuns. The Buddha advised him not to look directly and to control his senses.66 However, another verse is so much at variance with the image of the benign but firm patriarch that it may not have emanated from the Compassionate One. A monk asked why so few women addressed assemblies, indicating that women’s public roles had shrunk by 70 BCE. Buddha’s uncharitable reply is surprisingly at odds with his saintly reputation. Such apocrypha show how later monks used his voice to authoritatively supervise monastic celibacy. The verse states: Women, Ananda, are uncontrollable . . . envious . . . jealous . . . weak in wisdom. Angutarra Nikaya II.8067 The canon also exhorts monks to be kind, even under the stress of sexual abstinence, for example, in the Dhammapada verse: ‘‘As the Vassika plant sheds its withered flowers, men should shed passion and hatred.’’ 68 Although some misogyny marred the benign face of early Buddhism, other charitable monks helped women to reap the advantages of this religion. Therigatha and Bhikkhunis The Therigatha (Hymns of the Elder Nuns) was composed by the first bhikkhunis or theris in the sixth century BCE and inscribed around 70 BCE with the rest of the canon. The 522 hymns were composed by 72 wandering

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nuns who sang the hymns while preaching Buddha’s doctrines. The hymns were orally reshaped over centuries before being written down.69 Susan Murcott has uncovered the lives of the nuns who followed Pajapati and the meanings behind their poignant, yet exultant hymns. Women joined the order for social, psychological, and spiritual reasons. Some escaped from domestic hardships and thwarted ambitions; others sought answers to traumatic grief; and still others found comfort in the company of similar women, but all were assuaged by Buddha’s teachings. A devastating war had left women without male family support, and Pajapati took them under her wing. Female relations, servants, and aged hangers-on in the Buddha’s dispersed harem joined Pajapati when she became a nun. Mothers and sisters without support and abstinent widows easily adjusted to the nuns’ frugal existence. Society frowned on widow remarriage, and it is possible that widow-nuns with shorn heads shaped an emergent tradition requiring all widows to shave their heads, live and eat frugally, wear drab mourning attire, and eschew ornamentation. Dhammapadata Katha by Buddhaghosha (second century BCE) describes how the widow Bahupittika became a nun after her cruel sons cheated her of her property.70 Another aged widow, Citta, described her spiritual release in this stark poem: Though I am thin, sick and lean on a stick, I have climbed up Vulture Peak. Robe thrown down, bowl turned over, leaned on a rock then great darkness opened. Citta, Therigatha71

Emotional stress was common among co-wives in a polygamous society, and some described their suffering as ‘‘hell.’’ A few were ready to eat poison till they became nuns, while other nuns had been abandoned by ascetic husbands. Sumangalmata and Mutta left abusive husbands, as seen in Mutta’s poem early in this chapter. Isadasi was a beautiful, selfless wife neglected by a callous husband, but she conquered desire and found peace in Buddhist ideals and the female sangha. 72 Buddha’s words to another woman novice became her own poem: Sleep sweetly, dear sister in the robe you made your desire is still like dried up vegetables in a pot. Anonymous, Therigatha73

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Of the original 18 married women who became nuns, at least three grieved for dead children. Kisa Gotami’s cousin was the Buddha who directed her to bring a mustard seed from any house free of sorrow. She returned empty handed and was cognizant that sorrow was universal. Buddha assuaged her tears with these kind words, ‘‘Miserable woman, this pain cannot be measured. Your tears have fallen for thousands of years.’’ The mother Vassethi’s loss made her ‘‘totally mad, out of my senses’’ until she became a nun. Ubbiri wept for her daughter Jiva: I had an arrow in my heart And he took it out—That grief for my daughter. Ubbiri, Therigatha74

Courtesans in bustling cities also found a space as laywomen and nuns in early Buddhism. Tensions occasionally erupted between women escaping from arid sensuality and celibates priding themselves on their virtue. The latter were shamed by the beautiful, wealthy courtesan Ambapali, mistress of King Bimbisara of Magadha to whom she had borne a child. After hearing Buddha’s sermon, she joined as a lay disciple. Her munificent gift of a grove and hermitage sheltered Buddha on his death. Prostitute Vimala’s overtures were refused by monk Moggallana who told her to regard her body as ‘‘a bag of dung’’ until she grew independent of its cravings. She describes how she once scorned women and preyed on men: Dressed to kill at the whorehouse door, I was a hunter and spread my snare for fools. And when I stripped for them I was the woman of their dreams; I laughed as I teased them. Today, head shaved, robed, alms-wanderer, I, my own self, sit at the tree’s foot; no thought. All ties untied, I have cut men and gods out of my life, I have quenched the fires. Vimala, Therigatha75

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Some found spiritual opportunities, others became prescient teachers whose intellects enhanced the reputation of the first female sangha. After Maha-Pajapati, wise Patacara became the leader of the five hundred nuns. She had become a nun after the death of her child, but Patacara cultivated philosophy, empathized with, and assisted other grieving women. Dhammadina’s intelligence led Buddha to declare that her words were equal to his own as ‘‘buddhavacana’’ (Majjhima Nikaya I.299–305).76 Brilliant Khema was praised for her efficient administration of the order. Her lectures convinced King Pasenadi of Kosala to become a lay patron (Samyutta Nikaya IV.374–380).77 Inscriptions also reveal that women could bypass the eight ‘‘weighty laws’’ to find opportunities in Buddhism. The nuns who sang the Therigatha were Theravada missionaries freed from domestic constraints. Asoka Maurya sent his daughter Sanghamitta and son Mahindra, children of his Buddhist mistress Devi, to Sri Lanka where Sanghamitta instructed the queens about Theravada and Mahindra introduced Buddhism. Devi was a merchant’s daughter from the Buddhist stronghold of Vidisa, and Asoka’s first queen Asandhimitta was also an ardent Buddhist.78 However, his second wife Tissarakkha was apparently jealous of this religious preoccupation and is reputed to have damaged Buddha’s bodhi tree. Asoka’s last two queens, Karuvaki and Padmavati whose son was the heir, were all Buddhists. The tenuous position of co-wives in royal harems is indicated in the short Queen’s Allahabad Pillar Edict. It records Queen Karuvaki’s philanthropy, but ensures that this queen was given due credit: On the order of the Beloved of the Gods, the officers everywhere are to be instructed that whatever may be the gift of the second queen, whether a mango-grove, a monastery, an institution for dispensing charity or any other donation, it is to be counted to the credit of that queen . . . the second queen, the mother of Tivala, Karuvaki.79 Mahayana After 150 BCE, the popular sect of Mahayana Buddhism (Great Vehicle) was dominated by monks, but its fluid doctrines and engendered savior divinities (bodhisattvas) opened lay ritual spaces for women and men, and facilitated its spread across Asia. At the great monastic center of Nagarjunakonda, Andhra Pradesh (100–450 CE), theologians reexamined Buddha’s teachings in fresh Sanskrit scriptures. Saddharma Pundarika (Lotus of the True Law) is especially interesting for gender studies, and the later Prajnaparamita sutras (Discourses on Transcendental Wisdom) described bodhisattvas. Texts favorable to female bodhisattvas were often composed by 300 CE.80

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Other new Buddhist theologies reshaped attitudes to women and their roles in this religion. Mahayana monks honored Buddha as a historical personage, but he became a cosmic ideal and force behind a stream of semidivine past and future buddhas, arhants who attained nirvana, and selfless bodhisattva teachers. The Buddha was unique because of his three bodies (trikaya), concepts that brought Mahayana closer to Hindu Brahman as manifest in various deities. Buddha’s earthly body was a ‘‘Magical Transformation’’ of his sublime Body of Bliss, which emanated from his Body of Essence in the universe. While Buddha remained on earth after nirvana, upon death he merged into cosmic parinirvana. From this theistic vision, there sprang a pantheon of bodhisattvas, heavens, hells, and a Pure Land (Sukhavati). Nontheistic sects proclaimed the doctrine of ‘‘emptiness’’ (sunya) echoing Buddha’s atheism, and the meditative Dhyana school flourished in China as Chan, and in Japan as Zen Buddhism. Other Mahayana Buddhists believed in male and female deities and magical mysticism.81 Vajrayana Buddhism (post–sixth century CE) incorporated goddesses from local traditions in India, Nepal, and Tibet, and it encouraged women preceptors. The sect will be discussed in the next chapter. Bodhisattvas: Male and Female The ideal of compassion was elaborated in Mahayana through the doctrine of the selfless bodhisattva. The theology is significant because it derives from Buddha’s injunction to a monk to cultivate maternal kindness as superior to all other forms of compassion. The bodhisattva thus postpones his own nirvana, takes on the suffering of his followers, and rescues them. This is apparent in this text: ‘‘All creatures are in pain,’’ he resolves, ‘‘all suffer from bad and hindering karma . . . so that they cannot see the Buddhas or hear the Law of Righteousness or know the Order . . . All that mass of pain and evil karma I take in my own body, . . . I take upon myself the burden of sorrow; I resolve to do so; I endure it all . . . I am not afraid . . . nor do I despair. Assuredly I must bear the burden of all beings . . . for I have resolved to save them all, I must set them free.’’ Siksasamuccaya82 A Prajnaparamita text describes a conversation between Buddha, or the Lord, and his disciple Sariputra. Buddha compares the kind bodhisattva to those who strive only for themselves: ‘‘But,’’ said the Lord, ‘‘the bodhisattva (has this resolve) . . . a firefly . . . doesn’t imagine that its glow will light up all India or shine all over it, and so the disciples and Private Buddhas don’t think that they should

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lead all beings to Nirvana . . . after they have gained full enlightenment. But the disc of the sun, when it has risen, lights up all India, and shines all over it. Similarly, the bodhisattva . . . when he has gained full enlightenment, brings countless beings to Nirvana.’’ Prajnaparamita83 The most important bodhisattvas were males like Amitabha (Heavens), Avalokitesvara (Compassion), Maitreya (Future), and Manjusri (Wisdom). In India, Mahayana monks felt that Avalokitesvara’s kindness was compatible with masculinity, and at least one classical fresco at Ajanta Caves (fifth century CE) shows him as virile and handsome, eyes limpid with empathy for the pain of others.84 However, as the myth journeyed to East Asia, it encountered existing gender tropes, and gentle male Avalokitesvara was identified with goddess Guan-Yin/Kuan-Yin.85 The first Mahayana scriptures declared that women could reach nirvana and become bodhisattvas. The Lotus of the True Law (XII) states that nuns Maha-Pajapati and Yashodhara, Buddha’s wife, achieved nirvana with six hundred nuns in their train.86 When the bodhisattva Manjusri was questioned about his most perfect pupil, he named a virgin tribal girl, daughter of the serpent king of the sea: Manjusri answered: In the bosom of the sea I have expounded the Lotus of the True Law and no other Sutra. Prajnakula said: That Sutra is profound, subtle, difficult to seize . . . is there any creature also able to understand this jewel of a Sutra, or to arrive at supreme, perfect enlightenment? Manjusri replied: There is, young man of good family, the daughter of Sagara, the Naga-king, eight years old, very intelligent, of keen faculties, endowed with prudence in acts of body, speech, and mind who has caught and kept all of the teachings . . . who has acquired in a moment a thousand meditations and proofs of the existence of all laws. She does not swerve from the idea of enlightenment . . . With a bland smile on the face and in the bloom of an extremely handsome appearance she speaks words of kindliness and compassion. She is fit to arrive at supreme, perfect enlightenment. Saddharma Pundarika XI, 4887 Yet, some Mahayana monks quibbled over whether women could be bodhisattvas, since such a perfect being could only be born in a male body.88 As the Buddha had already accepted the girl’s present of a gem and declared her as a bodhisattva, the monks could only resolve this by a miraculous sex change: At the same instant, before the sight of the whole world and of the senior priest Sariputra, the female sex of the daughter of Sagara, the

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Naga-king, disappeared; the male sex appeared and she manifested herself as a Bodhisattva. Saddharma Pundarika XI, 5189 Another interesting Mahayana work is Srimala Sutra, attributed to the woman saint Srimala (Holy Garland) in the third century CE. Srimala calls herself ‘‘a lay bodhisattva of a good family,’’ with a constructed geneology linking her to an ancestral garland maker for the Buddha. Srimala may have been an Ikshvaku princess from the dynasty that maintained monasteries at Amaravati and Nagarjunakonda. Although only fragments remain of this brief but intriguing work by a woman, her theology is echoed in later Mahayana texts (ca. 400 CE), which refer to Srimala’s Divine Garland (Srimala devim Adhkrtya) as the Lion’s Roar of Srimala (Srimala Simhanada). It was also known to Chinese Buddhist translators. The text was theologically innovative and subtle, and the author was not a nun but a lay woman saint praised as a bodhisattva. The legend states that Srimala was a woman of ‘‘a good family’’ and supported the Mahayana through gifts, indicating that she had accrued meritorious karma. Since it ties the author Srimala to Mahayana monasteries where Telugu royalty made donations, she was probably a devout, aristocratic woman. The narrative also emphasizes her compassion and intelligence before she asked the Buddha to make her eloquent enough to teach his Doctrine during tumultuous times. The Buddha prophesied she would be a bodhisattva. Srimala took 10 vows, including a declaration to take on the pain of others. She declared: When I observe sentient beings who are trapped and friendless, bound, diseased, poor, miserable, I shall not forsake them for a single moment. Srimala Sutra90 After making her tenth vow, the text states that she merged completely into the Illustrious Doctrine (Mahayana). She had now become a bodhisattva, capable of preaching the Doctrine. She then uttered the Lion’s Roar to signify spiritual victory: My births are finished; the pure life fully resorted to; duty is done; there is nothing to be known beyond this. Srimala Sutra91

CONCLUSION Women’s orders in Jainism continue to this day; but those of the Buddhists in India have declined due to various reasons. Hindu rulers supported Buddhist monasteries like Nalanda in the fifth century, but after the

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sixth century, they supported devotional, bhakti Hinduism. Theravada remained in Sri Lanka, and Vajrayana took root in Bhutan, Sikkim, Nepal, and Tibet (640 CE ) and Mahayana continued in Bengal under the Palas (800–1100). The conversion of rulers to Hinduism was followed by bankers and merchants, and this dried up the financial base of Buddhist monasteries.92 Invasions by Huns (fifth to sixth century) and by Muslims (1197) destroyed Buddhist centers of learning and ebbed the orders of monks and nuns. Neither misogyny nor Muslim rule caused the Buddhist nuns’ orders to ‘‘disappear,’’ as nuns still survive in small monastery compounds. For example, one group in eastern India is still maintained by a ninth-century grant.93 Finally, a medieval feudal culture reinforced male martial chivalry and female honor as wives and mothers, so that few women chose to become Buddhist nuns. However, Hindu women mystics adopted the ideal of bhakti saintly celibacy. NOTES 1. Murcott, The First Buddhist Women. See also translations by Uma Chakravarti and Kumkum Roy, in Tharu and Lalitha, Women Writing in India, 1:68. 2. Basham, The Wonder that Was India, 294–96; Nalini Balbir, ‘‘Women and Jainism in India,’’ in Women in Indian Religions, ed. Arvind Sharma (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002), 85. Balbir cites Arthur L. Basham, History and Doctrine of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion (London: Luzac & Co., 1951), 106. 3. Murcott, The First Buddhist Women, 41 n. 4, citing Meena Talim, Women in Early Buddhist Literature (Bombay: Bombay University, 1972), 1. 4. Padmanabh S. Jaini, Collected Papers on Jaina Studies (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2000), 3–11. 5. Nancy Auer Falk, ‘‘The Case of the Vanishing Nuns: The Fruits of Ambivalence in Ancient Indian Buddhism,’’ in Unspoken Words: Women’s Religious Lives, ed. Nancy Auer Falk and Rita M. Gross (Belmont, California: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1989), 155–65; Reginald Ray, ‘‘Accomplished Women in Tantric Buddhism of Medieval India and Tibet,’’ in Unspoken Words, ed. Falk and Gross, 191–200; Nancy J. Barnes, ‘‘Women and Buddhism in India,’’ in Women in Indian Religions, ed. Arvind Sharma, 2nd ed. (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004), 51–61; M. Whitney Kelting, Singing to the Jina: Jain Laywomen, Mandal Singing, and the Negotiations of Jain Devotion (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 193–203. 6. Murcott, The First Buddhist Women, 15, 204. 7. Edward Conze, Buddhism: Its Essence and Development (Oxford: Bruno Cassiter, 1951; repr., New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1975), 54–55. 8. Dutt, Buddhist Monks and Monasteries of India. 9. Jaini, Collected Papers on Jaina Studies, 3–11. 10. Stein, A History of India, 69–70. 11. A Dravidian Tamil woman sage was Auvaiyar (Old Woman Sage). There are strong references to Buddhist and Jaina nuns in the Tamil literature. The Jaina monk Tiruvalluvar authored Tirukkural and Naladiyar, the second work being expanded

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later by other Jaina monks; a central character in Shilappadikaram is the Jaina nun Kavundi; Manimekhalai is the story of a Buddhist nun; Jivakachintamani is about a Jaina king Jivaka. In the fifth to early sixth century, the first Hindu woman bhakti-yogini was Karaikkal Ammaiyar. See Mu. Varadarajan, A History of Tamil Literature, trans. E. Sa. Visswanathan (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1988), 80–96, 100–101, 151–53, 174–76; P. S. Sundaram, trans., Thiruvalluvar: The Kural (Chennai: P. S. Sundaram, 1987); Alain Danielou, trans., Shilappadikaram: The Ankle Bracelet by Prince Ilango Adigal (New York: Penguin, 1965). 12. Karen Armstrong quotes MahaVagga, in the Vinaya Pitaka (3.1), in Armstrong, Buddha (New York: Lipper-Viking, 2001), 139. 13. Alphonso-Karkala, An Anthology of Indian Literature, 176, based on Hermann Jacobi, trans., Jaina Sutras, Part II, in Sacred Books of the East, ed. Freidrich Max Muller, vol. 45 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1895), 41–46. 14. Radhakrishnan, Indian Philosophy, 288–89. 15. Tharu and Lalitha, Women Writing in India, 1:65–70; and Murcott, The First Buddhist Women; Henry Clarke Warren, Buddhism: In Translations (Harvard University Press, 1896; repr., New York: Atheneum, 1982), xvii. 16. Alphonso-Karkala, An Anthology of Indian Literature, 240–42. AlphonsoKarkala cites E. W. Burlingame, trans., Buddhist Parables (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1922), 20–28. 17. Conze, Buddhism: Its Essence and Development, 441–47; Murcott, The First Buddhist Women, Appendix, 196–99. Murcott uses adaptations from I. B. Horner, trans., The Book of the Discipline (Culla Vagga of Vinaya Pitaka), vol. 5 (London: Luzac & Co., 1952), 356; and F. L. Woodward, trans., The Book of Gradual Sayings (Anguttara Nikaya), vol. 4 (London: Pali Text Society, Oxford University Press, 1935), 184–85. 18. Falk, ‘‘The Case of the Vanishing Nuns,’’ 155–265. 19. Murcott, The First Buddhist Women, 77, 90 n. 8. 20. Warren, Buddhism: In Translations, 443–44. 21. Denton, Female Ascetics in Hinduism, 23–40. 22. Ray, ‘‘Accomplished Women in Tantric Buddhism of Medieval India and Tibet,’’ 191–211; and Falk, ‘‘The Case of the Vanishing Nuns,’’ 155–265. 23. Personal research; also Raman, ‘‘Popular Pujas in Public Places,’’ 165–98. Also Katherine K. Young, ‘‘Women and Hinduism,’’ in Women in Indian Religions, ed. Arvind Sharma (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004), 31. 24. Embree, Sources of Indian Tradition, 1:49–50. 25. Radhakrishnan, A Sourcebook on Indian Philosophy, 250; also AlphonsoKarkala, An Anthology of Indian Literature, 166–211; John Fenton, Norvin Hein, Frank E. Reynolds, Alan L. Miller, and Niels C. Nielsen, Jr., Religions of Asia, 2nd ed. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988), 280–86. 26. Embree, Sources of Indian Tradition, 1:63. 27. Balbir, ‘‘Women and Jainism in India,’’ 88–89. 28. Padmanabh S. Jaini, ‘‘From Nigoda to Moksa: The Story of Marudevi,’’ in Jainism and Early Buddhism: Essays in Honor of Padmanabh S. Jaini, Part I, ed. Olle Qvarnstrom (Fremont, California: Asian Humanities Press, 2003), 1–2, 11–27. 29. Madhav Gadgil and Ramachandra Guha, This Fissured Land: An Ecological History of India (Delhi and Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1993), 71–110.

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30. Padmanabh S. Jaini, Gender and Salvation: Jaina Debates on the Spiritual Liberation of Women (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991), 105. 31. Murcott, The First Buddhist Women, 60. 32. Fenton, Hein, Reynolds, Miller, and Nielsen, Religions of Asia, 281, citing Heinrich Zimmer who stated this fact about Parshvanatha in his Philosophies of India, Bollingen Series 26, ed. Joseph Campbell (Princeton University Press, 1951; repr., Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1969), 60, 196. 33. Jaini, Gender and Salvation, xvi–xvii; Balbir, ‘‘Women and Jainism in India,’’ 72–73. 34. Embree, Sources of Indian Tradition, 1:67–68, quoting J. Charpentier, ed., Uttaradhyayana Sutra (Uttarajjhayana; Upsala: Appelbergs Boktrycheri Aktiebolag, 1922). 35. Jaini, Gender and Salvation, 1–29, vide, 2–4; and Robert P. Goldman, ‘‘Foreword,’’ in this volume, vii–xxiv. 36. Jaini, Gender and Salvation, xix–xx. 37. Ibid., 2–4. 38. Balbir, ‘‘Women and Jainism in India,’’ 70–72; also Jaini, Gender and Salvation, xvi–xxi. 39. Kelting, Singing to the Jina, 8–10, 53, 134–77. 40. Jaini, Gender and Salvation, 14–15, 217. 41. Balbir, ‘‘Women and Jainism in India,’’ 78–80, 104 n. 19. 42. Jaini, Gender and Salvation, 15, 27–28 nn. 19, 21, 105–6 n. 54. 43. Jaini, Gender and Salvation, 34–35, without the author’s numerical references and citations. 44. Ibid., 58–59. 45. Ibid., 82–92, 181. 46. Balbir, ‘‘Women and Jainism in India,’’ 104–5 n. 20. 47. Jaini, Gender and Salvation, 14–15, 191 n. 38; Balbir, ‘‘Women and Jainism in India,’’ 78–80. 48. Murcott, The First Buddhist Women, 42, 59–61. 49. Ibid., 60–61. 50. Jaini, Gender and Salvation, 72–73, 105–6 n. 54. 51. Jaini, ‘‘From Nigoda to Moksa: The Story of Marudevi,’’ 1–27. 52. Kelting, Singing to the Jina, 42–44. 53. Balbir, ‘‘Women and Jainism in India,’’ 80–81. 54. William M. Theodore de Bary, ed., The Buddhist Tradition in India, China and Japan (New York: Vintage Books, 1972), 56, 66–67, 399. 55. Warren, Buddhism: In Translations, 71–83. Warren gives a translation of the Jataka (Birth Tales; 1.68–76) on Buddha’s challenges before enlightenment. For a feminist critique, see Uma Chakravarti, Social Dimensions of Early Buddhism (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987). 56. Warren, Buddhism: In Translations, 81. 57. Basham, The Wonder that Was India, 359. 58. Barnes, ‘‘Women and Buddhism in India,’’ 38–69. Barnes lists Angutarra Nikaya and Kunalajataka as the most derogatory about women, but composed after the Buddha, 63.

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59. Barnes, ‘‘Women and Buddhism in India,’’ 45, 64 n. 19. Barnes quotes Samyutta Nikaya V, Bhikkhuni Samyutta 2 (vol. 1, 128–29). 60. Embree, Sources of Indian Tradition, 1:100–101. 61. Murcott, The First Buddhist Women, 15, 19–29. 62. Warren, Buddhism: In Translations, 441–47. 63. Murcott, The First Buddhist Women, 40–44. 64. Barnes, ‘‘Women and Buddhism in India,’’ 43; also Falk, ‘‘The Case of the Vanishing Nuns,’’ 159–60. 65. Murcott, The First Buddhist Women, 16–17. Murcott quotes the Culla Vagga (10.3.1) from T. W. Rhys Davids and Hermann Oldenberg, trans., Vinaya Texts, in Sacred Books of the East, ed. Fredrich Max Muller, vol. 20, Part III (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1885), 327–28. 66. Quoted by Conze, Buddhism: Its Essence and Development, 58. 67. Barnes, ‘‘Women and Buddhism in India,’’ 63 n. 12. 68. Alphonso-Karkala, An Anthology of Indian Literature, 236–37. AlphonsoKarkala gives the entire verse on bhikshus from Friedrich Max Muller, trans., The Dhammapada, a Translation of Verse, Sacred Books of the East, vol. 10 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1881). 69. Tharu and Lalitha, Women Writing in India, 1:65. 70. Murcott, The First Buddhist Women, 115–16 nn. 1–2. 71. Ibid., 116–17. 72. Ibid., 93–95. 73. Ibid., 105. 74. Ibid., 79–81. 75. Ibid., 123–27. 76. Barnes, ‘‘Women and Buddhism in India,’’ 45, 64 n. 18. 77. Murcott, The First Buddhist Women, 62–66, 81–83. 78. Sastri, Foreign Notices of South India, 70; Romila Thapar, Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), 22–25; Barnes, ‘‘Women and Buddhism in India,’’ 47–48, 65 n. 28. 79. Basak, Asokan Inscriptions, 151–52; Thapar, Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas, 30, 260 (Appendix V, inscription). 80. For Mahayana theology, see Miranda Shaw, Passionate Enlightenment: Women in Tantric Buddhism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); Alex Wayman and Hideko Wayman, trans., Lion’s Roar of Queen Srimala (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974); Conze, Buddhism: Its Essence and Development; H. Kern, trans., Saddharma-Pundarika or The Lotus of the True Law (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1963); reprint, F. Max Muller, ed., The Sacred Books of the East, vol. 21 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1884); Embree, Sources of Indian Tradition, vol. 1; de Bary, The Buddhist Tradition in India, China and Japan. 81. Conze, Buddhism: Its Essence and Development, 201–7. 82. Embree, Sources of Indian Tradition, 1:162, quoting Cecil Bendall, ed., Shantideva: Siksasamuccaya (St. Petersburg: Imperial Academy of Sciences, 1902; Biblotheca Buddhica), 278–83. 83. Embree, Sources of Indian Tradition, 1:160–61, quoting N. Dutt, ed., Pancavimsatisahasrika Prajnaparamita (Calcutta: Oriental Series No. 28, 1934; repr., 2000), 40–41.

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84. Maurizio Taddei, Monuments of Civilization: India (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1978), plate 65, 114–15. 85. Conze,Buddhism: Its Essence and Development, 146–47, 205; and Embree, Sources of Indian Tradition, 1:156. 86. Kern, Saddharma-Pundarika, 256–57. 87. Ibid., 250–51. 88. Barnes, ‘‘Women and Buddhism in India,’’ 49–50. 89. Kern, Saddharma-Pundarika, 253. 90. Wayman and Wayman, Lion’s Roar of Queen Srimala, 65–72. 91. Ibid., 77–90. 92. Noted Chinese pilgrim Hsuan Tsang stated that Harsha of Kanauj (seventh century) supported Hindus, Buddhists, and Jainas, that there were one hundred Mahayana monasteries and few Theravadins. Buddhism was rekindled by the Palas of Bengal (eighth century CE). Jainas flourished under Rajput Hindu rulers, and Muslim kings of Gujarat. Thapar, Early India, 274, 461, 486–87; Tripathi, History of Ancient India, 305–9; Jha, Ancient India, 158–63. The eleventh-century Persian Muslim visitor Al-Biruni confirmed that Hinduism was the chief religion, but mistakenly thought that ‘‘the Buddhists were banished’’ to the northwest. Ainslie Embree, ed. of Edward C. Sachau, trans. (1872), Alberuni’s India (New York: W. W. Norton, 1971), 21, 27–32. 93. Falk, ‘‘The Case of the Vanishing Nuns,’’ 159, 163–64.

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5 WOMEN IN CLASSICAL ART AND LITERATURE

Mother There in the very middle of battle-camps that heaved like the seas, he had fallen in that space between armies, his body hacked to pieces; when she saw him there in all his greatness, mother’s milk flowed again In the withered breasts of this mother for her warrior son who had no thought of retreat. Auvaiyar, Purananuru 2951

MAKING OF INDIA: 300 BCE–600 CE Extensive immigration and settlement resulted in the expansion of Sanskritic culture across ethnic and caste lines, despite elite textual controls over women’s sexuality. At first Buddhism and Jainism held sway, although followers of Hindu Vishnu, Shiva, and Devi gained popularity. Indo-Bactrian, Shaka, and Kushana rulers in the north and west adopted Mahayana Buddhism or Hinduism, which spread to Nepal and Tibet. Theravada became embedded in the culture of Sri Lanka, and Jainas thrived in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu. After 300 CE , royal patronage shifted to Hinduism, and brahmans sanctified folk myths and bhakti-puja in the Puranas and Agamas.2 Dravidian and aboriginal mother goddesses associated with forests, rivers, mountains, and deserts were absorbed into an overarching Great Goddess of Energy, Mahadevi/Shakti.3 Women embraced

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these goddess traditions, which also surfaced in atheistic Buddhism and Jainism. These currents are visible in art, scriptures, and secular literature. Maurya, Shunga, Shatavahana, Shaka, and Ikshvaku kings and queens authorized Buddhist reliquaries (stupas), monastic prayer halls (chaityas), and temples (viharas). Nuns, monks, and wealthy merchants and wives donated generously to their upkeep. Masons designed and executed chaityas in caves in the Western Ghats (200 BCE–350 CE). Under tolerant Gupta and Vakataka rulers (fourth to fifth century), painting reached its apogee in Mahayana chaityas at Ajanta; architects laid the framework for brick and stone Hindu temples; and Sanskrit was the courtly language of playwrights. Artistic representations of women defined Indian standards of feminine beauty.4 Indian artistic motifs often derived from tribal and village drawings of sacred diagrams (kolam, rangoli) for community rituals and women’s paintings on household floors, walls, and altars during domestic rites. These developed into sophisticated art forms under male craftsmen in caste guilds (shrenis).5 Male-authored art manuals describe artisans (shilpins) as men of shudra, vaishya, and mixed castes. Occupation was not based on choice, but family and caste traditions whose skills were first learned in childhood. It is thus likely that women assisted male artisans at home, although studies largely focus on men in guild workshops. Classical society’s nuanced but candid expressions of sexuality are evident in Sanskrit poetic dramas (kavyas), manuals of laws and rules (shastras), and in Tamil Sangam literature (200 BCE–400 CE). The Shilpa Shastras delineated feminine and masculine paradigms in sculpture and painting. Bharata’s Natya Shastra laid the foundation for theater and laid down the artistic formulae for expressing emotions (rasas). This first-century-CE work profoundly influenced women dancers (nityasumangalis/devadasis) in temples. Vatsyayana’s Kama Sutra dispassionately examined female and male desire from a man’s perspective. The most famous Sanskrit dramatist was Kalidasa (fourth to fifth century) whose Abhijnana Shakuntalam reveals a sensitive understanding of women and nature. In southern Madurai, Tamil Pandya rulers hosted conferences (sangams) for poets who exalted powerful women, and female sages like Auvaiyar. There were some significant women authors; while male authors Ilango Adigal and Sattanar chose women as their chief protagonists in Shilappadikaram and Manimekhalai. Women appear in texts as devis, shaktis, sages; mothers, wives, sisterly companions; nymphs (yakshis/apsaras), courtesans, poets, dancers, musicians, shepherds, hunters, and manipulative shrews. FEMALE IMAGES IN BUDDHISM Yakshis Although Buddhist funerary stupas stemmed from a male monastic tradition, they became pilgrimage sites for laywomen and laymen. Under the

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direction of monks who wished to inculcate dharma, classical artisans carved narratives from Buddha’s life around the stupas of deceased monks. The artisans were lower-caste men who drew upon earlier rural traditions to carve fertility nymphs (yakshis) and male nature spirits (yakshas) around the stupas. In turn, the yakshi became the prototype for later Hindu, Buddhist, and Jaina icons of devis. Fertility goddesses and auspicious geometric designs (kolam/rangoli) appear in the Indus Civilization (ca. 3000 BCE). Women still paint such emblems around homes, while belief in a female force as Energy (Shakti) and the sap of life is widely prevalent. Colonial European encounters with full-bosomed yakshis and devis in diaphanous, tropical garments led to their mistaken conclusion that Indian art was crafted by men for their erotic pleasure.6 Victorian Christians, accustomed to restrictive clothing and repressed desire, felt alarmed by the ‘‘heathenish’’ sexual exuberance of yakshis/devis.7 Thus, Western literature engendered Indian art and Hinduism as ‘‘feminine’’ and ‘‘decadent,’’ and propagated the myth of a superior, masculine, moral Christian West. 8 In response, Indian nationalists created the trope of a powerful motherland, a goddess resembling devi icons. 9 In a scholarly pendulum swing, early twentieth-century liberals romanticized Indian art as spiritually superior. However, the complex truth is that the sublime and erotic in India have been closely intertwined. Cosmic creation is regarded as a union of the divine male and female, which Hindus identify as Shiva-Shakti. It is now well established that the primary purpose of early art was to inculcate dharma to pilgrims and that artisans used known symbols to relate sacred myths. Despite the candid portrayal of female sexuality, the intent was not sexual stimulation, as yakshis were venerated as emblems of fertility. It is extremely unlikely that dignified monks and nuns whose inscriptions declared that they had ‘‘abandoned all attachment’’ on the road to nirvana would have wished to be aroused by yakshis, devis like Lakshmi, or fleshy female donors.10 It is more reasonable to suppose that the yakshi’s female features symbolized nature’s fecundity, and the artists simply sculpted ‘‘pictures’’ of prosperous lay donors. This purpose differs from modern commercial posters of voluptuous women meant to catch the male gaze. It reminds us not to inscribe contemporary values on premodern artifacts, as these should be viewed through their own cultural lens as far as possible.11 Buddhist tree yakshis, also called shalabhanjikas, appear at Sanchi and Bharhut stupas authorized by Maurya and Shunga rulers. These images show that pre-Aryan arboreal fertility cults were absorbed into a more sedate, monastic Buddhism. Hindus venerated trees as emblems of natural growth, and early shrines were at the base of tree trunks, according to Sanskrit and Tamil Sangam poetry.12 Trees stimulated enlightenment, as seen in the narratives of Buddha’s birth under an asoka tree (Saraca asoca), his nirvana under a bodhi or pipala tree (Ficus religiosa), and his death under twin sal trees (Shorea robusta). 13 Most yakshis were draped around a

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blossoming sal, fig, asoka, or mango tree, as their touch stimulated leaves and fruits. At Sanchi gateways, full-bosomed yakshis cling to mango trees. At Bharhut, yakshi Chandra stands on a mythical fish-crocodile, one hand holding a tree branch, the other suggestively pointing to her womb. Belief in a female energy force or sap of life percolated cults of the mother goddess as Nature (Prakriti). Yakshis were also associated with the aboriginal totem worship of snakes (nagas), as seen in a gray terra-cotta statue of a yakshi entangled by a snake in eastern India (first century CE).14 The folk myth of a cobra king of the waters surrounded by serpent-nymphs (naga kanyas) was later absorbed into the Hindu legend of Krishna whose triumph over the lake serpent Kaliya became a metaphor for sensory conquest through divine aid. Yakshi aesthetic modalities also appear in secular feminine representations. An exquisitely polished figure from Didarganj (third to second century BCE) resembles a yakshi with slim waist, but ample bosom and hips. However, the fly whisk (chauri) in her hand, the rich folds of her garment, heavy anklets, necklaces, and bangles all indicate a wealthy court attendant.15 Such images of court attendants and donors later inspired medieval ideals of feminine beauty. Devis and Bhakti-Puja Goddess images are found in north India dating a thousand years after their appearance in the Indus Civilization, showing that folk traditions of bhakti-puja to nature goddesses were grafted onto Sanskritic Hinduism.16 The fecund forest yakshi now resembled Vedic Mother Earth (Prithvi) embodied in Sri-Lakshmi, harbinger of bounty in the later Vedic hymn, Sri Sukta. Thirty verses describe Lakshmi as stirring the muddy earth into life (RV Khila, 2.6.11) and stimulating rain clouds, which caused seeds to sprout (24).17 As the golden, slender lotus dweller Padma (1), with lotus eyes and hands (25–26), she also has wide hips that promise progeny (26). As GajaLakshmi, she is accompanied by elephants and horses, the emblems of royal power. These textual images resonate in art.18 Buddhist and Jaina merchants and bankers thus naturally revered Lakshmi, although their religions denied a creator god.19 Lakshmi’s images appear at early Buddhist stupas, e.g., on the northern gateway at Sanchi (third century BCE),20 and on a Bharhut railing a century later. The yakshi influenced images of Hindu and Mahayana Buddhist devis and of Malli, the sole female Jaina preceptor (tirthankara/Jina). The Shvetambara sub-sect of Mukti-Pujaks do puja to images of tirthankaras.21 Women Devotees, Trees, and Stupas Arboreal rites are seen in Buddhist reliquary stupas whose friezes reveal that women and men worshipped the bodhi tree in rites similar to Hindu

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bhakti-puja. Arboreal rites are also mentioned in Tamil poems (Ainkurunuru 245, 247; Akananuru 149.12).22 In the Mauryan era, devotees visited stupas to venerate icons symbolizing Buddha’s life events. Railings and pillars at Sanchi, Bharhut, and Amaravati (150 CE) show them with hands folded in prayer (namaskara), offering flowers to the sacred symbol, prostrating themselves, circumambulating the stupa shrine, and occasionally playing music on drums, lyres, and flutes. Sanchi’s northern gateway shows two women kneeling in prayer to a stupa representing his death (parinirvana); the western pillar tells a Jataka tale with two women and a child kneeling to the bodhi tree indicative of his nirvana.23 At Bharhut, women and men kneel with hands folded at the base of a bodhi tree;24 and two women kneel while king and courtier stand near a wheel embodying his teachings (dharma-chakra).25 At Amaravati, four women prostrate themselves to his footprints, iconic of his death and parinirvana.26 Another delicate frieze shows women watering a bodhi tree, offering substances in puja, and prostrating themselves.27 The friezes clearly show female agency in the spread of bhakti-puja, even for agnostic Buddha who became an icon after his decease. While the earliest stupas contained Buddha’s relics, later monuments had relics of enlightened sages (arhants). It is often presumed that the remains are of monks who dominated the monasteries, although their names are not inscribed. Nuns and monks contributed to the building and upkeep of these pilgrimage sites. Secondary texts state that nuns worshipped MahaPajapati’s relics and images on festival days until the first century BCE, and there were perhaps venerated bhikkunis after Buddha. As arhants transcended their sexual identity, some of the 84,000 stupas attributed to Asoka Maurya may have held relics of arhants born as females.28 Buddhist Women Donors Inscriptions As Indians commonly believed that philanthropy (dana) transfers merit in the karma-samsara cycle, Buddhist donors included women and men as rulers, celibates, and lay devotees. Inscriptions and images prove that Indian women owned, managed, and donated property, despite the Manu Smriti’s attempts to keep them illiterate and financially subordinate. Inscriptions praise erudite nuns, and their names and gifts are inscribed on the pillars and walls of stupas, chaityas, and temples (viharas), between 200 BCE and 400 CE. Some donor inscriptions are Theravada and predate Mahayana scriptures. The Sanchi stupa inscription describes a woman donor as ‘‘learned in the scriptures’’ (sutatika). Central Indian stupas reveal that donor monks and nuns were often versed in the three scriptures (tripitakas). Three inscriptions (ca. first century CE ) refer to the nun Buddhamitra who was ‘‘knowledgeable in three scriptures.’’ 29 An inscription from

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Bharhut states that 40 percent of the donations were from 12 nuns and 24 monks. Inscriptions from early cave temples at Kondivte, Bhaja, Pitalkhora, and Karle (150 BCE) in the Western Ghats also indicate that 66 percent of the donors were monks and nuns.30 The prosperous classical era was notable for munificent donations by queens and kings, as well as by wealthy merchant and artisan families to monasteries and shrines. Their names are inscribed on the walls of cave temples in the Western Ghats, along with some massive sculptures of anonymous donor couples at the entrance. These monasteries and chaitya halls often housed a reliquary stupa. The famous Shaka king Gautamiputra Satakarni (100–110 CE) authorized the excavation of a cave with a chaitya and stupa near Nasik. His mother Balasri enlarged this shrine and inscribed a eulogy to him on the wall of Queen’s Cave. Balasri also donated a village to the monks of the Bhadaniya sub-sect.31 A century later, the Shaka queen Dakshamitra modestly donated a monks’ cave cell at Nasik, while her husband Rshabhadata made a magnificent donation with fanfare.32 Other dynasties whose kingdoms prospered due to artisans and merchants made donations to Buddhist institutions. In the Deccan, the Shatavahana royal navy patrolled both peninsular coasts to command trade. They supported great monastic centers at Amaravati with its marble stupa, Jaggayyapeta, and Nagarjunakonda whose ruined fragments contain inscriptions of donors. Amaravati inscriptions list donations by nuns and laywomen who described themselves as sisters, mothers, wives, and not by occupation. Donor monks and laymen are listed as sons and husbands, and by occupation as goldsmiths, merchants, or leather workers. Although society identified women primarily by domestic functions, it is likely that they were home-based artisans whose products contributed to the region’s prosperity. As in later eras, home craft enabled women to tend simultaneously to family duties and to elude the public eye. Thus, female work has often remained invisible in public records. Out of the 54 or so fragmented inscriptions at Amaravati, 22 gifts were solely by nuns (12) and women householders (10); and others described as the mothers, sisters, and wives of male donors.33 One pillar inscription states that the gift was made jointly by Sangha, Sanghadasi, and Kamala who added their husbands’ names almost as an afterthought. Learned women wished to be associated with their female teachers; household women with other female and male family members. This is evident in an inscription, which states that ‘‘Mala, the female disciple of . . . Samudiya, the female disciple of Aya-Punnavassu’’ had gifted a ‘‘padakka,’’ or stone slab image of Buddha’s feet. 34 Another describes a ‘‘bhikkhuni Budharakhita with her daughters’’ and her gift of a coping stone.35 Obviously, being a ‘‘mendicant’’ did not mean giving up wealth, and women boldly described their achievements, as seen in this railing:

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The gift of the nun Roha who has passed beyond the eight worldly conditions, the daughter of the venerable Sujata of great self-control.36 At Nagarjunakonda, the Ikshvaku dynasty (third century CE) promoted sectarian coexistence through evenhanded generosity. Queens donated to Buddhist sites, the kings patronized Hindu shrines. Several royal women related to founder king Camta-Mula are described as donors to monasteries, which may have included nuns. Camta-Mula’s sister Camti Sri provided pavilions and halls for the monks. Other donors included his daughter Adavi Catisri; his nieces Bapi-Srinika and Mahadevi-Camtisri; Mahadevi Rudradhara-Bhatarika, a princess of Ujjain; a royal relative Cula-Catisrinika; Bhati-Deva, mother of his successor; and Kodaballi Sri, a neighboring princess. The noblewoman Bodhi Sri donated pillars, trees, and a monk’s cell.37 The institutional power of Mahayana monks is apparent in donations to monasteries in India. In contrast, the paucity of inscriptions on nuns’ donations after the fourth century CE reflects the decline of philanthropy for nuns and their impoverishment. Chinese monk pilgrim Fa Hsein (fifth century CE) thus described Indian Buddhist nuns as humble and poor, and not erudite as few women attended the universities at Nalanda and Kanchi.38 Monastic patriarchy was not the sole cause for the disappearance of nuns’ orders, but it reflected the reduced social importance of women in the later classical era.39 Images In the early chaityas at Bhaja (150 BCE), Karle (50 CE), Kanheri (100 CE), and Nasik, prosperous looking women are portrayed with their husbands as joint donors. Although once described as a sexual pair (mithuna), the loving couples simply exude contentment with the mundane world, in sharp contrast to monks and nuns focused on nirvana.40 Their affluence is evident in generous body lines, elaborate headdresses, necklaces, earrings, and rings, but bangles and anklets adorn only women.41 Round bosoms and wide hips mark femininity and wealth. Diaphanous garments reveal the breasts, suggesting that the appearance of upper body nudity may have been due to the fine quality of textiles. Men’s corpulent bodies are clad in loose nether garments (dhotis). These aesthetic norms became central to Buddhist, Hindu, and Jaina art. The large sensual images of women in unrestrictive clothing in monastic spaces also inform us that women were not confined to the home, although they were defined by domestic roles. This is confirmed in the Tamil epic Shilappadikaram, which describes public streets and markets frequented by women poets, musicians, dancers; actresses; nuns; wives; garland makers; fisherwomen; shepherdesses; cowgirls; tribal huntresses with bows.

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Ajanta: Feminine and Masculine Ideals In a shifting emphasis from Theravada’s celibate ideals, Mahayana’s lay devotees clearly felt that prosperity was compatible with Buddha’s Middle Way under the Vakataka dynasty (fifth century). At Ajanta in western India, royal and mercantile munificence enabled the construction of many cave monasteries with colonnaded chaitya halls, stupas, and magnificent frescoes. Frescoes at Sigiriya, Sri Lanka, also belong to this prosperous era. While Ajanta frescoes relate Buddhist narratives for a moral purpose, the representations of women and men are secular in detail. They often relate a miraculous event, but the witnesses are painted in an elegant, opulent, worldly style. At Ajanta, the wall canvas is crowded with women and men in vibrant postures, their bodies being of diverse skin colors. They are clad in rich silks and jewelry or in simple cotton garments, according to their station in life. Women have a slim waist and drooping breasts often separated by pearl necklaces, which hint that an upper garment was optional for wealthy women in this era. They appear languorous, their limbs droop, and their soft eyes resemble the lotuses they hold in elongated fingers. The arms are heavy with bangles, lobes have pendulous, gold earrings, the hair is elaborate with jewels.42 Men are also portrayed with elegance. Two women appear awed by the generosity of Prince Vessantara, an earlier incarnation of the Buddha. In another scene, men and women listen raptly to Buddha’s sermon (cave 17).43 The bodhisattvas Padmapani and Avalokitesvara are virile, but gentle, their elongated, limpid eyes are half-closed with unshed tears of compassion (cave 1).44 These ideals of masculine and feminine beauty resonate in Sanskrit literature, and they became the most elegant standards in Indian art. Human qualities of gentleness, cruelty, bravery, selfishness were not exclusive to either gender, although women’s virtue was expressed by mothers and wives. A Case for the Woman Artisan The artisans (shilpins) in workshops or at open work sites were probably men of the shudra, vaishya, or mixed castes of anuloma and pratiloma.45 The Brahmavaivarta Purana gives a mythical origin for craftsmen who breathed life into stone and metal to create human and divine figures. The god Vishvakarma was cursed by a celestial nymph (apsara) to be born on earth to a brahman mother and to become an architect. His relationship with a shudra woman resulted in nine illegitimate sons who pursued the crafts of garland maker, blacksmith, potter, metalworker, conch shell carver, weaver, architect, painter, and goldsmith. The legend shows that artists were low caste and that intercaste sexual relations were common. However, since this male author did not specify craftswomen, it is likely that women from artisan castes conducted their domestic chores along with craft work. Artisan traditions are based on caste and family, not personal choice.

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Children learned to carve, weave, or etch from childhood at home before heading for the guild (shreni) workshop, and there are no textual restrictions on girls working beside male siblings.46 The Shilpa Shastras describe the guild artisan as literate with knowledge of legends and texts. These texts refer to women courtesans, musicians, dancers, agricultural and urban laborers, but do not specifically mention women artisans. This suggests that respectable craftswomen did not work in public.47 While this suggests that respectable craftswomen did not work in public space, it does not negate the possibility that they assisted family men at home. It is unlikely that all Indian cloth or jewelry valued by foreign merchants were entirely produced by men.48 No doubt, sculptors at precipitous cave sites and masons in shreni workshops were men. However, women artisans may have carved smaller pieces at home while attending to family chores. Artisan traditions were based on caste and family, and some crafts like pottery and sculpture could be conducted at home. Children learned skills from an early age at home, making it probable that women assisted them, as well as their men folk, in their tasks. As in later Indian history, women artisans may have painted designs, carved and molded small sculptures, spun and wove cotton cloth, laced baskets, and etched jewelry, especially when the delicate precision of smaller hands was required. The intricate carvings at Bharhut suggest that some early stone masons had initially trained as carvers of ivory and gold jewelry, tasks suited to women’s hands. Indian living tribal and village traditions point to this truth. Women paint figures and legends on the mud walls of homes, create geometric designs for community rituals, work on pottery wheels, and spin cloth at home. The tribal Warlis originally prohibited men from painting, as this was relegated to women.49 Bhil, Gond, and Savara tribal women in north and central India also paint designs on their homes for rituals. Across India from Mithila, Bihar, to Rajasthan in the west, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu in the south, village women paint the mud walls and floors of homes with geometric designs and erotic themes connected to goddess worship. The women painters use rice flour for white and vegetable dyes of vivid green, red, and yellow for rituals connected to the earth’s fertility (bhumi puja).50 TAMIL-DRAVIDIAN TRADITIONS Sangam Era Women Inscriptions and Tamil literature reveal that during the Sangam era, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism became the ideological catalysts for a fusion of Dravidian and Sanskrit cultures.51 The identity of Tamil goddess Korravai, fierce guardian of the desert (palai), merged with Hindu Durga or Shakti, thus strengthening traditions of the Mother Goddess (Amman/Devi) in south India. Korravai’s handsome son Murukan of the hills absorbed

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Hindu Skanda, and Korravan, a flat male god of Death, dissolved into complex Shiva.52 The first Tamil bhakti text, Paripatal (300 CE), juxtaposed passionate lyrics to ‘‘red’’ Murukan with poems to ‘‘dark’’ northern Krishna or Perumal. In the next centuries, a fervent theistic movement originated among Tamils whose women bhakti poets set the pace for later saints across India (Chapter 7). The first Tamil bhakti saint was the wraithlike female yogi Karaikkal Ammaiyar (fifth to sixth century). In contrast, enraptured Andal (ninth century) composed lyrical, sensual hymns to her lover Krishna.53 Dravidian views on chaste female empowerment profoundly influenced Indian feminine paradigms. Irrespective of sect, Tamils believed in women’s intrinsic auspiciousness (ananku) that kept evil spirits at bay. Ananku was believed to repose in the breasts of chaste wives and mothers, royal martyrs, and celibate yogis and monks. Such empowered persons could resist dangerous blood flows in menstruation, childbirth, disease, or violent death. An ambivalent respect for female sexuality thus led Tamils to regard chaste women with awe, as even the docile could be transformed into formidable enemies. However, the virtuous widow was forced to remain abstinent, as her inauspicious sexuality required ritual propitiation.54 Some Sangam male poets thus praised the benign ananku of a woman’s breasts (Akananuru 161; Kuruntokai 337).55 Another poet feared that in the pubescent girl, it could wreak havoc: Her brothers, strong in the hatred of murderous battle, will not be content without a fight. For spots have spread on the breasts of the young girl whose red, blackened eyes are like the sharp blades of brandished spears and whose bangled arms sway. Purananuru 35056

Yet, Tamils respected women’s creativity and scholarship, as evident in the signatures of at least 16 women poets in the Sangam corpus. Scholars suggest that as many as 155 of the 473 Tamil poets were women, since female compositions were often signed as anonymous in world history.57 However, this may be a partial truth in early India where these have been preserved in the Therigatha, the Sangam corpus, and as medieval hymns. As Sangam poems were sung before being inscribed, they probably originated in a plebeian performance culture. They describe lower class entertainers as singers (panans, patini), dancers (virali), and those who played lutes, drums, and reed instruments on festival days, at shrines, or when heralding the king. A class of learned men and women (pulavars) advised the king on morality.

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There were two women poets named Auvaiyar (Old Woman Sage). The first was a preeminent composer whose 59 stark and powerful poems are found in Sangam anthologies. This first Auvaiyar wrote in both thematic categories of poetry, namely those pertaining to the inner emotions (aham) and to outer, worldly affairs (puram). She may have been a pulavar who advised rulers, as her puram verses reveal that she placed even maternal love below loyalty to a battle-scarred king. Other signed female poets were Allur Nanmullai, Atimantiyar, Kacchippettu Nannakaiyar, Kakkai Patiniyar, Kallatanarm Naccellaiyar, Kavarpentu, Kuramakal Ilaveyini, Marippittiyar, Nakkanaiyar, Okkur Macattiyar, Punkanuttiraiya, Velli Vitiyar, Venmanipputi, Veripatiya Kamakkaniyar, and a set of sister poets called Pari’s Daughters.58 The first Auvaiyar mourned her son, but proudly praised his valor in the poem (see beginning of this chapter). On a different theme is Okkur Macattiyar’s mourning for her lost lover and wasted youth: The rains, already old, have brought new leaf upon the fields. The grass spears are trimmed and blunted by the deer. The jasmine creeper is showing its buds through their delicate calyx like the laugh of a wildcat. In jasmine country, it is evening for the hovering bees, but look, he hasn’t come back. He left me and went in search of wealth. Okkur Macattiyar, Kuruntokai 22059

The second Auvaiyar (ca. third to fourth century) was a later pulavar, whose didactic proverbs in Atticutti have been taught in Tamil schools for over a millennium. The popular expression ‘‘as wise as Auvaiyar’’ is a tribute to her couplets.60 One legend states that Auvaiyar’s high-caste father urged his low-caste wife to abandon their child. However, her mother left him and raised her daughter with help from charitable villagers. Auvaiyar enjoys universal respect among Tamils as her vision transcended gender, sect, and caste, although Hindus sometimes refer to her as Saraswati, goddess of wisdom.61 Her nonsectarian vision most closely resembles that of the male Jaina sage Tiruvalluvar (ca. 100 CE) whose didactic works, Tirukkural and Naladiyar, are sometimes called the Tamil Vedas. The two sages established an ethical system for all Tamils, as seen in Auvaiyar’s verse: All religions say this, Do good, refrain from evil.

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Tamil Epics: Woman Empowered, yet Contained The Dravidian-Tamil epics Shilappadikaram and Manimekhalai (ca. 350– 400 CE) exalt chaste women with ananku as demigoddesses. This message simultaneously contained the sexuality of ordinary women.63 Shilappadikaram’s female characters include chaste Kannaki; Kavundi the Jaina nun, a fictional prototype of Auvaiyar; Madhavi the musician-dancer; Shalini, the tribal goddess; a plebeian shepherdess; and a virtuous queen. Daughter of a wealthy ship owner, Kannaki is compared to goddess Lakshmi and to chaste Arundhati, wife of sage Vasishta (canto 1), but her happiness is shattered by her husband Kovalan’s affair with Madhavi. When he repentantly returns, Kannaki forgives him. However, Madhavi is not shown as a temptress, but as a dignified courtesan whose talents are inherited from her mother, Vedic nymph Urvashi, and her father, god Indra (cantos 3 and 7). A forlorn, rejected Madhavi bears Kovalan’s daughter Manimekhalai and becomes a Buddhist nun, as does her daughter upon maturity. Ilango Adigal dignified Madhavi’s profession by describing her compositions, instruments, and dance skills, based on a Dravidian tradition of women dancers and singers.64 He probably knew of Bharata’s Natya Shastra, the Sanskrit guideline on dance drama (natya), poses, hand gestures (nritta), and mood-based ragas (five-note scales) that still defines Indian performances.65 Kavundi guides Kannaki and Kovalan to Madurai. On the way, they meet the Eiyanar hunters’ goddess Shalini, a fusion of local deity Korravai/Culi and Sanskrit Durga Devi who both carry spears. These goddesses are all seen as aspects of Madurai’s Meenakshi Amman who is Shiva’s wife and Vishnu’s sister.66 When the Pandya king unjustly executes Kovalan for the theft of his queen’s anklet, Kannaki exacts a furious retribution. The heat of her chaste ananku makes her pull out her left breast, and god Agni burns the sinful city. Meenakshi Amman quenches Kannaki’s inner fire, and the chaste wife becomes a demigoddess reunited with Kovalan. 67 Male characters are depicted as morally culpable and weak. The dishonored king commits suicide, but his wife dies as an honored sati. Kannaki’s curse is presented below: ‘‘Men and women of Maturai [Madurai], city of four temples! Gods of the skies, and men of austerities, hear me. I am enraged at this city whose king wrought injustice upon him I love, and I am without fault.’’ With her hand she twisted off her left breast,

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encircled Maturai three times keeping it to the right, uttered a curse, and shining with her ornaments she threw her lovely breast on the pollen-covered street. His color black, his long, matted, twisted hair crimson, his teeth as white as milk, the god of fire who consumes in concentric order appeared at her curse in a Brahmin’s form. ‘‘Woman of great chastity, long ago I was commanded to leap forth and consume this city on the day you would be so cruelly wronged.’’ Shilappadikaram 21.40–5768

This Dravidian myth enshrined women’s chastity in a region already penetrated by Ramayana legends, explaining the similarities between Sita’s ordeal by fire and Kannaki’s agony and curse.69 In both cases, fire god Agni appears as their avengers; neither dies on her husband’s pyre, but each is regarded as a faithful sati. Indians noted the message that virtuous wives must be honored, and their anger must be quelled as it could consume the world. Medieval widows were later forced to immolate themselves on their husbands’ pyres as satis. Kannaki is venerated in south India and Sri Lanka; and Sita’s name is a synonym for womanly virtue.70 The sequel Manimekhalai about the Buddhist nun who was the daughter of Kovalan and Madhavi contains the message of permanent celibacy and retribution. Jainism and Gender in South India The Sangam texts show that Jainism thrived in south India where its ethical emphasis appealed to all sects. The epic Jivakachintamani revolves around a virtuous Jaina king; Tiruvalluvar’s Tirukkural transcends social ranks and gender. Tiruvalluvar’s work contains three sections on the first three life goals of dharma, artha, kama. While everyone was advised to be faithful, kind, and honest, the genders differed in their duties of dharma. Men were advised that a faithful husband was ‘‘a greater saint than hermits who fast and pray’’ (Tirukkural 1.48). Wives were directed to be chaste, serve the husband, and live within his means (51). Other verses ask rhetorically, ‘‘With a good wife, what is lacking? And when she is lacking, what is good?’’ (53; emphasis added); ‘‘What can excel a woman who is rooted in chastity?’’ (54). Still another couplet advises: ‘‘She whose husband is her only God says ‘Rain,’ and it rains!’’ (55).71 Jaina yogic influence is seen in the fictional representation of the wise old nun Kavundi in Shilappadikaram. It also appears in the personages of Hindu Auvaiyar and Tiruvalluvar, a Jaina monk. Ideas of austerity meshed strangely with fervent Dravidian theism in the coming centuries. This is

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apparent in the first Hindu bhakti saint, the woman yogi Karaikkal Ammaiyar who yearned for union with Shiva the Great Yogi. It is also visible in Akkamahadevi (twelfth century) whose hymns describe her passionate longing for her austere lover Shiva. Influenced by the Digambaras in Karnataka, Akkamahadevi wandered as a nude ascetic before joining the Virashaiva hermitage and attaining a beatific release. The metaphor of spiritual separation and union stemmed from the depiction of secular, starcrossed lovers (mithuna) in Sanskrit dramas. Initially separated in the mundane world, the predestined pair (jodi) eventually unites. Secular Tamil love poems by both genders inspired the first medieval Hindu bhakti hymns by women and men saints.72 CLASSICAL SANSKRIT LITERATURE Apsaras and Mithuna The classical era is notable for its secular Sanskrit dramas and poems. The male authors’ works embodied the urbane connoisseur’s (nagaraka) aesthetic appreciation of women, nature, and life. The royal patrons were the Shungas of Ujjain (184–178 BCE ), king Vikramaditya of Malwa (57 BCE), and emperor Chandra Gupta II of Ujjain (fourth to fifth century) at whose court lived the extraordinary poet and dramatist Kalidasa.73 The framework of the poetic drama was defined by Bharata’s Natya Shastra (100 BCE–100 CE), which declares that it was available to women and men of all castes. Bharata may have drawn upon his Tamil traditions of women performers, since his work incorporated poetry, music, dance, and mime, which soon appeared in the Sanskrit drama.74 Natya Shastra also set the stage for the medieval tradition of women artistes dedicated to the temple deity (devadasis/teyvadiyals). Devadasis extended the rituals through dance drama (natya), which combined dance steps (nritta), facial and body language (abhinaya), and hand gestures (mudra). Natya Shastra stated that drama’s aim was to depict the affairs of the world truthfully and aesthetically by evoking nine human emotions (rasas) in the viewer. These rasas were love (sringara), bravery (vira), ferocity (raudra), fear (bhaya), loathing (bhibatsa), laughter (hasya), pathos (karuna), wonder (adbhuta), and serenity (shanta).75 Women played female parts, but the viewers were largely men who dominated the public arena. The Natya Shastra shows the perspective of the nagaraka, a man of ‘‘character and pedigree endowed with composure, conduct and learning’’ who viewed life in terms of the rasas. While Bharata respected women of taste, he cautioned: It is not to be expected that all these qualities will be present in a single spectator . . . The young, the common folk, the women would always like burlesque and striking make-up.76

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However, Bharata also recognized that women artistes could best depict the rasas. He describes this in his own myth on the origins of drama. When the god Brahma first created drama as a literary genre, Bharata had insisted on women players who would guarantee its success. Brahma therefore created celestial nymphs (apsaras/yakshis) who embodied nature’s infinite variety and beauty. Apsaras were born in the waters of creation, and they appear in sculptures as yakshis and in classical plays. Kalidasa’s seven extant works reveal his sensitivity to women, children, animals, and his love of natural beauty as the marks of civilization. This is evident in his masterpiece, Abhijnana Shakuntalam (Shakuntala’s Recognition; henceforth Shakuntalam), and his poem Rtusamharam (Song of the Seasons).77 While his epic Raghuvamsham (Raghu’s Dynasty) was inspired by the Ramayana, Shakuntalam is derived from an archaic love legend in the Mahabharata (1.62–69). Shakuntalam begins with a country scene with apsaras. Her beauty is compared to flowers, dew, fragrant bushes, and innocent honeybees (Act 1: 22–23).78 Kalidasa describes Shakuntala and Dushyanta as drawn together by the magnet of mutual love (kama), so that the predestined jodi inevitably unite on a bed of leaves. This suggests that their union was pristine, although not conducted by Vedic rites. Dushyanta described his feelings through images from nature: To inhale the fragrance of your face is itself a favor granted to me; is the honey-bee not well content with the mere fragrance of the lotus? Act 3: 3779

Dushyanta gives Shakuntala a ring as his commitment to their sanctified clandestine (gandharva) union, one of the eight types of marriages listed in the Manu Smriti (3.27–35)80 and in the Kama Sutra (ca. fifth century). These were the (1) Vedic ritual (brahma); (2) father’s gifting of his daughter to a Brahman priest (daiva); (3) bridegroom’s payment of a bride-price instead of a dowry (arsa); (4) when the father neither gave a dowry nor accepted a bride-price (prajapatya); (5) clandestine celestial union (gandharva). The texts found homosexual relations and forms 6–8 objectionable, viz., (6) purchase of a wife (asura); (7) forceful taking of a wife (rakshasa); (8) seduction of an inebriated or sleeping woman (paischa). Kalidasa also described the steps of love at sight, desire, yearning in separation, and final rapture in Rtusamharam. The style is more romantic than erotic, as the images are delicate, and women are eulogized through similes in nature. Canto on Rains echoes the Ajanta’s frescoes: This season of massed rain clouds arranges chaplets of bakula blossoms twined with buds of malati,

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Kalidasa’s style differed from the straightforward narratives in Mahabharata and Ramayana, but it became a tour de force for later poets. His Canto on Spring explicitly connected women’s desire with nature, and the lovelorn woman is shown amidst flowering plants, parrots, and cuckoos. As implied by his name, Kalidasa was probably a devotee of goddess Shakti (Kali), and he clearly exalted sexuality in nature. He wrote: Lines of petal and leaf are delicately traced on the golden-lotus faces of graceful women beautiful, like pearls set in between gems amid the traceries spread beads of sweat. Women whose limbs unknot and become limp under the nagging ache of love, take heart reviving from the nearness of the husbands they love; they are now filled solely with impatient longing. The Bodiless One makes women thin and pale languid from desire, to stretch and yawn greatly again and again; breathless and flustered from the excitement of their own loveliness. Without form, Love now shapes himself many ways: in women’s roving, wine-heavy eyes, in their pale cheeks and in their hard breasts, in their sunken middle, in their plump buttocks. Rtusamharam 6:7–1082

Sex and Separation: Female and Male Views Male writings describe elite women through the perspective of the nagaraka. Bhasa’s drama, Swapna Vasavadattam (third century), on the love between princess Vasavadatta of Ujjain and king Udayana of Kausambi, relates escapades, jealous anxieties, and final happiness. 83 However, Dandin’s (ca. seventh century) ribald prose farce, The Ten Princes, shows wives accepting co-wives and mistresses with sophisticated nonchalance. His drama advises a young nagaraka on how to manage a courtesan insatiable for sex and wealth, whose prime loyalty is to her mother. The latter

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shows that matriliny was common among courtesans whose mothers had followed the trade themselves. Dandin warns him that she had been taught to please, but not to love, and that ‘‘she should not disobey her mother or grandmother.’’ He describes his own married life in this empty, bored fashion: Greatly pleased, he married the girl with all due ceremony, and took her home. After marriage, however, he neglected her and kept a mistress, whom the wife also treated as a dear friend. Her husband she served as a god, indefatigable in personal attention, indomitable in household duty, winning the devotion of domestics by inexhaustible considerateness. Subjugated by her merits, the husband subordinated the entire household to her, made her the sole mistress of life and person, and thus enjoyed virtue, money, and love. And that, I may say, is how good wives please the soul. The Ten Princes84 The views on sex and marriage clearly differed between the genders. Women mourned unfaithful lovers and resented sharing favors with co-wives. In the Therigatha poem in Pali, nun Kisa Gotami declared that the loss of a child was immeasurably painful, but ‘‘To live with co-wives is suffering.’’85 Tamil poet Velli Vitiyar candidly describes her feeling of wasted sexual passion when her fickle lover departed: What she said Like milk not drunk by the calf not held in a pail a good cow’s sweet milk spilt on the ground, it’s no use to me unused by my man my mound of love my beauty dark as a mango leaf just waiting to be devoured by pallor. Kuruntokai 2786

Some male authors portrayed the cruel neglect of women. In Shilappadikaram, Ilango Adigal describes a pale and thin Kannaki waiting for her errant husband Kovalan, her ‘‘dark left eye’’ brimming with tears. She greets him valiantly with a smile, thus deepening his shame on his return (cantos 5 and 9).87 Others like the misogynist Sanskrit poet Bhartrhari blamed women as

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obstacles to spiritual fulfillment, although his sexual indulgences were unrestrained. In Sringara Satakam (Verses on Sexuality) and Vairagya Satakam (Verses on Asceticism), Bhartrhari describes his dual preoccupations: Only two things are worth a man’s attention— the youth of full-breasted women, prone to fresh pleasure, and the forest.88

At last, he decided that passion for spirituality had greater merit than sexual passion. Sringara Satakam scapegoats women for his personal weakness in elegant, but morally flawed poetry: Remembered she will bring remorse; Seen she makes the mind unclear; Touched she nearly drives one mad! Why call such a creature dear? Whirlpool of doubts, home of immodesty, harbor of cruel deeds, treasury of faults, made of deceit, a mine of double dealing, blocking the door of heaven, the gate of hell, a casket of illusions, why was woman created of poison and nectar, the snare of all things living?89

Vatsyayana’s Kama Sutra on erotic love is well known in the West, but it remains ambiguous even to scholars. The elaborate discussion of etiquette, sexual dalliance, and courtship (kama) in seven chapters is evidence of affluence and refinement, and the belief in sexual fulfillment as the third of four goals, i.e., dharma, artha, kama, and moksha. Various chapters teach the nagaraka how to arrange his quarters, choices of musical instruments and books, and how to groom himself for elegant society. Others instruct him on the art of wooing women and how to conduct an affair with a woman in a harem. Dry descriptions of sexual play and poses indicate that Vatsyayana wanted to write a scholarly work on sexuality, rather than an erotic text. The book instructs men on how to arouse desire in a virgin bride and in lovers, but it does not encourage adultery. One chapter contains information on magical formulae to enhance desire; another teaches the courtesan on how to satisfy men.90 Female and male sexuality are viewed as normal, and these mores became embedded in literature and are echoed in modern Indian cinema. The Kama Sutra teaches men how to detect desire in a woman, and the marks on her body after sex: Signs of love in a girl: She never looks the man in the face, and becomes abashed when she is looked at by him; under some pretext or other she shows her limbs to him; she looks secretly at him though he has gone away from her side, hangs down her head when she is asked some question by him . . . Marks of love in a girl’s body: When love becomes

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intense, pressing with the nails or scratching the body with them is practiced . . . Even when a stranger sees at a distance a young woman with nail marks on her breast, he is filled with love and respect for her.91 CONCLUSION Classical literature and art describe the secular and religious life. The mundane and the sublime were seen as twin forces interwoven in subtle, mysterious ways. Various philosophical schools devoted considerable energy to the intermeshing of the divine and human on earth. This view was elaborated in a theology of an engendered universe. The Sankhya and Yoga schools which influenced the author of the Bhagavad Gita saw the universe as a composite entity propelled by dual-gendered forces. The Male was the single spirit Purusha, and the Female Prakriti (Nature/Primordial Matter) consists of 24 diverse strands. This gave rise to the worship of the mother goddess Devi as infinite energy (Shakti) and Prakriti having a varied and mutable nature. As Devi is the divine seed bearer, the female body is the instrument for reproduction. This makes female sexual desire more potent and compelling than the male. However, ordinary women were also sometimes regarded as obstacles to male spiritual advancement as ascetics. The theological and social implications of this vision have been subtle and profound in India. NOTES 1. A. K. Ramanujan, trans., Poems of Love and War from the Eight Anthologies and the Ten Long Poems of Classical Tamil (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 183. 2. Hazra, Puranic Records on Hindu Rites and Customs, 201–27. 3. Devi texts are available in Swami Tapasyananda, trans., Sri Lalita Sahasranama (Chennai: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 2003); Swami Tapasyananda, ed., Saundarya Lahari: Inundation of Divine Splendour of Sri Sankaracarya (Chennai: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1999); Swami Jagadiswarananda, ed., Devi Mahatmyam (Glory of the Divine Mother): 700 Verses on Sri Durga (Chennai: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 2002); C. Mackenzie Brown, trans., The Devi Gita, the Song of the Goddess: A Translation, Annotation, and Commentary (Albany: State University of New York, 1998). 4. R. S. Pandit, trans., Kalidasa’s Ritusamhara or The Pageant of the Seasons (Bombay: The National Information and Publications, Ltd., 1947); Rajan, Kalidasa: The Loom of Time; Arthur W. Ryder, trans., Dandin’s Dasha-Kumara-Caritra: The Story of the Ten Young Men (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1927); Embree, Sources of Indian Tradition, vol. 1; Alphonso-Karkala, An Anthology of Indian Literature. 5. Jasleen Dhamijia, ‘‘Folk Art,’’ in Encyclopedia of India, ed. Stanley Wolpert, vol. 2 (New York: Thomson Gale, 2005), 86–90; Jayakar, The Earth Mother,

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17–32, 115–16, 156–60, 165; Stella Kramrisch, Unknown India: Ritual Arts in Tribe and Village (Philadelphia: Museum of Art, 1980). 6. See E. M. Forester’s A Passage to India (1924; repr., New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984), 162–64; and George Orwell, Burmese Days (1934; repr., New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1962), 100–111. 7. Annapurna Garimella, ‘‘Engendering Indian Art,’’ in Representing the Body: Gender Issues in Indian Art, ed. Vidya Dehejia (Delhi: Kali for Women and The Book Review Literary Trust, 1997), 22–41. 8. Thomas Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 30–33, 85–87, 91–92. Metcalf cites Robert Orme, Effeminancy of the Inhabitants of Indostan (ca. 1750), and an Victorian art critic who described Buddha statues akin to ‘‘a boiled suet pudding’’ (92). 9. These essays from Dehejia, ed., Representing the Body, Visakha Desai, ‘‘Reflections on the History and Historiography of Male Sexuality in Early Indian Art,’’ 42–55; Joanna Williams, ‘‘The Construction of Gender in the Painting and Graffiti of Sigiriya,’’ 56–67. 10. Studies include Ananda Coomaraswamy, Elements of Buddhist Iconography (1935; repr., New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 2004); Ananda Coomaraswamy, History of Indian and Indonesian Art (New York: E. Weyhe, 1927); T. A. Gopinatha Rao, Elements of Hindu Iconography, 2 vols. (1914; repr., New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1997); Rowland, The Art and Architecture of India; Heinrich Zimmer, Myths and Symbols of Indian Art and Civilization, ed. Joseph Campbell, 2nd ed. (1946; repr., Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974); Stella Kramrisch, Exploring India’s Sacred Art: Selected Writings of Stella Kramrisch (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983). 11. John Berger, Ways of Seeing (London: BBE and Penguin Books, 1972), 47; and Vidya Dehejia, ‘‘Issues of Spectatorship and Representation,’’ in Representing the Body, ed. Dehejia, 1–21. 12. Srinivasan, Temples of South India, 6–7; Sivaram, Early Chola Art, 71–72; Meister, Encyclopaedia of Indian Temple Architecture, 11–12; Amritalingam, Sacred Trees of Tamilnadu, 25–50; Raman, ‘‘Popular Pujas in Public Places,’’ 165–98. 13. Murcott, The First Buddhist Women, 154–57; and Craven, Indian Art, 43– 48, 50–77; Minoru Hara, ‘‘A Note on the Concept of Plants and Trees,’’ in Jainism and Early Buddhism: Essays in Honor of Padmanabh S. Jaini, ed. Olle Qvarnstrom (Fremont, California: Asian Humanities Press, 2003), 465–89; Amritalingam, Sacred Trees of Tamilnadu, 41–46. 14. Vidya Dehejia, Indian Art (London: Phaidon, 1997), 48, slide 32; Jayakar, The Earth Mother, 109–12 on serpent virgins (naga kanyas). 15. Rowland, The Art and Architecture of India, plate 24. 16. Ananda Coomaraswamy wrote: ‘‘Women, accustomed to invoke the blessings of a tree spirit, would approach (these images),’’ in Yakshas (Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institute, 1928), 33. 17. ‘‘Anna,’’ ed., Devi Suktamkalum Upanishadankalum (Devi Hymns and Upanishads; Sanskrit with Tamil translation; Chennai: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 2003), 2–13; Ashudoshananda, Veda Mantrangal, 171–77, 177–206. Coburn, Devi Mahatmya, 258–64. 18. Zimmer, Myths and Symbols of Indian Art and Civilization, 92, plate 15 of Lakshmi (Padma) on a lotus; Kinsley, Hindu Goddesses, 19–22.

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19. Kelting, Singing to the Jina, 8–10. 20. Taddei, Monuments of Civilization: India, 48–49. 21. Kelting, Singing to the Jina, 8–10, 53, 134–77. 22. Raman, ‘‘Popular Pujas in Public Places,’’ 165–98; K. R. Srinivasan, Temples of South India, 3rd ed. (1972; repr., New Delhi: National Book Trust, 1993), 7; Meister, Encyclopaedia of Indian Temple Architecture, 12–13; Sivaram, Early Chola Art, 70–71. 23. Taddei, Monuments of Civilization: India, 48–49; Susan Huntington, The Art of Ancient India: Buddhist, Hindu, Jain (New York: Weatherhill, 1985), 90–100. 24. J. C. Harle, The Art and Architecture of the Indian Subcontinent, 2nd ed. (Penguin Books, 1986; repr., New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994), 46. 25. Craven, Indian Art, 61, 77. 26. Ibid., 77. 27. Dehejia, Indian Art, plate 42, 72. 28. Barnes, ‘‘Women and Buddhism in India,’’ 47. 29. Ibid., 45. 30. Gregory Schopen, ‘‘Of Monks, Nuns, and ‘Vulgar’ Practices: The Introduction of the Image Cult into Indian Buddhism,’’ in Bones, Stones, and Buddhist Monks: Collected Papers on the Archaeology, Epigraphy, and Texts of Monastic Buddhism in India (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997), 238–57. 31. Vidya Dehejia, Early Buddhist Rock Temples (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972), 95–96. 32. Dutt, Buddhist Monks and Monasteries of India, 156–57; Craven, Indian Art, 51–80; and Akira Hirakawa, The Rise of Mahayana Buddhism and Its Relationship to the Worship of Stupas, Memoirs of Toyo Bunko Research Society, vol. 22, 1963, 57–106. 33. Short translations of each inscription in Burgess, The Buddhist Stupas of Amaravati and Jaggayyapeta, 37–119. 34. Burgess, The Buddhist Stupas of Amaravati and Jaggayyapeta, 37–38. 35. Ibid., 53. 36. Ibid., 62. 37. Dutt, Buddhist Monks and Monasteries of India, 128–32. 38. Barnes, ‘‘Women and Buddhism in India,’’ 48–50. 39. Schopen, ‘‘Of Monks, Nuns, and ‘Vulgar’ Practices,’’ 238–57; Barnes, ‘‘Women and Buddhism in India,’’ 48, 65 n. 29. 40. Philip Rawson, ‘‘Early Art and Architecture,’’ in A Cultural History of India, ed. A. L. Basham, 6th ed. (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002), 200–201. 41. Dehejia, Early Buddhist Rock Temples, 123–34. 42. Williams, ‘‘Constructions of Gender in the Paintings and Grafitti of Sigiriya,’’ in Representing the Body, ed. Dehejia, figures 3 and 4, 56–67. 43. Taddei, Monuments of Civilization: India, plates 60 and 61, 106–7; Dehejia, Indian Art, 116–23. 44. Dehejia, Indian Art, plates 85 and 86, 116–17. 45. Stella Kramrisch, Exploring India’s Sacred Art (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1983), 61; Heinrich Zimmer, The Art of Indian Asia: Its Mythology and Transformations, vol. 1 (1955; repr., Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 321–23; Avvai Natarajan and Natana Kasinathan, Art Panorama of the Tamils (Chennai: State Department of Archaeology, 1992), 16.

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46. Kramrisch, Exploring India’s Sacred Art, 61; Zimmer, The Art of Indian Asia, 1:323–24. 47. Kramrisch, Exploring India’s Sacred Art, 59–66. 48. Champakalakshmi, Trade, Ideology and Urbanization, 311–26, 385–87, 392–94; Natarajan and Kasinathan, Art Panorama of Tamils, 1–10; Thapar, Early India, 300; Jha, Ancient India, 156–59. 49. Dhamijia, ‘‘Folk Art,’’ 2:86–90. 50. Jayakar, The Earth Mother, 97–116, 153–60. 51. Alvapillai Velupillai, ‘‘Jainism in Tamil Inscriptions,’’ in Jainism and Early Buddhism, ed. Olle Qvarnstrom, 315–32; Sastri, A History of South India, 92–101; Jha, Ancient India, 118–25; Champakalakshmi, Trade, Ideology and Urbanization, 14–18, 27–35; Natarajan and Kasinathan,Art Panorama of the Tamils, 56–60; Iravatham Mahadevan, ‘‘Corpus of Tamil Brahmi Inscriptions,’’ in Seminar on Inscriptions, ed. R. Nagaswamy (1966; repr., Madras: Tamil Nadu State Department of Archaeology, 1968); Clarence Maloney, ‘‘Archaeology in South India: Accomplishments and Prospects,’’ in Essays on South India, ed. Burton Stein (Honolulu: University of Hawaii, 1975), 1–35. 52. Raman, ‘‘Popular Pujas in Public Places,’’ 165–98; Hart, The Poems of the Ancient Tamil, 81–119. 53. P. V. Somasundaranar, ed., Paripatal (Text with commentary, in Tamil; Tirunelveli: Saiva Siddhanta Society, 1969). 54. V. Rajam, ‘‘Ananku: A Notion Semantically Reduced to Signify Female Sacred Power’’ (unpublished manuscript, University of Pennsylvania, 1989), 1–37; Hart, The Poems of the Ancient Tamil, 81–119. 55. Hart, The Poems of the Ancient Tamil, 98–99. 56. Ibid., 100. 57. Tharu and Lalitha, Women Writing in India, 1:70–77; George L. Hart III, Poems of the Tamil Anthologies: Ancient Poems of Love and War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979). 58. Ramanujan, Poems of Love and War, 323; A. K. Ramanujan, trans., The Interior Landscape: Love Poems from a Classical Tamil Anthology, 5th ed. (1967; repr., Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999), 119–22. 59. Ramanujan, The Interior Landscape, 67. 60. Tharu and Lalitha, Women Writing in India, 1:70–77; Hart, The Poems of the Ancient Tamil, 138–52. 61. Varadarajan, A History of Tamil Literature, 26–59, 80–95, 100–101, 118; C. Rajagopalachari, Avvaiar: The Great Tamil Poetess (Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1971); Denton, Female Ascetics in Hinduism, 145–47; Raman, ‘‘Popular Pujas in Public Places,’’ 165–98. 62. Rajagopalachari, Avvaiar, 9. 63. P. V. Somasundaram, ed., Ilango Adigal Iyarrunaruliya Shilappadikaram [Ilango Adigal’s Graceful Work Shilappadikaram], in Tamil (Chennai: Saiva Siddhanta Society, 1969); Danielou, Shilappadikaram; P. V. Sundaram, ed., Madurai Kulavannikan Sattanar Iyarrunaruliya Manimekhalai (Chennai: Saiva Siddhanta Society, 1971). 64. Saskia C. Kersenboom-Story, Nityasumangali: Devadasi Tradition in South India (New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1987), 14–20. Leslie C. Orr, Donors,

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Devotees, and Daughters of God: Temple Women in Medieval Tamilnadu (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000), 23–24. 65. Basham, The Wonder that Was India, 1:382–85. 66. Somasundaram, Ilango Adigal Iyarrunaruliya Shilappadikaram, 44–45; Danielou, Shilappadikaram, 76–85; Kinsley, The Sword and the Flute, 96–97; and Kinsley, Hindu Goddesses, 145, 201; Shulman, Tamil Temple Myths, 1–2, 93, 103–4; Sastri, A History of South India, 125–27, 145, 372–73; N. Subrahmanian, Social and Cultural History of Tamil Nadu to A.D. 1336, 2nd ed. (Udumalpet: Ennes Publications, 1998), 30–33, 39. 67. Danielou, Shilappadikaram, 76–85. 68. Hart, The Poems of the Ancient Tamil, 105–6. 69. Ibid., 105–7, 60–62. Hart cites Akananuru (70), Purananuru (378), and four verses cited by Mayilai Cini Venkatasami in 1967. 70. Gananath Obeyesekere, The Cult of the Goddess Pattini (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 553–80. On ananku, Shulman, Tamil Temple Myths, 148, 158–62; Rajam, ‘‘Ananku: A Notion Semantically Reduced to Signify Female Sacred Power,’’ 1–37, 18. 71. Sundaram, Tiruvalluvar: The Kural, 7; also see Rajagopalachari, trans., Kural: The Great Book of Tiru-Valluvar, 4th ed. (Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1975), 4–6; Alphonso-Karkala, An Anthology of Indian Literature, 268, quoting V. V. S. Aiyar, trans., The Kural or the Maxims of Tiru-Valluvar (Tiruchirapalli: V. V. S. Krishnamurthy, 1952); Rev. W. H. Drew and Rev. John Lazarus, trans., Thirukkural (repr., New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 1989), 12–13. 72. Ramanujan, Speaking of Siva; Ramanujan, Poems of Love and War, 139–41; Hart, The Poems of the Ancient Tamil, 93–119; Srirama Bharati, ed., The Sacred Book of Four Thousand (Nalayira Divya Prabandham Rendered in English with Tamil Original; Chennai: Sri Sadgopan Tirnaryanaswami Diya Prabandha Pathasala, 2000), 92–127; Vidya Dehejia, trans., Antal and Her Path of Love: Poems of a Woman Saint from South India, SUNY Series in Hindu Studies (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990); Danielou, Shilappadikaram. 73. Rajan, Kalidasa: The Loom of Time, 25–28. 74. Ibid., 25, 29. 75. Sunil Kothari, ‘‘Dance Forms,’’ in Encyclopedia of India, ed. Stanley Wolpert, vol. 1 (New York: Thomson Gale, 2005), 286. 76. Alphonso-Karkala, An Anthology of Indian Literature, 344. The quotation is cited from Embree, Sources of Indian Tradition, 1:267, 268. 77. Besides Abhijnana Shakuntalam and Rtusamharam, Kalidasa’s extant works are plays Malavikagnimitram and Vikramorvashiyam, the epic Raghuvamsham, and Kumarasambhavam. 78. Rajan, Kalidasa: The Loom of Time, 35–36, 39–41, 120, 176–77. 79. Ibid., 211. 80. Doniger and Smith, The Laws of Manu, 45–46; Basham, The Wonder that Was India, 168–70. 81. Rajan, ed., Kalidasa: The Loom of Time, 114. See also Pandit, Ritusamhara or The Pageant of the Seasons, 40–41. 82. Rajan, Kalidasa: The Loom of Time, 131. 83. ‘‘Bhasa: Svapna Vasavadattam,’’ in Alphonso-Karkala, An Anthology of Indian Literature, 347–75.

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84. B. N. Pandey, ed., A Book of India (Delhi: Harper Collins, Ltd., 2000), 212– 13, 214–15. 85. Murcott, The First Buddhist Women, 87. 86. Translation by Ramanujan, in Poems of Love and War, 183 and 69, respectively. See P. V. Somasundaranar, ed., Kuruntokai: With Commentaries (Tamil; 1955; repr., Tirunelveli: Saiva Siddhanta Society, 1972), 77. Somasundaranar attributes the second poem to Velli Vitiyar; Ramanujan suggests Kolan Alici or Velli Vitiyar. 87. Danielou, Shilappadikaram, 25, 54. 88. Translated by Basham, The Wonder that Was India, 425–27, 536 nn. 28–30. 89. Pandey, A Book of India, 218, citing A. L. Basham’s translation of Bhartrhari’s Sringara Satakam. 90. Basham, The Wonder that Was India, 168, 170–72, 205–6; Daud Ali, ‘‘Kama Su¯tra,’’ in Encyclopedia of India, ed. Stanley Wolpert, vol. 3 (New York: Thomson Gale, 2005), 2–3. 91. Embree, Sources of Indian Tradition, 1:254–59; also Wendy Doniger and Sudhir Kakar, Kamasutra (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002).

6 THE DIVINE FEMININE: DEVIS, YOGINIS, TARAS

In the first age of the gods, existence was born from non-existence. After this the quarters of the sky were born from her who crouched with legs spread (Aditi Uttanapad). Rig Veda 10.72.3 HINDUISM Early Goddess Icons and Yoni The earliest goddess emblem is a stone vulva-uterus (yoni) with concentric markings from a Paleolithic rubble shrine at Baghor.1 The artifact resembles symbols of the divine female worshipped in Indian villages even today. Other evidence from the Indus Civilization confirms that iconic fertility rites have long been central to pre-Aryan religion. A terra-cotta mother goddess from Sara Dheri (3000 BCE) with elaborate jewelry and headdress has a single round breast in the center of her chest and legs tapering into a triangle representing the yoni.2 Other terra-cotta goddesses occur at Zhob and Nal, while at Harappa they were simply fashioned with small additive clay clumps for breasts, eyes, and nose. Their flat bases indicate they were placed on domestic altars, and lamp-like protuberances on each side of the head have sooty residue, probably from a burnt wick or incense. They were discarded after rites in a manner reminiscent of the disposal of clay icons after Hindu festival pujas today. Interestingly, goddess figures are absent at the later city of Kalibangan (ca. 2000 BCE ), possibly as the new elites no longer favored iconic rites. Despite India’s dominant patriarchal framework, its religions emphasize female and male as complementary cosmic forces. This compels a discussion of both gender ideals in scriptures and art. Besides goddess icons, the Indus

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cities contain anthropomorphic images of a male ithyphallic divinity carved on seals in Harappa or painted on pottery in Dholavira. Sexual emblems include round stones with a central hole (yoni), and cylindrical phallic objects reminiscent of later icons of Hindu god Shiva as the male procreative force (lingam).3 The horned ithyphallic yogi is also surrounded by animals, presaging legends of Shiva as the Great Ascetic (Mahayogi) and Lord of the Beasts (Pashupati). Another seal depicts the yogic divinity in a tree rite with seven braided priests/priestesses. Dravidian culture later mystically associated the tree-pillar with Shiva, evident in ongoing Tamil folk rites to lingams on platforms at the base of trees. 4 Sangam-era Tamil poems (200 BCE–400 CE) first mention votive images (patimam) and brick or stone tree-platforms (padi) where devotees offered flowers (puja), fruits, grain, and meat to nature deities (Ainkurunuru 245; Akananuru 149.12).5 Tamil reverence for Shiva as the male creative force is visible in the Gudimallam lingam with a nude carving of this god (first century CE). In ensuing mergers with Indo-Aryans, popular imagination coalesced the tree shrine with the sacred Vedic pillar in fire rituals. The tree-pillar-shrine theme resonated in stupas whose friezes show devotees doing puja to the bodhi tree symbolizing Buddha’s enlightenment (200 BCE). It also appears in a votive column-shrine for Vasudeva (Krishna-Vishnu) dedicated by Heliodorus the Indo-Greek (180 BCE) at Besnagar in north India.6 The sacred pillar became an architectural prop for Buddhist chaityas (ca. 150 BCE) and for early Hindu brick temples at Sanchi, Eran, and Nachna Kuthara (ca. 450 CE).7 Many Hindu temples also house a sacred tree (sthala vriksha) within their precincts.8 The shrine is regarded as the axis mundi connecting earth and sky, but the life sap of the tree is venerated as female.9 Pre-Aryan and Vedic ideas of fecund maternal deities also shaped Hindu, Buddhist, and Jaina goddess icons, with a startling continuity across millennia.10 The folk yakshi in Buddhist stupas became mythically linked to Vedic fertility goddesses (devis) Prakriti or nature, Prithvi or seed-bearing earth, and Sri-Lakshmi as earthly bounty. For example, a gray terra-cotta goddess from Sara Dheri (150 BCE) was constructed additively like Indus figurines. This goddess now had two breasts, unlike its Indus ancestor with a single breast, but similar flayed arms and yoni-like triangular torso with legs held together.11 A Bhulandibagh goddess (200 BCE) has a flat base as in Harappa, an elaborate hairdo, heavy anklets, pearl necklaces between pronounced breasts, broad girdled hips, and bulbous eyes agleam with benign humor.12 An embossed gold plaque from Lauriya Nandangarh (300 BCE) shows Prithvi with open palms in the gesture of generosity (varada mudra).13 Bountiful Gaja-Lakshmi is displayed with elephants symbolic of royal power at Sanchi stupa (ca. 250 BCE) and as Padma on a lotus (padma) at Bharhut.14 A GajaLakshmi from Kaushambi (200 CE) attests to a vibrant goddess tradition on the Ganges.15 A Padma-Lakshmi at Basarh (150 BCE) with lotus armbands sits on an open lotus, but the absence of elephants and her open wings

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suggest a West Asian influence. 16 An intricate terra-cotta plaque from Tamluk, Bengal shows a full breasted, benign devi-yakshi with curvaceous girdled hips, long legs, and plump arms. She has unspecified markings on her thighs, bangles, pendulous earrings, and a ceremonial headdress with five pins. Three pins are shaped like an axe, trident, and elephant goad, which were instruments later associated with the Hindu goddess Durga.17 Devi’s devotees flourished across India, drawing strength from scriptural legends of her diverse forms and feats, depicted by artisans on temple walls. Hinduism: Female, Male, Neuter, and Androgyne Purusha and Prakriti There are many creation hymns in the Vedas after 1000 BCE, some attributing a sexual origin to the cosmos, while others are abstruse on the gender of the primal Being. The later Rig Vedic hymn, Purusha Sukta (RV 10.90), describes creation through the primal sacrifice of Purusha (First Man/Spirit). It speculates on Purusha’s own origin from a primal mother Prakriti (Matter), but enigmatically states that she also emerged from him, thus hinting that both Spirit and Matter were required for creation. From now on, male theologians equated Prakriti with the natural world, perhaps due to the physical act of birth. Another hymn states that goddess Aditi crouched (Aditi Uttanapad) when giving birth to the gods, humans, and all else (RV 10.73.3–4). One bard suggests that the cosmos emerged from the golden egg (hiranyagarbha) of the father Creator Prajapati (RV 10.121). A fourth suggests the golden egg, but concludes that the prime cause was the yogic self-heat (tapas) of an androgynous Creator (RV 10.129).18 The Atharva Veda, Upanishads, and Sankhya philosophers offered engendered theories on Spirit and Matter. The oldest Upanishads (ca. 700 BCE) by male sages reiterated the cosmic unity of male and female in formless, nameless Brahman who was also the individual essence Atman. This truth transcends the multiple phantom realities of a material world and is the central tenet of Hinduism. Later Upanishads (300 BCE ) focused on Brahman manifested in deities like Vishnu-Purusha (Svetasvatara Upanishad) and Shiva (Narayana Upanishad). Mahanarayana Upanishad describes Purusha-Prakriti as emerging jointly from androgynous Brahman and identifies Purusha with Shiva-Maheshvara (Great Lord Shiva) and Prakriti with Devi/Mahadevi (the Great Goddess). MNU lauds Devi as Energy (MNU 2.2) for creating the world from elements like water (23.1; 1.4–5). Her composite nature is evident in myriads of names and forms beginning with Durga and Uma (Knowledge). This Hindu prayer is to the Female-Male in Brahman: Supreme Brahman, the Absolute Reality, has become an androgynous Person (Purusha) in the form Uma-Maheshvara, dark blue and reddish

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brown in hue, absolutely chaste and possessing uncommon eyes. Salutations to (Him) the Soul of the universe, or whose form is the universe.19 Meanwhile, the Sankhya school of male philosophers reinterpreted the Purusha Sukta to formulate a seminal theory on Spirit and Matter. They postulated that suffering occurred when Spirit was enmeshed in the web of natural matter or Prakriti. Thus, to reach equipoise, one must disentangle the Spirit from transient, worldly illusions (maya). The Bhagavad Gita reinforced this doctrine, which was also modified by Buddhists and Jainas. Despite her identification with the material world, Devi/Mahadevi is not diminished in Hinduism as she is Shakti who activates all gods and humans, and in union with the Male, she too governs the universe. Yet, some misogynists have misconstrued this embracing doctrine for shallow purposes.20 Hindu Trinity Various pre-Aryan legends about local goddesses of rivers, mountains, and trees combined with Aryan myths to create the Hindu tradition of Devi/Mahadevi. After the Bhagavad Gita sanctified bhakti-puja to immanent gods/goddesses, brahman authors compiled the 18 great (Maha) Puranas (200 BCE–1000 CE) with legends of the Hindu Trinity, divine incarnations/emanations, and minor deities. Gods

Goddesses

Brahma (Creator)

Saraswati Devi (Wisdom/Inspiration/ Enlightenment)

Vishnu (Preserver) 10 incarnations, including Rama and Krishna

Sri-Lakshmi Devi (Auspicious Bounty) Incarnate as Sita Devi (wife of Rama)

Shiva (Destroyer)

Devi as Shakti (Energy) as Uma-Parvati (the gentle consort) as independent Mother (Durga, Kali)

Theological and gender ambiguities in the Puranas are due to their composition over a millennium and to their multiple authors. Abstruse legends on the gods’ divine play (lila) became entertainment for ordinary devotees. Creator god Brahma’s functions were absorbed by the increasingly popular Vishnu and Shiva whose Puranas laud each as Supreme Brahman. Devi was portrayed as Uma/Parvati, Shiva’s docile consort and Vishnu’s sister. However, later majestic hymns exalted Mahadevi (Great Goddess) as Supreme Brahman through her Shakti (divine energy). The Devi/Mahadevi tradition subsumed all goddesses from pre-Aryan Durga and Kali to Vedic

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Lakshmi and Saraswati. Saraswati represented Mahadevi as enlightenment in Brahman, although her consort became less important to the Trinity.21 Although the brahman authors of the Puranas were convinced that male domination was a natural phenomenon, they also implicitly believed that Devi was central to the Trinity. Devi was the ‘‘glue’’ who held together querulous gods and nature’s disparate forces, an idea surely inspired by mortal women who forge complex family relationships. The entire corpus cannot thus be labeled misogynist, even if the celestial gender ideal became flawed on earth.22 Mystic symbolism permeates Hindu shrines with icons of Devi as yoni and Shiva as lingam. Classical male emblems include the Gudimallam lingam engraved with a nude, standing Shiva in south India (first century); and Shiva’s face carved on lingams at Mathura (first century) and Udayagiri (fifth century) in north India.23 As the idea of a unified Shiva-Shakti as Brahman gathered adherents, rites centered around a lingam placed upon a yoni.24 The most perfectly executed anthropomorphic representation of this union is of Shiva Ardhanari (Half Woman) in an immense wall sculpture at Elephanta Caves near Mumbai (sixth century). Shiva and Devi are fused seamlessly in a bisexual body but with detailed feminine and masculine traits.25 DEVI TRADITIONS In the classical era, regional territorial squabbles led kings to worship Devi as the formidable foe of enemies. New Sanskrit hymns lauded her celestial exploits, while containing her domestic power as Shiva’s wife and Vishnu’s sister. This bridged the two sects, and also validated Devi’s lowercaste devotees in the kingdom.26 Later legends on Mahadevi’s emanations paralleled Vishnu’s 10 incarnations (avatars) like Rama and Krishna, and her identification as both Shakti and Brahman challenged the Vishnu and Shiva sects who hailed their deities as Supreme. Three gendered theologies elucidate how each sect regarded the Female Principle. Vishnu devotees believe that he is Brahman manifest as the savior god. Sri-Lakshmi as Vishnu’s shakti or energy, but she resides demurely on his breast and is saved by him. Male dominance is evident in his incarnations in the loving pairs Rama and Sita, Krishna and Radha. While both Krishna and Radha yearn for union, he is the Great Soul (Paramatma), she is the individual soul (jivatma). Shiva devotees believe that the union of Shiva-Shakti is Brahman. This idea appears to have more gender parity, but many equate Shiva with Brahman, and Devi as merging into him. In contrast, Devi devotees venerate her as Divine Mother, First Cause, and Shakti who activates the entire universe, including Shiva.27 When Dravidian and aboriginal communities were absorbed into Hindu kingdoms, brahmans ‘‘gentrified’’ their powerful independent divinities like Durga and Kali through Sanskrit scriptures, lineage, rituals. Thus, although Devi sects draw upon non-Aryan myths, these were transformed and contained in Sanskrit

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scriptures. However, theologians frowned upon incorporating the deities of tribal hunters like the Sabaras or Dravidian village goddesses like Peyaacchi Amman (Tamil Nadu), Bhagawati (Kerala), Seranavali (north India), and Vindhyavasini (Maharashtra).28 Brahmans also prohibited blood sacrifice, meat offerings, liquor, and possession in most Hindu temples after eighth century CE . However, in village shrines, Shakti devotees (Shaktas) still imbibe liquor and meat to heighten the experience of possession, as conducive to a mystical vision (darsan) of the goddess.29 Some esoteric Shaktas also practice Tantra Yoga to attain Brahman embodied in the union of Shakti-Shiva, sometimes through sexual intercourse with a Tantric teacher.30 Vedic Era Hymns The three oldest Sanskrit mantras stem from the Rig Veda, while others occur in later Vedic texts and the Puranas. The Rig Veda’s Sri Sukta (RV Khila, 2.6) describes Sri-Lakshmi as stirring the muddy earth into life (2.6.11); stimulating rain clouds to sprout seeds (24); dwelling in a lotus (25–26); having slender limbs (1), lotus eyes and hands, and wide hips that promise progeny (26). She is accompanied by a horse and two elephants representing prosperity (3). The Rig’s Devi Sukta (RV 10.125) is to Vak (Speech)/Saraswati who inspires the sacred chants. The short Ratri Sukta (RV 10.127) is addressed to the dark goddess Night who yet dispels our dark fears.31 In later Vedic hymns, Hindu brahmans sanctified powerful Durga Devi as the nurturing yet fiercely protective mother who destroys demons. A Vedic hymn to fire god Agni includes the short, laudatory mantra, Durga Sukta (Taittiriya Aranyka 4.10.2). Durga is invoked as all-knowing savior who like Agni has a golden complexion and incinerates evil through her energy.32 Kena Upanishad (3.12) describes Brahman’s guise as Uma Devi who is serene Knowledge.33 The Mahanarayana Upanishad allots verses to Devi in various iconic forms, claiming that she ‘‘multiplies by the hundreds and grows by the thousands’’ (MNU 1.36) and that she is Sri ‘‘the mistress of all created things’’ (1.47–48) and Durga who is ‘‘fiery of lustre, radiant,’’ ‘‘the Power residing in actions’’ (2.2).34 Shakti scriptures include the minor Bhvricha, Tripara, and Bhavana Upanishads. Bhvrichopanishad (2–5) describes Devi as love (kama), the energy in desire (iccha shakti) and in life (jiva shakti). She is the Creator, Source in eggs and seeds, and Atman, and hence Brahman.35 Three foundational hymns to Shakti are the Durga Stava and Durga Stotra (ca. 250 CE) in the Mahabharata, and a Durga prayer in the sequel epic Harivamsa (ca. 300 CE ) on Krishna’s life. 36 These depict Durga with anthropomorphic characteristics and list her exploits based on popular legends. Durga Stava (MHB 4.5) describes Devi as ‘‘queen of the three

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worlds’’ and sister of Vishnu-Krishna (verse 4); as ‘‘black like the dark cloud,’’ a chaste virgin ‘‘born from the lotus,’’ with four arms and faces, carrying a noose, sword, discus, bell, and vessel (5, 10, 15). She is called ‘‘Durgat’’ as she helps devotees to reach safety (35), so that she is the ‘‘boon giver’’ (70).37 Durga Stotra is placed in the Mahabharata (MHB 6.22.16) just prior to Krishna’s teachings in the Bhagavad Gita (MHB 6.23), the philosophical apex of the epic. Perhaps the compilers also wished to pay respect to a goddess tradition preceding the Krishna sect, hinting that she is his elder sister (10) in the Durga Stotra. Thus, Krishna asks Arjuna to pray to Durga as the virgin goddess Kali adorned with skulls (5) and as Chandi who wields a spear, sword, and shield (10). Durga is called the ‘‘black’’ and ‘‘white’’ goddess who destroyed evil demons Mahisha and Kaitabha (15). Drawing upon the Rig Veda’s Devi Sukta, Durga is exalted as Savitri/Vak, mother of the Vedas (20) and of god Skanda (20). She is savior of the virtuous, and she lives in reclusive ‘‘dreary forests, fearful spots, and places of difficult access’’ (25).38 Myths were revamped by different bards. As the Harivamsa concerns Krishna legends, he is the older brother who presages Durga’s birth. Durga is described as dark complexioned like Krishna, and with broad arms. She carries a three-pointed sword, lotus, and honey pot (47.i.39–40), and wears a dark blue lower cloth and a white upper cloth. Her face resembles the moon, and her hair is braided (41–43). She is a virgin (47.45) who destroys demons Shumbha and Nishumbha (49) and grants boons to devotees who offer her meat (50–51). As the Divine Mother (47.ii.20), Durga dispels bondage, death, and sickness (55–56). The Dravidian goddess was popular even among brahmans in the classical era, as the Sanskrit text lauds her as ‘‘Aditi among the gods, Sita (furrow) among plowmen, and Dharani (earth) among creatures’’ (47.ii.30).39 Other hymns in Harivamsa (HV 105–6) describe Durga as seated on a lion and frightening foes; as independent Mahadevi, and also Parvati-Uma, Shiva’s shy wife and Vishnu’s sister.40 These Vedic-era hymns shaped later Puranic legends on Durga as Devi (ca. 400–1200 CE). Classical and Medieval Hymns Devi Mahatmya The most significant Devi hymn is the lengthy Devi Mahatmya (ca. 400 CE ) in Markandeya Purana. Devi Mahatmya developed Devi’s earlier epithets and exploits for a stronger theology for the powerful, protective Mother Goddess. If the earlier Durga Stava depicted her as the raft for humans to transcend difficulties (durgat), Devi Mahatmya described her as the Divine Mother whose grace enables devotees to cross the ocean of existence.

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In Devi Mahatmya, Durga appears as a chaste, independent virgin, the energy and essence of the gods. She is called Narayani as she is VishnuNarayana’s sister. The powerful ‘‘Ya Devi’’ mantras highlight her cosmic presence, yet pointedly trace her royal genealogy to her father the king of the Himalayas and to her son Skanda the war god (DM, Purva Bhaga 1.3). Durga remains calm even when assuming an angry mien to confront inner and outer demons personified as Madhu-Kaitabha, Mahisha, Raktabija, and ShumbhaNishumbha. Durga rides a lion, and seven mother goddesses (sapta matrikas) emerge from her, each a secondary shakti of a male deity. Durga’s emanations defeat evil, just like Vishnu’s incarnations (avatars) Rama and Krishna. Later sculptures depicted the exploits of Durga and the matrikas, each holding a weapon resembling those of their divine consorts. Indrani thus carries a thunder bolt like her husband Indra (8.21); Varahi resembles Vishnu’s boar incarnation; Vaishnavi holds a discus like Vishnu; young Kaumari sits on a peacock like Skanda; Maheshvari (World Ruler) holds a trident and is accompanied by a bull like Shiva (8.34); Brahmani is Brahma’s serene wife with a meditative girdle and rosary; pre-Aryan Chamundi-Kali is single, dispelling fear in the virtuous, while instilling terror in demons whose blood she drinks and whose skulls she wears as a garland (8.57).41 Non-Aryan Kali was contained and transformed with the Sanskrit epithet Kala Ratri (Dark, Timeless Night) borrowed from the Rig Vedic goddess Ratri or Night (1.4). However, Durga was exalted as the Prime Cause for her secondary shakti, Rig Vedic Sri-Lakshmi (1.76, 82–83). Durga is also called mother Ambika; Mahamaya who spins illusions (maya) in the universe (1.54–56); Savitri or inspiration; the Rig Vedic Gayatri hymn (1.74–75); Prakriti whose three strands comprise the material world (1.78).42 Later Puranic hymns depicting a compassionate Devi with a gentle visage are popular in southern and western India. The most significant is Devi Gita (Devi’s Hymn) located in the Devi Bhagavata Purana (1000 CE), extolling her as Mahadevi or Bhuvaneshvari the world ruler (3.54), and the Supreme Reality (Devi Gita 1.50; 4.48). In Devi Gita, a devotee asked for Bhuvaneshvari’s grace in receiving beatific knowledge and freedom from rebirth as moksha (6.14). Bhuvaneshvari reveals her sublime form as Prakriti and Maya, as the primal source behind gods Vishnu and Shiva, and as the seven matrikas. The scene echoes Krishna’s display of his grand universal form (vishva rupa) in the Bhagavad Gita, after which Devi comforts her awestruck devotee by resuming her gentle, kind aspect.43 Other Sanskrit hymns like Kurma Devi Gita in the Kurma Purana are also dedicated to a compassionate Devi. Lalita Sahasranama and Saundarya Lahari As Shaktas became popular in the early medieval era, other Sanskrit scriptures elaborated on Devi’s legends and aspects in philosophical verses

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(mantras) and ritual liturgies (tantras) for Tantric Yogic sects. Tantric theology posits that Devi-Shakti’s power is situated in the cosmos and also in the body’s recesses, and that a metaphorical serpent Kundalini representing the ego and base desires is lodged at the base of the spine. The mediator focuses on releasing Kundalini from this base to travel across six inner nerve centers (chakras) and channels to the seventh Sri-Chakra in the brain, the seat of Shiva-Shakti. The yogic spiritual climax is attained on reaching Sri-Chakra, which is represented as a lotus with a thousand petals in two major Tantric hymns, Lalita Sahasranama (thousand verses to Lalita Devi) and the abstruse Saundarya Lahari. Lalita Sahasranama is located in the Brahmanda Purana (600 CE). This hymn describes Lalita Devi as the effulgent half of Shiva’s body (LS 392); as Shiva’s beloved (409); as worshipped by Shiva (406); as the Infinite Supreme (413); as the First Cause (397–398); and as the primordial power (Adisakti). The devotee meditates on Divine Mother Lalita Devi whose body is bathed in vermilion (kumkumam), who has three eyes, whose face is like a luminous moon, who holds a noose, a cup of wine, and a red lotus in her hands.44 If the earlier Devi Mahatmya highlighted Devi’s immanence, Lalita Sahasranama dwells on both the immanent, compassionate mother (LS 14) and the transcendent Supreme.45 Saundarya Lahari is attributed to Shankara (780–820 CE), the preeminent theologian exponent of Advaita or Vedanta monism, one of the six schools of Hindu philosophy. An ascetic from southern Kerala, Shankara established four monasteries across India to promote Advaita and to rid Hinduism of blood sacrifices common to local non-Aryan rituals. It is probable that Shankara composed Saundarya Lahari as a meditative tool for monks, although later monks perhaps expanded the hymn to mediate between Advaita intellectuals and lay Tantric devotees of Devi. Thus, although Devi was originally a non-Aryan divinity, this Sanskrit hymn helped to weed out such rites and to sanctify Devi in brahmanical Hindu rituals. Saundarya Lahari hails Mahadevi as Supreme Mother (SL 12–14).46 It also highlights the union of Shiva as cosmic Being (1) and Shakti as Knowledge, Action, Love (2), the three paths to moksha laid out in the Bhagavad Gita.47 For those who needed icons, the hymn provided verbal, poetic icons of Tirupura-Sundari Devi’s vermilion body (42–99) to guide monks to their spiritual goal. A classical erotic style thus compared Tirupura-Sundari’s face to the moon (63), while her sweet voice shamed Saraswati’s lyre (vina; 66). Shiva and Vishnu bowed to her feet reddened with the juice of the henna plant (84–89); her thighs were like an elegant elephant’s trunk (82). Monks hoped to control their sexuality by focusing instead on Devi’s slender waist with three folds, and her bountiful breasts (79–80) like ruby jars (72–73) overflowed with the immortal nectar of knowledge (amrta). She gave this nourishment to her wise son Ganesha who remained celibate (73).48 This metaphor is common in Tamil bhakti literature. Shiva saint Sambandhar

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(seventh century) wrote that he had imbibed wisdom from Devi’s breasts, about a century prior to Shankara.49 Tamil Male Bhakti Saints and Shiva-Shakti Regional language hymns attest to Devi’s great popularity after the fifth century. One of the earliest invocations of Devi are found in saint Tirumular’s weighty hymnal Tirumantiram, one of the 12 books of the Tamil Shiva canon. Tirumular, one of the 63 Tamil Shiva saints or nayanars (fifth to sixth century), lauds Shiva-Shakti as Brahman, and also praises Shakti as Mahadevi and Benevolent Mother (4:8:1155–1254); as Cosmic or Parashakti (4:5:1045–1074); as All Encompassing or Purnashakti; as Primal or Muladhara Shakti; and as Knowledge or Jnana Shakti (4:7:1124–1155).50 One verse thus described Devi: She is the damsel of the mountain regions of shapely breasts and delicate beauty. If you in devotion adore Her, She cuts the bonds of birth asunder; grants the prowess of mighty tapas; scorches the soul’s forgetfulness; and leads you to liberation’s path. Tirumantiram 5:17:152451

In the eighth-century work Tiruvachakam, Tamil mystical saint Manikkavachakar sang passionately of his longing for union with Shiva. He described Devi as World Mother and as Shiva’s gentle ‘‘mistress-wife’’ (utaiyal) who subdued Shiva’s eccentricities. Manikkavachakar compared Devi to a dark cloud whose grace (arul) was like benign rain (Tiruvachakam 7.16).52 Other verses recall how Shiva tamed Kali in a dance contest (TV 12.4) and subdued the river Ganga when she threatened to flood the earth (4.146). Manikkavachakar also stated that goddesses like Uma and Kali were simply aspects of the great Mahadevi. Although an enlightened saint, his personal battle with erotic desire sometimes caused Manikkavachakar to express disdain for mortal women as sexual traps in a spiritual minefield. To conquer lust, he adopted the voice of a subordinate woman weak with love for Shiva, and this gives an erotic undertone to his hymns. That he succumbed often to his flesh and later felt remorseful agony is seen in this verse: Down into the waters of lust I plunged, where the crocodiles, those red-lipped women, bite and devour me. Look, don’t leave me who trembles (in fear). This diseased body full of rotting flesh I cannot endure.

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O Shiva! Is it just? Is it just? O Half of the Lady Whose breasts are adorned with jewels and yellow beauty spots! O my Salvation (Shiva-kati)! Tiruvachakam 6.4153

Devi Icons Classical Era In the classical centuries, stone and bronze icons of Hindu deities proliferated when rulers supported the sects of Devi, Shiva, and Vishnu devotees. Terra-cotta and stone sculptures from the Deccan reveal the fusion of Vedic and Dravidian notions of fecund goddesses (200–600 CE). They include a faceless nude female torso (nagna-kabandha) whose head is represented by a lotus as the symbol of purity, with maternal breasts, and legs splayed out with bent knees and open vagina while giving birth (Uttanapad). The earliest terra-cotta images of Aditi Uttanapad is from the Shatavahana dynasty (early third century) in Ter, Maharashtra. The goddess icon lies flat upon the temple floor as an altar for libations of milk, water, and turmeric water.54 The deity was obviously inspired by the Rig Vedic verse on Aditi Uttanapad who gave birth to the gods and the universe: The earth was born from her who crouched with legs spread, and from the earth the quarters of the sky were born. From Aditi, Daksha was born, and from Daksha Aditi was born. RV 10.72.3–455 Another basalt icon of a pregnant goddess in labor is from Alampur in the Deccan during the reign of the Chalukyas (ca. 600 CE).56 Here also Aditi Uttanapad serves as a flat altar for libations of milk and turmeric water, her ‘‘majestic maternal body’’ with full breasts, taut thighs, and open vagina being in contrast to a relaxed upper body. In lieu of a head, she has a lotus with drooping petals symbolizing serene fertility, and purity even in muddy waters. Icons of Lakshmi and Saraswati also show them seated on lotuses, and their limbs and eyes are compared to this flower. For example, a fifthcentury medallion shows royal Lakshmi with horses standing on a lotus with a blossom in her hands.57 The flowers suggest ample harvests without an overt reference to fecundity, unlike the explicit icons of Aditi Uttanapad subdued by the sacred lotus motif. 58 Obviously, this patriarchal society respected mothers and women’s anatomy, since life begins in their wombs and is nourished by their breasts. These cultural norms must have protected women from overt physical abuse in this era, although it may not have completely averted it.

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While Aditi Uttanapad icons were popular in villages, artisans developed more subtle iconography for Devi. The Gupta emperors in north India, with their Vakataka subsidiary in western India (fourth to fifth century), greatly supported sculpture in caves and freestanding temples. After the sixth century, regional kingdoms proliferated, each expanding on Guptan artistic models. Sculptures and legends of Devi, Vishnu, and Shiva now appear in profusion on shrine walls. Devi sculptures show Lakshmi, Saraswati, Durga, Mahadevi, seven matrikas, and river goddesses Ganga and Yamuna. An early Guptan image at Udayagiri Caves is a rough-hewn buff sandstone legend of Durga slaying the demon Mahisha. A brick temple at Ahichchatra contains two realistic and finely crafted reliefs of Ganga and Yamuna, their aquatic connections highlighted by water urns and lotuses in their hands, clinging saris, and river animal mounts such as a mythical crocodile (makara) for Ganga and a turtle for Yamuna.59 Medieval Images of Devi Medieval styles reflected both classical continuity and innovation. The first significant testament to motherhood is a tenderly hewn gray schist icon of Skandamata Devi (Mother of Skanda) from Tanesara-Mahadeva (sixth century CE). She has a luminous halo and face, ample hips and bosom, while her sari is loosely draped over her head.60 Similar styles are visible in Rajput icons in western India under the Gurjara-Pratihara dynasty (eighth to ninth century)61 and the Maitraka era (tenth century CE). From the latter are three sets of Durga’s seven emanations (sapta matrikas), each goddess associated with a male god. As Devi sects gathered strength, earlier tensions between sensual motherhood and yogic abstinence were partially resolved in art. Brahmani or Saraswati, goddess of wisdom, thus appears as the embodiment of sacred female sensuality in a green schist icon of Brahmani alone62 and in a pink sandstone of Brahma holding Brahmani on his lap.63 A fine sandstone lintel now survives with images of some sapta matrikas and Shiva the Great Ascetic (Maha-Yogi). Three remaining matrikas are Kaumari (Youth) on a peacock like her consort Skanda; Maheshvari (Great World Ruler) with a bull and trident like Shiva; and Brahmani clad in a yogic girdle, sitting on a lotus with a lute and scroll.64 The missing matrikas are Vishnu’s consort Vaishnavi; Varahi associated with Vishnu’s boar incarnation; Indrani or Indra’s consort; and independent Kali. A red mottled sandstone Parvati from Mathura reveals that the artist had resolved some aesthetic tensions in portraying divine and mortal femininity. Devi is at once the sensual wife and mother with abundant breasts adorned with pearl necklaces, and the serene ascetic with matted locks reminiscent of Shiva Maha-Yogi.65 A marble icon from Rajasthan is of an androgynous Uma-Mahesvara as Shiva-Shakti. Uma sits comfortably on Shiva’s lap with his hand gingerly holding her waist, the goddess’s uplifted head proclaims

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her independence, which is reaffirmed by her arm cast boldly over his shoulders.66 Hindu, Buddhist, and Jaina artisans shared broad aesthetic visions, but their temples had regional stylistic variations. The most powerful Durga images occur south of the river Narmada. The Chalukyas of Karnataka and the Tamil Pallavas of Kanchi first developed distinct yet converging styles for Shiva and Devi images and temples (seventh century). The Kalachuris commissioned the masterpieces at Elephanta Caves near Mumbai (eighth century), while images and temples reached their apex under the Tamil Cholas (ninth to fourteenth century) who promoted bhakti saints and pilgrims. The most notable early Chalukya temples for Durga are at Aihole and Alampur. The apsidal temple for Durga at Aihole contains loving pairs (mithuna) on the pillars and fine sculptures of Durga and Shiva. Also at Aihole are four smaller temples to Kunti, mother of the Pandavas in the Mahabharata.67 A giant carving in Ravanphadi cave at Aihole depicts a bold Shiva with a coy, graceful Parvati by his side.68 Bala Brahma temple at Alampur contains an image of matrika Brahmani in serene yogic repose.69 As staunch devotees of Shiva and Devi, the Pallavas built temples and cave shrines at Mamallapuram. There was also a workshop where architects experimented with five styles of monolithic freestanding temples. One of these resembles a thatched roof wooden hut dedicated to Durga with her image carved on the back wall. Two large statues of women gatekeepers guard the entrance, while Durga’s lion—also the Pallava insignia—sits serenely in front, its face to one side. The most magnificent carving of Durga’s battle against demon Mahisha is on a large cave wall at Mamallapuram. The savior goddess is astride an intricately carved lion with weapons in her several arms, her right-hand sword wielding a furious battle against demon Mahisha, while the gods superintend Durga’s victory. Disguised as bull, Mahisha returns to his anthropomorphic form when slain by the goddess, a clear warning to lustful, demoniac humans. The cave also has gentler images of Devi as Lakshmi rescued by her consort Vishnu in his boar incarnation.70 Two exquisite carvings of Parvati are in Elephanta Caves near Mumbai. One shows her in domestic comfort, engrossed in a game of dice with Shiva. In the carving of Shiva Ardhanari discussed earlier, the feminine and masculine halves are distinct, but fused harmoniously. Shakti is dignified, wide bosomed, with slim waist and elegant, drooping shoulders, and one hip is bent gracefully. In contrast, Shiva’s virile arm rests confidently on his bull Nandi. Male and female sexuality breathe serenely under yogic control.71 Pallava and Chola sculptures depict Devi independently as Parvati, Lakshmi, or Saraswati, or with their consorts; or in her local or composite forms. An eighth-century frieze at the Pallava Shore temple at Mamallapuram shows Parvati seated beside Shiva. 72 This was echoed in a Chola bronze from Tiruvalangadu (eleventh century).73 Several temple friezes

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show the bridal couple hand in hand, as at Vadakkalattur (ninth century)74 and Tiruvengadu (eleventh century).75 Other Chola bronze icons include a standing Parvati at Tirumeyjnanam (925 CE)76 and Sita as Lakshmi at Tirucherai temple (ninth century).77 South Indian bronze sculptors reached their apex in the portrayals of Devi as sensual and maternal, yet wise, some based on the model of their patron queen Sembiyan Mahadevi. There are other icons of compassionate, yet ascetic motherhood. A green sandstone Brahmani shows her as a yogini seated on a swan symbolizing enlightenment, holding a meditative cup and scroll in two upper hands, while her lower right points to her full breast.78 A granite icon of a sensual yet serene Brahmani from Kanchipuram (ninth century) has three faces, her upper right arm holds a rosary, lower right in a gesture of solace from fear (abhaya mudra), lower left hand is open in the gesture of benefaction (varada mudra). The missing left hand probably held the ascetic’s water pot.79 A sandstone lintel from western India shows seven, haloed matrikas dancing with Shiva, feet elegantly poised, right hands in the abhaya mudra.80 Tantric Traditions Hindu worship to Devi as the Supreme accelerated around the fourth century. Among them were the ‘‘left hand’’ or Tantric sects who disagreed with brahmanical restrictions on the consumption of meat and liquor, sexuality before rites, and who also believed in magical possession. Among the Tantric sub-sects were the Sakti-samagama who venerated the yoni and the Kaulas who advocated ritual sexual intercourse.81 The Indian belief that human sexuality mirrors the divine union of Shiva-Shakti thus resulted in two sets of sub-sects not only in Hinduism but also in Buddhism. Mainstream Hindu devotees of Devi visit brahmanical shrines, such as the Meenakshi Amman temple in Madurai, Tamil Nadu. This ancient Dravidian goddess shrine was expanded by the Pandyas and Nayakas (thirteenth to sixteenth century) with the Devi icon in the sanctuary womb house (garbha griha). The theme of Meenakshi-Shiva’s marriage is reenacted each spring in the Chitrai Harvest Festival.82 Such brahmanical temples follow Sanskrit texts and rituals, do not allow magical possession, and regard meat, liquor, and sex before rituals as deterrents to spiritual understanding. In contrast, non-brahmanical temples to folk goddesses allow devotees to imbibe liquor, offer animal sacrifices, and experience possession. Goat sacrifice is common for Durga and Kali, and some communities like the Gurkhas of India and Nepal sacrifice buffaloes during the festival of Durga Puja. Some of these pre-Aryan ideas were taken to another level in the medieval era by esoteric Tantric sects. If Hindus and Mahayana Buddhists largely focus on sacred chants (mantras), Tantric sub-sects emphasize divergent yogic practices (tantras).

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Hindu Tantricists use mystical diagrams and icons of Shiva-Shakti as Supreme to attain moksha. Vajrayana Buddhists use meditative symbols and icons of female bodhisattvas to attain nirvana. Tantric sects also use five devices (pancha makaras) to heighten the mystical experience, and their rites are antithetical to brahmanical Hinduism. Each makara begins with the Sanskrit letter ‘‘m,’’ i.e., eating fish (matsya), meat (mamsa), and parched grain (mudra); drinking wine (mada); and having sex (maithuna) before or during the rites.83 The medieval esoteric sect of the Kaulas believed that sexual intercourse actually heightened the mystical experience. Their main patrons were the Rajput Chandella dynasty (tenth to eleventh century) who commissioned the magnificent Khajuraho temples in Madhya Pradesh. The Kaulas also flourished under royal patrons in Kashmir and Orissa. Today these temples are defunct, although they are valued as national monuments. Khajuraho Hindu temples have fac¸ades with panels of explicit sexual acts. The most magnificent is Kandariya Mahadeo temple to Shiva containing panels of goddesses and profusely carved friezes of coital pairs (maithuna) and groups.84 Devi Jagadamba temple contains relief panels of a maithuna couple; 85 and the Chausat Yogini temple dedicated to Kali and her 64 shakti-devis probably witnessed Tantric rites of possession. A nearby Jaina shrine to tirthankara Parshvanatha also contains erotic sculptures. The Orissa patron of the Kaulas was Narasimhadeva (twelfth to thirteenth century) who commissioned the Sun temple at Konarak. This masterpiece is shaped like a chariot with horses, and it too has erotic sculptures. Another Tantric temple in Orissa is dedicated to Chamundi-Kali and Shiva-Bhairava, two non-Aryan deities whose myths depict their blood thirst for evil demons. Despite scholarly speculations, bloody sacrifices may have been less common, as the wall panels show seductive, wealthy women absorbed in beautification, in a manner suggestive of courtesans.86 Sexual mores were obviously far from ascetic in this era in north India. While mainstream theology highlights the unity of Shiva-Shakti, many Tantric sects believe in Kali as Supreme Devi. While most Hindus view enlightenment as an asexual state that is retarded by imbibing meat and drink, and by having sex before or during rituals, Tantricists take the opposite view. Tantric theology states that the primal ecstasy of the divine pair during creation can be reenacted in human sexual intercourse, whose bliss temporarily ends sorrow, as well as self-identity. 87 Hindu Shaktas and Vajrayana Buddhists also challenge some central Hindu assumptions on celibacy and menstruation.88 Mainstream societies believe that sexual chastity promotes spirituality, making it necessary for ascetics to hoard this vital energy, known as bindu in Hinduism and thig-le in Buddhism. Men thus withhold semen or the ‘‘white fluid’’; women avoid sex during menstruation when the ‘‘red’’ fluid is shed. The belief that menstrual blood was a source of

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ritual pollution probably originated in early Dravidian culture. Hindu and Buddhist Tantric sects contest this by encouraging the mixing of fluids, rather than condemning sex during menstruation as in brahmanical Hinduism.89 Clearly, the raw power of the Devi Mahatmya caught the fascination of kings and ordinary folk. The Shaktas used a folk base to challenge brahmanical rites, so that elite-caste theologians tried to contain their popularity through diverse approaches. The most intellectual response stemmed from Shankara’s followers who emphasized ascetic renunciation as the prime path to knowledge of Brahman. Meanwhile, theologians compiled Puranic theistic legends for Devi, Vishnu, and Shiva as Brahman manifest. Medieval bhakti saints pleaded fervently to these deities for divine grace (arul) in attaining moksha. Devi’s devotees worshipped the Divine Mother as Supreme; Shiva’s devotees envisioned Brahman as the union of Shiva-Shakti; Vishnu theists hoped that their individual soul (jivatma) would unite with the Lord (Paramatma).90 Shakta sects elevated Devi as Divine Mother, and Shiva sects exalt her as loyal wife (Meenakshi/Uma/Parvati) and tender, bountiful mother (Amman). Vishnu legends often focus on Krishna as a child with selfless mothers. Human motherhood was rendered divine in art, as seen in a sandstone sculpture from Gurgi, Madhya Pradesh (tenth century). It depicts a reclining mother with a protective hand over her baby who probably represented Krishna. A black basalt image of Devi Purnesvari or fulfillment from Bihar (twelfth century) shows this mother goddess seated on a lotus with a child on her lap.91 There are innumerable folk icons of Devi Annapurna or goddess of food with a ladle across both hands. Devi images often have full breasts and ample lap, with gestures like open palmed benefaction (varada mudra) or comfort from fear (abhaya mudra). The divine-mortal hierarchy is engendered most notably in medieval bhakti literature to Vishnu. The Padma and Brahmavaivarta Puranas introduced the theme of the lovelorn pair of Krishna as the Great Soul (Paramatma) and his lover Radha as the individual soul (jivatma).92 While both yearned for union, the jivatma sought divine grace for salvation, sometimes through Sri Devi’s mediation. In this ardent theology, the devotee or bhakta often assumed the subordinate, female role to the male Beloved. As the metaphor of physical yearning was transposed on the spiritual quest in the style of classical secular literature, the profuse outpouring of bhakti literature and art had erotic undertones. The stages of courtship began with a brief rapture followed by a long separation, and end with union. One of the most poignant and eloquent compositions is the Gita Govinda in Sanskrit by saint Jayadeva of Bengal (twelfth century) who assumed Radha’s voice to woo Krishna. Legends relate that Krishna amused himself by writing some couplets for his beloved devotee.

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In his spiritual journey, Jayadeva was assisted by Padmavati, a dancer at Jaganatha temple at Puri, Orissa.93 Women’s Rites Despite the low social rank of many tribal and low-caste communities, they were spiritually empowered by their dedication to local goddesses. Village rites to resilient shakti-devis strengthened community morale during epidemics and natural catastrophes, but they had a special significance for women after traumatic pregnancies, childbirth, and physical abuse. The goddesses often acquired an auspiciousness even for high-caste women, and as they could not be obliterated by the Sanskritic Mahadevi tradition, brahman theologians incorporated them into the umbrella of Hindu beliefs. Perhaps these elites had plebeian connections themselves, or their family women were devotees. Moreover, India’s artisanal caste autonomy allowed for manifold creative visions of Devi in syncretic forms in each region or village. Women’s domestic and public rites to such deities were thus fairly common. Although their ritual niches are smaller than those of upper-caste priests in temples, female rites have sustained them emotionally in a largely male dominant society. Women’s public rites are often to icons of villageor caste-based goddesses, to Durga or to Kali. They pray for strength, wisdom, children, prosperity, and protection from sickness or violence. Their offerings differ according to the goddess in question. If sedate housewives offer fruits to Devi, others sacrifice to Kali in her many forms. Other women have found that mystical possession by Kali has provided a psychological outlet for their inner rages and frustrations. Fasts for Devi form an important element of women’s worship. In south India, married women celebrate Vara Lakshmi Nombu through a prolonged fast and by tying a turmeric stained thread around their wrists. Women also sometimes conduct their rites separately from the lower- or upper-caste priests on festival days at village or tree shrines. An example is the festival for the Dravidian goddess Mariamman common to coastal communities near Chennai, Tamil Nadu. During this occasion, women decorate the temporary shrine, smear the icon with turmeric and vermilion, offer fruits, coconuts, and rice porridge cooked with fish or meat in a communal pot. Men play drums and pipes, and spectacles of possession by both genders are common. Other women sing hymns at home, offer special prayers at temples to celebrate their life stages or the seasons. Female domestic rites include special prayers to Devi before weddings, during pregnancy, and upon a daughter’s menstruation, and these vary across seasons, castes, and regions. Women appear to have considerable autonomy over these resilient folk festivals, which brahman priests have not tried to nullify. 94

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Some festivals include strict vows and fasts for husbands or brothers. On such festive days, the women then tie a thread stained with turmeric around their necks or wrists. Such festivals include Karadai Nombu in south India and Karava Chauth in the north, both commemorating heroine Savitri who rescued her husband in the Mahabharata. The festival of Rakhi in north India celebrates the bond between sisters and brothers in a patriarchal society. She prays for her brothers’ longevity, and they promise her unstinting protection. In the south, women pray for brothers in the cool month of January, with the brother reciprocating her good wishes through gifts of money and clothes. While some are communal rites of each caste with women playing a specific role, other festivals are entirely conducted by women and cross caste boundaries. For example, in the festival of Naga Panchami, low- and highcaste women today conduct rites to snake icons of Shiva and Vishnu associated with snakes, placed under sacred trees near temples with brahman priests. Snake worship stems from autochthonous tribal rituals, but it became popular among the high castes in the Puranic era. Women chant Sanskrit mantras or regional language hymns; light lamps; burn incense; offer fruits, flowers, milk, and coconuts; and smear turmeric on the icons of Shiva and Vishnu.

JAINISM: DEVI TRADITIONS Icons of Saints and Devis Icons of divine matrons appear in some Jaina temples. In Gujarat and Rajasthan, there are depictions of a four-armed Saraswati Devi clad in a delicate girdle, necklaces, and headdress suitable for this dignified goddess of wisdom. Her sensuality is evident in rounded breasts and in her elegant hand poised to apply a vermilion mark (tilak) on her forehead.95 A Chalukya icon (seventh century) from the Deccan depicts Ambika, wife of the 22nd tirthankara Neminatha, as protector, mother, and symbol of fertility. Like Hindu Durga, Ambika rides a lion, but she also holds a child in her arms. Drawing upon folk fertility myths, she is placed between sal trees with yakshi attendants in iconography reminiscent of Buddhist stupas.96 The serene faced Jaina yakshi Chunda in Madhya Pradesh (tenth century) sits gracefully with one leg folded, a lotus between her breasts. Her right hand applies vermilion (tilak) upon her forehead, and an attendant pays homage with folded palms.97 The Jaina temples at Khajuraho were also probably frequented by Tantric Kaula or Vishnu devotees. Thus, the temple to tirthankara Parshvanatha contains an exquisite image of Shiva-Parvati; and the Ghatai temple shows Mahavira’s mother’s 16 dreams before his birth, but also a many-armed goddess on Vishnu’s eagle Garuda.98

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VAJRAYANA (TANTRIC) BUDDHISM The Vajrayana (Diamond Path) sub-sect of Mahayana Buddhism also offered Tantricists an avenue for nontraditional worship in eastern India, Nepal, and Tibet. Vajrayana’s popularity stems from its retention of local pre-Aryan respect for goddesses and priestesses. Vajrayana biographies of women yogic teachers (siddhas) were compiled under the Pala dynasty in Bengal (700–1200 CE), reminiscent of earlier Indian royal munificence to Mahayana monasteries, as recorded by Chinese pilgrims.99 Vajrayana began as a protest by some monks and lay Buddhists against monastic worldliness and sterile intellectualism, but it thrived due to royal generosity. Erudite monks then compiled Vajrayana manuals of Tantric rites (tantras) based on lay rituals. Since the tantras were taught to both Buddhist and Hindu students at Nalanda and Vikramasila universities, Vajrayana and Hindu Tantricism are remarkably alike in their use of yoga, sacred verses (mantras), diagrams, and sexuality to attain spiritual goals.100 Vajrayana thus exalts Hindu Shiva as the Great Ascetic (Maha-Yogi) who resides near cremation grounds, while Hindu Tantricists were influenced by Vajrayana after Turko-Afghan Muslim kings destroyed Buddhist monasteries in Bihar and Bengal (twelfth century). Women Siddhas and Yoginis As stated earlier, Hindu and Buddhist Tantricists embrace ritual sexual intercourse and do not regard it as a threat to yogic insights. As Vajrayana practitioners regard the emotions as the fertile mud in which to cultivate virtues like generosity and compassion, they are called the brave (viraa [f]; vira [m]). There are many hagiographies of medieval male and female Vajrayana siddhas who formulated these traditions, as well as their spiritual heights and pitfalls. While all siddhas were respected as yoginis (f) or yogis (m), some were stark ascetics residing in cremation grounds, caves, or forests, while others were married householders. There were noteworthy plebeian and aristocratic siddhas like the princesses Lakshminkara and Mandarava. Lakshminkara feigned insanity, smeared her body with ashes, distributed wealth to the poor, and left her husband’s palace for the cremation ground. When Mandarava refused to be married, her father confined her in a dungeon, but she scratched her face and pulled off her hair to frighten suitors, and escaped to be a yogini. Working-class yoginis included hunters Padma-Lochana and Jnana-Lochana, the roaming wine-seller Sahavrija, and Manibhadra, the wife and mother who remained at home. The Tibetan aspirant Niguma and her husband Naropa faced a domestic crisis when he wished to leave to become a siddha. They agreed to dissolve their marriage for Vajrayana, and both became famous siddhas.101 Tilopa, a celebrated woman siddha, had two students who were liquor merchants, one of whom became a respected yogini whose wisdom converted the king

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to Vajrayana. The male siddha Khambala learned from his yogini mother that prejudices against women, the lower castes, and prostitutes were delusions. Vajrayana’s humane attitudes is seen in the fact that one of Lakshminkara’s students was a cleaner of latrines.102 Female spiritual prowess is respected in the northeast culture, and Vajrayana’s fluid organization fostered a close interaction between female yoginis and monks in the medieval era. This led to a secret rite centering on women’s inner divinity (stri-puja, guhyapuja).103 The manual Hevajra Tantra advises the male Tantric aspirant to learn meditation from a yogini descended from five honored Buddhist families. The text also recommends disciplined sexual intercourse for spiritual understanding, and pointedly refers to the mixing of body fluids, with the power flowing from the yogini to the male student.104 Taras and Female Bodhisattvas Vajrayana Buddhists worship icons of female bodhisattvas who resemble forms of Hindu Devi, in contradiction to earlier Mahayana scriptures like Bodhisattvabhumi (fourth century), which stated that as the female body was ‘‘full of defilement and of weak intelligence,’’ there could be no female bodhisattvas. Moreover, as Buddhist theology emphasized asexual enlightenment, monks proposed that women were transformed into men upon attaining nirvana. In opposition, the Vajrayana Chanda MaharosanaTantra (eighth century) exalts women. While Siddhartha and other male Buddhas were the sons of his mother Maya, the text states that female Buddhas were embodiments of Siddhartha’s wife Gopa. 105 Moreover, Vajrayana tantras exalt enlightenment (prajna) as female, a noun with a feminine gender. As folk devotees then venerated Prajna and some other virtues as goddesses, Vajrayana theologians developed a pantheon of female and male bodhisattvas.106 Like Hindu Durga and other devis, Vajrayana female bodhisattvas have both benign and fierce forms. The most famous is Tara the protective mother associated with Avalokitesvara, the bodhisattva of compassion. An origin legend for Tara states that when Avalokitesvara attained nirvana and left the world, all creatures wept. The kind bodhisattva then wept a tear, which became the female bodhisattva Tara who is therefore the ‘‘essence of the essence of compassion.’’107 In the culture that reverences the female, other Tibetan legends attribute a local inspiration for Tara as mother and queen protector. Vajrayana traditions absorbed local non-Buddhist legends and ideas in the depiction of Tara as either gentle or fierce. Like Durga, Tara is the divinity who protects devotees from death and other hurdles.108 One of the most popular benign versions of Tara is depicted in texts as having a body like forest verdure, while her purity is represented by a lotus seat. Texts refer to Tara as 16 years old, with blooming breasts, and wearing

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ornaments.109 Like Hindu Sri-Lakshmi, Nepali icons depict Tara and the divinity Vasudhara with the lotus emblem of purity and with benefaction (varada mudra).110 These qualities are also evident in an early bronze Tara (eighth to ninth century) from Khurkihar, Bihar. The haloed bodhisattva sits on a lotus, her leg folded beneath her lap, and her two hands in the gestures of open generosity and of teaching (dharma-chakra mudra), the latter associated with Buddha’s sermons.111 A seventh-century Tara stands on a lotus, holding a lotus and the ball of generosity, which is like the varada mudra. The gilt gold face of an elegant, standing Tara (fourteenth century) suggests that this icon was worshipped. Her slim beauty resembles a lotus stalk, she has lotus bands on her arms and sides, and her hands gesture teaching and generosity. A splendid image of Maha-Sri Tara (tenth century) clearly links her to Sri-Lakshmi, as the bodhisattva is seated on a lotus beside two devis, her hands together in the gesture of teaching. A green watercolor painting of Tara on cotton cloth (fourteenth century) is ornate with Tantric symbols associated with animals. Her right hand blesses a monk, her left holds the gesture of instruction, while her full breasts and benign eyes and smile emphasize maternal wisdom.112 After the destruction of Buddhist monasteries, Hindu Tantricists adopted some Vajrayana practices, as reflected in the meditative rite of ‘‘Tara bhakti suddharnava’’ (worship of Tara).113 Vajrayana manuals and rites for female bodhisattvas are attributed to both historical and legendary women teachers. Thus, the lay siddhas Yasodatta and Yasobhadra are believed to have authored the manuals for the female bodhisattva Vagisvara and her male counterpart bodhisattva Manjusri. The most notable yogini author is Vajravati (Diamond-like Woman), the author of the manual for Pithesvari, the Wrathful Red Tara. Women teachers Lakshminkara, Mekhala, and Kanakhala composed the manuals for Severed-Head Vajra-yogini Tara. Vajravati’s narrative states that she was once a respected, pure minded brahman woman who carefully observed caste rules. Sensing her spiritual potential, a Tantric Buddhist of the weaver caste invited her to reject orthodoxy and to become his disciple. Convinced that he could teach her Buddha’s wisdom, Vajravati accepted him, thus crossing the barriers of gender and caste. Vajravati later devised a meditative technique through which the aspirant imagined she was Red Tara in a standing yogic pose on a lotus. Red Tara is often shown with a bone necklace signifying communion with death, and her hands hold a diamond spear (vajra) and a blue lotus. Despite the fearful symbols, the technique is believed to bring enlightened bliss.114 One of the most popular but fearsome female bodhisattvas is Vajra-yogini or Chinnamasta, whose Hindu counterparts are Durga and Kali in eastern India.115 Texts describe Vajra-yogini as having a bright red body, flowing black hair, a bone necklace, and as crushing demons, who are metaphors for the ego and sensory deceptions. Vajra-yogini is depicted holding a severed head and cup of mead, like Hindu icons of Kali, and her ferocious male

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counterpart was probably the bodhisattva Vajrapani. Another wrathful Tara is Simhamukha (Lion Faced) who is clad in a tiger skin and drinks from a skull-bowl. As the champion over illusions, Simhamukha’s diamond spears (vajra) aim in all directions, while the demon of fear and negativity lies crushed at her feet.116 A spectacular Tara is red Kurukulla who stands in a ‘‘dancing pose, haughty with furious rage,’’ wearing a crown of five skulls and a tiger skin.117 While these female divinities were conceived as ascetics by yoginis, Vajrayana highlights the revelatory potential of sexual intercourse. Tantricists emphasize that such union erases individual identities, and physical bliss becomes an echo of sublime bliss. This nuanced verse from Chakrasamvara Tantra reveals the relationship between yogini teacher and male aspirant, who learns to use his sexuality to scale spiritual heights: Because her great bliss is imperturbable, She is a mountain. Because lesser beings cannot fathom her profundity, She is a forest. Because her cavern is filled with nectar, She is a cave. Because her union of wisdom and skill is deep, She is a riverbank. Because she [knows] the natural state beyond birth and death, She is primordial. Because she is the object of great bliss, Her activity is natural. Because she burns the views of early disciples and solitary achievers in the fire of great passion, She is the cremation ground. Chakrasamvara Tantra118

Icons of some benign Taras represent historical women siddhas like Siddharajini (twelfth century) from Uddiyana in northwestern India. Siddharajini’s biography and manuals center on the Buddha Amitayus of Infinite Life, and they are foundational to Tibetan Buddhism. Icons show a two-armed Tara seated on a lotus with a vase of immortality in her hands. Haloes encircle her head and body, she is clad in tiger skin, while the ring of skulls and lamps around her head cautions the devotee against illusions.119 Bhikshuni Lakshmi (ca. ninth century) was an aristocratic Kashmiri nun and another compassionate, brilliant yogini who defeated monks in philosophical debates. Thus, when she later contracted leprosy, jealous monks chased her into the forest to die. Legend states that she was saved after appealing to Avalokitesvara, the supreme male bodhisattva of compassion. She then devised a meditative program of fasting and yoga combined with

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devotional bhakti for Avalokitesvara, and this transformed Tibetan Buddhism. She recorded her experience in a poem which also states that Avalokitesvara’s kindness enabled him to assume a female form and to understand women. Now translated by Tibetan monks (lamas), this poetic adulation provides a historical clue as to how Avalokitesvara came to be venerated as goddess Kuan-Yin/Guan-Yin in East Asia. Bhikshuni Lakshmi wrote: Moonlike mother of Buddhas, Whose form is that of a beautiful goddess Empty by nature, you [emerge] from emptiness In the form of a woman And tame living beings thereby.120

Vajrayana theology exalts the cosmic non-duality of female and male, a theme captured by Nepali and Tibetan artists in erotic, naturalistic sculpture free of sexual prudery. The sublime union was represented in slightly different ways in Tantric art, depending on the divinity being idealized. Some cults worshipped icons of Lokesvara or Compassion in a coital union with Prajnaparamita, Goddess of Wisdom, and their child was the Buddha as the perfect human savior of mortals. Other images represent the Tantric union of bodhisattva Vajra-sattva and his consort Vajra-sattvamika. One silver polychrome icon depicts the cosmic coital couple largely from her perspective. She has her arms entwined around his head, her hands gesture Unity, while he holds a double thunderbolt (vajra) and a bell shaped like a thunderbolt. Their benign faces are caught in a rapturous gaze, the male and female figures are well matched, and their union appears complete.121 Tibetan Buddhists depict the embracing figures of Yab-yum or the bodhisattva Vajrapani and his consort Wisdom or Prajna, a vision highlighting the union of male and female as leading to wisdom. NOTES 1. Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, J. M. Clark, J. D. Pal, and G. R. Sharma, ‘‘An Upper Paleolithic Shrine in India,’’ Antiquity 57:88–94; V. N. Mishra, ‘‘Prehistoric Human Colonization of India,’’ Journal of Bioscience 26, no. 4 (November 2001): 491–531, 498. 2. Rowland, The Art and Architecture of India, 18, plate 6A; Zimmer, Myths and Symbols of Indian Art and Civilization, 90–92, plates 16 and 24; Stella Kramrisch, The Art of India (London: Phaidon, 1955), plate 6; George Michell, Catherine Lampert, and Tristan Holland, eds., In the Image of Man: The Indian Perception of the Universe Through 2000 Years of Painting and Sculpture (New York: Alpine Fine Arts, 1982), 50, plate 59. 3. Zimmer, Myths and Symbols of Indian Art and Civilization, 94–95, plate 25. 4. Raman, ‘‘Popular Pujas in Public Places,’’ 165–98.

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5. Srinivasan, Temples of South India, 7–8; Sivaram, Early Chola Art, 70–71; P. V. Somasundaram, trans., Ainkurunuru (Chennai: Saiva Siddhanta Society, 1972), 324; P. V. Somasundaram, trans., Akananuru, vol. 2 (Chennai: Saiva Siddhanta Society, 1970), 100. 6. Philip Rawson, ‘‘Early Art and Architecture,’’ in A Cultural History of India, ed. A. L. Basham (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 200–201; Harle, The Art and Architecture of the Indian Subcontinent, 49, 56, 98, 112–13. 7. Harle, The Art and Architecture of the Indian Subcontinent, 49, 56, 98, 112–13. 8. Amritalingam, Sacred Trees of Tamilnadu, 34–44, 47–53. 9. Shulman, Tamil Temple Myths, 41–48; also Harle, The Art and Architecture of the Indian Subcontinent, 26. 10. Hardy, Viraha-Bhakti. 11. Michell, Lampert, and Holland, In the Image of Man, 110, plate 53. 12. A goddess with less jewelry is in Kramrisch, The Art of India, fig. 6. One with elaborate hairdo, heavy anklets, pearl necklaces is in Michell, Lampert, and Holland, In the Image of Man, 50, plate 59. 13. Rowland, The Art and Architecture of India, 24, plate 6C. 14. Zimmer, Myths and Symbols of Indian Art and Civilization, 92, plate 15. 15. Harle, The Art and Architecture of the Indian Subcontinent, 40, plate 25. 16. Zimmer, Myths and Symbols of Indian Art and Civilization, 90–92, plates 16, 24, 100; Balraj Khanna and George Michell, Human and Divine: 2000 Years of Indian Sculpture (London: Hayward Gallery Publishing, 2000), 14, 82, plate 54. 17. Harle, The Art and Architecture of the Indian Subcontinent, 39, plate 24. A similar figurine with mold broken to the hipline from Bengal is in Khanna and Michell, Human and Divine, 14, 80, plate 4. 18. Embree, Sources of Indian Tradition, 1:18–21, for English translation of ‘‘Purusha Sukta,’’ ‘‘Hiranyagarbha Sukta,’’ and ‘‘Naasadiya Sukta.’’ Also Ashudoshananda, Veda Mantrangal: Mantrangal, Shanti Mantrangal, Suktangal, 73–82, for ‘‘Naasadiya Sukta’’ (Sanskrit with Tamil translation). 19. Swami Vimalananda, ed., Mahanarayana Upanishad (Madras: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1957), 7. 20. Kinsley, Hindu Goddesses, 134–37. 21. Kinsley, The Sword and the Flute. 22. Roy, ‘‘Vedic Cosmogonies,’’ 9–19. Roy makes the specious argument that the Rig Veda’s Female Creator Aditi was demoted to Prakriti as created matter by later brahman philosophers of the Sankhya school, since her 24 parts balanced a single male Spirit Purusha. Despite many misogynists, Hindus associate Devi with Prakriti (Primal Matter) and Shakti (Primal Energy). Thus, the male authored Mahanarayana Upanishad (2.2) praises Durga as ‘‘productive power’’ in a verse central to this self-sustaining Devi without a consort. Vimalananda, Mahanarayana Upanishad, 95–96. 23. Harle, The Art and Architecture of the Indian Subcontinent, 271, plate 209; 93, plate 68 of single-faced (ekamukha) lingam from Udayagiri Cave (fifth century CE). On sculptures of lingams (first to twelfth century CE), see Michell, Lampert, and Holland, In the Image of Man, 214–15. 24. Glenn Yocum, Hymns to the Dancing Siva: A Study of Manikkavacakar’s Tiruvacakam (New Delhi: Heritage Publishers, 1982).

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25. Stella Kramrisch, The Presence of Siva (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), plate 3; Vidya Dehejia, Indian Art (1997; repr., London: Phaidon, 2000), 126, plate 91. 26. From John Stratton Hawley and Donna Marie Wulff, eds., The Divine Consort: Radha and the Goddesses of India, 2nd ed. (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1995) these essays: Diana Eck, ‘‘Ganga: The Goddess in Hindu Sacred Geography,’’ 166– 83; Dimmitt, ‘‘Sita: Fertility Goddess and Shakti,’’ 210–37; C. Mackenzie Brown, ‘‘The Theology of Radha in the Puranas,’’ 57–71; Glenn E. Yocum, ‘‘Comments: The Divine Consort in South India,’’ 278–81; Thomas B. Coburn, ‘‘Consort of None, Shakti of All: The Vision of the Devi Mahatmya,’’ 153–65. 27. Frederique Apffel Marglin, ‘‘Types of Sexual Union and Their Implicit Meanings,’’ in The Divine Consort, ed. Hawley and Wulff, 298–302; Brenda Beck, ‘‘The Courtship of Valli and Murugan: Some Parallels with the Radha-Krishna Story,’’ 262–77. 28. From John Stratton Hawley and Donna Marie Wulff, eds., Devi: Goddesses of India (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996) these essays: Humes, ‘‘Vindhyavasini: Local Goddess Yet Great Goddess,’’ 49–75; David R. Kinsley, ‘‘Kali: Blood and Death Out of Place,’’ 77–86; Kathleen M. Erndl, ‘‘Seranvali: The Mother Who Possesses,’’ 172–94; Sarah Caldwell, ‘‘Bhagawati: Ball of Fire,’’ 195–226. 29. Joanna Punzo Waghorne, ‘‘The Gentrification of the Goddess,’’ International Journal of Hindu Studies 5, no. 3 (2001): 235–75. 30. Tapasyananda, Sri Lalita Sahasranama, 20–22. 31. ‘‘Anna,’’ Devi Suktamkalum Upanishadankalum, 2–13; and Ashudoshananda, Veda Mantrangal (Sanskrit text with Tamil commentaries), 171–77, 177– 206. See also Coburn, Devi Mahatmya, 258–64. 32. Ashudoshananda, Veda Mantrangal, 153–61. 33. My translation of the verse in Sarvananda, Kenopanishad, 30–31. 34. Swami Vimalananda, trans., Mahanarayana Upanishad (Chennai: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1995), 53, 65–66, 95. 35. ‘‘Anna,’’ Devi Suktamkalum Upanishadankalum, 27–51. 36. Kinsley, The Sword and the Flute, 90. 37. Coburn, Devi Mahatmya, 268–71 (Durga Stava). 38. Ibid., 272–75 (Durga Stotra). 39. Ibid., 276–80 (Harivamsa). 40. Ibid., 284–89 (‘‘Aniruddha’s hymn’’). 41. Michell, Lampert, and Holland, In the Image of Man, 220–21. 42. ‘‘Anna,’’ ed., Devi Mahatmyam, Sanskrit text and Tamil translation (Chennai: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1999), 7, 63–64, 70–73, 193, 197–204; Swami Jagadisawarananda, trans., Devi Mahatmyam (Glory of the Divine Mother): 700 Mantras on Sri Durga (Chennai: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 2002), 88–128; Tapasyananda, Sri Lalita Sahasranama, 15–22. 43. Brown, The Devi Gita, the Song of the Goddess, 42, 70, 118, 156. 44. Tapasyananda, Sri Lalita Sahasranama, 20–21. 45. Ibid., 43, 142, 154–56, 167–68. 46. Tapasyananda, Saundarya Lahari, 55–58. 47. Ibid., 127. 48. Ibid., 126, 128, 134–35, 140–45.

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49. Sekkizhaar’s Periya Puranam (verses 1965–1968), in which Mother Uma mixed amrta into her breast milk and fed it to Jnana Sambandhar in a cup. See G. Vanmikanathan and N. Mahalingam, eds., Periya Puranam: A Tamil Classic on the Great Saiva Saints of South India by Sekkizhaar (Chennai: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1985), 155. 50. B. Natarajan, trans., and N. Mahalingam, ed., Tirumantiram: A Tamil Scriptural Classic by Tirumular (Chennai: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1991), 165–68, 169– 75, 176–80, 181–94. 51. Ibid., 217. 52. Yocum, Hymns to the Dancing Siva, 116–17. 53. Ibid., 121–22, 134 n. 37. 54. Kramrisch, Exploring India’s Sacred Art, 156–57; and Michell, Lampert, and Holland, In the Image of Man, 109, plate 52 of a terra-cotta image from Ter, Maharashtra. 55. O’Flaherty, The Rig Veda, 38–39. 56. Michell, Lampert, and Holland, In the Image of Man, 110, plate 55 of the basalt image at Alampur. 57. Kramrisch, Exploring India’s Sacred Art, 148. 58. Michell, Lampert, and Holland, In the Image of Man, 115–16, plate 76. 59. Harle, The Art and Architecture of the Indian Subcontinent, 94, plate 70; 117, plate 90. 60. Ibid., 115, plate 88. 61. Michell, Lampert, and Holland, In the Image of Man, 114, plates 72 and 73. 62. Ibid., 110, 114, plates 54, 72, and 73. 63. Nalini Rao, Boundaries and Transformations: Masterworks of Indian and Southeast Asian Sculpture from the Collection of Dr. and Mrs. William T. Price (Amarillo, Texas: Amarillo Museum of Art, 1998), 10, plate 1. 64. Ibid., 17, plate 11. 65. Ibid., 23, plate 18. 66. Ibid., 22, plate 17. 67. Harle, The Art and Architecture of the Indian Subcontinent, 176. 68. Ibid., 175, 177, plates 132 and 134. 69. Ibid., 187, plate 141. 70. Dehejia, Indian Art, 193, 196, 198–99, plate 133. 71. Ibid., 127, plate 91; Harle, The Art and Architecture of the Indian Subcontinent, 124–26. 72. Harle, The Art and Architecture of the Indian Subcontinent, 277, plate 213. 73. Ibid., 307, plate 241. 74. Vidya Dehejia, Art of the Imperial Cholas (New York: Columbia University, 1990), 20, plate 14. 75. Harle, The Art and Architecture of the Indian Subcontinent, 306, plate 240. 76. Ibid., 305, plate 239. 77. Dehejia, Art of the Imperial Cholas, 28, plate 21. 78. Harle, The Art and Architecture of the Indian Subcontinent, 191, plate 226. 79. Lorna Price and Rand Castile, eds., Asian Art Museum of San Francisco: Selected Works, Avery Brundage Collection (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1994), 31. 80. Michell, Lampert, and Holland, In the Image of Man, 221, plate 461.

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81. Philip Rawson, The Art of Tantra (Greenwich, Connecticut: New York Graphic Society, 1973), 15, 30, plate 4. 82. Jayakar, The Earth Mother, 73–96, 174–95; Erndl, ‘‘Seranvali: The Mother Who Possesses,’’ 173–94; Kinsley, Hindu Goddesses, 132–211. Also the film Wedding of the Goddess, Parts 1 and 2, University of Wisconsin at Madison, 1979. 83. Dehejia, Indian Art, 167–68. 84. Harle, The Art and Architecture of the Indian Subcontinent, 232–39, 248; Dehejia, Indian Art, 154–68; Michell, Lampert, and Holland, In the Image of Man, 217, 437–40; Mario Bussagli and Calembus Sivaramamurti, 5000 Years of the Art of India (New York: Harry Abrams, 1983), 203, 235–50. 85. Rawson, The Art of Tantra, 33–34, plates 14–16. 86. Harle, The Art and Architecture of the Indian Subcontinent, 161. 87. Rawson, The Art of Tantra, 11–12; Michell, Lampert, and Holland, In the Image of Man, 213. 88. On the Dravidian Tamil origins of views on menstruation as a ritual pollutant, see Hart, The Poems of the Ancient Tamil, 93, 96–97. 89. Rawson, The Art of Tantra, 31–40, vide, 33–35, plates 13–16. 90. Jan Brzezinski, ‘‘Women Saints in Gaudiya Vaisnavism,’’ in Vaisnavi: Women and the Worship of Krishna, ed. Stephen J. Rosen, 2nd ed. (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1999), 59–85; Katherine K. Young, ‘‘Theology Does Help Women’s Liberation: Srivaisnavism, A Case Study,’’ in Vaisnavi, ed. Rosen, 235–94; Vasudha Narayanan, ‘‘The Goddess Sri: The Blossoming Lotus and Breast Jewel of Visnu,’’ in The Divine Consort, ed. Hawley and Wulff, 224–37. 91. Michell, Lampert, and Holland, In the Image of Man, 119, plates 87 and 88. 92. Cheever Mackenzie Brown, God as Mother: A Feminine Theology in India: A Historical and Theological Study of the Brahmavaivarta Purana (Hartford, Vt.: Claude Stark, 1974), 180–86; also Brown, ‘‘The Theology of Radha in the Puranas,’’ 57–71. 93. Barbara Stoler Miller, ‘‘The Divine Duality of Radha and Krishna,’’ in The Divine Consort, ed. Hawley and Wulff, 13–26. 94. Raman, ‘‘Popular Pujas in Public Places,’’ 165–98. 95. Khanna and Michell, Human and Divine, 42, plate 45. 96. Michell, Lampert, and Holland, In the Image of Man, 110, plate 56. 97. Khanna and Michell, Human and Divine, 62, 83 front cover, plate 62. 98. Rohini Sharma, ‘‘Khajuraho: Where Sensual Meets the Sublime,’’ India Perspectives 18, no. 11 (November 2005): 2–15. 99. Reginald Ray, ‘‘Accomplished Women in Tantric Buddhism of Medieval India and Tibet,’’ 191–200. 100. Miranda Shaw quotes the seventh-century pilgrims I-Tsing and Hsuan Tsang in Passionate Enlightenment, 20. 101. Ray, ‘‘Accomplished Women in Tantric Buddhism of Medieval India and Tibet,’’ 192–93. 102. Ibid., 193, 195, 199. 103. Shaw, Passionate Enlightenment, 32, 48, 130–38. 104. Ibid., 158. 105. Ibid., 27–28. 106. Embree, Sources of Indian Tradition, 1:191. 107. Kinsley, Hindu Goddesses, 165. 108. Ibid., 166–68.

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109. Pratapaditya Pal, Nepal: Where the Gods Are Young (New York: Asia Society & John Weatherhill, 1975), 10. 110. Ibid., 57, 81, plates 41–42. 111. Harle, The Art and the Architecture of the Indian Subcontinent, 211, plate 159. 112. Pal, Nepal: Where the Gods Are Young, 53–56, 80–81, plates 36, 38, 39, 40. 113. Rawson, The Art of Tantra, 28–29. 114. Shaw, Passionate Enlightenment, 102–3, 107. 115. Kinsley, Hindu Goddesses, 172. 116. Shaw, Passionate Enlightenment, 30–31. 117. Kinsley, Hindu Goddesses, 170. 118. Shaw, Passionate Enlightenment, 150–51. 119. Ibid., 122–25. 120. Ibid., 128–29. 121. Pal, Nepal: Where the Gods Are Young, 46 and 78 (plate 28); 45 and 77 (plate 27).

7 QUEENS, SAINTS, COURTESANS

Brother, you’ve come Drawn by the beauty Of these billowing breasts, This brimming youth. I’m no woman, brother, no whore. Every time you’ve looked at me, Who have you taken me for? All men other than Chenna Mallikarjuna Are faces to be shunned, see, brother. Akkamahadevi, twelfth century1

ROYAL DHARMA, GENDER, AND CASTE (SEVENTH TO EIGHTEENTH CENTURY) Striking contrasts form the warp and woof of India’s historical tapestry. Luminous ideals of a Devi and humanism thrived amidst somber social hierarchies, tolerance and cultural fusions rubbed shoulders with conservative patriarchy. These social tensions increased after the seventh century when regional kings (rajas) competed for martial glory and women escaped from moving armies into domestic seclusion. However, guided by benign ideas of royal dharma, rajas also constructed dams and reservoirs and promoted the arts. In north India, they included the Palas and Senas of Bengal (eighth to eleventh century) and Bhoja Paramara of Malwa (1000 CE) who composed books on medicine.2 Rajendra Chola (d. 1044) deployed a navy to protect Tamil merchants in Sumatra, while his dynasty fostered village councils, dug irrigation tanks, built temples to ‘‘royalized gods.’’3 Chola shrines reinforced royal ‘‘ritual sovereignty,’’ redistributed wealth, and brought peripheral groups under the Sanskritic umbrella.4 Chalukya queens held administrative posts and were philanthropists. However, India’s semi-feudal economy excluded most women and lower castes from the centers of learning, while relying on female domestic labor, and on shudras as sanitation, cremation, and leather workers. Shudra women bore the twin burdens of gender and caste inferiority.5

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Women were pawns in dynastic competitions. In north India, a heroic kshatriya ethic demanded a commensurate female honor code requiring seclusion and vows of chaste fealty to the husband as lord, rendering such a wife into a pativrata. These attitudes intensified during political confrontations with Muslims, viz., Arabs in Sind (eighth century); Turkish-Afghan sultanates in Delhi, Deccan, Gujarat, Bengal (thirteenth to sixteenth century); and the Mughal empire (1526–1857). Female spousal fealty served as the moral linchpin to reassert ethnic identity and to safeguard the homeland. Rajput society ardently adopted an archaic Indian and Central Asian custom requiring the ‘‘true wife’’ (sati) to immolate herself on her husband’s funeral pyre, the penultimate sacrifice being the mass suicidal conflagration (jauhar) of palace women eluding capture after a lost battle.6 Sati immolation has festered like a canker in India, erupting during political and economic crises. Despite such violence, other women agents mediated some of the extraordinary cultural fusions of this period. Revolutionary devotional (bhakti) saints stirred social conscience by challenging gender and caste hierarchies. Although women and low-caste bhakti saints could not completely overturn the edifice of elite power, they succeeded in mapping out a route to spiritual freedom, as their hymns were powerful pleas for justice. Art, literature, and inscriptions provide evidence of philanthropic queens and of women saints, writers, courtesans, musician-dancers, farmers, weavers, spies, temple and court servants. As women were instrumental in forging radical social agenda, they cannot be regarded simply as victims of patriarchy. This chapter focuses on medieval Hindu women, taking into account the presence of Islam in India.

WOMEN IN SOCIETY Clothing Although classical Hindu lawgivers laid emphasis upon familial duties, women moved about freely in public in fields, markets, temples, and courts. Loose, unrestrictive clothing enabled women and men to work both indoors and outside in the tropical climate. Classical female clothing consisted of an unstitched length of cloth (lungi), sometimes pleated in the front, tied at the waist and extending to the ankles. A loose shawl covering the bosom after puberty was considered decorous in many regions of South Asia. Occasionally, the unstitched cloth was a long garment (sari) whose upper end (palav) was draped over bosom and shoulders. Men wore a dhoti, sometimes long enough to be pleated in front or merely a short loincloth for the poor. Climate, region, culture, and work decided the length and styles of the women’s sari. In the colder northwest, Gandhara sculptures show women in warm, heavy drapery (250 CE ) that were influenced by Graeco-Bactrian styles.

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A devi icon from Hariti, Punjab (100 CE) has a sakachcha sari with front pleats pulled between the legs and tucked in the back. Conducive to horse riding and other movement, the sakachcha sari was popular in the Deccan.7 The veil is absent in pre-Islamic Indian sculptures such as Buddhist yakshis from Didarganj (250 BCE) and Bharhut (200 BCE) and a Hindu devi icon from Ahichchatra (ca. fifth century) whose uncovered head is adorned with jewels. However, after the Huna invasions of north India (ca. sixth century), a new matronly decorum appears in a gray schist Skandamata Devi from TanesaraMahadeva where the sari is draped over the head. In contrast, southern sculptures (seventh century) depict bareheaded goddess like Durga at Mamallapuram, Tamil Nadu, and dancing sapta matrikas at Aihole, Karnataka.8 With a growing Turkish Muslim presence in north India in the eleventh century, Hindu women of Punjab and Kashmir used the Indian shawl over the bosom and shoulders (odini/dupatta) to partially cover the face, while adopting baggy Turkish pyjamas (shalvar) and a long tunic (kameez/kurta). The shalvar-kameez provided warmth and decorum, and facilitated riding horses and field work. Later Rajput and Mughal paintings (sixteenth to seventeenth century) depict Hindu women in long ruffled skirts, tight bodices, with the dupatta over the bosom, but not the face. Muslim women appear in long shifts, and the veil over the head and face (hijab—Arabic; pardah—Persian). Some classical sculptures depict women who appear nude above the waist. However, this was not a realistic depiction of clothing styles, but probably an artistic device to highlight the bosom, which Indians regard as the essence of femininity. A careful examination often reveals the faint lines of a thin cotton shawl and a bodice, revealing as much about India’s superfine textiles as it does about its aesthetic norms.9 Fine muslin cloth also appears in the thinly etched shawl of male figures such as in a seated Buddha icon from Mathura (fourth century CE). In the colder northern regions, teenaged girls and women covered the bosom with a cloth shawl and a tunic in the medieval era. Due to intense tropical heat, some Adivasi and south Indian women dispensed with the upper bodice, wound the sari’s upper end (palav) tightly across the bosom, leaving the arms free for forest and field labor. Some Kerala women were bare breasted, until made self-conscious by visiting West Asian Muslim and Christian Europeans who commented that both genders wore little on the upper body. Clad from head to toe, Europeans did not feel squeamish about portraying female nudity in art. However, they attributed sparse Indian upper body clothing to heathen moral laxity, and not to the tropical climate. In 1293, Marco Polo remarked satirically that the king and his court were adorned in pearls and gold necklaces, but wore just ‘‘a piece of fine cloth,’’ and made this exaggerated comment: . . . everyone goes naked! For decency only do they wear a scrap of cloth; and so it is with rich and poor, aye, and with the King himself.10

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An exception was Ibn Batuta (1333–45), an African Muslim scholar who did not pass moral judgments when describing women’s clothes in Hanaur (Onur) in southwestern India: The women of all the coastal districts do not wear stitched cloths, but only un-sewn garments. They tie one end of the cloth round their waist and drape the rest over the head and chest. They are beautiful and chaste; each of them wears a ring of gold in her nose.11 Indian culture eulogized the matronly breast in sacred and secular art. In south India where female decorum was manifested in behavior, rather than in clothes, bare breasts were not regarded as exhibitionist. Even after embracing Islam, some southern women did not adopt the hijab veil or the cumbersome full cloak. Ibn Batuta noted that Maldive women wore Muslim tunics merely to impress foreign visitors, despite discomfort and awkwardness: The women of these isles do not cover their heads, not even the queen. They comb their hair and gather it on one side. Most of them wear only one cloth which covers them from the navel downwards; the rest of the body remains bare. It is in this dress that they walk about in the bazaars and elsewhere . . . Some women wear, in addition to the cloth, a chemise with short and broad sleeves. I had some girls who dressed like the inhabitants of Delhi. They covered their heads, but this rather disfigured than adorned them, as they were not used to it.12 Living Spaces Despite the focus on upper-class female domesticity in classical dramas, women freely visited public areas like the temple and market, especially in south India. Working women did not have the luxury of private rooms, nor were they afraid to be seen by men. After Muslim kingdoms were formed in north India, elite Hindus often adopted their customs of pardah and separate living quarters for women (zenana). In large households, women’s rooms were often adjacent to a central courtyard where the family and close friends congregated, and were waited upon by trusted servants. Family men thus brought the outside world to the attention of their women. During the numerous male wars of this era, aristocratic Hindu and Muslim women studied, prayed, wrote, birthed and raised children, sewed, painted, sang, and played instruments in luxurious confinement. While some queens planned diplomatic maneuvers, other women negotiated with household authority figures like the mother-in-law who was a common denominator in the lives of Hindu and Muslim women. Female reproduction and agricultural productivity are clearly connected in Indian cultures. Rural women not only birth, feed, and tend to children

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and the aged at home, but they sow, weed, harvest, husk grains; provide fodder to draft animals; gather firewood; draw water from rivers and wells; repair canals and houses. Men plow and attend to market affairs, but without women, the farms would be handicapped. Clothing is therefore practical and suited to the climate. Southern women are often bare breasted when toiling in subtropical fields, while northern women are shielded by thicker, voluminous clothes. The restricted space within huts and small houses makes gender segregation less practical, and families generally meet in a central courtyard or verandah. Hindu and Muslim patriarchs define the broad rules of family conduct, but matriarchs supervise the daily affairs of the household.13 Hindu Ranis Regents and Administrators Several Indian queens (ranis) ruled as dowagers. A particularly vibrant tradition of female governance and philanthropy existed south of the river Narmada as early as 275 BCE, when an Ikshvaku rani financed a Buddhist stupa in the Deccan.14 In northern India, Guptan coins (310 CE) reveal that emperor Chandra Gupta I ruled jointly with his queen Kumaradevi of the powerful Lichchhavi clan of Bihar. Their descendent Prabhavati, daughter of Chandra Gupta II and his queen Kuberanaga, served as regent for her two minor sons for 15 years after the death of her husband, the Vakataka king of western India. The Ajanta cave frescoes are monuments to Vakataka tolerance, prosperity, and cultural innovation.15 Royal and aristocratic women were well educated. Chalukya, Rashtrakuta, Pallava, Chola, and Hoysala ranis in south India managed large properties, assumed public office, administered districts, and served as benefactors of temples. Although the male dramatist Bilhana portrayed Chalukya women as docile in his play Vikramanka-deva-charita (eighth century), inscriptions reveal that Rani Vijayabhattarika (seventh century) governed a large region near Mumbai and issued an important charter in her fifth regnant year.16 Pallava inscriptions show that Rani Rangapataka (seventh century) financed and supervised the building of Kanchipuram’s Kailasanatha temple.17 Rashtrakuta rani Silamahadevi (eighth century) bore the titles Paramesvari (World Ruler) and Paramabhattarika (Ritual Sovereign), issued land grants with coruler and husband Dhruva. Rashtrakuta princess Revakanammadi (ninth century) governed a district. Chief Chalukya queen Maliladevi (ninth century) governed a large province, and second rani Ketaladevi governed a brahman village. Chalukya rani Akkadevi (eleventh century) governed regions of her brother’s kingdom. Hoysala Bammaladevi (twelfth century) ruled several districts of her husband’s realm.18 Dynastic marriages resulted in cultural exchanges, as brides often brought artists and writers in their entourage to their new home. This was the case

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when princess Gauri of the Rajput Rathaur clan married a Chalukya prince of Karnataka (tenth century). When two Pallava sisters became co-wives of Vikramaditya Chalukya II (eighth century), the architectural innovations of their Tamil masons shaped the Virupaksha and Mallikarjuna temples in Karnataka.19 On the negative side, some Dravidian queens adopted the Rajput kshatriya custom of sati to strengthen the dynasty’s claims to Hindu royal power. For example, Chera (Kerala) princess Vanavan Mahadevi became a sati on the death of her Tamil husband Sundara Chola, although his second Chera queen outlived him by 16 years.20 The Graeco-Bactrian ambassador Megasthenes (ca. 300 BCE) was the first to take note of Dravidian matriliny in south India. Mixing fact with legend, Megasthenes noted correctly that ‘‘The Pandaean nation is governed by females,’’ but he imagined that the first queen was a ‘‘daughter of Hercules.’’21 A tradition of female authority also prevailed in Kerala whose rulers inherited from the maternal uncle due to a system of avuncular matriliny (marumakkatyam). Travancore queens were regents for underage sons, but few directly inherited the throne. Despite this restriction, benign regents like ranis Lakshmi Bai (1810–15) and Parvati Bai (1815–29) helped to introduce modern education. Marumakkatyam also prevails in Malabar among the Nayar caste who follow matrilineal inheritance rights. Vestiges of this Dravidian custom also linger across India in the honor and responsibility given to maternal uncles. There were dowager regents like Rani Katyayani of Kalinga in Orissa in early India. After the deaths of her husband Lalitabharana-deva and son, Katyayani became sovereign until her grandson’s birth. 22 However, few queens could successfully overcome rebellious nobles who often overthrew them. Sultana Raziya of Delhi (1236–40) was her father’s chosen heir, but she was killed after a few short years. Two Hindu queens who remained in power despite opposition were Didda of Kashmir (tenth century) and Rudrama-devi of the Kakatiya dynasty of Andhra (1259–95).23 Didda’s father Simharaja and grandfather Bhima Saahi were Lohara chiefs of Poonch, and she became queen upon her marriage to king Ksemagupta (950–58). After his death, Didda became regent, using her political acumen to control conniving nobles and brahman ministers. Her independent views on gender and caste led to the appointment of a tribal named Tunga as her advisor. Although this stirred resentment in the elite clique, Didda remained sovereign for 23 years (980–1003).24 Rudrama-devi ruled over the Telugu Kakatiya kingdom (1259–95) whose feudal system laid the foundation for the Vijayanagar Empire (1336–1556). The capital of Warangal, near modern Hyderabad, had a central palace and fort from which arterial roads radiated to a set of defensive, circular forts. The kingdom’s wealth of diamonds, gold, silk and cotton cloth brought foreign ships to the port of Motupalli.25 It is unclear whether Rudrama-devi inherited the throne from her father Ganapathi-deva;26 or if she was born

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a Yadava princess from Maharashtra before her marriage to her Kakatiya husband. 27 Marco Polo the Venetian described her as a regent (1295– 1323) for her grandson Pratapa Rudra and praised her thus: This was formerly under the rule of a King, and since his death, some forty years past, it has been under his Queen, a lady of much discretion, who for the great love she bore him never would marry another husband. And I can assure you that during all that space of forty years she had administered her realm as well as ever her husband did, or better; and she was a lover of justice, of equity, and of peace, she was more beloved of those of her kingdom than ever was Lady or Lord of theirs before. The people are Idolaters, and are tributary to nobody. They live on flesh, and rice, and milk.28 Another intriguing figure is the Jaina queen Abakka Devi (d. 1598) whose life and legends are enacted in yakshagana folk theater of Karnataka. Abakka Devi belonged to the Chauta matrilineal dynasty of Ullal, a small port-principality on the Arabian Sea. Like Calicut and Cochin, Ullal had grown wealthy through trade in pepper and spices with Arab and Indian Muslims. The Tulu-speaking population of Jaina, Hindu, and Muslim merchants lived amicably, but the fortunes of small port-states were altered completely when the Portuguese captured Goa (sixteenth century). Driven by mercantile and religious animosity for Muslims, the Portuguese converted locals to Christianity, wooed Hindu Vijayanagar as a trade ally, and repeatedly invaded Ullal which refused to pay them tribute. The legends about Abakka Devi as an ‘‘abhaya rani’’ (Fearless Queen) indicate that she was seriously wounded in battle against the Portuguese in 1581 and died fighting in 1598. However, it is unclear whether a single queen ruled for 54 years, or whether the narratives of a mother and her two daughters coalesced into a grand myth. The real persona is described by the Italian visitor Pietro della Valle (1586–1652) as an impressive dignified queen of middle age, stout but agile, dressed simply without jewels in a sari and armor. Although the dynasty was Jaina, Abakka Devi’s uncle Tirumala Raya (d. 1544) educated her in diplomatic and military techniques. A political marriage with Lakshappa of the Banga dynasty of Mangalore did not result in an ally, and they were probably estranged. Abakka Devi sealed a defense pact with the Zamorin of Calicut who also refused to pay taxes to the Portuguese. Legend states that the Hindu Zamorin and his Mappila Muslim soldiers shielded a wounded Abakka Devi in a mosque during a devastating Portuguese naval attack in 1581. Another describes the death of the last Abakka Devi in 1598 in Ullal fort, after resisting Portuguese land and naval forces sent by Viceroy d’Noronha. Abakka Devi’s martial bravery was later emulated by the Maratha rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi who died fighting British forces in the Revolt of 1857.

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Property and Philanthropy Many inscriptions attest to the proverbial generosity of Tamil Chola queens. In addition, portrait sculptures of such queens proclaimed the grandeur of their dynasty in various shrines, like the Nagesvara temple at Kumbakonam (ca. 886 CE).29 The first inscription (941) states that the pious Sembiyan Mahadevi first donated jewels and gold as a princess, continued her philanthropy as chief queen of Gandaraditya, and remained a benefactor as a widow until her death in 1006. She commissioned important temples, some of whose bronze icons of Devi (969) were patterned after her slim, royal figure. In 972, she established a flower garden in memory of her husband at Koneri-rajapuram temple. To her generosity are attributed several sculptural niches at Kailasanatha temple, Kanchipuram (980), a school for Vedic study, and a village in her name for brahmans. Inscriptions detail her donations of food, incense, sandal paste, lamps; wages for gardeners, garland makers, potters, conch blowers, musicians, reciters of Shiva’s hymns, even accountants of temples. Her grandnephew Rajendra I and his queen Lokamahadevi arranged for his noble ancestor’s annual birthday with rituals to icons of her favored deities at Nallur temple, and had garlands placed on images of Sembiyan Mahadevi. Lokamahadevi is also described as a benefactor as she installed 63 bronze icons in two major temples (1012 CE).30 In the tenth century, portrait bronzes were cast of Chola princess Kundavai Pirattiyar who ruled jointly with her younger brother Rajaraja I (985–1016). Rajaraja I was the first great ruler of this dynasty, relied on his sister’s political advice, and named his daughter after her. Inscriptions inform us that after her marriage to a feudatory prince, Kundavai Pirattiyar installed her mother’s portrait bronze icon in a temple and made munificent donations of gold to Rajaraja’s great temple at Thanjavur.31 Kundavai the younger is believed to have assisted her father in negotiating treaties, including her own marriage treaty with a Chalukya prince. The Chola and Chalukya lines converged through this marriage, and Kundavai’s grandson Kulottunga I (1070–1122) inherited both thrones.32 Chola women were key players in their dynastic history, and several queens are remembered in inscriptions for their generosity. For example, Kundavai’s niece Arulmozhi-nangaiyar presented a pearl umbrella to a temple at Tirumalavadi. Kulottunga’s chief queen Madhurantaki was described as ‘‘mistress of the whole world,’’ and her successor queen Tyagavalli as ‘‘mistress of the seven worlds.’’33 The merits of educational philanthropy were taken seriously by southern royalty. Thus, despite the Manu Smriti’s strictures on women’s property rights, records show that Tamil and Kerala princesses financed temple schools, and even Christian schools in the nineteenth century. This tradition emanated from two empowering sources, the first being the Dravidian belief in inherent female power, so that wise women were honored. The second derived from sage Jaimini’s writings (ca. second century BCE), which preceded the Manu

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Smriti. Jaimini argued that despite female social inferiority, as both genders shared identical religious aspirations, women must be allowed to make ritual offerings. It followed that women must inherit property to make these offerings, even if they were nonaristocratic women. This explains the thirteenthcentury Chola inscription of a wealthy landowner in Thanjavur who left his wife his entire estate, including money, jewels, and serfs.34 Women, War, and Sati When waging war against Hindu or Muslim enemies, medieval Hindu kings often invoked Durga to justify their actions. While soldiers died in face-to-face combat, women were raped or killed when villages were pillaged. Victorious kings also held aristocratic women hostage and cemented peace treaties with royal marriages.35 Widows were often compelled to become satis or coerced into a fearful marriage born of the victor’s lust. Thus in Sind in 650 CE, the brahman minister Chach defeated the king and ascended his throne, but he first forced the royal widow into marriage.36 Vishnuvardhana IV of the Chalukyas of Andhra (ca. 780 CE) gave his daughter Silamahadevi as a peace offering to king Dhruva of the Rashtrakuta dynasty. After a successful invasion of the Pallava capital (750 CE), Rashtrakuta king Dantidurga offered his daughter Reva as a peace offering to his enemy Nandivarman. A Chalukya inscription accused Rajendra Chola who invaded Bijapur (1006 CE) of having ‘‘plundered the entire country, and slaughtering women, children and Brahmins.’’37 Rashtrakuta Krishna II (ca. 910 CE) defended his grandson’s succession rights through his Chola mother by invading her natal home. After defeating Rajaraja Chola III (1225 CE), Sundara Pandya captured his chief queen.38 Prior to the ninth century, Hindu law books (dharma shastras) favored restoring a raped woman to her family after ritual penances, and the child of the union was given up in adoption. However, the frequency of medieval wars meant that raped women were often abandoned, and women’s position became precarious in war.39 Upper-caste rules became more stringent on female behavior, but genetic and cultural fusions ensued due to rape, as well as the settlement of some soldiers with local wives.40 Meanwhile, women sought safety in domestic duties like rearing children and nursing the elderly. Sati: Early Inscriptions The earliest reference to a widow’s suicide upon her husband’s death (sahagama) appears in the Rig Veda (RV 10.18) whose bard urged a grieving widow to arise from the pyre and return to the world. Sati was also not advocated by Manu Smriti (100 BCE–200 CE), the most influential law manual (shastra) for middle- and high-caste Hindus. Instead, the authors recommended that the widow be celibate and abstinent like the male hermit (sadhu):

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When her husband is dead she may fast as much as she likes, (living) on auspicious flowers, roots, and fruits, but she should not even mention the name of another man. She should be long-suffering until death, self-restrained, and chaste, striving (to fulfill) the unsurpassed duty of women who have one husband. MS 5.157–15841 The first textual reference to sati occurs in Megasthenes’ Indika (300 BCE). As this is in the context of Greek and Central Asian military occupation of Gandhara, sati’s purpose was probably political, rather than theological.42 The custom may have festered quietly during minor wars, but it erupted dramatically when Hunas attacked the Guptan Empire, as seen in a pillar at Eran, Madhya Pradesh (510 CE). This inscription eulogizes prince Bhanu Gupta for valor, and his wife as a meritorious sati: Hither came Bhanu Gupta, the bravest man on earth, A great king, a hero bold as Arjuna; And hither Goparaja followed him, As a friend follows a friend. And he fought a great and famous battle, And passed to heaven, a god amongst chieftans, His wife, loyal and loving, beloved and fair, Followed close behind him into the flames.43

Dravidian Tamil Texts: Widows and Death A Central Asian origin for sati is suggested by the fact that it is most common among Rajputs as descendants of Central Asians. However, Tamil texts from the classical Sangam era also refer to suicides by royal widows and the followers of a brave, deceased king. This custom may have stemmed from the Tamil belief in a mystical power (ananku) that reposed benignly in virgins and matrons of chaste honor (karppu), but could wreak havoc through the latent sexuality of the inauspicious widow.44 The poetic anthology Purananuru (ca. 100 BCE–100 CE) contains references to widows with tonsured heads (Pur. 280), drab attire devoid of flowers and jewels (Pur. 224), abstemious diets, stone beds. Some widows, including queens and their retinue, chose to avoid perpetual mourning through suicide. Yet in one verse (Pur. 246), the dowager of king Bhuta Pandya advised her followers not to die, as she would live on as their sovereign guide: Listen, you good men! I am no woman to suffer austerities Eating for food velai leaves

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boiled with tamarind with white sesame paste and a squeezed ball of rice untouched by fragrant ghee.45

A royal widow suicide is also described in the Tamil epic Shilappadikaram (fifth century), when the Pandya queen of Madurai declares that a loyal wife could not survive her husband (II.19.14–15).46 As wars required valor even in women, Dravidian belief in the brave chaste wife with ananku coalesced with the Indo-Aryan heroic ideal of the avowed wife (pativrata). Epics and Puranas: Fire Ordeals Secondary Sanskrit texts in the classical era reaffirmed the pativrata’s power as a true wife (sati) to confer good or evil. The Vayu Purana thus related the myth of Parvati-Sati who protested her father’s inhospitality to her husband Shiva by leaping into the fire as his wife (not widow). In the medieval context of regional wars that reduced auspicious wives into blighted widows, society sought scriptural validation for a custom that salvaged family honor, while eluding the enemy. This required distorting the Vayu Purana myth, since Parvati-Sati had entered the flames in Shiva’s lifetime, not after his death.47 A final chapter (‘‘Uttara Kanda’’) was now added to Valmiki’s original Ramayana, which had ended with Rama-Sita’s coronation, after her rescue from Sri Lanka. She proved her chastity to the public in a fire ordeal, he proved that he placed public welfare above private happiness. However, Uttara Kanda’s new narrative reopened the debate on Sita’s purity. To ease his subjects’ doubts, Rama banished pregnant Sita into forest exile, where she delivered their twin sons. Although Rama later beseeched her to return, Sita disappeared into Mother Earth. Valorous medieval kings emulated Rama as a martial hero and prized chaste Sita devi, but society clearly felt mortal women were sexually vulnerable. Medieval bhakti poets composed Ramayanas in regional languages, and they praised Sita’s chastity and tried to explain a cruel flaw in an otherwise perfect god.48 Kampan’s lyrical Tamil Iramavataram (ninth century) ends happily with the coronation.49 However, in an earlier chapter, Kampan explained that Rama’s sharp words to Sita stemmed not from belief in her guilt, but to reiterate the bhakti premise that painful separation preceded joyful union as moksha.50 In the Hindi Ramcharitramanas (sixteenth century), Tulsidas dwelt upon Rama’s heroic masculinity and Sita’s docile chastity. In contrast, lower-caste woman poet Atukuri Molla’s Molla Ramayanam (sixteenth century) described Sita’s coming of age, her choice of a husband, and her sorrow in captivity in mellifluous, simple Telugu accessible to all. 51 Yet, Molla apologized that she had ‘‘no rules of

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combination, no large vocabulary,’’ dedicated her epic to Rama, and claimed she was guided solely by ‘‘the grace of the famous Lord.’’52 Sati Stones and Group Identity in North India Bana, the poet laureate at Harsha’s court in Thaneswar (seventh century) near Delhi, deprecated sati, but widow burnings became a marked feature of Rajput society, especially after the rise of the Pratihara dynasty (eighth century).53 Rajput legends exalt their Hindu origins, kshatriya lineage, and sati mothers (sati matas) some of whom have great auspicious power (saubhagya) and are revered as deities (kuldevis).54 After Muslim rule in north India (1211 CE), Rajputs adopted the Persian pardah to seclude women, due to common attitudes about female chastity.55 While the widow had to emerge from pardah to immolate herself, the honor that accrued to her as a virtuous sati mata negated the dishonor of this public appearance. In Rajasthan and Gujarat, valiant queens were honored for mass suicidal conflagrations (jauhar) after a lost battle, but others lived on to defend the kingdom. As sati signified Hindu female valor and purity, and also Hindu identity, it coincided with anti-Muslim rhetoric. The legend of the valiant Rajput king Prithviraj Chauhan of Mewar (twelfth century) is related in Chand Bardai’s Hindi epic, Prithviraj-raisa. The play describes the romantic elopement of Prithviraj and princess Samyukta in Kanauj. She then exhorts her husband to resist the Turks and promises to become a sati if he died: Sun of the Chauhans! . . . Is life immortal? Therefore, draw your sword, smite down the foes of Hindustan; think not of self—The garment of this life is frayed and worn. Think not of me—we two shall be as one. Hereafter and forever—go, my king!56 Although Samyukta chose to be a sati mata, her companion Kurmadevi stayed alive after her husband’s death. Kurmadevi governed and defended Mewar against Qutb-ud-din Aybak, the first Turkish sultan at Delhi (d. 1211).57 Legends also circulated about the capture of Kamala-devi of Gujarat by sultan Ala-uddin Khalji (fourteenth century). Ala-uddin’s lust for Rajput queens is most vividly recounted in the story of Padmini of Mewar’s jauhar. Padmini first tricked Ala-uddin into believing she would come, but instead sent a palanquin of armed Rajputs. When the Rajput women learned that the battle was lost, but were still unsure if their husbands had survived, Padmini and her palace women committed jauhar.58 However, not all Hindu queens killed themselves out of fear of capture in a lost battle. When Rana Sangha of Chittor was killed by Babur the Mughal in 1527, his ranis Karnavati and Jawahirbai successfully defended their fort. They died in a later battle against sultan Bahadur Shah of Gujarat.59

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Female sacrifice served to assert Hindu-Indian identity during geopolitical contentions with Muslims and Europeans. With the spread of Muslim rule in the Deccan (fourteenth century), Hindus erected memorial stones to heroes (virgal) and satis, the latter engraved with an upraised woman’s arm with bangles symbolizing her marriage in perpetuity to a warrior husband.60 Akbar the Mughal emperor (sixteenth century) banned sati. However, the colonial wars of the eighteenth century witnessed its eruption in Bengal, until Viceroy Bentinck made it illegal in 1829 in British India. Sati in South India Sangam Tamil texts do not describe the burning of widows as satis. However, Dravidian society erected memorial stones (natukkal) to kings and chaste aristocratic women whom they called ‘‘satis’’ in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka (tenth to eleventh century). Tamil Chola inscriptions at Tiruvalankadu laud two queens who actually ascended their husbands’ pyres as satis, but whose families were unhappy over their sacrifice. This indicates that sati burnings were alien to southern culture, and that the women were guided by personal sentiment, rather than by social compulsion. The first Chola queen was Ganga-Mahadevi-yar (ca. 907) who first donated sums for the perpetual lighting of a temple lamp before she ascended the pyre of her husband, prince Ilangovelar. The second queen sati was Vanavan-Mahadevi, chief wife of Parantaka II Sundara Chola, and mother of the imperial Rajaraja I (985–1016). Rajaraja greatly respected his mother, as did Kundavai Pirattiyar, his coruler and elder sister. Also from the tenth century are three Karnataka inscriptions, which indicate that royal sati was becoming popular. The first describes the sati suicide of a princess Dekabbe (1068) after her husband died in a wrestling match. Her parents, the chieftan of Nunganad and his queen, tried unsuccessfully to dissuade Dekabbe. Wealthy women who became satis are also mentioned in Karnataka inscriptions. One widow pleaded to be allowed to die as she feared more powerful co-wives would enslave her. While most south Indian widows remained alive, they were shunned as inauspicious blights, often eking out a marginal existence with relatives. Moreover, as polygamy was common among aristocrats, a favorite wife who was overly dependent upon her husband may have preferred dying as a sati to living with abusive co-wives.61 In the classical mergers of Dravidian and Sanskritic societies, Tamil ideas on the ananku of chaste women like Kannaki fused with a kshatriya pativrata like Sita. In the medieval fusions of Hindu and Perso-Islamic cultures, women’s bodies served to assert group identity. Hindu royalty ensured their women’s chastity through the Islamic pardah, but asserted Hindu identity through sati. Kampiladeva of the Telugu Kakatiya dynasty (fourteenth century) advised his women and ministers to die on his pyre, rather than be

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captured by sultan Mohammad bin Tughlaq.62 In 1422 the Venetian visitor Niccolo da Conti noted that 3,000 harem women and officials pledged suicide after the death of Vijayanagar emperor Devaraya I.63 Political uncertainty fueled sati immolation even in regions where it was not originally practiced. The Marathas fostered a martial ethic in women and men, so that sati was not initially the normative practice. Thus, dowager rani Tarabai fought beside her son emperor Shivaji (1627–80) against the Mughals; and Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi died on the battlefield in the 1857 Revolt against British rule.64 Yet in the colonial wars of the eighteenth century, incidences of sati escalated even among brahmans. This led the brahman Peshwa ruler Baji Rao (d. 1720) and others to forbid sati, as most law manuals (shastras) like Manu Smriti did not sanction the burning of brahman widows.65 In Bengal, where brahmans followed the liberal Dayabhaga law code that allowed the widow to inherit her husband’s property, disinherited male relatives conspired with priests to invoke spurious scriptures to justify con-cremation. Here, male rapaciousness, rather than religious belief, was a major cause behind sati. Twentieth-century Indian nationalist Sarojini Naidu romanticized sati, and Rani Padmini’s jauhar as a noble feminine sacrifice against injustice.66 WOMEN’S SECULAR WRITINGS Encouraged by Chola and Pala rulers (eighth to thirteenth century), Indian bankers and merchants flourished in Southeast Asia. Meanwhile, Indian financiers mediated with Arabs in Malabar and in Sind. There is evidence that Indian women signed some foreign business contracts.67 The Arab occupation of Sind also led to cultural exchanges, such as translations of Sanskrit texts on medicine and mathematics into Arabic, one being a work by the Hindu midwife Rusa. The scholarly tradition of Aryabhatta (fifth century) was emulated by later Indian mathematicians like Bhaskara Acharya (Karnataka, twelfth century), who wrote texts on trigonometry, astronomy, and arithmetic. His work Lilavati is particularly intriguing. When originally translated by T. N. Colebrook (nineteenth century), Western scholars assumed that the Sanskrit aphorisms were erotic metaphors for Bhaskara’s mistress. Since then, however, it has been proposed that Bhaskara posed the mathematical problems in order to instruct his gifted, ‘‘fawn-eyed’’ daughter Lilavati, possibly when she was widowed. We know that other women of talent were taught in domestic privacy by family men in this era. However, questions remain as to the extent of Lilavati’s computations in the text, and the exact reasons for masking her contributions under her father’s name. Lilavati consists of 13 chapters in which Sanskrit aphorisms are used as metaphors for arithmetic and geometric formulae. Bhaskara compared Lilavati (Gracious One/Arithmetic) to a woman of high jati (i.e., ‘‘noble lineage,’’ and also

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‘‘reduction of fractions to a common denominator’’).68 He posed problems of Lilavati in the manner seen in this verse: Oh, Lilavati, intelligent girl, if you understand addition and subtraction, tell me the sum of the amounts 2, 5, 322, 193, 18, 10, and 100, as well as the remainder of those when subtracted from 10,000. Lilavati69 T. N. Colebrook’s translations throw light on why he erroneously assumed that the aphorisms were erotic symbols for Bhaskara’s mistress: Whilst making love a necklace broke. A row of pearls mislaid. One sixth fell to the floor. One fifth upon the bed. The young woman saved one third of them. One tenth were caught by her lover. If six pearls remained upon the string How many pearls were there altogether? Lilavati 3.54

The classical Sanskrit kavya (poetic drama) continued to fascinate many in the medieval era. While official records praised women’s Sanskrit kavyas, few were considered superior to those by men, although female works in regional languages were acclaimed as exemplary. One of the rare women whose Sanskrit kavya was lauded was Shila (seventh century) who was compared favorably with her contemporary, the famous Bana of Harsha’s court in Kanauj near Delhi. This was probably intended as a compliment to Shila, as it was considered respectful to emulate an acclaimed artist. Another famous woman dramatist was Vijayanka or Vijjika at the court of Chalukya Pulakesin II (seventh century). In her play Kaumudi-mahotsava, Vijayanka called herself the ‘‘dark Saraswati,’’ perhaps due to her complexion.70 Medieval critic Rajasekhara honored her by comparing her style with that of the genius Kalidasa (fifth century).71 Princess Gangadevi (fourteenth century) of Vijayanagar was praised for her Sanskrit epic poem, Madhura Vijayam. Gangadevi described her husband Kampana’s victory against Madurai’s sultan and his restoration of purloined icons to Hindu temples.72 WOMEN, BHAKTI, AND CASTE The medieval era witnessed an outburst of folk devotional fervor (bhakti) for Hindu divinities as an alternative to brahmanical rites. Bhakti saints (bhaktas, sants) were women and men from high and low castes who shed domestic comforts to wander as pilgrims to favored shrines. Their hymns

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form a notable literary compendium in regional languages. Convinced that gender and rank were worldly illusions, the saints broke conventions on menstrual and caste pollution, inspired by the Bhagavad Gita’s promise of salvation to all who loved God. The verses state: Whoever offers me a leaf, a flower, a fruit, or water with the devotion of a pure heart, that I accept. BG 9.26 Whoever takes refuge in me, women, vaishyas, and shudras, and even those born in the womb of sin, they too will reach me, the highest goal. BG 9.3273 The Ramayana’s ‘‘Forest Book’’ (RMY 3.74–75) also highlights this egalitarian message in an episode about the salvation of Sabari, a tribal woman ascetic. Knowing Rama was Vishnu incarnate, Sabari eagerly awaited Rama’s visit to her hut, tasting fruit to verify their sweetness before offering them to Rama. Although these were doubly polluted by her low caste, Rama accepted Sabari’s genuine gifts of bhakti and granted her moksha, whereupon the fulfilled ascetic ascended her funeral pyre. However, this act was not one of a sati, nor a fire ordeal such as Sita’s that proved her chastity.74 Later bhakti saint Mirabai (sixteenth century) retold Sabari’s tale: The Bhil woman tasted them, plum after plum, and found one she could offer him. What kind of genteel breeding was this? and hers was no ravishing beauty, Her family was poor, her caste quite low, her clothes a matter of rags, Yet Ram took that fruit—that touched, spoiled fruit for he knew that it stood for her love. What sort of Veda could she have learned? But quick as a flash she mounted a chariot And sped to heaven to swing on a swing, tied by love to God. You are the Lord who cares for the fallen; rescue whoever loves as she did: Let Mira, your servant, safely cross over, A cow herding Gokul girl.75

Tamil Bhakti Fervent Tamil mystics renewed conviction about bhakti in the fifth to twelfth century, and thus challenged society’s feudal hierarchies. Twelve Vishnu saints (azhvars) and sixty-three Shiva saints (nayanars) drew upon

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folk-Dravidian traditions of pilgrimages to sacred shrines and icons to appeal directly to God, thus bypassing priestly rituals.76 Besides the Sanskrit Gita, Tamil saints were highly influenced by two classical Sangam texts. These were Tiru-murukkarruppatai (Guide to Murukkan’s Shrines) on pilgrimage sites of this Tamil god and Paripatal (Holy Songs) describing the charms of Murukan and Krishna, the northern god.77 The azhvars and nayanars visited Tamil temples, singing mesmeric hymns about Vishnu, Shiva, and Devi, convinced that complete surrender (prapatti) was necessary for divine grace (arul). As Dravidian-Tamil culture accorded respect to women sages, it is not surprising that the first nayanar was the woman yogi Karaikkal Ammaiyar (ca. 550 CE) whose complex, but eloquent hymns begin the Tirumurai, the Shiva canon of 12 books. There are no records of the hymns of the two other women nayanars, queen Mangaiyyakkarisi and shudra musician Isai-jnani. The sole female azhvar was Andal (ninth century) whose masterpieces, Tiruppavai and Nacchiyar Tirumozhi, are central to the Tamil Vishnu canon, Nalayira Divya Prabandham (Four Thousand Scriptural Hymns). The canons are a rich storehouse of Tamil bhakti literature. Sekkizhaar’s Periya Puranam (thirteenth century), a hagiography of the nayanars, describes the brutal rejection of low-caste saints from temples and the divine intercessions granting them moksha. Thus, the meat offerings of tribal hunter Kannappa were rejected by a brahman priest until Shiva’s eye bled tears for his devotee. Saint Nandan, a Dalit skinner of carcasses, was kept out of Chidambaram temple until a pathway miraculously cleared. After the thirteenth century, bronze icons of all 63 nayanars, irrespective of caste or gender, were placed near the inner sanctum of temples for veneration. Painted frescoes of the saints are also in Chitra Sabha, a shrine with a music hall erected by Nayaka rulers (seventeenth century) near Tenkasi, Tamil Nadu. Saguni and Nirguni Bhakti in India As the bhakti movement spread across the subcontinent, bhaktas composed hymns in other regional languages, drawing inspiration from oral local traditions, as well as Sanskrit texts. Their own legends describe their success in challenging social constructions of gender and caste.78 The mystics believed implicitly in universalism and in the beatific experience. Two theological schools of nirguni and saguni bhakti advocated the Upanishadic goal of moksha as enlightened salvation, but differed on the relationship between cosmic Brahman and the individual Atman. Tamil saints and the Varkari saints of Maharashtra were lower-caste saguni bhaktas who worshiped Brahman as manifested in Vishnu, Shiva, or Devi. In north India, saguni bhaktas often belonged to the elite, but nirguni sants were largely lower-caste artisans and peasants. Nirguni sants like the woman Lalla of Kashmir (fourteenth century) and the male weaver Kabir (fifteenth century)

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lived in regions dominated by Muslims. Nirguni sants exalted transcendent Brahman devoid of attributes, rejected iconic puja, meditated to attain enlightenment as moksha, and took part in group hymns (bhajan). Nirguni sants thus shared some common visions with working-class Muslim Sufi mystics and some Jainas.79 Medieval saguni bhaktas believed that the individual Atman searched for union with Brahman who had all attributes, but was manifested in Vishnu, Shiva, or Devi to whose icons they did puja and sang bhajans. Women saints included Andal (ninth century), Akkamahadevi (twelfth century), Janabai (fourteenth century), Mirabai (sixteenth century). Some male saints were Chaitanya (b. 1486), Surdas, Tulsidas, Eknath (sixteenth century). Female and male saints visualized God through human relationships, seeing God as the divine lover (e.g., Vishnu for Andal; Shiva for Akkamahadevi); divine child (e.g., Krishna for Surdas); mother Devi (e.g., for Janabai and Eknath); and friend (e.g., Rama to Tulsidas). Women’s Ramayanas and Sitayanas Atukuri Molla (Telugu) Molla Ramayanam is a unique creative work by Atukuri Molla (sixteenth century), a gifted daughter of a humble artisan of south India. Molla Ramayanam is a mellifluous Telugu epic imbued with fervent bhakti for Rama, and it breaks free of classical Sanskrit conventions by adopting the ancient narrative style of Valmiki’s Ramayana. Molla’s Virashaiva community of Shiva devotees rejected caste, and she obviously rose above the educational restrictions on lower-caste women. She was also probably inspired by earlier Dravidian-Tamil bhaktas, especially Tamil saint-poet Andal, as Molla lived during the reign of Krishna Deva Raya of the Vijayanagar Empire, who dramatized Andal’s life in his play, Amukta Malyada. 80 Legend states that when the famous court poet Tenali Raman taunted Molla’s village with ignorance, she composed Molla Ramayanam in five days. The charm of Molla’s epic lies in its lucid, elegant Telugu poetry.81 Chandrabati (Bengali) The search for the ‘‘indigenous’’ origins of female opposition to patriarchy led some modern Indian feminists to Chandrabati (ca. 1550), a woman writer in Bengal during the reign of Mughal emperor Akbar (1556–1605). Chandrabati composed three extraordinary compositions in varied genres, the first being a short Bengali Ramayana as a bhakti tribute to Vishnu. Taught by her scholarly, but impoverished father, Chandrabati asked for a private shrine for her prayers, since she was depressed over her rejection by a childhood sweetheart. Although the lover returned contrite, an embittered Chandrabati closed the temple doors against him, and

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reputedly spent her life in worship, although she continued to write. Chandrabati composed the Bengali drama, Dasyu Kenaram (Kenaram the Dacoit), and her opus, Sundari Malua, a rare political work by a learned woman. Sundari Malua is an elegant poetic opera of 1,247 verses, a genre used to relate legends, but used by Chandrabati to protest against unjust taxes to emperor Akbar. A legacy from Turko-Afghan kings in the thirteenth century, the taxes were now collected by rapacious officials and landlords.82 Chandrabati described the imprisonment, rape, and abuse of women whose families could not pay the extortionate taxes, and the women’s cruel rejection after returning home. Chandrabati made a subtle analogy between their sufferings and that of innocent Sita after returning from exile in Ravana’s palace. She wrote poignantly: A village elder said, ‘‘Taking this woman back Will cost us rank and caste. For three long months She lived within Muslim walls. The shame of it Would shatter a tiger! Who can save a doe Caught in the wild beast’s claws? We can do Nothing once chastity and caste are gone.’’83

Oral Ramayanas and Sitayanas The devotional route, or bhakti marg, especially appealed to women and low castes who were largely excluded from learning the Vedas in the medieval era. They thus took pleasure in creative, oral retellings of legends from the Sanskrit epics and Puranas. The Ramayana holds a special fascination for women due to its poignant narratives of Sita. Oral Ramayanas were thus sung by Telugu brahman and shudra women, with some notable differences.84 The narratives of brahman women reflect their sharply defined gender roles. Those of working-class shudras like the Malas highlight the enormous caste chasm in gender attitudes. The first scholarly study refers to their songs as Sitayana, as the lens is turned away from the male heroic to feminine themes like marriage and childbirth. Brahman women’s songs included more women characters, like a sister for Rama called Shanta, and women have their moral victories. Thus, Rama dies repenting his cruelty to Sita who attains fulfillment through her sons. Shudra women’s songs reflect the heavy oppressiveness of caste over gender inequities. As Mala women are agriculturalists, their men share their domestic chores. They are also less preoccupied with household rituals and have fewer sexual inhibitions than high-caste women.85 Some Famous Women Saints The differences among the women saints included the choice of a deity and mode of bhakti; social rank and caste; status as married, single, or

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widowed women; and legacies. The hymns of women visionaries stand on their own literary merit and have dignified bhakti canons in regional languages. The most extraordinary compositions are those of two early Tamil saints, Shiva yogi Karaikkal Ammaiyar (fifth century), and Andal (ninth century) whose songs to Vishnu are set to music and danced; Kannada yogi Akkamahadevi (twelfth century) who wrote searing hymns (vacanas) to Shiva; Marathi saints Muktabai (thirteenth century), Janabai (fourteenth century), Bahinabai (seventeenth century) who sang hymns (abhangs) to Krishna; Mirabai (sixteenth century) who delighted in reciting Krishna’s names (nama) and forms (rupa), and whose hymns in Rajasthani, Avadhi Hindi, and Gujarati have been recorded extensively. These are discussed later in the chapter. Unlike these famous composers, minor women bhaktas often left no written records, but sang about their experiences, retold or painted divine legends in ephemeral, household decorative art. Some female poems lie buried in the larger male corpus or have disappeared from mundane records. Some minor saints are revered for association with a preeminent male mystic like Chaitanya (sixteenth century) who founded the Gaudiya Vaishnava sect in Bengal. Thus, Sachi is revered not just for wisdom, but for being Chaitanya’s mother; abstemious widow Sita Thakurani received disciples because she witnessed his birth; and his virtuous wife Vishnupriya is praised for initiating the puja of his icons.86 Despite such diverse backgrounds, they were united by the bhakti route, which was ideally suited to female life in India. Bhakti could be practiced in palaces or huts, confined or noisy households, alone in forest hermitages, through puja or yoga. What they all shared was the belief that love of God superseded carnal and familial love, and many remained celibate in the midst of family life. Bengali washerwoman Rami (fifteenth century) was a saguni bhakta whose hymns laud Vishnu, but she enjoyed a relationship with Chandidas, a brahman who shared her yearning for God above their physical bond. 87 The Marathi Bahinabai suffered her husband’s blows, then resolved philosophically to serve her spouse and thus attain knowledge of Krishna. She thus became a beacon for women bhaktas unable or unwilling to forsake their families like Gangasati (thirteenth century), a Gujarati nirguni sant who composed 40 hymns that are orally transmitted. Others flouted convention by remaining single or rejecting their lovers or husbands. Atukuri Molla was probably single, as she signed her natal village name Atukuri in Molla Ramayanam. Beautiful Akkamahadevi frightened predatory men because of her passion for Shiva. Mirabai was so besotted with Krishna that she refused conjugal relations with her Rajput prince. Even lesser saints wished to shed physical desire to attain moksha as union with the Divine. This was true of Vishnu devotees like Hemalata the Bengali ascetic (seventeenth century) and the faithful Tamil wife

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Kuresa (twelfth century).88 It was also true of low-caste prostitutes like Sule Sankavva (twelfth century) whose Kannada hymns declare that she gave up her profession for love of Shiva.89 The Marathi saint Kanhopatra (fourteenth to fifteenth century) declared her aversion to becoming a courtesan like her mother, and praised Krishna as her true mother.90 Those who exchanged sexual desire for sublime love sometimes composed sensual or erotic bhakti poetry. Others trivialized the body, emotions, and gender identity that were transcended in the spiritual experience. Muktabai chided a male yogi for his false shame upon inadvertently seeing her nude while in her bath in this verse: One is not ashamed to stare at The niches in the wall Do the cows grazing in the Fields have any clothes! I too am like the cows. Why are you embarrassed at my sight?91

Both women and men saints expressed their desire to lose their personal identity in the divine union. Manikkavachakar, the Tamil male saint, yearned as much for Shiva as the virgin Andal desired Vishnu. As the saints flouted contemporary social conventions, gender role reversal and ‘‘gender-bending’’ were common. Karaikkal Ammaiyar’s ghastly yogic appearance foreshadowed so luminous a spiritual beauty that her former husband fell at her feet. The sex of the Vishnu saint Jangali of Bengal is unclear. A legend states that Jangali was a beautiful woman meditating amidst tigers in the forest, until the king tried to rape her, but Jangali was then transformed into a man. Yet, upon being questioned about her sex, she replied that she had never been a man. In another myth, Jangali is described as a male disciple of Krishna.92 Karaikkal Ammaiyar (Tamil) Karaikkal Ammaiyar (fifth century), or the Lady of Karaikkal, was a Tamil mystic devoted to Shiva, the dancing lord of Tiruvalankadu. As the first nayanar, Karaikkal Ammaiyar helped to usher in the bhakti movement with her male azhvar contemporary Pudam. Her hymns are the first bhakti compositions in the prabandha mode, later popularized by saints. Karaikkal Ammaiyar’s three long hymns are in the 11th Tirumurai, the canon of the Tamil Shaiva Siddhanta school. Her complex style reveals that this accomplished poet was familiar with Sangam secular poetry and early bhakti texts, Tiru-murukkarruppatai and Paripatal. Karaikkal Ammaiyar’s three hymns of 22 classical verses in Mutta-tirup-patikankal; Tiru-irattai-manimalai, 20 verses of two alternating styles; and Arputat-tiru-vantati, 101 verses in the antati genre, as a sonorous web of praises in which the last word of each verse is echoed in the first word of the next.93

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Karaikkal Ammaiyar was born Punitavati, and later married a vaishya merchant. This differs from the narrative about Andal who resisted an earthly marriage from love of Vishnu. The myth of Punitavati’s transformation from chaste wife to yogi is recorded by Sekkizhaar in Periya Puranam. One day, Punitavati’s husband handed her two mangoes received as gifts from a sage. Punitavati fed one to her husband at mealtime and the other to a hungry Shiva devotee. When her husband asked for the second fruit, she prayed to Shiva and magically produced more mangoes. Frightened by this display of magical power, her husband fled, and later remarried. Punitavati became a yogi whose severe austerities earned her the title of Karaikkal Ammaiyar. In a significant reversal of spousal roles, her husband prostrated humbly at her feet. The myth reaffirms the chaste wife’s ananku and her evolution into a yogic renunciant. This echoes the earlier legend of Kannaki, the docile pativrata transformed into a fiery, demigoddess in the epic Shilappadikaram (ca. fourth century). Karaikkal Ammaiyar sang of her joyful bondage to Shiva whose grace alone could free her from earthly samsara bondage, and she begged Shiva for the boon that she would always remember him. Sekkizhaar states that even Shiva respectfully addressed her as ‘‘Ammaiyar’’ or Mother when she received moksha. A thirteenth-century Chola bronze icon shows the ghoulish, yet gleeful yogi who described herself as a pey (ghost), and whom Sekkizhaar described as ‘‘a female wraith of shriveled breasts, swollen veins, protruding eye-balls, white teeth, sunken stomach, fiery red hair, two protruding fangs.’’94 Wall frescoes in a modern shrine at Karaikkal depict the life of this venerable saint to whom young women offer mangoes even today.95 Andal (Tamil) Andal (ninth century) was the only woman Tamil Vishnu saint or azhvar. While many saints are revered, Andal is unique because she alone is venerated as goddess Lakshmi in her aspects of joy (Nila), auspiciousness (Sri), and prosperity (Bhu). Andal-Lakshmi’s bronze icon (tenth century) is housed in a shrine within the Vishnu temple at Srivilliputtur. Andal’s date is partly attested by her adoptive father Vishnu Chitta’s visit to Srimara Srivallabhadeva Pandya (815–862 CE). Vishnu Chitta was a weaver of temple garlands, but he was also Periazhvar, the ‘‘elder mystic’’ who composed cradle hymns to the infant Krishna.96 Incidents in Andal’s life echo those of Sita in the Ramayana, and legend states that Lakshmi took birth as Andal as she wished to be the greatest devotee of Vishnu, whom Tamils call Tirumal. While Sita was discovered by her father Janaka in a furrow (sita) in the ground, Periazhvar discovered the infant Andal beside a tulasi (basil) bush. He named her Kodai for her magnificent hair, and she became known as Kodai-Andal. As a girl, she was

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enchanted with his garlands for Vishnu-Tirumal, wore them in his absence, and peered at her reflection in a well. Upon noticing the strange fragrance in the garlands, Periazhvar chided her for desecrating the offerings to the deity. However, Tirumal appeared in a dream and informed Periazhvar that he desired Andal’s used garlands. The father then realized that Andal was Lakshmi incarnate. Andal’s obsession for Tirumal grew, and she refused to marry anyone else. The myth states that the 14-year-old Andal dreamt that Vishnu invited her to visit his shrine at Srirangam. She then wore her bridal finery and merged into the temple icon of Vishnu-Ranganatha, her beatific disappearance presaging similar later myths about saints Akkamahadevi and Mirabai. A twelfth-century inscription states that a garden was created in Andal’s name at Srirangam. Tiruppavai and Nacchiyar Tirumozhi Andal wrote two elegant, sensuous compositions, Tiruppavai and Nacchiyar Tirumozhi to Tirumal as Krishna. Andal’s writing was influenced by the Sangam literary mode of interior emotive (aham) poetry and by the Sanskrit epics. These works form an integral part of the Nalayira Divya Prabandham (Four Thousand Sacred Verses), the Tamil canon for Vishnu. She described Krishna with broad shoulders and lotus eyes (NT 7.7) as her ‘‘lord dark as a rain cloud’’ (NT 8.2) with ‘‘coral lips’’ (NT 5.1). She frankly declared, ‘‘my swollen breasts are meant for Krishna’’ (NT 1.5), and that her bosom ‘‘rises and throbs with excitement’’ (NT 5.7) from desire. Despite the semi-erotic tone, Andal’s quest was spiritual as she calls Vishnu the formless One, ‘‘the sweet sap of the four Vedas’’ (NT 4.10).97 In Tiruppavai, Andal assumed the role of a gopi or milkmaid in love with Krishna. Its 30 stanzas realistically depict human emotions and village customs. The poem shows women singing songs in the cool month of Marghazhi (December–January) before the harvest festival of Pongal. Tiruppavai describes women bathing in the river, anointing themselves with turmeric, and fashioning clay images of Lakshmi as they pray for a fruitful life. This genre of women’s festival songs (pavai patal) was described in Paripatal and in Bhagavata Purana (tenth century), a Sanskrit text inspired by Tamil azhvars. Tiruppavai has been translated into Kannada and Telugu. Andal also appears as the chief character in Amukta Malyada, a drama by the Telugu king Krishna Deva Raya of Vijayanagar (sixteenth century). Andal’s maturer work Nacchiyar Tirumozhi consists of 14 hymns in 143 stanzas that evoke the four stages of bhakti, viz., hope, yearning, separation, and ecstasy. The canto, ‘‘Varanam ayiram,’’ on her marriage to Vishnu is sung even today at weddings. Andal sang: The velvety red of the ladybirds whose flutter fills the air

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Akkamahadevi and Virashaiva Sect (Kannada) Akkamahadevi (twelfth century), or ‘‘elder sister’’ Mahadevi, was a bhakti saint from Udutadi, Karnataka in south India. She became enamored of Shiva’s icon in her village shrine as a young girl. Akkamahadevi’s 350 vacanas (spoken free verse hymns) are in the Kannada language, and the vacanas of all Kannada bhakti saints (Shiva saranas) constitute scripture for the Virashaiva sect. Although Virashaivas do not accept the Vedas, their vacanas reflect the blending of Dravidian and Sanskrit traditions, a hallmark of the bhakti movement. Akkamahadevi’s beauty attracted the Jaina king Kaushika whom she probably married. However, realizing that she could not simultaneously serve Shiva and an earthly husband, she became a nude ascetic like Digambara Jaina monks, clothed only by her long hair. After receiving the unwanted attentions of lustful men, she reached Kalyana where the Virashaiva saints Basavanna (1106–67) and Allamaprabhu resided. To queries about her unusual methods of renunciation, she replied that it mattered little what happened to the body, as her chaste soul belonged to her true husband Shiva. Her reason for nudity is expressed clearly in one of her vacanas: You can confiscate money in hand; can you confiscate the body’s glory? Or peel away every strip you wear, but can you peel the Nothing, the Nakedness that covers and veils?

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To the shameless girl wearing the White Jasmine Lord’s light of morning, you fool, where’s the need for cover and jewel? Vacana 12499

Like Andal and Mirabai, Akkamahadevi was preoccupied with God as lover, but their lyrical poems with descriptions of nature differ dramatically from her stark, semi-erotic hymns conveying her infatuation for Shiva Maha-Yogi, Lord of Dissolution-Creation. A few early vacanas describe his physical beauty, shining red locks, and even teeth (vacana 68). However, most poems are razor-sharp in their exposition of the irrefutable truth of a limitless, formless Being beyond desire and illusion (vacana 283). To probing male questions, this woman mystic replied that worldly passions must be experienced before being discarded for spiritual goals (vacana 104). In other verses, she compared a grand love for Shiva with trivial rituals, caste, and earthly preoccupations. Her signature line (ankita) addresses Shiva as ‘‘Chenna Mallikarjuna’’ or ‘‘Lord as White as Jasmine’’ or ‘‘Beauteous Lord of Goddess Mallika.’’100 She wrote: I love the Handsome One: he has no death decay nor form no place or side no end nor birthmarks. I love him, O mother. Listen. I love the Beautiful One with no bond nor fear no clan no land no landmarks for his beauty. So my lord, white as jasmine, is my husband. Take these husbands who die, decay, and feed them to your kitchen fires! Vacana 285101

Virashaivas The Virashaiva sect offered one of the most radical challenges to Hindu traditions on caste and gender. Virashaiva ideology was shaped by the vacanas of the brahman founder Basavanna, a Kannada ascetic, and other teachers Allamaprabhu, Akkamahadevi, and Devara Dasimayya the weaver. The Virashaivas rejected Jaina atheism, and also the Jaina commercial castes

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who dominated the region. Also called Lingayats, the Virashaivas affirm their bhakti for Shiva by wearing a lingam icon around the neck. 102 Basavanna encouraged Akkamahadevi to reside in the hermitage at Kalyana as its first female renunciant (sarana). Akkamahadevi influenced 50 successive women yogi saranas, some of whom have composed vacanas. The women saints were Neelambika, Basavanna’s learned wife; Lakkamma who described women’s linga-puja initiation; Satyakakka; Muktayakka; Gogavve; Rekkamma. 103 Through them, the Virashaivas initiated progressive reforms favorable to Hindu women. These included the discarding of customs on the ‘‘five pollutions,’’ which restricted women’s activities during menstruation, childbirth, and widowhood. The Virashaivas began new rites to celebrate womanhood, and they removed social constraints on widows so that they enjoyed greater freedom and mobility.104 Akkamahadevi’s vacanas often expressed her radical views on female roles and chastity. She succinctly stated that for an ascetic, ‘‘She is a nun, a man to a woman a woman to a man’’ (vacana 145). Legend states that Akkamahadevi meditated in a cave near Srishaila, going through six stages before ecstatic union (Aikyas sthala), when her body reputedly disappeared into Shiva. Varkari Women Saints (Marathi) Muktabai (Thirteenth Century) Like the Virashaivas of Karnataka, the working-class Varkari poets of Maharashtra also questioned the caste system. The Varkari bhakti movement began with Jnaneshwar (1271–96), elder brother of Muktabai, the earliest woman saint of this sect. In his Jnaneshwari, a Marathi commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, Jnaneshwar emphasized its egalitarian message in a feudal society riddled with economic and caste exploitation. 105 Jnaneshwar described salvation as open to all bhaktas, teachings that attracted followers. He wrote: There is a distinction between the Khaira and the Chandana trees only so long as they are not put into fire; but as soon as they are put inside, they become one with it, and the distinction between them vanishes. Similarly, the Kshatriyas, Vaisyas, Shudras, and the Women are so called only as long as they have not reached Me. But having reached Me, they cease to be distinguished; as salt becomes one with the ocean, even so they become one with Me.106 Lower-caste pilgrims visited the shrine of Krishna or Hari as Vitthal/Vithoba at Pandharpur. The hymns (abhangs) of their Varkari saints like Muktabai constitute the earliest bhakti verses in Marathi, an Indo-Aryan language. Varkari saints praised Vitthal as their savior and friend who eased their daily, burdensome chores. Unlike upper-caste northern saints like Mirabai

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who yearned for Krishna as her lover, Varkari abhangs are straightforward and free of erotic imagery.107 Once a sanyasi ascetic, the father of Muktabai, Jnaneshwar, and two other brothers had shocked the community by reverting to the householder’s life. They faced great penury when both parents died, and their distress was heightened by the social scorn for their father’s apparent fall from grace. This extreme deprivation probably shortened Muktabai’s life, although it was spiritually enlightened. Having died as a teenager, Muktabai’s hymns lack the emotional power that accompanies maturity, but her intellect and philosophical prescience enabled her to bear hardships with fortitude. Unlike many bhakti saints whose hymns are emotionally intense, Muktabai relied on her mind to guide her bhakti, so that her reputation for wisdom spread in the community. Muktabai’s few abhangs reveal this clarity of vision, which earned her the reputation of being an ‘‘intellectual’’ bhakta.108 Despite her youth, legend states that Muktabai became mentor to yogi Changdev Venkateswar who once saw her bathing nude in the river Tapti. She quickly chided him in a short abhang for his embarrassed inability to see the spirit behind the body.109 Muktabai’s delight in verbal ironies and her cerebral route to sublime ecstasy are revealed in this abhang: Though he has no form My eyes saw him His glory is fire in my mind That knows His secret inner form Invented by the soul What is Beyond the mind Has no boundary In it our senses end Mukta says: Words cannot hold him Yet in him all words end.110

Janabai (Fourteenth Century) Jnaneshwar’s contemporary was Varkari saint Namdev the tailor (1270–1350) whose followers included some important shudra devotees like Janabai the maid (1298–1350), Gora the potter, and Chokhamela the untouchable. The little girl Jani was seven years old when her mother died, and poverty drove her father to give her as a bonded servant (dasi) to Namdev’s wealthier family. Despite a life of arduous toil, Janabai grew greatly attached to the child Namdev whom she tended, later becoming his disciple, and finally dying when he died.111 Many of Janabai’s 300 Marathi abhangs are located in Namdev’s corpus of hymns. Janabai represents the voice of society’s most marginalized, namely orphaned, low-caste females.

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Janabai held Krishna close to her heart and referred to his names Vitthal/ Vithoba/Hari/Gopala while performing her chores. In many abhangs, she called him the inner lord and friend who sustained the low-caste oppressed (dalit) by doing their unrelenting work:112 Jani sweeps the floor, The Lord collects the dirt Carries it upon His head, And casts it away. Won over by devotion, The Lord does lowly chores! Says Jani to Vithoba, How shall I pay your debt? Translated by Vilas Sarang113

Janabai also viewed Vitthal as her mother, asking humorously in one abhang, ‘‘Can the river reject its fish? Can the mother spurn her child?’’114 She described how he tended to her needs: Mother is dead, father is dead now, Vitthal, take care of me O Hari, my head is itching I am your child and have no one of my own. Vitthal says to Rukmini, ‘‘There’s no one to care for my Jani.’’ Taking oil and comb in his hands he combs and braids my hair, finishing the braid he knots it. I say, now please rub my back. Jani says, O Gopala, Help celebrate the festival Of the powerless. Translated by Sarah Sellegren115

Janabai’s verses presage the mystic ‘‘madness’’ of the Rajput princess saint, Mirabai, in the sixteenth century. Not only did Janabai resist the rules of decorum framed for upper-caste women, but she declared that she was a ‘‘whore’’ for Krishna. Varkari saints drew upon working-class and female oral traditions, and Janabai’s bold imagery suggests that her low-caste female body became the property of men in the household. 116 Notwithstanding such exploitation, Janabai declared she was free from conventions, as she was a prostitute for the Lord, ready to parade in the marketplace with a lute in her hands, and perfumed oil on her wrists. One hymn declared gleefully that she had no false modesty before her lover Krishna, that ‘‘The sari

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slips from my head to my shoulders,’’ and that her body was ‘‘for sale.’’117 In some hymns Janabai praised the lot of the poor woman, since Hari himself became a servant (dasi) ‘‘to grind and pound [flour] like me,’’ that Hari washed her body and even soiled clothes, perhaps in bold reference to her menstrual flow.118 In others, she raged at her inferior status in a household whose master Namdev preached spiritual equality, but treated her as a servant. While chiding Namdev, Janabai prayed for divine union: Your wife and mother stay at your feet and sons are placed proudly in front, This woman is kept on the doorstep— no room for the lowly inside. O, God, how I want your embrace! when will you call dasi your own?119

Janabai finally proclaimed her sense of freedom from such worldly turmoil: i eat god i drink god i sleep on god i buy god i count god i deal with god god is here god is there void is not devoid of god jani says: god is within god is without and moreover there is god to spare.120

Bahinabai (Seventeenth Century) In the seventeenth century, several saints reinvigorated the Varkari bhakti movement among the Mahars who were Dalits. Their social revolution was inspired by Marathi folk and female poetry from earlier centuries. Mahars viewed Vithoba as the special lord who reduced the burden of the Dalits who performed menial jobs rejected by others. Significant male saints were Tukaram whose hymns testify to his creative inspiration through bhakti; and the brahman scholar Eknath who empowered the Mahars by republishing Jnaneshwari, by paying homage to the poor:121

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God baked pots with Gora; drove cattle with Chokha; cut grass with Savata Mali; wove garments with Kabir; colored hides with Ravidas; sold meat with butcher Sajana; melted gold with Narahari; carried cowdung with Janabai; and even became the Mahar messenger of Damaji.122 Of the Varkari women of this generation, Bahinabai (1628–1700) stands above the others, as she came to terms with her stultifying marriage to an abusive husband.123 As one who chose to remain a householder, Bahinabai is unique in her philosophical restructuring of some essential features of the bhakti movement. Her husband had grown jealous over her spiritual strength and threatened to desert her if she did not desist from attending bhakti lectures (harikatha) and group hymn singing (bhajans). To resolve this dilemma, Bahinabai philosophically chose to be a ‘‘sister’’ (bahin) to Krishna and to her mentor Tukaram, but simultaneously to serve her husband to her full capacity. Despite her domestic frustrations, Bahinabai wrote over five hundred abhangs and analyzed her feelings in the autobiography, Atmanivedana. She cogitated: 1) What am I to do with my Fate? I must bear whatever comes to my lot. 2) I am not one who is possessed. My body is not subject to demoniac possession. 3) Therefore, holding to my own special duties, I will give my mind to listening to the Scriptures, and the winning of God. 4) My duty is to serve my husband, for he is God to me. My husband himself is the Supreme Brahma . . . 8) This then is my determination, and the desire of my heart. I want my thoughts concentrated on my husband. Atmanivedana 35124 Bahinabai trained her mind to accept her husband wholeheartedly by seeing him as the ‘‘life’’ to her ‘‘body,’’ the ‘‘water’’ to her ‘‘fish,’’ the ‘‘sun’’ to her ‘‘brightness,’’ even while praying to Krishna. Her verses give us a glimpse of how women molded the bhakti movement to override personal constraints in patriarchal marriages. This appears in her plea to Krishna: In worshipping Thee, I can still be true to my duty of devotion to my husband. Thou, O Lord who has the color of dark clouds (Meghashyama), must thus think also. Abhang 68.2125 Lalla (Kashmiri) Lalla was a Kashmiri nirguni sant (fourteenth century) whose sayings (vakhyas) have been kept alive in a region that became predominantly Muslim. Although Lalla was a Shiva devotee, she spread the message of

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devotion to Shiva as formless Brahman of the Upanishads. She probably rejected iconic puja due to the Islamic presence, which frowned upon religious images and symbols like the lingam. Many working-class Hindus in north India may have willingly chosen nirguni bhakti as an easier spiritual path. Lalla’s oral verses (vakhyani) are compiled in Lallavakhyani. This somber verse eloquently describes her tormented separation from Shiva and desire for union: With a rope of untwisted thread am I towing a boat upon the ocean Where will my God Hear? Will He carry even me over? Like water in goblets of unbaked clay do I slowly waste away My soul is in a whirl. Would that I reached home. Lallavakhyani126

Lalla’s derision for icons and shrines is evident in this vakhya describing her beatific experience during a meditative, yogic trance: I, Lalla, went out far in search of Shiva, the omnipresent Lord; after wandering, I, Lalla, found Him at last within my own self, abiding in His own home. Temple and image, the two that you have fashioned, are no better than stone; the Lord is immeasurable and consists of intelligence; what is needed to realize Him is unified concentration of breath and mind. Lallavakhyani127 Mirabai (Rajasthani, Gujarati, and Hindi) Mirabai (ca. 1500–45) is one of India’s most popular bhakti saints, a Rajput princess who wrote fourteen hundred ecstatic padas (short devotional songs) to Krishna. Her favorite image of Hari was as Giridhar Gopal, the divine cowherd who lifted a mountain to save his followers. Mirabai composed hymns in Rajasthani; in the Hindi dialect of Braj Bhasha spoken in Mathura on the river Yamuna, Krishna’s mythical birthplace; and in Gujarati spoken in his mythical kingdom Dwaraka. That her padas were sung is apparent in her imprint on north Indian classical music in the naming of a raga (melody) as Mirabai ki Malhar.128 Mirabai’s sensuous verses highlight her divine lover’s beauty, the agony of separation, and beatific union. Her metaphors describe Krishna’s lips as nectar, sweet as curds, and her pain as the agony of a tree gnawed by insects. Despite her tone of intimacy with Krishna with whom she declares she is besotted, her verses do not have the frank sensuality of either Andal’s songs or Akkamahadevi’s vacanas, although the goal of all of these saints was sublime, divine union. Inspired greatly by the Bhagavata Purana, Mirabai regarded Vishnu as the Lord of the universe who also resided within the soul (antarayamin).129

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That her life had become legendary is seen in the earliest hagiography dated 1712 containing facts enriched by myths. Mirabai’s father was the powerful Rathor clan rana (ruler) of Jodhphur (Marwar), and her family ruled Merta near Ajmer. In 1516, the Rathors became political allies of the Sisodias of Chittor (Mewar) through Mira’s marriage to Bhoja Raja, heir to Rana Sangha who valiantly fought but lost to Babur the Mughal in 1527. As a young girl, Mirabai showed no interest in court affairs, but instead identified with tribal and low-caste devotees, and nonconformist hermit sadhus. She became enamored with an image of Krishna given to her by the hermits. Since Mira often flouted royal Rajput conventions, the elite regarded her as a renegade, and they rarely sing her hymns. This contrasts with Bhil tribals and the low castes for whom Mira’s sanctity almost exceeds that of Krishna. That great bhaktas are venerated as semi-divinities is also apparent in the iconic worship of the male Bengali saint Chaitanya, almost on a par with Krishna.130 Declaring Krishna as her true husband, Mira shunned her husband’s bed, and never bore a child. Not only did she thus reject two traditional roles of loyal wife and mother, but she also flouted Rajput ideals of clan honor and the loyal wife by dancing in the company of sadhus before temples. At first, her husband Bhoja Raja suspected her of infidelity, but he realized that her lover was divine. When he died soon afterward, Mira refused to become a sati, as she did not consider herself his wife or his widow. In one poem, Mirabai described his family’s attempts to kill her, but Krishna’s miraculous intercession saved her. The poem states that their gift of a basket of snakes turned into a garland around her neck; the poison they sent turned into ambrosia when she drank it. Although hounded by the powerful Rajput community, Mirabai later went on pilgrimages to Krishna’s birthplace in Mathura and to his legendary kingdom of Dwaraka. The legend thrives that like Andal, she too disappeared into Krishna’s image in his shrine. Renegade or Conformist? The bhakti movement was marked by revolutionary women who questioned elite patriarchy, such challenges occurring even in conservative sects like the Srivaishnavas of south India.131 Despite Mira’s marital insubordination, some feminists criticize her for reinforcing gender and caste hierarchies as she called herself Krishna’s dasi (slave). However, it is anachronistic to judge medieval women liberationists by modern feminist guidelines. Feudal society judged a high-caste woman by her outward decorum and her virtue as a loyal wife. Instead of being a docile pativrata ready to be a sati, Mirabai broke conventional boundaries between the elite and lower caste, rejecting a Rajput prince for a divine savior and using bhakti as her path to liberation. Her society viewed this as a serious rebellion, but even so radical a woman saint could not have predicted that a later generation would call her a conformist. The proof of her rebellion lies in Rajput society whose royal clans repudiated her, whose high castes still refuse to sing her bhajans, but whose

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Dalit and shudra menials keep her music alive in Dwaraka.132 That she identified with the marginalized low castes is evident in her poem about the tribal woman Sabari. In the twentieth century, Mahatma Gandhi and Indian nationalists were inspired by Mirabai’s life popularized in films and records by M. S. Subbulakshmi (1916–2004). Although Mirabai called herself Krishna’s slave (dasi), she became an icon of female rebellion during India’s freedom struggle. Yet, she was no simple dasi, but a formidable bhakta who composed this verse that was radical and feminist even in her time:133 Mira’s father made her sit in the wedding seat, My bangles, the bridal veil, I discarded them all. Ranaji, when did you ever know what was in my In my mind, the sadhu’s mind, In my mind, the bhakta’s mind; Ranaji, when did you ever know what was in my Mira’s father sent her to her marital home My beloved’s face remained in front of me. Ranaji, when did you ever know what was in my Bai Mira sings of Giridhar (Krishna). Without Hari bhajan, my heart thirsts. Ranaji, when did you ever know what was in my

mind?

mind?

mind? mind?134

COURTESANS AND PHILANTHROPIC TEMPLE WOMEN Classical India The Theravada Buddhist canon in Pali records the philanthropy of courtesans (ganika, vesiya) in early India. Ambapali was the intelligent, wealthy courtesan-mistress of king Bimbisara of Magadha (d. 490 BCE ) to whom she bore a child. After hearing the Buddha preach, Ambapali became his lay follower, donating a grove to his order. It was at this hermitage that the great sage rested for some months before his demise. Buddha’s respect for Ambapali is seen in his promise to share a meal with her and his keeping of this appointment, even by refusing the invitation of important officials. Ambapali later became a nun, and her elegant poetry is found in the Therigatha. The poem makes an analogy between physical and moral decrepitude, and describes the transient nature of all talents, including her own: My voice was as sweet as a cuckoo’s, who flies over the woodland thickets now in old age, it is broken and stammering. Not otherwise is the word of the untruthful. Verse 5135

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Sanskrit and Tamil literature reveals that some ganikas were talented composers, musicians, and dancers who occupied a respected social niche. Unlike commercial prostitutes, these well educated women were often mistresses of a single, powerful patron to whom they were loyal. After amassing some wealth, ganikas bought their freedom or married their patrons. This is described by Shudraka (fifth century) in his play Mricchakatika (The Little Clay Cart) whose brahman hero marries his shudra mistress Vasantasena.136 In Ilango Adigal’s Tamil epic Shilappadikaram, courtesan Madhavi is a gifted dancer, lyricist, and instrumentalist admired by the community. Her lover and patron Kovalan is a wealthy merchant who returns to his wife, leaving Madhavi pregnant and bereft. After the birth of their daughter Manimekhalai, Madhavi becomes a Buddhist nun dedicated to charity, a path followed later by her daughter. Temple Devadasi/Teyvadiyal (Eighth to Fourteenth Century) Other Sangam era Tamil poems describe women who danced and sang (aatu-makkal) in mystical possession at folk rituals.137 These archaic customs involving honored women musicians and ritualists merged into the medieval tradition of the female servant of the temple deity (teyvadiyal [Tamil]; devadasi [Sanskrit]). Chola inscriptions (850–1300) and Tamil bhakti literature inform us that teyvadiyals performed ritual dances for the shrine either singly or in groups.138 In the ninth century, saint Manikkavachakar described teyvadiyals as young women with slender waists and red lips, singing hymns, lighting the temple lamps, unfurling its flags, decorating it with flowers, rubbing sandalwood, holy ash, and gold powder on its walls. During festival processions when the icon was carried through the streets in a chariot with priests, teyvadiyals danced ahead, while devotees received a mystical visual blessing (darsan).139 An important inscription from the reign of Rajaraja Chola (1014) states that 400 teyvadiyal lived in the four streets around the huge Brihadisvara temple at Thanjavur, and that they danced in festival parades.140 Early Chola inscriptions also indicate that temple teyvadiyals bequeathed property in matrilineal succession to daughters who were also teyvadiyals. The women’s names reflect their native place or the temple to which they were attached. For example, an inscription about a teyvadiyal named Kanchipura-nankai (woman at Kanchipuram) states that her mother was also a teyvadiyal, but attached to a temple at Ekampam. While the meaning of ‘‘nankai’’ is still being debated, some teyvadiyals took the title of ‘‘utaiyal’’ (owner) to indicate that they were property holders. Thus, Tillaivanam-utaiyal Matatilli owned substantial acreage near Chidambaram (Tillaivanam) temple.141 A Dravidian origin is likely for the devadasi tradition as it was most prevalent in Tamil Nadu and peninsular India, although it existed across the subcontinent. Over 700 inscriptions thus attest to

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teyvadiyals’ functions and donations in Tamil Nadu (409), Karnataka (148), Andhra Pradesh (138), and Kerala (24).142 In addition, other records show that devadasis were attached to temples in Maharashtra (5), Gujarat and Rajasthan (4), Bengal and Bihar (3), Uttar Pradesh (2), Orissa (1), Madhya Pradesh (1); and in Sri Lanka (6).143 Clearly, the teyvadiyal served a respectable role in the Chola temple, which served as a religious, cultural, and economic institution. Royalty and the wealthy gifted vast acreages during rituals (arcana bhogam) for the community, and its rice fields supported hundreds of servants of various cadres, such as brahmans, accountants, caretakers, and menials. As a teyvadiyal was ritually married to the temple deity, she was known as a nityasumangali, or ‘‘eternally auspicious wife.’’144 While more talented and royal nityasumangalis probably remained chaste and performed their ritual services, over time, some ordinary teyvadiyals became mistresses of priests and temple functionaries. Temple women were sustained by special grants (nrtta bhogam) for performing rituals and dancing for the temple icon.145 These endowments were made by kings and queens, aristocratic and brahman women, and the teyvadiyal themselves.146 Chola inscriptions use other titles for high-ranking temple women such as manikkam (ruby), patiyilar (temple woman), and rudra-ganika (woman of Rudra-Shiva).147 Other names were tali-chcheri pentukal (girls living around the temple streets) and valvacci (fetchers of water for rituals).148 Teyvadiyals of a high rank enjoyed financial independence, rare in a society where women received marital property, but not landed inheritance from their fathers.149 Teyvadiyals donated icons, lamps, and sums for rites and prayer recitations to the temple, which was their sole mainstay, while aristocratic and brahman made similar contributions. As donors, temple women helped to define the rituals and icons to be venerated on special days. They thus shaped the content of temple religion in south India. Local contacts and associations helped temple women to develop a community identity in the Chola era.150 Clearly, while some women were victims of feudal patriarchy, some medieval women had more power to shape their lives. NOTES 1. Susan Daniel, trans., in Tharu and Lalitha, Women Writing in India, 79. 2. Tripathi, History of Ancient India, 364–65, 381–84. 3. Hermann Kulke and Deitmar Rothermund, A History of India, 4th ed. (New York: Routledge, 1995), 136–40. 4. Arjun Appadurai, ‘‘Kings, Sects, and Temples in South India, 1350–1700 A.D.,’’ The Indian Economic and Social History Review 14, no. 1 (January–March 1977): 47–75; Burton Stein, ‘‘The State and the Agrarian Order in Medieval South India: A Historiographical Critique,’’ in Essays on South India, ed. Burton Stein (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1975), 64–95.

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5. N. Vannamalai, ‘‘Feudalism & Chola Rule’’ (paper presented at Second International Conference Seminar of Tamil Studies, http://www.tamilnation.org/ heritage/chola, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, January 1968). The paper cites the Government of Madras, Oriental MSS. Library Temple Inscriptions, 3 vols. Nos. 2868, 637, 713, 727, 738 D 3355, 111 D 2868, 785 D 3367, 94 D 2875. 6. Lindsey Harlan, Religion and Rajput Women: The Ethic of Protection in Contemporary Narratives (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992), 120–33; Harlan, ‘‘Perfection and Devotion: Sati Tradition in Rajasthan,’’ 79–91; Ann Grodzins Gold, ‘‘Gender, Violence and Power: Rajasthani Stories of Shakti,’’ in Women as Subjects: South Asian Histories, ed. Nita Kumar (Calcutta: Stree, 1994), 26–48; Veena Talwar Oldenburg, ‘‘The Continuing Invention of the Sati Tradition,’’ in Sati, The Blessing and the Curse, ed. Hawley, 159–73. 7. Harle, The Art and Architecture of the Indian Subcontinent, 115 (plate 88). 8. Ibid., 128 (plate 100), 277 (plate 214). 9. Ibid., 30 (plate 15), 46 (plate 29), 117 (plate 90). 10. Marco Polo’s records in Sastri, Foreign Notices of South India, 163–64. 11. Ibn Batuta’s records in Sastri, Foreign Notices of South India, 233–34. 12. Ibid., 253. 13. William Sax, ‘‘Gender and Politics in Garhwal,’’ in Women as Subjects, ed. Kumar, 172–203, vide, 181. 14. Sastri, The History of South India, 100. 15. Tripathi, History of Ancient India, 250; Sastri, The History of South India, 109; and Altekar, The Position of Women in Hindu Civilization, 186–87. 16. Thapar, Early India, 392. Bilhana’s eulogy is questioned by Tripathi, History of Ancient India, 421; K. A. Nilakanta Sastri and G. Srinivasachari, Advanced History of India (Bombay: Allied Publishers, 1971), 320. 17. Sastri, The History of South India, 168. 18. Altekar, The Position of Women in Hindu Civilization, 189–90. 19. Sastri, The History of South India, 452; R. Champakalakshmi, The Hindu Temple (Delhi: Roli and Jansen, 2001), 64–65; Harle, The Art and Architecture of the Indian Subcontinent, 178–79. Harle believes that the temples reflect Tamil Pallava dynasty styles. 20. K. A. Nilakanta Sastri, The Colas (1937; repr., Chennai: University of Madras, 2000), 156; and Subrahmanian, Social and Cultural History of Tamil Nadu, 123, 135, 146. 21. Sastri, Foreign Notices of South India, 41. 22. Altekar, The Position of Women in Hindu Civilization, 185–86. 23. See Velcheru Narayana Rao, David Shulman, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Symbols of Substance: Court and State in Nayaka Period Tamilnadu (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), 37. 24. Tripathi, History of Ancient India, 348. 25. Thapar, Early India, 367; Sastri, Foreign Notices of South India, 174. 26. Rao, Shulman, and Subrahmanyam, Symbols of Substance, 36–37, citing Cynthia Talbot, ‘‘Master and Servant: Bonds of Allegiance in Medieval Andhra’’ (paper presented at the 16th Annual Conference on South Asia, University of Wisconsin at Madison, 1986). 27. John Keay, India: A History (New York: Grove Press, 2000), 252, 257–58. 28. Marco Polo’s records in Sastri, Foreign Notices of South India, 174.

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29. Dehejia, Art of the Imperial Cholas, 13–15 (plates 8–9). 30. Ibid., 1–10 (plates 1, 3, and 5), 74–76. 31. Sastri, The Colas, 156, 169, 226, 653–54. 32. Sastri, The History of South India, 181, 325. 33. Sastri, The Colas, 228, 332. 34. Altekar, The Position of Women in Hindu Civilization, 258. 35. Harlan, Religion and Rajput Women, 79–82. 36. Tripathi, History of Ancient India, 135, 337. 37. Sastri, The History of South India, 181–82, 188. 38. Ibid., 156, 176, 213. 39. Altekar quotes sages Atri, Parasra, and Brihaspati who wrote that a woman should not be abandoned after rape. Altekar, The Position of Women in Hindu Civilization, 308–10. 40. Medieval political contests occurred between Chalukya Pulakesin (seventh century CE), Harsha of Thanesvar, and the Pallavas of Kanchipuram; during Tamil Rajendra Chola’s march to the Ganges (eleventh century CE) in which he subdued the Bengal Palas over trading rights in Southeast Asia; when Delhi sultan Ala-uddin Khalji’s general Malik Kafur marched to Madurai and established a Muslim kingdom (1296–1310). 41. Doniger and Smith, The Laws of Manu, 115. 42. Oldenburg, ‘‘The Continuing Invention of the Sati Tradition,’’ 159–73, vide, 166. 43. A. L. Basham, The Wonder that Was India (1965; repr., Delhi: Rupa & Company, 1999), 188. Basham cites Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, 3:92. 44. Sastri, The Colas, 91–92, 553–54; Shulman, Tamil Temple Myths, 156–64. 45. Hart, The Poems of the Ancient Tamil, 102–3. 46. Somasundaram, Ilango Adigal Iyarrunaruliya Shilappadikaram, 259; Danielou, Shilappadikaram, 129. 47. Vidya Dehejia, ‘‘Comment: The Broader Landscape,’’ in Sati, the Blessing and the Curse, ed. Hawley, 49–53; and Courtright, ‘‘The Iconographies of Sati,’’ 27–49. 48. Paula Richman, ‘‘Introduction: The Diversity of the Ramayana Tradition,’’ in Many Ramayanas: The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia, ed. Paula Richman (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991), 3–21. 49. Aiyar, Kamba Ramayanam: A Study, 38–39, 339–43. 50. Shulman, ‘‘Fire and Flood,’’ 89–113, vide, 99–100. 51. Sastri, The History of South India, 415. 52. B. V. L. Narayanarow, trans., ‘‘Molla Ramayana,’’ in Tharu and Lalitha, Women Writing in India, 94–98, vide, 95–97. 53. Romila Thapar, A History of India (1966; repr., New York: Penguin, 1990), 242, 244–45, 247–48. 54. Harlan, Religion and Rajput Women, 48, 52–90; and Harlan, ‘‘Perfection and Devotion,’’ 82–83. 55. Although medieval Hindu and Muslim rulers adopted Perso-Indian styles, it is an exaggeration to refer to the subcontinent as ‘‘Islamic India.’’ See James W. Laine’s Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003), and my comments in Sita Anantha Raman, ‘‘Flawed Historian Meets Vandals,’’ The National Review 2, no. 3 (March 2004): 86–88.

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56. Sastri and Srinivasachari, Advanced History of India, 259. I have modernized and shortened the verse given by these authors. 57. Altekar, The Position of Women in Hindu Civilization, 187, quoting James Tod’s Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, vol. 1 (Oxford: Grooke, 1920), 303–4, 362. 58. Harlan, Religion and Rajput Women, 182–87. 59. Altekar, The Position of Women in Hindu Civilization, 187–88. 60. Courtright, ‘‘The Iconographies of Sati,’’ 36–37 (plates 2–3); also Thapar, A History of India, 304, 423–24. 61. Cited by Basham, The Wonder that Was India, 188; also Sastri, The Colas, 91–92, 553–54. 62. Sastri, The History of South India, 234–35. 63. Basham, The Wonder that Was India, 188. 64. Altekar, The Position of Women in Hindu Civilization, 187–88. 65. A. R. Kulkarni, ‘‘Sati in the Maratha Country: An Historical Perspective,’’ in Images of Women in Maharashtrian Literature and Religion, ed. Anne Feldhaus (Albany: State University of New York, 1996), 171–98, vide, 177–88. 66. Sarojini Naidu’s poem ‘‘Suttee’’ in which she asked, ‘‘Shall the flesh survive when the soul is gone?’’ She also addressed the Indian National Congress in 1917 with the request that patriots ‘‘remember that the spirit of Padmini of Chittor is enshrined with the manhood of India.’’ Quoted by Vishwanath S. Naravane, Sarojini Naidu, 2nd ed. (Bombay: Orient Longman, 1996), 95, 101. 67. Altekar, The Position of Women in Hindu Civilization, 180–85. 68. Francis Zimmerman, ‘‘Lilavati, Gracious Lady of Arithmetic—India—A Mathematical Mystery Tour,’’ UNESCO Courier, November 1989, http:// findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1310/is_1989_Nov/ai_8171045. 69. Also this Web site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilavati, dated February 2007. 70. A. K. Warder, ‘‘Classical Literature,’’ in A Cultural History of India, ed. A. L. Basham (Clarendon Press, 1975; repr., Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997), 194. 71. Sastri, The History of South India, 345. 72. Ibid., 266. 73. Srimad Bhagavad Gita, trans. Swami Vireswarananda (Chennai: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1982), 193, 196. 74. A fairly simple retelling of this popular story is by Swami Chinmayananda and Kumarit Bharati Naik, Bala Ramayanam (Bombay: Central Chinmaya Mission Trust, 1968), 86–87. 75. Jonathan Stratton Hawley and Mark Jeurgensmeyer, trans., in Tharu and Lalitha, eds., Women Writing in India, 1:93–94. 76. On bhakti in south India, see Ramanujan, Hymns for the Drowning; Ramanujan, Speaking of Siva; Hardy, Viraha-Bhakti; R. Champakalakshmi, ‘‘From Devotion and Dissent to Dominance: The Bhakti of the Tamil Alvars and Nayanars,’’ in Tradition, Dissent and Ideology: Essays in Honor of Romila Thapar, ed. R. Champakalakshmi and S. Gopal (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996), 135–63; Varadarajan, A History of Tamil Literature; Sastri, A History of South India; Hart, The Poems of the Ancient Tamil; Shulman, Tamil Temple Myths. 77. Primary Tamil bhakti texts are J. V. Chelliah, ed., Tiru-murukarruppatai, in Pattupattu: Ten Tamil Idylls (1946; repr., Thanjavur: Tamil University, 1986); P. V. Somasundaram, ed., Paripatal (Chennai: Saiva Siddhanta Society, 1957); Karaikkal

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Ammaiyar’s hymns are in K. Subramanian, ed., Patinonran Tirumurai (Eleventh Tirumurai), Saiva Siddhanta Math series (Srivaikuntam: Kumara Guruparan Sangam, 1972); Bharati, The Sacred Book of Four Thousand; P. S. Sundaram, ed., with Tamil original, The Poems of Andal: Tiruppavai and Nacciyar Tirumozhi (Bombay: Ananthacharya Indological Research Institute, 1997); Vanmikanathan and Mahalingam, Periya Puranam. 78. Studies of north Indian bhakti include: Parita Mukta, Upholding the Common Life: The Community of Mirabai (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997); David N. Lorenzen, ed., Bhakti Religion in North India: Community Identity and Political Action (Albany: State University of New York [SUNY], 1995); Eleanor Zelliot, ‘‘Chokhamela: Piety and Protest,’’ in Bhakti Religion in North India, ed. Lorenzen, 212–20; Eleanor Zelliot, ‘‘Chokhamela and Eknath: Two Bhakti Modes of Legitimacy for Modern Change,’’ in Tradition and Modernity in Bhakti Movements, ed. Jayant Lele (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1981), 136–56; Jonathan Stratton Hawley and Mark Juergensmeyer, Songs of the Saints of India (New York: Clarendon Press, 1988); Embree, Sources of Indian Tradition, vol. 1. 79. For nirguni bhakti, see these essays in Lorenzen, ed., Bhakti Religion in North India: David N. Lorenzen, ‘‘The Lives of Nirguni Saints,’’ 181–211; Joseph Schallen, ‘‘Sanskritization, Caste Uplift, and Social Dissidence in the Sant Ravidas Panth,’’ 94–119; John Stratton Hawley, ‘‘The Nirgun/Sagun Distinction in Early Manuscript Anthologies of Hindi Devotion,’’ 160–80. 80. Sastri, The History of South India, 415. 81. B. V. L. Narayanarow, trans., ‘‘Molla Ramayana,’’ in Tharu and Lalitha, Women Writing in India, 94–98. 82. Tharu and Lalitha, Women Writing in India, 102–7. 83. Chandrabati, ‘‘Sundari Malua,’’ trans. Madhuchhanda Karlekar, in Tharu and Lalitha, Women Writing in India, 106. 84. Rao, ‘‘A Ramayana of Their Own,’’ 114–36, vide, 128–30. 85. Ibid., 130–33. 86. Brzezinski, ‘‘Women Saints in Gaudiya Vaisnavism,’’ 59–86, vide, 63–66. 87. Rami, ‘‘Where Have You Gone?’’ trans. Sumanta Banerjee, in Tharu and Lalitha, Women Writing in India, 85–87. 88. Brzezinski, ‘‘Women Saints in Gaudiya Vaisnavism,’’ 72; and Nancy Ann Nayar, ‘‘The ‘other’ Antal: Portrait of a Twelfth Century Srivaisnava Woman,’’ in Vaisnavi, ed. Rosen, 212–13. 89. Sule Sankavva, ‘‘In my Harlot’s Trade,’’ trans. Susan Daniel, in Tharu and Lalitha, Women Writing in India, 81. 90. Sellegren, ‘‘Janabai and Kanhapatra: A Study of Two Women Saints,’’ in Images of Women in Maharashtrian Literature and Religion, ed. Felhaus, 213–38, vide, 227. 91. Vidyut Bhagwat, ‘‘Marathi Literature as a Source for Contemporary Feminism,’’ in Feminism in India, Issues in Contemporary Feminism Series, ed. Maitrayee Chaudhuri (Delhi: Kali for Women, 2004), 296–317, vide, 305. 92. Brzezinski, ‘‘Women Saints in Gaudiya Vaisnavism,’’ 66, 83 n. 23. 93. Vanmikanathan and Mahalingam, Periya Puranam, 537. 94. Ibid. 95. Harle, Art and Architecture of the Indian Subcontinent; Khanna and Michell, Human and Divine.

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96. Dehejia, Antal and Her Path of Love; Dennis Hudson, ‘‘Antal’s Desire,’’ in Vaisnavi, ed. Rosen, 171–210. 97. Andal, ‘‘Nacciyar Tirumoli,’’ in The Sacred Book of Four Thousand, trans. Srirama Bharati, 115, 116, 110, 104, 111, 110, respectively. 98. Dehejia, Antal and Her Path of Love, 107. 99. Ramanujan, Speaking of Siva, 126–27; also Tharu and Lalitha, Women Writing in India, 77–82. 100. Ramanujan, Speaking of Siva, 111–42. 101. Ibid., 134. 102. Embree, Sources of Indian Tradition, 1:347–50. 103. Leela Mullatti, The Bhakti Movement and the Status of Women (Delhi: Abhinav Publications, 1989), 28–43, vide, 39–42. 104. Ibid., 29, 31. 105. Dilip Chitre, ed., Says Tuka: Selected Poetry of Tukaram (New York: Penguin, 1991), xix. 106. Eleanor Zelliot, From Untouchable to Dalit: Essays on the Ambedkar Movement (Delhi: Manohar Publishers, 1996), 3–32, 267–92, vide, 22. 107. Mary McGee, ‘‘Bahinabai: The Ordinary Life of an Extraordinary Woman, or the Exceptional Life of an Ordinary Woman,’’ in Vaisnavi, ed. Rosen, 136–37. 108. Ibid., 137. 109. Meera S. Sashital, ‘‘Muktabai: The Soul of a Saintly Family,’’ http:// www.samachar.com/features/17024-literature.html. 110. Bhagwat, ‘‘Marathi Literature as a Source for Contemporary Feminism,’’ 305. 111. Sellegren, ‘‘Janabai and Kanhapatra,’’ 213–38, vide, 216. 112. Tharu and Lalitha, eds., ‘‘Janabai,’’ in Women Writing in India, 82–84. 113. Vilas Sarang, trans., ‘‘Jani Sweeps the Floor,’’ in Women Writing in India, ed. Tharu and Lalitha, 83–84. 114. Sellegren, ‘‘Janabai and Kanhapatra,’’ 216–17; also Margaret Macnicol, ed., Poems by Indian Women (Calcutta and London: Association Press and Oxford University Press, 1923); Rajeshwari V. Pandharipande, ‘‘Janabai: A Woman Saint of India,’’ in Women Saints in World Religions, McGill Studies in the History of Religions, ed. Arvind Sharma (Albany: State University of New York, 2000), xi, 244. 115. Sellegren, ‘‘Janabai and Kanhapatra,’’ 217. 116. Ruth Vanita, ‘‘Three Women Saints of Maharashtra: Muktabai, Janabai, and Bahinabai,’’ Manushi 50–52 (January–June 1989): 45–61. 117. Bhagwat, ‘‘Marathi Literature as a Source for Contemporary Feminism,’’ 304. Bhagwat quotes Shri Namdev Gatha (Bombay: Shasakiya Madhyvarti Mudranalay, 1970). 118. Sellegren, ‘‘Janabai and Kanhapatra,’’ 221. 119. Ibid., 218–19. 120. Ibid., 225. 121. Zelliot, ‘‘Chokhamela: Piety and Protest,’’ 212–20; and J. T. F. Jordens, ‘‘Medieval Hindu Devotionalism,’’ in A Cultural History of India, ed. A. L. Basham, 6th ed. (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002), 268–71. 122. Quoted by Zelliot, From Untouchable to Dalit, 22.

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123. Anne Feldhaus, ‘‘Bahinabai: Wife and Saint,’’ Journal of the American Academy of Religion 50 (1982): 591–604; Vanita, ‘‘Three Women Saints of Maharashtra,’’ 45–61; McGee, ‘‘Bahinabai,’’ 133–69. 124. Bahinabai, ‘‘Atmanivedana, abhang 35,’’ trans. Justin E. Abbot, in Tharu and Lalitha, Women Writing in India, 115. 125. McGee, ‘‘Bahinabai,’’ 152–53. 126. G. Grierson and L. D. Barnett, trans., Lalla-Vakyani (London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1920), in Alphonso-Karkala, An Anthology of Indian Literature, 442–43. I have modernized the language in the last line. 127. Grierson and Barnett, Lalla-Vakyani, in Embree, Sources of Indian Tradition, 1:350. 128. Krishna Kripalani, ‘‘Medieval Indian Literature,’’ in A Cultural History of India, ed. Basham, 309; and N. A. Jairazbhoy, ‘‘Music,’’ in A Cultural History of India, ed. Basham, 237. 129. Mirabai’s poems are in Parasuram Caturvedi, ed., Mirabai ki Padavali (Hindi; Prayag: Hindu Sammelan, 1973); A. J. Altson, ed., The Devotional Poems of Mirabai (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1980); Hawley and Juergensmeyer, Songs of the Saints of India; Macnichol, Poems by Indian Women; Baldoon Dingra, ed., Songs of Meera: Lyrics in Ecstasy (Delhi: Orient Paperbacks, 1977); AlphonsoKarkala, An Anthology of Indian Literature, 478–81. 130. Studies on Mirabai include: Mukta, Upholding the Common Life; Parita Mukta, ‘‘Kisne gaya Miro ko?’’ (Who Sang Mira’s Songs?), Sandarbh 47 (August– November 1983): 60–80; Neera Desai, ‘‘Women in the Bhakti Movement,’’ Samaya Shakti 1, no. 2 (1983): 92–100; Harlan, Religion and Rajput Women; Jordens, ‘‘Medieval Hindu Devotionalism,’’ 266–80; Nancy Martin, ‘‘Mirabai: Inscribed in Text, Embodied in Life,’’ Vaisnavi, ed. Rosen, 7–46; Andrew Schelling, ‘‘Where’s my Beloved? Mirabai’s Prem Bhakti Marg,’’ in Vaisnavi, ed. Rosen, 47–58. 131. Young, ‘‘Theology Does Help Women’s Liberation,’’ 235–94, vide, 235–38. 132. Mukta, ‘‘Kisne gaya Miro ko?’’ (Who Sang Mira’s Songs?), 68–69. 133. Mukta, Upholding the Common Life, 201–7. 134. Quoted by Mukta, Upholding the Common Life, 216. 135. In Basham, The Wonder that Was India, 456, 536 n. 44. 136. Ibid., 184. 137. Kersenboom-Story, Nityasumangali: Devadasi Tradition in South India, 14. 138. Ibid., xv, xx n. 2. Leslie Orr argues convincingly that Chola temple women were not called nityasumangali, in Orr, Donors, Devotees, and Daughters of God, 149–53. 139. Kersenboom-Story, Nityasumangali: Devadasi Tradition in South India, 22–24. 140. Orr, Donors, Devotees, and Daughters of God, 33. Orr cites South Indian Inscriptions, vol. 2, no. 66 (Delhi: Archaeological Survey of India, 1891–1990). 141. Orr, Donors, Devotees, and Daughters of God, 145–48. 142. Ibid., 18–20. 143. Ibid., Appendix I, 181–82. 144. Kersenboom-Story, Nityasumangali: Devadasi Tradition in South India, xii, xiv–xvi n. 2, 110–12, 181–83, 186. 145. Orr, Donors, Devotees, and Daughters of God, 127–29, 131–32. 146. Ibid., 170–71.

196 147. 27–28. 148. 149. 150.

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INDEX

Adigal, Ilango (Shilappadikaram), 98, 104, 109, 114, 115, 119, 124–26, 165, 176, 188, 191, 198, 199 Aditi, 23, 27–29, 40, 66, 133, 137, 150; as Uttanapad, 28, 127, 129, 137, 138 Adivasis, 1, 6–10, 12, 14, 15, 18, 59 Agricultural goddess, 10 Ahalya, 38, 53, 56 Akkamahadevi, xiii, 58, 116, 155, 172, 174, 177–80, 185 All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA), 15 Ambapali, 67, 92, 187 Amman (mother goddess; Dravidian), 5, 7, 111, 114, 132, 140, 142–43 Andal, 112, 171, 172, 174–77, 179, 185, 186 Apala, 28, 31, 32 Artha Shastra (by Kautilya), 46, 62–64 Auvaiyar, 58, 97, 103, 104, 113–15 Bahinabai, 174, 183, 184 Bhakti, 15, 21, 58, 83, 97, 98, 112, 116, 135, 147–50, 165, 170–75, 177, 180, 183, 184, 186, 188; puja, 40, 57, 65, 86, 103, 106, 107, 130; saints, 136, 139, 142, 156, 169, 178, 181, 185; in Buddhism, 147, 149 Bhuvaneshvari, 134 Bilateral descent, 16; lineage, 7; systems, 11 Bride capture, 13, 14

Bride-price, 13, 14, 59, 64, 117 Buddhism: Bhikkuni Vibhanga, 90; female bodhisattvas, 93, 141, 146, 147; nuns, 76, 110, 112, 148–49; philanthropy, 107, 109, 187; Therigatha, 40, 46, 67, 77–78, 90– 93, 112, 119, 187 Chalukya queens, 159–60; Vijayabhattarika (Chalukya), 159– 62 Chandrabati, 172–73 Chola queens, 162–63; Kundavai, 162, 167; Sembiyan Mahadevi, 68, 140, 162 Courtesans, 67–68, 92, 104, 111, 119, 141, 156, 187–88 Dandin (The Ten Princes), 118–19, 121 Devadasis/teyvadiyal (temple women), 104, 116, 188–89 Draupadi (Mahabharata heroine), 13, 53–54, 56–57, 59, 61 Durga, 14, 62, 88, 133, 136, 143, 151– 53, 156, 165, 169, 172, 185; Durga Stava and Durga Stotra, 132, 133; images, 139; puja, 140; seven mothers (sapta matrikas), 134, 138, 157. See also Goddess scriptures Education (women’s), xv, xvii, xviii n.1, 2, 65, 72

214 Feticide, 14 Gargi, xii, 37–39, 49, 58 Gayatri Mantra, 28, 49. See also Upanayana (initiation) Ghosha, 31, 32. See also Apala Goddess scriptures: Devi Bhagavata Purana, 62, 65, 134; Devi Mahatmya, xii, 21, 62, 66, 133–35, 142; Devi Sukta, 30, 66, 68, 72, 132, 133; Durga Stava and Stotra, 132, 133; Lalita Sahasranama, 134, 135; Saundarya Lahari (by Shankara), 134, 135; Sri Sukta, 66, 68, 106, 132; Vak Ambarni Sukta, 30 Gupta queens: Kuberanaga, 159; Kumaradevi, 68, 159; Prabhavati (later Vakataka), 68, 159 Indus Civilization, 3, 5, 16, 105, 106, 127 Intercaste marriages, 26, 34, 62 Jaimini’s Purva Mimamsa Bhasha, 50 Jainism: goddesses, 85–86; Jina Malli, 83–85; Mukti-Pujak sect, 5, 106; nuns, 81, 83, 85; preceptors (Jinas), 31, 32, 76, 81, 94 Janabai, 172, 174, 181–83 Kali, 130, 131–32, 134, 136, 138, 140–41, 143 Kalidasa, 104, 116–18 Kama Sutra (by Vatsyayana), 104, 117, 120–21 Kannaki (heroine in Shilappadikaram), xii, 114–15, 119, 167, 176 Karaikkal Ammaiyar, 51, 98, 112, 116, 171, 174–76 Kerala queens: Lakshmi Bai and Parvati Bai, 160 Korravai (Tamil goddess), 8, 19, 111, 114 Kunti (in the Mahabharata), 56–60, 62, 139 Lakshmi (goddess), 54, 65, 66–67, 86, 105–6, 114

Index Lakshmibai of Jhansi, 161, 168 Lalla, 171, 184–85 Lilavati, 168–69 Lingam (male phallic symbol), 3–6, 35, 66, 128, 131, 180, 185 Lopamudra, 28, 31–32, 34 Madhavi (Shilappadikaram), 114, 115, 188 Madri (in the Mahabharata), 56 Maitreyi (in Brihad Aranyka Upanishad), xii, 37, 38, 49 Manikkavachakar, 136, 175, 188 Manimekhalai (Tamil epic), 98 n.11, 104, 114–15, 188 Manu Smriti, xiii, 46, 49–50, 53–59, 84, 107, 117, 162–63, 168; on women and marriage, 60–63; property, 163; widowhood and sati, 64, 168 Matrilineal clans, 12, 15–16, 19; inheritance and succession, 11, 13, 35, 160, 188 Matrilocality, 9, 11 Maurya, Asoka, 46, 61–62, 76, 93, 106–7 Meenakshi Amman (goddess of Madurai), 114, 140 Menstruation, 12, 26, 35, 39, 53, 79, 112, 141–43, 180 Mirabai, xvi, 170, 172, 174, 177, 179– 80, 182, 185–87 Mithuna (loving couple), 109, 116, 139 Molla, Atukuri, 47, 165, 172, 174. See also Ramayana Muktabai, 174–75, 180–81 Muslims: Mappila, 16, 161; veil (hijab, pardah), xv, 157–58, 166–67 Nagas, 11, 36, 41, 128 Natya Shastra, 46, 62, 104, 114 Nayar matriliny, 14, 16 Niyoga, 13, 33, 53, 63, 64 Padmini of Chittor, 166, 168, 192 Pajapati, 39, 77, 87–91, 93, 95, 107 Polyandry, 9, 11–14, 16, 33, 52, 56,

Index 64; levirate polyandry, 11, 13, 14. See also Niyoga Polygamy, 33, 46, 52, 57, 64, 67, 167 Prajnaparamita, 93–95, 149 Prakriti (Nature), xi, 7, 106, 121, 128– 30, 134 Prithvi (Mother Earth), 7, 27–29, 66, 106, 128 Puranas (Hindu scriptures), 46, 47, 62, 64–65, 103, 130–32, 142, 165, 173 Purusha Sukta (hymn in the Rig Veda), 25–26, 66, 129–30 Queens: Abakka-devi (Karnataka), 161; Bammaladevi (Hoysala), 159; Didda (Kashmir), 160; Rudrama-devi (Kakatiya), 160; Silamahadevi (Rashtrakuta), 159, 163. See also Chalukya queens; Chola queens; Gupta queens Rajput women, 166 Ramayana (Valmiki), 47, 54, 55, 165, 172; by Chandrabati (Bengali), 172; by Kampan (Tamil), 47, 55, 165, 169; by Molla (Telugu), 47, 165, 172; Oral Sitayanas, 47; by Tulsidas (Hindi), 47, 165, 172. See also Sabari’s salvation; Sita Ratri (Rig Vedic goddess), 27, 29, 66, 132, 134 Sabari’s salvation (tribal woman in Ramayana), 56, 170, 187 Sangam (Tamil classical era), 7, 61, 111, 128, 164, 188 Saraswati (Rig Vedic goddess), 7, 27, 29–30; in Hinduism, 65–66, 112, 130–32, 135, 137, 139; in Jaina icons, 138, 144; poetess Vijayanka (‘‘dark Saraswati’’), 169

215 Sati (widow burning), xiii, xv, xvii, 33, 56, 63, 115, 156, 166–68; Padmini’s jauhar, 168; Parvati-Sati, 165; sati matas and sati stones, 86, 166 Savitri (Mahabharata heroine), xii, 49, 55–56, 59, 133–34 Shakti worship (Shaktas), 132, 134, 141–42 Shastras, 46, 62–63, 104, 111, 163, 168 Sita (Ramayana heroine), 45, 48, 49, 54–56, 58–61, 77, 115, 130–33, 140 Sutras (Vedic era texts), 36–37, 46–47, 49–50, 67, 93 Tantricism, 132, 134, 141–42 Tiruvalluvar (Tamil Jaina sage), xv, 113, 115 Upanayana, 23, 26, 31, 35, 50. See also Vedic initiation Urvashi (Rig Vedic nymph), 28, 32, 114 Ushas (Rig Vedic goddess), 27–29 Vajrayana Buddhism, xvii, 80, 94; Taras, yoginis, and siddhas, 145, 147, 148 Vak: goddess in the Rig Veda, 27, 132, 133; Vak Ambarni Sukta, 30. See also Goddess scriptures Vedic initiation, 53, 57, 59, 68, 70–72 Widow remarriage, 35, 63, 64, 91 Widows, xiii, 35–36, 62–64, 91, 180. See also Sati Yajnavalkya, xii, 37–39, 49, 59 Yami and Yama, 32 Yoni (female symbol), 3, 5, 6, 11, 127, 128, 131, 140. See also Lingam

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About the Author SITA ANANTHA RAMAN is Associate Professor Emerita, History, Santa Clara University, California; member of the Board of Directors, Pacific Coast Immigration Museum, California; and Adjunct at the University of Georgia, Athens. She is the author of Getting Girls to School: Social Reform in the Tamil Districts, 1870–1930 (1996) and A. Madhaviah: A Biography and a Novella (2004).

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Women in India

India—Political Map

Courtesy of Natraj A. Raman

Women in India A Social and Cultural History Volume 2 SITA ANANTHA RAMAN

PRAEGER

An Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC

Copyright 2009 by Sita Anantha Raman All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Raman, Sita Anantha. Women in India : a social and cultural history / Sita Anantha Raman. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–275–98242–3 (hard copy (set) : alk. paper) — ISBN 978–0–313–37710–5 (hard copy (vol. 1) : alk. paper) — ISBN 978–0–313–37712–9 (hard copy (vol. 2) : alk. paper) — ISBN 978–0–313–01440–6 (ebook (set)) — ISBN 978–0–313–37711–2 (ebook (vol. 1)) — ISBN 978–0–313–37713–6 (ebook (vol. 2)) 1. Women—India. 2. Women—India—Social conditions. I. Title. HQ1742.R263 2009 305.48’891411—dc22 2008052685 13 12 11 10 09 1 2 3 4 5 This book is also available on the World Wide Web as an eBook. Visit www.abc-clio.com for details. ABC-CLIO, LLC 130 Cremona Drive, P.O. Box 1911 Santa Barbara, California 93116-1911 This book is printed on acid-free paper Manufactured in the United States of America

YOKED OXEN Pipes played, drums rolled the chant of mantras cleansed the air as showered with flowers we took seven steps together, you and I two oxen, one yoke Since that day pebbles on my path became petals on a rug For dear Babu

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CONTENTS Volume 1: Early India Preface

ix

Introduction

xi

Abbreviations

xxi

1. Region, Environment, Gender

1

2. Vedic Goddesses and Women

23

3. Mothers and Wives in the Smriti Texts

45

4. Buddhist and Jaina Nuns and Laywomen

75

5. Women in Classical Art and Literature

103

6. The Divine Feminine: Devis, Yoginis, Taras

127

7. Queens, Saints, Courtesans

155

Bibliography

197

Index

213

Volume 2: Later India Preface

ix

Introduction

xi

Abbreviations

xxi

1. Muslim Women in Premodern India 2. Women in the Colonial Era 3. Male Reformers and Women’s Rights

1 43 101

viii

Contents

4. Feminists and Nationalists

135

5. Conclusion: Women in India Today

189

Bibliography

225

Index

249

PREFACE This history is really dedicated to the numerous women whose narratives I have tried to record as accurately as possible. On a personal plane, I thank the inspirational teachers, stimulating colleagues, and close family who watched over me as I wrote this book. I deeply regret that a lack of space precludes my acknowledging each by name. Two inspirational gurus at UCLA shared their vision of history as truth with me years ago. Mentor and friend Stanley Wolpert steered my research directly to the study of women and gender in India. Damodar SarDesai broadened my understanding of Asia and encouraged me in my early career. My fascination for women’s history thrived in conversations with my good friend Brenda Ness of Santa Monica College. At Santa Clara University, I shared innumerable hours of enjoyable discussion on women and world history with Barbara Molony, Jo B. Margadant, Thomas Turley, and Timothy O’Keefe. My many students gave me insights into how to make this complex region and its multifaceted women comprehensible. I specially thank Mini Krishnan of Oxford University Press in Chennai for having promoted my work in India. Praeger editors Brian Foster and Hillary Claggett helped to breathe life into these two volumes. Christy Anitha, Haylee Schwenk, Diana Andrews, Valentina Tursini, and Anthony Chiffolo of ABC-CLIO gave them their final look and shape. I acknowledge the assistance of archivists at the Theosophical Society, Adyar, Tamil Nadu, the Government of Tamil Nadu Archives at Chennai, the National Archives of India at New Delhi, the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Museum and Library at New Delhi, the Madras Institute of Development Studies at Chennai, and the research librarians at Santa Clara University, UCLA, and University of California at Berkeley. I thank Shilpa Sankaran, Nandita (Sankaran) Geerdink, and Sonya Sankaran for allowing me to put their picture in Bharata Natyam dance pose on the cover of Volume 1. I especially thank my dear husband Natraj Raman for his two valuable maps, as well as for his patient humor and perceptive comments. I dedicate the book to him, and to my sons, daughters-in-law, granddaughters, sisters, brothers, nieces, nephews, and friends.

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INTRODUCTION It is not surprising that women in India are often described as having two sharply contrasting aspects. In a region famous for goddesses with multiple visages, identities, and functions, the first fac¸ade is of the serene, primordial mother Great Goddess (Devi), Primal Energy (Shakti), and Nature (Prakriti), a gentle boon-giver who also slays demons. The other is the clouded face of the domestic handmaiden trailing behind men in life expectancy, nutrition, health, education, pay, and other rights on the subcontinent.1 However, behind this colorful essentialization of Indian women lies the complex reality of myriads of feminine personas in a sea teaming with self-sacrificing heroines like Sita in the epic Ramayana, modern feminists in the guise of Shakti, and the victims of gender, religious, caste, and class inequalities. This poses several dilemmas to the historian. What could an engendered history then include, which female narratives would one recount, and how does one retrieve the voices of the apparently voiceless? A work of this scope cannot cover all the narratives, since such a vast undertaking would lose its critical edge, and its diluted or descriptive litany may be unreadable. Due to the longevity of Indian history, this study of women is therefore divided into two broad chronological sections, i.e., the premodern era from antiquity to the early medieval Hindu kingdoms and the later era under Turko-Afghan and Mughal dynasties, colonial rule, and the independent state after 1947. The four interrelated themes focus on gender and female sexuality, viz., premodern social, religious, cultural, political paradigms of women in male-authored texts; their later resurrection by men and women for contemporary political and social purposes; women’s narratives in their social contexts; and the contentious issues of female agency and objectification.

TEXT, CONTEXT, AND RE-CREATED TEXTS No matter how unassailable texts and material artifacts appear to be, the historian views them as contested territory. This work attempts to be critical

xii

Introduction

in its assessment of the primary evidence from literature, art, and archaeology, as well as of secondary scholarship on women in Indian history. As it is almost impossible to read all the archaic texts entirely in their original languages, some scholarly translations have been used judiciously. However, it is clear that within ancient meanings lie embedded the unconscious biases of later translators steered by their own theoretical or cultural reasons to retell India’s history. The values they attributed to ancient gender norms were often remodeled in later eras for contemporary purposes, and these crystallized into paradigms for modern women. Therefore, in order to trace the evolution of gender norms, it is imperative to reexamine India’s complex historical tapestry and to re-create a new narrative concerning its women. Ancient and classical texts reveal that in the preeminent interface between Aryan and local Dravidian-aboriginal cultures, the core value crystallized across the subcontinent. This was the high honor given to female chastity, a virtue whose luster almost exceeded that of women’s natural intelligence in archaic texts, and there were numerous ambiguities, as the texts were composed by multiple male authors separated by centuries. Moreover, the genres of hymnal, epic poetry, and shastra (scripture, religious manual) facilitated several typologies of women as divine, heroic, maternal, saintly, victimized, lustful, or manipulative. The divine maternal appears early (ca. 3000 BCE) in pre-Aryan artifacts of the Indus Civilization, and it also appears in the Sanskrit scriptural Vedas (1600–300 BCE). In the early first millennium BCE, society also began to accord high respect to male and female celibate hermits (sanyasins). Thus, the utterances of the woman sage Gargi and the questions of Maitreyi to her sage husband Yajnavalkya were carefully recorded in the Brihad Aranyaka Upanishad.2 Unlike the Vedas, the popular epics Mahabharata and Ramayana contain socially pertinent messages on the honor given to faithful wives. Thus, while Indians celebrate the Mahabharata heroine Savitri for outwitting Death, the annual fast by Indian wives is a reminder that their chastity ensures the husband’s longevity. Similarly, the Ramayana makes it clear that male strictures on female sexuality were paramount, so that even guiltless Sita had to be punished for residing as a hostage in Ravana’s fortress. This schizophrenia about women became more rigid in the classical era (250 BCE–500 CE) when India witnessed waves of immigrants and conquerors. The newcomers jostled for a high rung on the Sanskritic caste ladder and took local women whose husbands and male kin agonized over the lost ‘‘purity’’ of caste lineages. New texts by elite men reined in mortal women’s sexuality, but exalted the feminine divine as the Devi. As local cults to divine female guardians were subsumed into the traditions of Devi worship, the Sanskrit hymn Devi Mahatmya celebrated the supreme goddess Durga’s martial triumphs over demons. An echo of semidivine female fury also occurs in the Tamil epic Silappadikaram in which a chaste wife Kannaki sets Madurai city ablaze as a malediction for the unjust killing of her husband.

Introduction

xiii

Meanwhile, ordinary women were kept in their domestic place by the misogynist authors of Manu Smriti, which may have been simply a normative manual but which some later Hindus regarded as their sacrosanct law code. The long experience of gender inequality on the subcontinent prevents its dismissal as mere feminine fancy. Despite the persistence of local pockets of aboriginal and Dravidian matrilineal societies, and enclaves of Buddhist, Jaina, and Hindu nuns, the many layers of mainstream patriarchal society were cemented by adopting Sanskritic values (or ‘‘Sanskritization’’) due to foreign invasion, immigrant settlement, and internecine feudal wars. These occurred centuries before Islam and European Christianity infused their own patriarchal features into Indian society. However, women did rebel quietly through nonconformism and loudly through religious literature. The most famous examples are the Kannada hymns of Akkamahadevi (twelfth century), a woman saint who rejected caste and gender inequality; the padas (songs) in three languages of Rajput saint Mira (sixteenth century) who cast aside prescribed norms of feminine and royal behavior; and the yakshagana folk songs of the Telugu widow Tarigonda Venkamba (nineteenth century) who was compelled by society to be a recluse. Other women worked from within the patriarchal order to negotiate with elite men through their writings. Betrayed in love, Chandrabati (sixteenth century) composed Bengali ballads against unjust social laws; the Mughal princess Gulbadan Begam (sixteenth century) wrote Humayun Nama, a biography of her brother in Persian; and courtesan Mahlaqa Bai Chanda (eighteenth century) composed Urdu ghazal poetry. Exotic, Colonial Accounts of Sexual Mores During tumultuous, colonial wars over hegemony in India (seventeenth to nineteenth century), women retreated further into private courtyards and zenanas, constrained further by earlier child marriage, bigamy, widow abuse, and a widow’s enforced immolation on her husband’s funeral pyre (sati). Colonial evangelical commentaries based on a bird’s eye view of misogynist customs fueled Victorian complacency over Western superiority. In 1829, Governor-General Bentinck passed a law outlawing sati, partly influenced by Utilitarian James Mill’s popular The History of British India (1826). Although Mill had not visited India, he described its civilization as ‘‘rude’’ and its women as ‘‘generally degraded.’’ He smugly concluded, ‘‘Nothing can exceed the contempt which Hindus entertain for their women.’’ 3 These initial images of India left an indelible mark upon Europeans. Colonial officials and a growing elite class of Indian reformers drew upon Orientalist translations of Indian texts, missionary accounts of Hinduism, colonial statistics, and the summations of Western anthropologists about

xiv

Introduction

tribal and matrilineal societies in India. Indian reformers felt abashed by their partial truths, but they did not discard them easily. If scholarly Orientalists revealed the common origin of Aryan languages, pseudoscientific Social Darwinism cataloged linguistic groups as separate ‘‘races.’’ Racial theory validated European imperialism for having brought material advancements, and as being genetically the fittest to rule. A corollary deemed the high-caste ‘‘Aryan’’ Indian as a heathen ‘‘brown stepbrother’’ to Europeans; but it delegated darker Dravidian and aboriginals to the ranks of the least civilized on the subcontinent. Twentieth-century discoveries of sophisticated, pre-Aryan cities at Mohenjo Daro and Harappa on the Indus river compelled a reexamination of these colonial fantasies. While Victorian anthropologists assiduously cataloged India’s manifold tribal and Dravidian matrilinies, and the worshipers of indigenous goddesses, many were dismissive of their religions and sexual norms favorable to women. A rare scholar was Verrier Elwin (1902–64) who lived among the matrilineal Gonds and sympathized with their ‘‘melancholy’’ when their forests were confiscated by the colonial state. Elwin married a Gond wife in a sensational public marriage, but callously discarded her once the novelty wore off.4 E. B. Thurston (1855–1935) documented his personal fascination for non-Aryan tribes and castes who performed ‘‘primitive’’ blood sacrifices to goddesses. W. H. Rivers (1864–1922) focused on exotic matrilineal and ‘‘promiscuous’’ customs among the Todas of south India.5 Higher-caste Hindus were a trifle higher on the scale of civilization, as their peculiar practices included female subjugation, caste, and the worship of strange deities. Victorian prudery was especially shocked by the uninhibited views on sexuality in precolonial India. A century of imbibing Raj attitudes in schools and offices resulted in greater sexual puritanism among elite-caste Indians who often lauded the chastity of high-caste women and decried lower-caste female promiscuity. Thurston’s assistant K. Rangachari argued that ‘‘primitive’’ tribalism must ‘‘evolve’’ into a more refined, brahmanical Hinduism. A. S. Altekar echoed this in his authoritative work, The Position of Women in Hindu Civilization (1938), and he exaggeratedly praised ancient Hindu women with these words: Women were honored in ancient India, more perhaps than among any other nation on the face of the globe. They were considered the intellectual companions of their husband.6 Both India and Indian women were the objects of male political contestations during the Raj. While Indian aspirations for a national renaissance were more commendable than British imperial ambitions, Eastern and Western patriarchs selectively read classical texts to arrive at diametrically opposing views on Indian women. Evangelicals exaggerated women’s abject condition to justify their conversion; while Indian reformers used women’s

Introduction

xv

customary constraints to negotiate their own place in the Raj, making women fodder for the nationalist engine, while improving female literacy and legally restricting sati and child marriage. Nationalist Hindu ‘‘matriots’’ lauded Indian epic women as the paradigm for modern womanhood, maternal and chaste, educated companion and activist, the pure soul (jivatma) of goddess Mother India.7 These appear in Bankim Chandra Chatterji’s Bengali hymn Bande Mataram (1882), C. Subramania Bharati’s Nattu Vanakkam (1907) in Tamil, and Abanindranath Tagore’s painting of Mother India (1905) as an ascetic four-armed goddess with white lotuses at her feet. These sentiments were expanded by nationalist-feminists like Sarojini Naidu in Ode to India (1904).8 Hindu and Muslim nationalists tried to improve female literacy and social life, but they simultaneously reified patriarchy and religious identities. Thus to counter Western contempt for Hinduism, Swami Vivekananda (1863– 1902) idealized ancient Aryan mores of universal tolerance. Yet, neoconservatives later distorted his inclusive philosophy to advocate Hindu superiority and majority rule. B. G. Tilak hoisted the petard of militant Hindu patriarchy when he vehemently attacked feminist Pandita Ramabai for ostensibly preaching Christianity and when he opposed a moderate law to raise the female age for marital sex.9 Religious extremists in the Arya Samaj supported female education, but also anti-Muslim drives. Modern Muslim consciousness was similarly divisive when it came to women’s education and seclusion through the veil (pardah). Thus, Maulana Thanawi’s Bihishti Zewar (Jewelry of Paradise, 1906), a conservative guideline for modern Muslim women, defused feminism by supporting women’s education and also the veil.10 In the present era, defensive, resurgent Islamic movements often curtail women’s rights and social spaces. To what extent then can we accept the narratives of colonial, nationalist, and postmodern Western scholars? Western educated scholars sometimes use the colonial-nationalist dialogue as a benchmark to gauge women’s status, often relying on Western models and theories without cultural specificity for India. For example, in their anxiety to declare war on religion and capitalism, some Marxists fault Hinduism, its caste system, and patriarchy for delaying the dialectical process in India. However, recent studies on the emergence of capital prior to colonial rule have undercut these theories.11 Some liberal histories describe reformers as indebted to Western secular and Christian thought, without reference to their early education in humanist Indian scriptures.12 Several downplay sectarian coexistence without serious conflagrations in early India. Yet, it is well known that Indian reformers would cite Hindu-Muslim-Buddhist-Jaina ideas on universalism to implant recent ideas from the West on social equality. For example, Tamil reformers Vedanayakam Pillai and A. Madhaviah frequently quoted the Jaina sage Tiruvalluvar (ca. 100 CE) on gender and caste equity, as well as the Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire on equality.13

xvi

Introduction

Despite their championship of Indian feminism, Western feminists have sometimes interpreted Indian texts using Western models. VictorianEdwardian women wrote rosy biographies of saint Mirabai and princess Gulbadan Begam (sixteenth century), but they infused their lives with contemporary European ideals on feminine virtue. Recent Western feminist translations of Indian texts are considerably more sophisticated, and they shed light on the multiplicity of female narratives. Yet, even these scholars either do not place the texts within the social context of India’s living traditions or read early texts through the lens of modern Western feminist theory. This reminds us that historians must be cautious when applying Western models upon studies of Indian women, and second, avoid attributing modern value judgments to premodern societies.

SHAKTI, SAINT, OR SLAVE? Were all Indian women saints and powerful agents, or hapless victims throughout history? This history attempts to avoid simplistic portrayals of victims and heroines of mythical courage, as these are socially dangerous. It notes that women are subordinate in India from the evidence of a declining sex ratio, lower literacy rates, poorer nutrition, and higher mortality rates than for men. However, it suggests that women have been both objects and agents, occasionally both on different fronts. It will show examples of their active resistance, avenues for self-expression, negotiations with patriarchy, and even their support of oppressive traditions. It is also worth noting that before the emergence of feminism in Europe over two centuries ago, women asserted themselves in India and other cultures. Moreover, the idea of a universal sisterhood gained credence only in the last century, and today’s feminists highlight sisterhood as a bond transcending parochial and national boundaries. Some scholars suggest that in view of its importance in determining women’s social and domestic roles, gender is the sole marker of feminine identity, and that it bifurcates the horizontal stratifications of caste, class, and ethnicity, each with its regional, religious, or chronological variations. However, I suggest that women have multiple identities besides being female, and that they are often dissuaded from uniting in a generic sisterhood due to their strong loyalties to family, caste, class, nation, or religion. It must also be remembered that women’s loyalties have been historically more local and communal, than national or international. Not all women are ardent feminists; some sit on the fence, some are even misogynist. Women have often quietly accepted domestic constraints either because they wish to protect the family even at cost to themselves, or because they are relatively powerless in specific situations, or because in the domestic pecking order, even lowly daughters-in-law can eventually become powerful mothers-in-law.

Introduction

xvii

Despite their multiple identities, such a study is validated simply because, historically, women’s experiences have been uniquely their own, whether in segregated female spaces or integrated public forums. Their agency or objectification is specific to each era, region, culture, economy, polity, and religion. Thus, this book examines the narratives by and about Indian women in the context of their regional history. To study India’s women, we must come to terms with Indian patriarchies and the region’s contradictions of power and pathos, beauty and ugliness, compassion and cruelty, serenity and chaos. OUTLINE OF CHAPTERS Volume 1 contains chapters 1 through 7. Chapter 1 introduces the subcontinent, its women, and its ethno-linguistic matrix of pre-Aryan aboriginal, Dravidian, and Sanskritic cultures; polyandrous, matrilocal, and matrilineal societies; local goddesses and their influence on mainstream societies; Indus Valley artifacts and influence upon later Hinduism. Chapter 2 discusses the coming of the Indo-Aryans, the Vedic era, and effects on women’s education and roles; Vedic goddesses and women as authors of scriptures; the mergers between Aryan and local non-Aryan cultures; the connections between caste, gender hierarchies, and gender norms. Chapter 3 is on non-Vedic scriptures (smritis) like the epics Ramayana and Mahabharata, and their paradigms of motherhood, female sexuality, and education. Chapter 4 is on Buddhism and Jainism, nuns, lay devotees and donors. Chapter 5 examines women’s representations in Hindu and Buddhist art, Sanskrit and Tamil literature during the classical era; the making of Indian society through streams of immigrants, their implications for gender and caste, elite responses in The Laws of Manu, and its resurrection by colonialists and nationalists. Chapter 6 is about Devi traditions in mainstream Hinduism, Tantric Hinduism, and Vajrayana Buddhism; images of Devi in Hindu, Buddhist, Jaina literature and art. Chapter 7 is on medieval devotional (bhakti) women saints and their hymns; feudal norms of sati and domesticity; philanthropic queens and courtesans in north and south India. Volume 2 begins with Chapter 1 on Islam, its textual references to women; arrival and history on the subcontinent; women’s involvement in Shia and Sufi festivals; Turko-Afghan and Mughal princesses and courtesans till 1700. Chapter 2 is on colonial rule (sixteenth to nineteenth century), the impact of hegemonic wars, sexual intermingling between Europeans and Indian women; nineteenth-century missionary impact on education for girls and boys; Victorian influence on elite Indian men and women, and dual patriarchies; legal changes affecting women. Chapter 3 is on Indian male reformers and nationalists and their views on women; female victimization and agency; attempts to pass laws favorable to women on sati, marriage, and divorce; male reformers’ work to educate Hindu, Christian, Muslim

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women; working-class women. Chapter 4 is on Indian feminism, suffrage, Indian nationalism, women nationalists, feminists in international forums and as freedom fighters alongside Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. Chapter 5 is on postindependence issues such as declining sex ratio, violence, globalization, and key political and legal controversies; women’s education and employment; postmodern feminism; women in environmental and working-class struggles; women in politics and the arts; conclusion. NOTES 1. The ratio of females to 1000 males declined from 945 (1991) to 927 (2001) in all states, except for Kerala and Pondicherry, despite the Prenatal Techniques Regulation and Prevention of Misuse Act (1994). The highest decline was in Punjab (874), Haryana (860), Chandigarh (773), Gujarat (921), Delhi (820), vide, Government of India, Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, Census of India 2001, Series 1, India, vol. 4 (Primary Census Abstract, and Total Population Table A-5), vol. 9 (Report and Tables on Age C-14), New Delhi: Controller of Publications, 2003; Asha Krishnakumar, ‘‘Doomed in the Womb?’’ The Hindu, December 14, 2003, 14. Cities with a steep decline in the sex ratio are Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Amritsar, Patiala, Ambala, Gurgaon, Faridabad, Kurukshetra, Ahmedabad, Vaddara, Rajkot, Jaipur, Satara, Nagpur, Salem, Tiruchi, Cuddalore, and Vellore, vide, Shefali Vasudev, ‘‘Missing Girl Child,’’ India Today 28, no. 45, November 10, 2003, 16–22; T. K. Rajalakshmi, ‘‘A Dangerous Trend,’’ Frontline 20, no. 23, November 21, 2003, 95–96. Female literacy rates rose significantly, but women’s education still lags behind men. 1947

India Kerala (highest) Rajasthan (lowest)

6%

1991

2001

39.19% (f)–64.13% (m) 54.28% (f)–75.96% (m) 86% (f)–93.62% (m) 87.86% (f)–94.20% (m) 20.44% (f)–54.99% (m) 44.34% (f)–76.46% (m)

See Sita Anantha Raman, ‘‘Walking Two Paces Behind: Women’s Education in India,’’ in Ananya: A Portrait of India, ed. Sridhar Rao and Nirmal Mattoo (New York: SUNY Press, 1996), 375–96. 2. The Brhadaranyka Upanisad (Chennai: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 2000), chap. 4, 6, and 8. 3. James Mill, The History of British India (1826), 2 vols. (New York: Chelsea House, 1968), 309–10. 4. Verrier Elwin, Leaves in the Jungle (1936; repr., London: Oxford University Press, 1968); Ramachandra Guha, The Unquiet Woods: Ecological Change and Peasant Resistance in the Himalaya (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 57. 5. Edgar Thurston, Castes and Tribes of Southern India, assisted by K. Rangachari, vols. 1–7 (Madras: Madras Government Publications, 1909); W. H. Rivers, The Todas (repr., Jaipur: Rawat Publications, 1986).

6. A. S. Altekar, The Position of Women in Hindu Civilization (1938; repr., Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1999). 7. Personal communication with Vasantha Surya, author of A Word Between Us (Chennai: Sandhya Publications, 2004). 8. The watercolor painting on paper with the Rabindra Bharati Society, Calcutta is depicted in Vidya Dehejia, Indian Art (London: Phaidon, 2002), 410. 9. Meera Kosambi, At the Intersection of Gender Reform and Religious Belief: Pandita Ramabai’s Contribution and the Age of Consent Controversy (Bombay: Research Centre for Women’s Studies, 1993). 10. Barbara Daly Metcalf, ‘‘Islamic Reform and Islamic Women: Maulana Thanawi’s Jewelry of Paradise,’’ in Moral Conduct and Authority: The Place of Adab in South Asian Islam, ed. Barbara Daly Metcalf (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984), 184–95; Shaheeda Lateef, Muslim Women in India: Political and Private Realities, 1890s–1980s (New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1990), 55–94; Gail Minault, ‘‘Women, Legal Reform and Muslim Identity in South Asia,’’ in Jura Gentium: Centre for Philosophy of International Law and Global Politics, ed. Claudio Augustino, Anil Mishra, and Antonella Roninone (1998), http:// www.juragentium.unifi.it/en/surveys/rol/minault.htm. 11. K. N. Chaudhuri, Asia before Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 12. Ainslie Embree, ed., Sources of Indian Tradition: From the Beginning to 1800, vol. 1; Stephen Hay, ed., Sources of Indian Tradition: Modern India and Pakistan, 2nd ed., vol. 2 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988). 13. Sita Anantha Raman and Vasantha Surya, A. Madhaviah: A Biography and a Novel (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005); also Sita Anantha Raman, ‘‘Old Norms in New Bottles: Constructions of Gender and Ethnicity in the Early Tamil Novel,’’ Journal of Women’s History 12, no. 3 (Fall 2000): 93–119.

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ABBREVIATIONS AIADMK

All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam

AIWC

All India Women’s Conference

AS

Arya Samaj

BJP

Bharatiya Janata Party

BS

Brahma Samaj

INC

Indian National Congress

ML

Muslim League

NA

National Archives, New Delhi

NMML

Nehru Memorial Museum and Library

PS

Prarthna Samaj

SEWA

Self-Employed Women’s Association

TNA

Tamil Nadu Archives, Chennai

TSA

Theosophical Society Archives

VS

Vedanta Society

WIA

Women’s Indian Association

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1 MUSLIM WOMEN IN PREMODERN INDIA

And recite what is rehearsed to you in your homes, of the Signs of Allah and His Wisdom: for Allah is All-Subtle, All-Aware. For Muslim men and women, for believing men and women, for devout men and women, for true men and women, for men and women who are patient and constant, for men and women who humble themselves, for men and women who give in charity, for men and women who fast, for men and women who guard their chastity, and for men and women who engage much in Allah’s remembrance, for them has Allah prepared forgiveness and great reward. Qur’an 33:34–351 INTRODUCTION Arab traders introduced Islam into South Asia in the seventh century after the death of its founder, the Prophet Muhammad (570–630 CE). In life, the gentle mystic had contended against warlike adversaries over polytheism, female infanticide, and the denial of female inheritance rights. His revelations from Allah are recorded in the Qur’an, which contains some humane guidelines on the treatment of women and girls. Islam emphasizes the individual’s moral imperative and vouchsafes spiritual equality to all believers, irrespective of gender or class. Early Arabic women took the scripture’s chapters (suras) and verses seriously, questioned male authority, ran businesses, voiced opinions in public, and fought battles. The Qur’an’s panaceas for gender justice thus remain relevant for India whose female Muslim population (62.85 million) is five times greater than that of Saudi Arabia (12.25 million).2 Islam marked a shift from the tribe to the family and the Muslim brotherhood or umma (Qur’an 2:143). However, as Allah and umma are envisaged as male, Islam inherited the patriarchy of its Arabic forbears; political crises often raked up controversies over women’s social space and etiquette.

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Medieval clerical pronouncements on some ambiguous suras favoring men became institutionalized. Ambiguity also stemmed from the nonchronological arrangement of the suras, since Muhammad received the revelations over 20 years (610–632), sometimes in critical life phases. For example, the verses from Medina reflect his preoccupation with war and marriage (622–630), but they reaffirmed pre-Islamic polygamy and the female veil (hijab [Arabic]). 3 Muslims consider two other sets of texts sacred, namely the Hadith comprised of the Prophet’s sayings recorded by his companions, and the Sharia laws derived from the Qur’an and the Hadith. Female inheritance, marriage, divorce, and the veil have been defined by five schools of Sharia jurisprudence. These are the Sunni schools of Hanafi in north India, and Shafi in south India; and the Jafari school for Shias. The Prophet tried to reform Arabic society, but he could not predict that medieval clerics would reinterpret suras to penalize women, that gender perspectives would change in the modern era, or that Islam would spread to remote regions whose local customs would compound the problems of Muslim women. This is the case in South Asia where Arabs first brought Islam to the Malabar coast and later occupied Sind (711) through the fiat of the religious head (Khalif) at Baghdad. Islam was the vanguard religion of later Turko-Afghans and Mughals who established kingdoms (sultanates) at Delhi (1206–1526), Deccan, Bengal, Gujarat, and the later Mughal empire (1526–1857). Although kings (sultans) periodically forced conversions, most lower castes were swayed by Islam’s promise of social equality and by Sufi mystics who preached a love for God that is akin to Hindu bhakti. The long history of Islam on the subcontinent has resulted in layers of genetic admixtures through marriage or cohabitation, and cultural and linguistic exchanges within each region.4 The regional bonds of language, food, custom, and art between Muslims and Hindus in one region sometimes exceed those with coreligionists elsewhere. In this adaptive process, Muslim women were agents of change by bridging the gulf between secluded female quarters (zenana) and the outside world of Hindu traders, artisans, and servants. Cultural exchange is visible in their speech patterns (begamati zabaan) that are different from those of men.5 Yet, Muslim women’s legal advantages eroded in the Indian milieu, and they were inhibited by the hijab (pardah [Persian]) and the zenana. Despite such constraints, women painted, wrote, read, sewed, took part in female rites, and even rode horses wearing the hijab. Today, they contend with three sets of patriarchal constraints, viz., Islamic laws reinterpreted by medieval clerics; preexisting gender relations in India; and reconstructed gender stereotypes as religious identities crystallized in the modern nation-state. As both women and members of a religious minority in India, they are subject to dual discriminations. This chapter describes some female social and legal problems by disentangling the gender dilemmas from the Qur’an’s ethical intent6 and by placing their narratives in the context of India’s medieval history.7

MUSLIM WOMEN IN PREMODERN INDIA

3

ARABIC ANTECEDENTS Islamic Tenets and Gender Islam means peace after ‘‘submission’’ to Allah, indicating that the believer’s personal relationship with God needed no intermediaries. The first of five tenets (shahada) unequivocally declares that Allah is One, and that Muhammad was His Messenger (rasul), the final ‘‘seal’’ of Biblical prophets. Muslims thus also believe in the Old Testament, its prophets from Abraham to Jesus, archangels, a Day of Judgment with heaven and hell, and injunctions against engraved images.8 The Qur’an decries three preIslamic Arabic goddesses as mirages and false creations. These verses possibly shaped Muslim antipathy to the worship of icons and goddesses in India: Have you seen Lat, and ’Uzza? And another, the third (goddess) Manat? What? For you the male sex, and for Him, the female? Behold, such would be indeed a division most unfair! Qur’an 53:19–229 The second tenet (salat) is of prayer five times daily facing Mecca where Muhammad was born. This can be alone at home or in congregation at a mosque, as the site is less significant than the believer’s spiritual attitude. The early mosque was adjacent to nine rooms where Muhammad resided with his wives and family. He occasionally entered the prayer room after arising from his conjugal bed, perhaps to challenge earlier restrictions on menstruating women or on prayers immediately after intercourse.10 However, in tune with contemporary customs, the Qur’an forbids menstrual intercourse as ‘‘a hurt and a pollution’’ (sura 2:222), but it advises sexual purity for both genders.11 The Prophet’s peers also commented upon his kindness and gentle respect for women. The third Islamic tenet (zakat) is a charitable tithe for the umma; the fourth is a month of fast during Ramadan when Muslims refrain from sex, alcohol, and impure thoughts and actions; and the fifth is a pilgrimage to Mecca (hajj) at least once in a lifetime.12 Prophet and Women Having lost his mother Amina in childbirth and his father Abdu’llah as a child, Muhammad was raised by his uncle Abu Talib.13 His reputation for honesty attracted the attention of Khadija Bint Khawaylid, a wealthy female caravan owner who employed and then married him. Muhammad was 25, several years younger than Khadija, but the marriage was happy, since she believed in him and became his first convert. Of seven children, the daughters Ruqayya and Fatima alone survived, so that their descendents

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stem from a female line in an otherwise patriarchal society. In 610, Muhammad began to meditate at Mount Hira where he received his first revelation (sura 96) through the voice of Archangel Jibreel (Gabriel). At first, the bewildered Prophet entreated Khadija to cover him, as he feared he was going mad. He had divulged his anxiety to her, rather than to his male companions, but Khadija reassured him of his mystical uniqueness.14 The deaths of Khadija and his uncle lost him the support of the Meccan elite, and he fled to Medina (hejira) in 622. The next eight years of political tensions were marked by 26 battles and marriages to several women. He returned in triumph to Mecca after his views gained credence, and died peacefully two years later. Muhammad never claimed to be more than a human, and he showed his interest in worldly affairs. He treated his wives courteously, and their importance is reflected in their title as the ‘‘Mothers of Islam’’ (Umm-al-Momineen). The Qur’an’s rules on polygyny, divorce, and the veil were formulated with reference to his wives, some being much older than him like Khadija and Sawda. Several were far younger like his favorite A’isha, a brilliant, fiery personality and author of 1,000 Hadiths; Umm Salama, a 29-year-old widow with four children, and a friend who inspired his revelations on women; and the beautiful divorcee Zaynab Bint Jahsh who led him to verses that reified the hijab. A few were war captives whom he freed, like Juwayriyya, Safiyya the Jew, and Maria the Copt whose son died in infancy.15 One of his first male converts was his cousin Ali who married his daughter Fatima the mystic. Other friends and relations through marriage who succeeded him as Khalif were his friend Abu Bakr whose daughter was A’isha; Umar whose daughter Hafsa was also Muhammad’s wife; and Uthman who married his daughter Ruqayya. Muhammad’s death resulted in a sectarian schism between orthodox Sunni Muslims led by Abu Bakr and A’isha, and dissident Shias led by Ali and Fatima. Muslim women accord respect to three female role models, since Muhammad often relied on them for advice. They were his wife Khadija who diplomatically handled tribesmen, Fatima the first woman mystic, and A’isha. Wives Umm Salama and A’isha often accompanied him into battle and offered their views on political strategies. After a victory, Muhammad received several women captives whom he freed but also occasionally married to legalize his protection, so that they were more friends rather than wives. He disliked taking captives and wept upon discovering that a prisoner was the sister of his wet nurse Halima. After hearing her story, he gave her freedom and gifts.16 Muslim women often draw special inspiration from Umm Salama’s questions that led to revelations on female spiritual equality (Qur’an 33:34–35), since divine rewards accrue from faith and virtue, not from gender. These verses led to another chapter named entirely for women (sura 4, An-Nisaa). Umm Salama was ready to die for Islam as the new religion decried the capture of women as booty in war.17

MUSLIM WOMEN IN PREMODERN INDIA

5

Qur’an: Medieval Text, Modern Relevance Islam recognizes no miracles except the Qur’an, which states that the genders are spiritually equal as both have souls. However, as women were socially inferior, their legal rights are explained in suras 2:221–241 (The Heifer); 4:1–43 (The Women); 16:57–59 (The Bee); 24:1–34 (The Light); and 33:28–37, 49–55 (The Confederates). This verse condemns preIslamic female infanticide (16:58–60): When news is brought to one of them, of (the birth of) a female child, his face darkens, and he is filled with inward grief! With shame does he hide himself from his people, because of the bad news he has had! Shall he retain it on (sufferance and) contempt, or bury it in the dust? Ah! What an evil (choice) they decide on! To those who believe in the Hereafter, applies the similitude of evil: to Allah applies the highest similitude, for He is the Exalted of Power, full of Wisdom.18 Female Inheritance Rights The Qur’an forbids men to treat women harshly or as inherited property (sura 4:19), stipulating special rules for the upkeep of orphans (4:6–9); widows’ inheritance (2:240); widow remarriage after four months (2:234); female divorce and alimony (2:237);19 women’s right to privacy (24:27) and chastity, through the hijab (24:31).20 Qur’anic rulings were later amplified by the Hadith and codified into the five schools of Sharia laws (four Sunni, one Shia) in the medieval era. The Qur’an emphasizes a father’s financial responsibility to maintain his daughters, and his moral duty to marry them to believers (sura 2:221), if he wished to avoid hell. The chapter on women (sura 4) was intended to prevent female destitution by ensuring that daughters and widows inherited property. It urges men not to dissipate the wealth of heirs and orphans but to treat children kindly (4:2, 10). Although daughters inherited half the sums received by sons (4:10–12), this was a praiseworthy innovation in the medieval era. Another verse requires men to give their wives a dowry or mehr upon marriage (4:4). A later chapter asks men who divorce their wives to ‘‘release them in a handsome manner’’ with a gift (33:49).21 However, after recommending the mehr for the wife, the next verse (4:5) warns men not to entrust their property to ‘‘the weak-minded’’ (al sufaha) but to clothe, feed, and speak words of kindness to them. Since Muhammad himself valued the opinions of his intelligent wives, he may have perhaps added this cautionary verse not to trust ignorant women, since few were literate in his era. However, misogynists have seized upon these words to denigrate women as incapable of managing property, especially since the sura also solemnly declared that ‘‘Men are the protectors and maintainers

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of women’’ as Allah had given them greater strength, and that righteous women should remain ‘‘devoutly obedient’’ to their husbands (4:34).22 The medieval verses advocate kind paternalism, but they do not guarantee equality by today’s norms. Relevance for Modern Indian Women Recent events show that the Qur’an’s injunctions to return the wife’s mehr upon divorce are sometimes disregarded in South Asia. This reduces women to destitution, as seen in the famous case of Shah Bano whose husband divorced her but withheld her mehr (1985). Although the Indian civil court ruled in her favor, this was overruled by Muslim clerics. The Indian government then placated its Muslim voters with a law potentially detrimental to women’s rights.23 In Kerala, Mappila Muslims have virtually given up their matrilineal customs by reducing mehr to nominal amounts and have also adopted the patriarchal Hindu custom of paying a dowry to the bridegroom. Women are thus made more financially vulnerable.24 Polygamy, Divorce, and Wives Tribal antecedents are reflected in the Qur’an’s support to polygamy (4:3; 33:50–51) and to gender inequality. Men were allowed up to four wives by formal contract (nikah-nama) to be witnessed by Muslim clerics, but nomadic Arabic traders often took ‘‘temporary’’ wives during long absences. The Prophet was an exception as he was allowed more wives (33:50), and he used this authority to save female captives after war. The Qur’an sternly admonished men to treat them with ‘‘kindness and equity.’’ It banned incest and ‘‘lewdness’’ (4:19–23), and it also stated: O ye who believe! Ye are forbidden to inherit women against their will. Nor should you treat them with harshness. Qur’an 4:1925 The Qur’an views marriage as a contract between adults, although child marriages were common in Muhammad’s era. The Prophet’s wives were adult, except for A’isha who was six when she married him when he was a 40-year-old widower, although the marriage was probably consummated only on her menarche. However, this Qur’anic precedent has made it difficult to overturn Muslim child marriages in India. Muslim women have greater customary rights than Hindu women, as they can initiate divorce for legitimate reasons, remarry as widows, and no impunity is attached to marriages between older women and younger men. However, these particular rights were not given to the widows of the Prophet. Muhammad remained monogamous until after Khadija’s death,

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7

and tradition points to his restraint from conjugal relations with wives whom he valued as companions or did not love. The Qur’an advises his ‘‘consorts’’ not to esteem ‘‘the life of this world, and the glitter,’’ but to ‘‘stay quietly in your houses, and make not a dazzling display’’ (33:28–33), be exceptionally chaste as they were ‘‘not like other women’’ (33:32–33), but the ‘‘mothers’’ of the umma. It also cautioned men not to cast eyes on his wives (33:53) or widows.26 Such injunctions reified docile domesticity for women. Yet, the Prophet’s wives felt that the Qur’an freed them from pre-Islamic male domination, as he tacitly encouraged his wives’ independent opinions. Muhammad’s wife Umm Salama resisted interference from his companion Umar who preached docility to his women. 27 Muhammad then ruminated alone for 29 days before receiving a revelation that stated that in gender disputes, diplomacy was preferable to authoritarianism. Relevance for Modern Indian Women The Qur’an’s reforms were a response to medieval gender inequalities, but as proscriptive scriptural laws, they are rigidly enforced despite changed modern circumstances. Recent Indian Muslim feminists have therefore demanded a reconsideration of Islamic laws on divorce. The Qur’an does not favor divorce but allows women to divorce husbands for legitimate reasons such as cruelty or physical defects in a spouse. Men cannot reclaim the dower (mehr) they had given the wife at marriage, thus enabling the divorced woman to sustain herself independently. Sharia laws do not allow outside agencies or civil judges to separate couples who have signed the marriage contract (nikah-nama). Sharia requires a waiting period of three months (iddah) before reconciliation or separation in order to detect a possible pregnancy. Yet, the Sharia laws on divorce make it significantly easier for men to obtain divorce. Three methods for men to initiate a divorce (talaq) can be undertaken without the wife’s consent. While Sunnis and Shias file for male talaq through different legal methods, a reprehensible method of triple talaq has existed since Muhammad’s era. This consists of the husband simply uttering ‘‘talaq’’ three times even without his wife’s knowledge, but he must return her mehr. Although Muhammad disapproved of this type of talaq, it continues in India and elsewhere. Female instituted divorce (khula) requires a wife to return her mehr to the husband as compensation, thus buying back her freedom. Although the Qur’an allows men up to four wives, individual couples can insert a clause against bigamy in the nikah-nama, and this legally entitles the wife to ask for khula. According to the Hadith, some marriages were so displeasing to God that they could be dissolved for no other reason. The Qur’an made an attempt to reform divorce customs in Arabia, but Muslim women still face unequal laws in South Asia and elsewhere.28

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Hijab or Pardah Although the Qur’an declared gender equality (33:35), it advised a screen (hijab) between the genders when they conversed (33:53). Ninth-century accounts describe the episode in which a boorish guest Anas bin Malik remained in the presence of Muhammad’s bride, Zaynab Bint Jahsh, despite the Prophet’s request of privacy. Muhammad left the chamber to ruminate on this offensive behavior until he received the revelatory sura on the hijab, which advised men not to transgress upon female privacy. The verses express Allah’s anger over insensitivity to his Messenger, caution men to respect women, and advise a ‘‘curtain’’ of modesty between the genders. This had a subtle implication, that veils cannot hide humans from God. The verses state: 33:53. O ye who believe! Enter not the Prophet’s houses—until leave is given you—for a meal, (and then) not (so early as) to wait for its preparation: but when ye are invited, enter; and when ye have taken your meal, disperse, without seeking familiar talk. Such (behaviour) annoys the Prophet as he is shy to dismiss you, but Allah is not shy (to tell you) the truth. And when ye ask (his ladies) for anything ye want, ask them from before a screen: that makes for greater purity for your hearts and for theirs. Nor is it right for you that ye should annoy Allah’s Messenger, or that ye should marry his widows after him at any time. Truly such a thing is in Allah’s sight an enormity. 55. There is no blame (on those ladies if they appear) before their fathers or sons, their brothers, or their brothers’ sons, or their sisters’ sons, or their women, or the (slaves) whom their right hands possess. And, (ladies), fear Allah; for Allah is Witness to all things.29 Another verse advises women also to use the head scarf or hijab when venturing outside the home, as protection from lecherous men (33:59): O Prophet! Tell thy wives and daughters, and the believing women, that they should cast their outer garments over their persons (when out of doors): that is most convenient, that they should be known (as such) and not molested: And Allah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful.30 A vehement chapter also warns men not to slander women’s chastity (24:1–31), probably as a response to false allegations of adultery against A’isha. This led to an injunction to women to use the hijab to cover both head and bosom. The veil’s original intent was to promote sexual ‘‘purity,’’ but it has historically constrained Muslim women’s freedom of movement and often secluded them. 31 Later Muslim clerics argued that seclusion guarded women from harsh worldly affairs, but it legitimized male agency

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and female passivity. Muslim girls are thus often constrained from attending schools, even those in mosques. This led modern Indian feminists to campaign against pardah as an outdated, medieval practice that inhibited their equal right to education.32 Sects and Early Women Martyrs Muhammad’s death led to a religious schism between Sunni supporters of Abu Bakr as leader (Khalif) and dissident Shias who favored Ali, Muhammad’s son-in-law. Muhammad’s wife A’isha fought bravely but unsuccessfully against Shias in the Battle of the Camel. Sunnis thus regard her as ‘‘a pearl amongst women,’’ as she composed about 1,000 Hadiths. However, Shias accuse A’isha of intensifying the rift through undue female interference. Shias revere Fatima for her devoted care of the Prophet, after whose death, she died from grief. Shias also lament the Prophet’s descendents through Fatima and Ali. They were their martyred sons Hasan and Husayn; their daughters Zaynab and Umm Khultum, and granddaughter Fatima Khubra, all three bridal widows; and Sakina, a four-year-old granddaughter who died from Sunni inflicted wounds.33 During the somber festival of Muharram, Shia women and men resurrect these events by singing dirges and through bloody rites of selfflagellation. Shia Muslims also conduct mournful laments and ceremonies within the zenana. QUEENS IN INDIAN SULTANATES Settlement and Gender Arab traders initially disseminated Islam along the Konkan, Kerala, and Tamil coasts, and in neighboring islands where they settled with local wives. This was qualitatively different from later Perso-Arabic court practices like the hijab/pardah and segregated female quarters or haram/zenana, introduced by sultans across India. In 711, the Khalif of Baghdad invaded Sind to retaliate against the Hindu raja’s plunder of Arab vessels, and a new era of cultural fusions began. West Asian men and women wore full-body shifts, and their courts were notable for female seclusion through pardah and the haram. Although the Qur’an requires a head-bosom scarf or hijab but not a face veil (niqab), West Asian women moved outside the haram in a fullbody cloak (burqah) that shrouded them from the public eye. These clothes became marks of elite culture in Indian sultanates (post–twelfth century) and the Mughal empire (post–sixteenth century).34 Historical antecedents have shaped Muslim women’s lives, since female inheritance, divorce, and mehr are affected by regional customs and the specific school of Sharia for local groups. Thus, northern Sunni women follow the Hanafi school, while the Shafi school of laws prevails in the south.

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Shia laws are based on the Jafari school, but there are differences among subsects like the Isna Ashari, Bohra, and Ismaili/Khoja.35 While most Indian Muslims are descended from local converts, there was an infusion of West and Central Asian genes due to marriage, cohabitation, or rape during war. The elite or ashrafs of north India can trace Turkish, Afghan, or Persian forbears, while some are descended from Ethiopian Habshis who married women in the Deccan. There were Sunni kingdoms in the north and Shia sultanates in Multan, Kathiawar, Kashmir, Oudh (now Uttar Pradesh), and the Deccan (Bijapur and Hyderabad).36 Sultans often converted subjects to impress court clerics or ulama (alim [singular]), or to justify their pillage of local temples. However, most Muslims are descended from voluntary converts swayed by Sufi mystics (pirs) whose royal patrons included Akbar (1556–1605).37 Many aristocratic Muslim women were devotees of pirs, and their practices could deviate from more conservative methods required by the ulama. Despite Islam’s promise of equality, Muslim society was stratified by ethnicity and class, and dominated by foreign-born ashrafs.38 Muslim political interactions with Hindu Vijayanagar, the Rajput, Maratha, Nayaka, and Sikh states also brought about religious, linguistic, and cultural mergers. Hindus adopted the pardah in north India, while the zenana became a feature of their courts after the thirteenth century. Women and Politics Sultan Raziyya (1236–40) The Delhi Sultanate (1206–1526) was the center of Islamic authority on the subcontinent. Its first important ruler was Iltutmish (1211–36) whose religious zeal to convert Hindu subjects did not equal that of the court ulama. Thus, during territorial wars with Hindu kingdoms, Muslim sultans periodically went on conversion sprees to satisfy the ulama and ambitious Turkish nobles (amirs). Upon the death of his first son Nasir-uddin Mahmud in 1229, Iltutmish appointed Raziyya as sultan (1236–40), as she was his oldest child and daughter by his first queen. Iltutmish deemed his other sons to be dissolute or incapable. Raziyya was the only Muslim woman to rule on her own merit in India, a remarkable feat since she called herself sultan instead of begam (queen). The main source on her short regime of three years, six months, and six days is Minhaj Siraj Juzjani’s Tabaqat-I-Nasiri. Raziyya appointed Juzjani as chief judge or qazi, and principal of the first Muslim college in Delhi. Juzjani respected his patron, but as he addressed her as sultan, he obviously felt that she was qualified to be a military ruler (Juzjani I:457).39 Moreover, since he was also the qazi for subsequent rulers, he does not seem to have been unduly biased. Juzjani attributed Raziyya’s downfall to her gender, rather than to structural weaknesses in the Delhi Sultanate.40 Juzjani wrote this summation of Raziyya:

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Sultan Raziyya was endowed with all the admirable attributes and qualifications necessary for kings; but, as she did not attain the destiny, in her creation, of being computed among men, of what advantage were all these excellent qualifications to her?41 The powerful vested interests of nobles and some ulama threatened Raziyya’s legitimate claim to the throne. The ulama relied on charitable gifts and endowments for a training college from the royal family of Iltutmish, Raziyya, and Shah Turkan Khatun, a concubine whom Iltutmish married and elevated to queen. After Nasir-uddin Mahmud’s death, Turkan Khatun’s ambitions escalated for her own son Rukh-nuddin Firuz to become sultan, and she wooed the ulama through ‘‘many offerings and much charity on learned men, saiyids, and devotees.’’ The ulama chose sides in this quarrel, with their eyes on the candidate most likely to succeed, while the nobles resented Raziyya’s opposition to established conventions. The Turkish amirs belonged to a clique of ‘‘The Forty’’ who had elected Iltutmish to power and in return had received life-term land grants (iqtas) and posts as provincial governors (maliks). According to Juzjani, Iltutmish left a document declaring Raziyya as his heir, citing the precedent of earlier Muslim queens in Persia and Egypt.42 Iltutmish distrusted Rukh-nuddin, a frivolous youth addicted to drink and concubines, yet placated him with the post of governor in an important province. Although many amirs distrusted Turkan Khatun, they supported Rukh-nuddin, while a faction led by the amir Junaydi favored her other son Ghiyas-uddin. The most ambitious was Balban who supported Raziyya whom he hoped to manipulate as a figurehead. A few nobles supported Qutb-uddin, another of Iltutmish’s sons, but he was cruelly blinded by Turkan Khatun when her son Rukh-nuddin served as sultan for a few months.43 Raziyya had diplomatically relinquished her claim to Rukh-nuddin, but with some allies, she overthrew her brother in a coup that year. Raziyya’s success led to the formal declaration of allegiance by amirs and the ulama, including Juzjani. Her initial coins bear her name along with that of Iltutmish (1237–38), but after this date, she boldly dispensed with her father’s name. Raziyya seems to have been free of contemporary racial prejudices, as she distrusted her Turkish countrymen and raised respected non-Turks to positions of importance. She thus appointed an Afghan as governor, and she raised the rank of Jamal-uddin-Yaqut, an Ethiopian Habshi, to that of chief amir and advisor.44 She also dispensed with the veil and appeared in public in male attire but with the head turban, as required by the Qur’an. Juzjani states that she rode upon elephants, and that she exhibited the qualities of ‘‘military leader.’’ Clearly, Raziyya wished to highlight her preeminent position as Sultan and to downplay her femininity to show that she was not a puppet of the Tajik and Turkish nobility. Raziyya may also have had the support of the local

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denizens of Delhi. Contemporary rumors of an affair between Raziyya and Yaqut are indicated in Juzjani’s statements. Juzjani wrote that the Ethiopian ‘‘acquired favor or closeness in attendance upon the Queen with the result that the Turkish amirs and maliks became jealous of him.’’45 At this point, she had completely alienated the prominent amir Ikhtiyar-uddin-Aytegin. In 1239 she could quell an uprising by the amir Kabir Khan in Lahore. However, next year, she was unable to subdue a more serious rebellion by Aytegin and Altuniya who governed the region of Tabarhindh.46 Altuniya killed Yaqut in battle, took Raziyya prisoner, and installed her brother Bahram as sovereign. However, Altuniya fell in love with Raziyya who married him, perhaps seeking an ally in her renewed bid for the throne. Although Raziyya and Altuniya marched toward Delhi, their allies deserted them, the campaign floundered, and they were killed by Hindu highway robbers on October 14, 1240.47 What were the consequences of Raziyya’s exceptional challenge to male authority? Raziyya had made a short but courageous move to establish women’s right to be sovereigns on their own merit. However, her failure to remain in power served to deter later women who aspired to be queens in medieval India.48 Contemporary sources indicate that kings and nobles distrusted women as leaders, and in this frontier Islamic state in India, mutual dependency bound Turkish or Afghan sultans to powerful military amirs. In the chaotic decades between 1240 and 1266, Balban served as the de facto ruler until formally appointed sultan (1260–87). He then relegated women to the zenana and curbed their political ‘‘meddling.’’ The amirs and many ulama distrusted Raziyya and saw her overthrow as proof that women could not hold sovereign power alone. Thereafter, princesses wielded power through minor sons, but their authority was confined to the zenana in the Delhi Sultanate. Due to royal polygamy, there was no dearth of offspring from minor queens and concubines, making contests for the throne commonplace in medieval India. Muslim clerics therefore decried women’s power in their texts on governance. The scholar Isami (ca. 1350) thus declared that Raziyya should have made ‘‘cotton her companion and grief her wine-cup,’’ as ‘‘a woman’s place was at her spinning wheel’’ (charkha). 49 Despite this venomous indictment of sultan Raziyya, the African humanist Ibn Batuta (1333–45) noted that her tomb was a popular pilgrimage site.50 Pardah Politics in the Delhi Sultanate There were some royal women who struggled for control over the throne during the first century of the Delhi Sultanate. However, their strivings took place in the zenana walls, and few were successful or as talented as Raziyya. As Mongols encroached on the empire from the northwest, there was another contest among Iltutmish’s male heirs and the Turkish nobles.

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Raziyya’s stepsister, as well as a widow of Iltutmish who bore the title of ‘‘Malika-i-Jahan’’ (Mistress of the World), used women’s Qur’anic rights to divorce and remarriage to realign the factions behind the throne. Malika was deeply ambitious for her own son Nasir-uddin Mahmud, an ascetic prince in prison. Her ally was the amir Qutlugh Khan whom she married, and she pressured the dissolute sultan Ala-uddin Masud Shah to release his uncle Nasir-uddin Mahmud from prison. The unwary Ala-uddin Masud Shah agreed, after which Malika and Qutlugh Khan incited nobles to overthrow him and to crown Nasir-uddin as sultan. As Nasir-uddin’s father-in-law was the powerful Balban, he was successful in ascending the throne.51 Eventually tiring of his mother’s authority, Nasir-uddin appointed Qutlugh Khan governor of Bihar and exiled his mother and her husband from Delhi. The couple finally sought refuge with Mongol kings in Central Asia.52 An important source was scholar Zia-uddin Barni (1285–1357) who wrote accounts of Jalal-uddin Khalji (1290–96) and his nephew Ala-uddin Khalji (1296–1316). Although the subjects were largely Hindu, Barni described his vision of the ideal Muslim kingdom and monarch in his political document, Fatawa-yi-Jahandari. Barni drew a line of male authority originating in Allah, proceeding to Prophet Muhammad as his emissary, and ending with the Delhi sultan as Allah’s earthly representative. The repeated emphasis on the word ‘‘king’’ reminded the sultan of his responsibility to uphold Islam, that Allah was the real king, and that earthly ‘‘kings’’ were merely instruments of ‘‘His Decree and Divine Power’’ (folio 143).53 Barni underscored political patriarchy by claiming that ‘‘the head of religion and the head of government are twin brothers’’ (folios 247b–248a).54 Finally, Barni drew a parallel between the ‘‘Divine Throne’’ and ‘‘Godlike attributes’’ of a perfect ‘‘king’’ (folios 193a–195a).55 As women were excluded from this discourse, female political ambitions could be pursued only in the zenana. Ala-uddin Khilji cruelly murdered his uncle Jalal-uddin Khilji and seized the throne. His first years as sultan witnessed a rebellion by his widowed aunt Malika-i-Jahan (no relation of the earlier queen by that title). The widow tried to claim the throne for her son Rukh-nuddin Ibrahim Shah. In his historical, Tariq-i-Firuz Shahi, Barni described Malika-i-Jahan as ‘‘the silliest of the silly’’ as she could not outmaneuver Ala-uddin Khalji and was ultimately a failure.56 Distrustful of women, Ala-uddin kept his zenana under close supervision. A misogynist irritated by women’s customary rites during marriage and childbirth, Ala-uddin may have had a homosexual relationship with the eunuch convert Malik Kafur whom he appointed as his deputy and chief general. Other sources describe his lust for Rajput queens Padmini of Chittor, who eluded him through jauhar, and Kamladevi of Gujarat whom he captured and married as a trophy wife.57 Historian Isami informs us that at least one Turko-Afghan queen was famous for pious philanthropy. She was Mahduma-i-Jahan, dowager queen

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of Ghiyas-uddin Tughlaq (1320–24), and mother of sultan Mohammad bin Tughlaq (1325–51). Mahduma-i-Jahan established several free hospitals where patients and visitors were fed regularly. She also founded hostels for foreign visitors who were given free elegant repasts and gifts of silk, linen, and cotton cloths embroidered with gold thread.58 Maldive Matriliny A different scenario of Islamic acculturation and gender relations emerged in Dravidian regions with earlier matrilineal traditions. When southern communities adopted Islam, Arab traders often married the daughters of wealthy converts. Since matrilineal traditions favored them as sons-in-law, they did not question such customs, so that there ensued an eclectic mix of social matriliny and Islamic religious patriarchy. This is seen in the Muslim Mapillas of Kerala, and the Muslim inhabitants of the Maldive Islands who embraced Arabic Islam but not Persian court customs of north India. In the fourteenth century, visitor Ibn Batuta noted admiringly that a queen ruled the Maldive Islands, a rarity in Muslim kingdoms where women’s political authority was restricted to the zenana. Ibn Batuta wrote: One of the wonders of these islands is that they have a woman for their ruler, viz., Khadijah, daughter of Sultan Jalal-ud-din Umar, son of Sultan Salal-ud-din Salih-ul-Bangali.59 Ibn Batuta also praised customs favorable to women in the Muslim kingdom of Hanaur on the Konkan coast near modern Goa. He praised Hanaur Muslims for starting as many schools for girls as for boys, indicating that girls were viewed as an asset, and not a burden. He wrote: I saw in Hanaur thirteen schools for the instruction of girls, and twenty-three for boys, a thing I have not seen anywhere else.60 Sultana Chand Bibi of Ahmadnagar One of the most remarkable Muslim queens was Chand Bibi (1550–1600), or Chand Sultana of Ahmadnagar, one of five sultanates eventually absorbed by the Mughal empire. Chand Bibi’s fame rests upon her regency for underage sultans in Bijapur (1579–84) and later in Ahmadnagar (1591–1600), and also for her legendary resistance to the siege by the Mughal emperor Akbar (1556–1605). Chand Bibi was killed in an internecine struggle among her own officers shortly before Ahmadnagar succumbed to an apparently ‘‘savage’’ Mughal attack.61 Chand Bibi’s parents were sultan Husayn Nizam Shah and queen (begam) Khonza Humayun in Ahmadnagar. Chand Bibi was married at the age of 12

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to Bijapur’s sultan Ali Adil Shah as a part of a treaty to realign the Deccan Muslim kingdoms. The alliance was cemented by the marriage of Chand Bibi’s brother Burhan Nizam Shah II, future sultan of Ahmadnagar, to a Bijapur princess. After her husband’s assassination in 1579, dowager Chand Bibi became regent for his nine-year-old son by another wife, the later celebrated sultan Ibrahim Adil Shah II (d. 1626) of Bijapur. Factional disputes were common in the Deccan among foreign-born ashrafs, Habshis, and local Muslims called Dakkhinis, and these struggles were often provoked by powerful eunuchs in the courts. Chand Bibi governed wisely with the help of Ikhlas Khan, a Habshi minister who also influenced her ward Ibrahim Adil Shah whose later reign was notable for its tolerance and innovation.62 In 1584, Chand Bibi returned to her home state of Ahmadnagar. In an effort to centralize his empire, Akbar sent missions in 1591 to Ahmadnagar and Bijapur. Ahmadnagar’s sultan Burhan Nizam Shah II repulsed his emissaries and refused to cede the province of Berar to the Mughals. However, upon his untimely death, Chand Bibi became regent for her infant nephew; and under her leadership, Ahmadnagar resisted the Mughal siege. When bombs were detonated to bring down the fort in 1595–96, Chand Bibi successfully repaired the walls and continued to hold out until relief forces arrived from Bijapur and Golconda.63 The Mughal army was weakened by squabbles between Akbar’s generals and his alcoholic son Murad. In 1599, Akbar personally pitched camp outside Ahmadnagar with his 80,000 troops to take command over the siege. In August 1600, the Mughals breached the fort, and in the ensuing commotion, Chand Bibi was killed by jealous officers. Ahmadnagar then ceded to the Mughal empire.64 WOMEN IN THE MUGHAL ERA Bridging Gendered Spaces The Mughals were descended from nomadic Chagatai Turks and Mongols whose women had authority and ownership rights. Although the Mughal empire in India has been called a ‘‘patrilineal military state,’’ its rulers prized an earlier Persian Muslim tradition of regnant queens. European visitors and later historians often described the engendering of space, with the public court being dominated by men, and female seclusion through pardah within the haram (zenana). Yet, public and private worlds were not as discrete as once imagined, as several royal women wielded considerable authority from within the haram, and they were immensely wealthy in their own right. While Mughals respected the haram’s sanctity and their women as the ‘‘veiled ones,’’ these gendered spheres were scenes of female activity, not passivity, with permeable boundaries. There existed bridges of communication, as the advice of senior royal women on political (public) issues

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and family (semi-private) matters had ramifications for the state.65 The haram itself consisted of two sections, that is, private chambers solely for women, and common areas where close family men congregated to celebrate births, birthdays, female rites at marriage, and other occasions. Moreover, royal women were not excluded from knowledge of public events, dramas, or sermons which they often watched through grilled trellises in the haram. They had opportunities for intellectual stimulation and were often accomplished women who read, wrote poetry, and painted. Several were patrons of painters, architects, and writers. Female Qur’anic scholars (ustad bis) instructed them as girls; and they had access to Akbar’s vast library with books on world religions and on secular Persian, Turkish, and Indian literature. They sewed, played board games like chess and Parcheesi, played polo, and hunted outdoors. Contemporary accounts, paintings, and architecture inform us about this magnificent period in Indian history. Early Mughal Women Babur led a semi-nomadic life of political turmoil before he founded the Mughal empire at Agra in 1526. During battles, he was accompanied by his wives, children, and extended family of female relations who went from one base camp to another in covered litters or palanquins, and camped in pardah within closely guarded, opulent tents. In her work Ahval-i-Humayun Badshah, his gifted daughter Gulbadan Begam (1523–1603) describes pardah tents as lined with cloth-of-gold and having exotic comforts like silk cushions, deep carpets, a jeweled throne, jeweled drinking cups, and ewers for rose water.66 While enjoying these luxuries and fine foods in temporary shelters, senior women helped to plan the military strategies of princes-in-waiting. It was in this atmosphere that Gulbadan was born to her mother Qut-luq-nigar Khanim before the conquest of northern India.67 In his autobiography Babur Nama, Babur referred respectfully to the ‘‘royal ladies.’’ He paid particular tribute to his loyal wife Qut-luq-nigar by writing: ‘‘She was with me in most of my guerilla expeditions and throne-less times.’’68 Qut-luq-nigar learned Turki and Persian from her erudite father, and bequeathed love of literature and composition to Gulbadan. Babur also thanked his maternal grandmother Aisan Daulat Begam for her wise counsel when he was a 12-year-old prince in search of a kingdom.69 Aisan Daulat Begam had warned him that a Hasan-i-Ya’qub would prove traitorous. Babur wrote: Few amongst women will have been my grandmother’s equal for judgment and counsel. She was very wise and farsighted and most affairs of mine were carried through under her advice. She and

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my mother were (living) in the Gate-house of the outer fort; Hasan-IYa’qub was in the citadel.70 Gulbadan Begam There is a paucity of real histories, and almost none by women in premodern India. This makes Gulbadan Begam’s Ahval-i-Humayun Badshah a rare historical document.71 The senior Mughal princess wrote this memoir of her half brother Humayun (d. 1556) upon the request of her nephew Akbar (1556–1605), who also asked for other people’s accounts of his father (Humayun-namas). Although she inherited her father’s literary talent and was devoted to Humayun, she initially pleaded a lack of scholarship. However, she eventually composed Ahval-i-Humayun Badshah in elegant Persian, the lingua franca of the Mughal court, interspersed with many Turkish phrases.72 Gulbadan’s work was shadowed by the more famous Ain-i-Akbari by Akbar’s close friend Abul Fazl; and her memoir was praised by later British historians in India. While many historians have overlooked it as simply an account of haram affairs, Gulbadan’s Ahval is replete with information on politics in the early empire and on the adventures of Babur and Humayun (1530–56). 73 However, Gulbadan ends her work after describing Humayun’s efforts to regain his empire, after having lost it to his treacherous half brother Kamran. Gulbadan’s loyalty to Humayun far outweighed her sense of duty to her own weak husband Khizr Khan. Ahval is also unique as it gives details of haram life and how her female relations in pardah assisted their men to establish the empire. This compels us to discard the earlier view of separate, gendered spheres of activity, since these worlds actually converged in the zenana, which was not as isolated as imagined. Notions of womanhood, wifehood, and motherhood were also not irrevocably fixed in the haram but altered due to political and social pressures.74 Once this is acknowledged, however, it must be stated that the zenana later became a private female refuge during crises like invasions and colonial wars for hegemony over India (eighteenth to nineteenth century). While several Hindu and Muslim women were prominent figures, most ordinary women saw a shrinking of their public personas due to confinement in pardah. Gulbadan describes the marriage alliances and relationships in detail, and a complex zenana hierarchy reflected in female duties and obligations. She reveals that despite seclusion, Mughal women freely articulated opinions, and that princes heeded the advice of seniors like Gulbadan and Hamida Begam, Humayun’s wife and Akbar’s mother, who performed administrative functions for the empire. For many, same-sex friendships were more binding than heterosexual relationships. A few did not consider homoerotic feelings incompatible with married love. Women candidly expressed their

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feelings about prospective husbands in a royal culture of political alliances often sealed with marriages. This is seen in Hamida Begam’s early refusal to marry Humayun, who wooed her again and was later accepted. The events reveal that despite gender inequalities in political power, women had their own spheres of influence and rules of etiquette.75 Humayun was a prince with a promising future, yet as a noblewoman, Hamida made this candid and trenchant comment: For forty days the begam resisted and discussed and disagreed. At last her highness my mother, Dil-dar Begam, advised her, saying, ‘‘After all you will marry someone. Better than a king, who is there?’’ The begam replied, ‘‘Oh yes, I shall marry someone; but he shall be a man whose collar I can touch, and not one whose skirt it does not reach.’’ Ahval-i-Humayun Badshah76 Gulbadan’s work is not a litany of frivolous concerns but a document that fills a void on the formative empire with minute details of Babur’s relationship with the Uzbegs of Samarqand, and Humayun’s struggles. It also describes the bartering of royal women for territory or peace, so that even Babur’s exalted sister Khanzada Begam fell as a marriage pawn for the enemy.77 Mughal Heyday (1556–1707) Politics and the Zenana Mughal royal women were adept in the political game, questioned male decisions, and sometimes neglected marital duties for more permanent natal ties. Princesses were married more commonly before Akbar consolidated his empire. Thereafter, they often remained single, since high-ranking suitors complicated the struggles for succession. Although resident in the haram, they bridged the private and public worlds by interceding for rebellious princes or by conspiring with favorite brothers in the unceasing competition over the throne, complicated by royal polygamy. Several women wielded considerable power and negotiated state policies and family matters affecting the state. Less ambitious women were spectators who watched public events through the zenana trellises.78 Their lives were hardly private, since political interests were reflected in their architectural commissions, letters and poetry, and pilgrimages to holy sites. Gulbadan thus served as Akbar’s trusted emissary in his contentious relations with the Portuguese whose maritime empire was based in Goa, Daman, Diu, and Surat. Their vouchers (cartazes) were needed for all ships sailing to and from India to the Persian Gulf, including those with hajj pilgrims to Arabia. In 1580, Akbar invited three Jesuits to Agra, one of whom was Antonio Monserrate who left a record of his visit. Monserrate

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describes the extent of Gulbadan’s imperial authority and states that Gulbadan handed over the region of Bulsar to the Portuguese before leaving on a royal women’s hajj organized by her. In October 1576, Gulbadan and a contingent of senior royal women sailed from Surat on the vessels Salimi and Ilahi, which Akbar had commissioned.79 As Gulbadan was in pardah, these negotiations probably took place across the trellises overlooking the public hall. Gulbadan was accompanied by a granddaughter, a stepdaughter, her sister-in-law Salima Begam, and several others, and they returned three and a half years later after a perilous journey. Monserrate also states that as Gulbadan governed the major province of Delhi, her responsibilities devolved upon Hamida Begam during her absence.80 While many colonial histories attribute Gulbadan’s pilgrimage to her piety, few state that this was the first imperial hajj, and that it transpired soon after Akbar’s conquest of Gujarat (1573), which not only consolidated his empire but opened a port for maritime traffic to Mecca. Gulbadan’s hajj thus marked a strategic imperial act for Akbar who commissioned the ships, arranged substantial funds, and provided thousands of sets of clothes for distribution among the pious in Mecca. Upon their return, Gulbadan was escorted in a magnificent palanquin across roads paved with silken cloths, and thousands of subjects were fed.81 As religious policy, Gulbadan’s hajj soothed a restive, conservative ulama after Akbar and Abul Fazl formulated their new eclectic sect Din-I-Ilahi which was inspired by Sufism, Zoroastrianism, and Hindu spiritualism.82 While Gulbadan’s piety may have led her to undertake the hajj, her trip validated Akbar’s Muslim piety shortly after his new, controversial policy of religious toleration. While historians focus on the Mughal military bureaucracy in which Rajputs were senior officials (mansabs), far less has been written about Rajput queens whose sons inherited the throne or on the political implications of having many Hindu princesses in the haram. Although Sunni Muslims, Akbar and his successors married three Hindu women from prominent Rajput dynasties, so that the zenana became central to his policy of social integration. Akbar’s chief wife was the Rajput princess of Amber, Manmati/Harkha/Maryam-i-Zamani, and their son Salim later became emperor Jahangir (1605–27). One of his senior Rajput queens was Man Bai of Amber, also called Shah Begam (Imperial Wife), the mother of his eldest son Khusrau.83 Although Khusrau’s charm made him popular in the haram, his later rebellion so shamed Shah Begam that she committed suicide.84 The beauty and wit of Jahangir’s wife Jagat Gosain (Jodh Bai) of Jodhpur endeared her to the populace. Jodh Bai was the mother of his third son Khurram who was later crowned Shah Jahan (1627–56). Jahangir’s Rajput wives included the Rathor mother of his daughter Bihar Banu Begam, a Bundela princess from Bikaner, Malika Jahan of Jaisalmer, and a Jaipur princess whom he wooed with an enormous sum. 85 Jahangir’s brother Daniyal also married Rajput women; and several aristocrats

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took Hindu concubines. Even the conservative Sunni emperor Aurangzeb (1656–1707) relied on his Rajput relations as allies. Aurangzeb even claimed Rajput ancestry for his Circassian concubine Udaipuri Mahal whom he married and elevated to a queen. She was the mother of his favorite son Kam Baksh. 86 The Mughal haram was a multicultural universe whose internal politics reflected the court. Mughal queens heard petitioners, issued minor edicts (hukms) on the release of prisoners and property transfers, and issued imperial orders (firmans). Such queens often interceded for rebellious princes beginning with Babur’s sister Khanzada Begam who begged Humayun to forgive his recalcitrant brother Askari. Akbar’s mother Hamida Begam also issued hukms and appealed for Jahangir when he rebelled. Three queens issued firmans with the royal seal, and they had royal titles or were honored with mausoleums. They were Jahangir’s mother Harkha, his last wife Nur Jahan Begam (1611–45), and Shah Jahan’s wife Mumtaz Mahal. Nur Jahan’s name appeared with Jahangir’s on gold coins, and she was the de facto ruler after he lost interest in governance due to opium addiction.87 Born Meherunissa Begam, she received the title Nur Mahal (Light of the Palace) at marriage and of Nur Jahan (Light of the World) four years later.88 Emperor Shah Jahan called his favorite daughter Jahanara Begam (Mistress of the Universe). European Jesuits and merchants from Portugal, Venice, Holland, France, and England left accounts of the Agra court, zenanas, and princesses like Nur Jahan, Jahanara, and Zebunissa. Nur Jahan (1578–1645) Although he had several wives and four sons as emperor in 1605, Jahangir became enamored of the 34-year-old widow, Meherunissa Begam, daughter of Itimad-ud-daula, an immigrant Persian noble. As Jahangir was bored by governance but interested in several intellectual pursuits, he agreed to make her chief queen. As the de facto sovereign in 1611, Nur Jahan Begam elevated her father and brother Asaf Khan to posts, heard courtiers’ petitions, and stamped the royal seal on land grants. The court chronicle, Iqbal-nama-i-Jahangiri, states that she favored women property holders and gave generous dowries to orphan girls upon their marriage.89 Like Jahangir, Nur Jahan was not particularly devout, but she performed the traditional charities of a Muslim queen. She accompanied him to the shrine of the Sufi pir Moinuddin Salim Chishthi to whom Akbar had asked for prayers before the birth of his heir. He rewarded Salim Chishthi by naming his son Salim (Jahangir). At the annual feeding ceremony, Nur Jahan assisted her husband in serving the poor, and her presence was much remarked.90 On another occasion, she and a skeptical Jahangir visited a Jaina shrine, where they debated with the chief monk on the merits of asceticism. It is not known whether Nur Jahan appeared in public with a hijab,

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full facial veil (niqab), or body cloak (burqah). Her attire would indicate if she conformed to conservative traditions or if she emulated Raziyya Sultana. As Nur Jahan performed the customary prayers for the royalty, she clearly did not wish to risk alienating the Sunni ulama in a period of growing conservatism after Akbar’s radical reforms. Nur Jahan’s regime was momentous, as her name appeared with Jahangir’s on gold coins, perhaps in emulation of Chandra Gupta I and Rani Kumaradevi (310 CE). Nur Jahan’s talents included poetic compositions and sports like hunting and polo. A magnificent miniature shows her wielding a long musket, with her hair discretely under a cap, a long shift (kameez), and loose pants (shalvar) modestly covering her limbs. 91 She probably shared Jahangir’s interest in nature and accompanied him into jungles to observe birds and wild animals. Nur Jahan’s architectural commissions were a famous tomb to her father in Delhi, a tomb to her brother in Lahore, her gardens, and palaces like Nur Mahal in Agra. A talented businesswoman, she acted as her own ship’s agent when importing English embroidery and exporting Indian textiles and jewelry. An affluent landowner, she used her personal fortunes to benefit destitute girls. Despite these talents, she acquired an unsavory reputation for manipulating Jahangir and for deftly pitting one prince against another in the scramble for succession. Nur Jahan first tried to woo the talented third son Khurram (later emperor Shah Jahan) with opulent presents and by arranging his marriage to her niece Mumtaz Mahal. However, these acts failed to guarantee his friendship or that of Jagat Gosain, Khurram’s mother and her chief rival in the haram. Nur Jahan then tried to entice the heir Khusrau to marry Ladli Begam, her only daughter from her first marriage. When that failed, she poisoned Jahangir’s mind against Khusrau, in favor of the second son, the alcoholic prince Parviz. She later discarded Parviz for Shahariyar, the fourth prince whom she wedded to her daughter Ladli Begam. Jahangir appears to have been blissfully unaware of her intrigues, as he was lost to addictions and to his preoccupation with painting, science, and poetry. Western visitors to Agra commented that Nur Jahan drove a wedge between the emperor and Khurram, his favorite son. 92 Thomas Roe, the English merchant ambassador, jotted in his diary that public business ‘‘slept’’ unless she took notice of it, and astutely remarked: ‘‘She governs him and wynds him up at her pleasure.’’93 Francisco Pelsaert, the Dutch agent in Agra (1618–25), maliciously described her as ‘‘a crafty wife of humble lineage’’ who used her ‘‘persuasive tongue’’ to manipulate the inebriated emperor.94 The queen did twist the mind of an aging monarch, but the comments may reflect the merchant’s jealousy over Nur Jahan’s wealth and power. As she was only as opportunistic as other Mughal monarchs and certainly less bloodthirsty than some ambitious princes, it would be unfair to apply higher moral standards for female sovereigns than for kings.

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Zenana Life As instruction in the Qur’an was essential for good Muslims, mullah clerics taught both girls and boys in the mosque or in orphanage schools (anjumans). A miniature painting (sixteenth century) shows such a mullah teaching girls and a few boys, while naughty boys play nearby.95 However, due to the emphasis on rote memorization in poor schools, illiteracy was more common among lower-class girls, as it was feared that having learned to write, they would pen clandestine love notes. This was not the case with wealthy or aristocratic girls who were instructed in the zenana by learned ustad bis and elderly male ustads. Contrary to some accounts, aristocratic women did not languish in boredom, as they were taught not only the scripture but also other secular works. Thus, Jahanara, eldest daughter of emperor Shah Jahan, was taught by Satti Khanum, sister of court poet Talib-I-Amuli.96 Zebunissa, emperor Aurangzeb’s eldest daughter, was an able poet, who studied with the female tutor Hafiza Maryam. Emperor Aurangzeb paid the princely sum of 30,000 gold pieces to the ustad bi for having taught his cherished daughter well.97 Women had access to libraries of illuminated handwritten manuscripts, which in Akbar’s reign numbered in the thousands. They wrote verses, sometimes under a pseudonym, and recited the Qur’an and Persian poetry. Salima Sultan Begam, a granddaughter of Babur and the widow of Bairam Khan, composed Persian poetry under the popular pseudonym ‘‘Makhfi’’ (Hidden). Childless and scholarly Salima Sultan perused books for hours in Akbar’s library. Yet, it was not her erudition but her ‘‘purity and nobility of disposition’’ that invited praise from Abul Fazl.98 Jahanara’s interest in Hindu philosophy was acquired through discussions with her favorite brother, the mystical Dara Shikoh.99 Jahanara was also spiritually inclined, becoming a devotee of the Sufi pir Mullah Shah for whom she constructed a seminary and a mosque. Zebunissa imbibed her interest in spiritualism from her favorite aunt Jahanara.100 Zebunissa also composed a book of poems under the pseudonym of Makhfi. She was a generous patron of religious poets who were women and men. 101 Zebunissa’s library was inspired by Akbar’s collection, which had the Qur’an, Hindu and Jaina scriptures, Greek mythology, Persian texts, travel accounts of the scholarly Alberuni, translations of the Bible, and contemporary writings about her ancestors.102 Medieval miniatures show women riding, hawking, and even hunting with guns, as seen in the painting of Nur Jahan holding a long musket. Like her, other Mughal women went riding and were adept at polo. 103 Jahangir shared his keen interest in natural science with his family women by venturing into the jungle to observe wild animals, birds, and plants. A delicate miniature shows the Hindu rani Roopmati of Sarangapur and her Muslim husband Sultan Raz Bahadur of Mandu (1564), riding with

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falcons on their wrists and gazing on a lake with storks.104 Their love story is celebrated in a palace at Mandu and in legends (1508).105 Of sedentary pastimes such as cards, chess, and Parcheesi (chaupar), Zebunissa’s favorite was Parcheesi. Women often played the lyre (dilruba) and listened to musicians from behind their trellised screens. They also watched puppetry and live animal shows, and were entertained by actors and storytellers. Devout women would hear sermons by mullahs and Sufi shaikhs from behind the pardah trellises. 106 They traveled outdoors in covered palanquins with attendants and went on pilgrimages to the tombs of Sufi saints (dargahs). The haram had its own hierarchies of power with the aristocratic women at the top, served by ranks of female servants, each with norms of etiquette and decorum. The haram housed wives, female relatives, concubines, girl children, and underage male children who lived in nearby rooms. If earlier emperors had four wives and several concubines, Akbar had many wives. When informed by the ulama that he exceeded the numbers of contractual marriages (nikah) allowed by the Qur’an, theologian Badauni gave him a loophole, namely that law did not restrict ‘‘temporary’’ marriages (mut’a).107 As Shias followed this custom, Akbar circumvented religious law by marrying many women, including Rajput Hindus who were not compelled to convert. The Mughal zenana thus comprised about five thousand women with their own entourages of wet nurses (anaga), deaf-mute female slaves, and chaste women superintendents (daroghas). Ethiopian or Uzbek women guards and eunuch guards guarded the zenana, and even Jahangir (1605–27).108 The luxurious haram contained running water and pools; marble tiled floors, spacious rooms, gardens, wall murals of birds, flowers, and sura verses in calligraphy. It had its own kitchens with cooks, scullery maids, and bearers. A woman housekeeper (mahaldar) organized the servants, her authoritative position a source of envy and fear. Elite ashraf women avidly sought the post of royal wet nurse, who was crucial to the survival of the royal child, so that she often claimed princely favors for her own children, raised like royal foster siblings. The ambitious nurse Maham Anaga thus manipulated an underage Akbar into favoring her son Adham Khan, who blatantly misused his power. Mother and son also murdered rivals, so that Akbar killed Adham Khan and pensioned off his old nurse.109 What aristocratic women did not enjoy was the freedom to move unveiled outside the zenana, but even this was modified under protected conditions, if we can believe paintings. Women did not veil their faces in the zenana, and wore unrestrained clothes such as a long kameez with loose shalvar (pants) and undergarments. The kameez was of heavy silk or woven wool in winter, and even diaphanous cotton or silk during the summer. Paintings depict Mughal women with a thick shawl over the bosom and head, while younger women wear a wisp of a veil attached to an elongated cap ornamented with jewels and a feather. Although they lived behind the pardah, women

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received male relatives. They would then drape the shawl over the head to partially cover the face or appear completely unveiled. As Islam forbids engraved images, at first Muslim artists in India did not depict the human face. However, this rule was broken by Mughal rulers in their collection of masterpiece miniature portraits. The habit of portraying the emperor developed after Akbar’s advisor Abul Fazl claimed that ‘‘royalty is a ray of light emanating from God.’’110 This new interpretation of divinely ordained royal authority became popular during Jahangir’s reign (1605–27) when Muslim and Hindu artists painted emperors with haloes and unveiled royal women.111 In a compelling painting of the zenana, Akbar’s Rajput queen Manmati/ Maryam-i-Zamani lies prone on a bed beneath a raised curtain, perhaps as a metaphor for women’s unveiling. The women admire the infant Jahangir brought by Hindu women with scarves (dupattas) while Mughal women with jeweled caps watch benignly.112 A full-length portrait shows a beautiful royal woman (ca. 1630) in a translucent gown to her ankles, her shalvar faintly visible, beaded necklaces, and a long cap with a fluttering ornamental veil. Another magnificent image shows Nur Jahan in a pensive mood, hair streaming down her back, a feathered cap, her bosom visible through a transparent, tight blouse. It is unlikely that male artists entered the zenana to paint royal women, and this portrait was probably an idealization. 113 Another possibility is that a woman painted or sketched the drawing, which was later finished by a male artist. There also exist some pictures by the woman painter Sahifa Banu (ca. 1620) whose work was admired. A sketch from the reign of Shah Jahan shows a female artist with other women before a drawing board.114 It is conceivable that there were more women painters in the Mughal court, since Zebunissa (1638–1702), daughter of Aurangzeb, was praised for her calligraphy,115 and other royal women were known for their artistic skills.116 Jahanara and Roshanara Mumtaz Mahal bore 14 children for emperor Shah Jahan before she died in childbirth in 1631. She met the annual demands of pregnancy with aplomb, and yet managed to read and supervise all official documents, which she closed with the imperial seal in her possession. Deeply moved by her death, Shah Jahan commissioned the Taj Mahal as her mausoleum, a flamboyant tribute to a loyal wife. Despite such high honors on death or huge pensions and inheritances in life, Mughal women’s lives were marked by political and sexual constraints. After Akbar’s reign, most Mughal princesses remained single, mainly out of royal fears that high-ranking suitors would claim the throne. Patrilineal succession also restricted the princesses’ right to the throne, and they became vicariously involved in the fratricidal rivalries of their brothers.

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For example, in the succession battles among Shah Jahan’s sons, his daughters conspired with their favorite brothers and shared their antithetical views on religion. His elder daughter Jahanara Begam (1613–80) sided with Dara Shikoh (d. 1659), the heir whose love for mysticism she shared. Dara introduced her to various books and philosophical ideas, and to a favorite Sufi pir, and Jahanara declared that their empathy made them ‘‘one soul in two bodies and one spirit in two physical forms.’’117 Believing in the universality of human religious impulse, Dara tried to understand Hinduism by translating the Upanishads into Persian. He also allied himself with Rajput relations disaffected with Aurangzeb’s conservative, Sunni beliefs and policies. During their struggle for the throne, Aurangzeb’s claim was supported by Roshanara Begam (1617–71), a sister who acted as his spy in court. Roshanara’s letters informed him of their father’s distrust and kept Aurangzeb abreast of the latest political maneuvers to enable him to seize power. He then imprisoned Shah Jahan, crowned himself emperor, and beheaded his brother Dara for apostasy to Islam. Rather than detailing Roshanara’s political views or loyalty to Aurangzeb, Western accounts focused on her sexual escapades. Nicolao Manucci, a Venetian in Agra (1653–1708), thus described Roshanara as frivolous, ‘‘bright, mirthful, fond of jokes and amusement.’’118 Frenchman Francois Bernier (1656–68) gossiped about her promiscuous affairs, including secreting lovers into the haram.119 Roshanara inherited her father’s streak of cruelty and insisted upon Dara’s execution as a member of the council that tried him for apostasy to Islam. Roshanara argued that if Dara were imprisoned instead of killed, he would continue with his heresies, and conspire against Aurangzeb.120 Jahanara Begam was the first child of Shah Jahan to whom she was greatly devoted, and she nursed Mumtaz Mahal in her final illness. After her mother’s death in 1631, the 18-year-old princess took over the care of her father to whom she remained loyal till he died 20 years later. The gossip monger Bernier hinted that such filial devotion was based on an incestuous relationship, as she was ‘‘passionately beloved by her father,’’ and their ‘‘attachment reached a point which is difficult to believe.’’ Bernier blamed Jahanara for conniving to dominate the aged emperor, and he sympathized with Shah Jahan for entrapping her suitors out of jealousy. Although Manucci was often salacious, he did not credit rumors of incest, but he felt that the princess manipulated her father while he grieved for his wife.121 Despite their gossip about Jahanara’s love of wine and sexual escapades, they also described her as pious and dignified. Her piety earned her the title of Padshah Begam (chief Mughal princess); Jahanara frequented the shrines of Sufi saints of the Chishthi and Qadiriyya orders to whom she donated munificently. She thanked Dara Shikoh for introducing her to pir Mulla Shah through whom she had a spiritual experience. She described this eloquently:

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I then sat down in a corner facing Mecca, and concentrated my mind on the picture of my master, whilst at the same time keeping a description of our holy Prophet before my eyes. While occupied with this contemplation, I reached a spiritual state in which I was neither asleep nor awake. I saw the holy community of the Prophet and his first disciples with the other holy ones; the Prophet and his four companions were sitting together . . . I also noticed Mulla Shah. He was sitting near the Prophet, his head resting on his foot, whilst the Prophet said to him, ‘‘O, Mullah Shah, for what reason have you enlightened this Timurid girl?’’ When I came to my senses again, my heart opened like a rose bud under the impact of this sign of God’s grace . . . Oh what exceptional good fortune, what unheard of happiness he has vouchsafed to me, a weak and unworthy woman! I bring thanks and endless praise to the Almighty, the unfathomable God, who, when my life seemed all set to be wasted, allowed me to devote myself to the quest for Him.122 Despite these religious feelings, Jahanara was not a rigid moralist as she enjoyed both liquor and light entertainment. On one occasion, she sustained serious burns when her favorite dancer’s clothes caught on fire while twirling near candles. Jahanara flung herself upon the dancer to put out the flames. Severely injured on the chest, Jahanara was critically ill for a considerable time, while her father prayed beside her bed. Upon her recovery, she visited a Sufi shrine in Ajmer. Jahanara used her immense fortunes for charity, especially to widows. Like her father, she commissioned monuments and gardens, and a bathhouse and palaces in Old Delhi. She supported writers and artists, and delighted in Persian literature. Jahanara endeavored to prevent Aurangzeb’s persecution and beheading of his elder brother Dara. However, Aurangzeb killed him and eliminated his other brothers to ascend the Peacock throne. As emperor, he banned alcohol and music at court, so that Jahanara tried to convince him that such austere injunctions promoted hypocrisy and clandestine drinking. One account states that she invited the wives of clerics to her chambers, and then plied them with wine till they lay in a stupor. She then led Aurangzeb to view the women, ‘‘lying drunk and in disorder,’’ and he was forced to reevaluate his methods to reform a profligate court.123 Ironically, his favorite daughter Zebunissa Begam was influenced by her aunt Jahanara’s proclivity for poetry and Sufi mysticism. Zebunissa’s Rebellion The most notable of Aurangzeb’s several daughters was Zebunissa Begam (1638–81), daughter of his first wife Dilras Begam whose marriage was promoted by Jahanara. Zebunissa was born in the Deccan during her

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father’s military campaign during Shah Jahan’s reign. Her first teacher was the poetess Hafiza Maryam, who also taught her sisters to recite the Qur’an. Upon hearing his seven-year-old daughter’s rendition of the sacred verses, Aurangzeb showered Hafiza Maryam with 30,000 pieces of gold and appointed her son to a high post. Zebunissa was also taught Persian poetry by her great-grandmother Salima Begam, and she soon composed poetry.124 Zebunissa accompanied her favorite aunt Jahanara and uncle Dara Shikoh to the hermitage of the pir Mulla Shah with whom Dara engaged in deep conversations. Unhappy over her separation from her father Aurangzeb, Zebunissa became attached to Dara who encouraged her to pursue calligraphy, an art form popular among devout Muslims. Zebunissa also began to paint and read extensively under Dara’s influence, especially from Akbar’s vast library to which Dara had added non-Muslim Indian texts. She shared her father’s fascination for astrology and religious subjects, but was influenced by Dara’s eclectic vision. Zebunissa wrote mystical, mournful verses under the pseudonym of ‘‘Makhfi.’’ They reflect her sense of alienation, which may have stemmed from knowledge of her father’s murder of Dara and several cousins. 125 An example of her poetic themes is given here: Behold the pages of my book of life! Its record blotted, black with sin and strife, As if the woe of all the world should be Ever following and pursuing me. Diwan 11126

As Zebunissa loved the gardens in Agra and Delhi, a Garden of Zebunissa in Lahore is named for her. She financed poor poets, even sending them on hajj to Mecca. She and her sister Zinatunissa commissioned mosques in Delhi and Agra.127 However, the life of this talented woman changed due to a succession struggle in the Rajput state of Marwar. Aurangzeb challenged the autonomy of this traditional Mughal ally and threatened to convert the infant heir to Islam. When Marwar resisted, Aurangzeb sent his forces under his son Mohammad Akbar. Akbar was deeply devoted to his sister Zebunissa, since his mother had died at his birth (1657). The disaffected Rajputs convinced Mohammad Akbar of their support if he rebelled against his father’s conservative rule. Mohammad Akbar corresponded frequently with Zebunissa who supported her brother’s rebellion.128 There was a deep dissatisfaction against Aurangzeb among the Rajputs, Marathas, Sikhs, and Shia Muslims.129 Prince Mohammad Akbar crowned himself emperor in 1681 with the help of the Rajputs and his brother Moazzam. However, the surrender of his battalions led to his flight to the Marathas, and later to Persia. As Mohammad Akbar’s rebellion failed, Zebunissa was imprisoned for complicity, and she died in prison in 1702.

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Oriental Women through Western Eyes India’s contacts with Europe date from the third century BCE, but the arrival of Vasco da Gama’s Portuguese ships on May 20, 1498 at Calicut ushered in an era of less congenial relations. By 1509, the Portuguese had established a maritime trading empire based in Goa, Diu, and Daman on the western coast. These ports became Catholic missionary centers with Dominican, Franciscan, and later Jesuit monks in 1542. Akbar’s invitation to some Jesuits to his court set the stage for European visitors to Agra. Although the men were quite different in their responses to India, several described the Mughal haram as a den of luxury, intrigue, and sexual mayhem. The Portuguese were initially tolerant toward Hindus as allies against Muslim states, but this changed, especially during the Counter Reformation (ca. 1540) when the Catholic Church instituted the Inquisition (1560–1812) in Goa and elsewhere. A few like the Italian humanist Pietro della Valle who visited Agra in 1623 praised Shah Jahan for honoring his female relations. Others resembled Sir Thomas Roe, the Protestant emissary of the English East India Company at Jahangir’s court. Roe commented on Mughal princesses and their luxuries, but did not seriously acknowledge the business acumen of senior women. The Jesuit Monserrate (in Agra in 1580) so distrusted Islam that he viewed Akbar’s international haram as a sign of Oriental excess, rather than as an unusual political ploy to unite a multiethnic empire. Monserrate commented that Akbar had ‘‘more than 300 wives,’’ each in a separate suite, but did not seem to understand how there were ‘‘only three sons and two daughters.’’130 He also did not appear to have considered the possibility that a multiethnic zenana promoted cultural harmony, and not Oriental promiscuity. Yet, Monserrate reported that Gulbadan was Akbar’s emissary to the Portuguese, and that she governed Delhi.131 Such views later fueled British descriptions of Asia as the unfathomable Orient, a continent that was essentially alien to Christian Europe. 132 A rare British historian suspected that Akbar’s haram was a ‘‘parliament of religions,’’ and regretted that no one had described its ‘‘probable debates.’’133 Some Western writings are replete with secondhand anecdotes passed off as eyewitness accounts. This is the case of the Florentine Francesco Carletti (ca. 1600) who recounted the mass sati for a Vijayanagar king 40 years after the event.134 Others were laced with supercilious judgments on Indian customs. Few Western men actually entered the zenana, except for the French doctor Francois Bernier (in Agra, 1658–64). However, Bernier’s Eurocentric views make his account less than objective. Bernier explains how he was taken into the zenana to treat a woman too ill to come to the gate, writing with distaste about being swathed in a long shawl from head to toe, and led ‘‘as if I were a blind man’’ by a eunuch.135 Bernier’s gossip about Shah Jahan’s incestuous love for Jahanara has been related earlier. The truth

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probably was that after watching the homicidal rivalry of his sons, the aging ruler could only trust this daughter. Aurangzeb later imprisoned his father and crowned himself emperor. Bernier wrote: Rumour has it that his attachment reached a point which is difficult to believe . . . [and that] Chah-Jehan reposed unbounded confidence in this his favorite child . . . It is not surprising, therefore, that her ascendancy in the court of the Mogol should have been nearly unlimited.136 Some writers indulged in fantasies about the mysterious pardah, yet these have been read as eyewitness accounts of the zenana. Few men entered the actual female chambers, but some foreigners ate with nobles in the zenana dining halls. Nicolao Manucci, a Venetian gunrunner and medical quack (1656–1717), described the Mughal court in Storio Do Mogor. He wrote of women patients lying prone behind a pardah, like pieces of flesh without will, mechanically sticking out the appropriate limb for examination, sometimes calling for a consultation simply to indulge in flirtations. Manucci also gossiped about the drinking orgies of Jahanara and Roshanara, particularly maligning the latter as starved for sex, and enticing men into the haram disguised as women. He described how Roshanara escaped for trysts outside the palace.137 To his credit, however, Manucci also reported two incidents that portray Jahanara favorably. He described her unselfish aid to a woman dancer whose clothes caught on fire, and then engulfed the princess. He also related how Jahanara exposed court hypocrisy when the ulama urged Aurangzeb to outlaw alcohol. Jahanara invited the clerics’ wives, served them intoxicants, and called her brother to witness them asleep in stupor.138 Dutch merchant Francisco Pelsaert (1620–27) described palace women as preoccupied with jewelry, clothes, shallow intrigue in Remonstrantie. However, he incidentally betrayed his own Puritan repressions in his descriptions of the ‘‘burning passions’’ driving the ‘‘wretched women’’ to use eunuchs. Such myths of the Orient probably shaped later Hollywood writers whose films often depicted voluptuous Muslim women lounging in the haram.139 Pelsaert wrote: The mahals are adorned internally with lascivious sensuality, wanton and reckless festivity, superfluous pomp, inflated pride, and ornamental daintiness, while the servants of the lords may be justly described as a generation of iniquity, greed and oppression . . . As a rule they have three or four wives, the daughters of worthy men, but the senior wife commands most respect. All live together in the enclosure surrounded by high walls, which is called the mahal, having tanks and gardens inside. Each wife has separate apartments for herself and her slaves of whom there may be ten, or twenty or 100, according to her fortune.

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Each has a regular monthly allowance for her expenditure. Jewels and clothes are provided by the husband according to the extent of his affection. Their food comes from one kitchen, but each wife takes it in her own apartments; for they hate each other secretly, though they seldom or never allow it to be seen, because of their desire to retain the favour of their husband, whom they fear, honour, and worship as a god rather than a man. Each night he visits a particular wife, or mahal, and receives a warm welcome from her and from the slaves who, dressed specially for the occasion, seem to fly, rather than run about their duties . . . In the cool of the evening they drink a great deal of wine, for the women learn the habit quickly from their husbands, and drinking has become very fashionable in the last few years. The husband sits like a golden cock among the gilded hen until midnight, or until passion, or drink sends him to bed. Then if one of the pretty slave-girls takes his fancy, he calls her to him and enjoys her, his wife not daring to show any signs of displeasure, but dissembling, though she will take it out of the slave-girls later on.140 Yet, his ideas of sexual repression may have been partially true, as the profusion of co-wives and concubines made princely conjugal visits infrequent for each wife. This partly explains why senior queens did not easily conceive male legitimate heirs. Kings also married noblemen’s widows, but royal widows rarely remarried, and as few high-ranking loyal nobles could be trusted to marry princesses, there were many single women in the zenana. These frustrations are reflected in the eighteenth-century miniatures of lesbianism in the zenana, and in textual references to women’s use of phallic objects (apradavyas) of gold, silver, various metals, ivory, and wood.141 For many men and women, the closest bonds were same-sex friendships, without or with erotic desire, but they met in the zenana for other amusements besides sex and procreation. Royal men entered to dine, listen to music, watch dancers, or to simply converse with the women. Here Shah Jahan (1627–56) spent his days with his wife Mumtaz Begam, and his daughter Jahanara attended to him in his final years. Lesser nobles relaxed with family women, and sometimes invited European guests to dine. It is thus likely that Pelsaert, Roe, and chaplain Edward Terry (seventeenth century) probably saw serving maids, and perhaps just briefly met veiled noblewomen.142 Sufi and Shia Women Sufi Traditions in North India If rank and file Sufi pirs spread Islam in the countryside, Sufi intellectuals and poets in court interwove Qur’anic beliefs with local legends. They invented syncretic literary traditions whose ideals of gender and sexuality

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were adapted from Indian traditions. Indian Muslim sultans were their patrons, and they too drew upon pre-Islamic precedents of court culture.143 For example, Sufi poets in Bihar’s Jaunpur sultanate (fourteenth to seventeenth century) composed a new epic form in the Awadhi or eastern Hindavi language. The narrative was similar to the Sanskrit-Indian epic love story (‘‘prem-kahani’’), but they interwove the theme of divine love from the Sufi poet Ibn al-Arabi’s (eleventh century) elusive epistle, ‘‘Fususal-hikam’’ (Jewels of Wisdom). Hindavi poets gave a Sufi twist to a theme common in bhakti poetry. Self-absorbed human lovers thus became a metaphor for a devotee’s ‘‘self-annihilation’’ (fana) into Allah. Poet Maulana Daud (1379) borrowed a lower-caste legend of Lorik and Canda to weave the first Hindavi romance, Candayan, with this theme. In Mirigavati (1503), poet Qutban told the sensual tale of Chandragiri (Moon Mountain) and Mirigavati (Doe woman), underscoring the message about ethical choices. The separated lovers are reminiscent of Rama and Sita in the Hindu Ramayana; the heroine’s name reminds us of Sita’s illusory deer, while the hero’s ascetic journey reinforces his duty to God, just as Rama’s travails to recover Sita reestablished dharma on earth.144 Sufi tombs (dargahs) sanctified Indian soil for many Muslims who could not make the hajj to Mecca. Women, the ill, and the destitute found it especially impossible to seek this spiritual benefit, and pilgrimages to dargahs became a simpler alternative. Women found the hajj daunting, as it entailed an expensive entourage of guards and servants, with palanquins as pardahs.145 Women thus often made these visits to Sufi shrines, and if converts they transposed pre-Islamic traditions onto the new rites. North India’s important dargahs for Sufi Shaikhs were for Mu’in-uddin Chishthi (Punjab); Nizam-uddin Auliya (d. 1325) and Baba Farid-uddin Ganj-I-Shakar (Delhi). Local customs of royal fealty were transposed upon Muslim ideas on paying honor (adab), for example, by Jat caste converts at Baba Farid’s dargah.146 Dargahs are also pilgrimage sites for Hindus who revere all saints. While more scholarship is needed on the effects of Sufism on Muslim women, one scholar has shown that the hymns of pirs were sung by medieval women in the Deccan while performing their chores of child and family care.147 Women sought comfort from mystical poetry and composed their own oral verses, which are unfortunately often unavailable to the historian.148 Despite spiritual equality in Islam, medieval women were in the periphery of religious authority, and class distinctions were rife. Few Indian women could seek spiritual counsel from mullahs, unless these were elderly men allowed inside the zenana. Girls in the zenana were taught only by old men or learned female teachers (ustad bi). However, devout women often listened from behind the trellises to sermons by ascetic Sufis whose message of love was more relevant to female life than that of young mullahs in mosques. One such Sufi saint was Nizam-uddin Auliya whose concern for the paucity of Qur’anic female scholars led him to praise spiritual women

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like his mother and Bibi Sharifa, the daughter of Baba Farid who could not obtain the legal credentials of a Sufi Shaikh despite her great erudition.149 Despite their relative exclusion from religious authority, devout women emulated female mystics like the Prophet’s daughter Fatima; the Sufi Rabi’a of Iraq (eighth century); and Indian mystics like Bibi Sharifa, and Hazarat Zaccha Bibi of south India.150 Poor but with great spiritual grace, women Sufis resembled the Hindu servant woman Janabai whose bhakti for Krishna lifted her above a crippling caste system. Legends about disenfranchised saints often inspired Indian women. Islam and Gender in South India South Indian Sufi saints integrated Islam into Dravidian culture, often connecting the pirs (or Hazarats) with female power or shakti. While most pirs were men, there are some important dargahs to female mystics in southern India. Two shrines to women pirs are located in Porto Novo near Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu. The first is to Hazarat a-Quraish Bibi (seventeenth century) whose shakti enabled her to conquer snake and scorpion bites. The second is to Hazarat Zaccha Bibi regarded by women as assisting them during pregnancy, depression, and other female sorrows. The shrine continues to draw pilgrims since a hospital was built next to it.151 A third is a famous dargah to Hazarat Mira Sahib and his wife Sultana Bibi (sixteenth century) at Nagapattinam, and it is visited by Muslim and Hindu pilgrims. The tombs lie beside each other, decorated with marigold garlands from devotees with ‘‘bhakti,’’ according to the site booklet.152 Women are frequently found sitting in prayer beside the tombs. A medieval Tamil Muslim devotional poem, Nakaiyan-antatim, is addressed to the saints of the dargah in the genre of Tamil bhakti poetry. Male mullahs say prayers in Tamil and Arabic, burn incense and smear sacred ash on the devotee irrespective of sect, while the worshipper gives flowers, coconuts, fruits, sweets, and meat to the saints. Except for the meat, these offerings resemble Sanskrit puja to Hindu gods in temples.153 The motifs at other Tamil dargahs such as to Kat Bava, Nathar Wali, and Alimullah Qadiriyya resemble Hindu legends for Devi/Amman, Shiva, and Vishnu, respectively. The myth of Kat Bava shrine concerns seven holy maidens, like the Hindu myth of seven goddesses (sapta matrikas) who emanated from Durga. Muslim and Hindu devotees refer to the Sufi shrine’s mystique (barakat) as its ‘‘shakti’’ (energy or strength), and as ‘‘shakti’’ is another name for Amman or Shakti Devi in south India, some devotees identify the pir with the Goddess.154 Islam was grafted onto Dravidian societies through curious mergers of local and Sufi ideas. One Tamil theoretical school draws on the parallel veneration of Amman as Shakti, and early Islamic maternalism. It suggests that Prophet Muhammad married several women out of genuine concern for their welfare, so that his wives are

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exalted in the Qur’an as ‘‘Mothers of Islam’’ (Umm-al-Momineen). Another school draws dual inspiration from Ibn al-Arabi’s semi-erotic Sufi text, ‘‘Fususal-hikam,’’ and from Tantric ideas of goddess Devi’s primal yoni or womb. This theology suggests that al-Arabi’s hidden message of sacred sexuality is a metaphor for ecstatic union with God, thus acknowledging a primal female in the universe. Shia Women’s Rites Each year during Muharram in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, and Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, Shia men and women mourn the martyred children of Ali and Fatima. A Mrs. Ali recorded these rites in 1820 during the colonial era, but they had existed for centuries earlier, and still continue. While men’s public flagellations are well known, less is known about aristocratic women who beat their breasts and sing dirges within their zenanas. The women especially mourn Zaynab’s lost veil signifying her bridal widowhood; and four-year-old Sakina’s death from wounds, symbolic of her desecrated innocence.155 Mrs. Ali confirmed that female rites were devout and powerful, although male rituals were more bloody and public. During the 10-day season, women sacrificed their usual comforts, wore dark clothes even in the intense summer, abjured jewelry and flowers, and luxuries like betel leaves (paan). They gathered in a room with a cenotaph for Hasan and Husayn, while educated women read Shia poetry aloud.156 Moreover, while men compiled the Sharia laws, women have shaped local Indian Muslim customs by retaining or borrowing Hindu customs. The Khojas of Kathiawar are the descendants of local Shia converts. Benign Khoja customs often involve wedding ceremonies shaped by women, including the habit of smearing the bride with turmeric for good luck. A cultural point of convergence is Khoja devotional songs (ginaans) in classical Hindu melodies to induce spiritual ecstasy (barakat). While many ginaans are attributed to men, there was at least one female composer. Saiyida Imam Begum (d. 1866?) wrote the popular ginaan, ‘‘Ae Rahem Raheman’’ (O, Merciful and Powerful), in which she regretted that she was not a Sufi pir like her mentor Shaikh Hasan Shah.157 However, the Khojas also borrowed some Hindu customs that adversely affect women, such as patriarchal inheritance and the objection to widow remarriage. Khoja eclecticism is evident in the enlisting of Sunni clerics to officiate at weddings and funerals. Muslim Musicians, Poets, and Dancers Late thirteenth-century sultans were often entertained by dancers, instrumentalists, composer-singers called taifa (tawaif [singular]). Like Hindu devadasis, taifa artistes were highly regarded in Muslim courts, as they helped to shape new literary and musical traditions. However, later Victorian rulers equated them with English dance hall girls, and demeaned them as nautch

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women or prostitutes. This led many taifa to call themselves ganevalis (singers).158 The taifa danced in the kathak style, whose original Indian classical postures with bent knees were replaced by straight legged poses used in Persia. Similarly, their songs (ghazal) used Indian melodic arrangements (ragas) but Urdu lyrics infused with a yearning for Allah resembling Hindu bhakti. Urdu is a language akin to Hindi, but enriched by Persian, and these links appear in Amir Khusrau’s Urdu poems (thirteenth century). These art forms flourished due to ganevalis in Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh, and Hyderabad in the Deccan. The artistes became famous for their Urdu ghazals and kathak dances (nautch), like the woman composer Mahlaqa Chanda (1767–1824) of Hyderabad.159 In 1790, a Hasan Shah wrote Nashtar on the life of Khanum Jan, another reallife ganevali.160 He revealed that gifted courtesans were taught Persian, Urdu, English, and the arts, but were often dismissed as nautch women (dancing prostitutes) in colonial army camps.161 Another sensitive portrayal of the ganevali was Umrao Jan Ada (1902) by Mirza Mohammad Hadi Ruswa whose talented heroine could not find a worthy husband, although her talents brought wealthy patrons.162 Tarred by the colonial brush as prostitutes, women performers were penalized by Victorian laws, and finally ‘‘saved’’ by Indian nationalists. NOTES 1. Allama Abdullah Yusuf Ali, trans., The Meaning of the Illustrious Qur’an (Being the Textless Edition of the English Translation of the Holy Qur’an) (1934; repr., Lahore: Shaikh Muhammad Ashraf, 1946), 354. 2. Zoya Hasan and Ritu Menon, Unequal Citizens: A Study of Muslim Women in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004); Shibani Roy, Status of Muslim Women in North India (Delhi: B. R. Publishers, 1979); Indira Jaising, ed., Men’s Laws, Women’s Lives: A Constitutional Perspective on Religion, Common Law and Culture in South Asia (New Delhi: Women Unlimited and Kali for Women, 2005), these essays: Pratap Bhanu Mehta, ‘‘Reason, Tradition, Authority: Religion and the Indian State,’’ 56–86; Cassandra Balchin, ‘‘Law Reform Processes in Plural Legal Systems,’’ 87–108; Martha Nussbaum, ‘‘Religion, Culture and Sex Equality,’’ 109–37; Sharan Parmar, ‘‘Gender Equality in the Name of Religion,’’ 226–58. 3. Muhammad’s first revelation in Mecca (sura 96) is placed near sura 98, which was revealed later in Medina. See Fatima Mernissi, Women and Islam: An Historical and Theological Enquiry, trans. Mary Jo Lakeland (Delhi: Kali for Women, 1991), 118–22, 125–26. 4. On Islam in India, see: Richard M. Eaton, The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204–1760 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), 113–34; Richard M. Eaton, ed., India’s Islamic Traditions, 711–1750 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003); Susan Bayly, Saints, Goddesses and Kings: Muslims and Christians in South Indian Society 1700–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 5. Gail Minault, ‘‘Other Voices, Other Rooms: The View from the Zenana,’’ in Women as Subjects: South Asian Histories, ed. Nita Kumar (Calcutta: Stree, 1994), 108–24.

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6. Leila Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 79–100. 7. Ashgar Ali Engineer, ed., Problems of Muslim Women in India (Bombay: Orient Longman, 1995), these essays: Ashgar Ali Engineer, ‘‘The Status of Women and Social Change,’’ 1–17; ‘‘Appendix I: Marriage Agreement—A Sample of a Nikhanama,’’ 180–82; ‘‘Appendix II: Revised Memorandum by the Muslim Women’s Research & Action Front to the Committee on Proposed Reforms to the Muslim Personal Law,’’ 183–92. 8. Maulana Mohammad Abdul-Aleem Siddiqui, Elementary Teachings of Islam (Karachi: Taj Company Ltd., 1954), 6–24. 9. Ali, The Meaning of the Illustrious Qur’an, 463. 10. Mernissi, Women and Islam, 107. 11. Ali, The Meaning of the Illustrious Qur’an, 26. 12. Siddiqui, Elementary Teachings of Islam, 25–77. 13. Syed Abas A. Rizvi, The Wonder that Was India, vol. 2, A Survey of the History and Culture of the Indian Sub-Continent from the Coming of the Muslims to the British Conquest, 1200–1700, 5th ed. (1987; repr., Delhi: Rupa & Co., 1996), 2; and Wiebke Walther, Women in Islam from Medieval to Modern Times (Princeton and New York: Marcus Wiener Publishing, 1993), 73. 14. Mernissi, Women and Islam, 102–3. 15. Ibid., 149–53, 176–79. 16. Ibid., 104, 136–37. 17. Ibid., 117–20, 132–35. 18. Ali, The Meaning of the Illustrious Qur’an, 214–15. 19. Ibid., 28–29. 20. Ibid., 288–89. 21. Ibid., 58–59, 355. 22. Ibid., 57–58, 61. 23. Vibhuti Patel, ‘‘The Shah Bano Controversy and the Challenges Faced by Women’s Movement in India,’’ in Problems of Muslim Women in India, ed. Engineer, 140–48; Sita Anantha Raman, ‘‘Shah Bano Case,’’ in Encyclopedia of India, ed. Stanley Wolpert, vol. 4 (New York: Charles Scribner, 2005), 44–45. 24. Prema A. Kurien, Kaleidoscopic Ethnicity: International Migration and the Reconstruction of Community Identities in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002), 96. 25. Ali, The Meaning of the Illustrious Qur’an, 59–60. 26. Ibid., 353, 356. 27. Mernissi, Women and Islam, 142–43; Walther, Women in Islam from Medieval to Modern Times, 104–6. 28. Ramala Baxamula, ‘‘Need for Change in Muslim Personal Law Relating to Divorce in India,’’ in Problems of Muslim Women in India, ed. Engineer, 18–29. 29. Ali, The Meaning of the Illustrious Qur’an, 356. 30. Ibid. 31. Mernissi, Women and Islam, 162–65. 32. Walther, Women in Islam from Medieval to Modern Times, 71–72, quoting Ibn Sa’d’s (ninth century) Kitab at-Tabaqat-al-kabir, vol. 8, ed. E. Sachau et al. (Leiden: 1904–21), 74n; also Mernissi, Women and Islam, 86–88, citing

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Al-Tabari’s (tenth century), Tafsir, jami’ak-aayan ’an ta’wil ayi al-qur’an, vol. 22 (Beirut: Dar a-Fikr, 1984), 26. 33. David Pinault, ‘‘Zaynab Bint’ Ali and the Place of the Women of the Households of the Imams in Shi’ite Devotional Literature,’’ in Women in the Medieval Islamic World, ed. Gavin R. G. Hambly (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), 70–80. 34. Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam, 41–78. 35. Zenab Banu, ‘‘Muslim Women’s Right to Inheritance: Sharia Law and Its Practice Among the Dawoodi Bohras of Udaipur, Rajasthan,’’ in Problems of Muslim Women in India, ed. Engineer, 34–39. 36. Syed Abas A. Rizvi, ‘‘Islam in Medieval India,’’ in A Cultural History of India, ed. A. L. Basham, 6th ed. (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002), 281–93, vide, 282. 37. Richard M. Eaton, ‘‘The Political and Religious Authority of the Shrine of Baba Farid,’’ in India’s Islamic Traditions, 711–1750, ed. Eaton, 263–84; Simon Digby, ‘‘The Sufi Shaikh as a Source of Authority in Medieval India,’’ in India’s Islamic Traditions, 711–1750, ed. Eaton, 234–62; and Richard M. Eaton, Sufis of Bijapur: Social Roles of Sufis in Medieval India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978). 38. Eaton, The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204–1760, 71–94, 238–39, 275–81. 39. Peter Jackson, The Delhi Sultanate: A Political and Military History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 47. 40. Texts of Minhaj Siraj’s ‘‘Tabaqat-I-Nasiri’’ are available in H. G. Raverty, ed., A General History of the Muhammadan Dynasties of Asia, Including Hindustan (810–1260) (1881; repr., Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint Corporation, 1970), 1:637–38; and Henry Miers Elliot and John Dowson, eds., The History of India as Told by Its Own Historians: The Muhammadan Period (1869; repr., New York: AMS Press, 1966), 2:332. Historian Rizvi, The Wonder that Was India, 2:217, 320, cites H. G. Raverty’s translation, A General History of the Muhammadan Dynasties of Asia; and John Keay, India: A History (New York: Grove Press, Harper Collins, 2000), 245–46, 540 n. 17, using Elliot and Dowson’s translation, History of India as Told by Its Own Historians. 41. Minhaj Siraj, ‘‘Tabaqat-I-Nasiri,’’ in The History of India as Told by Its Own Historians, ed. Elliot and Dowson, 2:330. 42. See Rafiq Zakaria’s Razia: Queen of India (1966; repr., New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999), 137. 43. Siraj, ‘‘Tabaqat-I-Nasiri,’’ 2:330–32. 44. Jackson, The Delhi Sultanate: A Political and Military History, 67. 45. Elliot and Dowson, The History of India as Told by Its Own Historians, 2:332–37. This is questioned by Raverty in A General History of the Muhammadan Dynasties of Asia, 1:637–38. 46. Jackson, The Delhi Sultanate: A Political and Military History, 47, 67–68. 47. Siraj’s ‘‘Tabaqat-I-Nasiri,’’ 2:332–37. 48. Walther, Women in Islam: From Medieval to Modern Times, 121–22. 49. Keay, India: A History, 245; also see Irfan Habib, The Cambridge Economic History of India (1200–1750 CE), ed. T. Raychaudhuri and Irfan Habib (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 1:78.

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50. H. A. R. Gibb, trans., Travels of Ibn Battuta, 2nd series (Cambridge and London: Hakluyt Society at the University Press, 1958), 3:632; also Jackson, The Delhi Sultanate: A Political and Military History, 46. 51. Siraj, ‘‘Tabaqat-I-Nasiri,’’ 2:345–56. 52. Iqtidar Hussain Siddiqui, ‘‘Socio-Political Role of Women in the Sultanate of Delhi,’’ in Women in Indian History: Social, Economic, Political and Cultural Perspectives, ed. Kiran Pawar (Patiala: Vision & Venture Publishers, 1996), 87–101, vide, 90–93; Rizvi, The Wonder that Was India, 2:29–31. 53. Cited by Ainslie M. Embree, ed., Sources of Indian Tradition: From the Beginning to 1800, 2nd ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 1:410–11. 54. Embree, Sources of Indian Tradition, 1:415–16, citing Zia-uddin Barni, Fatawa-yi-Jahandari, Persian manuscript no. 1149 (London: India Office Library). 55. Embree, Sources of Indian Tradition, 1:415–16. 56. Rekha Pande, Succession in the Delhi Sultanate (New Delhi: Commonwealth Publishers, 1990), 94–99. 57. Siddiqui, ‘‘Socio-Political Role of Women in the Sultanate of Delhi,’’ 93–94. 58. Ibid., 95, citing Isami’s Futuh-us-salatin, ed. A. S. Usha (Madras, 1948), 160–81. 59. K. A. Nilakanta Sastri, Foreign Notices of South India from Megasthenes to Mahuan (1939; repr., Chennai: University of Madras, 2001), 220, 256. 60. Keay, India: A History, 267, 277–78. 61. Annemarie Schimmel, The Empire of the Great Mughals: History, Art and Culture (London: Reaktion Books, 2004), 143. 62. K. A. Nilakanta Sastri and G. Srinivasachari, Advanced History of India (Bombay: Allied Publishers, 1971), 413. 63. Rizvi, The Wonder that Was India, 2:83, 112–13. 64. John F. Richards, The New Cambridge History of India: The Mughal Empire, 6th ed. (New Delhi: Foundation Books, for Cambridge University Press, 2002), 53–54. 65. Ruby Lal, Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World, Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 14–23. 66. Ibid., 127–28. 67. Schimmel, The Empire of the Great Mughals, 79. 68. Annette Susannah Beveridge, trans., Baburnama in English (Memoirs of Babur) from the original Turki of Zahiru’ddin Muhammad Babur Padshah Ghazi, vol. 1 (London: Luzac & Co., 1922), 20–21. 69. Kiran Pawar, ‘‘Role of the Royal Women in the Career of Babur,’’ in Women in Indian History, ed. Pawar, 102–10, vide, 103; Schimmel, The Empire of the Great Mughals, 23. 70. Beveridge, Baburnama in English, 43. 71. On Gulbadan, see Lal, Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World, 50–68, 111–39; Schimmel, The Empire of the Great Mughals, 144–48, 163–64; Rekha Misra, Women in Mughal India (1526–1748) (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1967); Rumer Godden, Gulbadan: Portrait of a Rose Princess at the Mughal Court (New York: Viking Press, 1981); Bamber Gascoigne, A Brief History of the Great Moguls: India’s Most Flamboyant Rulers, 2nd ed. (New York: Caroll & Graf

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Publishers, 2002), 26, 28–29, 35, 42–43, 90, 117, 250–51; Rizvi, The Wonder that Was India, 2:200–202. 72. Susie Tharu and K. Lalitha, eds., Women Writing in India: 600 BC to the Present (New York: Feminist Press, 1991), 1:99. 73. Lal, Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World, 50–56. 74. Ibid., 12, 21. 75. Ibid., 105, 111–28. 76. Excerpt in Tharu and Lalitha, Women Writing in India, 1:102. 77. Lal, Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World, 130. 78. Ibid., 14–15, 24–29, 75–81, 128–39. 79. Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘‘The Viceroy as Assassin: The Portuguese, the Mughals and Deccan Politics, c. 1600,’’ in Sinners and Saints: The Successors of Vasco da Gama, ed. Sanjay Subrahmanyam (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000), 162–203, vide, 170–71. 80. Lal, Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World, 30–31, 208–10. 81. Richards, The Mughal Empire, 31; Schimmel, The Empire of the Great Mughals, 138; Godden, Gulbadan, 133–40. 82. Lal, Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World, 211–13. 83. Schimmel, The Empire of the Great Mughals, 143, 170–71. 84. Ellison Banks Findly, Nur Jahan: Empress of Mughal India (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 48–49. 85. Ibid., 124–27. 86. Annie Krieger Krynicki, Captive Princess Zebunissa: Daughter of Emperor Aurangzeb, trans. Enjum Hamid from the French (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 41, 120, 205 (on Aurangabadi Mahal, mother of his daughters Meherunissa and Zubdatunissa), and 103, 120, 128, 207 (on Udaipuri Mahal, mother of his favorite son Kam Baksh). 87. Findly, Nur Jahan, 122–23. 88. Ibid., 94, 122–23. 89. Findly, Nur Jahan, 46, 306 n. 30, citing Mutamad Khan’s Iqbal-nama-iJahangiri, from Elliot and Dowson, The History of India as Told by Its Own Historians, 6:405. 90. Findly, Nur Jahan, 205–6. 91. Schimmel, The Empire of the Great Mughals, 163. 92. Ibid., 46, 143, 148–49. 93. Findly, Nur Jahan, 333. Findly cites Thomas Roe from W. Foster, ed., The Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe to India, 1615–19 (London: Hackluyt Society, 1926). 94. Lal, Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World, 41. Lal cites W. H. Moreland and P. Geyl, trans., Jahangir’s India: The Remonstrantie of Francisco Pelsaert (Cambridge, 1925), 2, 5, 50. 95. Godden, Gulbadan, 37, 155. 96. Schimmel, The Empire of the Great Mughals, 152. 97. Krynicki, Captive Princess Zebunissa, 4. 98. Zinat Kausar, Muslim Women in Medieval India (Patna and New Delhi: Janaki Prakashan, 1992), 155–56. She cites Badauni, Muntakhab-ul-Twarikh, trans. W. H. Lowe (repr., New Delhi, 1973), 2:389; and Abul Fazl, Akbar Namah, 3 vols., trans. H. Beveridge (1907–39; repr., New Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint Corporation, 1977), 3:1223.

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99. Schimmel, The Empire of the Great Mughals, 152–53. 100. Krynicki, Captive Princess Zebunissa, 14–18, 59. 101. Schimmel, The Empire of the Great Mughals, 153–54. 102. Krynicki, Captive Princess Zebunissa, 61–62. 103. Schimmel, The Empire of the Great Mughals, 163. 104. Ibid., 159. 105. Sastri and Srinivasachari, Advanced History of India, 395–96. 106. R. Nath, Private Life of the Mughals of India (1526–1803 A.D.) (Delhi: Rupa & Co., 2005), 158. 107. Lal, Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World, 172. 108. Nath, Private Life of the Mughals of India (1526–1803 A.D.), 19–23. 109. Schimmel, The Empire of the Great Mughals, 34, 156. 110. Abu’l Fazl, ‘‘A’in-I-Akbari,’’ in Sources of Indian Tradition, ed. Embree, 1:426. 111. Portrait sketch of Akbar without a halo; gilded paintings of Jahangir and Shah Jahan with haloes; portrait sketch of Aurangzeb with a halo; gilded painting of Shah Jahan with a halo in Schimmel, The Empire of the Great Mughals, 32, 70, 51, 200. Paintings of Jahangir and Shah Jahan with haloes in Vale´rie Berinstain, India and the Mughal Dynasty (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1998), 64–65. 112. Berinstain, India and the Mughal Dynasty, 40–41. 113. Schimmel, The Empire of the Great Mughals, 152, 162. 114. Ibid., 158. 115. Krynicki, Captive Princess Zebunissa, 60–61. 116. Nath, Private Life of the Mughals of India (1526–1803 A.D.), 160. 117. Krynicki, Captive Princess Zebunissa, 59. 118. Lal, Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World, 45. Lal cites William Irvine, trans., Storio Do Mogor or Mogul India, 1653–1708 by Nicolao Manucci Venetian (London, 1907), 1:239. 119. Findly, Nur Jahan, 102, 322 n. 133. Findly cites Archibald Constable, ed., Travels in the Mogul Empire AD 1656–1668 by Francois Bernier (London: Oxford University Press, 1891; repr., Delhi: S. Chand & Co., 1968), 132–33. 120. Krynicki, Captive Princess Zebunissa, 92; Schimmel, The Empire of the Great Mughals, 153. 121. Lal, Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World, 43. She cites Constable, Travels in the Mogul Empire AD 1656–1668, 11. See also Schimmel, The Empire of the Great Mughals, 153; Findly, Nur Jahan, 103; and Krynicki, Captive Princess Zebunissa, 27–28, but Findly and Krynicki also cite Manucci’s version. 122. Schimmel, The Empire of the Great Mughals, 151, citing original work in Jahanara’s handwriting. 123. Lal, Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World, 46, quoting Irvine, Storio Do Mogor or Mogul India, 2:149–50. 124. Krynicki, Captive Princess Zebunissa, xi, 4–5. 125. Ibid., 57–64, 97–100. 126. Ibid., 139. Krynicki quotes Zebunissa’s poems from L. Magan and Duncan Westbrook, The ‘‘Diwan’’ of Zebunissa (Lahore, 1912; repr., London, 1918). 127. Schimmel, The Empire of the Great Mughals, 153–54. 128. Krynicki, Captive Princess Zebunissa, 101–3, 160–63. 129. Richards, The Mughal Empire, 170–84.

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130. Monserrate described Allah’s laws as hypocritical, so that Akbar circumvented Muslim law by having 300 wives, in J. S. Hoyland and S. N. Banerjee, trans., The Commentary of Father Monserrate, S. J., on his Journey to the Court of Akbar (London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press, 1922), 196– 213: For, to draw attention to one or two such points, he allowed incestuous unions with closely-related women, excepting only the mother and the sister. He also invented and introduced amongst the Musalmans two forms of marriage, first that with regular consorts, who may number four; and second that with those who are merely called wives, and who may be as numerous as a man’s resources allow. Musalman kings employ this sanction and licence of the foulest immorality in order to ratify peace and to create friendly relationships with their vassal princes or neighbouring monarchs. For they marry the daughters and sisters of such rulers . . . Hence Zelaldinus [Akbar] has more than 300 wives, dwelling in separate suites of rooms in a very large palace. Yet when the priests were at the Court he had only three sons and two daughters. His sons’ names are as follows:– the eldest is Xecus [‘‘Shaikh Baba,’’ Akbar’s nickname for Salim, the future Jahangir], called after the Xecus by whose advice, as has been mentioned, the King built Sequiris; for this boy was the first born after the change of capital, and thus survived infancy. The second son is Paharis [Murad, whose nickname was ‘‘Pahari’’ (from ‘‘pahar,’’ or ‘‘mountain’’)], and the third Danus or Danialus. 131. Lal, Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World, 30–31, 35– 37. 132. See Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978). 133. Stanley Lane-Poole, Medieval India Under Mohammedan Rule AD 712–1764 (London, 1903), 251–52, cited by Lal, Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World, 32. 134. Michel Chandeigne, ed., Goa 1510–1685: Inde Portugaise, Apostolique et Commerciale, Collection Memoires no. 41 (Paris: Editions Autrement, 1996), 160–80, vide, 166. 135. Gascoigne, A Brief History of the Great Moguls, 154. 136. Lal, Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World, 43. 137. Gascoigne, A Brief History of the Great Moguls, 154–55; Schimmel, The Empire of the Great Mughals, 153. 138. Lal, Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World, 45–46. Lal cites Manucci. 139. An example is the film Road to Morocco, 1942, with Bing Crosby and Bob Hope as American heroes, Dorothy Lamour as seductive Princess Shalmar, and Anthony Quinn as the Muslim Mullay Kasim. The script was by Frank Butler and Samuel Donald Hartman. 140. Quoted by Nath, Private Life of the Mughals of India (1526–1803 A.D.), 31–34.

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141. Giti Thadani, Sakhiyani: Lesbian Desire in Ancient and Modern India (London: Cassell, 1996), 51–66 with plates; and Nath, Private Life of the Mughals of India (1526–1803 A.D.), 144–53 with plates. 142. Gascoigne, A Brief History of the Great Moguls, 184. Gascoigne cites Francisco Pelsaert’s Remonstrantie, trans. W. H. Moreland (1925); The Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe to India, 1615–19, ed. W. Foster (1926); and Edward Terry, A Voyage to East India (1777). 143. Eaton, The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204–1760, 22–32. 144. Aditya Behl, ‘‘The Magic Doe: Desire and Narrative in a Hindavi Sufi Romance, circa 1503,’’ in India’s Islamic Traditions, 711–1750, ed. Eaton, 180–208. 145. Eaton, The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204–1760, 77–94; Barbara D. Metcalf, ed., Moral Conduct and Authority: The Place of Adab in South Asian Islam (Berkeley: University of California, 1984), 333–56; Eaton, ‘‘Introduction,’’ in India’s Islamic Traditions, 711–1750, ed. Eaton, 1–34; Bayly, Saints, Goddesses and Kings, 73–103. 146. Eaton, ‘‘The Political and Religious Authority of the Shrine of Baba Farid,’’ in India’s Islamic Traditions, 711–1750, ed. Eaton, 263–84, vide, 272, 276–80. 147. Eaton, The Sufis of Bijapur, 157–58. 148. Sheila McDonough, ‘‘Muslim Women in India,’’ in Women in Indian Religions, ed. Arvind Sharma, 2nd ed. (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004), 166–88, vide, 171–72. 149. Siddiqui, ‘‘Socio-Political Role of Women in the Sultanate of Delhi,’’ 97–98. 150. Schimmel, My Soul Is a Woman: The Feminine in Islam (London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 1997); Camille Adams Helminski, ‘‘Women and Sufism,’’ at http://www.sufism.org/society/articles/women.html, 1–7; and ‘‘Rabi’ah al Adawiyya,’’ at http://www.islamicedfoundation.com/poetry/rabia.htm, 1–2. 151. Bayly, Saints, Goddesses and Kings, 134–35. 152. J. G. Khadir Navalar and R. S. Khwaj Huhuideen, Karunai Kadal: Kanjul Karamatu (Nagore: Miran Sahib-Sultana Bibi Dargah Press, 1996), 1–3. 153. Sita Anantha Raman, ‘‘Popular Pujas in Public Places: Lay Rituals in South Indian Temples,’’ International Journal of Hindu Studies 5, no. 2 (August 2001): 165–98, vide, 168, 189 n. 3. 154. Bayly, Saints, Goddesses and Kings, 116–19, 123–24, 131–37. 155. Pinault, ‘‘Zaynab Bint’ Ali and the Place of the Women in Shi’ite Devotional Literature,’’ 69–98, vide, 85–93. 156. J. R. I. Cole, ‘‘Popular Shı¯’ism,’’ in India’s Islamic Traditions, 711–1750, ed. Eaton, 311–41, vide, 317–26. 157. Ali S. Asani, ‘‘Creating Tradition Through Devotional Songs and Communal Script: The Khojah Isma’ilis of South Asia,’’ in India’s Islamic Traditions, 711–1750, ed. Eaton, 285–310, vide, 287, 295. 158. Sita Anantha Raman, Getting Girls to School: Social Reform in the Tamil Districts, 1870–1930 (Calcutta: Stree, 1996), 1, 9, 10, 12, 28, 35, 111, 168, 176, 207, 209, 213, 227–30, 234, 237–39; also Dharampal, The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Education in the Eighteenth Century (New Delhi: Biblica Implex, 1983). 159. Mahlaqa Chanda’s verse, trans. Syed Sirajuddin, in Tharu and Lalitha, Women Writing in India, 1:122.

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160. Qurratulain Hyder, trans., Hasan Shah’s The Nautch Girl (New Delhi: Sterling, 2003). 161. Saleem Kidwai, ‘‘The Singing Ladies Find a Voice,’’ 1–12, at this Web site: http://www.india-seminar.com/2004/540/540%20saleem%20kidwai.htm. 162. Mirza Mohammad Hadi Ruswa, Umrao Jan Ada, trans. Khushwant Singh and M. A. Husaini (Bombay: Disha Books and Orient Longman, 1982), viii, 35–38, 65.

2 WOMEN IN THE COLONIAL ERA

COLONIALISM AND GENDER South Asia experienced two European colonial regimes, viz., the maritime Portuguese Estado da India based in Goa (1510–1961) and the British Indian Empire (1757–1947). These colonial states shared certain hegemonic assumptions that implicated Indian women, relied on the labor of women and men, passed patriarchal laws challenging Indian rules of marriage, and introduced Western missionary schools. At first simply trading ventures with Indian empires, their search for dominion led to contentions with Hindu, Sikh, and Muslim states. The Portuguese arrived in 1498, followed by rival Dutch, English, and French East India Companies (EIC) who established outposts (seventeenth century). Anglo-French wars ended with decisive British victories at Plassey (1757) and Baksar (1765). The British Empire initially comprised Bengal, Madras, and Bombay, which were ruled jointly by Parliament and EIC. Subsequent encroachments expanded the empire, but the Great Revolt of 1857 led to complete Parliamentary authority. Although regarded as Britain’s ‘‘crown jewel,’’ India attained freedom in 1947 through the efforts of patriotic women and men led by Mohandas Gandhi. Although Asia and Europe form a single landmass with a history of migratory interaction, Western domination required the ideological construction of two racially distinct continents and unequal civilizations. Western political rule had a domino effect on gender and class in both regions. A key argument for Western rule was that it improved Indian women’s social condition. However, as the chief imperial purpose was profit, Europe became affluent, and Asia’s industrial modernization was postponed. Moreover, while the encounter expanded knowledge of Indian traditions in Europe and funneled secular Enlightenment ideas into India, these exchanges were filtered through the prism of cultural opposition between an emotive, mysterious, feminine Orient (East) and a logical, scientific, virile Occident (West).1 India was thus feminized in the popular imagination.

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Colonial economies thrived upon underpaid or unpaid Indian workers, and natural resources. The Estado depended upon the labor and products of Indian women and men, often slaves. Although prostitution was endemic in ports and garrisons, the Portuguese regarded this as a moral, not social problem caused by a floating male population. The Inquisition penalized Indian women prostitutes.2 British colonial plantations also initially used Indian slaves until Parliament abolished slavery in 1807. However, a ‘‘new system of slavery’’ involving state-sponsored indenture of Indian ‘‘coolies’’ was instituted between 1834 and 1917.3 Impoverishment and famine drove tribals and lower castes to toil long hours for little pay and no rights on sugar, tea, or rubber plantations in Mauritius, the West Indies, Fiji, Sri Lanka, and Malaya.4 The demand for male workers led to a phenomenal gender disparity on estates. The shortage of women did not translate into higher wages, but it exposed them to rape and violence.5 Britain’s industries relied upon India’s iron, wood, and coal, extracted with cheap labor, and their jute mills in India drew upon this work force. However, women earned less than half the wages of men, were restricted from forming unions, and faced sexual harassment.6 Although female labor was essential to the colonial economy, it was almost invisible in its records.7 Colonial policies were not uniform or static, but were shaped by powerful ideological trends in Europe and adapted flexibly to local conditions in a relentless search for profit. Attitudes to local women depended on the colonizer’s contemporary mores and on immediate circumstances. The initial paucity of Western women resulted in a large Eurasian population that merged into surrounding society or formed Luso-Indian and Anglo-Indian communities. The Estado allowed interracial marriages and liaisons, depending on prevalent biases in Portugal. Goa’s state policy promoted interracial marriages,8 but recommended fair-skinned wives,9 and also paid dowries to Portuguese women settlers. 10 Goan society initially reflected Lisbon’s permissive attitudes, but mores became straitlaced after the Jesuits arrived in 1542.11 Similarly, in the early British Empire, interracial liaisons and marriages were initially accepted by soldiers, civil servants, and merchants. However, these attitudes changed after 1813 with the influx of missionaries due to Parliamentary funds and during the Victorian heyday after the Revolt of 1857. The racial chasm then widened, and officials closeted interracial sex as transgressing the boundaries between rulers and subjects. Indian mistresses were thus discretely overlooked, but few Englishmen married local women.12 Guilt mixed with anathema drove Europeans to baptize and educate biracial children, but they were regarded as social inferiors. Missionaries spread literacy, and the Gospel laced with strictures on sexual sobriety among Indian and Eurasian girls and boys.13 Elite Indian men apologetically stapled Victorian morality onto earlier conventions of sexual tolerance.

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British laws in India were based on English patriarchal models that negated local matrilineal rights. As they influenced later laws in independent India, they affect women to the present era. Yet, as colonial rule crystallized political identities based on gender, caste, and sect, it served as a catalyst for nationalist and feminist movements. The Victorian era was also marred by pseudoscientific theories of European racial superiority through a purposeful misreading of Darwin’s principles of evolution and natural selection.14 Social Darwinism credited imperialists with altruism for having bestowed Western civilization upon the ‘‘dark races.’’15 The myth is encapsulated in ‘‘The White Man’s Burden’’ (1899) by Rudyard Kipling, an Englishman born in India. Kipling urged the United States to shoulder its Western imperialist destiny among nonwhite ‘‘fluttered folk and wild,’’ ‘‘new-caught, sullen peoples, half-devil, halfchild.’’16 Imperial rhetoric was thus replete with gender and racial typologies that portrayed India as a feminine entity, supine in the arms of a virile Anglo-Saxon empire. Indian men were derided as emasculated by their climate, echoing Robert Orme’s (1753) early description of the Hindu as the ‘‘most effeminate inhabitant of the globe.’’17 Indian women were viewed as either voluptuous sirens or chaste, but ignorant victims requiring Christian succor.18 If India’s feminization derived from Western notions of male power, later Indian nationalists made women the centerpiece of their reform agenda and deified the ‘‘motherland’’ as Goddess Shakti, a wombhouse of power. Yet, ordinary women remained the objects of this male dialogue until feminists restored their sense of historical agency.19 This chapter examines the norms for Indian women in this era, and their changes in the Estado and the British Empire. FEMALE PARADIGMS AND ROLES The divine female is one of the earliest forms of Indic religion, remaining persistent in the Hindu worship of goddess Devi as Shakti (energy), who along with male divinities Vishnu and Shiva are manifestations of a universal neuter spirit (Brahman). A mystical understanding of Brahman’s unity with the soul (Atman) bestows salvation or moksha. Indian terms for marriage (mangalya, kalyana) thus reflect an intrinsic awe of the female body, which despite its apparent delicacy endures the repeated stresses of menstruation, childbirth, and infant care. Women’s sexuality is regarded as an auspicious power bestowing good fortune and progeny, or misfortune by evoking men’s lust. To ensure caste purity and male descent lines, patriarchs devised rules to honor the virgin bride and faithful wife (sumangali), and placed taboos on a widow’s (amangali) remarriage.20 In the colonial era, high-caste girls were often married just before or after puberty. However, the norms of premarital sexuality, marriage, widow remarriage, and female inheritance vary significantly across ethnic lines, while

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some customs are shared by sects in the same region. Generally, Dravidian and aboriginal cultures, the lower castes (varnas) and subcastes (jatis) give greater freedom to women than the Sanskritic high castes. Thus, while upper castes often disallow widow remarriage, they are accepted by some Deccan castes as ‘‘pat’’ or ‘‘natra’’ marriages;21 and by other Dravidian or matrilineal lower-caste Hindu Tamils, Bants (Karnataka), Nayars (Kerala), and by Muslim Mappilas (Kerala). Widow remarriage is also permitted by tribes like the Garos (northeast India), and the Tibeto-Burman Limbu, Gurung, Tamang, and Newari (Nepal).22 However, those aspiring for a higher status have often emulated the high castes by disallowing widow remarriages and by conducting marriages just prior to or shortly after the girl’s menarche. Widows and Property Rights Guidelines on female roles and rights appear in the Manu Smriti (100 BCE–200 CE), widely regarded by many middle- and upper-caste Hindus as scriptural laws (shastra). Despite regional interpretations, and lower-caste and aboriginal customs on lineage and inheritance, brahman translators in British colonial courts enshrined Manu Smriti as the definitive Hindu law code. Manu Smriti advised the widow to remain faithful to her husband till her death and to subsist frugally on flowers, fruits, and roots (MS 5:157–160) as would the respected male ascetic (sadhu). Manu Smriti did not advocate widow immolation on her husband’s pyre as a ‘‘true wife’’ (sati), but it repudiated widow remarriage (5:161; 3:155; 3:159). However, it conceded remarriage if the woman was yet virgin or if she was deserted before nuptial consummation (9:69–70, 9:175–176). In such cases, it advised a levirate marriage to her brother-in-law.23 However, society generally regarded the widow as an ill omen, and few Sanskritic castes allowed remarriage. Till the twentieth century, widows were tonsured; wore drab saris devoid of a blouse, flowers, and jewelry; and were forbidden to wear a vermilion mark on the forehead (tilak). Thus defeminized, the unattractive widow was prevented from bearing illegitimate children. During medieval wars, institutional misogyny, especially among kshatriya castes, elevated the cremation of a sati into an honorable act. It was particularly popular among Rajputs who venerated the ‘‘true wife-mother’’ (sati-mata) as a family goddess (kuldevi).24 However, in the eighteenth century, widow immolation became popular among vaishyas who had become affluent through commerce with the West and wished for an elevated caste rank. It also crystallized among some brahmans on the Ganges plains. If Muslim women’s property rights were defined by the Qur’an and Sharia laws, caste Hindus followed the Manu Smriti, which stipulates that a woman’s property rights depend on her stage in life. These were as an unmarried girl under her father’s care, as a wife under coverture with no share in her husband’s patriarchal joint family property, and as a widow

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released from coverture.25 Joint family property was bequeathed to male heirs, but a wife often received gifts from her husband’s personal earnings. Such gifts along with those from her natal family constituted female property or stridhan, which maintains women during need and as widows. It allowed women funds to perform rituals for spiritual welfare, and it was inherited largely by female offspring. Manu Smriti cautioned men that they had no rights over stridhan, and not to cheat a woman as ‘‘a just king should punish them for theft’’ (MS 8:27), and they would suffer dire karmic consequences in the afterlife. Important verses on stridhan (9:192–196; 9:198–199) are: Now, when the mother has died, all the uterine brothers and sisters should share equally in the mother’s estate. Something should even be given to the daughters of these daughters out of the estate of their maternal grandmother, through affection and according to their deserts. A woman’s property is traditionally regarded as of six sorts: what was given in front of the (marriage) fire, on the bridal procession, or as a token of affection, and what she got from her brother, mother, or father. In addition, any subsequent gift and whatever her affectionate husband might give her should become the property of her children when she dies, (even) during her husband’s lifetime. And if a father should give anything valuable to a wife, the daughter of the (husband’s) wife of the priestly class, or her children may take it. A woman should not make a great hoard of the family property that belongs to several people, nor even of her own valuables, without her husband’s permission. Manu Smriti26 The original author probably intended stridhan to be matrilineal property, as the verse refers to ‘‘daughters of these daughters’’ (9:193). An important verse stipulates: ‘‘Whatever separate property the mother has is the share of the daughter alone; if a man dies sonless, his daughter’s son should take his entire property’’ (9:131). However, there are ambiguities in Manu Smriti as it was expanded by several authors over hundreds of years. Other verses thus state that daughters and sons inherit their mother’s stridhan (9:19), and that a childless woman’s wealth transfers to the husband. Moreover, there were several schools of law and interpretations of Manu Smriti. Many high-caste Hindus follow the Mitakshara system of Vijneshwara (eleventh century), and some Bengal brahmans follow the Dayabhaga laws of Jimutavahana (twelfth century). Mitakshara laws exclude a widow from inheriting her husband’s property, so that a dependent widow was at best valued as a selfless aunt, or at worst an unpaid drudge. Dayabhaga rules allow widows a share of the husband’s movable or immovable estate. However, this advantage became a scourge during EIC misrule of Bengal (eighteenth century), when famines claimed horrendous tolls and private

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property laws created disputes. Disinherited male relatives then colluded with misogynist priests to compel widows to become satis. The spate led the British governor to abolish sati in 1829. Sikhism and Women Founded by Guru Nanak (1469–1539), a nirguni bhakti saint in Punjab, Sikhism rejects caste and gender discrimination. Nanak was inspired by Hindu devotion or bhakti for a formless Being as the Breath of life (prana), modified by Islamic Sufi emphasis on monotheism. Ten Sikh guru preceptors preached monogamy and respect for women, but they repudiated the iconic worship of a mother goddess. The Sikh scripture Adi Granth was completed under the last guru, Gobind Singh (d. 1708), as an eclectic collection of six thousand sayings of the gurus and hymns of mystics from other sects like Ramdas and Kabir. Nanak’s verse shows respect for women: From woman is man born, inside her is he conceived; To woman is man engaged, and woman he marries; With woman is man’s companionship, From woman originate new generations. Should woman die, is another sought; Why revile her of whom are born great ones of the earth? From man is born woman, no human being without a woman is born. Saint Nanak: The holy Eternal alone with woman can dispense, The tongue by which is the Lord praised. Adi Granth 47327

Punjab’s Sikhs and Hindus believe in the karma-samsara cycle of the soul’s transmigration and hold similar views on women’s domestic roles. Their patriarchal communities view the relationship between devotee and God as analogous to that of a devoted wife to her husband. The Adi Granth lauds the devotee who resembles a faithful wife (AG 31) and ‘‘wins her Lord’s pleasure’’ (AG 56).28 The ten gurus preached respect for mothers and wives without whom human birth and life were impossible. Third guru Amardas (d. 1574) urged women to remove the veil and to attend congregational prayers at temple (gurudwara) by sitting apart. He also recruited a few women leaders (peerahs) to proselytize for the new syncretic sect.29 Amardas and his successor Ramdas (d. 1581) also promoted widow remarriage. While the gurus emphasized spiritual and social equality of both genders and all castes, these ideals were sometimes repudiated by the dominant, patriarchal Jat caste in Punjab. The mantle of leadership thus fell upon 10 male gurus, and there was never a female guru of their stature. This relegated women to playing a secondary role in Sikhism. As Punjab is the avenue through which invaders entered the subcontinent, its culture places a

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premium on male valor and female chastity. Girls were regarded as burdens even during Nanak’s time. Therefore, despite the gurus’ teachings, society expected widows to remain chaste, and it practiced female infanticide, child marriage, and polygamy. Nanak’s remedy was bhakti, while Gobind Singh (1666–1708) forbade female infanticide. He also reinforced the martial ethic by initiating men and women into the army of the Khalsa (Pure) to resist oppression. Caste names were forbidden for the Jat, Khatri, and Mahzib communities that adopted Sikhism. Initiation rites were uniform for men who were given the honorific of Singh (lion) and for women whose title is Kaur (princess). Sikh identification is through long hair (kesh), covered by women under a shawl (dupatta), and swathed by men beneath a turban; a comb (kanga) to keep the hair in place; an undergarment (kaccha); a steel bracelet (kadha); and a small sword (kirpan). While the gurus forbade polygamy and sati, Sikh history indicates that aristocrats practiced polygamy, and practiced sati immolation when the British Empire absorbed Indian kingdoms (eighteenth to nineteenth century). The most significant ruler to negotiate successfully with the British was Maharaja Ranjit Singh (1780–1839), often called ‘‘the Lion of the Punjab.’’ Ranjit Singh took pride in his haram of 22 wives, and upon his death, his chief wife Rani Guddun Kaur, three other wives, and seven mistresses or serving women became satis. Despite romantic Western accounts of their voluntary immolation, their genuine state of mind is unknown. The women may have possibly succumbed to prevalent myths of empowered satis, as they feared a harsh widowhood. Some historians suggest that two minor wives of the later Maharaja Kharak Singh (d. 1840) also became satis, but that his chief widow Chand Kaur lived on to assume the title of sovereign Maharani. However, at least one Sikh prince refused to bow to the widow on the throne and to apply the tilak on her forehead as a mark of his fealty.30 Devadasis: From Temple to Court in South India In medieval south India, a class of Hindu dancers-musicians were ritually espoused to the temple deity. Falling outside the common parameters of worldly marriage, the temple woman was called the ‘‘eternally auspicious wife’’ (nityasumangali) or the handmaiden of god (teyvadiyal/devadasi). Temple women stemmed from various castes, including royalty during the Chola empire (ninth to fourteenth century). As they filled a ritual, artistic niche, they were maintained by royal endowments to the shrine, to which devadasis made donations.31 A growing market economy and court culture transformed the devadasi tradition in the sixteenth century under the Vijayanagar Empire (1336– 1565). A text on dance (natya) by Goppa Tippa reveals that the venue for Karnatak music and dances had shifted from the temple to royal courts (sadir). 32 Once the honored wife of the temple deity, many devadasis

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now sought the mundane patronage of kings and aristocrats. A new etiquette evolved allowing only married, elder sons to serve as artistic patrons for devadasis. Yet, the death of a reputable devadasi was mourned, her body was garlanded as an auspicious wife (sumangali), and temple kitchen fires ignited her funeral pyre.33 During the annual Ram Navami festival processions in Vijayanagar, devadasis attracted the attention of merchants, officials, and Portuguese visitors like Domingo Paes (ca. 1518) and Fernao Nunes (ca. 1535). Paes described women functionaries, dancers, musicians, and royal guards, indicating that devadasis enjoyed a conspicuous secular presence: After this is over you will see issuing from the inside twenty-five to thirty female door-keepers, with canes in their hands and whips on their shoulders; and then, close to these come many eunuchs, and after these eunuchs come many women playing trumpets and drums and pipes (but not like ours) and viols, and many other kinds of music, and behind these women will come some twenty women-porters, with canes in their hands all covered with silver, and close to them come women clothed in the following manner . . . They carry in their hands vessels of gold each as large as a small cask of water; inside these are some loops made of pearls fastened with wax, and inside all this is a lighted lamp. They come in regular order one before the other, in all perhaps sixty women fair and young, from sixteen to twenty years of age . . . In this manner and in this array they proceed three times round the horses and at the end retire into the palace.34 After Vijayanagar fell in 1565, the devadasis’ secular venue widened under their dynastic patrons, the Wodeyars of Mysore; the Nayakas and Marathas of Thanjavur and Madurai; and the matrilineal kings of Travancore, Kerala.35 Learned devadasis at court composed Sanskrit, Telugu, and Tamil literature, and educated their daughters in temple verandah (pyal) schools with boys. Their court compositions marked a transition from earlier bhakti texts which proclaimed the supremacy of spirit over sensory desire. Their bhakti texts used the sensory/erotic/ornamental mode (sringara rasa) to exalt the body as the medium for spiritual salvation (moksha). Moreover, the growth of a market economy is visible in their emphasis on a transactional relationship between devotee and God. The sringara mode became an ideal voice for devadasi composers and provided a repertoire for performers. Their court based art similar to the tradition of female Kathak dancers in northern Muslim and Hindu kingdoms. Meanwhile, temple devadasis maintained the Karnatak music and dance traditions of south India, inspiring maestros like Muthuswami Dikshitar (1775–1835). Some of Dikshitar’s masterpieces were dedicated to a gifted dancer at Tiruvarur temple in Thanjavur, where his own father had studied

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music from another gifted devadasi. 36 Such artistes ritually served the temple deity and transmitted their art to devadasi daughters. Under their matrilineal tradition, their chief heirs were daughters, and musician sons were therefore less powerful. However, other devadasis used skills and personal charms to please mortal men. Foreign merchant accounts inform us that Indian ports and towns teemed with wealthy clients and courtesans, as parents sold daughters to temples or as performers for the affluent. Their tradition deteriorated when colonial powers absorbed small kingdoms and temples lost their royal endowments in the eighteenth century.37 British missionaries viewed devadasis with opprobrium, male nationalists were apologetic, and women nationalists tried to save their fallen sisters. Women Court Poets Wodeyars, Nayakas, and the Marathas patronized devadasi dancers and composers, and also working women poets. Sanciya Honamma thus held the menial job of rolling betel leaves with areca nuts (paan) for Rani Devajamanni, chief wife of Chikkadevaraya Wodeyar (1672–1704). At the same time, she composed the guideline for women, Hadibadeya Dharma (Duties of a Devoted Wife), in the Kannada language. As a lower-caste poet, Sanciya Honamma made concessions to the elite men at court, so that she won accolades from a senior poet. However, it is likely that such praise may not have been given, if she had challenged orthodox male authority.38 Three devadasis composed Sanskrit poetic drama (kavyas) at the Nayaka and Maratha courts. Their bold feminine style in the ornamental sringara mode affirmed the sensory world and earthly desire as a metaphor for a spiritual love of God. Ramabhadramba of Thanjavur was thus honored as ‘‘Kavita Sarvabhauma’’ (Queen of Poetry) for her epic Raghunathabhyudaya.39 She was probably a courtesan, although Indian nationalist Annie Besant (1847–1933) believed that she was the daughter of king Raghunatha Nayaka (b. 1612). Ramabhadramba’s poem pays tribute to this famous royal patron of literature, architecture, and sculpture by identifying him with god Rama/Raghunatha whose name he bore. Ramabhadramba’s genius fused an archaic Tamil veneration for the king as god with medieval bhakti for God as king.40 The other two courtesan poets who used the sensual sringara rasa to relate spiritual themes were Rangajamma (seventeenth century) at Thanjavur and Muddupalani (eighteenth century) at Madurai. In her Telugu epic Radhika Santvanamu (Appeasing Radhika), Muddupalani boldly declared that a king’s valor was enhanced through intimacy with a gifted courtesan. 41 Radhika Santvanamu consists of 584 poems in which god Krishna’s love for Radha became the erotic medium to express a mortal woman’s desire.42 Wealthy devadasis at Maratha courts performed public rituals in their

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names and established shrines and villages in honor of scholarly brahmans to whom they gave grants. Clearly, devadasis still occupied a respected social niche in this era. Philanthropic Queens Royal women were usually educated and accomplished in the arts. Many elite-caste women were taught Hindu scriptures and languages in domestic seclusion. The Maratha queens of Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu also administered substantial religious charities (chattrams), which comprised whole villages, verandah (pyal) schools, colleges, shrines, infirmaries, feeding and rest homes for pilgrims on the road to the sacred site of Rameshwaram. 43 Obviously considering educational charity as the highest form of dharma, Maratha kings established 20 such endowments between 1743 and 1837, prior to British takeover in 1852. Among the students at the pyal schools were devadasi girls, and boys of various castes.44 As the chattrams often bore the queens’ names, it is likely that they administered the charities, especially since Thanjavur queens held matrilineal inheritance rights from the inception of Maratha rule in 1677. At that time, Rani Dipamba had convinced her husband Raja Ekoji (d. 1686) to purchase Thanjavur’s freedom with jewels and money to forestall the armies of his half brother Shivaji of Maharashtra (d. 1680). In return for Dipamba’s diplomacy in averting a military clash, Shivaji granted her land revenues in Bangalore, to be inherited as matrilineal property (stridhan) by her female descendants. The six types of stridhan stipulated by the Manu Smriti (9:194–195) were primarily to enable women to undertake rituals for their spiritual welfare, to support themselves if necessary, and to bequeath sums to their daughters.45 The text thus states that a husband cannot touch his wife’s stridhan without her acquiescence; nor can she set aside a portion of his patrilineal family property without his permission.46 Thanjavur chattram documents indicate no gender conflict on the issue of matrilineal inheritance, as the system began with Shivaji. Two chattrams started in 1776 by Raja Tulsaji (1763–87) were named for his chief ranis, Rajasamba Bai and Sakhavaramba Bai. Other chattrams were named for royal women Rajakumara Bai, Mohanambal, Sulakshanambal, Draupadambal, Yamunambal, Sakwarambal, Muktambal.47 Thanjavur was politically threatened by the British after 1799, and king Sarabhoji (Serfoji; d. 1832) finally handed over the chattram administration to the colonial government. Sarabhoji’s letter to the British government confirmed that chattrams were royal matrilineal properties. He wrote that they descended ‘‘from the elder to the younger queen, that it remained in the hands of the senior queen until her death, and then descended to the wife of the reigning Raja.’’48 Despite the loss of sovereignty, south Indian kings and princesses donated lands and sums for girls’ and boys’ schools, irrespective of sect. Grateful for

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Muslim merchants who enriched Thanjavur, the rajas gave revenue lands to mosque schools.49 Tulsaji bequeathed enormous sums to Christian Frederick Schwartz (d. 1798), the Danish missionary.50 Also in memory of Schwartz, Sarabhoji gifted large sums and the entire village of Kannathangudi to educate ‘‘fifty poor Christian children.’’51 In 1871, his granddaughter Vijaya Mohana Muktambal donated Rs. 7,000 to the colonial government’s Lady Hobart School for Muslim girls.52 In 1877, the same princess donated money to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) for the Lady Napier School for Hindu girls, although conversion was central to the SPG mission.53 Other rulers supported girls’ and boys’ schools, irrespective of sectarian affiliation. The Muslim Nawab of Arcot gave the munificent sum of Rs. 80,000 to Lady Campbell’s Female Orphan Asylum, run by a Reverend Gericke and 12 directresses for 62 Eurasian girls. During war in 1790, there were 200 students, including orphan Indian girls. 54 In matrilineal Travancore, ranis Lakshmibai (in 1814) and Parvatibai (in 1821) donated rich paddy lands and coconut estates to the Church Missionary Society for girls’ and boys’ schools. Such institutions often relied upon funds from the sale of the girls’ embroidery and lace.55 Female Servitude: ‘‘Stri-Dharmapadhati’’ Despite eighteenth-century Thanjavur’s female composers, administrators, and philanthropists, some of the orthodox male elite resented women’s public presence. This is evident in the work ‘‘Stri-Dharmapadhati’’ (Guide to the Religious Status and Duties of Women), a manual for female subservience composed by a brahman named Tryambakayajvan. This author urged women not to flaunt their authority, remain at home, abstain from public activity. He drove home his point by citing Manu Smriti, which declared that ‘‘nothing should be done independently by a woman, either as a child, a young girl, or an old woman, even in her (own) home.’’ 56 ‘‘Stri-Dharmapadhati’’ advised women of their roles and property rights, as delineated by Manu Smriti. Although other lawgivers had elaborated and advised different views on stridhan, and many tribal, Dravidian, and low-caste communities did not consider Manu Smriti prescriptive, Tryambakayajvan reiterated its guidelines on female conduct. His orthodox views had appeared earlier in Dharmakuta, a commentary on the Ramayana (ca. 1715).57 However, by drawing specific attention to Manu’s laws in ‘‘Stri-Dharmapadhati,’’ Tryambakayajvan paved the way for brahman translators in colonial courts to declare the Manu Smriti as the preeminent Hindu laws. Tryambakayajvan’s work indicates that women had largely receded from public life in south India, perhaps in response to colonial wars. He argued that women’s minds were fickle, that their menstrual cycles kept them perpetually impure, but these flaws could be remedied if the wife worshipped her husband and performed menial chores with religious merit. He thus

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advised her to present an auspicious face to him each morning, labor on household tasks, collect cow dung with her hands, and smear it on the walls, sort grain till nightfall. The low caste had little relevance for this misogynist work, but its weight fell heavily upon elite women.58 WOMEN IN THE PORTUGUESE ESTADO When Vasco da Gama’s fleet docked at Calicut, Kerala, he did not realize that his nation’s empire would outlast other Western colonies in India. The Portuguese were propelled by two colonial visions that shaped their views on non-European women, after a Papal Bull (1492) directed the Iberians to discover new trade routes and to spread Catholicism. A medieval antipathy to Muslims (‘‘Moors’’) and Jews on the Iberian Peninsula was fueled by Arab mercantile successes in the Indian Ocean. Demographics shaped their colonial policy, compelling them to take local convert wives. Portugal’s population of one million was often decimated by epidemics, and it lacked the manpower to run an empire from a distance. It could thus ill afford the high rates of shipboard mortality due to poor hygiene or the loss of entire fleets on perilous oceans. 59 In his 1572 epic, The Lusiads (The Portuguese), poet Luiz de Camoes praised his countrymen as being ‘‘so strong, though you are so few’’ (7:3), and for surmounting these obstacles.60 He failed to mention that without Indian women, the Estado was doomed from the start. Intermarriage Policy Until the Counter Reformation, there were widespread prostitution, homosexuality, and common law marriages, even among monks and nuns in Portugal. The near absence of women on ships made homosexuality inevitable, and the crew rushed to local women immediately after disembarking at colonial ports.61 Similar mores also prevailed in Goa, despite the interracial Marriage Policy (Politica dos Casmentos) instituted in 1510 by Viceroy Afonso de Albuquerque (1453–1516). The new policy did not stem from lack of racial bigotry, but from the Viceroy’s desire to legalize marriages with Indian women who were sexually necessary. Yet, adultery continued even under the eagle eyes of Jesuits during the Inquisition in Goa (1560–1812). A large contingent of Indian women had accompanied Albuquerque’s forces after their temporary loss of Goa to Bijapur Sultanate in 1502. Observing that his soldiers enjoyed Indian mistresses, he became convinced that such promiscuity was a waste of national energy, and that his nascent colony could only survive through state-sponsored marriages. Accordingly, after he regained Goa in 1510, he informed King Dom Manuel that he had baptized the women, and that a friar had married ‘‘a hundred and

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fifty people.’’62 The plebeian Konkani women were more amenable to interracial marriages than high-caste women in Cochin and Calicut. The Marriage Policy is unique in India’s colonial history, as soon after it was instituted, there were about 450 biracial couples in Goa.63 Albuquerque felt that legal marriages would produce stable families of householders (casados) who as the backbone of the Estado would induce Indians to convert to Catholicism. However, Albuquerque was a pragmatist who was not averse to using prostitution to stabilize his empire. In at least one instance in 1513, he sent eight prostitutes to his guards at a warehouse (factory) and informed the Portuguese merchant that he would send more women after four months.64 The settlers who benefited from the Marriage Policy were artisans, clerks, masons, soldiers, and a few convict settlers who began life anew in the colonies. The Viceroy asked his king to supply funds, and he rewarded the men with land, cattle, houses, minor offices, and the woman as chattel.65 Thus, a Fernao de Basto received money and an Indian woman slave as his marriage gift. Another soldier married the governor’s maid and received a huge sum, a house, and a job. Albuquerque also occasionally punished his wealthy opponents by demanding a dowry for a couple to start their household. For example, he compelled his captain Diogo Mendes Vasconcelos and the merchant Francisco Corvynell to pay a substantial sum to a Pedro Vas who married a Goan woman.66 Although the demand for such marriages and gifts far exceeded the availability of women, Albuquerque stated his preference for fair-skinned converts from affluent or powerful Indian families in Goa. Fresh evidence shows that the women were primarily from lower castes for whom conversion meant social ascendancy. Their political power was also augmented as they now belonged to the ruling elite.67 Albuquerque’s letter enthusiastically reminded Dom Manuel of a conversation in Lisbon about intermarriage as a colonial policy. He flattered his distrustful royal patron by giving him credit for a farsighted plan, but the idea originated with Albuquerque. He wrote: With regard to the people here whom Your Highness has ordered to marry, it seems to me that this would be doing a great service both to God and to yourself. If Your Highness could see how great an inclination and desire the people have to marry in Goa, you would be amazed. There seems to be something divine about the wish that Portuguese men have to marry and settle in Goa. As God is my salvation, I believe that Our Lord has ordained this and inclined men’s hearts towards something that is hidden from us, but is of great service to him. Your Highness should give every encouragement to this business, and whoever you have here as governor and captaingeneral should watch over it with great care and give it his protection. I assure Your Highness that the devil is greatly concerned to

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oppose and thwart this scheme and gnaw away at the tender shoot to prevent its growing.68 Albuquerque’s enemies included insubordinate monks, and officials jealous over Goa’s preeminence over Cochin. He complained that ‘‘very few’’ were ready to set up monasteries, arrange intermarriages, or ensure that recently convert wives were good Christians. He was particularly exasperated by a Dominican friar whom he had misguidedly left as the vicar of Goa. The friar ‘‘stole more than seven hundred cruzados from the fund for the deceased,’’ excommunicated some soldiers, and refused to marry them to Indian wives.69 Moreover, as conversion was a central goal, Albuquerque drove Hindus out of Goa and Cochin to prevent social or sexual contact with converts.70 He wrote to Manuel in 1512: When I arrived at Cochin, it seemed to me right for the service of God and Your Highness that I should put an end to certain evils that were being committed here involving your people and the new Christians. I issued a proclamation saying that any heathen, man or woman, should withdraw from our settlement and go and live outside it. I did this, Sire, because these newly converted Christian ladies had ten, fifteen, twenty people in their households, cousins and brothers and other relations, who were not Christians but had dealings with them, and there were other heathen houses where the Moslems of Cochin came to sleep with the Christian women. Then there were houses which gave shelter to heathen and Moslem men from outside the city, whose occupation it was to entice male and female slaves to rob their masters and flee. Moreover, some of your people, weary of sleeping with Christian women, have gone to live with these heathen women.71 Gender, Sect, and Race in the Estado The Marriage Policy represented European racial pragmatism in sixteenth-century India. While the Estado was a male enterprise, it came to fruition through complicit Indian women, and ensuing generations of Catholic Luso-Indians (mestic¸as/mestic¸os). Although Albuquerque advised his men to marry fair Muslim women, few such women left the zenana unless taken captive in war. Similarly, few elite-caste women would have converted unless they were widows or captives. However, in the next centuries, more elite families perhaps converted because they benefited in various ways from their connections to the Portuguese rulers in Goa. Although society placed a premium on fair-skinned wives, Portuguese men apparently enjoyed dark-skinned mistresses they acquired in the slave trade between Mozambique (Africa), Goa (India), and Brazil (South America). Seventeenth-century accounts thus give lascivious details about

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the dark bodies and unrepressed desires of non-European women. 72 Frenchman Francois Pyrard (ca. 1603) described Goa’s slave auction on Rua Direita where ‘‘some of the most beautiful girls of all the nations of India’’ were sold as menials and sexual companions. Pyrard specifically described their swarthy, olive, and white bodies, the values of their products, their gift with musical instruments, and their skill in sewing dainty garments. He wrote of their gourmet cooking talents, and that their preserves were sold in the market, carried by slave women. He stated also that while the women cost little, ‘‘the greatest profit and riches of the people of Goa proceeds from the work of their slaves.’’ They were dressed attractively in lengthy silk cloths and bodices to entice customers to buy their goods, and to offer themselves as prostitutes. Clearly, female slavery, prostitution, and crafts were inextricably bound together in Goa’s economy.73 For Camoes, the ideal of feminine beauty was the ‘‘fair’’ European with ‘‘angelic hair’’ and ‘‘shoulders white as ivory’’ (TL 3:102).74 It is also believed that during his stay in Goa, he was attracted to a local woman named Luisa Barbara to whom he wrote verses. Yet, in his trenchant work Disparates na India (Follies of India), he dismissed Goan women as low-class speakers of a pidgin language. He also vented his poetic spleen against Muslims whom he described as traitors (2:7) of ‘‘shameless, barbaric blood’’ (3:75), and ranted against Hindu ‘‘heathen idols’’ (2:51) as ‘‘abominations base’’ (7:47).75 However, Camoes had exaggerated praise for Kerala’s products and polyandry. This sexual hyperbole convinced European visitors of the easy availability of docile women and wealth in India. Camoes wrote (TL 7:41): Women are held in common, but they are In this restricted to the husband’s kin. Happy that race, under a kindly star, Who feel no pang of jealousy within. Such practices, the men of Malabar, Like others odder yet, esteem no sin. And the land fattens on all trade the while, Which the seas fetch from China to the Nile.76

In a strange prejudicial twist, although Portuguese soldiers feared ‘‘white’’ Jews and Muslims, Albuquerque wished them to marry fair Muslims, not dark Malabari Hindus. 77 Yet, newly converted dark Catholics ranked higher than fair Jews and Muslims in the Estado.78 In the bloodthirsty war with Bijapur in 1502, Albuquerque mercilessly set fire to a Muslim ship, but saved 20 children for conversion. In his second battle over Goa in 1510, Albuquerque cut off the noses and ears of 6,000 Muslim men, women, and children in a fishing village. Widows converted when soldiers threatened rape. 79 The Portuguese had mixed feelings about Hindus (gentias [f]; gentios [m]) whom they first mistook for ‘‘fallen’’ Christians, and the

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humanist Tome Pires even saw similarities in Hinduism and Christianity in 1623. Albuquerque wooed Hindus as allies against Muslims, but despised them as heathen idolaters. Hindu men and women were stoned in Malabar, and banished from Goa where temples were zealously razed, especially after St. Francis Xavier arrived (1542) as harbinger of the Counter Reformation.80 Xavier separated soldiers from Hindu lovers, baptized Indians en masse, weeded out lax converts, and recommended the Inquisition, which was implemented in 1560, six years after his death.81 Inquisition and Goan Women The Inquisition lasted for roughly 250 years in the Estado, and Hindu, Muslim, and Jewish converts were targeted. Women were penalized for simple social acts, including birth control. In 1774 it was outlawed by the Marquis of Pombal, a dictator in Portugal, but reinstated in 1778 by Queen Maria, and finally abolished in 1812.82 Over 16,000 women and men were tortured, imprisoned, or burnt alive for presumed offences against the Church.83 Hindus later paid a poll tax to live in Goa, but faced restrictions on rites, names, and attire. Women could not wear their traditional blouses (choli), men the cotton nether garment (dhoti) as being sexually provocative.84 Women were prosecuted for breaking the ban on social functions during weddings. They were jailed for prostitution, using contraceptives, and abortion. Thus, in 1771 the widow Luisa was jailed for aborting her fetus. Although a convert, the tribunal viewed her with suspicion, especially as she was listed as being of the ‘‘sudra class.’’ Convert women Flomazia, Maria, and Esperanca were imprisoned for prostitution.85 Midwives or widows were accused of necromancy and for faith in non-Christian superstitions when delivering infants. Catherina, Anna Maria Telles, and Luiza Fernandez thus performed penance, and Anna Pinto was confined at a garrison jail.86 Women were jailed for celebrating female life rituals during pregnancy or a girl’s menarche. These festivities were banned in 1736, but observed secretly, and then in open after the Inquisition ended.87 Male Inquisitors also banned residual, but innocuous Hindu wedding customs such as anointing the bride with turmeric and coconut water (1736), and covering the bride’s face (1780). A bride could no longer wear a nose-ring or jewelry gifted by the groom’s parents. The parents of the bride were not permitted to follow the tradition of washing their son-in-law’s feet, nor could they exchange gifts of betel leaves and areca nuts (paan).88 Portuguese Women Settlers in Goa Between 1550 and 1750, the Portuguese state and the Catholic Church sent destitute orphan girls (orfas) and reformed prostitutes to Goa and Brazil. If the state saw them as a drain on the exchequer, the Inquisitors were

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determined to stamp out prostitution and homosexuality in Goa, and to produce stable casado families. The females were between 14 and 30 years of age, and they were given dowries upon marriage to casados in Goa.89 The dowries came from royal subsidies and special taxes, but also from the women’s personal finances. Prior to departure in groups of three to five, the women were housed in special shelters like the Ricolhimento do Castelo at Sao Jorge. Sometimes there were older women who were slated to marry junior colonial officials who requested Portuguese wives. The misericordia was the main supervisory institution for the orfas until marriage, while another government agency searched for suitable husbands. So many orfas arrived in Goa in the sixteenth century that the Estado passed special taxes and used a royal subsidy to build the shelter, Recolhimento da Nossa Senhora da Serra. In 1610, the Ricolhimento de Santa Maria Madalena was established for reformed prostitutes, while Convent of Santa Monica in Goa catered to those who wished to be nuns.90 While the Estado promoted white female immigration, some officials felt that it counteracted Albuquerque’s original policy of intermarriages with Indians. Interestingly, over time, the orfa dowry became a type of female inheritance. For example, a woman named D. Clara Maria Torres was given a naval notary position in honor of her father in lieu of a dowry, and this could be transferred to the husband. Women also occasionally inherited valuable villages with large incomes if they married elite officials born in Portugal but settled in Goa (reinos).91 Women in Multiethnic Goa Unlike the later English and Dutch, the Portuguese viewed their Indian colony as an extension of their national identity, ensuring that their men married convert Indian wives and raised families. Despite such marriages, Portuguese and mestic¸o sailors continued to consort with slave and free mistresses from Brazil to Malaya. This long history of sexual traffic has left multiracial descendants and Creole cultures in peninsular India and Sri Lanka.92 A permissive life style was also shared by Goa’s military nobility (fidalgos), householders (casados), and male soldiers (soldados), whose social status depended upon birth, as among Hindu castes. The highest ranks were born in Portugal (reinas [f]/reinos [m]), followed by Portuguese born in India (castic¸ as/castic¸ os or Indiaticas/Indiaticos), Eurasians (mestic¸ as/ mestic¸os). After the eighteenth century, Hindus and Muslims were allowed to reside in Goa, but they ranked lowest. Prostitution and venereal diseases like syphilis were thus widespread in Goa. The Jesuits tried to curb prostitution, realized its impossibility, and finally just collected a tax from the women.93 Fear of prosecution by the Inquisition drove homosexuality underground, and lip service was paid to sexual sobriety. This is apparent in the scholarly account of John Huygen

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van Linschoten, a Dutch physician who studied Goa’s customs, women, and systems of medicine (1583–88). While he probably did not intend to titillate, his writings provide a glimpse into early Western views on the ‘‘primitive savage’’ and dark women’s animal appetites. Linschoten does not blame European men for their lust, but the tropical climate and Indian women’s lewd attire. Yet, he felt that even intercourse with dark women was preferable to sodomy. He wrote: The women go altogether naked onely with a cloth before their privie members, which openeth chewing all they have, which is by them ordayned to the ends that by such means it should tempt men to lust after them and to avoid the most abominable and accursed sin of Sodomie.94 Linschoten also described the use of clove and other spices, and even marijuana or ganja to increase desire. Similarly, the seventeenth-century French visitor Francisco Pyrard de Laval described Goa’s sexual mores, which allowed women to drug their husbands with datura to enjoy trysts with Portuguese and Eurasian lovers. With such widespread promiscuity, the formal ranks overlapped across the centuries. When ensuing generations of soldiers settled in Goa with Indian wives and when affluence increased in the early Estado, some Indiaticas/Indiaticos and mestic¸as/mestic¸os became as powerful as reinos. Thus, by 1524, there were about 450 casados, including those with Indian wives. They had increased to 1,800 by 1540, many now powerful mestic¸ os. 95 Mestic¸as/mestic¸os with high-caste Catholic mothers often retained their caste status.96 During the eighteenth-century European hegemonic wars, the Dutch, French, and English prized the beauty and wealth of Indiatica/mestic¸a wives whose knowledge of India gave them a distinct political advantage. Despite the policy on interracial marriages, the fair-skinned enjoyed a higher status in Goa. Laws prohibited the smuggling of Portuguese women on ships from Lisbon, but this was common in the first decades. When three women were caught in 1524, Viceroy da Gama ordered their public flogging and return to Europe in fetters. Although he later gave dowries for marriage, he refused to pardon them.97 Many wealthy fidalgos/reinos openly maintained Indian mistresses, and adultery was also common among aristocratic Goan women.98 This was especially true of senior officials who came without their wives to India on a short tenure until 1750, when the Marchioness of Tavora accompanied her husband the Viceroy to Goa.99 Ordinary soldiers, lesser functionaries, and merchants settled permanently in India with local wives, as they could not afford periodic visits to Portugal, so that inevitably within decades,

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many casados were mestic¸os. Their wives were most often women from the lower castes, as brahman women would not risk losing their high caste through intermarriage, although they were taken as war captives or forced to be the mistresses of powerful officials. Albuquerque also convinced some elite Indian families to marry their daughters to his men and to convert to Catholicism. Despite the interracial Marriage Policy, neither the genders nor the races were equal. In a patriarchal culture that thrived on slavery, women and slaves of all hues were considered necessary for colonial existence. What is significant, however, is that Catholic mestic¸os were given a legal standing in the Estado. The dictator of Portugal in 1773 was the Marquis of Pombal who outlawed slavery in the Estado and legalized mestic¸o inheritance rights. Mestic¸ os were also allowed to hold official posts in Goa. This inspired Francisco Luis Gomes (b. 1829), a Goan doctor who wrote the biography, Marquis de Pombal, in which he praised Pombal for repudiating Jesuit excesses in the Inquisition.100 Gomes’s novel Os Brahamanes derided the elitism of Hindu priests and of European colonials. Yet, illicit slavery thrived despite Pombal’s enactments until the Portuguese Civil Code (Part I, Article 7) finally, but effectively eradicated it in 1869.101 Female Education and Rights in Goa The absence of state schools and paucity of private girls’ schools meant that female illiteracy was widespread until the mid-nineteenth century. The affluent had private teachers instruct their daughters in the precepts of Catholicism, some rudimentary reading and arithmetic, and in sewing, embroidery, and lace-making. This is seen in the popular work, Carta de Guia de Casados (Guidelines for Casados), by Dom Francisco Manuel de Melo (1606–66), a fidalgo patriarch who advised that women be taught only handicrafts and domestic skills.102 In 1846 the state finally established a girls’ primary school in Goa, but few families enrolled their daughters in the first decades. However, after more liberal laws were passed in 1910, female literacy rates began to ascend, as they did elsewhere in India. Polygamy and sati were banned in 1567, stimulated by Catholic horror at heathen customs, although the Inquisition exacted its own brand of penalties upon women. On the positive side, however, Christian girls were married at a later age, so that their mortality rates in childbirth were lower than that of Hindu women. 103 A liberal Portuguese Civil Code (1869) allowed widows to remarry, and wives to annul unhappy marriages, although only with Ecclesiastical Court approval. When Portugal became a republic in 1910, the Estado instituted more egalitarian statutes on female rights in marriage, remarriage, divorce, and guardianship over children. While praiseworthy, the laws were enacted after four hundred years of racial, sectarian, and gender discrimination in the Estado.104

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WOMEN IN THE BRITISH EMPIRE Wars and Women’s Lives British colonialists and Indian nationalists remarked often on the low social status of Indian women. They both blamed outdated Indian traditions, but the problems had exacerbated during the eighteenth-century Anglo-French wars for colonial domination. Moving armies and modern weapons left a trail of widows, sati, rape, and Eurasian orphans. Fearing the loss of caste, orthodox caste men tightened the rules governing women’s sexual lives, education, and public appearance. High-caste women now retreated further into households, valued primarily as reproducers, so that their labor became invisible in official records. Early marriages meant more progeny, but they also resulted in greater female mortality in childbirth. In south India and the Deccan, high-caste girls were married before puberty, but consummation occurred after puberty and a secondary ritual. The literate castes, especially those with liberal propensities, instructed daughters in the epics and Bhagavad Gita, sometimes seated in the inner rooms of verandah schools, while boys sat outside and learned the Vedas.105 Prepuberty marriages reduced women’s chances to study, while working women remained largely illiterate. However, devadasi girls attended pyal schools with boys in south India. In Bengal, elite girls were taught at home by women performers (vaishnavis) versed in the epics and Puranas. In her work, Sekele Katha (Tales of Olden Days), Swarnakumari Thakur (1855–1932) described an earlier generation taught by vaishnavis who entered their inner rooms. Swarnakumari’s educational opportunities were due to her father Debendranath Thakur, a reformer in the Brahma Samaj (BS; 1828).106 In the agricultural northwest, patriarchal Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims welcomed male children as seasonal rain to the farm, as boys were future wage earners obliged to care for aged parents.107 Girls were financial burdens, since village exogamy required daughters to be married with fanfare and sent away. Female infanticide was common among high-ranking Jats and Rajputs, and lower-caste Khatris until the colonial Prohibition of Female Infanticide Act (1872). The sex ratio became less disproportionate in Punjab by 1901.108 Despite this misogynist custom, natural affection led parents to undertake expenses for daughters whose departure they mourned after the wedding, knowing that separation could be permanent. Punjabi Hindus and Sikhs also practiced levirate marriage (karewa) in which the widow remarried her deceased husband’s brother. She then regained her married status, and karewa safeguarded her children. Unfortunately, such marriages did not require her acquiescence, especially if the husband’s family wished to retain her dowry.109 Women’s clothing varied according to region, caste, and sect. In south India, Muslim women wore a light veil (pardah) over head and face; but

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Hindu women did not, although they covered the bosom carefully and lived sheltered lives at home. Women of working castes wore unrestricted saris for labor and movement. In the north, east, and west, Hindu and Sikh women draped heads and bosoms with the sari or a dupatta (shawl), which also served as a partial pardah. Muslim women wore similar attire, but observed pardah more completely, and when in public they wore a body cloak (burqah). Many homes across India had separate women’s chambers in the inner section, while men stayed in outer rooms. Family and close friends met in a central courtyard where Muslim women sometimes shed the veil.110 Pardah reinforced the gender division of labor among rural Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims. Women attended to household chores, sorted crops, and cared for the livestock, but as they did not get paid, their labor was not recorded in documents. Upon acquiring some wealth, rural families withdrew their women from harsh field work. Social esteem rose when women could remain family reproducers, although they also did all domestic chores, cared for children, and nursed the elderly.111 Few Muslim girls attended mosque schools (maktabs) along with boys, and there was gender segregation in the few classes which they did attend. Here most often girls learned to recite, but nor read the Qur’an. In the nineteenth century, segregated girls’ maktabs numbered eleven in Bengal, and only six around Delhi, so that many working-class women were illiterate.112 As a preparation for marriage, girls helped their mothers with cooking, sewing, and caring for younger siblings and the elderly. As most elite Muslim girls were in strict pardah, they did not attend the maktabs. However, older male teachers (maulvis) did enter their homes to instruct young girls and boys on the Qur’an, moral tales from Persian texts, and elementary arithmetic. After maturity, elite girls were taught separately at home by female scholars (ustad bis).113 The education of elite class Muslim and Hindu girls largely depended upon patriarchal favor. While the enlightened taught their daughters to read the scriptures, the conservative feared that other literature would lead women astray, and the feudal feared that literacy would tempt girls to write clandestine notes to lovers.114 A popular Persian classic cautioned parents to teach girls the scripture and laws, but not how to write, as such knowledge would be ‘‘a great calamity.’’115 The time spent in the classroom for Muslim girls was as limited as for Hindus, since the former were sometimes engaged as children, but married after puberty. This section focuses on women’s education, two colonial laws affecting women before the 1857 Indian Revolt, working women in the empire, and Eurasians in the British colonial state. Colonial Rulers, Laws, and Indian Women After Parliament assumed joint control with the EIC, the empire’s new moral arbiters were the Evangelicals led by William Wilberforce

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(1759–1833). Wilberforce accused EIC officials of licentiousness with Indian women, for banning missionaries from their territories, visiting Hindu temples on festivals, and promoting European scholars of Indian texts (Orientalists). Wilberforce reiterated Britain’s obligation to ‘‘improve’’ India by sending Christian chaplains and schoolmasters, and charged Hinduism with condoning idolatry, infanticide, and sati.116 Many officials were now convinced of the superiority of Western society (Anglicists), and many espoused Jeremy Bentham’s (d. 1832) Utilitarian views on government efficiency. Despite the numerous errors in The History of British India (1806) by EIC Director James Mill, who never visited India, his derogatory views on Hinduism and its women were widely accepted in Britain. A Parliamentary grant to missionary enterprise in India led to an influx of missionaries after 1813. They implicitly believed these words by Mill: Nothing can exceed the habitual contempt which Hindus entertain for their women . . . they are held in extreme degradation, excluded from the sacred books, deprived of education and (of a share) in the paternal property.117 A Dual Patriarchy: British Officials and Indian Reformers Having acquired an empire through dubious means, which remained necessary for this profitable enterprise, the British sought to reduce their culpability by enacting moral laws in India, many affecting women. However, these measures depended on the support of educated Indian men (bhadralok) like Ram Mohan Roy (1772–1833) and Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar (1820– 91). Anchored in Indian and Western texts, Ram Mohan Roy and the BS’s bhadralok believed that sati, polygamy, and constraints on widow remarriage deviated from the humane ideals of early Hinduism. Roy’s pamphlets against sati strengthened the decision of Governor-General William Bentinck (1828–33), an evangelical and Utilitarian, to pass the Bengal Sati Regulation Act XVII (1829). Bentinck also banned highway robbery (thuggi) in the name of goddess Kali. Similarly, Vidyasagar’s petitions on widow remarriage enabled Governor-General Dalhousie (1848–54), another Utilitarian, to enact Widow Remarriage Act XV (1856). However, orthodox Hindus protested the measures as religious interference by foreign rulers. After the 1857 Revolt, the British hesitated to pass religiously intrusive laws, but did enact others on women’s marriage, inheritance, and other rights. These were the Indian Divorce Act (1869), Special Act of 1870 for the Suppression of Female Infanticide, Special Marriage Act (1872), Married Women’s Property Act (1874), the Age of Consent Act (1860; amended in 1891), and Child Marriage Restraint Act (1929). Indian reformers spearheaded the last two laws which raised the age of consensual sex and

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marriage for girls to 12 years. They followed the view of Sir William Jones, a judge and Orientalist scholar, that earlier Hindu texts took precedence over later works, and that textual laws took precedence over local customs of marriage, inheritance, and other rights. This recognized Sanskrit textual laws in Manu Smriti over India’s labyrinth of regional ethnic customs.118 This interpretation was accepted by British officials and elite Indian men who both believed that India would modernize through colonial rule. While some laws were beneficial to Indian women, others negated their rights, but their long-term effects appear in the laws of independent India. However, elite-caste reformers disagreed with the British that premodern Indian laws were uniformly unjust and outmoded. They argued instead that ancient Vedic ideals of universalism and justice had eroded over the millennia, and needed rectification. Despite good intentions, patriarchy won the day. Colonial laws were based in English common law which guaranteed male property rights, as this resonated in the Manu Smriti. However, they negated some Indian matrilineal traditions on female property rights. Moreover, for reasons unknown, the British court denied Manu Smriti’s fair stipulation that widows be maintained from the husband’s joint family property.119 Altruism and self-interest governed the dual patriarchy of elite British officials and Indian reformers. The former tried to validate an illegal empire through benign laws, and the latter initially focused only on customs inhibiting elite women. Reformers labored under feelings of cultural inferiority, with a schizophrenic defense of enlightened Indian traditions with apologies over its misogynist customs. The Bengal bhadralok tried to instill their new Western knowledge in women (bhadramahila), who were proudly introduced into the Calcutta’s colonial society.120 However, both reformers and officials ignored issues peripheral to their interests, viz., the problems of working women and of Eurasians. The former threatened British bourgeois views and were ignored by Indians seeking a niche in the new regime. Both elites derided Eurasians as misfit ‘‘half-castes,’’ as they were an uncomfortable reminder of British sexual dependence on local women and of Indian women’s unchaste complicity with foreign men. However, humanists like Ram Mohan Roy, Rabindranath Thakur (1861–1941), and A. Madhaviah (1872–1925) were genuinely disturbed by gender and caste inequities. They sought homologies between premodern Indian universalism and recent Western ideals of equality in their writings in Indian languages and in English. Rabindranath of Bengal and Madhaviah of Tamil Nadu explored gender issues through fiction, entering into women’s minds to explore their frustrations over educational neglect, seclusion, child marriage, and widow abuse. Thakur assumed a woman’s voice to describe marital cruelties from which the only escape was religious pilgrimage (‘‘A Letter from a Wife,’’ 1912). In one novel, he compared the caged bird to a woman in pardah. If suppressed women remained gullible children,

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colonial chains reduced India to a gullible nation (Home and the World, 1915). Madhaviah charged Hindus with subordinating women through illiteracy, marital rape, and widow abuse (Padmavati Charitram, 1898; Muthumeenakshi, 1903). He also accused unscrupulous Bible women of converting unwary females (Satyananda, 1909) and elite Christians of discriminating against lower-caste converts (‘‘Padmavati Charitram Munram Bhagam,’’ 1924).121 A rising class of women reformers emulated Pandita Ramabai Saraswati (1858–1922) who educated women of all castes; Savitribai Phule (1831–97) who taught Dalit women with her husband Jotiba Phule (1827–90); and Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1880–1932) who started schools for Muslim girls. They form the subject of a later chapter. Women’s Education Girls in Indigenous Schools (Madras) With its large population of high-caste brahmans and non-brahmans, devadasis, Muslims, and Christian converts, multilingual Madras Presidency provides insights into indigenous schools and colonial policies on female education. Upper-class Muslim girls were taught at home by women scholars (ustad bis), and at local mosque schools (maktabs) meant primarily for boys, although a few girls’ schools were scattered across north India. Fearing missionaries, upper-class Hindu and Muslim parents did not send daughters to Western schools until the late nineteenth century. As Muslim girls also did not attend Muslim colleges (madarssas), they were largely invisible in the first British educational survey (1822) conducted by Governor Thomas Munro in Madras. The collectors who gathered data on indigenous education concluded that the only girls visibly in attendance in verandah or pyal schools were devadasis. Oral history shows that caste girls may have escaped the collectors’ eyes, as they studied in rooms next to verandahs where devadasi girls sat with boys. They studied the regional language, arithmetic, Bhagavad Gita, the Sanskrit epics, and the Puranas, and the high-caste boys learned the Vedas. Yet, the girls often imbibed some sacred Vedic verses (mantras) chanted by boys. In her autobiography, Vedavalli, a brahman woman (1901–89), described how she learned mantras at the age of four, and Sanskrit two years later: The day began at 4:00 a.m. when my father woke me, my elder sister, and my younger brother, and took us to the temple. There he taught us to recite holy chants (slokas) in Sanskrit. Only after I had learnt them did we return home and break our fast. I learnt to read Sanskrit when I was six. I went to school for six months in Karuthattangudi School, the raja’s school, and for another year in Nagapattinam when I was seven.122

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Savitri Rajan (1908), descendant of a brahman musicologist, described the classes on the verandah of her ancestral home. She said: Girls could not learn the Vedas, but they were taught literature and music. They sat inside the house and the boys remained in the verandah. My great-grandmother, who was born around 1860, was known to be so well-versed in the Manusmriti that her two brothers, who were lawyers, often asked her advice on Hindu law.123 Missionaries and Girls’ Education An increasing number of male missionaries arrived after 1813, often accompanied by wives or sisters who started classes for girls. They belonged to Protestant organizations like the Church Missionary Society (CMS), London Missionary Society (LMS), Scottish Presbyterian Mission (SPM), the Wesleyan Mission, and the American Madura Mission. Later female missionaries arrived on their own, enthusiastic about their work as teachers, nurses, and doctors for Indian women. Early girls’ classes were begun in south India by Mrs. Bailey at Kottayam, Travancore (1816); Mrs. Rhenius at Palayamkottai, Tirunelveli (1823); Mrs. Drew at Vepery, Madras (1832); Mrs. Eckard in Madurai (1835). They provided a network for Indian Christian women whom they trained as ‘‘suitable wives for pastors and teachers.’’124 Spinster Mary Anne Cooke began an early Protestant girls’ school in Bengal in 1821, and then set up 30 others.125 At the age of 12, a Bengali woman convert named Hannah Catherine Mullens (1826–61) taught girls at Bhawanipore Mission School, left this to write Christian literature, and possibly married a British missionary.126 Mission curriculum consisted of reading, writing, arithmetic, Gospel teachings, sewing, and knitting, the last being taught even in tropical south India. 127 Western women missionaries braved poverty, intense heat, and other adversities to teach Indian women, and their work with low castes raised their literary rates. Seeing low-caste girls as victims of brahmans, they attempted to convert them with such vigor that the high castes kept their own daughters away. As the poor were drawn to mission schools through gifts of rice and other benefits, especially during famines, they were often called ‘‘rice Christians.’’ However, most Hindu and Muslim girls at mission schools did not embrace Christianity. Knowing the role of women in transmitting traditions at home, they feared that cultural identity could be lost through conversion. Missionaries also knew this and thus relied on ‘‘Bible women’’ converts to preach to the family, and village women. In 1821, LMS reverend Thomas Nicholson wrote to colleagues: While they continue in Heathenism, it does not appear that will undergo the disgrace of allowing their girls to be educated. The only

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plan that I think remains is to take in girls who are orphans, and support them entirely, which would require an establishment of such expense that I know not to whom we could look for supplies of money . . . to raise the females of India . . . is of great importance as it regards the spread of the Gospel.128 The absence of caste girls from Western schools appeared in colonial records, so that officials were convinced that Hindu women were universally illiterate. Missionaries like Isabella Thoburn (1840–1901) felt motivated to teach, imagining Indian girls to be worse off than they really were. Her biographer wrote this exaggerated summary: The sad history of Indian womanhood, as seen by those brought up in the free air of Christly teachings, has been pathetically summed up in three brief sentences, which though all apothegms, not wholly true, still contain so much truth as to afford a severe arraignment of Brahmanism. This terse history is, ‘‘Unwelcomed at birth, unhonored in life, unwept in death.’’ No heavier burden lies upon life in India than the inhuman and debasing treatment of womanhood by the religious prescription of the ruling faith.129 Female conversion did not remove the stigma of caste or widowhood, since converts continued to cling to caste ranks. However, the example of literate Bible women as preachers for other women was more persuasive than even Christian theology for villagers. Spiritual and material salvation went hand in hand, since converts learned to read the Bible and incidentally escaped child marriage or perpetual widowhood. The American Madura Mission’s example of ‘‘Bible women’’ became a stirring example of how women converts could win a whole village. This missionary summed up the view that women were the best teachers:130 It has always been an article of the creed of every people that the mothers make the nation. To educate and Christianize the makers of the Hindu nation was the work that thus opened out before the women of our Christian lands. Almost immediately the wives and daughters of our missionaries began to visit the zenanas in the towns where they were situated. This movement became a recognized feature in our Indian campaign.131 Yet, missionaries frowned upon women’s innocent pleasures, like the red vermilion tilak on the forehead, love of flowers, nose-rings, necklaces. They forbade female rites for watershed life events such as menarche, marriage, and childbirth. Their biases were evident in a school for orphan and lowcaste boys and girls run by J. W. Lechlar and Rosa Lechlar in 1848 in Salem, Madras. Four high-caste girls studied with them in the morning and sewed in

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the afternoons, and their handiwork helped with finances. However, the Lechlars bemoaned the caste girls’ fondness for jewelry and the ignorance of their Hindu parents. Rosa Lechlar described the girls as ‘‘beseeching’’ her to convert them, so that when their work was rewarded with cash, they had to promptly donate it to the Bible Society.132 After 1840, women missionaries expanded their network of free classes for Hindu and Muslim girls, and opened boarding schools in temple towns like Kanchipuram and Puri. Habitually short of funds, they began teaching elite women at home, since these women did not attend formal schools in this era. Zenana missions were started in 1857 by the Church of England Zenana Mission Society (CEZMS), and also by LMS and SPG.133 Since male teachers could not enter the women’s chambers, zenana missions employed European and later Eurasian women to read stories, teach sewing, lace-making, and knitting, while they spread the Gospel. Despite evangelical zeal, their teaching was impeded by unfamiliarity with local languages and cultures. They often suffered due to heat, fell ill, died at an early age, or returned to Britain. Women missionaries were respected as part of the ruling European elite, and they earned more than governesses in Britain. Yet, like other women, they earned half the pay of male counterparts, and marriage even to a missionary meant losing both their jobs and the return fare to Britain. The quick turnover in women teachers impeded the success of zenana missions, and although elite women appreciated the classes, few became converts.134 This remained true also of mission schools which had large numbers of elite girls after 1885, but few converts. More successful were village schools, innovative deaf and dumb industrial schools, and teacher training schools such as the Sarah Tucker College in Tirunelveli.135 Mission women’s instructional methods were adopted in secular government schools, and later by nationalists in their efforts to spread female education. Government Girls’ Schools The colonial state did almost nothing for girls’ education until the midnineteenth century when it began to subsidize secular private schools with grants-in-aid. Female literacy rates remained low until Indians established girls’ schools, after which government increased its efforts. A new official policy to promote secular education began with Sir Charles Wood, later the secretary of state for India. In the momentous Despatch of 1854, Wood advised special taxes to raise funds for government schools, but grants for private institutions. Primary education was to be in the local language, and English for secondary classes, mostly for boys. However, Wood noted ‘‘with pleasure the evidence which is now afforded of an increased desire on the part of many of the natives of India to give a good education to their daughters.’’ He also praised a Maghanbhai Karamchand for starting two girls’ schools in Ahmedabad.136 Officials corresponded on how to implement the

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policy, while a Reverend Richards of Madras made the definitive pronouncement that ‘‘the education of girls [was] a thing generally unknown among the Hindus.’’137 Yet, at Calcutta in 1849, a Ram Gopal Ghosh and Babu Jaikissen Mookherjee gave land and money to start the secular Hindu Balika Vidyalaya (Hindu Girls’ School) with lessons in Sanskrit, Bengali, and English taught by Indians and Europeans.138 Its patron was J. E. Drinkwater Bethune, law member of Dalhousie’s Council, and Mrs. Bethune, so that the institution was called Bethune School. Its first secretary of school was Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, whose petitions led Dalhousie to sign the Widow Remarriage Act in 1856.139 The first hint of Wood’s subsidies led to a similar experiment in Madras in 1852 by elite men. The Royapettah Hindu Female School was started and operated by a T. Gopalkistnah Pillay and his colleagues. For the next three years, Gopalkistnah Pillay wrote to the Madras governor for grants, but received one letter stating that the governor viewed the school ‘‘with gratification, and wished for its prosperity and emulation by others.’’ However, neither the Bethune nor the Royapettah girls’ school were given enough aid, and struggled for survival.140 Such schools were few, as the colonial government gave a low priority to girls’ education until 1930. In 1866, Mary Carpenter, an educationist friend of Ram Mohan Roy, visited India to gauge Indian views on government girls’ schools. Impressed by Maharaja Hindu Girls’ School started in Madras by the Vizianagaram raja, Vijayaram Gajapathi, Carpenter aggressively corresponded with officials on starting similar teacher training schools for women. She respected Indians and strongly advised against religious interference, and her efforts promoted a major shift in government policy on women’s secular education. In 1868, Carpenter published Six Months in India, with a portrait of Ram Mohan Roy. She stated: The grand obstacle to the improvement of female schools, and to the extension of them, is the universal want of female teachers. Nowhere, except in Mission Schools, are any trained female teachers to be found; and even in them, the supply created by the training of teachers in the institutions themselves, is not sufficient to meet the demand. The girls’ schools are taught entirely by male teachers! This has long been felt to be a great evil by the inspectors, the intelligent native gentlemen, and the mothers of the children; but there has been no possibility, in the existing state of things, of remedying the evil.141 Emulating the Maharaja Hindu Girls’ School, government opened the Presidency Teachers’ Training School (PT School) in 1870 in Madras. Its first 19 students were Hindu and Christian orphans, and virgin widows who became a resource for teacher training schools over the coming decades.142 In her address to Parliament in 1877, Carpenter described the support

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to women’s education by ‘‘enlightened Indians,’’ and that widows were a potential resource: [T]he ignorance of Hindu women of a suitable age is one great impediment, and the difficulty of finding any such, except widows, who would be able and willing to be trained as teachers, is another.143 The first major census in 1871 revealed that although Christians formed just 1 percent of the population, they comprised 32 percent of the students in Madras schools. Caste girls were often literate, but in this era did not attend public government schools. 144 Madras reformers voiced concern that women from the literate castes would lag behind Christian girls. Over the next 40 years, elite-caste girls were sent to public schools, where 12 percent were brahmans, 8.5 percent were Christians, Muslims were 8 percent, and all other groups were 2 percent.145 Yet, colonial expenditure on girls’ education was a fraction of what was spent for boys. In the early twentieth century, Indian nationalists started schools with an India-centered curriculum, including its languages and texts, English, mathematics, science, hygiene, and geography. Feminists also began schools for girls of all communities, so that after 1921, female literacy rates inched forward, but the most significant improvements occurred only after independence in 1947. Educating Devadasis After the British began absorbing smaller Indian kingdoms, the rulers lost the revenue needed for endowments to temples and to village schools. As devadasis depended upon the endowments for survival, they increasingly sought commercial patrons. The decline of village schools also meant that the performing women had less opportunities to study Indian languages, epics, Puranas, and bhakti texts which formed the repertoire for their dances. In the first survey of indigenous schools in Madras in 1822, Governor Thomas Munro’s revenue collectors noted that pyal schools had begun to deteriorate in Tamil-, Telugu-, Kannada-, and Malayalam-speaking districts. They were the first to record the presence of devadasi girls at village schools.146 The situation worsened after missionary schools proliferated in India after 1813. The evangelicals were highly suspicious of devadasis, nor did the girls enroll in Christian institutions that did not teach them Hindu legends.147 As the Victorian century progressed, devadasis also faced the censure of officials, and Indian reformers eager to ‘‘cleanse’’ society of its permissive traditions. Chattram schools attended by devadasis were also taken over by the British administration. In 1877, Nidamangalam chattram’s pyal school in Thanjavur was converted into a government girls’ school that catered to the elite favored by the British. In a newspaper letter, Sir W. Robinson

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pleaded with Victorian prudery that ‘‘brothel girls’’ be excluded from colonial schools. He pointed out that the maharaja of Vizianagaram had excluded devadasis from his model girls’ school, fearing that caste girls would be tainted by ‘‘depraved prostitutes’’ even before puberty. 148 He sanctimoniously declared: I know the feeling to be genuine amongst the respectable people of this country from a lifetime spent amongst them . . . It has been my painful duty, with reference to a large female school of which I had charge years ago at Narsapur, to personally inquire into those brothel exercises and filthy communications from which these infants pass to school for a few hour only in a day.149 Despite their misfortunes, talented devadasis maintained the Karnatak music and dance legacy, but were often compared to English dance hall girls. Elite Indian men accepted their art, but not the women. The term ‘‘nautch girl’’ (dancing prostitute) was used derogatively by reformers like Viresalingam Pantulu (1848–1919), an educator of widows and women, who aggressively undertook anti-nautch campaigns in Madras.150 Such attitudes were imbibed by the feminist Dr. Muthulakshmi Reddi (1886–1968) who glossed over her maternal devadasi ancestry. Dr. Reddi later helped legally to abolish the dedication of devadasis to temples.151 Feminists and male reformers united to abolish the practice in Mysore (1909), Travancore (1930), Bombay (1934), and Madras (1929, 1937, 1947). Many devadasis became dependent on male relatives for concert arrangements. These men became prominent musicians in south India, and they coined their new political-caste identity as isai vellalas.152 Colonial Laws and Women Sati Regulation Act of Bengal (1829) The feminine for ‘‘sat’’ (Truth; Skt.) is sati, connoting goddess Sati-Devi, but in the medieval era it referred to a true wife (sati) who died upon her husband’s pyre. A feudal culture thus sought to balance wartime deaths of kshatriya warriors by demanding a comparable sacrifice of true wives. Nineteenth-century colonial debates used the term sati not for the widow, but for her immolation, thus reducing her from agent to victim object.153 Sati immolation is not sanctioned by the scriptural Vedas and Bhagavad Gita, and it is not required by law manuals like Manu Smriti. It was also not practiced initially by brahman, vaishya, and shudra castes.154 However, in the late seventeenth century, a few vaishyas who grew affluent through commerce began to practice sati immolation as a status symbol. In the eighteenth-century colonial wars, some northern brahmans adopted it for venal reasons. Historically, widow burnings occur during social upheavals

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that threaten group survival or during conflicts over women’s inheritance (stridhan). Under such circumstances, orthodox men have imbued sati with false religious symbolism to reinforce cultural identity.155 Many higher-caste Hindus follow regional systems of law, such as Mitakshara and Dayabhaga, based on interpretations of the Manu Smriti. Manu stipulated that stridhan was property gifted to a woman from her father, mother, brother, husband, and that it was meant for female maintenance. As matrilineal property, the chief heirs of a woman’s stridhan were her daughters and maternal granddaughters, but also occasionally sons, as the woman had flexibility concerning its dispensation. In contrast, Hindu joint family property is patrilineal, devolving upon male heirs for four generations. While a wife can be maintained by her husband’s share of such family property, she cannot inherit a share.156 In Bengal after the twelfth century, some brahmans followed the Dayabhaga system. Dayabhaga laws allowed the widow a small share of her husband’s movable or immovable property in the absence of a son. Recent studies reveal that this advantage was wrested from widows in the eighteenth century, after the EIC acquired revenue rights in Bengal, which then included modern Bihar, Orissa, and Bangladesh. EIC extortions were so severe that poverty, famine, and cholera decimated the population by a third by 1770. Alarmed at the spate of widow claimants, disinherited male relations conspired with brahman priests to force widows to become satis. Reformer Ram Mohan Roy also pointed out that the spate of sati burnings coincided with property litigations after the British Permanent Land Settlement (1793), a revenue policy that privatized real estate.157 Although the British blamed Hindus for maltreating women, the colonial regime was immediately culpable for the upsurge in widow burnings. Yet, equally venal were orthodox brahmans who used spectacles of sacrificial satis and the myth of their empowerment as demigoddesses to woo back devotees who had strayed to plebeian Shakti cults.158 Late eighteenth-century EIC courts employed Muslim clerics to translate Sharia laws, and Hindu pandits to interpret the Manu Smriti. Although Governor Warren Hastings (1770–84) forbade religious interference, Anglicists enforced British laws over Indian legal systems. Humane officials also voiced concern that a growing number of widows were being coerced to ascend the husband’s pyre. In 1789, revenue collector M. H. Brooke asked permission to obstruct a widow’s burning, but was refused as his prohibition would make sati more popular. In 1805, a Bihar official also asked the right to intercede, but court legalist Ghanashyam Sharma offered his advice. The ensuing writ then stated that: Women who desire to join their husband in the funeral pyre can do so provided they have no infant children to look after; they are not pregnant, or not in the period of menstruation, or are not minors. The rule

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applies to women of all castes. If a woman having an infant-child can make proper arrangements for the rearing of the child, she can burn herself along with the dead body of her husband. But it is against the Shastras or customs to apply drugs or intoxicants and to make a woman lose her senses.159 Four circulars were circulated between 1797 and 1829 on whether to interfere in a burning. These debates were more intense after 1813 when evangelical ideas had percolated into the Calcutta government. A district official was given permission to intercede if the widow were young, intoxicated, or had children under three years of age.160 A distinction was now made between the social practice as murder, and ritual suicide based on Hindu laws, although Ram Mohan Roy dismissed the latter in public speeches as an invalid argument. As the public, the elite bhadralok of Bengal were concerned, as 55 percent of the cremated widows in Bengal were brahmans who constituted just 11 percent of the population. 161 The numbers tripled in Bengal from 378 (1815) to 838 (1818), with fewer incidences among those who did not follow Dayabhaga laws.162 There were just 170 cases in Madras (1818), and 50 in Bombay (1819–27).163 GovernorGeneral Bentinck outlawed widow immolation in the Bengal Sati Regulation Act XVII (1829). Reformer Ram Mohan Roy (1772–1833) Men from the literate high castes became influential and affluent in the early British Empire, especially in Bengal. Besides studying Sanskrit, Bengali, and Persian texts, the urban middle class (bhadralok) took delight in reading English translations of Enlightenment works. Among them was Ram Mohan Roy, the pioneering activist who supported women’s education and rights. He vigorously opposed sati and polygamy in tracts and speeches, which convinced Governor Bentinck that liberal Indians favored a law against sati. While praising the British for their rule of law, Roy criticized the censorship of Indian newspapers and the overzealous Christian missionaries.164 Roy stressed Vedic Hindu monism and its similarities to Sufism and Unitarian Christianity. Although Roy had a Persian mistress and waged a legal battle over inheritance with his mother, these personal enigmas cannot trivialize his seminal contributions for women. Roy supported widows’ rights based on Hindu law codes, which give both widow and her sons shares in the husband’s estate. His resistance to sati probably began when he witnessed his sister-in-law’s con-cremation in 1812. In 1815 he began campaigning against sati in his Amitya Sabha (Friendship Society), which became the Brahma Samaj in 1828. He wrote Bengali pamphlets and translated these into English for officials. On November 30, 1818, he published his first dialogic tract, ‘‘A Conference between an

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Advocate for and an Opponent of the Practice of Burning Widows Alive,’’ in which he was the opponent. His first statement was pungent: Those who have no reliance in the Shastras, and those who take delight in the self-destruction of women, may well wonder that we should oppose that suicide which is forbidden by all Shastras and by every race of man.165 The advocate for sati cited the legendary chaste wife Arundhati and verses from the Brahma Purana. Roy assumed the voice of the opponent by quoting the Manu Smriti (5:157–160) which advised the widow to live on, but abstemiously. He also showed that monism in the Upanishads preceded priestly Puranic rituals to justify sati speciously. On February 20, 1820, Roy published, ‘‘A Second Conference between an Advocate for and an Opponent of the Practice of Burning Widows Alive,’’ dedicating it to Governor Hastings’s wife in an effort to publicize the bhadralok’s opposition to sati immolation. He now cited the Bhagavad Gita to prove that the highest goal for Hindus was enlightenment, not promises of a dubious heaven through sati. To the accusation that women were pleasure-seeking, Roy retorted that men’s desire for pleasure led them to steal women’s wealth. He compared women’s courage and physical endurance to men’s fear of death, and argued that women had more control over passions, while men had many wives and mistresses. Roy accused polygamist Kulin brahmans of lust for marrying, then neglecting their several young wives. The widows were later compelled to become satis. Roy wrote: Women are in general inferior to men in bodily strength and energy; consequently the male part of the community, taking advantage of their corporeal weakness, have denied to them those excellent merits that they are entitled to by nature, and afterwards they are apt to say that women are incapable of acquiring those merits.166 In 1822, Roy published, ‘‘Brief Remarks Regarding Modern Encroachments on the Ancient Rights of Females According to the Hindu Law of Inheritance.’’ In this tract, Roy made the public connection between the Permanent Land Revenue Settlement, increased property litigation, and the spate of sati burnings. He also praised ancient lawgivers Yajnavalkya and Katyayana for stipulating the widow’s right to inherit a part of her husband’s estate, but accused men of stealing these rights if the women were childless. Bengali brahman women had lost their traditional rights through Dayabhaga law. He also attacked polygamy as harsh upon widows, as many women chose death over penury.167 Roy wished to use logic to persuade his countrymen to change, as he feared that a British law would popularize sati among orthodox bhadralok

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in the Hindu Dharma Sabha. After Bentinck read Roy’s pamphlets, he invited him for a discussion, as he was considering the law against sati immolation. Roy refused at first, but later accepted Bentinck’s second invitation. Clearly, the debates on sati and widow remarriage did not stem from the reformers’ patriarchal wish to objectify women. Rather, they were a bhadralok challenge to the rulers not to dismiss all Indian traditions as regressive or complacently assume that all British laws were progressive. On his part, Bentinck wished to erase ‘‘a foul stain upon the British rule,’’ but unlike Roy whose pamphlets focused on women, Bentinck made no reference to them in his ‘‘Minute on Suttee’’ to EIC Directors on November 8, 1829. As an evangelical he denounced the inhumane custom, but justified his law as ‘‘enlightened Hindus’’ (men like Roy) recommended it. Bentinck wrote: The first and primary object of my heart is the benefit of the Hindus. I know nothing so important to the improvement of their future conditions as the establishment of a purer morality, whatever their belief and more just conception of the will of God. The first step for this better understanding will be dissociation of religious belief and practice from blood and murder . . . I disown in these remarks, or in any measure, any view whatever to conversion to our own faith. I write and feel as a legislator for the Hindus and as I believe many enlightened Hindus think and feel . . . Descending from these higher considerations, it cannot be a dishonest ambition that the Government of which I form a part should have the credit of an act which is to wash out a foul stain upon the British rule, and to stay the sacrifice of humanity and justice to a doubtful expediency . . . The practice of Sati or of burning of and burying alive the widows of Hindus, is revolting to the feelings of human nature; it is nowhere enjoined by the religion of the Hindus as an imperative duty, on the contrary, a life of purity and retirement on the part of the widows is more specially and preferably inculcated.168 However, as widow burnings ceased, Roy believed that the Bengal Sati Regulating Act was effective. Orthodox Hindus denounced Roy as a renegade, but he published a rejoinder in the press a few years before his death. He also praised the law in an open letter to Bentinck on January 18, 1830, and in another letter dated November 15, 1930. Declaring that numerous Hindus expressed ‘‘satisfaction at the abolition of the horrible custom,’’ he wrote: Even in Bengal a greater number of the most intelligent and influential of the natives, landholders, bakers, merchants, and others, felt so much gratified with the removal of the odium, which the practice had attached to their character as a nation, that they united in presenting an address of thanks and congratulation.169

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Sati Myths in the West and East Sati myths became a romantic theme in European operas and literature by the irreverent Voltaire (d. 1798), Romantics like Goethe (1797), and Baptists like William Carey.170 Carey translated Bentinck’s 1829 proclamation and saw ‘‘heathen murder’’ as inspiration for sermons.171 Benign patriarchs like Roy and Bentinck were similarly repulsed by widow sacrifice, but orthodox brahmans and Christians used sati to promote their own religions.172 European women also found the myth convenient to their purposes. The romantic Christian Mrs. General Mainwaring (ca. 1830) suggested in a lurid novel, The Suttee, or the Hindu Convert, that conversion could cure the disease of sati. Romantic Orientalists like Mrs. Speier of Calcutta blamed brahmans for women’s decline after the Vedic era. In her monograph, Life in Ancient India (1852), Mrs. Speier gushed about brave satis and heroic Vedic women, ‘‘as free as Trojan dames or the daughters of Judaea.’’173 Christine Bader’s (1867) monograph on Hindu women’s spirituality presaged later Theosophists like Annie Besant and feminist Margaret Cousins, author of The Awakening of Indian Womanhood (1922).174 Although men and women nationalists lauded abolition, the idea of sati sacrifice became a theme through which these Indians highlighted two messages from Indian history. They drew a parallel between tyrannical Turkish sultans and British imperialists in India, and they also described two contestations. The first was for India as the motherland and goddess (Bharat Mata). The second paradigm was of chaste Indian women patriots (‘‘matriots’’?) whose bodily sacrifices would free the motherland. In journals and speeches, nationalists re-evoked the romantic view of sati as female sacrifice, and retold feudal legends about Rani Padmini (thirteenth century) who died in a conflagration with palace women (jauhar) to prevent her capture by the Muslim enemy.175 Cultural jingoism blinded famous art historian Ananda K. Coomaraswamy who mythologized the sati as ‘‘the ideal Hindu wife’’ in a paper to the British Sociological Society in 1912. Grandiloquently quoting patriarchal texts, Coomaraswamy claimed that Indians married not from passion, but from ‘‘religious duty,’’ and that women’s roles differed from those of men, since society ‘‘asks of women devotion to men; of men devotion to ideas.’’ 176 Eighty years after Roy’s campaign against sati, Coomaraswamy obviously thought his vision was clearer than that of the pioneer who fought against burning widows: Let us now return to the Indian Sati, and try to understand her better. The root meaning of the word is essential being, and we have so far taken it only in a wide sense. But she who dies for a husband is also called Sati in a more special sense. It is in this special sense only that the word is well known to European readers. It is this last proof of

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the perfect unity of body and soul, this devotion beyond the grave, which western critics have chosen as our reproach. They were right in attaching so much importance to it; we only differ from them in thinking of our Satis with unchangeable respect and love, rather than pity.177 Nationalist-feminists also glorified Indian woman (Bharatiya nari) as spiritual and unselfish, and praised jauhar as the ultimate female sacrifice for the nation. While Sarojini Naidu (1879–1948) balked at condoning widow immolation, her poem, Suttee, suggested that loyal women would not wish to survive their husbands. She asked provocatively, ‘‘Shall the flesh survive when the soul is gone?’’178 In her 1917 address to the Indian National Congress (INC), Sarojini Naidu also validated the sati myth by referring to Rani Padmini’s jauhar. She intended to stir the men and women delegates with dramatic tales of female courage, but her regressive metaphor handicapped the feminist movement. She said: Womanhood of India stands by you today . . . When your hour strikes, when you need torch-bearers in the darkness, standard-bearers to uphold your honour . . . the womanhood of India will be with you as holders of your banner, sustainers of your strength. And if you die, remember that the spirit of Padmini of Chittor is enshrined with the manhood of India.179 Widow Remarriage Act (1856) In 1832, English became the lingua franca of British India, enabling those who mastered the language to seek minor positions in the bureaucracy. In Bengal, the elite bhadralok attended Western schools where they studied European literature and history. In contrast, elite women (bhadramahila) who were versed in Indian texts were often unable to converse in English. Liberal men, who wished more modern, conjugal companions, thus employed zenana teachers to instruct their wives and enable them to move in Calcutta’s colonial society.180 The men opposed child marriage, restrictions on widow remarriage, and polygamy among Kulin brahman community. In an era of high youth mortality due to epidemics, child brides often became child widows. Fortunately, most Bengalis belonged to lower castes that practiced later marriages, widow remarriage, and did not penalize women for cohabiting with men of their choice.181 By mid-nineteenth century, in India, the intelligentsia began to send girls to schools, but few allowed widows to remarry. The widow remarriage movement was spearheaded in Bengal by Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar who had been moved by their plight in Calcutta. He lobbied to remove the prejudice in caste society and to challenge the decrees of EIC courts, which

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depended on brahman scholarly translators. Like Ram Mohan Roy, Vidyasagar initially published a Bengali tract to prove that the most sacred texts allowed widow remarriage. This led to heated debates with orthodox Hindus, but the lower castes who allowed widows to remarry sang his ideas as street ballads and wove them into cloth. Vidyasagar translated his pamphlet into English to distribute among colonial officials with whom he had contact, as he was secretary of the Bethune School for girls. Convinced that other enlightened Indians agreed that colonial laws would reverse outdated customs, in 1855 Vidyasagar petitioned GovernorGeneral Dalhousie to legalize widow remarriage. Law member J. P. Grant introduced a bill into Dalhousie’s Council, and the Widow Remarriage Act (1856) was promulgated. The Widow Remarriage Act had some flaws that made it less successful than the law against sati immolation. Its preamble revealed that official Victorian mores on sexual restraint often derived from missionary views on Indian women as permissive. These Western moralities now percolated into elite Indian society. For example, Baptist William Ward’s conviction that the law would save unmarried widows from prostitution is reflected in the preamble. This stated that ‘‘the removal of all legal obstacles to the marriage of Hindoo Widows will tend to the promotion of good morals and to the public welfare.’’182 The Western assumption was that unattached widows corrupted men, not that corrupt men preyed upon single women. Moreover, the Widow Remarriage Act was merely advisory and did not inflict penalties on those who did not arrange for family widows to remarry. A law to allow remarriage was thus difficult to police and eradicate. This differed from the earlier law outlawing widow immolation, so that sati was effectively policed and eradicated. Another flaw was its negative effect upon Hindu widows’ customary rights to stridhan and maintenance by the husband’s family. The second clause of the Widow Remarriage Act stipulated that unless a dying husband permitted his widow to remarry, or if the caste allowed it, a widow lost her right to maintenance from his family property. If a widow wished to dispute this, she had to appear before the magistrate. Since highcaste women, especially widows, rarely appeared in public in this era, they relied on male relatives to plead their case and lost their customary rights.183 Similar fine legal distinctions became loopholes for family men to dispossess the widow of her customary rights. The law thus further marginalized Hindu widows if they remarried.184 The long-term implications of this act were removed only a hundred years later in 1956, when women were given equal inheritance rights in free India. In the meanwhile, however, the Widow Remarriage Act of 1856 also tempted some non-Hindu men to adopt Hindu customs for their material benefits to men. In the rich agricultural province of Punjab, as Hindus and Sikhs already allowed widows levirate marriages (karewa), the law was an anomaly. This patriarchal society and also the British administration

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disapproved of females inheriting agricultural land, so that remarriage became a disadvantage to some widows. Moreover, under the law, a remarried woman lost her stridhan and her customary maintenance rights from her deceased husband’s family property.185 Despite its severity, the Widow Remarriage Act in India must be viewed in the context of contemporary British laws which in 1857 granted women right to divorce but not maintenance. Only after 1882 were divorced British women able to hold property separately from men.186 As the Act of 1856 in India could not eradicate cruelty to widows, social reformers sought to change customs through persuasion and precept. Widow activist Pandita Ramabai Saraswati promoted female education, even converting to Christianity to break free of Hindu patriarchs. In Madras Presidency, Justice S. Venkatadri Naidu promoted widow remarriage in the 1860s, and Justice T. Muthuswami Iyer founded the Widow Marriage Association (1872); while in the 1880s, Raghunatha Rao, Viresalingam Pantulu, and his wife Rajyalakshmi worked assiduously for widow education and remarriage. 187 In Bombay, D. K. Karve (1858–1962) began a remarriage association, married widow Godubai Joshi in 1893, and started a girls’ school where widow Parvatibai Athavale became an inspirational teacher. In 1912, the virgin widow R. Subbalakshmi Ammal (1886–1969) opened a Madras home where she trained widows as teachers for women. Working Women Although reformers focused on elite women, working-class/lower-caste women faced more severe problems of subsistence and survival. Females often worked from childhood, performing outside wage labor, and household farm chores and family care. There was often little respite during pregnancy, childbirth, and illness. Poverty mean inadequate nutrition, but women’s lives were more seriously affected by unequal gender distribution of food. Girls were socialized early to feed others before themselves, making anemia and chronic ailments rife among females. Poor hygiene and medical care in confinement made them susceptible to famines and epidemics which haunted the colonial centuries. Census records after 1901 show that female birth rates and sex ratios (females per 1000 males) declined steadily. These figures reveal that the sex ratio fell steadily between 1901 and 1941: 1901 (972), 1911 (964), 1921 (955), 1931 (950), 1941 (945).188 A cultural preference for male children was because men were the primary wage earners and the mainstay of aged parents. Males were thus fed better than females who worked at home in diverse ways important for subsistence. However, a patriarchal colonial state and economy exacerbated these gender preferences. As women’s domestic farm labor contributed to the family’s resources, but did not bring in a wage, their work did not appear in official records. Women’s survival was also jeopardized by the colonial exploitation of Indian labor through low wages and by the state’s failure to buttress poverty

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through subsidies and irrigation programs where most needed. For example, British wages for miners and construction workers in India and indentured laborers in overseas colonies were a pittance compared to the profits from these industries. Women were paid half the wages of men. While the colonial state invested in irrigational projects in riverine areas of Punjab, it neglected its arid region of Haryana, where droughts and ensuing famine severely affected the population. Women and girls were often the first casualties, victims both of unequal food distribution in a patriarchal society and of an exploitative state.189 Moreover, in epidemics, such as the disastrous 1918 influenza epidemic, more female infants died at birth, and the overall deaths among females rose due to malnutrition and poor hygiene. Censuses between 1901–11 and 1911–21 from Madras Presidency reveal two phenomena: a declining sex ratio from 958.3 to 955.9, and an increased rate of female deaths from 961.2 to 979 per 1000 males. The female population clearly declined in these colonial decades, with the most significant losses among the marginalized.190 Indenture and Gender Initially, eighteenth-century British planters used Indians as slaves on their estates in Mauritius and Guyana until 1807 when Parliament abolished slavery. However, the use of Indian slaves persisted for at least a decade, since in 1818 in Mauritius, one-seventh were south Indians. Many were smuggled into Mauritius from the French island of Reunion where they had been transported from Pondicherry on the subcontinent. 191 In 1834, the British government formalized the indenture system through which India’s tribals and impoverished lower castes were recruited for overseas plantations. Heavy taxation and the decline of India’s weaving and other industries under British rule caused widespread internal rural migrations and patterns of overseas emigration, which corresponded to 12 or more disastrous famines.192 A stream of indentured Indians toiled for a pittance on sugar, coffee, or tea plantations in Mauritius, Guyana, Trinidad, Jamaica, Sri Lanka, Fiji, and Malaya until indenture was legally terminated in 1920.193 The indenture experience was marked by a significant sexual disparity on colonial estates, as owners preferred male workers. Thus, in Mauritius, the first Indians were 72 women and 1,182 men (1835); 353 women and 6,939 men (1838); 10 women and 73 men (1842) due to harsh local laws and conditions. Similarly, in Guyana, the first group consisted of 5 women, 6 children, 233 men (1838), but the women were refused formal contracts, although they toiled for 10–12 hours to clear dense forests for sugar fields. As mortality was high, many returned to India after the five-year contract ended. 194 In Jamaica, only one-third of the indentured were women, since Europeans wanted male ‘‘breadwinners.’’ Despite evidence on

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hard-working women farm workers in India, British officials argued that they were ‘‘not nearly the equals of the men as agricultural labourers.’’ This predilection for male workers was satisfied by Indian recruiters who received less for female workers.195 Male biases appeared in other ways, after Indian nationalists protested that fewer women meant more prostitution, although like men, women emigrated for work and a new life. Yet, like Indian urban women workers who occasionally supplemented inadequate wages with prostitution, women also resorted to it on overseas estates.196 In any case, the bourgeois nationalist argument based on ‘‘moral’’ considerations swayed Victorian officials, who in turn convinced planters to employ 40 women per 100 men. Planters often accused women of being unreliable due to the demands of pregnancy. However, this was also an exaggeration, since evidence shows that they toiled for 10–12 hours until confinement, returning to work soon after delivery, as the family depended upon their daily wages. Women often carried infants to the fields, since childcare was not offered by the planters, an impediment that was partly remedied only in 1913 in Jamaica.197 Planters also often employed young children in the fields, although it was illegal to indenture a person before the age of 16. Class and patriarchal biases framed the wage scales, with women earning roughly half the pay of men for the same hours of work. Labor was divided according to gender, with women being given the least remunerative, but not necessarily the least arduous jobs. The coterie of European planters-colonial officials did not apparently value the indentured woman either for her labor or as the reproducer of the workforce.198 Planters ignored the social consequences of the sex disparity, i.e., rape, domestic violence against women, short-term marriages, alcoholism, and suicide. Protests by Indian nationalists led to the British recruitment of more women to later colonies like Fiji. Thus, in 1891, 2,470 Indian women accompanied nearly 5,000 men to Fiji; however, the social problems of sexual misuse and violence continued. After 1920, former indentured Indians were permitted to remain in the colonies as permanent residents, and they began to multiply naturally. Thus, censuses show that in Fiji the India-born constituted 70 percent of the Indians in 1911, but only 50 percent in 1921. Over the next decade, unfettered by indenture, the sex ratio of Fijian Indians became nearly equal.199 Several reasons drove Indian women to emigrate to the colonies as indentured laborers. They frequently accompanied husbands, since separation to a distant colony like Guyana or Trinidad was likely to be permanent. Those who were socially outcast like widows or prostitutes often sought opportunities elsewhere. Cataclysmic events like the 1857 Revolt or devastating famines in 1867 and 1890 compelled many women and men to emigrate. There were also a few positive aspects of the gender disparity in the colonies where women could leave an unhappy marriage and abusive husband with

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greater facility. Women living outside India faced less censure if they remarried, even if they had a second or third husband. The shortage of women meant that men with wives enjoyed a higher status than single men, while caste and patriarchal marriage customs became less significant. For example, the dowry was a burden on parents of the bride, but it was replaced in the colonies with gifts to the bride, a custom mistaken by some to be a ‘‘bride-price.’’ Yet, these normative changes in gender relations also conflicted with the persistence of patriarchal authority in the household. Domestic violence, marital rape, alcoholism, and suicide were features of life in the colonies. The briefest suspicion of female infidelity often resulted in ‘‘coolie wife-murder,’’ as evident in Trinidad where 65 of the 87 murders between 1872 and 1900 were of wives by jealous husbands. A wife’s infidelity meant loss of social esteem for men who were often driven to alcoholism or suicide. These residual effects of indenture still plague Indian society in the former colonies.200 Women Workers in India In India’s precolonial and colonial economies, women performed a variety of productive functions, which included animal husbandry, collecting fodder and water, sowing, reaping, harvesting, sorting, and drying crops. This is encapsulated in a pithy Punjabi proverb which states that a single man cannot manage a farm without a wife.201 Rural women bought and sold goods, and worked as barbers, midwives, cooks, and as servants in large homes. They were the producers and sellers of 15–20 percent of cottage goods such as handmade woven baskets and pottery, spun thread, and dyed cloth.202 Although in Bengal, women did not work on cotton looms, they often wove jute.203 In south India, kaikkolar women of a weaving subcaste (jati) often handled looms. Most female manufactures were connected in some way to the family or jati unit. Women vendors of fish and milk thus depended on their family men for these products, while weavers, potters, laundry workers all belonged to specific jatis. Midwives alone were independent of family men, although they too often belonged to a specific jati, such as that of the leather workers (chamars) in Bengal. In the late nineteenth century, there was a decline in handspun cotton made by rural women and in their crafts using simple tools, as these products could not compete with the precision of machined products.204 Gandhi’s emphasis on handicrafts found expression on a state-supported handicraft industry after Indian independence. Indian women also worked in coal and iron mines, gathered forest products like gum and wood, and worked on tea and coffee estates in India and Sri Lanka. Planters and mine owners liked to employ women and children in the labor-intensive tea industry, ostensibly due to the delicacy of the plucking operation. Often laborers were extremely marginalized Adivasi tribals ready to low-paying jobs. Children were the cheapest to employ,

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followed by women, and then by men. Women workers in mines received 40 percent of the wage given to men, as managers regarded female wages as merely supplemental family income. On the ‘‘coolie lines’’ or slum houses near mines, living conditions were deplorable, but rarely investigated. Women washed and cooked in pit water, and breathed the noxious air. There were no latrines, and pigs were the only scavengers, so that disease was rampant, and mortality rates were high.205 The nineteenth century was marked by a decline in Indian agriculture and industry, while the economic policy of laissez-faire favored mechanized industries in Britain. Only after 1850 were the first mechanized jute and cotton mills established in India by Europeans, and later by wealthy Indians.206 Scholars have shown that the trajectory of industrialization differed in a colony like India in comparison with independent European nations. After a long neglect, British capitalists began to invest in specific industries in India, but the colonial state expedited this process without ensuring social safeguards for women and families. Moreover, Indian women were not immediately employed in mechanized mills, and when they were hired, they were not allowed to operate machines or to perform better paying technical jobs, unlike women in Europe.207 At first, Indian women could not be enticed to leave their small farms for mill work in Calcutta or Bombay. Women’s rural work on subsistence farms provided the basic food for the family, although it brought almost no cash. Men largely migrated to work in urban textile and jute mills. As women’s farm labor had little remunerative value, official records devalued their work in comparison to that of men.208 When the subsistence farm eventually ceased to provide even the basic necessities for the family, women migrated with their children to the city in search of work at the mills. However, their wages fell far short those of men, so that women sometimes resorted to prostitution to supplement their meager mill wages. Recruitment for jobs was conducted through personal acquaintance, and women sometimes repaid male recruiters with sexual favors for a mill job. The better paying jobs were weaving and spinning, which were invariably given to men, who in turn recommended their male relatives for such jobs. An extended family of four or five male members could bring in a larger income pool than a single man and a woman, as women largely occupied the lower cadres of mill work. Moreover, the family’s social esteem rose by keeping its women at home in pardah, in the narrow streets of the crowded workers’ slums of Calcutta and Bombay.209 The fetid atmosphere of open drains, the poor sanitation, and narrow rooms were detrimental to the health of all the workers. Despite these problems, the Bombay textile mills employed about 25,000 women, or 25 percent of the workforce, to clean, spin, reel, and dye the cotton thread.210 In the peak year of 1929, in the Calcutta jute mills, records show that about 59,000 women and 265,000 men worked in various semiskilled and low-skilled jobs. Around the same time, the numbers of child

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laborers also declined due to various investigative reports, enactments, and subsequent managerial strategies. 211 There were also part-time female migrant workers from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Madras, and although these were perfunctorily dismissed as ‘‘dependants,’’ such women performed many necessary functions in the mills. However, working conditions were harsh since women were often prevented from unionizing in the mills and often endured the sexual harassment of their supervisors. In 1881 the colonial government passed its first Indian Factories Act after an enquiry by a Labour Commission into conditions in Bombay. A child was defined as a person between 7 and 12 years, and their working hours were limited to 9 hours a day with an hour’s rest. However, the act did not lay down specific rules concerning women, and although amendments were proposed, they were not implemented until another act was passed in 1891. The child was redefined as one between the ages of 9 and 14 years; the women’s working hours were limited to 11 per day, with a rest break for one and a half hours for domestic responsibilities such as childcare.212 In this era, until the formation of the International Labour Organization (ILO) in 1920, the empire was governed by laissez-faire economics with a strong bias toward factory owners, rather than the workers. Now, after the end of World War I, the idea of a welfare state became increasingly popular in the industrialized West, which now focused on women’s crucial roles within the family. Yet, the imperial government in India did not favor the welfare state, nor did it put pressure upon mill owners to apply all the ILO recommendations to safeguard women through maternity benefits and compensation during sickness and unemployment. In 1882, Pandita Ramabai Ranade, the first Indian feminist, gave evidence to the Hunter Commission, and she recommended that government improve the educational and medical facilities for Indian women. Accordingly, in 1885, the Dufferin Fund was established to provide ‘‘zenana’’ hospitals and clinics expressly for women. However, the zenana medical movement largely catered to affluent women in pardah, and little was actually done to improve health care for working women. The rates of childbirth mortality was extremely high, as well as the rates of infant mortality. This was evident in Bengal where 50 percent of the children died at early infancy.213 Working women were often handicapped by their dual responsibilities within the home and to maintain a job crucial for their survival. Not only did they have to report to work regularly, for fear of losing their jobs, but the mill owners did not provide any cre`ches for childcare, nor any private areas for mothers to breast-feed infants in the mills. Children were thus often left in the inadequate care of elderly neighbors or relatives who fed them opium to keep them quiet until their mothers returned. In 1921, a Dr. Barnes gave evidence of the widespread use of opium to drug mill workers’ children in Bombay. To counter this accusation, the mill owners proposed that minor children be allowed to work, although the Factory Act intended to curb the use of child labor in mills

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and mines. In that same year, a Dr. D. F. Curjel headed an investigation of workers’ conditions, and he published his report, ‘‘The Conditions of Employment before and after Child-birth in Bengal Industries,’’ for the government. Curjel was dismayed by the managers’ lack of interest in the laborers’ social backgrounds, living conditions, and working problems.214 These two studies led to two bills in the Bombay and Bengal councils which proposed that government provide prenatal and child care, and clinics operated by trained professionals. However, the government was unwilling to invest in these expensive schemes, and it was only in the 1930s that the Maternity Benefit Act became effective in several provinces. However, by now, the numbers of women in the jute industry sharply declined due to a combination of factors. The increased pace of mechanization resulted in the hiring of men, rather than women, while the factory legislation promoted female domesticity over mill employment.215 Many women drifted to the city in search of family men during the depression when farms were further marginalized. Many were virtually single, subsisting through part-time work in the mills, or as domestic servants, sometimes supplemented through prostitution. Although women often participated in the unions and protested against unfavorable work conditions or the harassment of supervisors, the middleclass feminists largely ignored their contributions to women’s rights.216 As they constituted just 15 percent of the labor force in Calcutta and Bombay, women could organize to unionize on their own, but they attended the meetings organized by men, without playing a decisive role in the proceedings. However, after 1921, women participated in strikes, and accounts of working-class militancy indicate that they retorted verbally to the supervisors (sardars), and even physically staved off aggressive bullies with brooms and sticks. Evidence given to commissions of enquiry reveal that the sardars intimidated both female and male workers, often took a cut of their wages, or demanded sexual favors from the women.217 In extreme situations, women surrounded and held the manager hostage in his office while making their demands. Although these protests were few in number and appeared spontaneous, their modus operandi was well known to elicit results. However, women often found that strikes conflicted with domestic responsibilities, and that their income balanced the loss of pay during men’s strikes. Although the women hardly saw themselves as strike breakers, managers sometimes succumbed to their demands. This happened in 1929 when female bag sewers refused to agree to similar demands by male workers. In Bengal, male unionists often ignored women’s demands, but in Bombay, women organized their own strikes more effectively.218 Eurasians: Maternal Indian Ancestry Until the mid-nineteenth century, the near absence of white women in India meant that most Europeans consorted with Indian and Eurasian

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women who were prostitutes, long-term mistresses, or wives. In 1690, the Frenchman Robert Challe noticed that most of the two hundred men employed by the French EIC were unlikely to return to Europe as they would settle in the colonies. A royal edict in 1664 thus tried to regulate their moral welfare abroad by stipulating that no Frenchman was to marry a local woman unless she had been instructed in Catholic precepts and then baptized. The Frenchman had also to obtain permission to marry from the Mission Superiors.219 Despite this stern admonishment, French outposts like Pondicherry were far more tolerant than the Dutch and English colonies toward biracial relationships and informal ‘‘marriages.’’ French egalitarianism after the Revolution is reflected in the 1790 legal document, which classified Eurasians as French, since their ancestors were European. English travelers commented on such attitudes, so obviously at variance with their own racially exclusivist society. The Dutch and English were especially severe upon illegitimate Eurasian children, although at least one Dutch-Eurasian community survived in Cochin in the 1720s.220 In the eighteenth century, the French and English sought beautiful and wealthy Luso-Indian wives as they were familiar with Indian life. Thus, Joseph Francois Dupleix (1697–1764), the French governor, married a Goan wife, Dona Joana de Castro, who negotiated with Indian princes and helped to forge a Catholic front against the English. Her fellow diplomat was Dom Antonio Jose de Noronha, the vicar of Mylapore, and the scion of a distinguished Indiatico family from Goa.221 Englishmen occasionally even married Indian women until 1820s. They styled themselves as ‘‘nabobs’’ or princes (i.e., nawabs), dressed like Indian aristocrats, ate curries, spoke local languages, kept Indian wives. While some EIC officials were notoriously corrupt, others had a scholarly appreciation of India, and they had Indian wives. For example, Charles Metcalfe (d. 1846), the enlightened Resident of Delhi (1811–19), had an aristocratic Sikh wife and three Eurasian sons.222 Resident William Fraser (d. 1825) of Delhi also dressed like a local and had at least one Indian wife and several mistresses, raising his numerous progeny as Hindus or Muslims, each according to her/his mother’s faith.223 The eighteenth-century wars resulted in a growing number of Eurasian orphans, while early EIC permissiveness toward Indian customs and women was challenged by Protestant evangelicals. As early as 1707, Protestant missionaries had started a Portuguese medium school for orphan Eurasian and other children at Ft. St. George, Madras. Also at Ft. St. George in 1715, a Reverend William Stevenson began the English medium St. Mary’s Charity School for 12 girls and 18 boys, the offspring of English soldiers and Indian women to be raised as Protestants. 224 Similarly, in the British siege of Madurai in 1798, a number of orphans were left under the care of the great missionary, Christian F. Schwartz. Schwartz began a school under the

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auspices of the SPG at Tiruchirapalli shortly before his death.225 In 1805 and 1811, charity schools were started for low-caste, Eurasian, and English orphans at Vizhakapattinam (Andhra Pradesh), Travancore (Kerala), Bellary (Karnataka), Cuttack (Orissa), and Serampore (Bengal).226 However, the orphans of ordinary soldiers and Indian women in the colonial wars were stigmatized, especially after the passing of the Pitts India Act in 1784. When a bankrupt EIC requested the British Parliament for a loan, evangelical legislators urged that stricter sexual mores replace the more permissive attitudes that had prevailed among company employees in India. In 1786, Eurasians were classified as ‘‘natives of India,’’ and not as British subjects, paving the way for their institutional exclusion from British society. Initially, Lord Clive’s Military Fund and the Bengal and Madras funds supported all orphans of soldiers killed in the wars, both legitimate and illegitimate, irrespective of the mother’s ethnicity. However, now the Bengal Military Orphan Society even removed orphans from Indian mothers who were suspected of thwarting the child’s Christian development. English society despised biracial marriages for ‘‘mongrelizing’’ their race, while Indians saw them as ‘‘half-caste.’’ In 1825, the Indian widows of English soldiers were excluded from Lord Clive’s Fund for the families of deceased soldiers, as racism replaced Christian charity. The British historian F. C. Danvers (1888) echoed the racist sentiments of traveler Richard Burton who blamed Portuguese intermarriage with Indians for their losses against England. Burton dismissed Luso-Indians as an ‘‘ugly,’’ ‘‘degraded looking race’’ and as ‘‘Mestici—in plain English, mongrels.’’227 British feelings were an ambivalent mix of sexual guilt and contempt for biracial children, often caused by European soldiers’ rape of Indian women.228 The skin color and maternal upbringing of Anglo-Indians effectively led to their social ostracism, although they were raised as Christians. Anglo-Indians thus learned to despise their maternal heritage, and their loyalties often rested with unknown English fathers. During the British heyday, they prided themselves on their ‘‘heritage as Britishers.’’229 There was a honeycomb of separate Eurasian caste-like identities, with Anglo-Indians ranking highest (Protestants, recent British link), and Luso-Indians/Goans as lower (Catholics, remote European link). Apart from famous Indian patriots like poet Henry Derozio (1809–31) and journalist Frank Moraes (1907–74), a few famous Anglo-Indian women include Dr. Margaret Alva, a senior member of India’s Parliament (1974–2007), a Cabinet minister and Congress Party official (1984); stage artist Patricia Cooper (1905–84); Bollywood film star Helen (b. 1939); and Ann Lumsden, winner of the Arjuna Award for hockey (2004). Many Anglo-Indians emigrated to other British dominions after 1947. Their poignant history is seen in their definition in the Indian Constitution (Article 366 [2]) as a person whose ‘‘male progenitor’’ was of European (English, Portuguese, French, or Dutch) descent living in India.

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NOTES 1. Thomas Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 2. On indenture: British Parliamentary Papers, 1837–38, Vol. 52 (100), (101), (180); 1840, Vol. 37 (58), (455); 1875, Vol. 24 (100–180); 1841, Vol. 3 (137), session (66); Lord Sanderson, Report of the Committee of Enquiry on Emigration from India to the Crown Colonies and Protectorates, 1910, Vol. 27 (1), (Cmd. 5193 & 5194); James McNeill and Chiman Lal, Report to the Government of India on the Conditions of Indians in 4 British Colonies & Surinam, 1914–1916, Vol. 67 (488 & 583); Major G. St. Orde Browne, Report of the Committee of Enquiry into Labour Conditions in Ceylon, Mauritius & Malaya, Vol. 9 (659); Charles Freer Andrews, The Indian Question in East Africa (Nairobi, Kenya: The Swift Press, 1921); Lord Hardinge, My Indian Years: 1910–1916 (London: Murray, 1948). 3. Hugh Tinker, A New System of Slavery: The Export of Indian Labour Overseas, 1830–1920 (London: Oxford University Press, 1974); also N. Gangulee, Indians in the Empire Overseas: A Survey (London: New India Publishing House, 1947); C. Kondapi, Indians Overseas (Bombay and Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1951); I. M. Cumpston, Indians Overseas in British Territories (1834–1854) (London: Oxford University Press, 1953), 80; Panchanan Saha, Emigration of Indian Labour (1834–1900) (New Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1970); K. Hazareesingh, History of Indians in Mauritius (London: MacMillan Education Ltd., 1975); G. S. Arora, Indian Emigration (New Delhi: Puja Publishers, 1991); Sinnappa Arasaratnam, Indians in Malaysia and Singapore (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1979); K. L. Gillion, Fiji’s Indian Emigrants: A History to the End of Indenture in 1920 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1962). 4. Arora, Indian Emigration, 13–17. 5. Verene Shepherd, ‘‘Gender, Migration and Settlement: The Indentureship and Post-Indentureship Experience of Indian Females in Jamaica, 1845–1943,’’ in Engendering History: Caribbean Women in Historical Perspective, ed. Verene Shepherd, Bridget Brereton, and Barbara Bailey (Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers, 1995), 233–57; Kelvin Singh, Race and Class: Struggles in a Colonial State, Trinidad 1917–1945 (Jamaica: University of the West Indies, 1994); Morton Klass, East Indians in Trinidad (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961). 6. Samita Sen, Women and Labour in Late Colonial India: The Bengal Jute Industry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Geraldine Forbes, Women in Modern India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 167–88; Dipesh Chakrabarty, Rethinking Working-Class History: Bengal 1890–1940 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989). 7. Guha, Unquiet Woods, 21–61; Ramachandra Guha, ‘‘Forestry and Social Protest in British Kumaun, c. 1893–1921,’’ in Subaltern Studies IV: Writings on South Asian History and Society, ed. Ranajit Guha (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994), 54–100; Dagmar Engels, ‘‘The Myth of the Family Unit: Adivasi Women in Coal-Mines and Tea Plantations in Early Twentieth-Century Bengal,’’ in Dalit Movements and the Meanings of Labour in India, SOAS Studies on South Asia, ed. Peter Robb (Oxford and New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993), 225–44; B. R. Tomlinson, The Economy of Modern India, 1860–1970 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

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8. Letter from Afonso de Albuquerque to King Dom Manuel, 1st April, 1512, in T. S. Earle and John Villiers, eds., Albuquerque, Caesar of the East: Selected Texts by Afonso de Albuquerque and His Son (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1990), 97, 99, 137, translating Raymundo Antonio de Buhao Pato, ed., Carats de Affonso de Albuquerque Seguidas de Documentos Que as Elucidam (Lisbon, 1884–85), 1:29–65. 9. M. N. Pearson, The Portuguese in India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 101–2. 10. Timothy Coates, ‘‘State-Sponsored Female Colonization in the Estado da India, ca. 1550–1750,’’ in Sinners and Saints: The Successors of Vasco da Gama, ed. Sanjay Subrahmanyam (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000), 40–56. 11. Pearson, The Portuguese in India, 21. 12. Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj, 102–7. 13. Raman, Getting Girls to School; also London Missionary Society (Letters, records, reports), 1817–52, microfilm; Church Missionary Society, Church Missionary Intelligencer, volumes for 1851–1930; ‘‘A.D.,’’ Until the Shadows Flee Away: The Story of the C.E.Z.M.S. (London: Church of England Zenana Mission Society, 1920); Irene H. Barnes, Behind the Pardah, 2nd ed. (1898; repr., London: Marshall Brothers for C.E.Z.M.S., 1903); Sylvester Horne, The Story of the London Missionary Society, 1795–1895 (London: John Snow, 1894); M. A. Sherring, The History of Protestant Missions in India (London: Religious Tract Society, 1884); William F. Oldham, Isabella Thoburn (Chicago: Jennings & Pye, The Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions, 1902); C. F. Pascoe, Two Hundred Years of the S.P.G., 1701–1900 (Westminster: Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, 1900); J. A. Sharrock, South Indian Missions (Westminster: Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, 1910); John S. Chandler, Seventy-Five Years in the Madura Mission (Madras: American Madura Mission, 1912); Narendranath N. Law, Promotion of Learning in India by Early European Settlers up to 1800 AD (London: Longmans Green, 1915); Kenneth Ingham, Reformers in India, 1793–1833 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1956); R. N. Yesudas, The History of the London Missionary Society in Travancore, 1806–1908 (Trivandrum: Kerala Historical Society, 1980). 14. Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of the Favored Races in the Struggle for Life, 6th ed. (1859; repr., New York: Appleton, 1892); and Charles Darwin,The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, 2nd ed. (1871; repr., New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1898). 15. Houston Stewart Chamberlain, The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, trans. John Lees (London: John Lane the Bodley Head Ltd., 1912), 2:180–81, 196–97, 222–23; also Eugen Weber, The Western Tradition: From the Renaissance to the Present, 5th ed. (Lexington, Massachusetts: D. C. Heath and Company, 1995), 2:49–51. 16. Rudyard Kipling, Rudyard Kipling’s Verse: Definitive Edition (New York: Doubleday, 1940), 321–23. 17. Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj, 9, 92–112, citing Robert Orme’s, ‘‘Effeminacy of the Inhabitants of Indostan,’’ in Of the Government and People of Indostan, ed. Orme, pt. 1 (1753; repr., Lucknow: 1971), 42–43. 18. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak described the sati debate in British India as ‘‘white men, seeking to save brown women from brown men.’’ Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, ‘‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’’ in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture,

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ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grosberg (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1988), 263–305, vide, 297. 19. Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid, eds., ‘‘Introduction,’’ in Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial History (New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1989), 1–25; Susie Tharu and K. Lalitha, eds., ‘‘Literature of the Reform and Nationalist Movements,’’ in Women Writing in India, ed. Tharu and Lalitha, 1:145–86; Kumkum Sangari, Politics of the Possible: Essays on Gender, History, Narrative in Colonial English (New Delhi: Tullika, 1999); Vandana Shiva, Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Survival in India (Delhi: Kali for Women, 1988), 62–67; Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, ‘‘Discussion: An Afterword on the New Subaltern,’’ in Subaltern Studies XI: Community, Gender and Violence, ed. Partha Chatterjee and Pradeep Jeganathan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 305–34. 20. Raman, Getting Girls to School, 102–12; also Raman and Surya, A. Madhaviah, 71–87, 126–75; A. Madhaviah, Padmavati Charitram, 7th ed. (1898; repr., Chennai: Little Flower Book House, 1958); A. Madhaviah, Muthumeenakshi (1903; repr., Chennai: Vanavil Prasuram, 1984); Thiagarajan Meenakshi, trans., Padmavati Charitram (New Delhi: Katha Publishers, 2004); Pandita Ramabai Saraswati, ‘‘The High Caste Hindu Woman,’’ in Women Writing in India, ed. Tharu and Lalitha, 1:247–53. 21. Flavia Agnes, ‘‘Women, Marriage, and the Subordination of Rights,’’ in Subaltern Studies XI: Community, Gender and Violence, ed. Chatterjee and Jeganathan, 106–37, vide, 126–27. 22. Bina Agarwal, A Field of Ones Own: Gender and Land Rights in South Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 93, 115–17, 142, 267. 23. Wendy Doniger and Brian K. Smith, trans., The Laws of Manu (New York: Penguin, 1991), 115–16, 59–60, 217, 205. 24. Lindsey Harlan, ‘‘Perfection and Devotion: Sati Tradition in Rajasthan,’’ in Sati, the Blessing and the Curse: The Burning of Wives in India, ed. John Stratton Hawley (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 79–99. 25. Agnes, ‘‘Women, Marriage, and the Subordination of Rights,’’ 107–8. 26. Doniger and Smith, The Laws of Manu, 154, 213, 219–20. 27. Cited by Rajkumari Shanker, ‘‘Women in Sikhism,’’ in Women in Indian Religions, ed. Arvind Sharma, 2nd ed. (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004), 108–33, vide, 116. 28. Ibid., 117. 29. Ibid., 121. 30. Khushwant Singh, A History of the Sikhs (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1966), 1:140, 2:14–15; also Shanker, ‘‘Women in Sikhism,’’ 122–23. 31. Leslie C. Orr, Donors, Devotees, and Daughters of God: Temple Women in Medieval Tamilnadu (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 65–74. 32. T. V. Mahalingam, Administration and Social Life under Vijayanagar (Madras: University of Madras, 1975), 72, as quoted by Saskia C. KersenboomStory, Nityasumangali: Devadasi Tradition in South India (New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1987), 37. 33. Amrit Srinivasan, ‘‘Reform and Revival: The Devadasi and Her Dance,’’ Economic and Political Weekly 20, no. 44 (November 2, 1985): 1869–76, vide, 1870. 34. Quoted by Kersenboom-Story, Nityasumangali, 35–37.

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35. Velcheru Narayana Rao, David Shulman, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Symbols of Substance: Court and State in Nayaka Period Tamilnadu (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), 114–17. 36. Kersenboom-Story, Nityasumangali, 42. 37. Raman, Getting Girls to School, xii, xiv–xvi n. 2. 38. Excerpts in Tharu and Lalitha, Women Writing in India, 1:115–16. 39. Rao, Shulman, and Subrahmanyam, Symbols of Substance, 53, 191–202, 224–25, 335 (Ramabhadramba); 189 (Rangajamma). Raghunatha Nayaka is associated with Rama in the Raghunatha temple, Kumbakonam, Tamil Nadu. 40. Annie Besant, Higher Education in India: Past and Present, Convocation Address to the University of Mysore, October, 29, 1924 (Madras: Theosophical Society, 1932). See also Raman, Getting Girls to School, 1, 21 n. 1. 41. Rao, Shulman, and Subrahmanyam, Symbols of Substance, 53, 123–24, 316 (Muddupalani). 42. Excerpts in Tharu and Lalitha, Women Writing in India, 1:116–20. 43. Vedanayakam Pillai, Pratapa Mudaliyar Charitram (The Story of Pratapa Mudaliyar; 1879; repr., Madras: Vanavil Press, 1984). Also Raman, ‘‘Old Norms in New Bottles,’’ 93–119. 44. British Parliamentary Papers (Colonies, East India), 1831–32 (I, Public), Part B, Appendix (I), ‘‘On the Education of the Natives,’’ Governor Thomas Munro’s Minute, July 2, 1822, 413. Also see Government of Madras (Revenue), Proceedings, Reports of District Collectors: J. B. Huddleston, Tinnevelly (October 28, 1822), Vol. 928, Nos. 46–47, 9937; H. Vibart, Seringapatam (November 4, 1822), Vol. 929, Nos. 33–34, 10260–10262; L. G. K. Murray, Madras (November 14, 1822), Vol. 931, Nos. 57–58, 10512, 10512s, 10512b; J. Sullivan, Coimbatore (December 2, 1822), Vol. 932, No. 43, 10939–10943; R. Peter, Madura (February 13, 1823), Vol. 942, No. 21, 2402–2406; William Cooke, North Arcot (March 10, 1823), Vol. 944, Nos. 20–21, 2806–2816; E. Smalley, Chingleput (April 3, 1823), Vol. 946, No. 25, 3494; J. Cotton, Tanjore (July 3, 1823), Vol. 953, No. 61, 5347– 5354; C. Hyde, South Arcot (July 7, 1823), Vol. 954, Nos. 59–60, 5622–5624; G. W. Sanders, Trichinopoly (August 28, 1823), Vol. 959, Nos. 35–36, 7456–7457A. 45. Doniger and Smith, The Laws of Manu, 219. 46. I. Julia Leslie, The Perfect Wife: The Orthodox Hindu Woman According to the Stridharmapadhati of Tryambakayajvan (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989), 13–14, 277–80. 47. Sita Anantha Raman, ‘‘From Chattrams to National Schools: Educational Philanthropy in South India, 18th–20th Centuries,’’ Selected Papers in Asian Studies, #52, Western Conference of the Association for Asian Studies, 1994, 10–14. Also Government of Madras, Note on the Past and Present Administration of the Raja’s Chattrams in the Tanjore and Madura Districts (Tanjore: Government of Madras Press, 1908), 1–5, 24–28; Government of Madras, Manual of the Administration of the Madras Presidency, Records of the Government and the Yearly Administration Reports, vol. 1, pt. 1, 1885, 597; T. Venkasami Row, A Manual of the District of Tanjore, pt. 2 (Madras: Lawrence Government Press, 1883), 235, 249, 257; and William Hickey, Tanjore Maratha Principality in South India (Madras: 1872), 36–37. 48. Government of Madras, Note on the Past and Present Administration of the Raja’s Chattrams in the Tanjore and Madura Districts, 1–5, 24–28; also Row, A Manual of the District of Tanjore, 226–41.

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49. Bayly, Saints, Goddesses and Kings, 88–91; also Raman, ‘‘Walking Two Paces Behind,’’ 382. 50. Raman, Getting Girls to School, 2–3. 51. Hickey, Tanjore Maratha Principality in South India, 101–3. Also Raman, Getting Girls to School, 3–5, 22 n. 14; Raman, ‘‘From Chattrams to National Schools,’’ 10–11. 52. Samuel Sattianadhan, History of Education in the Madras Presidency (Madras: Srinivasa Varadachari, 1896), 226–27; Raman, Getting Girls to School, 50; personal interview with P. Thulajendra Raja Bhonsle, raja of Thanjavur, at his palace on January 2, 1990. 53. Raman, Getting Girls to School, 66. 54. Government of Madras, Manual of the Administration of the Madras Presidency, 566; also Law, Promotion of Learning in India by European Settlers up to 1800 AD, 40–45. 55. Raman, Getting Girls to School, 3, 7; Yesudas, The History of the London Missionary Society in Travancore, 1806–1908, 45–46, 53–54; P. Cheriyan, The Malabar Christians and the Church Missionary Society: 1816–1840 (Kottayam: Church Missionary Society, 1935), 190. 56. Leslie, The Perfect Wife, 276, 277–79. 57. Ibid., 3, 10–13, 38–43. 58. Ibid., 57–65, 248–55. 59. Fatima da Silva Gracias, Kaleidoscope of Women in Goa, 1510–1961 (New Delhi: Concept Publishing Company, 1996), 32. 60. Leonard Bacon, trans., The Lusiads of Luiz de Camoes (New York: The Hispanic Society of America, 1950), 249. 61. Pearson, The Portuguese in India, 20–21. 62. Earle and Villiers, Albuquerque, Caesar of the East, 97. 63. Frederick Charles Danvers, The Portuguese in India: Being a History of the Rise and Decline of Their Eastern Empire, 2 vols. (1894; repr., London: Frank Cass & Co., Ltd., 1988), 1:217. 64. da Silva Gracias, Kaleidoscope of Women in Goa, 1510–1961, 36. 65. Earle and Villiers, Albuquerque, Caesar of the East, 119. 66. da Silva Gracias, Kaleidoscope of Women in Goa, 1510–1961, 32–33. 67. Sanjay Subrahmanyam, The Portuguese Empire in Asia (London: Longmans Group, 1991), 220; C. R. Boxer, Race Relations in the Portuguese Colonial Empire, 1415–1825 (London: Oxford University Press, 1963), 77. 68. Earle and Villiers, Albuquerque, Caesar of the East, 137. 69. John Villiers, ‘‘Introduction: Faithful Servant and Ungrateful Master: Albuquerque and the Imperial Strategy of King Manuel the Fortunate,’’ in Albuquerque, Caesar of the East, ed. Earle and Villiers, 20, 95–97, 99, 115–16, 137. 70. Pearson, The Portuguese in India, 116–17. 71. Earle and Villiers, Albuquerque, Caesar of the East, 115, 117. 72. Pearson, The Portuguese in India, 21–22. 73. da Silva Gracias, Kaleidoscope of Women in Goa, 1510–1961, 45. 74. Bacon, The Lusiads of Luiz de Camoes, 106. 75. Ibid., 42, 99, 53, 260–61. 76. Ibid., 259.

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77. Pearson, The Portuguese in India, 101–5; Earle and Villiers, Albuquerque, Caesar of the East, 97, 99, 107, 109, 111. 78. Villiers, ‘‘Introduction: Faithful Servant and Ungrateful Master,’’ 2, 48–49. 79. Pearson, The Portuguese in India, 71–72; D. R. SarDesai, ‘‘Portuguese in India,’’ in Encyclopedia of India, ed. Stanley Wolpert (New York: Thomson Gale, 2006), 3:322. 80. Pearson, The Portuguese in India, 116–17. 81. Ibid., 101, 104–5. 82. Alfredo de Mello, ‘‘Memoirs of Goa: The Portuguese Inquisition in Goa (1560–1812),’’ http://www.hvk.org?articles/1103/57.html. 83. Pearson, The Portuguese in India, 117–20. 84. da Silva Gracias, Kaleidoscope of Women in Goa, 1510–1961, 41. 85. Appendix 2, ‘‘Instructions Issued by the Church in the Province of Mormugao to Improve the Moral Conditions of Women,’’ in ibid., 154. 86. Appendix 4, ‘‘List of Women Accused, Imprisoned and Punished by the Holy Inquisition in the 18th Century,’’ in ibid., 156. 87. da Silva Gracias, Kaleidoscope of Women in Goa, 1510–1961, 50–51, 53–77. 88. Appendix 3, Conselho Geral doSanto Oficio: Inquisic¸ao de Goa, Mac¸o 36, no. 23, in ibid., 155. 89. Coates, ‘‘State-Sponsored Female Colonization in the Estado da India, ca. 1550–1750,’’ 40–56, vide, 41. 90. Ibid., 43–47. 91. Ibid., 48–49. 92. M. H. Goonatilleka, ‘‘A Portuguese Creole in Sri Lanka: A Brief SocioLinguistic Survey,’’ in Indo-Portuguese History: Old Issues, New Questions, ed. Teotonio R. de Souza (New Delhi: Concept Publishing Company, 1985), 147–80, vide, 148–54. 93. da Silva Gracias, Kaleidoscope of Women in Goa, 1510–1961, 36–37. 94. S. K. Pandya, ‘‘Medicine in Goa—A Former Portuguese Territory,’’ Journal of Postgraduate Medicine 28, no. 3 (1982): 123–48, at http://www.jpgmonline.com/ text.asp?1982/28/3/123/5573. Pandya cites Dr. Bernardus Paludanus, ed., A Dutch Physician of XVI Century on Indian Drugs. Linschoten’s Account of Spices and Drugs of India (Hyderabad, India: Osmania Medical University, 1965), 3:173–84. 95. Pearson, The Portuguese in India, 95. 96. Ibid., 127–30. 97. Danvers, The Portuguese in India, 1:367–68. 98. Pearson, The Portuguese in India, 94–105, vide, 99, 101; also Dejanirah Couto, ‘‘ ‘Goa Dourada,’ La Ville Dore´e’’ (Balmy Goa, the Gilded Town), in Goa 1510–1685, ed. Chandeigne, 40–73, vide, 61–68. 99. da Silva Gracias, Kaleidoscope of Women in Goa, 1510–1961, 35–36. 100. Pearson, The Portuguese in India, xv, 102, 145, 150–51; also Henry Scholberg, ‘‘The Writings of Francisco Luis Gomes,’’ in Indo-Portuguese History, ed. Teotonio R. de Souza, 202–24. 101. Margaret Mascarenhas, ‘‘Goa’s Civil Code: Legal Legacy,’’ http:// mmascgoa.tripod.com/id12.html.

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102. C. R. Boxer, Women in the Iberian Expansion Overseas, 1415–1815: Some Facts, Fancies and Personalities, 1415–1815 (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1975). 103. da Silva Gracias, Kaleidoscope of Women in Goa, 1510–1961, 110–16. 104. Ibid., 90–100. 105. Raman, Getting Girls to School, 104–7. 106. See Sumanta Banerjee, ‘‘Marginalization of Women’s Popular Culture in Nineteenth Century Bengal,’’ in Recasting Women, ed. Sangari and Vaid, 127–79, vide, 151–54, 176 n. 58; and Bharati Ray, Early Feminist of Colonial India: Sarala Devi Chaudhurani and Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002), 3, 114 n. 3. 107. Prem Chowdhry, ‘‘Customs in a Peasant Economy: Women in Colonial Haryana,’’ in Recasting Women, ed. Sangari and Vaid, 302–36, vide, 305. 108. Ibid., 306, 330 n. 11. 109. Ibid., 312–21. 110. Rabindranath Thakur’s 1905 Bengali novel Home and the World was filmed by Satyajit Ray in 1961. 111. Sen, Women and Labour in Late Colonial India, 54–65. 112. Gail Minault, Secluded Scholars: Muslim Women’s Education and Social Reform in Colonial India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), 22–23. 113. Ibid., 23–24. 114. Raman, Getting Girls to School, 157–58. 115. Minault, Secluded Scholars, 24. 116. Lata Mani, Contentious Traditions: The Debate on Sati in Colonial India (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998), 87, 134–37. 117. Uma Chakravarti, ‘‘Whatever Happened to the Vedic Dasi? Orientalism, Nationalism, and a Script for the Past,’’ in Recasting Women, ed. Sangari and Vaid, 27–87, vide, 35, citing James Mill, The History of British India, 5th ed. (London: James Madden, 1840), 312–13. 118. Yogesh Snehi, ‘‘Conjugality, Sexuality and Shastras: Debate on the Abolition of Reet in Colonial Himachal Pradesh,’’ The Indian Economic and Social History Review 43, no. 2 (2006): 163–97, vide, 164–66. 119. Agnes, ‘‘Women, Marriage, and the Subordination of Rights,’’ 106–37, vide, 119–28. 120. Meredith Borthwick, ‘‘Bhadramahila and Changing Conjugal Relations in Bengal, 1850–1900,’’ in Women in India and Nepal, ed. Michael Allen and S. N. Mukherjee, Australian National University Monographs on South Asia, no. 8 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982), 108–10. 121. Raman and Surya, A. Madhaviah, with Surya’s translation of Muthumeenakshi, 127–86; 82–83. Also A. Madhaviah, Satyananda, an English novel (Bangalore: Mysore Review, 1909), 292–93; A. Madhaviah, ‘‘Padmavati Charitram: Munram Bhagam,’’ Panchamritam (Tamil journal), 2, no. 3 (1924). 122. Vedavalli, ‘‘My Life: In Reply to Sita,’’ a personalized autobiography dated September 1987, after an interview with her in Madras, July 1987, shortly before her death. See citation in Raman, Getting Girls to School, 106. 123. Interview with Savitri Rajan at Madras on December 16, 1989. See Raman, Getting Girls to School, 104.

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124. Nora Brockway, A Larger Way for Women: Aspects of Christian Education for Girls in South India, 1712–1948 (London: Oxford University Press, 1949), 38, 50. Brockway quotes Paul Appasamy, The Centenary History of the Church Missionary Society in Tinnevelly (Tirunelveli: Palamcottah Printing Press, 1923). Also Raman, Getting Girls to School, 8–13. 125. Forbes, Women in Modern India, 38–39. 126. Tharu and Lalitha, Women Writing in India, 1:203. 127. Raman, Getting Girls to School, 6–13. 128. London Missionary Society, ‘‘Report of Reverend Thomas Nicholson,’’ May 29, 1821, Box 2, Reel 274 (1817–24; microfilm). 129. Oldham, Isabella Thoburn, 12. 130. ‘‘Report of Reverend W. T. Sattianadhan,’’ in Church Missionary Intelligencer, vol. 27, October 1876, 624. On Bible women, also see Chandler, Seventy Five Years in the Madura Mission, 338–40, 442–44; ‘‘A.D.,’’ 202–4; Sharrock, South Indian Missions, 92–93, 222. 131. Horne, The Story of the L.M.S., 1795–1895, 289, 301 (photograph of Bible women). 132. Rosa Lechlar’s account from Salem, December 29, 1848, London Missionary Society Records (1848–52), folder 1, jacket D; citation in Raman, Getting Girls to School, 12–13. 133. Barnes, Behind the Pardah, 2. 134. Geraldine H. Forbes, ‘‘In Search of the ‘Pure Heathen’: Missionary Women in Nineteenth Century India,’’ Economic and Political Weekly 21, no. 17 (April 26, 1986), 1–8. 135. Barnes, Behind the Pardah, 153–59; Godfrey E. Phillips, The Outcastes’ Hope (London: United Council for Missionary Education, 1913), 54–59, 124–28. 136. British Parliamentary Papers, 1854 (393), XLVII, 155, Charles Wood, ‘‘Despatch on the Subject of General Education in India,’’ July 19, 1854, no. 49. 137. British Parliamentary Papers, 1857–58 (72), XLII, 339, ‘‘Further Correspondence on Education,’’ 390. 138. M. N. Das, Studies in the Economic and Social Development of India: 1848–1856 (Calcutta: Firma KLM, 1959); Raman, Getting Girls to School, 13–14. 139. Forbes, Women in Modern India, 38–39. 140. Government of Madras (Public), Proceedings, June 6, 1854, vol. 924, nos. 38 and 39, handwritten records. 141. Mary Carpenter, Six Months in India 2 vols. (London: Longmans Green, 1868), 2:142–43. 142. Raman, Getting Girls to School, 36–37. 143. British Parliamentary Papers, 1877 (185), LXIII, 427, ‘‘Report to Marquis of Salisbury by Miss Mary Carpenter on Prison Discipline and on Female Education in India.’’ 144. Raman, Getting Girls to School, 25–28, 47–48. 145. Ibid., 204–5, 222–23; and Government of India (Education), G.O. 254, May 16, 1884, unpublished record; Government of Madras, Census of India, 1921, vol. 13 (Madras: Government Press, 1922), charts 128–29 on literacy by caste, 120–21; Government of India, Review of Growth of Education in British India by the Auxiliary Committee Appointed by the Indian Statutory Commission, September 1929 (Hartog Committee Report), 45, 145.

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146. Raman, Getting Girls to School, xii, xiv–xvi n. 2; British Parliamentary Papers (Colonies, East India), 1831–32 (I. Public), Part B, Appendix (I.), ‘‘On the Education of the Natives,’’ Governor Thomas Munro’s Minute on Education, July 2, 1822, 413; Government of Madras (Revenue), Proceedings, Reports of District Collectors (1822–23), Vols. 928–29, 931–32, 942, 944, 946, 953–54, 959. 147. Raman, Getting Girls to School, 28, 35–36, 104–6, 131, 168, 176, 187. 148. Ibid., 110–11. 149. Ibid., 35–36. 150. Amrit Srinivasan, ‘‘Reform or Conformity? Temple ‘Prostitution’ and the Community in the Madras Presidency,’’ in Structures of Patriarchy: State, Community and Household in Modernizing Asia, ed. Bina Agarwal (New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1988), 175–98. 151. Sita Anantha Raman, ‘‘Prescriptions for Gender Equality: The Work of Dr. Muthulakshmi Reddi,’’ in Charisma and Commitment: Essays in South Asian History in Honor of Stanley Wolpert, ed. Roger Long (Mumbai: Orient Longman, 2004), 331–66; Raman, ‘‘Old Norms in New Bottles,’’ 93–119. 152. Srinivasan, ‘‘Reform or Conformity?’’ 175–98; and Amrit Srinivasan, ‘‘The Hindu Temple-Dancer: Prostitute or Nun?’’ Cambridge Anthropology 8, no. 1 (1983): 73–99. 153. Spivak, ‘‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’’ 297. 154. Radha Kumar, The History of Doing: An Illustrated Account of Movements for Women’s Rights and Feminism in India, 1800–1990, 2nd ed. (New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1997), 7–14, vide, 9; Ashis Nandy, ‘‘Sati: A Nineteenth Century Tale of Women, Violence and Protest,’’ in Rammohan Roy and the Process of Modernization in India, ed. V. C. Joshi (New Delhi: Vikas, 1975), 168–75; Ashis Nandy, ‘‘Sati as Profit Versus Sati as Spectacle: The Public Debate on Roop Kanwar’s Death,’’ in Sati, the Blessing and the Curse: The Burning of Wives in India, ed. Hawley (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994), 132–49. 155. See also Ainslie Embree, ‘‘Comment: Widows as Cultural Symbols,’’ in Sati, the Blessing and the Curse, ed. Hawley, 149–59, vide, 152; Veena Talwar Oldenburg, ‘‘Comment: The Continuing Invention of the Sati Tradition,’’ in Sati, the Blessing and the Curse, ed. Hawley, 159–73. 156. Agnes, ‘‘Women, Marriage, and the Subordination of Rights,’’ 112–13. 157. Mani, Contentious Traditions, 21. 158. Romila Thapar, ‘‘Perspectives in History: Seminar 342 (February 1988),’’ in Sati: Dialogues by Ram Mohan Roy, ed. Mulk Raj Anand (New Delhi: B. R. Publishing Corporation, 1989), 83–95, vide, 92. 159. Cited by Anand, Sati: Dialogues by Ram Mohan Roy, 4. 160. Mani, Contentious Traditions, 17–19. 161. Ashis Nandy, At the Edge of Psychology: Essays in Politics and Culture (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1980), 5; also Nandy, ‘‘Sati: A Nineteenth Century Tale of Women, Violence and Protest,’’ 168–93. 162. Mani, Contentious Traditions, 21. 163. Anand, Sati: Dialogues by Ram Mohan Roy, 92. 164. Excerpts from Ram Mohan Roy’s English Works, in Hay, Sources of Indian Tradition: Modern India and Pakistan, 2:25–31; and in B. N. Pandey, ed., A Book of India (New Delhi: Rupa & Co., 2000), 383–85.

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165. Ram Mohan Roy, ‘‘A Conference between an Advocate for and an Opponent of the Practice of Burning Widows Alive,’’ in Sati: Dialogues by Ram Mohan Roy, ed. Anand, 20–30, vide, 20. 166. Ram Mohan Roy, ‘‘A Second Conference between an Advocate for and an Opponent of the Practice of Burning Widows Alive,’’ in Anand, Sati: Dialogues by Ram Mohan Roy, 31–64, vide, 54–55. 167. Mani, Contentious Traditions, 59, 79. 168. Anand, Sati: Dialogues by Ram Mohan Roy, 15–16; Mani, Contentious Traditions, 76, 210 nn. 93, 94, cites ‘‘Lord William Bentinck’s Minute on Suttee,’’ from J. K. Majumdar, ed., Raja Rammohun Roy and the Progressive Movements in India: A Selection from Records, 1775–1845 (Calcutta: Art Press, 1941), 139. 169. Roy’s letter in Anand, Sati: Dialogues by Ram Mohan Roy, 74–79. 170. Dorothy M. Figueira, ‘‘Die Flambierte Frau: Sati in European Culture,’’ in Sati, the Blessing and the Curse, ed. Hawley, 57–61; and Robin Jared Lewis, ‘‘Comment: Sati and the Nineteenth-Century British Self,’’ in Sati, the Blessing and the Curse, ed. Hawley, 72–78. 171. Mani, Contentious Traditions, 85. 172. Spivak, ‘‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’’ 263–305, vide, 297. 173. Chakravarti, ‘‘Whatever Happened to the Vedic Dasi?’’ 42–46. 174. Annie Besant, ‘‘Address to Maharani Girls’ School,’’ Mysore, December 24, 1896, Arya Bala Bodhini (Adyar: TS, January 1897); Annie Besant, On the Education of Indian Girls, pamphlet no. 25 (Benares and London: Theosophical Society, 1904); and Margaret Cousins, The Awakening of Indian Womanhood (Madras: Ganesh and Co., 1922). 175. S. A. A. Rizvi, ‘‘The Ruling Muslim Dynasties,’’ in A Cultural History of India, ed. Basham, 252. 176. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, ‘‘Sati: A Vindication of the Hindu Woman,’’ November 12, 1912, reproduced in J. Mark Baldwin, ed., The Sociological Review (London: 1912), 119–35, vide, 119, 122. 177. Ibid., 123. 178. From Vishwanath S. Naravane, Sarojini Naidu: Her Life, Work, and Poetry, 2nd ed. (Bombay: Orient Longman, 1996), 101. 179. Ibid., 95. 180. Borthwick, ‘‘Bhadramahila and Changing Conjugal Relations in Bengal, 1850–1900,’’ 108–10; and Meredith Borthwick, Changing Role of Women in Bengal, 1849–1905 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 60–108, 291. 181. Banerjee, ‘‘Marginalization of Women’s Popular Culture in Nineteenth Century Bengal,’’ 127–79, vide, 146. 182. Cited from ‘‘A Bill to Remove All Legal Obstacles to the Marriage of Hindoo Widows,’’ in entirety in Kumar, History of Doing, 18–19. 183. Sen, Women and Labour in Late Colonial India, 180–86. 184. Kumar, History of Doing, 20. 185. Chowdhry, ‘‘Customs in a Peasant Economy,’’ 302–36, vide, 312–21. 186. Agnes, ‘‘Women, Marriage, and the Subordination of Rights,’’ 124–25. 187. Raman, Getting Girls to School, 119–27. 188. Government of India, Census of India, 1991, Educational Statistics, Part II-A, General Population Tables, Sex Ratio (Table 2.5). 189. Chowdhry, ‘‘Customs in a Peasant Economy,’’ 304–6.

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190. G. T. Boag, Government of India, Census of 1921, vol. 13, pt. 1 (Madras: Government Press, 1922). 191. Tinker, A New System of Slavery, 17–18. 192. Saha, Emigration of Indian Labour (1834–1900), 71–73. 193. These British Parliamentary Papers: LII, 1837–1838, Enclosure from H. J. Princep to G. F. Dick, June 29, 1836; XXXVII, 1840, (58), Despatch 57 from Governor W. Nicolay to Lord Glenglg, May 4, 1839, and Despatch 62 from Glenglg to Nicolay; III, 1841, Session 66; XXXV, 1844, (356–544); XXXIV, 1875, (100–199); Thomas Curson Hansard, ed., Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates: Third Series, Volume XLI, 1837–1838; J. Goehgan, Report on Coolie Emigration from India (1873); G. A. Grierson, Report on the System of Recruiting Coolies for British and Foreign Colonies as Carried Out in the Lower Provinces of Bengal (1883); D. W. D. Comins, Note on Emigration from the East Indies to Trinidad (1893); Lord Sanderson, Report on Emigration from India to the Crown Colonies (1910). 194. Tinker, A New System of Slavery, 70. 195. Shepherd, ‘‘Gender, Migration and Settlement,’’ 237. 196. Nirmala Banerjee, ‘‘Working Women in Colonial Bengal: Modernization and Marginalization,’’ in Recasting Women, ed. Sangari and Vaid, 295. 197. Shepherd, ‘‘Gender, Migration and Settlement,’’ 244–45. 198. Ibid., 237, 243. 199. Fiji Census Records, 1891–1921. 200. Brigid Brereton, Race Relations in Colonial Trinidad, 1870–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 182–83; Shameen Ali, ‘‘Indian Women and the Retention of Social Institutions in Trinidad, 1870–1940’s’’ (unpublished paper presented at the Indian Diaspora Conference, The University of West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad, August 11–18, 1995). 201. Chowdhry, ‘‘Customs in a Peasant Economy,’’ 310. 202. Banerjee, ‘‘Working Women in Colonial Bengal: Modernization and Marginalization,’’ 271–72. 203. Sen, Women and Labour in Late Colonial India, 78–79. 204. Banerjee, ‘‘Working Women in Colonial Bengal,’’ 287. 205. Engels, ‘‘The Myth of the Family Unit,’’ 225–44. 206. Forbes, Women in Modern India, 167–68. 207. Banerjee, ‘‘Working Women in Colonial Bengal,’’ 270–71. 208. Sen, Women and Labour in Late Colonial India, 54–55. 209. Ibid., 124–28, 138–39. 210. Forbes, Women in Modern India, 167–68. 211. Chakrabarty, Rethinking Working-Class History, 11, 78–81. 212. Kumar, History of Doing, 24. 213. Sen, Women and Labour in Late Colonial India, 5, 142–47. 214. Dipesh Chakrabarty, ‘‘Conditions for Knowledge of Working-Class Conditions: Employers, Government and the Jute Workers of Calcutta, 1890–1940,’’ in Subaltern Studies II: Writings on South Asian History and Society, ed. Ranajit Guha (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983), 259–310, vide, 290–91. 215. Sen, Women and Labour in Late Colonial India, 152–56, 153–76. 216. Forbes, Women in Modern India, 174–75. 217. Chakrabarty, Rethinking Working-Class History, 109–10. 218. Sen, Women and Labour in Late Colonial India, 222–23.

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219. Cited by Adrian Carton, ‘‘The Color of Fraternity: Citizenship, Race and Domicile in French India’’ (paper presented to the 15th Biennial Conference of the Asian Studies Association of Australia, Canberra, June 29–July 2, 2004), 1–9. Also see Adrian Carton, ‘‘Shades of Fraternity: Creolization and the Making of Citizenship in French India, 1790–1792,’’ French Historical Journal 31, no. 4 (2008): 581–607. 220. Adrian Carton’s interesting article, ‘‘Beyond ‘Cotton Mary’: Anglo-Indian Categories and Reclaiming the Diverse Past,’’ International Journal of AngloIndian Studies 5, no. 1 (2000): 1–12. Carton cites H. Furber, ‘‘Bombay and the Malabar Coast in the 1720’s,’’ Heras Memorial Lectures 1962, in R. Rocher, ed., Private Fortunes and Company Profits in the India Trade in the Eighteenth Century (Aldershot: Variorum, 1972). 221. Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘‘Profiles in Transition: Of Adventurers and Administrators in South India, 1750–1810,’’ The Indian Economic and Social History Review 39, nos. 2 and 3 (2002): 197–231, vide, 201–2. 222. Philip Mason, The Men Who Ruled India, reprinted from The Founders (1953) and The Guardians (1954), 3rd ed. (New Delhi: Rupa & Co., 1994), 118. 223. Mason, The Men Who Ruled India, 103–4. 224. Law, Promotion of Learning in India by European Settlers up to 1800 AD, 12–15, 20–23. 225. Sharrock, South Indian Missions, 42. 226. Ingham, Reformers in India, 1793–1833, 62–67. 227. Richard Burton, Goa and the Blue Mountains (London: 1851), 88, 97; Pearson, The Portuguese in India, 103. 228. George Orwell’s Burmese Days (1934; repr., New York: Harcourt Brace, 1962). The novel is based on Orwell’s experiences as a soldier in colonial Burma, with vivid descriptions of British angst over Eurasians. 229. See Adrian Carton’s interesting 12-page essay, ‘‘Beyond ‘Cotton Mary,’ ’’ 2–5.

3 MALE REFORMERS AND WOMEN’S RIGHTS

In India the mother is the center of the family and our highest ideal. She is to us the representative of God, as God is the mother of the Universe. It was a female sage who first found the unity of God, and laid down this doctrine in of the first hymns of the Vedas. Or God is both personal and absolute, the absolute is male, the personal is female. And thus it comes that we now say, ‘‘The first manifestation of God is the hand that rocks the cradle’’ . . . and I and every good Hindoo believe, that my mother was pure and holy, and hence I owe her everything that I am. That is the secret of the race—chastity. Swami Vivekananda1 REFORMERS, NATION, AND WOMEN Introduction Women’s rights constituted a central agenda of the social reform movement, which crystallized ideas of feminism and pan-Indian nationalism in the nineteenth century. As products of missionary and government schools, elite male reformers resented comparisons between modern Europe after the Enlightenment and India’s apparently feudal, moribund society. They reread Hindu-Buddhist-Jaina texts in the original or through ‘‘Orientalist’’ translations, and a romantic nostalgia grew apace for a bygone ‘‘golden Aryan age’’ when gender and caste justice prevailed in India. Through associations (samajs) and pamphlets they sought to abolish child marriage, polygamy, and the cremation of widows (satis) on the husband’s pyre; and to promote female literacy and widow remarriage. After the 1857 Revolt, elite men were emboldened by promises of administrative collaboration with the Raj, but their frustrated ambitions fueled nationalist samajs that promised to rejuvenate India. Meanwhile, educated women formed groups to assist the larger sisterhood, although some authoritarian men preempted their agency.

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This chapter describes male reformers, their impact on colonial laws concerning women, and the work of important early feminists. Twentiethcentury feminism and its impact on the freedom struggle are discussed in the next chapter. Male Reformers before 1857 The pioneering reformer was Ram Mohan Roy (d. 1833) who reexamined Hindu scriptures to challenge adverse practices affecting high-caste women. Roy used his association Amitya Sabha (1815) and the later Brahma Samaj (1828) to persuade elite Bengali Hindus (bhadralok) to educate women and to eradicate sati and polygamy. He asserted the scriptural primacy of the Upanishads (Vedanta), which advocate monism and spiritualism, over the Puranas whose later legends and rites were used to sanctify sati. After reading his tracts, Governor Bentinck was convinced that liberal Indians supported a legal ban, and he accordingly passed the Bengal Sati Regulation Act (1829), which became the law in British India. Similarly, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar petitioned administrators to legalize widow remarriage, and Governor-General Dalhousie passed the Widow Remarriage Act (1856). However, the 1829 law was more effective, as it punished those who burnt satis, while the 1856 law was prescriptive and could not penalize those who chose not to remarry. Both laws were humane and wellintentioned, but reflected straitlaced, Victorian Christian mores, which seeped into nationalist rhetoric. The dual patriarchy of Indian nationalists and British officials thus bolstered the colonial state as a modernizing force, precisely when imperial laissez-faire economics destroyed local industries and impoverished its working women and men. Male Reformers after 1860 Later male reformers and philanthropists established three nationalist associations, which founded schools for girls and for the poor castes. A fourth reform society was founded by Westerners enamored of Indian traditions and later relocated to India where its feminist leaders promoted women’s rights. The earliest was the Prarthna Samaj (PS; 1867) founded in Bombay by Judge Mahadev Govind Ranade (1842–1901), G. K. Gokhale (1866–1915), and other elite men who wished to persuade Indians to reject child marriage and enforced widow celibacy. Less apologetic about Hindu theism than the BS, members of the PS sang congregational bhakti hymns (bhajans), a legacy of medieval devotional meetings. In 1870, Ranade supervised the first widow remarriage, and through his Sarvajanik Sabha (Public Society) established schools for girls and low castes in Pune. Although male reformers did not hold legislative positions until the 1909 Indian Councils Act, Ranade and Gokhale assisted British officials in municipal and provincial assemblies to implement progressive laws like the Age of Consent Bill (1891)

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which criminalized sex with a girl less than 12 years of age. Although by today’s standards this was a cautious bill, it was a leap forward from the 1861 Age of Consent Act allowing marital relations with 10-year-old girls. Women reformers later publicized the 1929 Sarda Bill raising the marriage age for girls to 14 years. In 1897, Gokhale warmly supported schools for women in his paper, ‘‘Female Education in India,’’ to women at the Victoria Era Exhibition in London.2 Cultural nationalists of both genders took reform to another dimension by advocating a return to ancient Vedic customs of female education and adult marriages. A spate of reform associations now popularized the modern feminine paradigm of the learned, chaste mother and wife-companion. The earliest was the Arya Samaj (AS; 1875) founded in Gujarat by the ascetic Dayananda Saraswati (1824–83). It advanced women’s education and widow remarriage in Punjab but also drove a wedge between Hindus and Muslims. In contrast, the Ramakrishna Mission and Vedanta Society (VS; 1887), founded in Bengal by Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902), fostered national unity and started schools for girls and boys across India. The Theosophical Society (TS; 1875) was established in Chicago by Madame Blavatsky (d. 1891), but its headquarters shifted to Madras and Benares in the 1880s. TS President Annie Besant (1847–1933), a former Irish-English radical who became a HinduIndian nationalist, provided a cultural blueprint for girls’ schools and institutional support for the Women’s Indian Association (WIA; 1917). A similar movement to reform Islamic society redefined Muslim political identity, while providing prescriptions on female decorum. At the crux of its agenda were the female veil (pardah) and the practice of female seclusion in segregated rooms (zenana, antarala) common among Muslims and Hindus, especially in north India. A seventeenth-century movement to purge Islam of Hindu practices had led to stricter controls on female behavior. The colonial era witnessed a modernizing movement that opened paths for young men but initially curtailed opportunities for women. The leader was Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817–98), an Urdu aristocrat (ashraf) who wished Muslim men to acquire a Western scientific education at the Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh. However, for women he advocated pardah and Islamic education within the zenana. As a widely respected Muslim leader, his conservative attitudes retarded girls’ enrollment in schools outside the home. Fortunately, other enlightened men educated their daughters in Muslim schools, especially after 1901. The ensuing network of educated Muslim feminists later challenged child marriage and polygamy. Motherland and Mothers of the Nation In 1885, 73 elite men formed the INC as a forum to articulate their political concerns. Many were inspired by Bankim Chandra Chatterji’s hymn,

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Bande Mataram (Hail to the Motherland), in 1882.3 This patriotic paean from Bengal was followed in 1891 by Abanindranath Thakur’s painting of Mother India as a four-armed goddess (Devi) holding a drum, lamp, palm leaf scroll, and a pot, the emblems of freedom, prosperity, learning, and charity. Abanindranath’s nephew Rabindranath Thakur (1861–1941) later composed India’s national anthem.4 Pan-Indian nationalist literature now abounded with metaphors of the sacred motherland and its numerous mother tongues, while the analogy between the nation as a feminine deity and its household goddesses became self-evident. Apart from such idealism, most male nationalists agreed that it was imperative to preserve the Indian patriarchal family, and that its women remain chaste mothers and wives. After the British partition of Bengal in 1905 on sectarian lines, Bande Mataram became popular among Hindus, but its religious symbolism alienated Muslims. Moreover, shamed by colonial surveys that revealed the absence of elite women in missionary schools, male reformers initially endorsed the Western critique of Indian society and reinforced the rhetoric of Britain’s civilizing mission. However, recent evidence suggests that under colonialism, patriarchal rules for women became more stringent due to high incidences of rape and sati during the Anglo-French hegemonic wars over India. Second, when the Raj absorbed small kingdoms, royal philanthropy dried up and indigenous schools decayed.5 Elite women now retreated into the household where they were often taught informally, and religious mendicancy became an escape from extreme domestic hardship. Ironically, a gendered household existence forged ties of sisterhood, making it easy later to establish feminist networks. Moreover, Victorian society was also male dominated, and its mores demeaned the female anatomy as conducive to ‘‘weakness’’ and requiring the support of virile men. Bourgeois attitudes prevailed among officials and elite Indians who regarded lowerclass women as having coarse sexual appetites, while colonial records dismissed rural women’s hard labor as domestic chores without economic value. In speeches, essays, and poems, progressive male reformers promoted literacy for elite and middle-class women, adult marriages, and widow remarriage. Many felt that pardah adversely affected female health and education, but they neither organized campaigns against women’s seclusion nor supported their inheritance rights. Like cultural nationalists, many men felt that pardah was a safeguard against male lust, and that its purpose was not to subordinate women but to buttress them worldly realities.6 There were some humanitarian exceptions. Rabindranath Thakur’s short story, ‘‘Home and the World,’’ compared the antarala to a gilded birdcage, and the cloistered women to the fettered nation. His message was clear, that if the nation wished freedom, it must first emancipate its women.7 Similarly, Tamil poet extraordinaire C. Subramania Bharati (1882–1924) exhorted all women to

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speak up, demand an education, step out of the home, shed caste, and participate in national affairs.8 SOCIAL REFORM MOVEMENT Female Education In precolonial India, elite Hindu and Muslim girls were taught either informally or formally at home and in village schools. In south India, devadasis were the few girls in open attendance with boys. Boys and girls learned to read, but memorization and oral transmission of sacred verses from the Ramayana, Mahabharata, and Puranas for Hindus, and the Qur’an and Persian texts for Muslims. Many Hindu girls thus maintained their cultural traditions even when men began to focus on Western history and its literature. When missionaries started schools for girls, the focus on literacy alone and school enrollment changed the system of education. They equated devadasis with English dance hall women and ostracized them from their schools. The Western emphasis on literacy and enrollment in formal schools became the chief assessment tools in later government schools. However, as most Indian girls did not attend mission or government schools, they were rarely counted in official records. Few middle-class/caste Hindus of south or north India initially enrolled their daughters in mission or government schools where the teachers were men, or women converts.9 Officials dismissed informal instruction at home in Indian texts and household computation until the 1882 Hunter Commission of enquiry recognized this fund of knowledge among women.10 Women’s formal literacy began to improve only after the spread of nationalist schools in many parts of the country. Progressive Indian men were convinced that women’s education spelled progress for their society and nation, and the platform of female education remained a core component of the reform movement. Elite men educated in Western-style schools first began schools for girls largely to shape their wives into companions for themselves and later to create learned mothers for the nation. This was a common feature of the West as well, where a growing bourgeois, consumerist economy gave women’s domesticity a new glamour. These attitudes infiltrated the mind-set of middle-class Indian men and were adopted by many Indian women. The first modern schools for girls were established in Bengal in 1846, followed by a school in Madras in 1848, and in Bombay. In 1819, Bengal pandit Gourmohan Vidyalamkara wrote the first modern text on girls’ education, and this was published by the Female Juvenile Society of Calcutta.11 Bengali bhadramahila or elite women produced over four hundred literary compositions in this era, indicating the extent of their erudition.12 Between 1841 and 1900, in Madras alone, over 40 Tamil journals discussed the importance of women’s education, and later issues had essays

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written by women. In 1868, the Tamil Samuel Vedanayakam Pillai published the book Pen Kalvi (Female Education) on the importance of girls’ education.13 A Christian with eclectic beliefs, Vedanayakam dedicated his book to his learned mother Mariamma, while he addressed his daughters on their rights. In all his works, Vedanayakam portrayed educated women, frequently quoting the classical nonsectarian Tirukkural by Jaina saint Tiruvalluvar to argue that learned women benefited society.14 Justice T. Muthuswami Iyer, who started the first Widow Marriage Association in Madras, gave evidence on indigenous schools in 1882 to the liberal Hunter Commission, which validated home instruction for girls. Director of Public Instruction, H. B. Grigg stated in his sympathetic report: Many women of the upper class had their minds stored with the legends of the Puranas and epic poems, which supply impressive lessons in morality, and in India form the substitute for history.15 Devadasis and Widows This view differed from the educational plan in Western government schools. Missionary teachers and Victorian officials often erased Indian cultural features from the curriculum as morally questionable, and their staid attitudes crept into the ideology of Indian reformers embarrassed by earlier traditions of tolerance. After the Contagious Diseases Act of 1864 was instituted in India, Victorian officials equated devadasi courtesans with English dance hall prostitutes. When cultural nationalism grew apace after 1880, both Hindu and Muslim traditionalists frowned upon devadasis as ‘‘nautch’’ or dancing girls. Although the liberal Ranade and Viresalingam Pantulu (1848–1919) of Madras promoted widow remarriage and women’s education, both conducted anti-nautch drives to cleanse society. These bourgeois moralities also crept into the philosophy of the early feminists who worked with male reformers. Even Pandita Ramabai Saraswati (1858–1922) and Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1880–1932) disassociated their girls’ schools from controversies surrounding women performers. The first woman legislator, Dr. Muthulakshmi Reddi (1886–1968), helped to frame a twentieth-century law against the dedication of devadasis to temples, perhaps because she resented her mother’s own devadasi ancestry. However, Muthulakshmi worked idealistically to rehabilitate devadasis by retraining them in other occupations.16 Once respected as temple women, devadasis were now derided as prostitutes or pitied as victims of patriarchy.17 Scholars suggest that the early struggle for women’s rights in Bengal was absorbed by Hindu and Muslim revivalists into the national movement.18 Madras and Bombay offer a contrast since the BS and PS activists worked together. They started schools for girls and campaigned vigorously for widow remarriage, especially due to high youth mortality in influenza and

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plague epidemics after 1890. These decades were marked by dynamic reform efforts and a growing feminist voice. The Widow Remarriage Act of 1856 directly resulted from Vidyasagar’s efforts in Bengal. This inspired reformers in Madras and Bombay to address the problems of upper-caste widows after 1860. Upper-caste girls were often wedded just before puberty, and the marriage was consummated after menarche when a formal second ritual (ritu shanti) was conducted. Unfortunately, in an era of high youth mortality due to influenza, small pox, and plague, the child bride was transformed into a child widow, an inauspicious blight (amangali) who remained celibate for life with the shaven head of an ascetic, and wearing drab mourning. Grieving parents were compelled to observe these hidebound customs or to face social ostracism. In Madras Presidency, Judge S. Venkatadri Naidu first championed widows’ right to remarry, and in 1872, High Court Judge T. Muthuswami Iyer began the first Widow Marriage Association. Others like Sesha Iyengar, a brahman lawyer of Travancore, bravely conducted a daughter’s remarriage and appealed to the public to start support associations.19 In the 1880s, Telugu Viresalingam Pantulu and his wife Rajyalakshmi spent their fortune in starting girls’ schools and in sponsoring widow remarriage in Rajamundhry.20 Viresalingam first tried to teach Rajyalakshmi but decided to enroll her instead in zenana classes operated by the Lutheran missionary Agnes Schade. Subsequently, Rajyalakshmi organized other women’s classes in Viresalingam’s ancestral home.21 In 1881, they conducted the first widow remarriage and began a girls’ school through funds donated by the rajas of Vizianagaram and Pithapuram. Two government women inspectors, Mrs. Brander and Mrs. Carr, supervised the curriculum and helped them start other schools for girls.22 While Viresalingam supported laws against unfair customs, conservative reformer Raghunatha Rao advocated persuasion. Rao had first supported the 1891 Age of Consent Bill, but he later cited the census to show that Madras had few virgin widows, and that they were common only to elite castes. He believed that this ‘‘microscopic minority’’ of just 15 percent of the population did not have many rigid conservatives. Rao ignored the multitude of poignant widows across India, as in Punjab where 25 percent of the women were widows.23 He wrote sanguinely: What should a thoughtful man do in this case? He should not apply to the Legislature for a statue for the punishment of those who would not agree so to marry or of those who would not help such parties as may agree so to marry. So long, therefore, as one desires to introduce a change and wishes to associate with society, his duty would be to tell the members of that society that have incorrect ideas on the subject and that the prohibition of widow marriage has been working very injuriously to our society by making it immoral.24

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Pandita Ramabai and Other Early Women Reformers As early as 1880s, some radical women activists resisted the dictates of conservative and liberal reformers. The pioneer feminist was Pandita Ramabai Saraswati, a Sanskrit scholar and widow whose distaste for Hindu social customs partly influenced her decision to convert to Christianity. In 1889 at Bombay, Pandita Ramabai opened a widows’ home and girls’ school, naming it Sharda Sadan in honor of the Hindu goddess of learning. She later relocated her school to Pune where she inspired the male reformer Dondo Keshav Karve to also start a widows’ school. Ramabai’s spirited resistance to patriarchy and the attacks of Hindu nationalist B. G. Tilak mark her as India’s first feminist. Feminist writer Tarabai Shinde’s (ca. 1850–1910) satirical Marathi tract, ‘‘Stri Purush Tulana’’ (A Comparison between Women and Men), in 1882 protested the court’s decision against a brahman widow who had killed her illegitimate child.25 Tarabai accused men for hypocritically blaming women for moral turpitude, when the prisons overflowed with male convicts. Tarabai’s pamphlet was endorsed by the egalitarian reformer Jotiba Phule (1827–90) and his wife Savitribai Phule (1831–97).26 In 1873, the Phules founded Satyashodhak Mandal (Society for Serving Truth) in Pune, Maharashtra to assist the marginalized Dalit castes who were shunned as ‘‘untouchables.’’ Savitribai was a loyal Hindu wife who bravely shielded her outspoken husband, and although less mettlesome than Pandita Ramabai, Savitribai was a renegade against unjust conventions. She had defied village censure by attending school, and opened the first Dalit girls’ school where her colleague was Fatima Sheik, a Muslim woman teacher.27 Such feminists campaigned against child marriage, widow celibacy, and pardah in speeches and pamphlets. They pointed out that child wives and widows withdrew from school, and that this adversely affected their mental and physical health. They helped to raise female literacy, worked for the indigent, and undertook campaigns for suffrage. Moreover, they also helped liberal male nationalists to pass laws that prevented men from sexually exploiting girls. Feminists collaborated with male reformers to support two laws favorable to women. The 1891 Age of Consent Bill stipulated that a girl had to be 12 years of age before conjugal relations; and the Child Marriage Act (Sarda Act of 1929) decreed that the minimum age of marriage for a girl was 14 years. Feminist campaigns enabled Sarda’s Bill to pass in the Central Legislative Council of British men and a handful of Indian men. Although women eventually became legislators after independence in 1947, the largely male-dominated Indian Parliament followed this precedent of men’s laws for women’s welfare. The earliest women’s associations were the Arya Mahila Samaj (Aryan Women’s Society) started by Pandita Ramabai in 1882 in Pune with the help of M. G. Ranade and his wife Ramabai Ranade (1862–1924).28 A year after the founding of the political group, the INC, Swarnakumari Devi (1855–1932)

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started Sakhi Samiti (Women’s Friendship Society) to assist indigent widows. Swarnakumari was a novelist and sister of poet Rabindranath Thakur with whom she had earlier founded the patriotic journal Bharati (India, Land of Wisdom) in 1877. She was its chief editor in 1884.29 In 1889, Swarnakumari Devi attended the third INC meeting at Calcutta, where some five hundred members swore to promote women’s education and widow remarriage.30 In 1887, M. G. Ranade inaugurated the Indian Social Conference (ISC, or Rashtriya Parishad) as an arm of the INC specifically geared to social reform. Yet, as women’s issues were being sidelined at the ISC meetings, in 1905 the recently widowed Ramabai Ranade spearheaded a women’s wing, the Indian Women’s Conference (Bharatiya Mahila Parishad), as a national caucus of several hundred activists.31 The male reformer Dondo Keshav Karve (1858–1962), a brahman, emulated Ramabai by starting a school for widows and by promoting their remarriage. At Ramabai’s school in 1893, he met Godubai Joshi, a widow whom he married against his family’s wishes. Pandita Ramabai had begun her widows’ school to help the victims in the high castes which practiced child marriage. However, conservatives misconstrued her intentions and spread the rumor that Ramabai wished to convert her students to Christians. High-caste parents rapidly withdrew their daughters, and the school failed. Having endured brahman ostracism by marrying Godubai, and witnessing its effect on Ramabai’s school, Karve changed his tactics. He could not afford to serve the widows of orthodox castes by flaunting traditions. When Karve opened another widows’ school in 1896, elite nationalists slighted Ramabai’s earlier efforts and lauded Karve’s venture. At Karve’s home, widows were taught to think fearlessly but not to flaunt their views to conservative family members. Godubai’s sister Parvatibai Athavale, who was also a widow, and other women became famous teachers and writers. Karve’s success led to numerous applications to start a school for other girls. His Mahilya Vidyalaya (Girls’ School) emphasized independent thought in the girls destined to become wives, companions, and mothers.32 Karve’s final achievement was to establish a Women’s University in 1916. Funded by the wealthy businessman, Sir Vithaldas Thackersey, in honor of his wife Nathibai, the college was renamed Shrimati Nathibai Damodar Thackersey Indian Women’s University (SNDT Women’s University). 33 Schools started by Karve, Viresalingam Pantulu, and the maharaja of Mysore inspired TS President Annie Besant to write ‘‘On the Education of Indian Girls’’ in 1904.34 B. M. Malabari: Persuasion or Laws? The main controversy was whether to slowly persuade through tracts and speeches, or to convince British officials to pass laws against unfair marriage practices. The British had passed laws on sati and widow remarriage with confidence before the 1857 Indian Revolt, but they now hesitated to interfere

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in social customs. Despite this hesitancy, other colonial laws included the Age of Consent Bill (1860) stipulating 10 years as the minimum age for a girl to have conjugal relations; the Indian Divorce Act (1869); the Special Act (1870) against female infanticide; and the Special Marriage Act (1872) to raise the marriage age for girls. However, these laws were not applicable to all communities and were often circumvented. Two major bills were passed due to the efforts of Indian nationalists, i.e., the Age of Consent Bill (1891), and the Child Marriage Restraint Act (1929) decreeing 14 as the minimum marriage age for girls. The latter received extensive publicity from feminists. After 1884, reformers urged legal intervention. Foremost was the Zoroastrian (Parsi) reformer Behramji M. Malabari (1853–1912) whose 1887 tract, ‘‘Notes on Infant Marriage and Enforced Widowhood,’’ horrified Victorian England.35 Signatories included eminent Hindu, Parsi, and Muslim men like T. Madhav Rao, Amir Ali, Dinsha Ardeshir Talyerkhanan; and British Liberals like Mary Carpenter, William Wedderburn, and William Gladstone. Malabari argued that child rape and widow celibacy were not sanctioned by Hindu, Muslim, or Parsi scriptures but were a ‘‘cold-blooded philosophy’’ devised by men. He also claimed that an apparently just Raj was needed to mediate between Indian society and its women. He pleaded: Emancipate the woman of India, ye English rulers! Restore to the widow her birth-right of which she is robbed by usurpers who owe no allegiance to God or to man. Give her back the exercise of free will. Is it meet that in the reign of the most womanly Queen the women of India should remain at the mercy of a foul superstition?36 Rakhmabai and Age of Consent Bill (1891) In Maharashtra, female and male liberal reformers advocated legal intervention, although Hindu cultural nationalists like Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856–1920) strongly disagreed. One case brought emotions to the surface. A woman named Rakhmabai was married at the age of 11 to Didaji Bhikaji, a man much older with little interest in education. On the other hand, Rakhmabai was taught by her stepfather who was a doctor, and resided with her parents. Upon her puberty, Bhikaji demanded that she live with him and give him conjugal rights, which she resisted strongly. The initial district court ruling in her favor as she was married without her consent was later overthrown by the Bombay High Court. Rakhmabai was now ordered to return to her husband or serve a prison sentence. 37 In 1885 under the pseudonym ‘‘A Hindu Woman,’’ Rakhmabai wrote the article, ‘‘Indian Child Marriages,’’ for an English newspaper. Her bitter denunciation of Indian men’s laws confirmed British opinion on their civilizing mission: We Hindu women are treated as worse than beasts. We are regarded as playthings—objects of enjoyment to be unceremoniously thrown away

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when the temporary use is over. Our law-givers (i.e., the writers of shastras) being men have painted themselves . . . noble and pure, and have laid every conceivable sin and impurity at our door.38 Controversy ensued, with British papers arguing that India was socially backward, and protests from Indian nationalists. The regressive B. G. Tilak opinions provoked Pandita Ramabai’s spirited defense of Rakhmabai. In contrast, progressive men like Gokhale, Justice Telang, and T. Madhav Rao were incensed by the Bombay High Court’s decision and immediately supported Sir Andrew Scoble’s Age of Consent Bill (1891) in the Bombay legislature.39 Even the more conservative Raghunatha Rao lamented that ‘‘the Modern Hindu Marriage has come to be but a sad travesty of the Grand Old Ideal.’’40 Although the Age of Consent Bill cautiously raised the age for consensual sex for girls in marriage to 12 years, Tilak chastised it as a ‘‘foreign intrusion’’ and used the term ‘‘castration’’ to describe its effect upon Hinduism.41 The beneficial effect was that many Indians joined reform associations in the aftermath of the bill. Ordinary women in Madras boldly described their plight in Tamil journals, as seen in the introductory excerpt from Mathar Manoranjani (1898). Rakhmabai went to England to study medicine, and there probably met law student Cornelia Sorabji (1866–1954) who was the first Indian woman graduate of Bombay University. The daughter of Parsi converts to Christianity, Cornelia Sorabji shared Rakhmabai’s dislike of some Hindu practices. In 1894, Sorabji returned to India ostensibly to serve its women but was interested only in aristocratic women in pardah. Her prolific literary output included her memoirs, India Calling (1934). An Anglophile loyalist, Cornelia Sorabji opposed the INC and Gandhi. She returned to England in 1944.42 It is moot here to state that in the late century, cultural nationalists often alienated feminists like Pandita Ramabai who broke free of even liberal supporters like Ranade. Indian society was ripe for change, but cultural nationalism was a knee-jerk response to British racist domination and aggressive evangelicals who wooed Hindu widows as trophies to justify Western rule. Women activists were in a dilemma. Were they to reject their culture completely, or just misogynist customs, while retaining its enlightened features? Unlike Rakhmabai and Cornelia Sorabji whose lives were guided by personal goals, Pandita Ramabai magnanimously chose to assist other women like herself. Her life is examined more closely in the next chapter. REFORM ASSOCIATIONS AND WOMEN Hindu and Muslim revivalists wished to resuscitate an ideal past marked by religious purity and social justice, while trying to carve out a modern

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power base through education. The late century, therefore, witnessed the crystallizing of the modern political identities of Hindus and Muslims. Like bourgeois Victorians who emphasized sexual sobriety and social progress, especially in women, revivalists romanticized women’s chaste domesticity and patriarchal control over home and society. Hindu revivalists foisted their upper-caste values on non-Aryan matrilineal groups, while Muslim revivalists tried to expunge Hindu traditions borrowed by women over centuries. Sectarian differences intensified due to the Raj policy of ‘‘divide and rule’’ and as colonial censuses and records revealed communal disparities in education and employment. As female literacy rates could trigger sectarian rivalries, Hindu, Sikh, and Muslim organizations sought to educate their girls, and female literacy rates rose after 1921. The most progressive on gender and caste rights were the PS, VS, and TS. The AS and some Muslim revivalists supported women’s education but fomented sectarian xenophobia. Among Muslims, female seclusion through pardah was supported both by Sir Sayyid Ahmad’s modernizing movement and by regressive conservatives. All reformers lauded women’s chastity, spousal loyalty, and maternal power as the linchpins for the cultural survival of the group or nation. Their feminine paradigms thus shaped the contours of modern sectarian identity in the incipient nation-state. Arya Samaj: Girls’ Schools and Female Sexuality Founded in Gujarat in 1875 by ascetic Dayananda Saraswati, the AS was intended as a means to restore Vedic fire rituals, education for women, and egalitarian social practices. However, Dayananda’s anger over the perceived decay of Hindu society resulted in his Shuddhi (purification) movement through which Hindu converts to Islam and Christianity were restored to their ancestral faith. The ensuing communal vendettas instigated by later followers like Lekh Ram reached its apex in violent partition of India and Pakistan in 1947.43 The bodies of Hindu, Sikh, and Muslim women then served as the sites to wage war against a sectarian enemy, and the scars are nearly irreparable in north India.44 Dayananda attempted to return to the Vedic era’s occupational, nonhereditary caste system and women’s human rights. He promoted education for women, adult marriages, and simplified marriage rituals, and he denounced child marriage as the accretion of a later age. The association started numerous schools for girls and boys in Punjab and north India, thus raising female literacy rates. Dayananda laid great emphasis upon women’s chaste domesticity and the Vedic era custom of levirate remarriage (niyoga) through which a widow remarried her deceased husband’s brother. However, under the guise of improving social morality, local AS leaders often attempted to control women’s sexual and reproductive lives. After a visit

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to Calcutta, Dayananda became familiar with I. C. Vidyasagar’s efforts for widows. In 1875, he wrote the AS handbook, Satyartha Prakash (The Light of Truth).45 This work urged proactive methods to restore Vedic/‘‘Aryan’’ purity through better female health. Its implications for women as reproducers of an improved ‘‘Aryan’’ Hindu ‘‘race’’ were clearly apparent. Many later AS reformers also publicized adult marriages, as early marriages often resulted in higher child mortality rates. As Dayananda also felt that mothers were weakened by breast-feeding, he advised lower-caste wet nurses. He also devised meticulous rules on infant care, which would enhance the mother’s reproductive energies. However, unlike some patriarchs who suspected women of inciting licentious behavior, Dayananda believed that both sexes were driven by sexual urges, which he believed should be restrained through gender segregation in schools. At first Dayananda distrusted widow remarriage among the high-caste brahmans and kshatriyas as likely to end in property disputes. However, he later changed this viewpoint and encouraged widow remarriage, as it prevented promiscuity, but only if there were no children from the previous marriage. The puritan reformer recommended levirate or niyoga remarriage as conducive to family stability. The AS raised female literacy rates in Punjab where leader Lala Munshi Ram started national schools as a counterfoil to missionary schools. The Dayanand Anglo Vedic schools catered to upper-caste/middle-class Hindu girls whose parents refused to send them to mission and government schools where the teachers were often men or lower-caste women converts to Christianity. The teachers at AS girls’ schools were Hindu women, and the students included young widows. The curriculum included traditional Indian texts and modern secular subjects, so that the girls would be suitable wives-companions for educated husbands. Widows were often encouraged to take up teaching as a profession. An important AS institution was the Great Girls’ School or Kanya Mahavidyalaya (KMV) in Jalandhar, Punjab. It was founded in 1892 by the idealist Lala Devraj, after being inspired by his mother.46 A common theme that cuts across sectarian and regional lines for reformers was the inspiration of learned mothers. Thus, Tamil Christian writer Samuel Vedanayakam Pillai advocated girls’ education in recognition of his learned mother Mariamma; and Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan advocated home education for Muslim girls out of respect to his erudite mother. The AS schools also attempted to remedy the serious Punjab social problem of widespread widowhood. About 25 percent of Punjab’s women were widows dependent on family charity, according to the 1881 Census. Whereas in earlier decades widows had sustained themselves through handicrafts like handloom spinning, their condition was precarious by the mid-nineteenth century when India’s thriving textile industry declined under British rule. Christian missions often assisted indigent women but also converted the

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women. AS schools trained widows to become teachers of women and to be financially independent without losing their cultural traditions. Other revivalist groups led by middle-class men and women attempted to impose Victorian moralities upon subordinate communities with distinct sexual norms. In the 1920s, they included Himalaya Vidya Parbandhani Sabha (HVPS), Anjuman-I-Islamia, and Singh Sabha in Shimla, Himachal Pradesh. The members of HVPS tried to shape laws to prohibit tribal customs (reet) allowing women right to choose partners, cohabit, marry, or seek divorce.47 Reet was not subject to brahmanical Hindu laws (shastras), and women could break free of an unhappy relationship by paying a sum to the man. This offended the bourgeois sentiments of HVPS leaders who influenced officials to abolish reet by associating it with prostitution rings in 1924. While the HVPS thus used colonial bureaucratic authority to control tribal women’s sexuality, enlightened reformers like Har Bilas Sarda used the colonial state to raise the legal age of marriage for girls to 14 years and thus prevented the sexual misuse of girls. Ramakrishna Mission and Vedanta Society The VS was inspired by the monism and universalism in the Upanishads or Vedanta (last books of the Vedas). The Upanishads state that behind the illusion of worldly diversities there exists a single cosmic entity (Brahman) identical to the inner essence (Atman) in every living thing. This idea was given a secular interpretation by Swami Vivekananda, who believed that a spiritual unity lay behind India’s social diversity, and his phrase ‘‘unity in diversity’’ became the nationalist logo. In an inspirational lecture in 1900, Vivekananda praised a ‘‘universal religion,’’ which respected diverse sects and cultures which enriched society, and that monotony was unnatural.48 Born in Bengal as Narendranath Dutta (1863–1902), Vivekananda received a Western education, and he had friends in the BS.49 At the age of 18, he became a devoted monk-disciple of Sri Ramakrishna (1836–86), a Hindu devotional (bhakti) saint with a broad social vision. 50 After his death, Vivekananda and his monks formed the Ramakrishna Mission and VS to serve humanity and to spread tolerance. The monks, nuns, and laymen and laywomen disciples started schools and clinics, and fed the poor. Ramakrishna and Sarada Devi From early childhood, Ramakrishna felt great bhakti for the Mother Goddess as Kali but was convinced of the unity of all religions. He believed that the Buddha’s teachings were integrated into Hinduism. In 1866, he took instruction from a Muslim cleric, and in 1870, from a Christian teacher. In each case, after observing their injunctions for weeks, he would go into a complete trance (samadhi) when he had beatific visions from that religion. Although he had not read many scriptures, Ramakrishna had a deep

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knowledge of their teachings, and he was convinced that a fundamental truth lay behind disparate tenets. Ramakrishna once remarked to his disciples that ‘‘the same God’’ directed everyone, but through different paths, and that ‘‘the substance is One under different names.’’51 This article of faith shaped the VS’s programs for women.52 If the educated appreciated Ramakrishna’s subtle wisdom, the poor were drawn by his compassion and childlike demeanor. He sought constantly for opportunities to serve others with humility, even when sweeping the hut of a Dalit scavenger. 53 The hermitage (ashram) housed monks like Vivekananda, and Ramakrishna’s saintly wife Sarada Devi (1853–1920) who also had visions. The Kali temple and ashram were built in 1847 at Dakshineshwar near Calcutta on land with funds donated by Rani Rasmani, a wealthy but low-caste woman.54 Ramakrishna was particularly respectful to women as the embodiments of the Divine Mother.55 Although he had wanted an ascetic life, his family arranged his marriage to Sarada Devi. They took joint vows of celibacy and shared a tender, platonic friendship until his death. At one stage, Ramakrishna began a daily shoodasi puja in which he worshipped an image of Sarada Devi as Divine Mother. At first, followers were shocked by this reversal of gender roles, since custom required women to worship the husband as their lord.56 However, later VS members revered Sarada Devi as a manifestation of the Divine Mother.57 Vivekananda and Women’s Rights Vivekananda’s oratorical gifts stunned a Western audience at the World Parliament of Religions at Chicago in 1893. His speeches on Vedanta enlightened many who had previously regarded Hinduism as heathen polytheism. Vivekananda also honestly laid bare Hindu social flaws as deviations from the Upanishads, and that Hindus worshipped in different ways, but that the truth was found even among the unlettered. He asked educated Indians and Christians to respect them, as God lay in the poor (daridra narayan).58 His modern vision of Vedanta involved renewed compassion and service, known to Indians before the advent of Christian missionaries.59 Vivekananda also delineated his views on women early in his career as spokesman for Hinduism. In a speech on ‘‘Ideals of Womanhood’’ to the Ethical Association of New York that was published in the Brooklyn Standard Union on January 21, 1895, he asked sternly that foreigners not judge Hinduism by its worst aspects, as rotten apples lie beneath the best apple trees. Although he credited the Enlightenment philosophers and John Stuart Mill for championing women’s rights in the West, he praised Indian culture for honoring the mother above all (see introductory quotation). He traced the historical decline of educated women from Vedic age, and he blamed hereditary male brahman priests, Buddhist celibate monks, and Muslim invasions. He spoke romantically about Indian women’s property rights,

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love of chastity, and the treatment of the mother as God. He blamed later eras for the custom of sati. He wrote: The ideal of womanhood centers in the Arian race of India, the most ancient in the world’s history. In that race, men and women were co-religionists, as the Vedas called them. There every family had its hearth or altar, on which, at the time of the wedding, the marriage fire was kindled, which was kept alive, until either spouse died, when the funeral pile was lighted from its spark. There man and wife together offered their sacrifices . . . But with the advent of a distinct and separate priest-class, the co-priesthood of the woman in all these nations steps back . . . Another cause was instrumental in bringing this about—the change in the system of marriage. The earliest system was a matriarchal one; that is, one in which the mother was the center, and in which the girls acceded to her station . . . when a man died without any children, his widow was permitted to live with another man, until she became a mother; but the children did not belong to their father, but to her dead husband. In later years the widow was allowed to marry again, which the modern idea forbids her to do.60 Sister Nivedita (1867–1911) Vivekananda’s idealizations fell like music upon nationalist ears and inspired Mahatma Gandhi. They were also an ideological wellspring for Margaret Noble, an Englishwoman who later became his disciple Sister Nivedita. She first met Vivekananda in 1895 at the home of Isabel Margesson in England where he spoke on Hinduism. As the daughter of an Irish Wesleyan minister, Margaret had begun to chafe under the constraints of Victorian, Christian life. Her search for fresh ideas led her first to George Bernard Shaw and William Butler Yeats, and she was also eager to experiment with new methods of teaching girls. She became enthralled by Vivekananda’s talks from Sanskrit texts, and her desire for a broader humanism led her to attend his classes on Hinduism.61 At one session, Vivekananda suggested that she teach Indian women but expressed concern for her health in the tropics. However, Margaret eagerly accepted this as her life mission. In 1898, she stayed with Sarada Devi in Calcutta, and after intensive study, she became the lay nun Nivedita. She also became close friends with two American disciples named Sara Bull and Josephine McLeod. Her lay status allowed her to live, teach, and travel independently across India, which she loved deeply. In 1889, she started a girls’ school in a crowded Calcutta community and taught 30 girls whom she encouraged to express themselves through art. She displayed their work in exhibitions and served in the local community by volunteering to clean the streets and to nurse the sick during

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plague and other epidemics. Returning from a fund-raising trip abroad in 1902, Nivedita began a new school with a class on reading, writing, and sewing for adult women whom she encouraged to discuss social issues openly with men. Nivedita profoundly influenced later feminists like Sarojini Naidu and male nationalists like C. Subramania Bharati. Bharati was the author of Tamil poems, essays, and novels on women’s rights, and he started the journal Chakravartini (Empress) in 1906 to promote women’s emancipation. Another Tamil writer in the 1908 reform journal, Viveka Bodhini (Enlightened Intellect), described Nivedita’s curriculum for Indian girls. Like Annie Besant, another British woman who had fled from domesticity in Christian Britain, Nivedita emphasized childcare, Hindu scriptures, arithmetic and accounts, and occupational skills for Indian girls, ideals that became central to the curriculum in nationalist girls’ schools.62 Theosophical Society, Annie Besant, and Women The Russian medium Mme. Blavatsky who was inspired by Asian religions chose to relocate the TS to India. She made a plea to Annie Besant to ‘‘come among us!’’ and appointed Besant as her successor.63 Besant’s life underwent several transformations before she became a Hindu Theosophist. From impoverished but educated Irish-English family, she resisted Victorian constraints on women’s higher education by studying science instead of law.64 She rejected Christian patriarchy by divorcing her domineering, pastor husband and fought for custody of her two children. Notoriety followed her tracts, ‘‘Marriage as It Was and as It Should Be’’ and ‘‘Law of Population’’ in which she advocated birth control. She became an atheist when living with trade unionist Charles Bradlaugh; as G. B. Shaw’s friend, she adopted Fabian Socialism; as a feminist, she was elected to the London School Board. After becoming a Theosophist, she arrived in Bombay in 1893, remaining deeply committed to India till her death in 1933. Although the TS first set up offices near the AS in Bombay, the TS soon left Bombay to establish its permanent base at Adyar, Madras. Besant now plunged into studies of Hinduism and Sanskrit, gave lectures on Indian cultural revival, and made contact with leaders of the INC. Besant’s radical feminism was transformed in India. She promoted a system of national schools for girls and boys, gave assistance to the WIA in 1917, and championed women’s suffrage in India. However, her speeches and pamphlets on girls’ education reaffirmed their subordinate roles, which were enshrined in the curriculum in national girls’ schools. She distinguished between Western and Eastern social mores on women and idealized the Indian woman as a chaste mother and selfless Sita or Savitri. She told women not to compete with men but to raise the future male leaders of India. Her feminism was subordinated by her interest in India’s cultural rejuvenation and freedom.

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This was first seen in her 1896 speech at Maharani Girls’ School in the progressive princely state of Mysore. She advised the girls to ‘‘grow up to be Hindu wives and mothers,’’ as there was ‘‘nothing nobler than loving, unselfish, spiritual Indian women.’’ 65 By 1904, her pamphlet, ‘‘On the Education of Indian Girls,’’ delineated her views on the curriculum at Indian girls’ schools. She wrote: The national movement for girls’ education must be on national lines: it must accept the general Hindu conceptions of woman’s place in the national life, not the dwarfed modern view but the ancient ideal. It must see in the woman the mother and the wife, or, as in some cases, the learned and pious ascetic, the Brahmavadini of older days. It cannot see in her the rival and competitor of man in all forms of outside and public employment, as woman, under different economic conditions, is coming to be, more and more, in the West. The West must work out in its own way the artificial problem which has been created there as to the relation of the sexes. The East has not to face that problem and the lines of Western female education are not suitable for the education of Eastern girls.66 Besant began active in nationalist affairs, and she was elected INC president in 1917, the first woman of European ancestry to hold this post. She now urged Indian women to become activists for the nation and advised men to support them. In her 1932 book, Higher Education in India, she prophesied that ‘‘The future of Hinduism depends largely on women.’’ 67 She also admonished men not to hinder their educational progress, since ‘‘exceptional girls’’ would require a ‘‘more profound and wider education’’ to lead India. She wrote: Such girls may be born into India in order to restore to her the learned women of the past, and to place again in her diadem the long lost pearl of lofty female intelligence. It is not for any to thwart them in their upward climbing—or to place unnecessary obstacles in their path.68 Madras philanthropic men like P. S. Sivaswamy Aiyar and Maranna Gounder joined the TS and financed its National Educational Trust, which established numerous schools attended by the middle-class intelligentsia. Here boys and girls studied the Indian languages, texts, and culture, as well as English and Western scientific disciplines. This type of curriculum attracted so many Indians that between 1902 and 1912, private schools doubled.69 The TS also began schools for Dalits or the fifth caste (panchamas), often demeaned as ‘‘untouchable’’ pariahs. The initiative was taken by Colonel Olcott, an American Civil War veteran and Theosophist who outlined his goals in The Poor Pariah (1902).70 Olcott began the Panchama Educational Trust,

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which had 757 boys and 193 girls in 1910. Students were taught academic subjects and given occupational training that made them economically independent of the high castes and also prevented their conversion by Christian evangelicals.71 The feminist and nationalist movements thus evolved together from the late nineteenth century when educated women began regional groups (mahila samajs/parishads) to assist their less fortunate Indian sisters. This was especially apparent after World War I when millions of women joined Mohandas K. Gandhi’s (1869–1948) pacifist freedom campaigns (satyagrahas) based on nonviolence (ahimsa).72 Among them were domiciled Irish women like Besant and Margaret Cousins who aligned Indian women’s suffrage movement with feminism in the West. Initially, many Indian women rejected the term ‘‘feminist’’ as it seemed to imply a gender war. Supported by progressive men and guided by the culture of family solidarity under duress, they felt that they struggled jointly with men for rights and freedom.73 In return, male patriots idealized their women as unselfish and spiritual, in contrast to Western feminists who sought to wrest their individual rights from a patriarchal society marked by competitive materialism.74 Gandhi or Mahatma (Great Soul) appealed to men to seek inspiration from women’s daily abnegations for their families, and women now courted arrest and sacrificed for the nation’s freedom. 75 In 1922, feminist Sarojini Naidu compared Gandhi’s methods with Europe’s wars: The difference between our warfare and the warfare of Europe, the warfare of the West, the accepted warfare of the world, is this, that while nations of another land win their victory slaying their enemies we win our victory by slaying only our sins.76 Assessment of Male Reformers Recent critics argue that male reformers were too preoccupied with elite women’s customs to consider the pressing problems of lower-class women.77 As the elite, they filtered the benefits of modernity from themselves to women and the low castes, so that women became the objects of their reforming gaze and channels for India’s regeneration. Moreover, critics point out that male reformers wished to educate elite girls by reaffirming their roles as ‘‘good wives and good mothers,’’ an idea that was extended to their work as brave ‘‘mothers of the nation’’ (and its men).78 In this highly political environment, missionary, government, and nationalist schools emphasized women’s domestic and reproductive importance, since patriarchy demanded that men seek outside employment through a Western secular education. Nationalists did not try to educate their women for jobs but to maintain cultural stability in the midst of rapid social change.79 The exception was the widow who became an ideal resource to teach other

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women. Without any substantive programs for women’s economic independence, gender equality remained an elusive dream.80 Moreover, nationalists used the colonial legal system to control female sexuality, fearing that women trained into other professions would shirk domestic duties or even become sexually independent like Western women. This appeared during Constituent Assembly debates after independence in 1949. Male legislators then opposed women’s equal rights to property on the spurious logic that this would fragment the Indian family.81 These valid arguments may be understood better if placed in their historical context. Not only were patriarchal mores of over two millennia deeply ingrained in high-caste/class male nationalists, but also notions of caste hierarchy. They deeply resented the racist colonial hierarchy that allotted them a limited political niche. Neither colonial rulers nor Indian male nationalists wished to share authority equally with women or the lower orders, but rather to guide these paternalistically. Women thus became the means to attain freedom from Western rule. The idea of engendered spaces with men in the public sphere and women in the domestic arena had grown in the late Victorian consumerist economy.82 When applied to India, the philosophy would postpone meaningful equality either for women or for the lower classes. As products of their era, male reformers shared the shibboleths of that time. Yet, the liberal first articulated the importance of human rights in India and fostered pride in its valuable traditions, but also criticized its weaknesses. As moderates, they were terrified by radical politics, whether by outspoken feminists or by cultural nationalists who wished to restore an outmoded past. Although born to privilege, elite nationalists forged a new philosophy that grafted spiritual equality from Indian scriptures onto recent Western innovations on social equality. This dual inspiration grounded their movement in the context of Indian historical dissent and tolerance, making it comprehensible to modern compatriots.83 While the ideal of equality continues to entrance many, it requires constant vigilance. Ranade was convinced that his goals were innovative for his time, since more extreme changes would be socially convulsive and impermanent. He thus wished to proceed slowly, ‘‘along the lines of least resistance.’’ In tune with current usage, Ranade used the term mankind for humanity, but his progressive views are evident throughout his speeches.84 Reform was to be judicious, since despite ‘‘decay and corruption,’’ ‘‘we cannot stop at a particular period without breaking the continuity of the whole.’’ He sought to raise the low castes and women but criticized the revivalist who wished to restore Vedic levirate widow remarriage. Pointing to outmoded customs in Manu Smriti, Ranade asked sharply, ‘‘What shall we revive? Shall we revive the twelve forms of sons, or eight forms of marriage, which included capture, and recognized mixed and illegitimate intercourse?’’ He wrote: All admit we have been deformed. We have lost our stature, we are bent in a hundred places . . . and now we want this deformity to be

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removed; and the only way to remove it is to place ourselves under the discipline of better ideas and forms. Now this is the work of the Reformer.85 MUSLIM REFORMERS AND WOMEN Modernist Movements The most significant Islamic modernist movement was spearheaded by Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan, an Urdu-speaking ashraf whose ancestors worked for the Mughal empire. Educated in Muslim schools (madarssas), Sir Sayyid became a scholar through personal diligence when serving as a minor judge in the British criminal court at Delhi. Convinced that the Raj would safeguard his Muslim community (qwam), Sir Sayyid was shaken by the 1857 Revolt, and in 1866, he founded the British Indian Association. In the late 1870s, he was dismayed by the rise of educated Hindus in the bureaucracy and derided the INC as a Hindu club. In order to promote a renaissance among Muslim men, he advocated a Western education along with studies in Arabic, Urdu, and Persian texts. He founded the Scientific Society to translate Western texts into Urdu, and the Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental University for men at Aligarh. However, Sir Sayyid believed that Muslim women should study only within the zenana. In 1886, Sir Sayyid also started the All-India Mohammedan Educational Conference (MEC), which met concurrently with the INC to siphon nationalist Muslims into his organization. Women’s Schooling and Pardah Pan-Indian, Hindu, and Muslim identities were shaped by gender and class hierarchies. All reformers regardless of sect emphasized female education and women’s domesticity as stabilizing influences on each community. Like the Hindu Ranade, Sir Sayyid and his successor Abd Ali Latif knew that the illiterate were likely to believe in miracles, and that as illiteracy was more common among women, they were susceptible to obscurantist ideas.86 Conservative and modernist Muslim reformers sought to instruct women on the Qur’an and its verses outlining their rights. In 1905, Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanawi’s Urdu guideline, Bihishti Zewar (Jewelry of Paradise), became a seminal influence upon Muslim women. A Sufi scholar of the revivalist Deoband school, Maulana Thanawi agreed with Sir Sayyid that an earlier tradition of wise Muslim women had deteriorated through contact with Hindus. 87 The Maulana argued that women must be taught, as Prophet Muhammad had emphasized that God had given both sexes natural intelligence. On a somber note, Thanawi wrote that he was ‘‘heartsick’’ at the ‘‘ruination of the religion of the women of Hindustan’’ and their ‘‘ignorance of the religious sciences.’’ He urged women to shed ostentatious frivolity at weddings and rites.88

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Modernist reformers drew attention to women’s rights to property, adult marriages, and divorce as laid down by the Qur’an. They supported pardah as a way to promote respect for women but argued that many illiterate Muslim women had lost their Qur’anic rights to property, albeit half the amounts given to men. They felt that the important verse (4:32) advising men to manage female affairs and women to be ‘‘devoutly obedient’’ reflected female ignorance, and not censure by the Prophet who relied on the advice of his senior wives. Muslim women’s property rights had eroded in India where such rights were customary, rather than textually mandated. Muslim reformers thus blamed Hindu society for such losses through cultural assimilation. This view was also accepted by British feminists like Eleanor Rathbone, a Parliamentary member who testified to the Census Board in 1934.89 Muslim reformers believed that women’s lost rights to divorce and adult marriage in India could be rectified by education on the Qur’an. The progressive wished to also teach women some modern secular subjects but not commensurate to men’s schooling. Most Muslim reformers also advocated some form of pardah as a distinguishing marker of high-class women. If the liberal advocated seclusion to safeguard women, the puritanical saw pardah as a way to punish women for inciting male lust. Muslim women faced the double indemnity of being both female and from a minority group, so that they could not easily explore the new freedoms that became available to Muslim men in the late colonial era. Lastly, incipient feminist aspirations were shadowed by sectarian contestations, so that decades passed before Muslim women could reassert their natural, human rights.90 Sir Sayyid’s conservatism is evident in his advocacy of the pardah for women’s chastity and zenana education. He distrusted Western gender norms as unsuitable for Muslim women and did not favor formal schools for Muslim girls.91 His ideal was his aristocratic mother Azizunnissa Begam (d. 1857), who studied Arabic, Persian, and Urdu texts within the zenana. A similar vision was expounded nearly a century previously by Mirza Abu Talib in his Vindication of the Liberties of Asiatic Women (1801). Talib had witnessed the promiscuity of upper-class English women and men in Regency England. While Talib admired aristocratic Englishwomen, he disparaged their sexual escapades and praised Muslim women’s secluded innocence. Thus, pardah became a significant cultural distinction between East and West.92 Eighty years later, Sir Sayyid conflated several models of feminine perfection to create a modern Muslim woman with the grace admired by Talib, coupled with Victorian, educated domesticity. As his mother represented an ideal zenana woman, Sir Sayyid advised the Hunter Commission on Education in 1882 not to take the trouble to start formal schools for Muslim girls: The present state of education among Muhammadan females is, in my opinion, enough for domestic happiness, considering the present

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social and economic condition of the life of the Muhammadans in India.93 The idea of a distinctive Muslim community was thus linked to gender ideals, their cultural spaces, and educational attainment. At the MEC in 1893, Sir Sayyid’s son Sayyid Mahmoud (1850–1903), a judge at Allahabad High Court, gave a lecture on Muslim educational shortcomings.94 Sayyid Mahmoud later published an erudite history on elite men’s importance to his community, without any reference to women’s public roles. Islamic nationalism was clearly in the hands of men.95 Islamic nationalism was also shaped by reformers who castigated the accretion of Hindu customs over a thousand years of historical interactions. The close proximity of Hindu and Muslim groups led to fuzzy cultural and ethnic markers, most noticeable among convert Muslims, but also true of elite ashrafs descended from West Asians. The Indian social mosaic is notable for the sharing of cultural ideas and practices across sects, often mediated by women. Shared regional vocabularies and languages, foods, music, literature, art, social rites at births and marriages, and even religious rites at the tombs of Sufi saints. South Indian working Muslim women cover their heads but move freely out of pardah, speak Tamil or Malayalam and not Arabic or Urdu, and venerate the Sufi saints with plates of marigolds, ash, and fruits in rites that resemble Hindu temple offerings to icons.96 Elite women in the zenana bridged disparate cultures through interactions with Hindu vendors and servants. In north India, mixed metaphors and language patterns with Hindu nuances was called the women’s dialect (begamati zabaan).97 Although society was enriched by such female mediations, male clerics (maulvis) frowned upon these as Hindu corruptions of the Islamic ideal. However, some Muslims disagreed with purists and with Sir Sayyid on women’s home education. The progressive thinker Mumtaz Ali (d. 1935) of Lahore, Punjab differed on the scope of women’s domestic authority as delineated by the Qur’anic verse, which advised men to supervise household finances as women were unlettered. Mumtaz Ali proposed that female education would revive the example of powerful, literate women like the Prophet’s chief wives.98 Mumtaz Ali respectfully presented his manuscript on women’s rights to Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan but was shocked when the great man threw it into the waste basket. It was only after the great man’s death in 1898 that Mumtaz Ali undertook to publish Tahzib-E-Niswan (The Women’s Reformer), the first important Urdu women’s journal. 99 Mumtaz Ali’s wife Muhammadi Begam was his coeditor until her death, after which his daughter Waheeda Begam and later his son continued the journal till 1948.100 Fortunately, some of Sir Sayyid’s students broke free of his dictates. Ibrahim Saber and his younger sister Rokeya, the first Muslim feminist, came from a distinguished Bengali family. Although their father had Ibrahim educated

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in Arabic, Persian, Urdu, and English, he restricted Rokeya and her sister to rote recitations from the Qur’an and forbade the girls from learning Bengali and English. Rokeya’s eagerness to master Bengali led Ibrahim to teach his sister surreptitiously at night by candlelight. A grateful Rokeya dedicated her first novel Padmarag to him for having opened a window to Bengali literature.101 At the MEC at Allahabad in 1900, Muslims pledged to open more schools for both genders. They convinced British provincial governments to start girls’ schools where teachers did not preach Christianity, and to arrange for closed pardah conveyances to transport the girls.102 After the 1920s, liberal and patriotic Muslim families sent their daughters to college. Thus, the Gujarati Bohra Muslim merchant Badruddin Tyabji, a respected member of the INC, sent his elder daughters to a Bombay school and his younger daughter to college in England.103 Similarly, Attia Hosain (b. 1913) of Lucknow was also educated abroad by her family, before she returned to write the English novel, Sunlight on a Broken Column, about a middle-class Muslim woman and the challenges faced by her family in the twentieth century.104 Muslim Laws for Women (Twentieth Century) Muslims largely believed that the Sharia laws based on the Qur’an superseded the secular, civil laws of the colonial state. The Shariat governs both personal moralities and social responsibilities. However, many communities followed a combination of Shariat, local customs, and colonial government injunctions. Muslims gave charitable donations to religious endowments (waqf) administered by clerics (mullahs, ulama) to maintain indigents and widowed women. British colonial authorities often favored loyal but often reactionary landowners (zamindars) who sometimes misused their power over local waqf boards. Some zamindars allowed the endowments to become derelict and denuded widows of property, so that many became paupers. Liberal, Westernized Muslim nationalists joined hands with the clerics to reassert the primacy of the Shariat and waqf boards by forcing legislators to pass the Waqf Validating Act (1913). Later, laws affecting women were instituted in the midst of several political movements. They included vibrant feminism, Pakistan separatist movement, and political divisions with secular Indian Muslim nationalists. The Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act of 1937 and the Muslim Dissolution of Marriage Act of 1939 (Divorce Act) were two laws that directly affected only Muslim women. Due to many regional inheritance practices among Muslims, the colonial government had enacted the Married Women’s Property Act (1876), the Guardians and Wards Act (1890), and the Kazi Act (1880), the latter providing for a Muslim legal scholar (kazi) to advise civil courts on the Shariat. Many religious clerics of the Jamiat-ul-ulama-I-Hind organization supported the Shariat but rejected regional non-Islamic

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customs. Taking note of this movement, in 1927 at Peshwar, Punjab, Muslim leaders resolved to pass a civil law enforcing the Shariat and to reject local customs. Reactionary Muslim landlords of northern India loyal to the British deprived women of Qur’anic rights with impunity, and the colonial state overlooked their excesses. Patriotic Muslims like Mohammad Ali Jinnah (1871–1948), a Khoja from Bombay, believed that a secular law was necessary to help Muslim women. In 1934, a controversial bill was resisted by Gujarati Bohra and Khoja Muslims who followed a mix of Muslim and Hindu inheritance laws. Jinnah framed an amended bill allowing greater flexible transitions from local customs to Muslim Personal Law.105 Although the Shariat Act appeared to promote religious over secular law, it partially restored Muslim women’s rights, although some ensuing judgments were unfair to women.106 The Dissolution of Muslim Marriages Act (1939) had a more significant impact by replacing the Hanafi laws of Sharia that restricted women filing for divorce by the more lenient Maliki school of Sharia law that allowed women to dissolve marriages if the husband failed to support her or deserted her. The Qur’an accepts polygamy for men, but not all men are polygamous. The scripture allows women and men to divorce, especially if wives feared ‘‘cruelty or desertion’’ as there would be ‘‘no blame on them’’ (4:128). The Qur’an also states that a wife facing ‘‘prejudice’’ in marriage can break it (4:23–24), as long as she returns her dowry (mehr). While men can divorce even without the wife’s presence by pronouncing the word ‘‘talaq’’ (divorce) three times, women need two (male) witnesses. The Maliki school of law prevailing in south India grants women divorce on several grounds. The strictest is the north Indian Hanafi school, which allows women to divorce only through the mediation of a clerical judge. It also does not accept divorce between Muslims if a non-Muslim judge is the mediator. Hanafi jurists also decreed that a woman be imprisoned if she married a nonMuslim or converted to another religion until she returned to the Islamic fold.107 The clarity of the Dissolution of Muslim Marriage Act gave women ample reasons to divorce, and the law could be implemented justly and easily. Husain Iman, a Bihar legislator, explained the need for such a law, as the Hanafi Code had no provision if her husband ‘‘neglects to maintain her, makes her life miserable by deserting or persistently maltreating her, or absconds,’’ which ‘‘entailed unspeakable misery to innumerable Muslim women in British India.’’108 Two secular laws applied to all Indian women irrespective of sect, caste, or class. They were the Age of Consent Bill (1927) introduced by Hari Singh Gour and the Child Marriage Restraint Act (1929) introduced by Har Bilas Sarda. Although intended to abolish child marriage most common among Hindus, both bills were supported by liberal Muslim women at local meetings and through national feminist organizations like the All India Women’s Conference (AIWC), WIA, and the National Council of Women in India

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(NCWI). Despite the growing rift between Muslim and Hindu male leaders, Hindu and Muslim feminists in the AIWC and WIA jointly denounced child marriage as an Indian custom. In her 1928 presidential address to the AIWC, the Begam of Bhopal described child marriage as an ‘‘evil’’ that debilitated women, took away their childhood, and denied them an education. Vocal Muslim supporters of the Sarda Bill were Begam Sharifa Hamid Ali, Lady Abdul Qadir, Begam Qudsia Aizaz Rasul, Mrs. Akhatar Husain, Mrs. Kazi Mir Ahmed, Begam Hamida Momin, and Mrs. I. F. Hasan. Similar support was forthcoming from Abru Begam, honorary secretary of AIWC chapter in Hyderabad princely state, and from Lady Ismail whose husband Mohammad Ismail was chief minister of Mysore, whose ruling dynasty was enlightened on women’s rights.109 Due to her husband’s high rank, considerable weight was attached to her demand that the British legally raise the marriage age for girls to 16 years.110 The Sarda Act of September 1929 made 14 the legal age of marriage for girls in British India. Nation and Sect: Muslim Women and Politics Many elite Muslim women began pardah clubs in the 1920s to articulate their ideas on reform for women. They included professionals like Dr. Rahamatunissa Begam of Madras and Sharifa Hamid Ali from the Tyabji family from Bombay, and aristocrats like the Begam of Bhopal. The AIWC represented a sisterhood embracing women of all communities. Muslim women’s sectarian identity was reinforced in its debates over pardah and the Shariat Act. In the 1940s, feminists’ united front was threatened by communal tensions, and they were forced to choose sides. Their family men espoused either the Muslim League’s (ML) Pakistan cause or the Indian nationalist struggle led by Gandhi and the INC. 111 The less political returned to educational or quiet reform work that was not confrontational with their colleagues. The ML now organized women into political action groups, such as the All-India Muslim Women’s Sub-Committee in 1938. Its leader Mohammad Ali Jinnah was interested in promoting women’s involvement in the creation of Pakistan on August 14, 1947. Although in pardah, Muslim women participated in demonstrations by wearing a fullbody cloak with veil (burqah). Others like the aristocratic Qudsia Aizaz Rasul discarded the pardah, if supported by their husbands.112 She and her husband belonged to the ML but remained in India after India’s partition. Among the Muslim supporters of the INC was Sharifa Hamid Ali, from the affluent Bohra family of Badruddin Tyabji in Bombay. Sharifa’s integrity and ability were respected by Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964), as she believed implicitly in a united India and represented the INC position against communal electorates at the Round Table Conference in 1933.113 In 1939, Sharifa served on the National Planning Committee with two other Muslim women, under the direction of Prime Minister Nehru.

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Two other important Muslim women were Kulsum Sayani and Sofia Khan. As Kulsum’s father was Gandhi’s physician, she regarded Gandhi as a favorite uncle and readily joined his satyagraha movement.114 Sofia Khan (1916–61) was a devout Muslim and the daughter of the respected Justice Somjee of Bombay, and a relative of Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan of North West Province, also known as ‘‘Frontier Gandhi’’ due to his commitment to peace. Like other feminists, Sofia Khan joined the INC and took part in Salt Satyagraha of 1930. During this epoch-making event, Gandhi marched 240 miles from Sabarmati to Dandi, Gujarat. Gandhi made salt from seawater in defiance of the British monopoly over the manufacture and sale of salt, which was crucial to survival in the tropics. Although Gandhi had first objected to women in the arduous march, Sarojini Naidu, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya, and Khurshed Naoroji changed his mind. Elite and ordinary women became patriotic ‘‘salt thieves’’ who braved arrest by making and selling this commodity. Sofia Khan joined Nehru in protests against India’s enforced involvement in World War II, and she was imprisoned in Yeravada Jail in Pune. Sofia Khan followed Gandhi’s guidelines by spinning cotton cloth (khaddar) on the handloom (charkha). A less prominent but enthusiastic follower of Gandhi was Sultana Hayat of Uttar Pradesh. Sultana later served as the president of an organization to promote the Urdu language in independent India. These were just a few examples of elite and middle-class Muslim women who fought to free India. Muslim women workers of Uttar Pradesh demonstrated for higher wages and lower prices, appearing in public in the full-body cloak (burqah). However, they did not often venture to public meetings unless the speakers were Muslim women or bore Muslim names like Aruna Asaf Ali (1906–95), a courageous feminist born Hindu and married to a Muslim who shared her commitment to leftist ideals.115 Indira Gandhi was Jawaharlal Nehru’s daughter, and the descendent of Kashmiri Hindu brahmans, married Feroze Gandhi whose parents were Zoroastrian and Muslim. The revolutionary freedom movement was marked by similar marriages transcending caste and sect in a search for national unity. NOTES 1. Vivekananda, ‘‘Ideals of Womanhood,’’ in The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, 9th ed. (Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1995), 2:503–7. 2. Stanley Wolpert, Tilak and Gokhale: Revolution and Reform in the Making of Modern India, 2nd ed. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1961), 36. 3. Bande Mataram hymn appeared in Bankim Chandra Chatterji’s Bengali novel, Ananda Math. Bankim Chandra Chatterji, The Abbey of Bliss: A Translation of Bankim Chandra Chatterji’s Ananda Math, trans. Nares Chandra Sen Gupta (Calcutta: P. M. Neogi, 1906), 31–37.

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4. I am indebted to Debashish Banerji for his comments during his exhibition of Bengal modern painters at Aurobindo Ashram at Pondicherry, Tamil Nadu, December 2001. Also cited in Raman and Surya, A. Madhaviah, 106, 114 nn. 3, 4. 5. Thanjavur state, now in Tamil Nadu, had many philanthropic kings and queens. Raman, Getting Girls to School, 1–6. 6. Gail Minault, ‘‘Introduction: The Extended Family as Metaphor and the Expansion of the Women’s Realm,’’ in The Extended Family: Women and Political Participation in India and Pakistan, ed. Gail Minault (New Delhi: Chanakya Publishers, 1981), 3–19, vide, 7–8. 7. Rabindranath Thakur’s story was filmed by Satyajit Ray as Home and the World in 1961. 8. C. Subramania Bharati’s Tamil writings on women include his journal editorial, ‘‘Statistics on Women’s Education,’’ Chakravartini (Empress), 1, no. 7 (February 1906), 1; his 1924 novella Chandrikaiyin Kadai (Chandrikai’s Story; Madras: Sangam Publishers, 1982); Katturaikal: Mathar (Essays on Women; Triplicane: Bharati Publishing House, 1935); his four poems on the new Indian woman, in Bharatiyar Kavitaikkal Muzhuvadum (Bharatiyar’s Complete Poems; Madras: Bharati Publishers, 1986), 207–12. 9. Madhu Kishwar, ‘‘Arya Samaj and Women’s Education: Kanya Mahavidyalaya, Jalandhar,’’ Economic and Political Weekly 21, no. 17 (April 1986): 9–10. 10. Raman, Getting Girls to School, 77–80. 11. Kumar, History of Doing, 14. 12. Forbes, Women in Modern India, 28–31. 13. Vedanayakam Pillai, Pen Kalvi (Female Education; repr., Tinnevelly: Saiva Siddhanta Publishing Society, 1950), frontispiece. 14. Raman, Getting Girls to School, 114–15; Raman, ‘‘Old Norms in New Bottles,’’ 93–119, vide, 94–96. 15. Government of Madras, Report of the Madras Provincial Committee with Evidence Taken Before the Committee and Memorials Addressed to the Education Commission, 1883, 130; Government of India, Report of the Indian Education Commission (Hunter Commission), February 3, 1882, 542; and Raman, Getting Girls to School, 77–79, 99 nn. 48, 50. 16. Muthulakshmi Reddi, My Experiences as a Legislator (Triplicane: Current Thought Press, 1930); Muthulakshmi Reddi, An Autobiography (Adyar: Avvai Home, 1964); Muthulakshmi Reddi, The Presidential Address of Dr. (Mrs) S. Muthulakshmi Reddi, Delivered at the Seventh Andhra Provincial Women’s Conference (pamphlet; Ellore: 1933); Muthulakshmi Reddi, Why Should the Devadasi Institution in the Hindu Temples Be Abolished? (Madras: Central Cooperative Printing Works, Ltd., 1927); S. Muthulakshmi Reddi Papers, Files 7–12, and All India Women’s Conference Papers (New Delhi: Nehru Memorial Museum and Library [NMML]). 17. Pandita Ramabai, The High Caste Hindu Woman (New York: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1887); Tharu and Lalitha, Women Writing in India, 1:243–55, 340–52; Kosambi, At the Intersection of Gender Reform and Religious Belief; Forbes, Women in Modern India, 46–49; Chakravarti, ‘‘Whatever Happened to the Vedic Dasi?’’ 27–87; Kumar, History of Doing, 26–27, 32–34; Bharati Ray, Early Feminists of Colonial India: Sarla Devi Chaudhurani and Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002); Minault, Secluded Scholars, 256–62.

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18. Sumit Sarkar, ‘‘The Women’s Question in Nineteenth Century Bengal,’’ in Women and Culture, ed. Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid (Bombay: SNDT Women’s University, 1985), 157–72; Partha Chatterjee, ‘‘The Nationalist Resolution of the Women’s Question,’’ in Recasting Women, ed. Sangari and Vaid, 232–53, vide, 235. 19. John Greenfield Leonard, Kandukuri Viresalingam: A Biography of an Indian Social Reformer (Hyderabad: Telugu University, 1991), 58. 20. Raman, Getting Girls to School, 119–27. 21. Leonard, Kandukuri Viresalingam, 155–56. 22. Ibid., 56–59, 75–81, 85–90, 119–29; also Y. Vaikuntham, Education and Social Change in South India: Andhra 1880–1920 (Madras: New Era, 1982), 221–22. 23. Kishwar, ‘‘Arya Samaj and Women’s Education,’’ 9. 24. R. Raghunatha Rao, ‘‘The Method of Social Reform,’’ in Hindu Social Progress, ed. N. Subbarau Pantulu Garu (Madras: G. A. Natesan & Co., 1904), 66–67. 25. Rosalind O’Hanlon, A Comparison between Women and Men: Tarabai Shinde and the Critique of Gender Relations in Colonial India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994), 100–25; Tharu and Lalitha, Women Writing in India, 1:221–35. 26. Padma Anagol, The Emergence of Feminism in India, 1850–1920 (Hampshire, England and Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate Publishers, 2005); Rosalind O’Hanlon, ‘‘Issues of Widowhood: Gender and Resistance in Colonial India,’’ in Contesting Power: Resistance and Everyday Social Relations in South Asia, ed. Douglas Haynes and Gyan Prakash (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 62–108; Rosalind O’Hanlon, Caste, Conflict and Ideology: Mahatma Jotirao Phule and Low Caste Protest in Nineteenth Century Western India, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 27. Gail Omvedt, Cultural Revolt in a Colonial Society (Bombay: Scientific Socialist Education Trust, 1976); and Gail Omvedt, ‘‘Hinduism as Patriarchy: Ramabai, Tarabai and Others,’’ in Dalit Visions, ed. Gail Omvedt, 2nd ed. (Mumbai: Orient Longman, 2002), 25–42; Tharu and Lalitha, Women Writing in India, 1:211–14. 28. Kosambi, At the Intersection of Gender Reform and Religious Belief, 29. 29. Kumar, History of Doing, 37–38; Ray, Early Feminists of Colonial India, 152–53. 30. Forbes, Women in Modern India, 26–27. 31. Ibid., 66. 32. D. D. Karve, ed. and trans., The New Brahmins: Five Maharashtrian Families (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963), 50–51. 33. Forbes, Women in Modern India, 51–53. 34. Annie Besant, ‘‘Address Delivered to the Children of the Maharani’s Girls’ School at Mysore on the Occasion of Her Recent Visit to That Institution, December 24, 1896,’’ Arya Bala Bodhini, January 1897; Annie Besant, ‘‘An Interview,’’ Arya Bala Bodhini, January 1899, 44–48; Besant, On the Education of Indian Girls; Besant, Higher Education in India. See also Raman, Getting Girls to School, 132–37. 35. Behramji M. Malabari, Infant Marriage and Enforced Widowhood in India (Bombay: Voice of India Press, 1887), v, 10–105; also Rajendra Singh Vatsa,

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‘‘The Movement against Infant Marriages in India, 1860–1914,’’ Journal of Indian History 44, no. 145–47 (April 1971): 294–300; Rajendra Singh Vatsa, ‘‘The Remarriage and Rehabilitation of Hindu Widows in India, 1856–1914,’’ Journal of Indian History 4, no. 3 (December 1976): 722–33; Raman, Getting Girls to School, 124– 27; Kumar, History of Doing, 25–27. 36. Malabari, Infant Marriage and Enforced Widowhood in India, 5. 37. Kosambi, At the Intersection of Gender Reform and Religious Belief, 41–42. 38. See Ibid., 26–27. 39. Wolpert, Tilak and Gokhale, 37, 59–60. 40. R. Raghunatha Rao, The Aryan Marriage with Special Reference to the Age Question: A Clinical and Historical Study (1908; repr., New Delhi: Cosmo Publication, 1975), ix; also Rao, ‘‘The Method of Social Reform,’’ 64–69. 41. Chakravarti, ‘‘Whatever Happened to the Vedic Dasi?’’ 73–75; Kumar, History of Doing, 25–27; Forbes, Women in Modern India, 22, 46–49. 42. Tharu and Lalitha, Women Writing in India, 1:296–98; Antoinette Burton, ‘‘ ‘Stray Thoughts of an Indian Girl’ by Cornelia Sorabji, The Nineteenth Century, October 1891,’’ in Feminism in India, ed. Maitrayee Chaudhuri (New Delhi: Women Unlimited and Kali for Women, 2004), 94–102, vide, 94–95. 43. Kenneth W. Jones, ‘‘Communalism in the Punjab: The Arya Samaj Contribution,’’ in Modern India: An Interpretive Anthology, ed. Thomas Metcalf (New Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 1990), 261–77. 44. Urvashi Butalia, The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India (New Delhi: Penguin, 1998); Ritu Menon and Kamla Bhasin, Borders and Boundaries: Women in India’s Partition (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University, 1998). 45. Chakravarti, ‘‘Whatever Happened to the Vedic Dasi?’’ 55–60. 46. Kishwar, ‘‘Arya Samaj and Women’s Education,’’ 9–13. 47. Snehi, ‘‘Conjugality, Sexuality and Shastras,’’ 176, 178–81. 48. Vivekananda, ‘‘The Way to the Realization of a Universal Religion,’’ Lecture at the Universalist Church, Pasadena, California, January 28, 1900, in The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, 2:359–96, vide, 381–83. 49. Swami Nikhilandanda, Sri Ramakrishna: A Biography (Madras: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 2002), 94–184; ‘‘Anna,’’ Saints of India (Madras: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1990), 77–97. 50. Nikhilandanda, Sri Ramakrishna, 106–9; ‘‘Anna,’’ Saints of India, 70–76. 51. Advaita Ashrama, A Short Life of Sri Ramakrishna (Mayavati, Himalayas: Advaita Ashrama, 1940), 61. 52. Nikhilandanda, Sri Ramakrishna, 53–58. 53. Ashrama, A Short Life of Sri Ramakrishna, 69–70; ‘‘Anna,’’ Saints of India, 73–74. 54. Nikhilandanda, Sri Ramakrishna, 10–11. 55. Ashrama, A Short Life of Sri Ramakrishna, 71, 90–92; ‘‘Anna,’’ Saints of India, 40–45, 75. 56. Swami Tapasyananda, Sri Sarada Devi, the Holy Mother: Life and Teachings (Madras: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 2003), 24–25. 57. Ibid., 71–140. 58. Vivekananda, ‘‘Addresses at the World Parliament of Religions, Chicago, 11th September, 1893,’’ in The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, 1:3–24, vide, 15.

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59. Dietmar Rothermund, ‘‘Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902), Hindu Religious Leader,’’ in Encyclopedia of India, ed. Stanley Wolpert (Detroit and New York: Thomson Gale, 2006), 4:222–23. 60. Vivekananda, ‘‘Ideals of Womanhood,’’ 2:503–7. 61. Kumari Jayawardena, The White Woman’s Other Burden: Western Women and South Asia during British Colonial Rule (New York and London: Routledge, 1995), 183–94; Pravrajika Atmaprana, The Story of Sister Nivedita (Calcutta: Ramakrishna Sarada Mission and Sister Niveditta Girls’ School, 1991). 62. ‘‘Aa.chi.ka’’ (a pseudonym), ‘‘The Education of Women’’ (Tamil), Viveka Bodhini 1, no. 1 (August 1908): 39–41; also Raman, Getting Girls to School, 155, 192 n. 12. 63. Annie Besant, An Autobiography (1893; repr., Adyar: Theosophical Publishing Society, 1984), 311. 64. Jayawardena, The White Woman’s Other Burden, 107–34; Raman, Getting Girls to School, 39, 132–36, 154, 168–73, 190, 219, 229; Barbara Ramusack, ‘‘Catalysts or Helpers? British Feminists, Indian Women’s Rights, and Indian Independence,’’ in The Extended Family, ed. Minault, 109–50; Arthur H. Nethercott, The First Nine Lives of Annie Besant (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1961); Anne Taylor, Annie Besant, a Biography (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); Jyoti Chandra, Annie Besant: From Theosophy to Nationalism (Delhi: K. R. Publications, 2001); Indra Gupta, India’s 50 Most Illustrious Women (New Delhi: Icon Publications Pvt. Ltd., 2003), 57–66. 65. Besant, ‘‘Address to Maharani Girls’ School’’; also Raman, Getting Girls to School, 166–77. 66. Besant, On the Education of Indian Girls, 3. 67. Annie Besant, ‘‘An Appeal: Higher Education for Indian Girls’’ (Adyar: Theosophical Society, January 1915), 1–3. 68. Besant, On the Education of Indian Girls, 10. 69. Government of India, Report on the Progress of Education in India, Fourth Quinquennial Review, 1897–1898 to 1901–1902, Table 61, 106; Report on the Progress of Education in India, Fifth Quinquennial Review, 1902–1907, Table 174, 134; and Report on the Progress of Education in India, Sixth Quinquennial Review, Table 161, 285. 70. Henry S. Olcott, The Poor Pariah (Adyar: Theosophical Society, 1902), 16–17; Raman, Getting Girls to School, 160–66. 71. Report of the Olcott Panchama Free Schools, December 1, 1909–November 30, 1910 (Adyar: Theosophical Society Press, 1910), 3; C. Kofel, ‘‘Education of the Depressed Classes, Particularly in Southern India’’ (Adyar: 1913), handwritten report of the Superintendent of Olcott Panchama Free Schools. 72. R. K. Prabhu and U. R. Rao, The Mind of Mahatma Gandhi (1945; repr., Ahmedabad: Navajivan Trust Publishing House, 1967); B. R. Nanda, Mahatma Gandhi: A Biography (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1958); Joan Bondurant, Conquest of Violence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988); Suzanne H. Rudolph and Lloyd I. Rudolph, Gandhi: The Traditional Roots of Charisma, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983); Judith Brown, Gandhi’s Rise to Power (London: Cambridge University Press, 1972); Judith Brown, Gandhi and Civil Disobedience (London: Cambridge University Press, 1977); Judith Brown, Gandhi: Prisoner of Hope (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989); Dennis Dalton,

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Mahatma Gandhi: Nonviolent Power in Action (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993); Stanley Wolpert, Gandhi’s Passion: The Life and Legacy of Mahatma Gandhi (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); Louis Fischer, Gandhi: His Life and Message for the World (New York: New American Library, 1954); Erik H. Erikson, Gandhi’s Truth: On the Origins of Militant Nonviolence (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1969). 73. Suma Chitnis, ‘‘Feminism: Indian Ethos and Indian Convictions,’’ in Feminism in India, ed. Chaudhuri, 8–25; Kamla Bhasin and Nighat Said Khan, ‘‘Some Questions on Feminism and Its Relevance in South Asia,’’ in Feminism in India, ed. Chaudhuri, 3–7. 74. K. Sudarshana Rao, ‘‘Hindu Social Reform,’’ in Hindu Social Progress, ed. Garu, 89–90; Maitrayee Chaudhuri, ‘‘The Indian Women’s Movement,’’ in Feminism in India, ed. Chaudhuri, 117–33. 75. Shahid Amin, ‘‘The Making of the Mahatma,’’ in Subaltern Studies 3, ed. Ranajit Guha (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1984), 1–55; David Arnold, Gandhi: Profiles in Power (Harlow, U.K.: Longman and Pearson Education, 2001); Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993); D. C. Ahir, Gandhi and Ambedkar (New Delhi: Blumoon Publishers, 1995). 76. Sarojini Naidu, ‘‘Presidential Address to the Ahmedabad Students’ Conference, 1922,’’ in Women Writing in India, ed. Tharu and Lalitha, 1:335–40, vide, 337–38. 77. Partha Chatterjee, ‘‘The Nation and Its Women,’’ in The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Post-Colonial Histories (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995), 116–34; Chatterjee, ‘‘The Nationalist Resolution of the Women’s Question,’’ 233–53; Sumit Sarkar, A Critique of Colonial India (Calcutta: Papyrus, 1985), 1–17, 71–76; Chakravarti, ‘‘Whatever Happened to the Vedic Dasi?’’ 27–87; Joanna Liddle and Rama Joshi, Daughters of Independence: Gender, Caste and Class (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University, 1986). 78. Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments, 127–30. 79. Raman, Getting Girls to School, 19–21, 50–54, 166–69. 80. Bina Agarwal, ‘‘The Idea of Gender Equality: From Legislative Vision to Everyday Family Practice,’’ in India: Another Millennium? ed. Romila Thapar (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2000), 41–42. 81. Ibid., 39. 82. Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments, 117. 83. Raman and Surya, A. Madhaviah, x, 18–19, 25–31. 84. Quotation in Sumit Sarkar, Modern India, 1885–1947 (Madras: Macmillan India, 1983), 70. 85. Cited in Hay, Sources of Indian Tradition: Modern India and Pakistan, 2:104–9. 86. Hafeez Malik, ‘‘Sayyid Ahmed Khan and the Aligarh Movement,’’ in Encyclopedia of India, ed. Stanley Wolpert (Detroit and New York: Thomson & Gale, 2006), 4:11–14. 87. Barbara Daly Metcalf, ‘‘Islamic Reform and Islamic Women: Maulana Thanawi’s Jewelry of Paradise,’’ in Moral Conduct and Authority, ed. Metcalf, 184–95; Minault, Secluded Scholars, 62–72; and Minault, ‘‘Other Voices, Other Rooms,’’ 108–24.

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88. Cited by Minault, ‘‘Women, Legal Reform and Muslim Identity in South Asia,’’ 2–3. 89. Lateef, Muslim Women in India, 62. 90. Gail Minault, ‘‘Sisterhood or Separatism? The All-India Muslim Ladies’ Conference and the Nationalist Movement,’’ in The Extended Family, ed. Minault, 83–108. 91. Minault, Secluded Scholars, 19–31. 92. Michael H. Fisher, ‘‘Representing ‘His’ Women: Mirza Abu Talib Khan’s 1801 ‘Vindication of the Liberties of Asian Women,’ ’’ The Indian Economic and Social History Review 37, no. 2 (2000): 215–37, vide, 226–29. 93. Minault, Secluded Scholars, 18–19. 94. Ibid., 188. 95. Sayyid Mahmoud, A History of English Education in India (1781–1893) (Aligarh: Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College, 1895), 37, 59. 96. My research in Muslim prayer offerings at the sixteenth-century Sufi dargah to pir Miran Sahib and his wife Sultana Bibi at Nagur (Nagapattinam), Tamil Nadu. Like priests at temples, Muslim clerics offer personalized Tamil and Arabic prayers to devotees regardless of sect. Devotees offer flowers, fruits, coconuts, a form of ash, and sometimes meat to the saints’ tombs. The informational booklet describes this as bhakti, a Hindu term used also by Christian and Muslim converts. Raman, ‘‘Popular Pujas in Public Places,’’ 165–98, vide, 168, 189 n. 3. Similar cultural borrowings form one theme in Bayly, Saints, Goddesses and Kings. 97. Minault, ‘‘Other Voices, Other Rooms,’’ 108–24. 98. Ali, The Meaning of the Illustrious Qur’an. 99. Minault, Secluded Scholars, 62–95. 100. Azra Asghar Ali, The Emergence of Feminism among Indian Muslim Women 1920–1947 (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2000), 214–15. 101. Ray, Early Feminists of Colonial India, 20–21. 102. Raman, Getting Girls to School, 157–60. 103. Minault, Secluded Scholars, 183–87. 104. Attia Hosain, Sunlight on a Broken Column (New Delhi: Penguin, 1961). 105. Ali, The Emergence of Feminism among Indian Muslim Women, 147–51. 106. Lateef, Muslim Women in India, 66–73, 94. 107. Ali, The Emergence of Feminism among Indian Muslim Women, 152–61. Also Ramala Baxmulla, ‘‘Need for Change in the Muslim Personal Law Relating to Divorce in India,’’ in Problems of Muslim Women in India, ed. Engineer, 18–29; Sherebanu Malik, ‘‘Divorce in Indian Islam,’’ in Problems of Muslim Women in India, ed. Engineer, 30–33; and Appendix II, ‘‘Revised Memorandum by the Muslim Women’s Research and Action Front to the Committee on Proposed Reforms to the Muslim Personal Law, 1987,’’ in Problems of Muslim Women in India, ed. Engineer, 183–92. 108. Ali, The Emergence of Feminism among Indian Muslim Women, 144–45. 109. Salana Report: All-India Muslim Ladies Conference at Hyderabad, February 1929, cited by Ali, The Emergence of Feminism among Indian Muslim Women, 144–45, 163 n. 62; and Lateef, Muslim Women in India, 66–73. 110. The Indian Ladies’ Magazine 3, no. 3 (October 1929): 145, cited by Ali, The Emergence of Feminism among Indian Muslim Women, 146, 163 n. 67. 111. Minault, ‘‘Sisterhood or Separatism?’’ 83–108.

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112. Forbes, Women in India, 198–99. 113. Memorandum of Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, Dr. Muthulakshmi Reddi, Mrs. Hamid Ali to the AIWC, WIA, and NCWI from London, August 9, 1933, in ‘‘All-India Women’s Conference Papers,’’ File no. 10 (NMML). 114. Forbes, Women in Modern India, 198–201. 115. Suruchi Thapar-Bjo¨rket, Women in the Indian National Movement: Unseen Faces and Unheard Voices, 1930–42 (New Delhi and Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2006), 96–97.

4 FEMINISTS AND NATIONALISTS

Patriotism is not a thing divorced from real life. It is the flame that burns within the soul, a gem-like flame that cannot be extinguished. The Congress-League scheme is a little thing. If you are not united and earnest, even that little is too much of a burden for you to sustain, but if you are united, if you forget your community and think of the nation, if you forget your city and think of the province, if you forget you are a Hindu and remember the Musalman, if you forget you are a Brahmin and remember the Panchaman, then and then alone will India progress. Sarojini Naidu, 19171 SISTERS, MATRIARCHS, WIVES, AND WIDOWS Unlike women’s earlier resistances to patriarchy, modern feminism attempted to realign the gender hierarchy through programs to educate the sisterhood, emancipate the nation, and fight for equal rights in the democratic state.2 Feminist and nationalist identities crystallized during the nineteenth century from social angst over problems that affected women. The fearful shadows of child marriage, debilitating pregnancies, and possible death fell upon girls while they played hopscotch, hide-and-seek, and board games with conch shells and beads. Education was haphazard, as the lucky imbibed Sanskrit verses (slokas), epic legends, and household rules from mothers and aunts, but others languished in ignorance, prey to superstitions. Working women toiled in fields and huts with no time for study. A mother’s death was a catastrophe that brought other misfortunes, as described by A. Madhaviah in Muthumeenakshi (1903), a Tamil novella later published in a reform journal.3 Celibate widows lived in perpetual mourning as household drudges preyed upon by lechers, but discarded by family and caste if they sought affection.4 The bright spots for a married woman were motherhood, friends’ visits, bhakti songs, and festivals when she decorated the home with tracings of rice powder (rangoli, kolam).

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In 1899, an anonymous woman described the effects of child marriage and widowhood in the journal Mathar Manoranjani (Brightener of Women’s Minds): Educated people outwardly revile the custom of child-marriages, but marry off their own daughters who are children. Wherever there are child marriages, there are child widows. The homes of astrologers and priests swarm with child wives and widows. Perhaps God is punishing them for performing the marriages of the innocent children of others! Fathers, mothers, elders! Stop this iniquity! Why do you push your offspring into a well with your hands! Why are your houses full of widows? Why don’t you recognize the force of reason?5 Rank and education did not preclude such suffering. In her 1906 inaugural address to the Ladies’ Social Conference, which Ramabai Ranade (1862– 1924) had earlier established with her husband M. G. Ranade, the young widow reformer described herself as the unsullied floral offering to God (nirmalya) whose touch alone granted grace.6 Christian missionaries and Muslims argued that conversion alleviated the widow’s plight, but their women also endured some harsh restrictions. Thus, the talented Christian widow and first woman graduate from Madras University remained celibate and wore mourning till her death. Kamala had married educationist Samuel Sattianadhan, only to become a widow at the age of 27. She had ironically lauded Vedic women’s rights and their abject condition in her time in an article, ‘‘Position of Women in Ancient and Modern India’’ (1901), for Indian Social Reform journal.7 Her daughter wrote: It was a tragedy to Kamala that as a widow she could not wear flowers in her hair, as is the custom in South India. For some years after the death of her husband she dressed only in white, black, gray and dark red. But when we (children) grew up, we insisted on her wearing brighter colors, and as she disliked posing as a martyr under any circumstances, she willingly acquiesced. Flowers, however, she could never bring herself to don in her hair, thereby pandering to the strong convention prevailing that widows should not wear them. She always bemoaned this sad custom but nevertheless followed it herself.8 In one respect, a gendered world fostered a feminist network of sisterly companions (sakhis) and motherly mentors. Such solidarity was nurtured by Hindu, Muslim, and Christian women during celebrations, childbirth, and sickness. Feminists now projected this woman-centered view onto the national or international canvas of sisterhood, transforming patriarchal constraints into empowering ties binding all women.9 Moreover, the educated feminist matriarch emerged as the natural leader in a culture where

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motherhood elevated even the youngest daughter-in-law. 10 All Indian women aspired eventually to be a mother-in-law whose opinions mattered to the family. The first women’s society was the Arya Mahila Samaj (Aryan Women’s Society) formed by Pandita Ramabai Saraswati in Maharashtra ca. 1883. Some early local groups were the Tamil Mathar Sangam (Tamil Women’s Organization) which met in Madras (1906) and Kanchipuram (1907, 1914);11 the Gujarati Stree Mandal in Ahmedabad (1908);12 and the Banga Mahila Samaj (1909) and the Aghorekamini Roy’s Nari Samiti (Women’s Society, ca. 1910) in Bengal to help women workers on tea plantations.13 In 1910, Sarala Devi Chaudhurani (1872–1945), daughter of composer Swarnakumari Devi, started the nationalist Bharat Stri Mahamandal (Indian Women’s Great Circle) in north India.14 Local sectarian groups included Stri Zarthoshti Mandal (Parsi Women’s Circle) in 1903 in Bombay; 15 Anjuman-e-Khawatin-e-Islam (Muslim Women’s Conference) established in 1914 by the radical writer Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1880–1932); 16 and the Ladies’ Auxiliary of the YMCA, later known as the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA).17 Using the core membership of the Madras society and the institutional framework of the Theosophical Society (TS), the first secular national women’s group, the Women’s Indian Association (WIA), began in 1917.18 Two later organizations were the broad-based nationalist All India Women’s Conference (AIWC; 1927) and the loyalist National Council of Women in India (NCWI; 1925) supported by the British.19 Yet, Indian women activists were initially reluctant to use the term ‘‘feminist,’’ which had negative connotations in late Victorian culture, which caricatured feminists as ‘‘desexed’’ or ‘‘unnaturally’’ prone to lesbian desires for resisting male dominance. These ideas spilled over to colonial India where elite nationalists feared that feminists would destroy the joint family and its gender mores. Some Indian feminists thus painstakingly demonstrated their domestic loyalties and refined ‘‘womanliness’’ as a survival strategy for their organizations.20 Space precludes the retelling of all their narratives, but these biographies give a glimpse of some early educators, writers, suffragists, and nationalists, categories that were not mutually exclusive. The first feminist stirrings were expressed in literature, and by teaching girls, forming clubs to assist less fortunate women, and supporting female suffrage and Indian freedom. When the Pakistan movement gathered momentum around 1930, Muslim women faced the dilemma of choosing between a secular sisterhood and their male relatives’ agenda in the ML. Despite this, many educated Muslim and Hindu women forged a bond that bridged sect, class, and caste in their struggle for suffrage and to pass laws favorable to women. Many worked as doctors, teachers, lawyers, and nurses to ameliorate the lives of women in slums and villages. When the idea of an international sisterhood gathered

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adherents, Indian feminists also cemented bonds with counterparts in colonialist regimes and in the West. A revolutionary band of non-pacifist, socialist communist women established contacts with Russians.21 Indian feminism continues to evolve after independence in 1947 by addressing problems like dowry, rape, inflation, environmental decay, tribal displacement, and globalization. FEMINIST REFORMERS Savitribai Phule (1831–97) The first modern woman humanitarian was Savitribai Phule, who was born into a middle-class farming family in Naigaum village near Satara, Maharashtra. At the age of nine, Savitribai was married to 13-year-old Jotiba Phule (d. 1890), a member of the lower ranking Mali caste of flower gardeners. Educated in village and missionary schools, Jotiba encouraged his young wife also to attend the village school so that she could later teach girls. However, his father was furious that the couple had broken the convention that forbade girls to attend a public school. When he threatened to evict them unless Savitribai desisted, Jotiba refused, and the couple left their family home, thus striking their first blow against unjust mores.22 Jotiba was inspired by the revolutionary Maratha emperor Shivaji (d. 1680), George Washington (d. 1799), and Thomas Paine who advocated resistance to tyranny in Rights of Man (1791).23 In 1848 when the lower ranking Jotiba was prevented from joining his high-caste friend’s wedding procession, he began zealously to fight caste discrimination. Jotiba focused especially on helping the Mang and Mahar castes of Dalits, then called untouchables. Savitribai attended teacher training classes with Fatima Sheik, a Muslim woman who became her friend and colleague. Savitribai founded the first girls’ school in Pune in 1848, her nine students belonging to various castes. Although the village folk heaped insults and physical abuse when she walked to and from the school, she and Jotiba established five other schools in Pune. In 1851 the Phules began their first school for Dalits among whom they lived and shared a well, so that high-caste villagers regarded them also as Dalits. The Phules also assisted widows and promoted their remarriage. Their first major step for widow relief was taken when Jotiba rescued a pregnant, brahman widow who tried to commit suicide. As no one wished to help her, they brought her to their home for her confinement. As they had no children of their own, they adopted the boy Yasavantrao who later became a doctor.24 The Phules shared a common vision on social change. If Jotiba was the force, Savitribai was his active colleague and staunch defender. They organized the first strike against barbers who performed the ritual tonsure of widows, and they assisted other raped widows who were pregnant and destitute. In 1873, Jotiba and Savitribai founded Satyashodhak Mandal to

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help the needy, irrespective of caste. They were probably inspired by the medieval woman bhakti saint Muktabai whose Varkari sub-sect defied the caste system. In an era when men and women feared to move out of the rutted path of convention, Savitribai was unique as she was guided by her conscience. She and Jotiba’s revolutionary ideology preceded that of Dr. Ambedkar (1891–1956), the twentieth-century Dalit legalist and reformer. When her affectionate, but conservative brother challenged their work with Dalits, she chastised him and defended Jotiba as her lord whom she helped to do ‘‘God’s work.’’ Savitribai was ready to break many conventions, but not that of a loyal, even subservient wife when she wrote: Bhau [brother], your point of view is extremely narrow and, moreover, your reason has been weakened by the teachings of the Brahmins. You fondle even animals like the cow and the goat . . . But you consider the mangs and mahars, who are as human as you, untouchables . . . Learning has great value. One who masters it loses his lowly status and achieves the higher one. My master [swami] is a godlike man. No one can ever equal him in this world . . . Jotiba confronts the dastardly brahmins, fights with them and teaches the mangs and mahars because he believes they are human beings and must be able to live as such. So they must learn. That is why I also teach them. What is so improper about that? Yes, we teach the girls, the women, the mangs and the mahars . . . It’s such a pleasant task and I feel immeasurably happy.25 Savitribai’s 41 poems published in 1854 as Kavyaphule (Poetic Blossoms) had a didactic message on shunning caste and educating girls and boys. When Jotiba died, she published Bhavankashi Subodha Ratnakar (Ocean of Pure Gems), a prose biography about his legacy. The couple received awards from the British Raj for their humanitarian work in the devastating 1876–77 Deccan drought and famine. 26 When cholera struck in 1897, widowed Savitribai helped its victims until she finally contracted the fatal disease. Pandita Ramabai Saraswati (1858–1922) The foremother of Indian feminism is Pandita Ramabai Saraswati who challenged both Hindu and British colonial patriarchs in her efforts to educate widows and girls. Like her friend Ramabai Ranade, Pandita Ramabai belonged to the Chitpavan brahman caste of Maharashtra. However, she was an unusual, radical female scholar who not only married a lower-caste lawyer from Bihar but also adopted Christianity in 1883. Her conversion occurred in the wake of a spiritual crisis following the loss of her entire natal family, widowhood at the age of 22, and the suicide of a female companion on a ship bound for England. Pandita Ramabai’s candid views and refusal to

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toe the line demarcated by male liberals led to her alienation from the reform community. Only recently have feminists resurrected her pioneering work, although its scope was limited by her ostracism by the orthodox whose very widows she wished to help. This message was understood by D. K. Karve and Sahodari (Sister) Subbalakshmi (1886–1969) who pragmatically worked with caste families so that they could educate their widowed daughters. Life and Achievements Ramabai’s parents were the scholarly Ananta Sastri Dongre and his second wife Lakshmi. Dongre had tried to teach his first wife before she died, and he remarried at the age of 40. Lakshmi was then nine years old, and her father was impressed by his scholarship. Dongre instruction of Lakshmi in Sanskrit texts led to his ostracism by the brahmans. Dongre and Lakshmi were forced to resettle in the Gangamul forests of Karnataka where Ramabai, a brother Srinivas, and a sister were born. The family live peripatetically, as the father eked out a living from lectures on the Puranas in villages.27 Ramabai describes her early studies with her mother, a scholarly emphasis that allowed her to elude child marriage. She wrote: When I was about eight years old my mother began to teach me and continued to do so until I was about fifteen years of age. During these years she succeeded in training my mind so that I might be able to carry on my education with very little aid from others.28 Ramabai’s parents and sister all died in the 1877 Deccan famine. She and Srinivas continued on their lecture tours until word of her Sanskrit erudition reached scholars in Calcutta. She was invited to Bengal and awarded the title of Saraswati in honor of the Hindu goddess of wisdom. She became friendly with Keshab Chandra Sen, leader of the BS whose members advocated women’s study of the Vedas. Pandita Ramabai was attracted to the BS as an enlightened Hindu sect, but a series of personal tragedies changed her life. The tragic death of her brother in 1880 led her to marry his close friend Bipin Behari Das Medhvi, a shudra lawyer from Bihar with whom she shared ideals on girls’ education. After the birth of their daughter Manorama in 1881, Medhvi died in an epidemic. The bereft young widow returned to Maharashtra, resolving to teach widows. In Pune she joined the PS, and at public lectures spoke out against child marriage and advised women to study Sanskrit and vernacular Hindu texts.29 Supported by M. G. Ranade and his wife Ramabai Ranade, Pandita Ramabai started the women’s club, Arya Mahila Sabha, which had centers in smaller towns. She and her friend Ramabai Ranade also studied English with a woman missionary at home. Around this time, Pandita Ramabai

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became unhappy over some PS reformers whose oratorical platitudes did not match the effectiveness of their work with women. She had admired the programs of the BS and was so impressed by Christian missionary work that she readily believed the Anglican Reverend Goreh who misinformed her that the BS ‘‘was not taught by the Vedas as I had thought, but it was the Christian faith.’’ Pandita Ramabai wished to study medicine in England, and to finance this journey, she wrote Stri Dharma Niti (Morals for Women) in 1881. In this first book, Ramabai urged women to become more independent of men. She left for England in 1883, declaring that she would not convert, but the suicide of her young woman friend on board ship produced a spiritual crisis. Eager for a religious community that would promote women’s advancement, she sought baptism upon landing in England. However, when a woman missionary at Wantage expressed disgust over her daughter Manorama who scooped food with her fingers while seated on the ground, Ramabai retorted, ‘‘I want her to be one of us, and love our country people as one of them.’’30 Moreover, her increasing deafness cut short medical studies, and Ramabai returned home to her Indian women friends like Ramabai Ranade.31 Missionaries often tried to convert high-caste widows or talented women like her cousin Anandibai Joshi, India’s first woman doctor. Anandibai resisted them and the pressure of her recently baptized husband. Orthodox Indians attacked Pandita Ramabai’s apostasy as abetting the colonial enemy, and even her former supporter M. G. Ranade believed she had become too Westernized. 32 If she lost her progressive friends, the West lauded her baptism, although Pandita Ramabai despised Anglophiles and the colonial hierarchy. She nearly ruptured her relationship with the Anglican Church by probing into its theology and organization. 33 She remained sharply critical of Hindu misogynist customs but drew attention to spiritual similarities between Vedic monism and Christian monotheism. In 1885, she described these thoughts in a letter to missionary Dorothea Beale at St. Mary’s Home in Wantage, England: Is not the same God who dwells in Christ dwelling in you and me, yet can we ever say that our lower nature can touch Him? No, the Upanishads—the revelation of God to the Hindoos, if I may call them so—teach that the Great Brahma which is in a manifest atom, yet is in His nature unbounded, and most pure, dwelling in everything, yet untouched by the lower nature, just as the lotus leaf, though it grows in water, yet is not wetted by the water.34 In a letter to Ramabai’s mentor Sister Geraldine, Beale feared that she would ‘‘easily pass into Unitarianism.’’35 When chided by the Church, Ramabai proudly retorted that she was unlikely to accept Christian patriarchy after having rejected Hinduism for its inequalities.36 She wrote:

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I am, it is true, a member of the Church of Christ but I am not bound to accept every word that falls from the lips of priests or bishops . . . Obedience . . . to the Word of God is quite different from perfect obedience to priest only. I have just, with great effort, freed myself from the yoke of the Indian priestly tribe, so I am not at present willing to place myself under another similar yoke.37 Pandita Ramabai was angered also by the colonial state which did not educate women or safeguard their rights. 38 In 1882, she informed the Hunter Educational Commission that the extreme shortage of women doctors jeopardized the health of sick women who rejected male doctors. Her recommendations led to the Women’s Medical Movement led by Lady Dufferin, wife of the Viceroy.39 However, Ramabai blamed the British for racist cultural arrogance and impotence in educating and helping women. During the plague epidemic in Bombay in 1897, she protested to Governor Sandhurst that it was callous to expect ‘‘modest’’ women to submit to male doctors, and chided him for the special treatment given to European women in clinics and hospitals. Sandhurst dismissed her protests as ‘‘grossly inaccurate.’’40 In 1892, when a prison sentence was accorded to a young woman Rakhmabai for refusing her husband’s conjugal demands, Pandita Ramabai bitterly remarked: We cannot blame the English Government for not defending a helpless woman; it is only fulfilling its agreement with the male population of India . . . Should England serve God by protecting a helpless woman against the powers and principalities of ancient institutions, Mammon would surely be displeased, and British profit and rule in India might be endangered thereby.41 In 1887, Ramabai wrote The High Caste Hindu Woman to pay for a visit to the United States to attend her cousin Anandibai Joshi’s medical school graduation. At Philadelphia, Anandibai’s successful treatment of Ramabai’s daughter Manorama cemented their bond, despite differences over religion. Ramabai’s new book on the decline of Indian women’s conditions after the Vedic era financed her lecture tours across America. Evangelicals and British colonials lauded the book as proof of the West’s civilizing mission, and Ramabai took note of their praise in her lectures, which financed her plans for a girls’ school in India. She informed her readers and audience that she wished to educate the ‘‘half-caste widow’’ as a teacher, nurse, or doctor. Her popularity is evident in the numbers of ‘‘Ramabai Associations’’ that sprang up in Boston in 1887 and across the east coast. They helped to implement her goals. She founded Sharda Sadan, a widows’ home and school at Chowpatty, Bombay in 1889. She named it after the Hindu goddess Saraswati

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(or Sharada), indicating her intention to educate, not proselytize, supported by trustees like Ranade and scholar R. G. Bhandarkar. Financial difficulties led her to move her school to more conservative Pune where cultural nationalist B. G. Tilak accused Ramabai of converting Hindu widows in his journal Kesari. The trustees began an investigation and cleared Ramabai; conservative parents withdrew their daughters. Even progressive, friendly reformers now severed their ties with Pandita Ramabai. However, she did not give up easily, and in 1896 started Mukti Sadan (Freedom Institute) for girls with her daughter Manorama. At Mukti Sadan in rural Khedgaon, Ramabai openly embraced Christian festivals, rites, and subjects, but she had lost opportunities to assist high-caste Hindu widows. The school catered to Christians and low-caste Hindus orphaned by famine and epidemics. Ramabai made one last effort to help Hindu widows by touring Brindavan and Benares where widows lived in temples, exploited by priests and pilgrims, but she did not achieve much success here. In 1919, the British awarded Pandita Ramabai the prestigious Kaiser-I-Hind for her service, although she scorned their racist hierarchies and cultural ignorance. A year after Manorama’s death in 1921, Ramabai died leaving an enormous legacy for women.42 Tarabai Shinde (ca. 1850–1910) In 1882, Tarabai Shinde wrote ‘‘Stri Purush Tulana’’ (A Comparison between Women and Men), a satirical protest against elite men who supported the court sentence meted to the brahman widow Vijayalakshmi for killing her illegitimate child in Surat, Gujarat.43 This 40-page essay is one of the earliest modern Indian feminist works. Jotiba Phule admired her free spirit and defended Tarabai’s booklet in an 1885 issue of Satsar, his journal for Satyashodhak Mandal. Tarabai’s trenchant comments are at variance with her self-description as a ‘‘powerless dull woman, prisoner in a Maratha household.’’ Probably born into a high-caste family, she was educated in Marathi, Sanskrit, and English. Her angry feminism may have resulted from a cold marital household. She seems to have had little regard for her ineffective husband, and they apparently had no children. 44 Tarabai boldly attacked marriages of convenience, as men bought rich wives to further their careers, and then neglected them, so that the women were inevitably disappointed. Tarabai accused men of lust and infidelity, and defended an outcaste prostitute as an innocent woman seduced by a married man. With biting wit and a compelling logic, she demanded conjugal fairness so that women could choose their spouses. She wrote: You would not like a bad, ugly, cruel, uneducated wife, full of vices; why then should a wife like such a husband? Just you desire a good wife, she also longs for a good husband.45

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In another section, she accused men of hypocrisy when they accused women of lust, greed, and subterfuge although the prisons overflowed with men: You men are all very clever, it’s true. But you just go and look in one of our prisons—you’ll find it so stuffed full of your countrymen you can hardly put your foot down. Oh yes, they’re all very clever there, aren’t they? One’s there for making counterfeit notes, another for taking bribes, another for running off with someone else’s wife, another for taking part in a rebellion, another for poisoning, another for treason, another for giving false evidence, another for setting up a raja and destroying the people, yet another for doing murder. Of course, it’s these great works of thought that make the government offer you a room so reverently in their palatial prisons! What women do things like these? How many prisons are filled with women?46 Tarabai attacked men’s false adherence to brahman laws and rites, and their love of legends marked by male lust and trickery, so that even God seemed to have deserted women. She wrote: What he [God] gave you was just one great intelligence—he made you the greatest and best of all forms of life in the universe. So you should behave in a way that suits this high rank. But that would be hoping for too much, wouldn’t it?47 Tarabai ended with a poignant prayer exhorting women to remain virtuous, ‘‘to conduct themselves properly,’’ and ‘‘to live up to the name of Lakshmi.’’ She ended with these words: So I pray to the great God who disposes over all, who is eternal, true and merciful, a river of compassion, a sea of forgiveness, brother of the poor. I pray women may shine like lightning by means of their conduct as pativratas (chaste loyal wives) in their husbands’ families and their own.48 Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1880–1932) The Muslim feminist writer Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s achievements are quite astounding, as she was raised in an aristocratic zenana, yet started girls’ schools. Her family of landed ashraf e´migre´s from Persia in the 1850s ensured that sons received an extensive education. However, her father insisted that Rokeya and her sister Karimunissa learn the Qur’an largely by rote and acquire enough Urdu to read Muslim guidelines on female decorum. However, Rokeya shaped her own destiny in defiance of his injunctions

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by requesting her elder brother Ibrahim Saber to teach her Bengali and English by candlelight. In gratitude, Rokeya later dedicated her Bengali novel Padmarag to Ibrahim. 49 Her first journal essays were ‘‘Pipasha’’ (Thirst, 1901) and ‘‘Alankar Na Badge of Slavery’’ (1903) on jewelry as chains of bondage.50 Two volumes in Motichur (Pearl Dust, 1905) included the essays ‘‘Ardhangi’’ (Female Half) and ‘‘Borka’’ (Burqah), the women’s cloak worn in public. Rokeya’s hatred of pardah seclusion was explicit in her final set of essays, Abarodhbhasini (Secluded Women), in the journal Muhamadhi (1928–30).51 She described her unpleasant experiences with pardah from the age of five. So indoctrinated was she that when even women visited their zenana, she would run ‘‘helter-skelter as if I were in mortal fear of my life’’ so that they did not see her unveiled.52 Eighteen-year-old Rokeya married Sayyid Sakhawat Hossain, a magistrate many years senior to her. She moved to Bihar where Sakhawat Hossain encouraged her to study and enjoyed hearing her read aloud in English.53 After his death 11 years later, Rokeya used a part of her inheritance to start a girls’ school in Bhagalpur, Bihar, and she now spent her time writing her first Bengali works. However, a property tussle with her stepdaughter forced her to leave for Calcutta in 1911, but here too she started a girls’ school. She also cofounded Anjuman-e-Khawatin-e-Islam (Association for Muslim Women) in 1915 with Amir-Unissa, mother of Begam Shah Nawaz Khan of the NCWI. Rokeya continued to write until her death at the age of 53.54 Rokeya’s works demonstrate her challenges to male dictates on female clothing, seclusion, education, and marriage. She used logic and personal experience to argue her case, rather than Western feminist and other literature. Her most famous work was the pungent short story, Sultana’s Dream (1905), depicting a topsy-turvy universe in which men were secluded in segregated male rooms (mardana), and women ran public affairs. Rokeya’s inspiration stemmed almost exclusively from Bengali literature, and the focus was solely upon Indian Muslim culture. Although she wrote Sultana’s Dream first in English, and then translated it into Bengali, it is likely that she had not read Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792), or Olympe de Gouge’s Declaration of the Rights of Women (1791) in French.55 However, three decades later in 1932, Rokeya left an unfinished work, ‘‘Narir Adhikar’’ (Women’s Rights), whose title indicates that by now she was familiar of women’s long struggle for rights in the West.56 Sultana’s Dream emerged from her experiences in running a girls’ school in Bihar, when she had reassured parents by transporting their daughters in burqah to class in covered carriages. However, the public regarded her indictment of pardah as too extreme. Rokeya stated that it was contrary to the Qur’an and jeopardized women’s mental and physical health. She called pardah an insidious ‘‘silent killer like carbon monoxide gas.’’ She described how her aunt died on a train, unable to break pardah’s strict rules by soliciting help

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from men.57 She used satire and the first person singular to describe her young heroine’s dream walk in another world where the gender order was reversed, and her talks with the older woman Sister Sara. She wrote: I became very curious to know where the men were. I met more than a hundred women while walking there, but not a single man. ‘‘Where are the men?’’ I asked her. ‘‘In their proper places, where they ought to be.’’ ‘‘Pray let me know what you mean by ‘their proper places.’ ’’ ‘‘Oh, I see my mistake, you cannot know our customs, as you were never here before. We shut our men indoors.’’ ‘‘Just as we are in the zenana?’’ ‘‘Exactly so.’’ ‘‘How funny.’’ I burst into a laugh. Sister Sara laughed too. ‘‘But, dear Sultana, how unfair it is to shut in the harmless women and let loose the men.’’ ‘‘Why? It is not safe for us to come out of the zenana, as we are naturally weak.’’ ‘‘Yes, it is not safe so long as there are men about the streets, nor is it so when a wild animal enters the marketplace.’’58 Sister Subbalakshmi (1886–1969) Born into an enlightened brahman family, R. S. Subbalakshmi Ammal was a pioneer educationist of widows in colonial Madras.59 Her students and coworkers affectionately called her Sahodari (Sister) Subbalakshmi.60 In an era when high-caste female education was dependent on family whim, her father, who was a college professor, supervised her education, supported by her mother and a widowed aunt (or Chithi) Valambal Ammal. Subbalakshmi was married before puberty but widowed at the age of 11 when her bridegroom died in an epidemic. Subbalakshmi’s family was determined not to let her languish in illiteracy, perennially tonsured, and in drab attire. They defied the censure of family and caste by moving to Madras city where she attended Presidency Convent Higher Secondary School. Although the nuns tried to convert this brilliant girl, her mother and Chithi instilled the Bhagavad Gita, so that she remained philosophical despite the burden of virgin widowhood. Subbalakshmi took comfort from the Upanishads, the Gita, and fervent Hindu bhakti saints. After winning gold medals at school, Subbalakshmi entered Madras Presidency College as a mathematics and botany major, graduating with a BA in 1912 as the first Hindu widow to receive this degree in Madras.61 Nearly 18 percent of the female population of Madras in 1910 consisted of widows.62 Here Subbalakshmi began her first widows’ home, aware of earlier efforts by Viresalingam Pantulu in Madras, D. K. Karve in Maharashtra, in the princely Mysore state (1907), and in Bangalore (1908). Her work began after the grieving parents of child widows requested her to start a school, after hearing of her graduation from college as the first brahman widow in Madras. Her first student Ammukutty was a child widow whose

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father approached Subbalakshmi to teach his daughter.63 Subbalakshmi also began teaching at Presidency Convent, but despite minimal pay and proselytizing efforts of the nuns, she liked her former teachers. She knew that to help other caste widows, she would have to win the confidence of their conservative parents. Her pragmatism enabled her venture to succeed and to attract the attention of Christina Lynch, a progressive Inspector of Government Girls’ Schools. They jointly started a government teachers’ training institute for widows, with a secular academic curriculum bolstered by Indian texts. On July 1, 1912, Sarada Widows’ Ashram opened its doors, named for the goddess of wisdom. A later niece compared Subbalakshmi with Pandita Ramabai and their use of honorifics. While Christian Ramabai retained the Hindu title ‘‘Pandita,’’ Hindu Subbalakshmi was endearingly known as ‘‘Sister’’ (‘‘Sahodari’’), a term used for Catholic nuns. Each drew strength from her religious beliefs but crossed cultural boundaries in order to serve other widows.64 Subbalakshmi became a beacon for women whose schooling had been curtailed by early marriage, like celebrated author Rajeshwari Padmanabhan whose pseudonym was ‘‘Anuthama.’’65 Subbalakshmi also trained widows as teachers, the most famous being S. Chellammal, principal of Lady Sivaswamy Ayyar Girls’ High School in Madras.66 In January 1912, Subbalakshmi began Sarada Ladies Union (SLU) to promote intellectualism in women. A nationalist dedicated to women’s rights, her post in a government school prevented her from being an active member of the WIA. However, as an unofficial colleague of WIA members, she assisted in their campaigns for women.67 In 1919, Subbalakshmi started Sarada Vidyalaya school for destitute, unmarried girls. In 1921, she addressed the AIWC on more teacher training institutes and occupational programs that would induce parents to educate their daughters. She was respected by a broad spectrum of men and women conservatives and reformers, colonial officials, and nationalists. On July 28, 1928, SLU and WIA jointly hosted a public meeting to pledge support for Har Bilas Sarda’s bill on child marriage and Hari Singh Gour’s Age of Consent Bill, then being debated in the Central Legislative Council. Dr. Muthulakshmi Reddi took the first pledge, Subbalakshmi Ammal the second, and they were supported by Gandhian Ambujammal and by Rukmini Lakshmipathi.68 In 1947, SLU was formally affiliated with the WIA. After India’s independence, Subbalakshmi served on the Madras Legislative Council, a national and private icon to students and family. WOMEN WRITERS Despite constraints, women produced a corpus of remarkable literature using the prose genres of the novel, short story, essay, and biography to

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explore their turmoils and the contours of their lives. The late century saw a spate of journals in regional languages and in English. The authors included women from the literate middle class who resented educational discrimination and their plight as child brides and widows. The authors were Hindu, Christian, and Muslim women, but their writings are relatively free of sectarian prejudices. Instead, they evoke a broader sisterhood burdened by male laws and mores. Rassundari Devi The first notable Bengali woman writer was Rassundari Devi (born ca. 1810) whose Amar Jiban (My Life, 1876) is the first autobiography in that language. Its poignant elegance was recognized by gifted writer Rabindranath Thakur who first read it simply because its author was an elderly woman. However, Rassundari’s unusual text preceded by 20 years the autobiography of his father Debendranath Thakur, writer and Brahma Samajist.69 Rassundari Devi conquered her natural timidity by teaching herself to read and write. Her work is a paean to her religious faith, and her writing allowed to voice a subdued anger at injustice in her life. Rassundari Devi describes her mother as her one true friend and her silent grief at her death. She speaks of her ‘‘bondage’’ in marriage to an otherwise ‘‘likable man’’ who helped her to resist the cruelties meted out to daughters-in-law. In her hunger for study, she stealthily stole sheets of writing, which she taught herself to read without any help. She states simply that she worked long, arduous hours at servile chores, and that she had numerous children and duties, and describes her widowhood and tonsure as ‘‘more painful than death.’’70 Self-deprecating and stoic, she corrected occasionally outbreaks of anger with such words: Wasn’t it a matter to be regretted, that I had to go through all this humiliation just because I was a woman? Shut up like a thief, even trying to learn was considered an offense. It is such a pleasure to see the women today enjoying so much freedom. The parents of a single girl child take so much care to educate her. But we had to struggle so much for just that. The little that I have learned is only because God did me the favor.71 Swarnakumari Devi Among the most astounding writers was Swarnakumari Devi of Bengal.72 Daughter of Debendranath Thakur, Swarnakumari was married at the age of 13 but remained in close touch with her natal family. In 1878, she founded Bharati with her brothers Jyotindranath and Rabindranath Thakur, and she edited this journal for 30 years. A gifted artist, she composed over 25 works in a range of genres. She perfected the poetic of the gatha before

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Rabindranath won the Nobel Prize for Gitanjali (Garland of Hymns), and to whom she addressed her first book of poems: ‘‘To My Younger Brother’’ Let me present these poems: carefully gleaned and strung To the most deserving person But you are so playful. I hope you will not Snap and scatter these flowers for fun.73

Swarnakumari published the first Bengali opera, Basanta Utsav (Spring Festival), which inspired Rabindranath’s later work. Her first novel at the age of 18 was Deep Nirban (Snuffing Out of the Lamp), which received praises in contemporary journals. Two other novels, Chinna Mukul (Plucked Flower) and Phuler Mala (Flower Garland), were translated into English. She wrote historical novels about tribal revolts and the 1857 Mutiny, two popular farces, and several short stories. Although acclaimed by many, her younger brother’s phenomenal fame eluded her. Kripabai Sattianadhan Other women writers paid respect to parents, brothers, and husbands for educating them. In return, they started girls’ schools to refute the charge of women’s intellectual inferiority. Christian Kripabai Sattianadhan (1862–94) and Kamala Sattianadhan both broke free of foreign missionary misconceptions to depict the real texture of south Indian women’s lives. Before her premature death at 32, Kripabai wrote two English novels, namely the semiautobiographical Saguna: The Story of Native Christian Life (1886) and the fictional Kamala: The Story of a Hindu Life (1887). Both works testify to her ability to evoke picturesque images and Hindu characters without enveloping them with Christian rhetoric. Born into the first family of brahman converts in Bombay, Kripabai’s faith was shaped by her mother Radhabai Khisty, while her elder brother Bhaskar directed her education. Intended for medical college in England, weak health compelled her to study at Madras Medical College as an early woman student. Despite her brilliance, she had to discontinue her studies because of ill health. Deeply chagrined, she married Samuel Sattianadhan, famed Tamil educationist and founder of the National Missionary Society. Kripabai taught girls and even started a school for Muslim girls in the hill station of Ootacamund.74 In her first novel Saguna, Kripabai explored racism among European women missionaries and caste prejudices among Indian converts through the character who was her alter ego.75 In Kamala, she sensitively portrayed a Hindu heroine’s mystical philosophy, and social criticism of misogynist customs against widows. 76 Unfortunately, Kripabai’s early death ended her promising career as writer

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of English novels, which revealed that this genre had easily adapted to its Indian environment. Kamala Sattianadhan Several years later, Samuel Sattianadhan married Kamala, daughter of Sivarama Krishnamma, a high-caste Telugu convert. Although a devout Christian, Kamala studied Sanskrit and Indian literature, and English, and graduated at 19 from Madras University. She was the first Indian woman to receive a BA in this province. Naturally ebullient, Kamala became famous as an educator of women and a writer of three novels, several sundry works, and the reform journal, Indian Ladies’ Magazine (1901). Contributors to Indian Ladies’ Magazine included nationalist Sarojini Naidu and British missionary Isabella Thoburn.77 Widowed in 1906, Kamala educated her son and daughter in Indian Christian cultural values and formed a network with Christian women educators like Swarnam Appasamy and Mona Hensman.78 These women also belonged to a larger circle of women activists who crossed sectarian boundaries to help indigent women in slums. They included the Hindu doctor Muthulakshmi Reddi and the Muslim doctor Rahamatunissa Begam who jointly founded Muslim Women’s Association in 1928.79 Kamala Sattianadhan reviewed Katherine Mayo’s Mother India (1927), whose sensationalist indictment of India offended many nationalists.80 This unpleasant controversy probably expedited the Sarda Act (1929) raising the age of marriage for girls to 14 years. Kamala Sattianadhan and Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain agreed that Mayo was insensitive to Indians, but they agreed with some of her allegations. Kamala also stated that biased patriotism would hinder Indians from redressing misogynist customs.81 Kamala was an Honorary Magistrate in South India and served on the Central Advisory Board of Women’s Education. She admired Gandhi’s methods, and she started cooperative societies. She died after independence in 1950.82 Journal Writers Other women’s voices appeared in regional language journals started either by men or in conjunction with women. In Madras alone, 40 journals with reform themes were addressed solely to women or had a special section devoted only to women’s issues. These vernacular journals fostered ideas of women’s rights while fostering a regional language renaissance. In 1891, a Nagaratnam Pillai and his anonymous wife began the Tamil journal, Penmathi Bodhini (Women’s Enlightenment). Two years later, Chintamani was dedicated to Tamil literary awakening, with stories on women’s rights. In 1895, Maharani was started as the organ of the Madras Reform Association. In 1898, Mathar Manoranjani (Brightener of Women’s Minds) provided quality reading for women, often by women. In the first issue of Tamil Mathu (Tamil Woman) in 1905, woman editor Ko. Svapneshwari stated

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that her goal was to provide excellent literature for women. She advised them that education prevented them from being duped of their property.83 Other women’s journals emerged in this period across India. They included Stree Subodh (Women’s Wisdom) in Gujarati (1901); the Hindi language Bala Bodhini (1874), Rameshwari Nehru’s Stree Darpan (Women’s Pride) in 1909 at Allahabad, and Kumari Darpan (Young Women’s Pride). The most significant and successful was Stree Darpan whose women writers examined provocative issues like pardah, sexual exploitation, and marriages between older widowers and young girls. The journal also contained entertaining plays, stories, and poems.84 In 1918, two British women Theosophists domiciled in South Asia founded Stri Dharma, the official organ of WIA, their chief contributions being to women’s rights. Margaret Cousins (ne´e Gillespie, 1878–1954) was a more ebullient suffragist and a strong believer in workingclass rights. Her participation in Gandhi’s freedom struggle led to her arrest, just as she was jailed earlier in Britain for joining the Irish Home Rule movement. Dorothy Jinarajadasa (ne´e Graham), wife of a Sri Lankan Buddhist and Theosophist, was a founder of WIA, an editor of Stri Dharma, and a member of the first Indian women’s suffrage deputation to the Viceroy. Although aristocratic Muslim women wrote various pieces of literature, there was a spurt in Urdu women’s journals after the Muslim middle class expanded in 1920. Moreover, initially, they had prescriptive articles by men for women, but later, the journals provided a forum for women to voice opinions on social issues and to disseminate information on political issues for the larger community. The first Urdu journal was Akbar-E-Nisa (Women’s Newspaper) started in 1887 by maulvi Sayyid Ahmad for women’s moral welfare. However, the first important paper was Tahzib-E-Niswan begun in 1898 by Mumtaz Ali and his wife Muhammadi Begam and later edited by his daughter Waheeda Begam.85 There were few women writers until the Islamic separatism grew between 1930 and 1940, a popular editorial theme of ‘‘Woman, Not Slave,’’ provoking debates on women in public roles.86 Some women’s papers like Ismat (Chastity) were published and written by men using a feminine pseudonym, and this encouraged women to express their views in print. In 1904, Sheik Abdullah began Khatoon, the most successful Urdu women’s journal. His aim was to encourage women to speak bravely on a broad range of subjects. Sheik Abdullah urged them to study geography, history, and mathematics equally with men. Its women authors formed a Muslim feminist network. 87 Surprisingly, Christian missionaries often opposed these, as the women expressed their aversion for evangelicalism.88 SUFFRAGISTS AND NATIONALISTS The nationalist and feminist movements intersected closely during the twentieth century, after the emergence of substantial numbers of educated

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women. Although female literacy in British India in 1921 was still just 1.8 percent (male, 13%), it rose after 1911 due to intensive work by reformers, especially in Bengal, Madras, and Bombay.89 Private reform schools taught the scientific disciplines, math, and also Indian languages and culture, which drew Indian girls. 90 In Madras, for example, female enrollment doubled between 1902 and 1912.91 Until the WIA (1917), earlier twentieth-century women’s societies often had a parallel focus on the nation, region, or sect. The latter included Stri Zarthoshti Mandal (1900), YWCA, and Anjuman-e-Khawatin-e-Islam (1915). Patriotic associations were started by women from prominent nationalist families. They included Ramabai Ranade’s Ladies’ Social Conference (1906) begun as an arm of the INC; and Bharat Stri Mahamandal (Greater Society of Indian Women, 1910) started in Allahabad by Sarala Devi Chaudhurani, gifted niece of Rabindranath Thakur whose poetry she set to music. Sarala Devi’s Bharat Stri Mahamandal spread to just three centers in north India. At the 1901 INC session in Calcutta, Sarala Devi sang her patriotic hymn, Arise, Bharata Lakshmi, with 50 young women. A product of Bethune School, she was one of Calcutta’s first women graduates of Bethune College with a degree in botany and science. During the British partition of Bengal in 1905, she lived with her husband in Punjab but registered her protest by wearing Indian (swadeshi) cloth. She later joined Gandhi’s peaceful movement but remained a revolutionary at heart. Sarala Devi succeeded her mother Swarnakumari Devi (Ghosal) as editor of the journal Bharati.92 Women’s associations in multiethnic Madras province reflected its diverse population of doctors, teachers, and magistrates. In 1910, Telugu-Indian reformer Viresalingam Pantulu founded Andhra Mahila Sabha (Andhra Women’s Club) to educate and give vocational training to disadvantaged women. The Tamil Mathar Sangam (Tamil Women’s Organization) met intermittently in Madras (1906) and in Kanchipuram (1907, 1914), while All-India Ladies’ Congress (parishad) met in 1908. The Tamil Mathar Sangam became the seedbed for the WIA, the first secular organization to serve all Indian women of all regions and sects. According to Rajkumari Amrit Kaur (1889–1964), later president of the AIWC, WIA members expressed their desire for female liberation in Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, and English. The WIA and AIWC had sophisticated feminist agendas. The AIWC was established in 1927 as an educational forum for women of all regions, religions, and castes. Its founders included Margaret Cousins and Muthulakshmi Reddi who had started the WIA as an inclusive group, in marked contrast to the era’s growing sectarian divisions. The first AIWC president was the Begam of Bhopal, a princely state now in Madhya Pradesh. The Muslim begam had hesitated to shed pardah and her personal name even when addressing the AIWC. The NCWI (1925) was loyal to the British Raj.

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Women’s Indian Association On May 8, 1917, in Adyar, Madras, a multiethnic women’s group started the WIA, which remains in operation today. WIA’s success can be attributed to its secular agenda and effective use of the TS’s organizational framework. TS President Annie Besant was chosen as president along with Margaret Cousins. Other founding matriarchs included Dr. Muthulakshmi Reddi (Vice President), Malathi Patwardhan (Hon. Secretary), Ammu Swaminathan (Treasurer), Dorothy Jinarajadasa, Dr. Joshi, Sarlabai Naik, Mangalammal Sadasivier, Herabai Tata, Dr. Poonen Lukhose, Sarojini Naidu, Begam Hazrat Mohani, and Dhanavanti Rama Rao.93 Using the Tamil Mathar Sangam’s idea of a multicultural association, Cousins sounded out her proposal to a TS gathering after she arrived in 1915. Besant was largely a silent member, and Cousins disagreed occasionally with her methods.94 WIA first linked women’s subjugation with poverty and disenfranchisement in colonial India. The members called themselves ‘‘daughters of India,’’ dedicated to a sisterhood beyond sect, class, and caste: The aims and ideals and work of the Association are on a religious, but non-sectarian basis. To present to women their responsibilities as daughters of India To help them to realize that the future of India lies largely in their hands for as wives and mothers they have the task of guiding and forming the character of the future rulers of India. To band women into groups for the purpose of self-development and education, and for the definite service of others. To secure for every girl and boy the Right to Education through schemes for Compulsory Primary Education including the teaching of religion. To secure the abolition of child marriage and to raise the Age of Consent for married girls to sixteen. To secure for women the vote for Municipal and Legislative Councils as it may be granted to men. To secure for women the right to be elected as members on all Municipal and Legislative Councils.95 Social Service By the end of 1918, the WIA had 33 self-governing local branches that served a sisterhood transcending creed, class, and caste. However, despite this ambition, its leaders stemmed from the elite for decades. In 1920, Cousins began Stri Dharma, a quarterly English newsletter with Tamil and Hindi sections, which later became a monthly journal. Stri Dharma publicized WIA activities and its agenda to abolish child marriage and pardah. Its membership grew quickly, so that by 1924 there were 51 branches and

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2,500 members across India, and by 1926, it was the largest women’s organization with 80 branches and 4,000 members. Education was a key thrust of WIA activities, since less than 5 percent of Indian women were recorded as literate in the colonial census. The feminists blamed child marriage, polygamy, and pardah for adversely affecting girls’ health and obstructing their school enrollment.96 They discussed this in Stri Dharma and in articles to Indian Social Reformer, The Commonweal, and other regional journals. The national movement after World War I opened new forums for feminists to publicize their agenda. WIA held free literacy classes, and others on hygiene, child welfare, and vocational skills, and the ideal of social service spilled over to other feminist programs. Thus, doctors Muthulakshmi Reddi and Rahamatunissa Begam initiated a clinic for poor women; in 1930 Dr. Reddi started Avvai Home for destitute girls; and WIA members held vocational classes at Madras Seva Sadan. The WIA continues to serve women through numerous regional branches after independence in 1947. Women’s Suffrage: WIA and AIWC One of the architects of the Indian women’s suffrage movement was Margaret Cousins who had been jailed earlier in Britain as a suffragist and as an activist for Irish Home Rule. In 1915 she arrived with her musicology degree to teach at TS schools with her husband James.97 Soon afterward, Margaret helped to organize the WIA with civic-minded, educated women like Sarojini Naidu (1879–1949). In August 1917, Sarojini appealed for support for female suffrage from the INC. They assured male nationalists that they would not usurp their authority, but that as matrons they would inspire the nation’s children.98 On December 18, 1917, a WIA delegation led by Sarojini met Viceroy Chelmsford and Secretary of State Edwin Montagu to request equal suffrage in the coming expanded provincial legislatures following the 1919 Indian Councils Act.99 Margaret Cousins’s outspoken opinions led her inexorably into Gandhi’s movement, for which she was imprisoned in 1932 at Vellore. In We Two Together, coauthored with her husband James, Margaret stated that her Indian women colleagues hesitated to speak boldly to the Viceroy, perhaps as they were quenched by the presence of imperious European rulers. However, Margaret probably exaggerated, as Sarojini Naidu was equally feisty, and moreover, had shed her fears of Europeans when educated in England. Sarojini’s declamations at INC meetings were praised by men, yet Margaret Cousins remembered this scenario: Curiously enough, though I had the backing of some of the best women in India, I was the one voice publicly explaining and proclaiming the suffrage cause; not because I had any special fitness, but simply because the womanhood of India had not yet found its authoritative voice.100

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The imperial Southborough Franchise Commission in London did not sanction their request, despite the support of Sir C. Sankaran Nair and Mr. Hogg in the commission. Sarojini Naidu, Besant, and Herabai Tata then appealed their case in London, and eventually, the provincial legislatures were authorized to decide on an individual basis. With the help of some male nationalists on the councils, a few women were granted the vote first in Madras in 1920, and then in Bombay in 1921. Thus, in the first elections of 1923, roughly a million women went to the polls, constituting between 5 percent and 8 percent of the electorate.101 There were other outspoken Indian women leaders like Dr. Muthulakshmi Reddi, a cofounder of WIA, and Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya (1903–88) who helped her to organize the AIWC in 1927. Socialist Kamaladevi participated in Gandhi’s peaceful resistance campaigns (satyagraha) and was jailed during the 1942 Quit India Movement led by Jawaharlal Nehru. Yet, Kamaladevi openly disagreed with Gandhi and Nehru on some issues. She and Margaret helped to organize the AIWC in 1927. As the freedom movement intensified, feminists in WIA and AIWC passed resolutions on female suffrage. Earlier in 1926, five delegates had attended the Congress of International Women Suffrage Alliance in Paris and encouraged Indian women to stand for election as magistrates. In 1928, WIA supported Dr. Muthulakshmi’s nomination to the Madras Legislative Council as India’s first woman legislator, and she became its deputy president. Dr. Reddi introduced bills to expand women’s education, raise the minimum marriage age for girls to 14, and support women’s health programs. In 1929, she pushed legislation to discontinue temple endowments that maintained devadasis and thus helped to end this custom.102 The second phase in the fight for female suffrage began in 1929, when the Simon Commission arrived in India to work out the details of the Indian Councils Act of 1935. WIA supported the INC plank against separate electorates for minorities and boycotted the Simon Commission. WIA and AIWC feminists asked for an expanded electoral base, unlike the loyalist NCWI whose members stemmed from the landed gentry. When British Prime Minister Irwin called for Round Table Conferences in London, Sarojini Naidu, Muthulakshmi Reddi, and Rameshwari Nehru were the feminist delegates, but following Gandhi’s lead, they boycotted the conference. Muthulakshmi thus described women in Gandhi’s satyagraha campaigns: Women, both non-pardah and pardah, who came out in thousands not only picketed foreign and toddy [liquor] shops, but they also broke the salt law and courted imprisonment, faced lathi charge [police beatings] and police terrorism. It was a revolution of a non-violent nature in which students, men and women, all participated facing many a police atrocity during this period.103

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Gandhi was released from jail in 1931, and a new Round Table Conference on Indian franchise was organized. The AIWC selected eight delegates, including Hansa Mehta, Sarojini Naidu, Sharifa Hamid Ali, and Hilla Fardoonji. The feminists asked for a united Indian front and ‘‘equality and no privileges’’ based on either class or sect. 104 The NCWI sent two British-nominated delegates, Begam Jahan Ara Shah Nawaz and Radhabai Subbarayan. Over the next decades, WIA and AIWC members spoke passionately in favor of adult franchise and against the criterion of wifehood for women to vote. However, the Lothian Committee rejected adult franchise in the 1935 India Act, supported separate electorates for Muslims, but conceded a marginally expanded female electorate. 105 In 1933, Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, Muthulakshmi Reddi, and Begam Sharifa Hamid Ali went to London to ask for adult women’s suffrage, irrespective of literacy or wifehood. However, 1935 Act did not grant adult suffrage but emphasized literacy although the majority in India were illiterate and poor. Many feminists now eagerly joined Gandhi’s struggle to overthrow the colonial regime. Child Marriage and Age of Consent In the mid-1920s, the Indian feminist and nationalist movements were well on its way. Women of all sects and ethnicities publicly voiced their opinions in journals, speeches, and dialogues with men. Feminists joined hands with male compatriots, whether Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, or Christians, in the struggle to shape the political future of the subcontinent. In this period, feminists promoted a few laws with the potential to affect millions of ordinary women, some of them reflecting a closer global interaction after World War I. The League of Nations attempted to control the traffic and sexual exploitation of women across the world. In India, although Hindus believed that sexual relations with a prepuberty girl was against the shastras, no civil injunction existed in the colonial state to punish such offenses. The 1891 Age of Consent Act simply made sex within marriage illegal before the age of 10. The growth of elected Indian officials to the central and provincial legislatures meant that reformers tried to pass laws against child marriage and sexual relations with minor girls. In 1924–25, Dr. Hari Singh Gour’s Age of Consent Bill in the Central Legislative Assembly attempted to raise the legal age of sexual consent to 16 for unmarried girls and to 14 for married girls. At first accepted, the bill was denied by 16 of the 30 British legislators.106 Thereupon, progressive Indians, supported by the WIA, AIWC, and local women’s groups, tried to pass a similar law in the provincial legislatures.107 In the Madras Council in 1927, Muthulakshmi Reddi proposed a bill raising the age of consent to 18 for unmarried women, and within marriage to 16 for girls and 21 for boys. A similar bill was introduced by Jayaramdas Doulatram in the

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Bombay Council. Neither bill passed, perhaps due to the escalating freedom movement, although many legislators believed that a child marriage law was desperately needed. In 1928, central legislator Har Bilas Sarda framed a bill that would criminalize marriage and sex with a girl below the age of 12. Thousands of conservative Hindus and Muslims protested against Sarda’s Bill and in favor of Gour’s Bill, and voiced anger against British laws on Indian cultural customs.108 Sarda’s amended bill passed into law (1929), which stipulated that all girls, irrespective of sect and caste, had to be at least 14 years of age before marriage and sexual relations. The civil, secular implications of Gour’s Bill and the Sarda Act evoked different sectarian responses based on perceived notions of identity. Although both Hindus and Muslims allowed child marriage, polygamy, and pardah, many Muslim legislators resisted bills on child marriage as not directly affecting their community. Conservative Hindu men did not support feminist arguments against polygamy and pardah, erroneously viewing these as only Muslim cultural norms. Progressive men like Sir C. Sankaran Nair supported feminists on all three issues. Feminist Solidarity Between 1925 and 1929, the WIA, AIWC, and local associations like the Madras Ladies Samaj held grassroots meetings promoting both Gour’s Bill and Sarda’s Act as conducive to female health and to a more protracted education. There was a general feminist consensus that girls less than 16 should not engage in sexual relations.109 Three AIWC feminist delegations met the Viceroy and the Indian and European legislative members to support the Sarda Act. AIWC Muslim feminists praised the law that would protect all Indian women.110 Initially a women’s educational conference, AIWC took on social and political issues after a meeting at Patna, Bihar in 1929. Socialist nationalist Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya and Hilla Fardoonji introduced a resolution that the organization of diverse Indian women should become a political voice to articulate wider social concerns.111 Margaret Cousins helped to organize local cells to gather information on women’s educational status, but the meetings were marked by discussions on other issues, beginning with their inauguration by Hindu or Muslim queens from progressive princely states. Thus, the first meeting of 2,000 delegates was led by the Rani of Sangli and the Maharani Chimnabai Gaekwad of Baroda. The Begam of Bhopal gave the presidential address the following year.112 The Sarda Act forced the conservative to conduct a daughter’s marriage only when she was 14 years of age and encouraged the progressive to delay her nuptial consummation till the age of 16. Muslim women who supported the law included the Begam of Bhopal, Sharifa Hamid Ali as secretary of AIWC, and Mrs. Mir Muzeruddin of the Madras Muslim Women’s

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Association. The bills were also supported by Christian feminists like Swarnam Appasamy and Rajkumari Amrit Kaur. In an era marked by deepening sectarian divisions among male leaders, it is remarkable that feminists presented a nonsectarian united front. If Muslim women supported raising the age of marriage, Hindu feminists raised awareness against polygamy and pardah, more common among Muslims. The WIA journal Stri Dharma supported the Muslim Women’s Association of Madras, which demanded more government girls’ high schools, but opposed the MWA’s resolution on ‘‘pardah parks’’ for affluent members alone. Stri Dharma revealed that tuberculosis thrived among women in pardah, especially in ‘‘congested city gullies’’ without air circulation.113 Muthulakshmi Reddi, a cofounder of MWA, informed the Hartog Committee on education in 1928 that Muslim women universally desired more girls’ schools, even in conservative Sind where pardah was rigidly enforced.114 In her 1928 address to the AIWC, the Begam of Bhopal advocated Sarda’s Bill then being examined by the legislature. Declaring that child marriage and pardah were common among Hindus and Muslims, she pleaded that ‘‘it is incumbent upon us to stop this evil’’ of child marriage.115 Seconded by the Rani of Mandi, a resolution was taken to propose that government raise the legal age of marriage for girls to 16 years, since a law that simply raised the age of sexual consent was insufficient. They inaugurated a small standing committee to report on the progress of bill in the legislature and to raise public awareness.116 The Begam of Bhopal stated: Another handicap to the education of our girls is the custom of child marriage. The evil custom exists practically in every part of the country, and in almost all sections of the people. Owing to it the best part of life which ought to be devoted to the physical, mental and moral growth of a girl, is wasted, and, besides, she often falls a victim to various kinds of disease and physical disability . . . Another custom that needs re-adjustment is the purdah. Just as early marriage is largely common among the Hindus, the purdah is to be met with mostly among the Musalmans. There can be no denying the fact that the present strictness of the purdah system among Musalmans does not form a part of their religious obligations. It is based on purely local considerations and is not found in other Islamic countries.117 After 1920, Muslim feminists had been raising awareness against the deleterious effects of pardah. The Begam of Bhopal described it as contrary to the Qur’an and a ‘‘hindrance’’ to women’s education and health. However, no Muslim or Hindu legislators attempted to abolish the veil by law, as had Kamal Ataturk of Turkey. Indian Muslim women like Begam Habibullah and Lady Abdul Qadir shed the veil but supported gender

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segregation in schools where girls were inhibited by competitive boys. The AIWC chose to spread awareness about its medical problems and to encourage women to move freely in mixed gatherings. In Patna, ‘‘anti-pardah’’ drives were planned in the 1930s and 1940s. In Calcutta in 1944, Radhadevi Goenka took part in a procession in which Marwari Hindu women rode horses.118 The most significant change was the participation of Hindu and Muslim women in Gandhi’s nonviolent campaigns. WOMEN IN THE FREEDOM MOVEMENT Gandhi, Women, and Kasturba Revered as the father of independent India, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869–1948) is a unique personage in its protracted history. At once astute politician and visionary statesman, Gandhi’s satyagraha campaigns based on nonviolence were instrumental in wresting India’s freedom from a mighty British Empire.119 Gandhi’s decision to adopt celibacy (brahmacharya) after many years of marriage and fatherhood has been discussed by his biographers. Gandhi was married at the age of 13 to Kasturba (1869– 1944), a wife chosen by his wealthy merchant caste family in Surat, Gujarat. Kasturba bore four sons and was his colleague for 62 years, supporting him in his ventures in South Africa and India.120 In My Experiments with Truth, Gandhi candidly described their mutual passion and a traumatic event in their early married life. Gandhi had spent hours in vigil beside his sick father’s bed, but when released, he had rushed to his bedroom to make love to a pregnant Kasturba. However, Gandhi was soon awoken by the news of his father’s sudden death. Soon thereafter, Kasturba miscarried, so that Gandhi agonized that he had been distracted from his filial duties. He now became convinced that sexual desire was destructive except for procreation within marriage. Gandhi also described his youthful squabbles with his spirited wife whom he tried to teach but felt impatient at her slow progress. A mature Gandhi understood that kindness brought him closer to God, whom he and other Hindus revered as Truth (satya). From his devout mother Putlibai, Gandhi learned self-discipline, fasting for spiritual purposes, and nonviolence (ahimsa), a Jaina-Buddhist precept absorbed by Hindus. Gandhi’s quest for moral perfection became inextricably tied to ahimsa, which he stated was lived most perfectly by women like Putlibai and Kasturba. Gandhi’s inspiration for satyagraha thus stemmed from his observations of women, and this in turn inspired other women and men. In South Africa, Gandhi began to practice sexual restraint in his marriage, driven to a complete vow in 1906 after the birth of his fourth son Devadas. He had been searching for an ethical principle upon which to found his programs on constructive social activism, and he did not choose this path due to

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loss of affection for his wife. He and Kasturba had dreaded enforced separations, when he sailed alone in 1893 to South Africa to work as a barrister for an Indian firm. Rejoicing in their reunion, their marriage was strengthened by a shared commitment to promote justice, and belief in asceticism as a means to purify mind and body. Kasturba may thus have accepted his celibacy as conducive to the serenity required for his nonviolent work. Gandhi wrote that Kasturba was unafraid and candid, and ‘‘made no objection.’’ He stated that carnal desire led to violence, but women exemplified nonviolence. 121 He wrote: Perhaps only a Hindu wife would tolerate these hardships, and that is why I have regarded woman as an incarnation of tolerance . . . The canker of suspicion was rooted out only when I understood Ahimsa in all its bearings. I saw then the glory of Brahmacharya and realized that the wife is not the husband’s bond slave, but his companion and his helpmate, and equal partner in all his joys and sorrows—as free as the husband to choose her own path.122 On women’s role in spreading the idea of nonviolence, Gandhi wrote: I have hugged the hope that in this, woman will be the unquestioned leader and, having thus found her place in human evolution, will shed her inferiority complex. If she is able to do this successfully, she must resolutely refuse to believe in the modern teaching that everything is determined and regulated by the sex impulse.123 Gandhi and Kasturba shared certain Indian beliefs, beginning with the principle that God is Truth (satya) and can be spiritually known through a life of ahimsa, nonattachment to material goods (asteya), and brahmacharya. They also accepted the view that life had four phases, i.e., of the celibate student (brahmacharya), householder (grihastha), middle-aged forest contemplative (vanaprastha), and ascetic (sanyasa). Celibacy and poverty were required for all stages except that of the householder. Gandhi modified the vanaprastha ideals by taking a vow to serve others unselfishly without violence. In addition, Gandhi believed in the Hindu Bhagavad Gita’s delineation of three paths (yogas) to salvation, i.e., through asceticism, selfless action (karma yoga), and loving devotion (bhakti). He ardently upheld karma yoga or unselfish, nonviolent action as his path to God. In 1899, Gandhi combined public, nonviolent service by volunteering as an ambulance worker for the Natal government during the Boer War. He wrote: It became my conviction that procreation and the consequent care of children were inconsistent with public service . . . the idea flashed upon me that if I wanted to devote myself to the service of the community in

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this manner I must relinquish the desire for children and wealth and live the life of a vanaprastha—of one retired from household cares.124 However, after witnessing South African racist brutality against Zulu Africans and Indians in 1906, Gandhi felt morally compelled to strive to change attitudes without destroying his opponents. He defended the cause of Indian indentured workers, merchants, and clerks in public talks and writings. In Johannesburg, he organized his first nonviolent campaign (satyagraha) against the Asiatic Ordinance Bill compelling Indians to register and be fingerprinted like criminals. His vow of permanent celibacy has led psychobiologists to argue that Gandhi equated men’s carnal use of women with white men’s barbaric blood lust against dark-skinned people.125 He certainly became a gentler husband and humanitarian. He wrote: Perhaps only a Hindu wife would tolerate these hardships, and that is why I have regarded woman as an incarnation of tolerance . . . The canker of suspicion was rooted out only when I understood Ahimsa in all its bearings. I saw then the glory of Brahmacharya and realized that the wife is not the husband’s bond slave, but his companion and his helpmate, and equal partner in all his joys and sorrows—as free as the husband to choose her own path.126 Despite personal hardships, Kasturba supported his mission by helping to establish his first communal hermitage (ashram), the Phoenix Settlement in Africa, and his later Sabarmati Ashram in India. She was also unafraid to challenge his ‘‘cruel-kind’’ shibboleths, for example, by initially resisting his order to clean latrines as the work of ‘‘untouchables’’ but later acquiescing, while he regretted his authoritarian commands. Yet, Kasturba herself became transformed through service to Dalit women and children, and worked for their uplift. So implicit was her faith in Gandhi’s idea of justice that she staunchly defended him to their son Harilal.127 Gandhi’s views on women’s patience and ahimsa were thus shaped by his observations of Putlibai and Kasturba. While many men saw women’s loving service as a sign of weakness, he argued that it was a strength that men could cultivate. If humanism means love of humankind, women were its embodiments. He wrote: Woman is the incarnation of ahimsa. Ahimsa means infinite love, which again means infinite capacity for suffering. And who but woman, the mother of man, shows this capacity in the largest measure? . . . Let her transfer that love to the whole of humanity . . . And she will occupy her proud position by the side of man as his mother, maker and silent leader. It is given to her to teach the art of peace to the warring world thirsting for that nectar. She can become the leader

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in satyagraha which does not require the learning that books give but does require the stout heart that comes from suffering and faith.128 Satyagraha and Women Patriots In 1915, Gandhi returned to India and joined the INC. His success was his ability to utilize earthy, domestic symbols to challenge political and economic threats to India. Two important emblems associated with women and the peasant world were handloom spinning and the manufacture of salt, a staple in the poor person’s diet. Women enthusiastically joined his campaigns to promote handloom spinning and to resist the British monopoly on salt. They embraced his directive to wear cotton cloth (khaddar) spun on the handloom wheel (charkha), and they became satyagraha protestors. Handloom textiles were India’s chief cottage industry often produced by village women. Gandhi launched his charkha protest against British policy to inundate the Indian market with mill cloth from Lancashire. Gandhi personally learned to spin on the charkha from women whose dexterous hands he envied. His masterly campaign combined economic resistance, pride in craft labor, and the ancient view of the wheel of law (dharma chakra). Elite and working Indians now wore khaddar as an emblem of democratic pride. For example, Sridevi Tiwari was an ardent handloom spinner of little education and wealth. Yet, her motive was not personal gain but the altruistic conviction that khaddar sales supported women whose handicrafts were being replaced by machines.129 Gandhi defended workers’ rights through satyagraha campaigns against British indigo planters in Champaran, Bihar (1917) and at Ahmedabad, Gujarat (1918) where the industrialist was Ambalal Sarabhai, an INC supporter of Gandhi. Gandhi answered an appeal by Sarabhai’s sister Ansuyaben, an advocate for the workers over the withdrawal of a ‘‘plague bonus’’ granted by the company a year earlier. Gandhi negotiated with Sarabhai who restored the bonus, while Ansuyaben founded the Ahmedabad Textile Labor Union. In 1930, her niece Mridula Sarabhai and mother Sarla Devi both joined the INC and the AIWC. The Sarabhai women took part in several satyagraha campaigns in which ordinary women beat drums and cymbals, and paraded in small streets calling attention to the nationalist cause.130 Women Activists after Jallianwala Bagh In April 1919 at Jallianwala Bagh, Punjab, British troops opened fire upon an intersect festival, killing over 400 and injuring 1,200 women, children, and men. This watershed event spurred Gandhi to declare his mission to end Britain’s ‘‘evil’’ rule, and many elite Indians discarded foreign cloth for khaddar. In December, nationalists converged as pilgrims upon Jallianwala Bagh. They included women political activists like Lajjavanti of Punjab

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and Lado Rani Zutshi of the aristocratic Nehru family. Motilal’s charismatic son Jawaharlal (1889–1964) became Gandhi’s closest colleague, and both father and son were arrested in satyagraha campaigns in 1921. Nehru’s vision of democratic equality is enshrined in free India’s laws on female property, marriage, and divorce when he was elected as the first prime minister (1947–64). Several Nehru women were involved in Gandhian politics. Feminist Rameshwari Nehru began Prayag Mahila Samiti (Allahabad Women’s Society) in 1909 with two hundred members. Jawaharlal’s mother Swarup Rani and his shy wife Kamala were unwillingly drawn into the struggle, but both took part eagerly in the 1930 Salt Satyagraha. Yet, women’s political activity took a toll of their family duties, as occasionally stated by his patriotic sisters Vijayalakshmi Pandit and Krishna Hutheesing. As a mother of three children, Vijayalakshmi spent months in jail for taking the freedom pledge in 1928. Her niece Indira Gandhi (1917–84) largely raised her two sons alone, yet found time for family when prime minister (1966–77, 1980–84).131 Women answered Gandhi’s call, convinced that he respected their work and rights. Gandhi’s paternalism was complex. On the one hand, he described them as mothers, sisters, and wives, and thus reinforced patriarchal notions of gender. On the other, he spoke of them idealistically as the social conduit through which ethical ideals were transmitted to boys and men. He reiterated that woman was ‘‘the companion of man, gifted in equal mental capacities,’’ a social being whose purpose was to purify male intemperance. 132 He spoke to elite women in many cities, appealing to wealthier women to donate jewelry, wear khaddar, and picket shops selling liquor and foreign goods. He asked Hindu women to sacrifice like the heroine Sita. To Muslim women, he compared Britain to a Satanic colonial power. Ordinary women joined INC demonstrations in full force after 1921. Gandhi asked the educated to rehabilitate devadasis as they were victims of male lechery. When Telugu social worker Durgabai Deshmukh organized an audience of devadasis to hear him speak, Gandhi’s compassion elicited such a generous flood of contributions to the freedom struggle that he was visibly overwhelmed.133 He especially requested women to shun caste and to serve the ‘‘untouchables’’ whom he renamed Harijans (God’s folk). In Punjab, AS leaders like Lala Lajpat Rai feared the arrest of middle-class women and curtailed their demonstrations. However, women in Bombay and Calcutta were freer in their protests, and south Indian women eagerly took part in his reform programs. Many women attended INC meetings and continued their activism after returning home. In Bombay, women formed the Rashtriya Stri Sabha to distribute khaddar and picket liquor shops. Among those who were jailed was Basanti Devi of Bengal, wife of INC leader C. R. Das.134 Madras nationalist-feminists were preoccupied by problems like prepuberty marriages, devadasi prostitution, caste harmony, and poverty. They

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spoke out on improving women’s lives in villages and slums, and advocated cautious cooperation with nationalist men like V. S. Srinivasa Sastri, and even liberal British officials. Subbalakshmi Ammal addressed the importance of a female board to shape girls’ school curriculum in the context of an impending law on education. They shared Gandhi’s views on improving education and health facilities for the poor, and raising the age of marriage. The austere felt that the nation must channel its energies from sexual and alcoholic indulgence into social regeneration.135 After Dr. Reddi’s return in 1926 from an international women’s conference in Paris, the WIA nominated her for the Madras Legislative Council. As its deputy president, she received a unique legal opportunity to chip away at gender inequalities.136 When Gandhi visited Madras in September 1927, WIA feminists led by Muthulakshmi Reddi asked him to speak about India’s social problems that directly affected women.137 Gandhi was somewhat critical of middle-class women’s domestic preoccupations. He advised them to donate generously to help disadvantaged women, educate their daughters, and delay their marriage. He also asked them to remove the ‘‘blemish’’ of the devadasi system through which women fell into prostitution. Suffragists had recently won some electoral gains in Madras and Bombay, and Muthulakshmi Reddi had just been appointed to the Legislative Assembly. In 1933, Gandhi made a longer visit, and he jokingly remarked that he must be mistaken for a woman, as he was attending a women’s meeting. The audience included both housewives and feminist leaders of the WIA, Madras Seva Sadan, SLU, and the Ladies Samaj. Dr. Reddi translated Gandhi’s speech into Tamil in which he urged them to become activists, to donate money and jewelry for Harijan uplift, and to love them as family members. Leaders like Durgabai Deshmukh and Soundram Ramachandran described the great poverty in villages and slums, which often lacked amenities and health facilities. Both women were members of the INC and started constructive programs for poor women. Dr. Reddi and Dr. Rahamatunissa Begam treated poor women in the slums, while nationalist Christians like Swarnam Appasamy and Mona Hensman ran classes and raised funds for women workers. Dr. Soundram Ramachandran asked women social workers to cultivate compassion and serve the poor in villages. Other women leaders spoke of the relative cultural and sectarian unity in south India. Kerala Muslim social worker Ayesha Bibi described Hindus and Muslims as working together in south Indian villages but not in towns. The queen of Vizianagaram princely state gave a generous donation to the national cause.138 Women Satyagrahis: Salt March (1930) and Quit India Movement (1942) In the context of Depression and wartime penury during the 1930s–40s, millions of Indian women and men demonstrated against British rule. Two

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major noncooperation campaigns were the 1930 Salt Satyagraha led by Gandhi with a women’s group led by Sarojini Naidu, and the Quit India Movement (1940–42) organized by Jawaharlal Nehru in which countless ordinary women took part. The 240-mile Salt March from Sabarmati to Dandi was Gandhi’s masterly stroke against the British monopoly over the production and sale of salt, crucial for life in the tropics. After Gandhi scooped up some salt water and simply manufactured salt, others like Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya boiled seawater in pots on the beaches. The Quit India Movement was a massive protest against India’s enforced involvement in World War II, although Gandhi, Nehru, and INC members opposed Hitler and Mussolini as fascists. War meant heavier taxes, military spending, and deaths of Indian soldiers. This exacerbated the devastating effects of the 1942–43 Bengal famine in which millions died. The idea of self-rule (swaraj) for India (Bharat) became an enticing slogan for everyone. Yet, Gandhi cautiously advised women leaders to not push female demonstrators onto the streets, in case they were mistaken for prostitutes. He also shielded them from arduous satyagraha campaigns like the Dandi Salt March but was dissuaded by feminists Sarojini Naidu, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya, and Khurshed Naoroji (1894–1996). In the end, thousands of women were jailed for ‘‘stealing’’ salt from India’s beaches in contravention of the British colonial monopoly and tax on a commodity that was essential in the tropics. Many poor Indians contented themselves with the barest meal of salt with a chapatti or rice. Many feminists joined in this momentous satyagraha, including Aruna Asaf Ali (1906–96), a Bengali Hindu (ne´e Ganguly) whose Muslim husband shared her views on freedom and socialism. Aruna and Asaf Ali also participated in the 1942 Quit India demonstrations and were arrested numerous times. Aruna’s prison hunger strike against the ill-treatment of political prisoners resulted in her solitary confinement. Her courage and leadership earned her the sobriquet, ‘‘Heroine of the 1942 Movement.’’ After independence, Aruna started the National Federation of Indian Women as a wing of the Communist Party.139 Two other women in the Salt Satyagraha were Durgabai Deshmukh (1909–81) of Andhra Pradesh and Rajkumari Amrit Kaur (1889–1964) of Punjab. At the age of 12, Durgabai heard him speak to an audience urging resistance to colonialism. She then made a bonfire of her foreign clothes and learned to spin on the charkha. Unhappy over her arranged marriage, since it cut her education short, she requested her husband for a separation. She bore him no ill will and later helped him to remarry. She now devoted her life to the cause of national freedom, and service to women and children. In 1922, she founded Balika Hindi Pathasala (Hindi Girls’ School) where she taught girls Hindi and Telugu. In 1923, she organized a Girls’ Volunteer Corps. As a young woman, Durgabai began to travel across the country with Gandhi and other leaders to raise awareness about their struggle. At a meeting in

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south India, she asked him for a separate address to Muslim women in pardah as they could not appear in public. During the 1930 Salt Satyagraha, she raised the national flag in Madras beaches, organized processions, and bore police beatings with the lathi stick. She refused special treatment as a political prisoner and was incarcerated in jail with ordinary women for whose rights she pleaded. After release in 1933, she studied and received her BA, MA, and law degrees. At a meeting when Gandhi addressed Madras middle-class women, Durgabai spoke of sexual exploitation, of village women’s poverty and basic lack of amenities, and of dedicated women social workers. She proposed that the Kasturba Fund be used for village women in south India. In 1937, Durgabai founded the Andhra Mahila Samaj (Andhra Women’s Society, AMS) with funds donated by south Indian queens of Pithapuram, Mirzapur, Bobbili, and Hyderabad. 140 After Indian independence, she was appointed to the Indian Planning Commission and the Central Society Welfare Board. In 1953, Durgabai married Finance Minister C. D. Deshmukh of Maharashtra. The AMS continues to treat women’s health and to support welfare activities in Madras.141 Rajkumari Amrit Kaur was a Christian from the royal family in Kapurthala, Punjab. She imbibed her patriotism from her father, a friend of reformer G. K. Gokhale. After her father’s death, she joined Gandhi’s cause and served as his secretary for 16 years. 142 In 1937, she was arrested on sedition in the North West Frontier Province, and in the 1942 Quit India Movement, suffered brutal police beatings with the lathi when she led processions demonstrating against British rule. She was passionately convinced that pardah and child marriage were ‘‘cankers’’ that vitiated the nation and prevented women from rising to their full potential. She strongly advocated free, compulsory schooling for girls, more teacher training schools for women, and health care for girls and infants at school. After independence, she was the first woman central minister for health and later the president of the United Nations World Health Assembly. She helped to establish the All India Institute of Medical Sciences and used her contacts in New Zealand, the United States, and West Germany to promote research on tuberculosis.143 Personal conviction and family affiliation brought many women to Gandhi’s cause. The young medical student Sushila Nayar of Punjab arrived with her brother Pyarelal Nayar at Gandhi’s Sevagram Ashram in Wardha, Maharashtra. Pyarelal later became Gandhi’s secretary, but Sushila was inspired also by the doctrine of selfless service and began to view Gandhi in a paternal light.144 Throwing herself into the treatment of cholera victims, an observant Gandhi chose her as his personal physician. She participated in numerous satyagraha campaigns and was imprisoned with Gandhi during the Quit India Movement. She remained with him till his assassination by a Hindu fanatic in 1948. She then went to the United States for further medical studies, and after her return, she began a sanatorium for TB patients in a cooperative township started by Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya outside Delhi.

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Dr. Nayar’s first clinic at Wardha developed into the Kasturba Memorial Hospital (1944), the Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences (1969), and the Gandhi Memorial Leprosy Foundation. In 1952, Nehru appointed her as Health Minister, and she was elected several times to Parliament. However, her differences with Indira Gandhi made her join the opposition Janata Party in 1971. Sushila Nayar’s contributions to the treatment of cholera, leprosy, and tuberculosis have earned her a respected place in modern India. The prominent feminist Hansabehn Mehta (1897–1995) was one of the first Gujarati women college graduates. Although her intercaste marriage to Dr. Jivraj Mehta led to family ostracism, the progressive maharaja of Baroda attended their wedding. Hansabehn joined Gandhi’s movement, picketed shops that sold liquor and foreign goods, and was jailed during one of his satyagraha campaigns. She and fourteen women were included in the Constituent Assembly to frame India’s constitution in December 1946. On the transfer of power on August 14, 1947, as a representative of Indian women, Hansabehn Mehta presented the tricolor flag to the Constituent Assembly. In her 1946 presidential address to AIWC, Hansabehn proposed a Women’s Charter of Rights, and as India’s representative to the UN Human Rights Commission, she helped to frame its Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Usha Mehta (b. 1920) was born in Surat to a Gujarati couple. She became a follower of Gandhi after meeting him at the age of five. Her father was a judge, and while her mother was not highly educated, she inspired Usha to attend college and acquire a BA and a law degree. In an era when marriage was considered essential for a woman, Usha Mehta boldly remained unmarried. She emulated Gandhi by remaining celibate and wearing only homespun khaddar. She participated in anti-British demonstrations from 1928 with the tacit support of her extended family, and her father joined her after resigning as a judge in 1930. During the salt satyagraha, Usha and her family broke the law by making salt on the beaches of Bombay. The high point of her career was in 1942 when Gandhi, Nehru, and key INC officials were jailed in the Quit India Movement. She operated an underground radio station, later called ‘‘Congress Radio,’’ to disseminate news and also surreptitiously unfurled the Indian tricolor flag in public places. She was then incarcerated in isolation and interrogated for four years. Although her health suffered permanently, she bravely remained silent. Usha Mehta received India’s Padma Vibhushan award in 1998.145 Sarojini Naidu (1879–1949) Sarojini Naidu’s nationalism was underscored by her feminism. Her BS parents had nurtured her creative talents, and their home in Hyderabad princely Muslim state, now in Andhra Pradesh, was open to diverse intellectuals of all communities. Her mother Varada Sundari Devi wrote Bengali

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lyrics, and her father Dr. Aghorenath Chattopadhyaya was a scientist who founded Nizam’s College. Sarojini’s poetic collections in English, Songs (1895), The Golden Threshold (1905), The Bird of Time (1912), and The Broken Wing (1917), were acclaimed in her lifetime for evocative descriptions of India.146 Sarojini would later make passionate speeches on women’s education. As a 12-year-old in 1891, she received the highest marks in the Madras Presidency matriculation exams, a feat that impressed the Nizam into granting her a scholarship to attend Girton College, Cambridge. She now made friends with famous writers and traveled in Europe, but ill health brought her home to India. In 1898, Sarojini defied caste rules by marrying Dr. Govindarajulu Naidu, a non-brahman Telugu widower with whom she had four children.147 Sarojini’s oratory drew large crowds after 1904. At Framji Cowasji Institute, she recited her poem Ode to India asking Mother India to awaken from slumber. This was in sharp contrast to Ramabai Ranade’s practical plea to affluent women to help their poorer sisters. In 1906 she spoke on women’s education to INC members at Calcutta and to male reformers at the ISC. She was a close associate of G. K. Gokhale, Gandhi, Rabindranath Thakur, and Sarala Devi Chaudhurani. In Madras in 1909, she met Muthulakshmi Reddi, her future colleague and cofounder of WIA in 1917. Although she received the colonial government Kaiser-I-Hind award for flood relief work in 1911, she remained an ardent nationalist. In 1917, Sarojini appealed to INC men to support women’s equal voting rights and emphasized that as the mothers of the nation, women did not wish to overturn male authority. On December 18, 1917, Sarojini led the WIA delegation to Edwin Montagu to request women suffrage in the 1919 elections. At Madras, Bombay, and Secunderabad, Sarojini told women that their low status was due to child marriage, pardah seclusion, and bigamy. However, Sarojini also romantically referred to female sacrifice as sati, although she ironically supported the 1829 colonial law against widow immolation on the husband’s pyre. This has led some scholars to describe her as a ‘‘traditional feminist,’’ as she reified certain feminine stereotypes. Sarojini’s speeches were a poetic cascade of idealism, humanism, and humor. She lauded patriotism as ‘‘the flame that burns within the soul’’ and condemned communal separatism.148 At Lucknow and Patna, she urged Muslims and Hindus to remember their shared national identity and common humanity. On December 21, 1917, she pleaded with Madras Special Provincial Council to support the INC-Muslim League Pact. Sarojini was key player in Gandhi’s satyagrahas after 1917 when she began to speak about nonviolent resistance. In 1925, she was appointed the first INC woman president. When Gandhi hesitated to have women in the 1930 Salt March as it would be arduous, he was dissuaded from this view by Sarojini, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya, and Khurshed Naoroji, a granddaughter of Zoroastrian leader Dadabhai Naoroji. Sarojini led the

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women marchers and was jailed. She was also imprisoned in the 1942 Quit India struggle, as was her brother’s wife Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya, a cofounder of AIWC. The two women are respected as India’s nationalistfeminist luminaries. After independence, Sarojini Naidu was appointed governor of Uttar Pradesh, and all Indians mourned her death in 1949. Muthulakshmi Reddi (1886–1968) Feminist Muthulakshmi Reddi was a founding member of WIA, the first Hindu woman doctor in Madras Presidency (province), and the first woman legislator in India. Born in Pudukottai princely state in Tamil Nadu, her upper-caste father S. Narayanaswami was principal of Maharaja’s College. Her mother Chandrammal belonged to a family of musician dancers (devadasis). Although her father had initial reservations about educating girls, except to teach them to keep ‘‘milk and dhoby (laundry) accounts,’’ Muthulakshmi’s scholastic talents attracted the attention of her teachers. Narayanaswami then encouraged his daughter to study further and even relocated to Madras so that she could attend medical college. Muthulakshmi thus respected her father more greatly than her fairly illiterate mother who feared that higher education would prevent her daughter from marriage and domestic fulfillment. Muthulakshmi blamed her mother’s devadasi ancestry for her superstitious fears, and lack of enthusiasm for her education. In 1912, Muthulakshmi graduated with higher grades than her all-male class at Madras Medical College. She immediately threw herself into the service of women and children in this province, by treating women and children at a government hospital and the poor in Madras slums.149 She chose medicine as her profession, attracted by its scientific answers to the world’s problems. Convinced that illiteracy bred irrational fears and beliefs, she used her knowledge and position in society to educate women, as she was convinced that it would improve their physical and mental condition. She also had a strong distaste for sectarian and caste divisions, which she felt were irrational and misogynist traditions that obstructed women’s modernization. In 1913, she became resident doctor for R. S. Subbalakshmi Ammal’s Brahmin Hostel for Widows. In 1914, her parents persuaded her to marry Dr. Sundara Reddi despite their different castes. The couple shared an interest in medicine and welfare work, and they jointly established a girls’ orphanage and rehabilitation center for destitute women. When she first attended to sick, vagrant children at Dr. Varadappa Naidu Home in 1919, she perceived the direct connections between women’s low status, family neglect, illiteracy, early marriage, childbirth death, prostitution, and disease. Muthulakshmi then became politically active in the struggle for women’s rights. In 1917, she joined Margaret Cousins and other feminists to found the WIA, and in 1928, she, Dr. Rahamatunissa Begam, and Sharifa Mazeruddin

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cofounded the Muslim Women’s Association. The first MWA president was Rani Begam Yukub Hasan of Arcot. She also worked with women of several communities in Madras Seva Sadan (1923) which assisted indigent women; the Madras Vigilance Society which retrieved girls from brothels; and the Indian Ladies’ Samaj. Her colleagues included Hindus like Parvati Ammal Chandrasekharan and Mangalammal Sadasivier; Muslims like Rahamatunissa Begam and Shafia Mazeruddin; Christians like Swarnam Appasamy and Poonen Lukhose; Parsis like Herabai Tata; and the British Annie Besant and Margaret Cousins. She joined the 1917 WIA delegation to Edwin Montagu to request provincial female suffrage under the 1919 Constitutional Reform Act. In 1926, she represented India at the International Suffrage Conference of Women in Paris, and in 1933, at the Congress of Women in Chicago. As the first woman legislator in 1927–28 and deputy president of the Madras Legislative Council, Muthulakshmi first formulated a bill to raise the age of sexual consent to 16 for girls. However, she and her WIA colleagues soon campaigned for the Sarda Act, which raised the age of marriage for girls to 14 years. She also campaigned for increased state funding for girls’ schools and occupational centers, Dalit (Adi Dravida) girls’ teacher training programs, and Muslim girls’ education. As a member of the 1928 Hartog Committee, she investigated the state of female education in India. Although she believed that the pardah promoted female ill health, as a pragmatist, she passed an Assembly resolution for separate wards and doctors for Muslim women in pardah. Her personal dislike of her maternal ancestry probably led her to frame a 1927 bill. This bill eventually led to the abolishing of devadasi dedication to Hindu temples as musician dancers. The subject had attracted the attention of legislators after World War I. In 1922, Hari Singh Gour tried to change the penal code on minor girls’ prostitution under a religious pretext; and in 1924, Government of India Act XVIII guaranteed protection to temple girls below 18 years of age. However, devadasi dedication continued in Madras until Muthulakshmi formulated her new bill. She resigned in 1929 when Gandhi called for civil disobedience, so that the bill lay dormant. It was finally passed as Madras Hindu Religious Endowments Act V (1947). Muthulakshmi’s bill undercut the economic basis of this cultural system by denying temples certain land revenues to maintain devadasis. This endorsed Gandhi’s views on moral purification to renew the nation and to emancipate women. Muthulakshmi and Gandhi respected each other’s constructive programs for the discriminated poor and low caste. In one letter, she praised his ‘‘moving appeal’’ to help devadasis as ‘‘victims of tradition, custom or mistaken religious fervor’’ due to male lechery, and spoke of ‘‘a few good and pure’’ women rehabilitated into ‘‘virtuous’’ vocations.150 Gandhi admired Muthulakshmi for going beyond speeches and slogans, and for organizing pragmatic programs.

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Not only did she tend to their health, but she and other feminists of Madras Vigilance Society, Ladies Samaj, and WIA rehabilitated devadasis. She also started Avvai Home and Orphanage for Girls to teach them other trades so that financial independence would prevent a lapse into prostitution. Addressing Gandhi respectfully as ‘‘Beloved Mahatmaji,’’ in 1937, she wrote: I was simply touched by your moving appeal in the Harijan in support of the Bill for the abolition of the dedication of girls to the Hindu temples in this Presidency. As you might remember, I introduced an amendment to the Hindu Religious Endowments Act, which has now become law to dispense with the Devadasi service in the Hindu temples . . . But I have found soon after that a large number of women and girls are allowed to be dedicated in the large as well as in the small temples for the purpose of prostitution . . . The saddest part is that these girls while they are young, innocent and helpless are coached up and trained purposely for a life of prostitution . . . Therefore, I have introduced another measure, viz., a bill for the prevention of dedication of girls . . . As I resigned soon after, the work was left incomplete . . . I may also add that some of us women have done propaganda against this custom through lectures and pamphlets both in English and in the vernacular but without much effect. Therefore, I feel strongly that legislation for the prevention of this evil is absolutely necessary.151 Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya (1903–88) Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya was a dynamic nationalist-feminist, a prolific writer on diverse topics, and a cultural enthusiast who helped to revive Indian theater and handicrafts. Kamaladevi’s interest in acting began when she met her husband Harindranath Chattopadhyaya, but it persisted even after her divorce, as in 1944 she spearheaded the Bharatiya Natya Sangha (Indian Drama Council). Her work for Indian cottage industries led to her appointment as Chairman of the Indian Handicrafts Board in 1952. At the age of 18, she joined INC and accompanied Gandhi across the country, appealing to youths to join their struggle. She was then appointed as president of the national Youth Conference. In 1930, she was one of the first women appointed to break the salt laws at Dandi. She was commander of the Women’s Volunteer Corps in the Quit India Movement, and her key role in numerous satyagraha campaigns resulted in her jail sentence for five years, one in solitary confinement. At the 1927 meeting of the Women’s Educational Conference, she and Hilla Fardoonji introduced a resolution to expand its focus, which led to AIWC’s political involvement in satyagraha campaigns. As AIWC general secretary, she helped to establish branches across India, and in 1934 she became AIWC president.152 In 1926, Kamaladevi represented AIWC at the International Congress of the Women’s League

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for Peace and Freedom at Prague. As a socialist, she openly disagreed with Gandhi and questioned even Nehru’s plan to retain colonial institutions. However, her indefatigable service inspired their respect. Early Life She was from a prominent high-caste family of Konkan Saraswat brahmans from Mangalore. When her father, a distinguished District Collector, died intestate, his son by an earlier marriage claimed his entire property. Kamaladevi’s mother Girijabai was a second wife now entirely dependent on her own dowry.153 In 1914, Girijabai arranged for her daughter’s marriage according to social custom, but the groom died the next year, leaving Kamaladevi as a child widow. However, her educated mother and grandmother did not allow Kamaladevi to languish, and they sent her to a convent girls’ school. Girijabai’s resolve stemmed from her personal admiration for Pandita Ramabai and Ramabai Ranade, and her anger at the caste ostracism of Pandita Ramabai’s father for educating his widowed daughter. Kamaladevi always remembered how her mother and grandmother read and discussed Sanskrit texts and the Marathi newspaper Kesari edited by Tilak, the cultural nationalist.154 In 1917 the family moved to Madras city where Kamaladevi was now exposed to speeches by Annie Besant who admired Indian handicrafts and culture, and by WIA feminists like Margaret Cousins. Kamaladevi attended St. Mary’s College and met the talented Chattopadhyaya siblings, namely Sarojini (later Naidu) and Harindranath, a mercurial poet and actor. In 1919, Kamaladevi and Harindranath were married in a civil ceremony, and in 1921 they left for England, he to Cambridge, she to study sociology at Bedford College. Kamaladevi’s eagerness to join Gandhi’s movement led to their return the following year. After the birth of her son Ramakrishna in 1923, she accompanied Gandhi in his journeys to exhort young Indians to resist British rule. Harindranath’s philandering led to their separation in 1927 and divorce many years later. Kamaladevi was now befriended by Margaret Cousins with whom she founded AIWC. In the first general elections with women candidates to Madras Legislative Council, she unsuccessfully contested a seat from Mangalore. The WIA had the right to select another female candidate, and Muthulakshmi Reddi was chosen as India’s first woman legislator. Activist and Writer In 1930, she, Sarojini Naidu, and Khurshed Naoroji convinced Gandhi to include women in the Salt March to Dandi. After his arrival at Dandi, he symbolically broke the salt law on April 6, the anniversary of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. The next day the feminists Kamaladevi and Avantibai Gokhale marched onto the beaches with five male satyagrahis, lit the fires,

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and made salt by boiling seawater.155 In her later work, Inner Recesses, Outer Spaces: Memoirs (1986), Kamaladevi described her excitement ‘‘at the enormity of the occasion and my own good fortune’’ at being one of the first women to take part in the event.156 By 1934, she joined the newly formed Congress Socialist Party in the belief that justice was possible only through left-wing politics. The conviction remained in a muted form till her final years. It appears in her early work, At the Crossroads (1947), which described the perfect welfare state, cooperative unions, public education, and programs to free women from domestic bondage.157 During the 1940s’ civil disobedience campaigns, especially after the 1942 Quit India demonstrations, her socialist involvement increased, and she disagreed even with socialist Nehru who wanted to retain some colonial institutions after independence. Ideological tensions and personal sorrows led her to focus again on the AIWC in 1944 and to help revive Indian theater and handicrafts. Gandhi lauded her constructive plans to help women through the handloom before his assassination. In 1951, Prime Minister Nehru endorsed her candidacy in the Bombay elections, although on a Socialist Party ticket. Upon her defeat she resigned from the Socialist Party and accepted Nehru’s offer to organize the All India Handloom Board in 1952. In this post, she served her country with creative vision and talent.158 Despite their extraordinary contributions to women’s social and political equality, recent feminists have criticized Kamaladevi, Sarojini Naidu, and others for disclaiming the title of ‘‘feminist.’’ Feminism is rooted in the historical struggle for women’s rights, and the first women to challenge patriarchy are surely entitled to this term, even if they did not describe themselves as feminists. Indian nationalist-feminists believed that their fledgling movement would be jeopardized if they antagonized male nationalists in power. An earlier generation of elite reformers had focused solely on female illiteracy, early marriage, and widowhood. The nationalist-feminists were faced with the compelling social problems of grueling poverty and misrule. They joined men of all castes, sects, and classes who were energized by the idea of self-rule (swaraj). As their generation’s goal was freedom, nationalist women like Kamaladevi agreed with men like Gandhi that political unity was essential across gender and class lines. Moreover, like Nehru, Kamaladevi believed that freedom with democracy and socialism would guarantee class and gender equality, and that an all-out ‘‘gender war’’ would delay freedom. Kamaladevi’s socialism is evident in The Awakening of Indian Women (1939), in which she blamed feudalism for women’s thralldom. However, in 1983, the 80-year-old feminist glanced back with satisfaction over her generation’s feminist achievements in the Indian Women’s Battle for Freedom. Kamaladevi’s writings include a broad range of books, pamphlets, and essays. They are carefully researched, elegant works imbued with her

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characteristic passion for each subject, enlivened by translations from Indian literature. Apart from the two works listed above, others include the books At the Crossroads (1947); Carpets and Floor Coverings of India (1966); The Glory of Indian Handicrafts (1976); Indian Embroidery (1977); Tribalism in India (1978); and Inner Recesses, Outer Spaces (1986); and essays such as ‘‘In War-Torn China’’ (1944), ‘‘America: The Land of Superlatives’’ (1946), ‘‘Socialism and Society’’ (1950), and ‘‘Towards a National Theatre’’ (post-1947) for the AIWC.159 Women Revolutionaries with Alternative Ideologies Other twentieth-century women wielded arms for the nation, in the martial tradition of Raziyya who died struggling for her throne (d. 1240), Abakka Devi who died fighting the Portuguese (d. 1598), and Lakshmibai of Jhansi who died on the battlefield of the 1857 Revolt. In 1905, the British Bengal partition on communal lines provoked militancy among Indian youths who threw bombs and assassinated officials, after listening to the oratory of Bipin Chandra Pal and Lala Lajpat Rai. Several notable women wrote inflammatory journal articles. For example, Sarala Devi Chaudhurani (ne´e Ghosal) redirected her rebellion into writing editorials for Bharati.160 Kumudini Mitra, whose father was a respectable nationalist, published the inflammatory journal Suprabhat in 1907. Other women’s incendiary activities were noted by the British police. Moreover, unlike mainstream worshippers of Kali, newer violent cults believed that the goddess blessed the martyrs who died for Mother India. To control Indian discontent in World War I, the British passed the Defense of India Act (1915) and expanded its constraints through 1918 Rowlatt Acts. In angry response, young Indian men excited by recent Marxist successes in Europe took pride as revolutionaries (krantis) by forming societies to overthrow the British Empire. They saw themselves as socialists, rather than as anarchists (biplabi). However, the colonial government categorized them all simply as terrorists. Amarendranath Chattopadhyaya who founded the revolutionary Jugantar Party lived with his aunt Nanibala Devi (d. 1967). This widow since childhood was not simply his housekeeper but his assistant in revolutionary activities.161 Revolutionary news journals referred often to the courage of Mazzini and Garibaldi of Italy. Bhikaiji Cama These inspired Bhikaiji Cama (ne´e Patel, 1866–1936), a wealthy Zoroastrian patriot of India. Unhappily married to a wealthy man, she became involved with women’s groups that spread ideas of sectarian and class unity for the nation, and worked with Bombay plague victims. When her health deteriorated, her father sent her to recuperate in Europe where she associated with exiled Indian nationalists. In 1907, she attended a socialist

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conference at Stuttgart, Germany and unfurled the Indian tricolor flag for the first time. This was construed as treason by the British, but Hindus praised Bhikaiji as a patriot and as an incarnation of goddess Kali, although she was a Zoroastrian. 162 In 1909, Bhikaiji moved to Paris where she launched Vande Mataram journal and smuggled revolvers to distribute in British India.163 While patriots often accepted nonviolent methods as effective in the long run, they sometimes felt that violence was necessary when family, religion, or homeland was in danger. While Gandhi’s followers spun peacefully on the charkha, some would occasionally resort to sabotage. The Mahatma would then anxiously educate them on the nuances of satyagraha. Aruna Asaf Ali and Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya were two women who occasionally went underground as revolutionary socialists. After 1930 when harsher colonial laws tried to curb nationalist activity, the young sometimes resorted to violence. In the Chittagong Armory Raids, the British arrested young Bengali men for making arms. However, their wives and sisters continued manufacturing bombs until they too were jailed as terrorists. They included Mrinalini, her daughter Jogmaya, and Radha Rani Debi of the Bengal Youth League.164 In 1931, Shanti Ghosh and Suniti Choudhury shot at the magistrate who promulgated harsh ordinances, and Bina Das’s attempt to kill Governor Stanley Jackson led to a life sentence in a penal colony.165 Bina Bhowmich’s 1932 attempt to kill the governor led to her confession that she was ‘‘entirely responsible.’’ She wrote: My object was to die, and if to die, to die nobly fighting against this despotic system of Government, which has kept my country in perpetual subjection to its infinite shame and endless suffering. I have been thinking—is it worth living in an India, so subject to wrong and continually groaning under the tyranny of a foreign Government or is it not better to make one supreme protest by offering one’s life away?166 Lakshmi Sahgal and the Indian National Army During World War II, Indians endured economic hardships and also Japanese coastal attacks from Singapore, Malaya, and Burma. Indians led by Subhas Chandra Bose (d. 1944) now courted the Axis Powers as a counterfoil against British imperialism. Bose established the India Independence League (IIL) from exile in Singapore, while followers like General Mohan Singh used Japanese aid to organize the Indian Liberation Army (ILA). An ILA battalion of women was the Rani of Jhansi Regiment, founded by Dr. Lakshmi Sahgal (b. 1914), a Tamil woman, and daughter of WIA feminist Ammu Swaminathan, a Gandhian member of INC. At first, Lakshmi also joined INC, but she was disillusioned by the hanging of revolutionary patriot Bhagat Singh. Lakshmi entered medical college, became a gynecologist, and started a medical clinic for women in

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Singapore in 1939. Here she met Bose, joined the IIL, and was chosen as its president. In 1942, Bose set up his Provisional Government of Free India in exile, and he appointed Dr. Lakshmi Swaminathan as Minister of Women’s Organization. Upon Bose’s request, she formed the Rani of Jhansi Regiment, holding the rank of captain and later as colonel. When her regiment was in combat in Burma, Lakshmi conducted a hospital for the wounded. In 1945, she was captured by the Allies during the Japanese retreat into Thailand and taken to Rangoon where she treated patients in a clinic. Due to her continued involvement with ILA, she was later imprisoned at Red Fort in Delhi. However, Indians accorded her heroine’s welcome upon her return. Here she met the political prisoner Prem Kumar Sahgal whom she married in 1947 after independence. In October 1984, she once again showed her personal courage while living with her family in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, by confronting mob attacks on innocent Sikhs after Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by Sikh guards. In 1998, Lakshmi Sahgal was awarded the Padma Vibhushan by the Government of India for exemplary services.167 Independence and Partition When early reformers tried to guarantee modern women’s rights, they did not imagine that women would one day fight beside men to free the nation. By 1930 it was apparent to the liberal Nehru, socialist Jayaprakash Narayan (1902–79), and legalist B. R. Ambedkar (1891–1956) that gender equality had to be a cornerstone of the Indian democracy. In Nehru’s The Discovery of India written while in prison, he described how women resisted British rule: Most of us men folk were in prison. And then a remarkable thing happened. Our women came to the front and took charge of the struggle. Women had always been there, of course, but now there was an avalanche of them, which took not only the British government but their own men folk by surprise. Here were these women, women of the upper or middle classes, leading sheltered lives in their homes, peasant women, working-class women, rich women, poor women, pouring out in their tens of thousands in defiance of government order and police lathi. It was not only that display of courage and daring, but what was even more surprising was the organizational power they showed. Never can I forget the thrill that came to us in Naini Prison when news of this reached us, the enormous pride in the women of India that filled us. We could hardly talk about all this among ourselves for our hearts were full and our eyes were dim with tears.168 Indian women’s activism invited the admiration both at home and abroad. In recognition, 14 AIWC and WIA feminists were appointed as members

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of the Constituent Assembly to draft the constitution. They included Ammu Swaminathan, Kamala Chaudhuri, Begam Qudsia Aizaz Rasul, Sarojini Naidu, Hansa Mehta, Sucheta Kripalani, Dakshayani Velayudhan, Durgabai Deshmukh, Purnima Banerjee, Begam Ikramullah, Lila Roy, and Vijayalakshmi Pandit.169 Vijayalakshmi Pandit (1900–1990), Nehru’s talented sister, began her political career at the age of 16 by joining Besant’s Home Rule League. In 1928, the young married mother of three was elected to Allahabad Municipal Board. In 1937, Vijayalakshmi Pandit became minister for health in pre-independence Uttar Pradesh. She was first jailed in 1928 for taking the public oath of freedom and was imprisoned twice during Gandhi’s satyagrahas. Born to affluence and prestige, Vijayalakshmi contributed generously to the nation’s cause, but when widowed at the age of 44, she was swindled by her husband’s relatives of his estate, like many widows. Vijayalakshmi volunteered her services for women and child victims of cholera and famine in Bengal in 1944. She was elected AIWC president for two terms and appointed to the Constituent Assembly in 1946. She was India’s first emissary to the USSR and to the United Nations where in 1953, she was elected as the first woman president of the General Assembly. In 1946, Vijayalakshmi attended a conference for the UN Commission on the Status of Women, which passed a Charter of Women’s Rights under the aegis of Eleanor Roosevelt, India’s well-wisher and Nehru’s personal friend. The AIWC endorsed the UN charter and also prepared its own Charter of Women’s Rights and Duties. 170 In Nehru’s records during his first trip abroad as prime minister in 1948, he described Mrs. Roosevelt’s respectful praise for Indian feminists, with a special reference to Professor Lakshmi N. Menon (1899–1994), an AIWC founder, and later president.171 Lakshmi Menon also served as delegate to the United Nations, and in 1949 she headed the UN Human Rights Division on the Status of Women. She was appointed to the Rajya Sabha, India’s Parliamentary upper house, and received the Padma Bhushan in 1959. Partition On the independence day of August 15, 1947, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru spoke eloquently of ‘‘India’s tryst with destiny,’’ while women leaders hoisted the tricolor flag. Yet, behind this momentous event lurked the tragedy of Partition, ‘‘an undeclared civil war’’ that began months earlier and escalated like a wildfire after August 16.172 About 10 million Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims fled to and from India and Pakistan across boundaries demarcated rapidly by British jurist Cyril Radcliffe and accepted prima facie by the INC and the ML.173 Although often described as the world’s largest peacetime migration, it was hardly peaceful, especially for women. Roughly a million people died, the roads were strewn with corpses, and Punjab rivers

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ran blood. Convoys and trains meant to safeguard migrants often arrived eerily at destinations with dead bodies. Some 75,000 Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh women were raped and brutalized, their bodies serving as the sites to wage war for the nation and male honor.174 In a culture that places great value upon female honor (izzat [Urdu]; abhiman [Hindi]), patriarchal families often rejected raped women, forcing them into prostitution or to commit suicide. Those who became pregnant occasionally married the rapist and converted to forget painful memories, but the offspring were living reminders of a traumatic event. Fearing that the stories of abducted, raped, and converted women would raise ‘‘popular passions’’ leading to a communal frenzy, Nehru urged that ‘‘recovery’’ proceed quickly, as the ‘‘trouble will simmer and might blaze out.’’175 Condemning such ‘‘heinous’’ treatment of women, INC leaders urged that women be restored to their homes in India and Pakistan in a humane manner. On December 6, 1947, discussions began at Lahore, Pakistan. Mridula Sarabhai was appointed Chief All India Organizer of the women’s recovery program, and Rameshwari Nehru was Honorary Advisor for rehabilitation.176 The two women humanely and creatively used welfare program funds, named Kasturba Gandhi and Kamala Nehru. The Indian and Pakistani governments set up transit refugee camps with police inspectors to send abducted women back to their homelands. Unfortunately, the official discourse often treated women as national property to be claimed or rejected, so that occasionally they were even raped by supervisory officials appointed for their help. There were continuous press and government complaints until 1949 that Pakistan returned fewer women (6,272) than India (12,500). One Indian legislator suggested that communal retaliation was required, since Hindu men were ‘‘descendants of Ram’’ whose duty it was to ‘‘bring back every Sita that is alive.’’177 It was left to veteran feminists like Ammu Swaminathan to point out that women were not mythic ideals but flesh and blood victims: I think that is a most inhuman thing to do because after all, if two Governments are not agreeing with each other, that is not the fault of these innocent girls who have been victims of cruel circumstances. We should not think in terms of retaliation at all.178 A major problem was that the large population of discarded widows, wives, and orphaned children were paupers after Partition. Rehabilitation centers were set up, including the Karnal Mahila Ashram with a sewing center; the Kasturba Niketan; the Trust for Sindhi Women and Children; and the Nari Seva Sangh. While women did find employment as leather workers, producers of apparel, dairy and vegetable farmhands, accountants, and stenographers, they were often underpaid and received little for their products. 179 The cruelties perpetuated on innocent women and

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children so dismayed Gandhi that this apostle of peace retreated to Sabarmati Ashram, making rare appearances till a Hindu fanatic assassinated him on January 30, 1948. NOTES 1. Sarojini Naidu, Speeches and Writings (Madras: G. A. Natesan, 1919), 219. 2. Sita Anantha Raman, ‘‘Crossing Cultural Boundaries: Indian Matriarchs and Sisters in Service,’’ Journal of Third World Studies 18, no. 2 (Fall 2001): 131–48. 3. A. Madhaviah, Muthumeenakshi (1903; repr., Chennai: Vanavil Press, 1984); Raman and Surya, A. Madhaviah, 87–98, 127–86. 4. My father’s maternal cousin, a brahman widow, eloped with a Mudaliyar and was never heard of again. See also the fictional tale of a brahman widow’s seduction, her death in childhood, and the adoption of her son by missionaries in Madhaviah, Satyananda. 5. ‘‘A Woman’’ (anon.), Mathar Manoranjani (Brightener of Women’s Minds), a Tamil journal for women, 1, no. 8 (October 1899): 125. 6. Kosambi, At the Intersection of Gender Reform and Religious Belief, 25. 7. Padmini Sengupta, The Portrait of an Indian Woman (Calcutta: Y.M.C.A., 1956), 45–47. 8. Ibid., 61–62. 9. Minault, ‘‘Introduction: The Extended Family,’’ 3–19, vide, 5. 10. Raman, ‘‘Crossing Cultural Boundaries,’’ 131–36. 11. Ibid., 131–33. 12. Aparna Basu and Bharati Ray, Women’s Struggle: A History of the All India Women’s Conference, 1927–2002, 2nd ed. (New Delhi: Manohar Publishers, 2003), 18–19. 13. Kumar, History of Doing, 45, 54. 14. Ray, Early Feminists of Colonial India, 15; Kumar, History of Doing, 38–39. 15. Forbes, Women in Modern India, 67–68. 16. Minault, ‘‘Sisterhood or Separatism?’’ 83–108, vide, 86–87. 17. Sengupta, Portrait of an Indian Woman, 52; Raman, Getting Girls to School, 210–11. 18. Women’s Indian Association, ‘‘History of the Women’s Indian Association,’’ in Golden Jubilee Celebration Souvenir, 1917–1967 (Madras: Women’s Indian Association, 1967), 1–10. 19. Basu and Ray, Women’s Struggle, 17–29. 20. Anagol, The Emergence of Feminism in India, 1850–1920, 62. 21. Women’s Indian Association, Annual Reports for 1928 & 1929; All Asian Conference on Women (Adyar: Women’s Indian Association, 1930); Reddi, An Autobiography, 88–96; Raman, ‘‘Crossing Cultural Boundaries,’’ 140–42, 148 nn. 48–51. 22. O’Hanlon, Caste, Conflict and Ideology, 118. 23. Ibid., 110. 24. Ibid., 135. 25. Savitribai Phule, ‘‘Letter to Jotiba Phule,’’ October 10, 1856, full text in Tharu and Lalitha, Women Writing in India, 1:213–14.

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26. Tharu and Lalitha, Women Writing in India, 1:211–12. 27. Kosambi, At the Intersection of Gender Reform and Religious Belief, 28–32. 28. Tharu and Lalitha, Women Writing in India, 1:243–55. 29. Jayawardena, The White Woman’s Other Burden, 54. 30. Cited by Kosambi, At the Intersection of Gender Reform and Religious Belief, 87–88. 31. Ibid., 72–73. 32. Maratha feminist wrote Anandibai’s biography in 1912, vide, Kosambi, At the Intersection of Gender Reform and Religious Belief, 18. See also S. J. Joshi, Anandi Gopal, trans. Asha Damle (Calcutta: Stree, 1992), 229, 236–39. 33. Gauri Vishwanathan, ‘‘Silencing Heresy: Feminist Struggle and Religious Dissent,’’ in Outside the Fold: Conversion, Modernity and Belief (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 118–52. 34. Tharu and Lalitha, Women Writing in India, 1:243–55, vide, 253. 35. Vishwanathan, Outside the Fold, 149. 36. Gauri Vishwanathan argues that her conversion was due to changed spiritual faith, and rebellion against Hindu social misogyny, unlike most feminists who believe it was in rejection of Hindu patriarchal norms. They include Kosambi, At the Intersection of Gender Reform and Religious Belief; Inderpal Grewal, Home and Harem: Nation, Gender, Empire, Cultures of Travel (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1996); Antoinette Burton, Burdens of History: British Feminists, Indian Women, and Imperial Culture, 1865–1915 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1994); and Jayawardena, The White Woman’s Other Burden, 53–62. 37. Mary Rama (Pandita Ramabai), ‘‘Letter to Miss Dorothea Beale, Cheltenham,’’ in Women Writing in India, ed. Tharu and Lalitha, 1:245. 38. Tharu and Lalitha, Women Writing in India, 1:245. 39. Kumar, History of Doing, 26; Forbes, Women in Modern India, 46. 40. Quoted by Tharu and Lalitha, eds., Women Writing in India, 1:246. 41. Quoted by Kosambi, At the Intersection of Gender Reform and Religious Belief, 89. 42. Ibid., 31; Gail Omvedt, Dalit Visions: The Anti-Caste Movement and the Construction of an Indian Identity, 2nd ed. (Mumbai: Orient Longman, 2006), 17–24. 43. Rosalind O’Hanlon, A Comparison between Women and Men: Tarabai Shinde and the Critique of Gender Relations in Colonial India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994), 100–125; and O’Hanlon, ‘‘Extract from Stri Purush Tulana (A Comparison between Women and Men): Tarabai Shinde and the Critique of Gender,’’ in Feminism in India, ed. Maitrayee Chaudhuri, 2nd ed. (New Delhi: Women Unlimited and Kali for Women, 2005), 82–93. 44. O’Hanlon, ‘‘Extract from Stri Purush Tulana,’’ 88; Tharu and Lalitha, Women Writing in India, 1:221–35. 45. Tharu and Lalitha, Women Writing in India, 1:228. 46. O’Hanlon, ‘‘Extract from Stri Purush Tulana,’’ 83–84. 47. Ibid., 91. 48. Ibid. 49. Ray, Early Feminists of Colonial India, 20. 50. Ibid., 22–23.

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51. Tharu and Lalitha, Women Writing in India, 1:340–42. 52. Ray, Early Feminists of Colonial India, 19. 53. Forbes, Women in Modern India, 55–57. 54. Tharu and Lalitha, Women Writing in India, 1:340–42. 55. Thomas Noble, Barry Strauss, Duane Osheim, Kristen Neuschel, and William Cohen, Western Civilization: The Continuing Experiment (Boston and Toronto: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1994), 746–47, 794, 826. 56. Tharu and Lalitha, Women Writing in India, 1:341. 57. Forbes, Women in Modern India, 56. 58. Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, ‘‘Sultana’s Dream,’’ trans. Roushan Jahan, in Feminism in India, ed. Chaudhuri, 103–14, vide, 104–5; also in Tharu and Lalitha, Women Writing in India, 1:344–45. 59. Primary sources: R. S. Subbalakshmi Ammal, ‘‘My Diary,’’ handwritten account from 1899 to 1935 (Tamil and English); Government of Madras (Educ), G.O. 504, June 4, 1913, Tamil Nadu Archives, Chennai (TNA); S. Chellammal, ‘‘Sister Subbalakshmi Ammal,’’ in Sister Subbalakshmi Ammal First Anniversary Commemoration Souvenir (Tamil; T. Nagar: Sarada Ladies Union, 1970), 50–53; Interview with S. Chellammal, 1987 at Madras; ‘‘Origin and Growth of Sri Sarada Ladies Union,’’ in Sister Subbalakshmi Ammal First Anniversary Commemoration Souvenir (T. Nagar: Sarada Ladies Union, 1970). 60. Secondary references: Monica Felton, A Child Widow’s Story (London: Gollancz, 1966); K. Krishnaveni, Sahodari Subbalakshmi (Tamil; Madras: Sarada Ladies Union, 1962); Kokila Sastri, ‘‘Sister R. S. Subbalakshmi,’’ in Women Pioneers in Education (Tamil Nadu), ed. T. M. Narayanaswamy Pillai (Madras: National Seminar on the Role of Women in Education in India, 1975); Raman, Getting Girls to School, 186–92; Raman, ‘‘Crossing Cultural Boundaries,’’ 131–48; Muthulakshmi Reddi, ‘‘Messages,’’ in Sister Subbalakshmi Ammal Souvenir (T. Nagar: Sarada Ladies Union, 1953), 29–32; Malathi Ramanathan, ‘‘Preface,’’ in Sister Subbalakshmi Ammal Birth Centenary Souvenir (T. Nagar: Sarada Ladies Union, 1986), 57–58; S. Chellammal, ‘‘Avar Oru Daivam’’ (She Was a Divine Person), in Sister Subbalakshmi Birth Centenary Souvenir (T. Nagar: Sarada Ladies Union, 1986), 1–4; Radha Sadasivan, ‘‘A Centenary Tribute: Sister Subbalakshmi Ammal,’’ Bhavan’s Journal 32, no. 24 (July 16–31, 1982): 21–23. 61. Raman, Getting Girls to School, 186–92. 62. Government of India, Census, 1911, Volume 12, Madras, part 1, 28. 63. Subbalakshmi Ammal, ‘‘My Diary,’’ entry dated September 27, 1910 on Ammukutty. 64. Ramanathan, ‘‘Preface.’’ 65. Interview with Rajeshwari Padmanabhan (Anuthama) in Madras on July 28, 1987; also Raman, Getting Girls to School, 191–92, 202 n. 181. 66. Interview with S. Chellammal, January 8, 1990; interview with Radha Sadasivan, November 30, 1989; interview with V. S. Shankar, December 16, 1989. 67. Nallamuthu Ramamurthi, ‘‘Messages,’’ in Souvenir Presented to Sister Subbalakshmi Ammal, November 29, 1953 (Madras: Sarada Ladies’ Union, 1953), 35–37; ‘‘Sister Subbalakshmi’s Talk on Compulsory Primary Education for Girls at the Indian Women’s Conference,’’ Stri Dharma 4, no. 1 (January 1921): 4; S. Chellammal, ‘‘Sister Subbalakshmi Ammal,’’ in Sister Subbalakshmi Ammal First Anniversary Commemoration Souvenir, 50–53.

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68. ‘‘Legislation on Child Marriage,’’ S. Muthulakshmi Reddi Correspondence, File no. 8, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi. 69. Tharu and Lalitha, Women Writing in India, 1:190. 70. Ibid., 190–202. 71. Ibid., 201–2. 72. Ibid., 256–43; Kumar, History of Doing, 38. 73. Tharu and Lalitha, Women Writing in India, 1:237. 74. Krupabai Sattianadhan, Kamala: The Story of a Hindu Life, ed., Chandani Lokuge (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), xiii–xv. 75. Krupabai Sattianadhan, ‘‘Saguna: A Story of Native Christian Life,’’ in Women Writing in India, ed. Tharu and Lalitha, 1:277–81. 76. Sattianadhan, Kamala, 57–87. 77. Sengupta, The Portrait of an Indian Woman, 41–43, 191–92; also Indian Ladies’ Magazine 2, no. 6–9 (January–April 1929). 78. Raman, Getting Girls to School, 210–13. 79. Raman, ‘‘Prescriptions for Gender Equality in South India,’’ 331–66; and Raman, ‘‘Crossing Cultural Boundaries,’’ 131–37. 80. Katherine Mayo, Mother India (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1927), 319–23; also Forbes, Women in Modern India, 85, 88, 108. 81. Sengupta, The Portrait of an Indian Woman, 179–81. 82. Ibid., 182–84. 83. Raman, Getting Girls to School, 130–31, 142; also Mathar Manoranjani 1, no. 7 (September 1899), and 3, no. 6 (August 1901); Tamil Mathu 1, no. 1 (April 13, 1905). 84. Vir Bharat Talwar, ‘‘Feminist Consciousness in Women’s Journals in Hindi, 1910–1920,’’ in Recasting Women, ed. Sangari and Vaid, 207–15. 85. Ali, The Emergence of Feminism among Indian Muslim Women, 24–25. 86. Ibid., 215. 87. Ibid., 25–26. 88. Ibid., 228–29. 89. Government of India, Hartog Committee Report, Review of Growth of Education in British India by the Auxiliary Committee Appointed by the Indian Statutory Commission, September 1929, 45, 145; Appendix, Fig. I. 90. Theosophical Society: ‘‘An Indian Lady,’’ ‘‘Girls’ Education,’’ read to the Mahila Parishad, Kanchipuram, in The Commonweal, vol. 1 (April 3, 1914), 267, Adyar: TS; Besant, ‘‘Address to Maharani Girls’ School’’; Besant, ‘‘An Appeal: Higher Education for Indian Girls’’; Besant, An Autobiography; Besant, Higher Education in India. 91. Government of India, Hartog Committee Report, Table 71, 147; Appendix. Fig. J. 92. Ray, Early Feminists of Colonial India, 1, 7–15. 93. Primary sources: Stri Dharma 3, no. 4 (December 1920); 5, no. 1–4 (January–December 1921); 7, no. 3 (January 1924); 8, no. 3–8 (January–June 1925); 11, no. 6–8 (April–June 1928); Women’s Indian Association, Annual Reports, 1927–1928, 1928–1929; WIA, ‘‘Demand for the Grant of the Vote Placed before Lord Chelmsford and Mr. Montagu by the Representatives of All India Women’s Deputation on December 18, 1917’’ with a photograph; WIA, ‘‘Franchise for Women: Views of Prominent Men’’ (pamphlet), 1918; WIA, Golden Jubilee Celebration: 1917–1967 (Adyar: WIA, 1967).

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94. Jayawardena, The White Woman’s Other Burden, 147–55, vide, 151. 95. ‘‘Goals of the Women’s Indian Association,’’ May 8, 1917, in WIA, Report of the Women’s Indian Association (Adyar, Madras: Theosophical Society Publishers, 1928). 96. Some secondary sources: Geraldine Forbes, ‘‘The Indian Women’s Movement: A Struggle for Women’s Rights or National Liberation?’’ in The Extended Family, ed. Minault; Gail Minault, ‘‘Introduction: The Extended Family’’; Manmohan Kaur, Role of Women in the Freedom Movement (1857–1947) (Delhi: Sterling, 1968); Shahida Lateef, ‘‘Indian Women’s Movement and National Development: An Overview,’’ in The Extended Family, ed. Minault; Lateef, Muslim Women in India; Vishwanath S. Naravane, Sarojini Naidu: Her Life, Work, and Poetry (1980; repr., Delhi: Orient Longman, 2001); Ramusack, ‘‘Catalysts or Helpers?’’ 97. Cousins, The Awakening of Indian Womanhood; James H. Cousins and Margaret Cousins, We Two Together (Madras: Ganesh, 1950); Margaret Cousins, ‘‘Women’s Indian Association: Summary of Women’s Suffrage Work in India,’’ letter to Annie Besant, June 4, 1919, Madras; Dorothy Jinarajadasa and Margaret Cousins, letter to Annie Besant, March 21, 1922. 98. Forbes, Women in Modern India, 78–83. 99. Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, Sharifa Hamid Ali, and Muthulakshmi Reddi, ‘‘Statement of the Elected Representatives of the All-India Women’s Conference, the Women’s Indian Association, and the National Council of Women in India, to the Joint Select Committee,’’ London, August 1, 1933, File no. 10 (Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi); joint letter to All-India Women’s Conference Papers, London, August 9, 1933, File no. 10 (NMML); Letter of Support for the Indian Women Suffrage Delegation from the British Commonwealth League, Women’s Freedom League, Six Point Group, St. Joan’s Social and Political Alliance, and Women’s International League, April 10, 1934, File no. 12 (NMML). 100. Cousins and Cousins, We Two Together, 370; also Ramusack, ‘‘Catalysts or Helpers?’’ 109–43, vide, 127. 101. Basu and Ray, Women’s Struggle, 70. 102. Reddi, My Experiences as a Legislator; Reddi, An Autobiography; Reddi, Presidential Address; Reddi: Why Should the Devadasi Institution in the Hindu Temples Be Abolished? Pamphlet, S. Muthulakshmi Reddi Papers, Files 7–12 (NMML). 103. Reddi, An Autobiography, 87. 104. The Hindu, November 17, 1931, as cited by Forbes, Women in Modern India, 107. 105. Basu and Ray, Women’s Struggle, 69–73. 106. Dorothy Jinarajadasa, Stri Dharma 8, no. 6 (1925): 82–83. 107. Muthulakshmi Reddi, letter to Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya, February 6, 1927, ‘‘S. Muthulakshmi Reddi Correspondence, 1925–53,’’ 1–8; also Indian National Social Conference, Madras Session, 1927, agenda pamphlet, signed by Muthulakshmi Reddi, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya, K. Natarajan, File no. 8. 108. Kumar, History of Doing, 71–72. 109. Muthulakshmi Reddi papers, ‘‘Resolution at the Public Meeting of the Hindu Women of Madras, April 7th, 1928,’’ File no. 7 (NMML); ‘‘Public Meeting Under the Auspices of the Sri Sarada Ladies’ Union, Women’s Indian Association, Indian Ladies’ Samaj, Women Graduates’ Union, and Mothers’ Union on July 28th,

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1928’’ in Madras, signed by Malathi Patwardhan, Mrs. Muzeruddin, Sister Subbalakshmi, Swarnam (Mrs. Paul) Appasamy, File no. 7 (NMML). 110. Basu and Ray, Women’s Struggle, 58–60. 111. Reena Nanda, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya: A Biography (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002), 33. 112. Forbes, Women in Modern India, 79. 113. Stri Dharma, ‘‘Madras Women’s Muslim Association,’’ April 1928, 49. 114. Government of India, Hartog Committee Report, 181–83. 115. Basu and Ray, Women’s Struggle, 59. 116. Ibid., 55–60. 117. Begam of Bhopal, ‘‘Presidential Address at the Second All-India Women’s Educational Conference,’’ February 7–10, 1928 at Delhi, in The Indian Social Reformer 38, no. 25 (February 18, 1928): 391. 118. Basu and Ray, Women’s Struggle, 85–87. 119. Gandhi’s writings: M. K. Gandhi, An Autobiography or My Experiments with Truth, translated from Gujarati by Mahadev Desai (1927; repr., Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1996); M. K. Gandhi, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 2 vols. (New Delhi: Government of India Publications Division, 1958); M. K. Gandhi, Hind Swaraj and Other Writings, ed. A. J. Parel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 120. Arun Gandhi, Sunanda Gandhi, and Carol Lynn Yellin, The Forgotten Woman: The Untold Story of Kastur Gandhi, Wife of Mahatma Gandhi (Arkansas: Zark Mountain Publishers, 1998). 121. Gandhi, An Autobiography, 174. 122. Ibid., 21. 123. M. K. Gandhi, ‘‘What Is Women’s Role?’’ February 12, 1940, in The Penguin Gandhi Reader, ed. Rudrangshu Mukherjee (New Delhi: Penguin India, 1993), 194. 124. Gandhi, An Autobiography, 172–73. 125. On his celibacy, see M. K. Gandhi, An Autobiography, 171–76; Erikson, Gandhi’s Truth, 192–95, 224; Gandhi, Gandhi, and Yellin, The Forgotten Woman, 138–40. 126. M. K. Gandhi, An Autobiography or My Experiments with Truth, 21. 127. Gandhi, Gandhi, and Yellin, The Forgotten Woman, 212–15, 221–27, 235–39, 241–43. 128. Gandhi, ‘‘What Is Women’s Role?’’ 194. 129. Thapar-Bjo¨rket, Women in the Indian National Movement, 109. 130. Ibid., 59–60. 131. Ibid., 65, 81, 100–101, 106–7. 132. M. K. Gandhi, Young India, March 26, 1918, cited by Thapar-Bjo¨rket, Women in the Indian National Movement, 79. 133. Forbes, Women in Modern India, 125, 127–28, 145–46, 229, 236. 134. Kumar, History of Doing, 63–64. 135. Raman, ‘‘Prescriptions for Gender Equality in South India,’’ 331–66; Raman, Getting Girls to School, 212–13, 227–40. 136. Reddi, My Experience as a Legislator; Reddi, An Autobiography. 137. Muthulakshmi Reddi, letters to M. K. Gandhi, July 31, 1927, and January 24, 1946, Muthulakshmi Reddi Papers (NMML).

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138. Reddi, An Autobiography, 110–12. 139. Kaur, Role of Women in the Freedom Movement, 236–38. 140. Durgabai Deshmukh, Stone That Speaketh: The Story of the Andhra Mahila Sabha (Hyderabad: Andhra Mahila Sabha, 1980). 141. Reddi, An Autobiography, 110–12. 142. Gupta, India’s 50 Most Illustrious Women, 11–18, 87–93; Forbes, Women in Modern India, 129, 205–7. 143. Gupta, India’s 50 Most Illustrious Women, 90–92. 144. Forbes, Women in Modern India, 129. 145. Gupta, India’s 50 Most Illustrious Women, 100–106. 146. Sarojini Naidu, Speeches and Writings; S. Naidu, The Bird of Time: Songs of Life, Death and the Spring, 5th ed. (1912; repr., London: William Heinemann, 1926); S. Naidu, Broken Wing: Songs of Love, Death, and Destiny (London: William Heinemann, 1917); Muthulakshmi Reddi, ‘‘Letter to Sarojini Naidu on Her Diamond Jubilee Celebration,’’ February 9, 1946, Muthulakshmi Reddi Correspondence, 1917–53 (NMML); Sarojini Naidu, ‘‘Bangle Sellers,’’ ‘‘The Temple, a Pilgrimage of Love,’’ and ‘‘Presidential Address at the Ahmedabad Students’ Conference,’’ in Tharu and Lalitha, Women Writing in India, 1:331–40. 147. Tara Ali Baig, Sarojini Naidu: Portrait of a Patriot (New Delhi: Congress Centenary Celebration Committee, 1985); Hasi Banerjee, Sarojini Naidu: The Traditional Feminist, University of Calcutta monograph #16 (Calcutta: K. P. Bagchi, 1998); Bipin Chandra, India’s Struggle for Independence, 2nd ed. (Delhi: Penguin, 1989); Partha Chatterjee, ‘‘The Nationalist Resolution of the Woman Question,’’ in Recasting Women, ed. Sangari and Vaid, 233–53; Neera Desai, Woman in Modern India (Bombay: Vora, 1977); Mukul C. Dey, Twenty Portraits (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink and Company, 1953); Forbes, ‘‘The Indian Women’s Movement,’’ 49–82; Sarla Jag Mohan, Remembering Sarojini Naidu (Delhi: Children’s Book Trust, 1978); Devaki Jain, Indian Women (Delhi: Government of India Publication Division, 1976); Kaur, Role of Women in the Freedom Movement; V. S. Navaratne, Sarojini Naidu: Her Life, Work and Poetry (Delhi: Orient Longman, 1980); G. Venkatachalam, My Contemporaries (Bangalore: Hosati Press, 1966). 148. Naidu, Speeches and Writings, 219. 149. Avvai Ashram, Adyar: 14th–15th Annual Report, 1943–44 & 1944–45; Avvai Home Completes Fifty Years: A Golden Centenary Souvenir (Adyar: Avvai Ashram, 1980); Avvai Home Silver Jubilee Souvenir, 1955; ‘‘Yengal Amma’’ (Our Mother), Avvai Home School Calendar, 1986–87; Government of India, (Home), Judicial, Part A, May 1905, nos. 130–44, ‘‘Legislating for the Protection of Minor Girls Found in the Custody of Women of Ill-Fame’’; Govt. of India, (Home), Jails, Part B, May 1918, nos. 7–8, ‘‘The Madras Children’s Bill’’; (Home), Jails Branch Proceedings, December 1920, nos. 35–36, ‘‘Madras Children’s Law,’’ no. 15, 63–66; (Home), Jails, December 1920, nos. 35–36, ‘‘The Madras Children’s Law’’; (Home), Judicial File 791, August 24, 1927, 1–4; (Home), Judicial File 791, 1927, 1–4, ‘‘Legislation to Prohibit Dedication of Girls at Temples as Devadasis’’; Government of Madras, (Educational), G.O. 504, June 4, 1913, ‘‘Brahmin Widows’ Hostel’’; Legislative Council Proceedings, v. 51 (July 1915–June 1916); v. 53 (July 1919–June 1920); v. I-A, No. 1 (July 1920–June 1921); Dorothy Jinarajadasa, ‘‘The Age of Consent Bill,’’ Stri Dharma (Adyar: Women’s Indian Association), 8, no. 6 (April 1925): 82–83; Margaret Cousins, ‘‘Children’s Protection Bill,’’

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Stri Dharma 8, no. 11 (September 1925): 129; Anon., ‘‘Social Evil in Madras,’’ Stri Dharma 8, no. 12 (October 1925): 130; Anon., ‘‘The Madras Muslim Ladies Association,’’ Stri Dharma 11, no. 6 (1928): 47; S. Bhagirathi Ammal, ‘‘Raising of the Marriage Age,’’ Stri Dharma 11, no. 6 (April 1928): 12–13; C. V. Vishwanatha Sastri, ‘‘The Child Marriage Bill,’’ Indian Social Reformer (Bombay), 38, no. 26 (February 1928): 407; K. Natarajan, ‘‘Haribilas Sarda’s Bill,’’ Indian Social Reformer 38, no. 31 (March 1928): 487–89; Kamala Sattianadhan, ‘‘The Society for the Protection of Children in Madras,’’ Indian Ladies’ Magazine 2, no. 7 (February 1929): 355–57; Kamala Sattianadhan, ‘‘Dr. Muthulakshmi’s Achievement,’’ Indian Ladies’ Magazine 2, no. 8 (March 1929): 447; Reddi, An Autobiography; Reddi, My Experience as a Legislator; Reddi, A Brief Autobiographical Sketch of Dr. (Mrs.) Muthulakshmi Reddi (Adyar: Avvai Home, 1957); Reddi, The Life of Dr. T. Sundara Reddi: The Story of a Dedicated Life (Madras: Shakti Karyalayam, 1949); and Madras Seva Sadan, Silver Jubilee Souvenir, 1953 (Madras: 1953). 150. Reddi, An Autobiography, 140–41, 145. 151. Muthulakshmi Reddi, letter to M. K. Gandhi, September 29, 1937, Adyar, Madras, Muthulakshmi Reddi Papers, File no. 11, Part I (NMML). 152. Basu and Ray, Women’s Struggle, 221. 153. Nanda, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya, 10–16. 154. Ibid., 33–39; Basu and Ray, Women’s Struggle, 19, 106–7, 221; Kumar, History of Doing, 55, 57–58. 155. Nanda, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya, 48–49. 156. Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya, Inner Recesses, Outer Spaces (New Delhi: Navrang Publications, 1986), 152–53; Forbes, Women in Modern India, 132. 157. Nanda, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya, 96–97. 158. Ibid., 114–20. 159. Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya, The Awakening of Indian Women (Madras: Everyman’s Press, 1939); K. Chattopadhyaya, Indian Women’s Battle for Freedom (New Delhi: Abinav Publications, 1983); Chattopadhyaya, Inner Recesses, Outer Spaces; K. Chattopadhyaya, At the Crossroads, collection of essays on socialism and other topics (Bombay: Yusuf Meherally and Nalanda Publications, 1947); K. Chattopadhyaya, Tribalism in India (New Delhi: Vikas, 1978); K. Chattopadhyaya, Carpets and Floor Coverings of India (New Delhi: Handicrafts Board, 1966); K. Chattopadhyaya, The Glory of Indian Handicrafts (New Delhi: Indian Book Co., 1976); K. Chattopadhyaya, Indian Embroidery (New Delhi: Wiley Eastern, 1977). 160. Ray, Early Feminists of India, 3–16; Kumar, History of Doing, 38–41. 161. Forbes, Women in Modern India, 123. 162. Gupta, India’s 50 Most Illustrious Women, 67–75. 163. Kumar, History of Doing, 46–47. 164. Thapar-Bjo¨rket, Women in the National Movement, 124–32. 165. Kumar, History of Doing, 86–87. 166. Ibid., 91. 167. Gupta, India’s 50 Most Illustrious Women, 80–87. 168. Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India (New York: The John Day Company, 1946), 29, 239–40, 265. 169. Kiran Devendra, Changing Status of Women in India (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1996), 43. 170. Basu and Ray, Women’s Struggle, 65.

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171. Sarvepalli Gopal, ed., Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, 2nd series (New Delhi: Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund, 1989), 8:296–300, vide, 299. 172. Menon and Bhasin, Borders and Boundaries, 21, 33–35. 173. Butalia, The Other Side of Silence, 83–86. 174. Ibid., 3–4. 175. Cited by Menon and Bhasin, Borders and Boundaries, 68. 176. Ibid., 69–71. 177. Butalia, The Other Side of Silence, 175–78. 178. Ibid., 179. 179. Menon and Bhasin, Borders and Boundaries, 148–58.

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5 CONCLUSION: WOMEN IN INDIA TODAY

Achieving gender equality is therefore not just women’s concern—it deeply concerns men. Bina Agarwal, economist1 IDEALS AND REALITIES India’s secular, democratic constitution is formulated on the principle of social justice for all. Its laws give women equal rights to property (1956) and prohibit dowry (1984), child labor (1987), and female feticide (1984), and its press is vigilant and relatively free. Indian women made notable strides in literacy by 2001 (53.7%) from the abysmal 7.30 percent at the end of colonial rule. This is especially significant as the population tripled, thus raising the number of literate women from 11.7 million (1951) to 255 million (2001).2 Other achievements include the appreciable drop in the fertility rate (1990: 4 children per woman; 2007: 2.7), as women wait longer to marry and to have children.3 Women of the expanding middle class have garnered high professional honors at home and abroad, although these benefits have not yet accrued fully to the lowest-caste and tribal women. A growing number contest and win elections to village councils (panchayats), provincial councils, and Parliament, while dissident women challenge corrupt officials and multinational corporations to change the power structure. Despite poverty and patriarchal traditions, women juggle family duties and work to be their own agents. They care for children and seniors at home, while bringing in an income as farmers, herders, weavers, craftswomen, teachers, doctors, scientists, pharmacists, lawyers, judges, administrators, bankers, businesswomen, nurses, soldiers, policewomen, computer technicians, tailors, artists, performers, shop assistants, and construction laborers.

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They maneuver village and urban streets on foot, bikes, scooters, buses, trams, and cars to reach these places of work. Many take up contractual jobs in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere abroad, thus ensuring the family’s prosperity, boosting India’s economy, and reshaping gender norms and ethnic identities. Erstwhile elite feminist associations have been penetrated by working-class leaders, and their societies have multiplied since 1970. Clearly, Indian women are productive agents today.4 Government welfare departments, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and some UN agencies have started cooperatives for marginalized women. One such is SEWA or help (Self-Employed Women’s Association) started by Ela Bhatt in Ahmedabad as a union for workers in bidi (local cigarette) and other small industries, and for self-employed vendors of vegetables and small products. Today, numerous SEWA branches across Gujarat offer women loans for small businesses, conduct classes to expand employment skills, and publish their activities in Shramshakti (Working Power) journal founded in 1989.5 Following the model of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, micro-credit banks in India give poor women loans to buy livestock, start small handicraft shops, repair homes, and acquire skills to earn a better living.6 The repayment rates are sometimes as high as 98 percent despite extensive female poverty.7 Indian micro-credit unions are run by NGOs and by government, examples of the latter being the Tamil Nadu Women’s Development Project and the Maharashtra Rural Credit Project. A small NGO microcredit bank is BISWA (Bharat Integrated Social Welfare Agency) in operation in Sambalpur, Orissa since 1984. By assisting women to educate their daughters or halt the sale of children into servitude, micro-credit banks stall the cycle of poverty and empower women.8 Despite such gains, gender equality remains elusive for many Indian women for complex reasons. These obstacles include entrenched patriarchal cultural norms; a residual colonial legal framework; persistent high-caste male domination in the bastions of power; electoral politics in a multiethnic nation; and commercial globalization that thrives on female and child labor, and reduces them to pawns for large corporations. Modernization is not always commensurate with progress, since moribund traditions do not all simply fade away but are often reinvented in the relentless drive for wealth and power. While there is broad consensus that women are more assertive, and that a democracy can be guided into promoting the disadvantaged, even such a state can be coercive under corrupt leaders, unless humane attitudes are assiduously cultivated and just laws duly enforced. In the crucial markers of sex ratio (933 females per 1000 males), literacy, nutrition, wages, and wealth, India’s gender anomalies are startling, and women walk a sedate two paces behind men, like the dutiful housewives of a bygone era.9 Although women are visible on rural paths and the Bollywood silver screen, in some conservative circles, the pardah threatens to make a comeback. The goddess of wisdom, Saraswati, beckons girls to

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schools that are passports to opportunity. However, female dropout rates are high, as girls perform many domestic chores or labor to augment the family income.10 Women have equal property rights, yet many daughters are denied their inheritance by male relatives, and many widows own property jointly with sons.11 Although the legal marriage age is 18 for women and 21 for men (1978), child marriage is common, thriving where female literacy is negligible, and infant mortality is high.12 Destitution sometimes drives parents to sell daughters into prostitution and children into bonded labor for the family to survive, making these a lurking threat for young working women.13 These poignant themes are encountered in daily life and portrayed in journals like Manushi and Economic and Political Weekly, and in regional films and literature.14 India’s 35 states and territories are diverse in culture, language, history, and governance by political party. Comparisons between Kerala and Uttar Pradesh reveal statistical links between female education, sex ratio, and infant mortality.15 This has led scholars like Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen to emphasize a holistic approach to female ‘‘well-being’’ and agency, which are shaped by many factors such as education, income, and property. In their absence, women suffer domestic violence, and the whole family is affected. Sen argues persuasively that gender inequality cannot therefore be simply dismissed as a ‘‘female problem,’’ when it jeopardizes the larger community and shakes India’s foundations of freedom and democracy.16 In view of these complex developments after 1947, this chapter is divided into four broad but interrelated sections, viz., survival (sex ratio, education, and employment); women in power (politics and laws); women as dissidents; and some notable women in the arts. SURVIVAL Sex Ratio and Violence to Women Statistics and studies now show that India’s population is growing at a slower pace, as women wait longer to marry and have children. The fertility rate (children per woman) has thus taken a significant dip (2007: 2.7; 1990: 4), and other favorable signs are the decline in maternal and infant mortality after 1970.17 However, the intelligentsia is alert to the problem of ‘‘missing women’’ in the population ever since the United Nations published its report Towards Equality (1974), which inaugurated the International Women’s Decade (1975–85). While praising elite women in India for their high educational honors, the report revealed that most ordinary women lagged far behind. It also revealed that India’s low sex ratio (females per 1000 males) had been plummeting since 1901. The Census of India 2001 gives these figures: 1901 (972); 1911 (962); 1921 (955); 1931 (950); 1941 (945); 1951 (946); 1961 (941); 1971 (930). Since the report, the census records indicate

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a slight rise in 1981 (934), but then a sharp slump in 1991 (927). Although it appears to improve in 2001 (933), it is actually 927 for infants less than six years. It is clear that girls are being aborted, despite a higher chance of survival at birth than boys.18 The declining sex ratio indicates a disturbing trend toward sex-selective abortion. Abortion was first legalized in 1971 (Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act) for humane reasons, namely to safeguard women after rape, if they are physically or mentally unfit to bear a child, or in other extreme circumstances, and in 1978, ultrasound and amniocentesis were introduced to detect fetal abnormalities. However, due to a growing number of female feticides, these modern technologies were soon legally prohibited except in extreme cases (Penal Code, sections 312 and 316). Ironically, in order to maintain their traditions of patriarchal descent and inheritance, some affluent urban families bribe local doctors or visit the United States to have these procedures. The sex ratio is now alarmingly askew in Daman and Diu (710 females/1000 males), Haryana (819), Chandigarh (777), and Delhi (821).19 Female feticide is also more common among those aspiring for social mobility, by emulating the misguided lifestyles of the wealthy. The sex ratio is higher in areas with some matrilineal traditions (e.g., Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Assam) and in small states like Goa (2003) where a recent law protects girls based on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.20 The sex ratio is lower in the north and west (Haryana, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, and Rajasthan). A comparison of Kerala and Uttar Pradesh reveals the links between female literacy, sex ratio, and the infant mortality. Kerala is home to more than one matrilineal community, and its former kings and queens invested in primary education, a thrust maintained by the Communist Party of India (CPI) whose political clout dates from 1952. Kerala has the highest female literacy (87.7%), the highest sex ratio (1028), and the lowest infant mortality rate in the nation. Uttar Pradesh on the Gangetic plain is home to a conservative Hindu and Muslim population, and it remains a major stronghold of the Congress Party, which has done little to help its women. Its record of female literacy (42.2%) and sex ratio (916) is among the lowest, while its infant mortality rate is four times higher than that of Kerala.21 The link between ‘‘missing women’’ and general ‘‘female well-being’’ was first brought out in 1992 by Amartya Sen in a medical journal. Since then, other scholars like Bina Agarwal have shown that women’s agency and equality cannot be dismissed as simply ‘‘female’’ issues, as they profoundly affect the community’s survival. Sen argues that a 75 percent female literacy will lead to a plummeting of child mortality rates. However, wealth alone does not guarantee a lower fertility rate or a higher sex ratio, as seen in wealthy Punjab and Haryana where birth rates are higher than in poorer southern states. Despite Punjab’s fair record in female literates, there is a substantial gap between literate men

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and women, and its sex ratio, especially in two districts, is among the lowest in the nation.22 Traditional gender inequity is being abetted by modern technology and commercialization. The tradition of bequeathing property to sons drives even educated parents to bribe doctors to abort girls.23 This defies the Constitutional guideline ‘‘to renounce practices derogatory to women’’ and to break the law against sex-selective amniocentesis. ‘‘Gender cleansing’’ Census of India 200125

India Daman & Diu Dadra & Nagar Haveli Haryana Delhi Chandigarh Andaman & Nicobar Punjab Sikkim Jammu & Kashmir Arunachal Pradesh Nagaland Uttaranchal Uttar Pradesh Madhya Pradesh Bihar Gujarat Goa Rajasthan Maharashtra West Bengal Assam Mizoram Jharkhand Tripura Lakshadweep Karnataka Himachal Pradesh Orissa Meghalaya Manipur Andhra Pradesh Tamil Nadu Chhattisgarh Pondicherry Kerala

Sex Ratio (Lowest to Highest)

Sex Ratio (0–6 Years)

933 710 812 819 821 845 846 876 875 892 893 900 908 916 919 919 920 920 921 922 934 935 935 941 948 948 965 968 972 972 974 978 987 989 1001 1058

927 926 979 861 868 777 957 798 964 941 964 964 962 898 932 942 883 938 909 913 960 965 964 965 966 959 946 896 953 973 957 961 942 975 967 960

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has insidiously crept even into Tamil Nadu whose Dravidian culture once exalted women. Tamil Nadu once had the second highest sex ratio in India (1991: 975), but this has now fallen (2001: 942).24 The Indian sex ratio in the 0–6-year range is noticeably lower in some urban states like Chandigarh and Delhi (see chart of sex ratio in each state). Domestic Violence Female feticide has also spread from the urban wealthy to the rural poor, thriving in the tradition of extravagant weddings for daughters and of lavish dowry gifts to the groom’s family. Dowry demands have grown with the commercial economy. In the earlier tradition, dowry consisted of jewelry, clothes, cash, and linen for the girl as stridhan, or personal property. In the modern era, the groom’s family now often demands real estate, an apartment, or a car as the price for their son. Such demands are illegal under India’s Dowry Prohibition Act (1961), which has been amended twice (1984, 1986). However, dowry continues to extract its toll of verbal and physical abuse of the bride, sometimes even death at the hands of the groom’s mother or father. Young brides were sent back to their natal family until they returned with a second dowry. As few could remarry with ease, they often became permanent dependents of their natal families; if they remained with the husband, violence was their lot. Newspaper reports of ‘‘bride burning’’ increased in the 1970s–80s, although the groom’s family whitewashed these as kitchen ‘‘accidents’’ or ‘‘self-immolations’’ using kerosene.26 Feminists publicized the cruel incidents through assistance groups like Nari Raksha Samiti (Women’s Protection Group), Mahila Dakshata Samiti (Society for Women as Gifts), and Stri Sangharsh (Women’s Welfare Organization) in Punjab, Maharashtra, Gujarat, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, and Karnataka. So common were these incidents that even leftwing politicians conceded that their party members were guilty. The deaths of young Shakuntala Arora and Tarvinder Kaur in north India thus led to outraged demonstrations by feminists and benign patriarchs until the perpetrators were arrested.27 Debates in the Lok Sabha (Parliamentary Lower House) in 1987 revealed that the dowry issue was the cause of at least half the reported cases of domestic violence. Domestic violence also occurs when women defied fathers and brothers who believed they defended her honor. In 1982, Kiran Singh, a Ph.D. zoology student at Patna University in Bihar, filed a petition in the Supreme Court charging her father with violence. This was reported in the journal Manushi. Although Kiran’s father was the university’s vice-chancellor, she claimed that he had taken away her fundamental rights for dating a Muslim student named Anwar Ahmad, and that he had coerced her friends. 28 Violence also takes more subtle, chronic forms due to poverty, as girl children are more likely to be undernourished, and marriage in adolescence

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takes its toll through early pregnancy and death. Early malnutrition also leads to physical and cognitive stunting with long-term effects during pregnancy, maternity, and old age. Its cross-generational effect is profound, as the children of malnourished women are often born underweight and remain so for years.29 However, a recent study (Rajasthan) shows that some poor parents strive to nourish their daughters before marriage, as young brides in a new home often face nutritional deprivation.30 Young brides can also be physically or verbally abused by in-laws for not conforming to gender roles (Maharashtra).31 As some ignorantly believe that a child’s sex depends on the mother, she can be abused at the birth of a girl child.32 A young bride’s lot improves with age and the birth of sons. It is best for a mother-in-law but worst for a propertyless widow, whose numbers are greater in the northern states.33 A serious health issue today is AIDS which affects over two million Indian women. Although only 1 percent of Indian men and women are affected by the HIV, India has the second largest population of those infected with HIV. Although once feared as a homosexual disease, it is clear now that heterosexual women and men are equally vulnerable to this virus. While it was probably introduced to wives after the husband frequented a brothel, only 1 percent of the sex workers actually carry the HIV. It is expected that in the near future, Indian women will comprise the majority of victims, and as this ignorance and fear accompany this epidemic, victims are sometimes shunned and refused treatment. In recent years, government and UN agencies have worked to educate the population and to curb the spread of this fatal disease.34 Education Girls’ schools were inadequate under the colonial government whose Hunter Educational Commission (1882) noted that female literacy was a low .02 percent. Conscious efforts by feminists and nationalist reformers raised it to 1.8 percent in 1921, but it was still just 7.3 percent in 1947. Independent India has improved primary school enrollment, but budget allocations remain low, and secondary school is not compulsory. In the first stage of national planning (1950–60), officials viewed women as welfare recipients. Between 1970 and 1980, planners addressed working women’s problems, and rates rose in 1981. The 1986 National Educational Policy specifically addressed enrollment and literacy (see chart). Literacy rates in India (%), 1947–200135 Year

Female

Male

1947 1961 1981 2001

7.3 15.3 28.5 53.7

22.6 40.4 53.5 76

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Women in India

Since 2001, girls’ primary school enrollment has risen, even in states with low female literacy rates like Rajasthan and Bihar. The National Literacy Mission has also percolated into rural areas where older women have been eager to learn. In 1997, female literacy rose significantly in Maharashtra after an aggressive drive to commemorate Savitribai Phule, the state’s first woman teacher. Most girls in Maharashtra now complete secondary school, and many urban dwellers send daughters to college.36 The chart reveals that female literacy is often higher in smaller states that are easier to administer Census 2001: Literacy rates (%) by state (from highest to lowest)37 State

Kerala Lakshadweep Mizoram Chandigarh Goa Andaman & Nicobar Delhi Pondicherry Maharashtra Himachal Pradesh Daman & Diu Tamil Nadu Tripura Punjab Nagaland Sikkim Uttaranchal West Bengal Meghalaya Karnataka Gujarat Manipur Haryana Assam Chhattisgarh Orissa Andhra Pradesh Madhya Pradesh Rajasthan Arunachal Pradesh Jammu & Kashmir Uttar Pradesh Dadra & Nagar Haveli Jharkhand Bihar

Female

Male

87.7 80.5 86.7 76.5 75.4 75.2 74.7 73.9 67 67.4 65.6 64.4 64.9 63.4 61.5 60.4 59.6 59.6 59.6 56.9 57.8 56.8 55.7 54.6 51.9 50.5 50.4 50.3 43.9 43.5 43 42.2 40.2 38.9 33.1

94.2 92.5 90.7 86.1 88.4 86.3 87.3 88.6 86 85.3 86.8 82.4 81 75.2 71.2 76 83.3 77 65.4 76.1 79.7 75 78.5 71.3 77.4 75.3 70.3 76.1 75.7 63.8 66.6 68.8 71.2 67.3 59.7

CONCLUSION: WOMEN IN INDIA TODAY

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like Lakshadweep islands and a city like Delhi. It is also true of Kerala with its history of educational commitment, former Portuguese or French colonies (Goa and Pondicherry), or tribal states (Mizoram). In states like Rajasthan with low female literacy, there is often a considerable disparity between the literacy rates of men and women (see chart). Literacy empowers women by increasing skills for better paying jobs and more voice in decisions on the family budget. Evidence shows that most women spend the household income on food, health, and education for boys and girls. If these allocations are met, the family’s chances of survival are greater in the leaner years. Educated women often have fewer children, and their energies are spent in other productive activities that generate income for the whole family. Educated women bring down infant mortality rates, and they are more receptive to ideas on conserving the environment. Girls fare better when state governments promote gender equality (e.g., in Kerala, Pondicherry, and Tamil Nadu).38 Some activists argue that ‘‘literacy by itself is meaningless’’ unless society is mobilized to appreciate women’s rights and to reject gender biases in nutrition, education, and employment. They point out that in Chandigarh, many women are literate, but the sex ratio is the worst in the nation, and many girls drop out of school. Government textbooks are also discriminatory, as they marginalize women’s contributions and diminish their selfesteem. This perpetuates some men’s stereotypes of women as useful largely for reproduction, and not productive enterprise.39 Yet it is patently clear that literacy leads to more educated women who are empowered to demand more rights. This reduces domestic violence, raises child survival rates, and ensures better nutrition for girl children. Educated women also make wiser choices on family expenditure and other decisions concerning sanitation, and this benefits the whole family.40 They also are better equipped to learn ecologically sound practices that improve the environment for the family and community. Today, primary and secondary education are within the reach of many women, and more girls are visible in schools. However, there still remains much to be achieved in terms of the content, standards, and affordability of textbooks, and whether schools can satisfy the expectations of ordinary women to an improved quality of life. Rural peasants often keep their daughters to care for the family, so that fewer girls finish school than boys. Literacy rates are far higher in cities and towns than in the rural areas, and since over 70 percent of India’s population is rural, the impact upon females is most significant. Employment As stated earlier, independence has witnessed a significant growth in literate women and in highly educated women who are professional teachers, lawyers, judges, doctors, news editors, and businesswomen. Yet, even in

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college, middle- and high-caste boys have the advantage, since a degree in science and technology is largely a male preserve, and over 72 percent of the girls are found in the arts. This means that girls potentially earn less, are more likely to be financially dependent on men, and are more likely to remain poor even with an education.41 Many highly qualified women scientists face a ‘‘glass ceiling,’’ as they are kept from attaining a faculty post in universities. The first women at Raman Research Institute, Bangalore faced restrictions from the founder Dr. C. V. Raman, a Nobel Laureate. Dr. Sunanda Bai completed her dissertation but was not given a Ph.D., and later committed suicide. However, Dr. Anna Mani went on to become Deputy DirectorGeneral, Indian Meteorological Department.42 Despite obstacles, many brilliant women today strategize in forums like Third World Organization of Women Scientists. A small sample of those in major institutions includes National Brain Research Center director Dr. Vijayalakshmi Ravindranath, and Dr. Shyamala Mani who researches stem cells; Dr. Kiran Majumdar Shaw, biotechnologist, founder of BIOCON; Dr. Maria Lisette D’Souza of the National Institute of Oceanography in Goa; theoretical physicist Dr. Sumati Surya at Raman Research Institute; Dr. Vineeta Bal of the National Institute of Immunology; Dr. Manju Sharma, Executive Director, Indian Institute of Advanced Research; and Dr. Shobhana Narasimhan at Jawaharlal Nehru Center for Advanced Scientific Research.43 Most women do not fall into this elite category, however, as they are either low skilled or unskilled workers who face discrimination in hiring and wage, and are harassed by male supervisors. These issues shape public perceptions of their work as insignificant, and they are rendered ‘‘invisible’’ in some records. This lowers women’s self-esteem, they demand less rights, and the cycle of discrimination is perpetuated.44 Often denied access to better paying jobs, girls and older women go into domestic service, and females constitute the bulk of such workers. One out of every three girls between the ages of six and eleven is outside school and at work, compared to the high rate of male school enrollment. Illiteracy also further marginalizes Dalits, low-caste Hindus, Christians, and Muslims. Women workers cannot be categorized easily as they perform a wide range of jobs, each with its own type of discrimination or abuse. Economic globalization has pushed unskilled girls and women into the informal sector as casual labor with lower wages, no job security, and long hours in hazardous conditions. More women have been pauperized by globalization than men, an affliction that is greater as they largely care for the family. Although laws dictate that certain industries establish cre`ches (Factories Act 1948, Mines Act 1952, Plantation Act 1957, and Labour Act 1970), other industries have escaped through legal loopholes. Thus, workers’ children play in the rubble near dangerous construction sites, although mothers nurse and other workers care for the babies while she is busy. Some women do piece work for cottage industries that are lauded as beneficial to the nation.

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However, most women, girls, and boys are paid trifles for their piece work, while profits accrue to rich intermediaries and corporations. In 2007, international corporations like GAP reported the semi-slavery conditions of child laborers.45 Gender inequalities have also heightened in the global market economy. Formal industries rely heavily on cheap female labor from the informal sector. Unskilled women often do not unionize, as they cannot easily find jobs in the formal sector. In the formal sector, gender labor divisions have widened, and discrimination is subtle.46 The benefits of industrial technology do not always filter down to women. Global demands have increased for Indian cloth made often in power loom mills. Women constitute around 40 percent of the workers in power loom mills, unlike their numbers in traditional mills and the cottage handloom industry. A study of the textile power loom industry in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu reveals that the women workers are more educated, younger, and fairly well trained before being inducted as mill weavers, winders, and reelers of thread. Immediately after independence, there were less gender divisions in labor in the mills and annual wage increases, and the state paid women three months leave at half wages after childbirth due to the Maternity Act.47 Yet, women’s voices are being heard through their unions, and there is a growing social acceptance of women as factory workers. Most scholars agree that mill workers are more empowered than those in the informal sector. Even in the domestic service industry marked by low wages and few rights, women are beginning to organize and receive publicity for their difficulties. Domestic service draws upon the pool of unskilled female labor, and although it appears to be set in a relatively benign environment, abuse and rape are commonly reported to social workers. Domestic workers are often expected to perform dangerous and difficult tasks, and to use hazardous cleaning agents without protection. Despite the law against child labor, young girls are often employed in such work, and they are easily exploited. Their protests gathered momentum in the 1980s when their first union was formed in Bombay and spread to Chennai, Patna, Varanasi, and Bangalore. In 2004, Karnataka became the first state to pass a minimum wage law. Two years later, 10,000 women domestic workers organized by Stree Jagruti Samiti (Society of Awakened Women) took out a prolonged national strike for better conditions.48 Most Indian women workers perform various agricultural functions. Yet, a mere 3–10 percent of the women own the land which they till and harvest, and this creates the public perception that they are not farmers, and certainly not as productive as men. This affects their bargaining power within the household and in public village panchayats. Women farm vegetables for the kitchen pot, which provide the nutrients necessary for subsistence families. Such kitchen gardens sustain the family during leaner years. Commercial cultivation is by men who are respected as farmers, since land titles are largely in their hands and as commercial crops fetch more income than

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women’s kitchen plots.49 Property ownership is necessary to emancipate women, but it also empowers the community. Thus, women’s economic power benefits everyone. Since the 1990s, some favorable changes have occurred, especially after government and NGOs have tried to ‘‘mainstream’’ women into development programs. Women’s voices are heard more loudly now in local councils, and they do not easily submit to pressure from the men. Indian women are now expanding their traditional role in vegetable farming to commercial agriculture which fetches a larger income, and this increases their bargaining power. In a comparable example, Bangladeshi women now often hold on to their rights to fish they raise in hatcheries, but they are willing to share ownership of ponds with men.50 WOMEN IN POWER Democratic Idealism and National Realities Democratic idealism was most evident in the two decades before independence. It appeared in the 1931 INC Resolution of the Fundamental Rights of Citizenship in India introduced by Jawaharlal Nehru at Karachi. This important document laid the groundwork for the free India’s Constitution (1950) by declaring a strong commitment to human rights and legal equality ‘‘irrespective of religion, caste, creed or sex.’’ Its goals were to prevent all forms of discrimination in public employment, to adopt universal adult suffrage, and to ensure women’s right to vote and to hold office. In addition, in 1939, when a National Planning Committee was created to prepare for independence to be headed by Nehru, he followed the AIWC recommendations by appointing a special Sub-Committee on Women to study their legal, social, political, and economic status. This Sub-Committee was authorized to examine familial and traditional constraints upon women, as well as legal deterrents to their education, employment, and full participation in national life.51 The Sub-Committee re-endorsed the Fundamental Rights of individual women, irrespective of marital status. It reminded the incipient state that women bore an unequal burden, and that it was the state’s responsibility to ensure female ‘‘equal status and equal opportunity’’ through laws against unjust practices and through local and other governing bodies. Emphasis was laid upon the special health needs of all females and the vulnerability of orphan girls to various kinds of exploitation. The document highlighted the contributions of women workers to the economy. It also emphasized that they needed equal wages, better cre`ches to remove anxiety over their children, and trade unions to protect them during economic slumps or from employers’ whims. Idealism is apparent in the discussions on women’s education and right to personal earnings, equal property, and status in the family.52

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Hindu Code Bill and Implications for Women In this era, many male nationalists lauded the contributions of ordinary women and of feminist organizations to freedom. However, there were growing expressions of different views on legal measures to guarantee women’s rights. After 1935, Indian members of the provincial and central legislatures began to introduce a number of separate bills to amend local customary laws on female property and divorce, and also the existing colonial Women’s Rights to Property Act (1937). By 1940, senior legislators were clear that a cohesive law was necessary to guarantee women’s rights to property and divorce. Based on recommendations by the AIWC, the Rau (Hindu Law) Committee was appointed in 1941 to consider an amendment to the existing law of 1937. However, the complexities in framing a new law and also the disruptions to legislative continuity caused by mass resignations during the Quit India Movement meant that these changes were shelved temporarily, and the 1937 law remained intact until independence. Although many AIWC feminists supported Gandhi and Nehru, the feminists disagreed among themselves and with some nationalists on how best to change colonial family laws on monogamy, property, and divorce. Gandhi’s noncooperation movement led many Indian legislators and officials to resign en masse, and this delayed the process of making legal changes to help women. Gandhi urged elite feminists to help their disadvantaged sisters and to take part in the nation’s struggle, but he also advised them not to engage in prolonged legal battles that were divisive and debilitating to the nation. Although respectful to Gandhi, Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, Hansa Mehta, and Durgabai Deshmukh openly dissented on this issue.53 Nehru advised patience, since his party was committed to women’s rights, and he would support them.54 One Indian who remained at his post as Law Minister was B. R. Ambedkar, a senior Dalit leader with ideological differences with Gandhi. However, as both Nehru and Ambedkar believed implicitly in a secular democracy, they agreed that a civil code was needed to guarantee women’s rights to property and divorce. Moreover, Nehru and Gandhi recognized that Ambedkar’s legal insights would be invaluable when framing the Constitution. After independence, the Constituent Assembly began to draft the Constitution and review changes in Hindu law. The feminists in this august assembly included Ammu Swaminathan, Hansa Mehta, Sucheta Kripalani, Vijayalakshmi Pandit, Sarojini Naidu, Purnima Banerjee, Begam Qudsia Aizaz Rasul, Malti Chowdhury, Kamala Chaudhuri, Durgabai Deshmukh, Begam Ikramullah, Dakshayani Velayudhan, and Lila Roy. 55 In 1949, debate accelerated on a Hindu Code Bill (HCB) whose important provisions included women’s right to paternal and family property, and to divorce. Although framed as a Hindu bill, its scope also included Sikhs, Buddhists, and Jainas. Both Nehru and Ambedkar had accepted the UN Charter of

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Women’s Rights (1946) and the AIWC’s own Charter of Women’s Rights and Duties (1946). Nehru stated, ‘‘I am personally anxious to do everything in my power to advance the cause of women in the country.’’56 In the opposite camp were powerful traditionalists like C. Rajagopalachari, first Indian governor-general (1947), and Rajendra Prasad, India’s first president (1950). In a letter to Nehru, Prasad voiced his view that social precept, not state law, should change attitudes to monogamy and women’s right to marital separation, since Hindu law already gave women right to property (stridhan).57 Other patriarchs in the Assembly and press threatened that the HCB would cause the dissolution of the Indian family because financial independence would make women spurn marriage and adopt permissive Western mores. Nehru’s declaration indicates that he agreed with Ambedkar on the principle of secular laws to guarantee women’s rights, but when facing the opposition of powerful men like Rajagopalachari and Prasad, Nehru procrastinated over the HCB, and Ambedkar resigned in protest.58 However, the Indian Constitution bears the unmistakable stamp of Ambedkar’s legal insights and Nehru’s statesmanship. The Constitution ushered in a democratic, secular republic on January 30, 1950, declaring justice, liberty, equality, and fraternity for all citizens; legal equality and suffrage irrespective of gender, sect, caste, or class; and the individual rights of women and men regardless of marital status. These aspirations are clearly stipulated in Part III (Fundamental Rights), Articles 14–16 and 23 (equality in law, of opportunity, employment, and prohibition of traffic in humans and forced labor); and Part IV, Article 29 (equal pay and freedom from exploitation), Article 42 (humane work conditions and maternity relief), and Article 44 (uniform civil code for all).59 A few years later, controversies over women rights were resolved when Parliament enacted the Hindu Marriage Act (1955) sanctioning female divorce and the Hindu Succession Act (1956) giving females equal shares in family property. These laws still operate today. Modern Indian family laws on women’s property, marriage, divorce, and maternal rights are based primarily upon elite interpretations of Hindu and Muslim legal texts, of which there were many schools. These were also shaped by British law, which were patriarchal, and by Victorian imperial attitudes. Indian paternalism was thus reinforced by English common law in which the father is the head of the family, and by Biblical strictures on adultery that penalized women for extramarital sex. In contrast, in India, unregistered marriages were once common, and sometimes even legally valid; a mother’s primary rights over her young child were recognized by many men; and matrilineal societies exalted the family matriarch. Yet, the Colonial Guardians and Wards Act of 1890, which still operates in independent India, requires the father’s permission if a mother considers it necessary for her child to have a medical procedure, to enter school, or to have a passport. On the one hand, ideas of gender equality are now written into the

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legal system, yet residual colonial laws on divorce are too stringent for a woman to escape, except in marital rape. However, as India is a signatory of the bilateral Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), a case can be taken to the UN court after having first explored legal avenues within India. This treaty has also led to some reforms in India on inheriting citizenship through the mother, but in the cases of women’s conflicts with religious authority, the power lies with religious clerks, and not the state.60 Despite the important law on women’s right to an equal share of family property, recent studies show that the reality is somewhat different. As few as 13 percent of the daughters and 51 percent of the widows actually get a share of the family estate, and nearly half the widows own this jointly with sons on whom they are effectively dependant. Sons can also disinherit the woman using their power in the village panchayat, which often rule for men. Matriliny in Kerala suffered due to colonial prejudice against the polyandrous Nayars, and it eroded further when the Communist Party’s Kerala Agrarian Bill (1957) redistributed land among the poor but effectively penalized Nayar women with property.61 Similarly, the HCB’s application to tribal (Adivasi) women has been challenged by the Jharkhand Nari Mukti Samiti (Women’s Freedom Forum of Jharkhand) and the Shramik Stri Mukti Sanghatana (Working Women’s Freedom Organization) in Shahada, Maharashtra.62 Women Politicians Soon after independence, elite women nationalists attained high-ranking appointments as central government ministers, governors of provinces, and emissaries to other nations. They were immediately granted the right to hold top executive and legislative posts, and this has continued as a feature of the Indian democracy. The first women in high political offices included AIWC feminist patriots like Sarojini Naidu (first governor of Uttar Pradesh), Rajkumari Amrit Kaur (first central minister for health), Hansa Mehta (UN Human Rights Commission), and Sharifa Hamid Ali (UN Commission on the Status of Women).63 Women patriots from influential families were recognized for their contributions, the foremost being Vijayalakshmi Pandit, India’s first emissary to the United Nations where she was elected as the first woman president of the General Assembly. In 1975, the aging matriarch came out of retirement to denounce the semi-dictatorial powers assumed by her niece Prime Minister Indira Gandhi (1917–84) under Emergency Rule (1975–77). As prime minister, Indira Gandhi was in office for two long terms (1966–77, 1980–84). Sometimes described as one of India’s most popular leaders, the high point of her regime was the assistance she provided to the Bangladesh freedom movement against West Pakistan’s military dictatorship in 1971.

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However, she also authorized an army raid of the Sikhs’ holiest shrine, the Golden Temple at Amritsar, Punjab, in which the militants inside were killed. Their martyrdom fueled a protracted struggle with Sikhs and led to her assassination in 1984. During the Emergency, she imprisoned political opponents without legal cause, yet democratically called for an election in which she was defeated. She also allowed her son Sanjiv to authorize the compulsory sterilizations of disadvantaged men, a move that retarded the family planning program through persuasion. Lauded abroad as a powerful Third World woman leader, Indira Gandhi’s gender neutral policies did not specifically help women’s causes. This is in contrast to the first woman legislator, Dr. Muthulakshmi Reddi, who used her short tenure (1927–28) to introduce numerous bills for women. Ironically, it was during Indira Gandhi’s regime that the United Nations published Towards Equality. The UN report lauded elite Indian women’s achievements but noted that other Indian women trailed in nutrition, education, employment, and the sharp plummet in a declining sex ratio. While Mrs. Gandhi was not responsible for these figures, neither did she pursue programs to rectify these problems. For generations, dominant men in the village assemblies or panchayats have silenced women who wish to speak on public issues.64 However, in central and provincial councils, this has not always been true. Women have contested elections, and they hold power as the wives, widows, mistresses, daughters, sisters, and heirs of male politicians. Indians believe implicitly in democracy, despite corruption and nepotism, and view elections as the vox populi. A vibrant vernacular language and English press quickly report scandals about corruption in the teeth of dangerous reprisals. The vast majority of women whose rights are tenuously held are not the women in power. Some women like Sheila Dixit, chief minister of Delhi, champion women’s causes, while others follow Indira Gandhi’s policies of downplaying gender and focusing on the economy or communal tensions that also interest male voters. Tamil Nadu’s former chief minister Jayalalitaa (All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, AIADMK) has bestowed upon herself the honorific of ‘‘Amma’’ (Mother) but rather resembles a quixotic stepmother. The former mistress of former chief minister M. G. Ramachandran, a flamboyant film idol, Jayalalitaa’s brand of fascist politics has kept her intermittently in power for over a decade. She has garnered millions, bullied recalcitrant bureaucrats, and used the media to denounce enemies but done virtually nothing for women. South Asians laud the dutiful wife and daughter-in-law, but widows are often disregarded. It is thus interesting that elite widows hold some of the highest offices in India. Sonia Gandhi was unwillingly inducted into politics after her husband Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, a son of Indira Gandhi, was assassinated. Sonia was chosen leader of the Congress Party, whose electoral successes in 2004 led to the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) coalition

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government. Although legally entitled to be India’s prime minister, she quickly ceded this posit to her next in command in Congress and remained behind the scenes in the party. Sushma Swaraj is the moral arbiter of the Hindu right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and also the wife of former Mizoram governor Swaraj Kaushal. Rabri Devi of Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) was three times chief minister of Bihar (1997–2005) and is the wife of Union Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav. Vasundhara Raje (BJP) was the chief minister of Rajasthan (2003–2008) and also the dutiful daughter-in-law of former rani Gayatri Devi of Jaipur. Pratibha Patil became the first woman president of India (2007), after serving as governor of Rajasthan, positions accruing from her loyalty to the Congress Party and Indira Gandhi’s family. One of the most colorful is Rabri Devi who uses a housewife’s efficiency to run Bihar. Rabri Devi is the wife of Lalu Prasad Yadav who was the chief minister into whose office she would rush at will, claiming her right as his ‘‘aurat’’ (wife). In 1997, Rabri Devi charmed voters with her homespun imagery, devotion to her husband, and maternal references to her nine children. Despite her rustic background, she is not easily manipulated, but when conscious of her deficiencies in finance or other areas, she appoints trained bureaucrats to guide her. She preaches the importance of less talk and more help to the poor, and appeals to women journalists by accusing male reporters of misguiding the world about India.65 Yet, Rabri Devi has done almost nothing to help Dalit women in her decade of power. Like the entrenched feudal attitudes in Madhya Pradesh, Bihar is marked by human rights violations against Dalits and tribals by caste landlords. Its sex ratio is one of India’s lowest (919), and its female literacy is the lowest (33.1%), with Dalit women lagging even further behind men. A controversial woman leader is Mayawati of the Bahujan Samaj Party of Uttar Pradesh. Mayawati provides a role model to other Dalit women and men as she has a college degree. Her political mentor was Kansi Ram who founded this party in 1984 to mobilize Dalits and poor Muslims against the high-caste politicians in the BJP and in most other parties.66 Despite the strength of her ideology, Mayawati’s two earlier stints as chief minister were marked by charges of corruption. In the ‘‘Taj Corridor’’ scandal, she stands accused of diverting huge sums meant for tourist purposes into her private coffers.67 After Kansi Ram’s death in 2006, Mayawati lit the funeral pyre claiming that she was his political heir, and that women had this final right just like men. After her landslide victory in 2007, she proclaimed her intention to adopt Buddhism like Ambedkar, the great Dalit leader. However, Mayawati’s political moves also include wooing voters from higher castes or accusing Gandhi of having divided Hindus and Muslims.68 To win votes, some women politicians assume traditional gender roles and pay lip service to morality (dharma). The moral arbiter of Hindu right-wing politics (Hindutva) is self-styled ascetic (sadhvi) Uma Bharati

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(BJP) of Madhya Pradesh. The Hindutva uses rhetoric laced with images of goddess Durga as Shakti (female power). Uma Bharati depicts herself as a champion of Hindu traditions, so that elite and middle-class voters regard her as a mortal shakti. Winning her first Parliamentary victory in 1989 from Bundelkhand, Uma Bharati kept this seat in three elections. However, she did not improve the state’s record of violence against women or its low sex ratio (919/1000), nor raise these issues in Parliament. Many BJP-run states like Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Uttar Pradesh have poor records on female literacy, violence, and female feticide, according to the National Family Health Survey (2007).69 The press reports that in these states, most court cases revolve around women’s shooting, torture, and rape, and subsequent suicide, and that police and officials are often complicit. The NGO network Samaan (Equal) raises awareness on this issue.70 Rajasthan is India’s largest state. The 2001 census records that it has the lowest female literacy (43.9%) that is far below the male (75%), and also a low sex ratio (921).71 However, a decade ago, conditions were far worse as female literacy was just 20.44 percent, with the district of Barmar registering 7.68 percent.72 Rajasthan’s desert region has meant less population density and less productivity than many states. Half the population is less than 20 years of age, child marriage is common, and the lurking threat of sati became a public nightmare when an 18-year-old widow named Roop Kanwar was cremated on her husband’s pyre. Roop Kanwar’s sati had little to do with spousal loyalty, as the couple did not live together for more than a few months. Rather, the spectacle was intended to revive Hindu Rajput identity and the state’s autonomy over the 1829 colonial-federal law banning sati.73 Roop Kanwar created a furor in the national press but sidetracked attention from feudal traditions oppressing peasants. Yet, after Vasundhara Raje’s landslide victory as chief minister in 2003, she attempted to showcase Rajasthan’s modernizing programs and some changes in its feudal attitudes to women. As the educated, royal daughterin-law of powerful Gayatri Devi (b. 1919), former Jaipur rani, Vasundhara’s programs benefit women. At the same time, she speaks patriotically of female ‘‘full honor’’ through literacy and its ‘‘empowerment’’ of women. She also lauds tribal resistance to colonialism and refers to the education of women weavers whose handicrafts are popular among foreign tourists.74 The press release extols newly established scores of maternity centers; 500 cre`ches (anganbadis) for rural working women; 35,000 women helpers at the cre`ches; 1,200 policewomen to protect women’s honor; and thousands of women’s self-help groups. Vasundhara is clearly fueled by the desire to remain in power by winning the votes of an expanded, educated female electorate and the subsequent boost from tourists. They have already garnered the state two UNESCO awards for combating illiteracy. Meanwhile, Gayatri Devi has taken up a crusade against violence against women, using her

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popular image of benign victim and defender, as she was incarcerated for opposing Indira Gandhi’s Emergency. Although misogyny has a stranglehold on Rajasthan, these two women leaders have tried to remedy some crucial problems of women. The Hindutva Right challenges the Constitutional premise of secularism and uses Hindu emblems to mobilize women into militant cadres like Durga Vahini in honor of the goddess and Rashtriya Swayamsevika Samiti (National Women’s Service League).75 A secular intelligentsia was shocked in 1989 at media portrayals of women who helped to demolish the sixteenth-century mosque known as Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh. In the ensuing communal clashes, Uma Bharati urged Hindu women to fight Muslims who opposed the construction of a new Rama temple at this site. The BJP ideologue is Sushma Swaraj whose middle-class, educated female followers are apparently liberated but are cultural reactionaries. Hindu and Muslim women are thus prominent both in religious and in secular politics, and are found as leaders of several parties. In contrast, Communist parties claiming to rise above religion have yet to produce notable women leaders.76 Hindutva appeals to a segment of conservative women, but many educated female voters vote for parties with broad-based programs for all women. Moreover, lower-caste rural Hindus are also known to forge alliances with poor Dalits, Muslims, and Christians. Women’s Reservation Bill Group representation is essential in a democracy, and women fall into the category of the underrepresented, especially those in rural India and also from the minorities or low castes. While women vote in large numbers in both provincial and central government elections, there have been relatively fewer women members of local councils, provincial assemblies, or Parliament. The custom of veiling, particularly in northern India, has restricted many Hindu and Muslim women from participating in village councils (panchayats). In the early 1980s, the main women’s organizations refused any move toward quotas in Parliament on the grounds that separate electorates would fragment Indian democracy. Instead, they suggested a 30 percent quota for women in the village panchayats where they had almost no voice, and possibly a special quota for Dalit and tribal women. They also requested regular elections for local councils as a path to later elected offices in the provincial and central legislatures. A local women’s movement in Maharashtra (1985) began to demand a female quota in panchayats, leading to political party debates on gender representation in local government. The next years saw a growth in all-women panchayats, e.g., in Bengal, and in 1993, a Parliamentary amendment guaranteed women a one-third representation in panchayats, once the preserve of high-caste men. The momentous act enabled women to make significant changes in

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local governance by working with various NGOs on programs to improve literacy, health, and sanitation for the whole community. The women learned to become more adept as public leaders, serving as role models for younger women.77 In 1988 the Draft National Perspective Plan introduced the idea of giving women a 30 percent quota in Parliament. Many women’s groups now supported Parliamentary quotas, and a new Women’s Reservation Bill was introduced in 1998 with some significant changes. Opposition came from some women who asked for higher quotas, since they formed half the population (ideally!), and from socialist and people’s parties, e.g., Samajwadi and RJD, whose leaders argue that quotas were needed for the poor, rather than for elite women. If the bill is ideally revised, women would contest open seats, there would be separate quotas for Dalits and underrepresented minorities, and men would be less threatened that they would lose their seats to women’s ‘‘reserved’’ seats. At present, just 8.3 percent of the seats in Parliament are held by women, far less than in Muslim Pakistan (21%), so that women’s quotas would bring India closer to the democratic ideal of proportional representation.78 In 2003, a revised Women’s Reservation Bill (WRB) was supported by the ruling BJP, although leaders Murli Manohar Joshi and L. K. Advani have shown scant respect for women.79 Congress leaders support the WRB and have made it clear after their victory in 2005 when they formed UPA coalition government. Sushma Swaraj took the opportunity to blame Congress leadership and Sonia Gandhi for the bill’s impasse at a BJP women’s convention titled Matrushakti (Mother Strength). However, the impasse is due to opposition from leftist parties in the UPA, while some male legislators are apprehensive over women holding 33 percent of Parliamentary seats.80 Mohini Giri, chairperson for the National Commission for Women, spoke at an interview of the need to expand women legislators in all councils and described panchayat women leaders’ plans to improve water, sanitation, and electricity facilities in the villages. WOMEN DISSIDENTS Class and Gender In the late 1960s, class and gender struggles for justice began to converge, and there brewed a simmering discontent due to high food prices, a doldrums economy, droughts, and famines. A marginalized peasant population created the platform for the CPI’s new wing, the CPI-ML (Marxist-Leninist), with a Maoist ideology of rural insurrection. The CPI often mobilized urban working women in street demonstrations against price hikes, poor wages, and liquor consumption among working men.81 The CPI-ML organized peasant associations (kisan sabhas), inspired by a violent revolt in Naxalbari district of Bengal, where the leaders were peasants, and there was a militant

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women’s wing. In Telegana, Andhra Pradesh, a festering movement against upper-caste landlords erupted in the 1970s, and women were again trained to use rifles. In the context of drought and forest encroachments in Shahada, Maharashtra, tribal Bhil women took up arms against oppressive landlords.82 In response to agrarian crises, Vinobha Bhave, a respected Gandhian, appealed to the rich to donate viable land to the poor (Bhoodan movement), but such land was often arid and rocky.83 Bhave undertook fasts with Mira Behn (Madeleine Slade), another Gandhian, but the crisis escalated. Oppressed peasant movements often had a militant female cadre demanding a minimum wage, Food for Work programs, forest rights, water, and fuel. Although they were rarely supported by middle-caste/class women, feminist groups were also shaken by the searing discontent among low castes, laborers, and various minorities.84 Their newspapers reported urban, middle-class women’s problems such as the ‘‘dowry murders’’ often whitewashed as ‘‘accidental’’ deaths of young women in kitchen fires when the groom’s family was dissatisfied with the girl’s dowry. Although these reflected a raging undercurrent of misogyny, working women’s problems eclipsed the scale and magnitude of dowry deaths. Meanwhile, in the late 1970s, newspapers also described escalating communal tensions due to minority anxieties over identity and status, and issues like sexual taunts (‘‘eve teasing’’) in city streets across northern India. However, most rapes occur nearer the home and by men known to the woman or girl. More serious were rapes by police and other state officials when the woman was held in custody over an alleged offence. Police were known to single out women for rape as a warning to others who protested against uniformed authority. One of the brutal incidents of police rape occurred in December 1978 at the village of Beldhia, Bihar as a reprisal against tribals who decided to farm land that belonged to a wealthy merchant. That night, some two hundred Central Reserve and Bihar Police forces surrounded and attacked the sleeping villagers and gang-raped girls and women.85 The Hindi poem Ballad of Budhini (1988) tells another tale of police terror in a village in Madhya Pradesh, where fears of molestation led women to suffer thirst in the grueling summer, rather than to walk to the well.86 In Jharkhand in 1979, Santhal women were raped after protesting against high-caste takeover of tribal land and forced labor. Feminists were divided on how to resolve these serious problems affecting women in various cadres of society. Left-wing feminists believed these incidents preceded a revolutionary class upheaval that would bring benefits to all women. Other feminists charged all politicians, including the leftists, of paying scant attention to violence against women and of subsuming gender issues under the umbrella of minority rights. It is now clear that gender and class are not mutually exclusive categories, and that women’s issues need to be addressed specifically on their own merit, but also within the separate contexts of sect, caste, class, and ethnicity in India.

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The issue of rape as assault brought many women activists together, as it is one of the most underreported types of violence, and it often accompanies a political struggle. In the 1970s–80s, ordinary women took to the streets of Bombay, Mathura, Patna, Delhi, and Bangalore to demonstrate against police rape. Their protests compelled the new feminists to demand that policemen be retried if earlier charges had been dismissed too easily. Communal tensions are not simply a result of religio-cultural differences, but they are due to perceived grievances over the distribution of economic benefits or the political power. This fact has been proven repeatedly after Partition in 1947; in the 1990’s rapes of Tamil Dalit women by higher-caste tevar men who resented government benefits to Dalits;87 in Gujarat where the BJP condoned the gang-rape of hundreds of Muslim women (2002); in the Narmada dam controversy over displacements of low-caste and tribal groups;88 and at Nandigram, Bengal (2007) where police assaulted protestors against the privatization of tribal lands. Environmental Struggles Chipko Movement In contrast to Naxalite rebellions in Bengal and Andhra, and tribal women’s violent protests in Shahada, tribal women led peaceful protests during the Chipko Movement in Tehri Gahrwal (1970s). When loggers encroached on tribal forest preserves in these Himalayan foothills, women obstructed them by clinging (chipko) to huge ash and pine trees. The protestors had almost no political power, while the loggers represented the might of wealthy companies and the state. The Chipko Movement began with the demonstration by 10,000 working women against liquor vendors who supplied men with drink in the town. Male alcoholism depleted small family incomes and led often to rape, assault, and burning when women resisted men’s advances. Chipko women organized patrol squads to ferret out distillers, tied them to buffalo poles, and gave evidence against them in the local court.89 Discontent had also been brewing ever since the colonial government established a Forestry Department to provide timber for railway carriages and sleepers. After 1960, the Indian government began to intrude further in tribal lands, although its rhetoric included a claim to protect forests and their inhabitants. The government also sanctioned logging by outside contractors for whom roads were built into the forests, and this eroded the fragile soil around trees. Diminishing patterns of rainfall caused huge fires, which the local people refused to help extinguish as they felt that their way of life was being threatened.90 In the ensuing drought, women continued in the customary manner to collect water and fuel for the household, but the walks became longer and more arduous. They often worked for 14 hours a day in these and other chores, returning in the evening to light the kitchen

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fires with insufficient fuel. Their caloric expenditure far exceeded their intake, especially as women ate after feeding the family. Women’s health was thus severely compromised, and in these decades, half the women of India fell below the poverty line.91 Although government laid faucets in central areas, water was siphoned off by the road contractors, and few women had access to these taps.92 Tribal women began the struggle to protect the forests from loggers, although the movement was later shaped by Sunderlal Bahuguna and Chandi Prasad Bhatt, two followers of Gandhi. They described how they drew inspiration from the women’s commitment to preserving the forests. In Gopeswar town in 1973 and 1975, women and men resisted contractors who felled ash trees to make sporting goods. Women then dressed the axe ‘‘wounds’’ with mud and sacking, and bemoaned the hurt to the ancient pine trees. In Almora, women peacefully obstructed soapstone mining contractors who cut across their fields to reach the mines. When contractors tried to stifle women’s protests by stoning their homes, burning children, and bribing men, the women took their case to court and revealed their damage to the magistrate. When the contractors realized its extent, they pleaded guilty, and the women won their case.93 Narmada Bachao Andolan and Medha Patkar While these struggles in the 1970s were marked by at least a modicum of government interest in social welfare, these benign interests have been sacrificed by its commitment to a market economy since the 1990s. Not all tribal protests have been nearly as successful as the Chipko, as seen in the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) or Movement to Protect the Narmada. This is led by humanitarians who wish to protect tribal villages from government dams (35 large, 135 medium, and 3,000 small) to be built across the Narmada river in western India. The project is the largest in the world, and government argues that it would ‘‘develop’’ India by bringing electricity and other modern benefits. The opponents argue that this huge project would flood low-caste and tribal villages, disturb the water tables, and have profound environmental results. The chief spokeswoman for the NBA is Medha Patkar (b. 1954), a believer in Gandhian nonviolent resistance, who also heads the National Alliance of People’s Movements. When she first learned in the 1980s that the dams would evacuate 100,000 tribal Adivasis, she began to live among them and alerted them about the effects of large dams. When NBA members voiced protests to government officials, they were threatened. More than 35,000 poor Dalits and tribals have already been displaced, and many have not received compensation for having vacated their ancient villages. The NBA work of publicizing these issues led the World Bank to conduct an independent review before sanctioning further loans. The World Bank report

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first criticized the dam proposal as being poorly conceived. Medha Patkar and the NBA also appealed to the Supreme Court to stop construction of the huge Sardar Sarovar Dam, while displaced tribals conducted their protests. The Supreme Court later ordered construction to proceed, and the World Bank has also now resumed its loan agreement. However, Medha continues to fast and conduct ‘‘monsoon satyagrahas’’ on the banks of a rising Narmada in order to demonstrate how its flood waters could engulf thousands.94 Her life is now legendary, since she is a courageous individual defending the poor against corporate and state power.95 Medha Patkar herself appears unfazed by failures, and she relies on two tactics that have sustained her movement. The first is struggle (sangarsh), which has resulted in considerable international publicity for this cause. The second is constructive work (nirman) through which she helps villagers to discover the best ecological methods to conserve soil and water in their region. Patkar’s numerous awards include the Mahatma Phule Award (India), the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize, and the Human Rights Defender Award (Amnesty International). Women in Other Struggles In December 2007, three women received awards for fighting battles against corporations for polluting the environment and exploiting Indian workers. The first was Mukta Jodia, an Adivasi from Rayagad, Orissa who received the Chingari Award for Women Against Corporate Crime. She and her fellow tribeswomen consistently waged a battle for traditional usufruct rights to forest products and to fair wages as workers in companies that mined bauxite in the forests. Rasheeda Bee and Champa Devi were two women who received the Goldman Environmental Prize for their fight for adequate compensation from Union Carbide Corporation at whose factory in Bhopal over 3,000 people died and others maimed in 1984. Union Carbide was a subsidiary of Dow Chemical (U.S.), and this industrial disaster is one of the worst in the world.96 Corporate negligence led to poisonous methyl isocyanate leaks, but the company refused to bear its full responsibility. When India charged CEO Warren Anderson with manslaughter, he conveniently escaped to the United States where the case was tried. Although Union Carbide paid some damages, the charges were diluted considerably. NOTABLE WOMEN IN THE ARTS It is impossible to do justice to all the numerous and extraordinary women writers, artists, musicians, and dancers in independent India, so this brief section confines itself to a few in each category. Among the writers, Arundhati Roy (b. 1961) is one of the most articulate champions of the weak. Arundhati Roy is an impassioned supporter of Medha Patkar’s struggle against dams on

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the Narmada, and she has given this international publicity through her writings, speeches, and media presentations. Born to a Kerala mother and a Bengali father, Arundhati Roy is an architect who had written two film scripts before her English novel, The God of Small Things (1997), which won the Commonwealth Booker Prize.97 Her phenomenal success from the prize and the sale of her book, which has been translated into numerous languages, has enabled Arundhati Roy to pick up her pen for social justice. Her searing, forthright prose exposes misanthropic governments that wage war for profit, and multinational corporations that sacrifice the weak.98 Her first article, ‘‘Lies, Dam Lies and Statistics’’ (1999), called attention to the human toll of big dams (50 million Adivasis and Dalits). Her other works include The Algebra of Infinite Justice (2001) and An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire (2006). In 2002, she was imprisoned for a day for challenging the Supreme Court’s order to resume construction of the Narmada dams.99 In 2004, Arundhati Roy received the Sydney Peace Prize at Australia. Another writer in English is the prolific Anita Desai (b. 1937), whose canvas is largely one of fiction. Anita Desai has published at least 12 volumes of novels, short stories, and poetry, and has taught at universities in Delhi and the United States. She has received awards like the Padma Shri from India, the Guardian Prize for Children’s Fiction, and the Taraknath Award.100 Many women authors have also produced some splendid works in regional languages, some of which have been retrieved and translated by scholars. Mahasweta Devi (b. 1926) has written over a hundred Bengali novels and short stories on the oppression of women, Adivasis, and Dalits who are trapped by feudal landlords who conspire with high-caste bureaucrats in the climate of droughts and famines in the 1970s.101 Mahasweta Devi’s initial fascination for literary composition soon graduated to literature as activism. In ‘‘Witch Hunt,’’ she describes the panic caused by a tribal Oraon woman who predicts famine in a village. ‘‘Paddy Seeds’’ concerns the devious revenge taken by a powerless Dalit upon a merciless landlord. ‘‘Dhowli’’ is a poignant story about a Dalit woman’s love affair with a brahman man whose family will not allow their marriage.102 Mahasweta Devi received the national Padma Shri (1986) and the prestigious Jnanpith (1996) awards for her literary contributions. Mahadevi Verma (1907–87) is widely regarded as one of the greatest writers of Hindi poetry in the twentieth century. Mahadevi Verma received her education at home due to liberal parents who encouraged her literary and artistic talents. A devout woman of compassion, Mahadevi Verma was inspired by Gandhi to become an advocate of women’s liberation. She served this cause through the Prayag Mahila Vidhyapith (Allahabad Women’s Educational Institution). She used to host Hindi poetry festivals, even as she published five volumes of poetry and others of prose. Her essays on women’s liberation were compiled in Shrnkhla Ki Kadiyaan (Chains of Subjugation), and her paintings appeared in her poetry collection, Sandhyageet (Evening Songs). She used the

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proceeds of her Padma Bhushan and Jnanpith awards to support aspiring writers.103 Women write most often in the regional languages, and these few examples of those that have been translated represent a small tip of a vast iceberg available in English translations. The Urdu short stories of Ismat Chugtai (d. 1991) depict middle-class Muslim family life, its suppressions and emotional opportunities. This is visible in ‘‘The Quilt,’’ a subtle short story describing a young girl’s humorous discovery of a lesbian relationship between a mistress and a servant.104 ‘‘Anil’’ (Squirrel) by the Tamil author Ambai (C. S. Lakshmi) is a reflective journey into how women write their life stories. Vaasanthi’s recent work ‘‘Birthright’’ on female feticide is an ironic story of a woman doctor who aborts girls out of her fury at misogyny.105 Its compelling translation into English is by Vasantha Surya, a seasoned poet with volumes of her own poetry collections and a translator from Tamil, Hindi, and even German.106 The Kannada author Veena Shanteswar wrote ‘‘Avala Svatantrya’’ (Her Independence) to explore how and if women were yet free in India. A discussion of painters must include Amrita Sher-Gil (1913–41), an innovative but short-lived artist. Born to a Hungarian mother and a Sikh father, her European upbringing and marriage left her with little curiosity about Indian culture or its independence movement. Poverty merely provided her with an opportunity to paint people whom she described as ‘‘strangely beautiful in their ugliness.’’ These shortcomings can be partly understood by the fact that she died at 29 and thus never arrived to a philosophical middle age. She hardly had time to explore her own vibrant, original talent. Yet, Amrita Sher-Gil painted and sketched landscapes, monuments, and portraits with lyrical melancholy, as seen in ‘‘Hill Men,’’ ‘‘Hill Women,’’ ‘‘Mother India,’’ and ‘‘The Beggars.’’ The profusion and scope of her paintings attest to her great talent, so that India’s government has declared them to be National Treasures. In music, dance, film, and theater, there continue to be a stream of extraordinary women performers. If earlier reformers had viewed women performers derogatively as devadasis or ‘‘nautch’’ girls, the national movement also led to a growing pride in Indian cultural traditions that helped to legitimize their art. A growing film world absorbed and glamorized musicians, actresses, and dancers, so that erstwhile devadasis merged into the general population. In south India, the community assumed the caste name of isai vellalas (musicians), and their dance traditions were elevated under the title of classical Bharata Natyam. Bharata Natyam luminaries include Theosophist Rukmini Arundale who reshaped its format and styles; Balasaraswati, a genius in dance emotive expression (abhinaya); Kamala Lakshman who made it dramatic; and Padma Subrahmanyam who researched temple sculptural depictions of dancers. In north India, Muslim and Hindu Kathak dancers reinvigorated a court dance, a famous danseuse being Sitara Devi.

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Other famous dancers like Yamini Krishnamurthy and Mallika Sarabhai strengthened the Kuchipudi dance of Orissa, while Sanjukta Panigrahi and Sonal Mansingh brought innovations to Odissi. The wide popularity of regional films incorporated folk traditions, e.g., koratthi dances in Tamil cinema and Bhojpuri group dances on the Hindi screen (Bollywood). A unique south Indian (Karnatak) classical musician was M. S. Subbulakshmi (1916–2004), whom Nehru described as the ‘‘Nightingale of India.’’ Subbulakshmi’s golden voice haunted audiences from her first performance at the age of six and her first record at the age of ten. Born in Madurai, Tamil Nadu near the great temple to goddess Meenakshi Amman, she and her siblings were raised in a household dedicated to music. Her mother was gifted veena instrumentalist Shammukhavadivu of the community of musicians (isai vellalas), and her father was a brahman lawyer. Subbulakshmi’s extraordinary gifts soon led to extensive training in Karnatak music. She later studied with a seasoned guru in north Indian (Hindustani) classical music, enabling her to sing its ragas (melodic arrangements) with subtle understanding. Subbulakshmi’s rendering of bhakti hymns by woman saint Mira and the Gujarati Narsinh Mehta profoundly touched Gandhi. Upon his assassination, the nation mourned as she sang his favorite hymn on religious unity. Subbulakshmi also sang in other Indian languages at the UN General Assembly, as an ardent believer in peace among all nations. M. S. Subbulakshmi was married to Thyagarajan Sadasivam, a prominent journalist and INC nationalist. Subbulakshmi lived serenely immersed in music in Chennai until her death. Other legendary women Karnatak music singers include D. K. Pattammal and Vasantha Kumari. In north India, one of the most powerful women singers was Begam Akhtar (1910–73). Begam Akhtar set the benchmark for the performance of Urdu ghazals set to the musical form of thumri. Born in Faizabad, Uttar Pradesh to a professional woman singer of moderate means, Begam Akhtar learned to play the folk dholak drum as a girl of six. After training under venerable ustads (scholarly virtuosos), she gave her first performance at the age of 15. Begam Akhtar’s powerful voice and her aesthetic musical renditions of the ghazal soon earned her fame. She also began to sing for films after 1930, as ghazals are ideally suited for romantic themes. She also performed in the affluent courts of the erstwhile royalty of India, and she came to be known as the Queen of the Ghazal (Mallika-e-Ghazal). She was posthumously awarded the national Padma Bhushan award, and in 1996, a stamp was issued portraying her face.107 Other northern Indian women classicists are Gangubai Hangal, Girija Devi, and Prabha Atre. In the field of film music, mention must be made of Lata Mangeshkar (b. 1929) whose legendary voice has been the most significant influence upon women singers of the Hindi cinema. Her singing career spans six decades and includes some 30,000 songs in many languages.108 Raised in a family of theatrical singers, Lata and her siblings like Asha Bhonsle quickly took

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to the lessons in light music imparted by their father, which were strengthened by lessons in classical music, especially after her singing debut in a Marathi film in 1942. She acted in some films for a decade, but her magic lies in her voice which has retained its innocent quality. Her greatest hits occurred after 1950, when her repertoire included Urdu ghazals and trendy songs. Famous singer Noor Jehan predicted that the phenomenal Lata would overtake her own popularity. Often called the Melody Queen, Lata Mangeshkar received both the Padma Bhushan and the Padma Vibhushan awards, and numerous minor awards. The Indian film screen has provided thoughtful artistes with the opportunity to explore their personal talents and to expose injustice of various sorts. The best films depict women as victims, as well as agents unfazed by overwhelming odds. For example, in Mother India (1950), Nargis acts as a long-suffering, rural housewife, and this served as a metaphor for the nation and its women. In the Hindi art film Ankur (1974), Shabana Azmi gave a stellar performance as a low-caste woman who triumphs over a predatory landlord. In Satyajit Ray’s Ghare Bhaire (1984), a cinematic masterpiece based on Tagore’s story, Swatilekha Chatterjee is a woman whose new explorations into freedom turn into tragedy. In the popular Hindi film Aradhana (1961), actress Sharmila Tagore became an irate mother defending her son. A merged metaphor connects her to both goddess Durga who conquers male lust and sacrificial Sita whose virtue is her own reward. Two women directors have produced significant award-winning films. Mira Nair’s Salaam Bombay portrays prostitutes who are essentially purer within than the men who frequent them. Deepa Mehta uncovers thick veils of misogyny and homophobia in Fire (1996), Earth (1999), and Water (2000). CONCLUSION This chapter concludes a two-volume history of women in India from its beginnings to the present era. Its focus has been on society, culture, and religion as framed by economic and political systems, and it attempts to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of this civilization. It is impossible to narrate the stories of Indian women without placing them in their historical contexts. Early Indian women’s rights appear to have lessened over the millennia with each successive wave of immigration and settlement on the subcontinent. A simple reliance on male texts to tell the multiple feminine stories may lead us into the false impression of women’s powerlessness in each phase of India’s history. Although regional governments and institutions were dominated by elite men, women enjoyed both domestic and local authority in communities outside the mainstream. India’s geographical and social complexities gave opportunities to wield certain types of power, in certain spaces and in certain times. However, during crises, women were compelled to bear the brunt of misogynist laws. Thus, during wars and

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invasions, patriarchal rules were enforced more stringently upon women whose sexual vulnerability was exploited through rape, child marriage, widowhood, and sati. Despite these constraints, Indian women managed to rule kingdoms, either by occupying the throne or from behind the scenes as advisors. They used wealth often for philanthropy, as well as for art. They have produced an enormous corpus of regional language literature. They have farmed, crafted, and sustained their families, done math, supported men in their endeavors, and are rewarded through respect as virtuous mothers and wives. They have often been agents of destinies circumscribed by men, but their writings show that they did not regard themselves completely as victims. In the past century, women’s social roles have expanded greatly, and they are now vocal and dissident when necessary. However, as modernity is accompanied by new forms of exploitation, they need to strengthen the legal institutions that protect them. The pitfalls include the Internet that can prey on girls and women, international corporations enriched through cheap labor, and governments that wage wars using a profitable arms industry. These prevent all Indian women from farming and industry, writing and artistry, feeding and nurturing families, healing and researching illnesses, and governing society in a peaceful, humane manner. NOTES 1. Agarwal, ‘‘The Idea of Gender Equality,’’ 36–65, vide, 36. 2. Government of India, Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, Census 2001, Series 1, India, vol. 4 (Primary Census Abstract, and Total Population Table A-5), vol. 9 (Report and Tables on Age C-14), New Delhi: Controller of Publications, 2003. See also Government of India National Portal at http:// www.india.gov.in/knowindia/literacy.php; National Literacy Movement in India, ‘‘Female Literacy in India,’’ with Census 2001 statistical tables at http:// www.nlm.nic.in/women.htm; Azad India Foundation, ‘‘Literacy in India,’’ at http:// azadindia.org/social-issues/literacy-in-india.html; and Victoria A. Velkoff, ‘‘Women’s Education in India,’’ U.S. Department of Commerce, Economics and Statistics Administration, Bureau of the Census, International Programs Center, October 1998, 1–5, at http://www.census.gov/ipc/prod/wid-9801.pdf. 3. Government of India updated information on the sex ratio has been cited by researchers from United Nations International Children’s Educational Fund at http:// www.unicef.org/india/resources_4458.htm. See also O. P. Sharma and Carl Haub, ‘‘Sex Ratio at Birth Begins to Improve in India,’’ for Population Reference Bureau, August 2008, at http://www.prb.org/Articles/2008/indiasexratio.aspx; and editorial article, ‘‘Adverse Child Sex Ratio in India,’’ The Financial Express, Mumbai, October 27, 2003, at http://www.financialexpress.com/news/advers-child-sex-ratioin-india/48979/. 4. Kurien, Kaleidoscopic Ethnicity, 30–36, 58, 94–100, 127–30, 139–56, 164–70. 5. SEWA at http://www.sewa.org. Also the documentary Kamala and Raji, produced by Michael Camerini and Shari Robertson, 1991. The film examines two women workers, and their empowerment through SEWA.

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6. Gawzi Hamad Al Sultan, in Frontline 17, no. 25 (December 9, 2000), at http:// www.flonnet.com/fl2024/stories. 7. Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (New York: Anchor Books, 1991), 197–98. 8. BISWA at http://www.biswa.org. 9. Raman, ‘‘Walking Two Paces Behind,’’ 375–95. 10. Myron Weiner, The Child and the State in India: Child Labor and Education Policy in Comparative Perspective (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 59–64, 114, 161, 175, 184; Meena Verma and Neeta Verma, ‘‘Incidence of Female Child Labour in Bihar,’’ in Children at Work: Problems and Policy Options, ed. Bhagwan Pd. Singh and Shukla Mahanty (New Delhi and Patna: B. R. Publishing Corporation and Indian Society of Labour Economics, 1993), 105–15; Kumudini Sinha, ‘‘Female Child Labour in Bihar: Incidence and Their Conditions,’’ in Children at Work: Problems and Policy Options, ed. Singh and Mahanty, 117–32. 11. Agarwal, ‘‘The Idea of Gender Equality,’’ 37. 12. Indu Grewal and J. Kishore, ‘‘Female Foeticide in India,’’ International Humanist and Ethical Union, May 1, 2004, http://www.iheu.org/female-foeticide -in-india. 13. Madhu Kishwar and Ruth Vanita, ‘‘Drought—Women Are the Worst Victims’’ (1980), in In Search of Answers: Indian Women’s Voices from Manushi, ed. Madhu Kishwar and Ruth Vanita (New Delhi: Manohar, 1996), 80–93. 14. Personal experience with two working women whose fathers sold them into prostitution in Bengal, but who escaped due to good Samaritans. See also Manik Bandhopadhyaya, ‘‘A Female Problem at a Low Level’’ (1963), in Women, Outcastes, Peasants, and Rebels: A Selection of Bengali Stories, trans. Kalpana Bardhan (Berkeley: University of California, 1990), 152–57; Mahasweta Devi, ‘‘Dhowli’’ (1979), in ibid., 184–205; Hasan Aizul Huq, ‘‘The Daughter and the Oleander’’ (1966), in ibid., 290–98. Hindi films on girls forced into prostitution include Shakti Samanta’s Amar Prem (Eternal Love, 1971) and Mira Nair’s Salaam Bombay (1988). 15. Anirudh K. Jain and Moni Nag, ‘‘Importance of Female Primary Education for Fertility Reduction in India,’’ Economic and Political Weekly 21, no. 36 (1986): 1602–7; Leela Visaria, ‘‘Infant Mortality in India: Levels, Trends, and Determinants,’’ Economic and Political Weekly 20, no. 34 (1985): 1447–50; Santosh Mehrotra, ‘‘Child Malnutrition and Gender Discrimination in South Asia,’’ Economic and Political Weekly 41, no. 10 (2006): 912–18. 16. Sen, Development as Freedom, 187–203; Amartya Sen, ‘‘Gender Inequality and Theories of Justice,’’ in Women, Culture, and Development: A Study of Human Capabilities, ed. Martha Nussbaum and Jonathan Glover (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995); and Amartya Sen, ‘‘Agency and Well-Being: The Development Agenda,’’ in A Commitment to the Women, ed. Noeleen Heyzer (New York: UNIFEM, 1996). 17. Leelamma Devasia, ‘‘Maternal and Girl Child Care in India,’’ in Girl Child in India, ed. Leelamma Devasia and V. V. Devasia (Springfield, VA: Nataraj Books, 1992), 133–52, vide, 140–43; United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Statistics on India at http://www.unicef.org/india/resources_4458.htm. 18. Asok Mitra, Implications of Declining Sex Ratio in India’s Population, Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), Women’s Studies, and Jawaharlal Nehru University (Bombay: Allied Publishers, 1979), 1–11.

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19. The 2001 Census records the sex ratio as 933 females/1000 males, but since 1991, it is closer to 800/1000. Punjab and Haryana have 10 districts with lower ratios, e.g., Fatehgarh Sahib with 766/1000. See Kalpana Sharma’s ‘‘No Girls Please, We’re Indian,’’ The Hindu, August 29, 2004, 1–3; and Vaasanthi, Kadaisee Varai (Birthright), trans. from Tamil by Vasantha Surya (New Delhi: Zubaan Books, 2004). 20. J. Venkatesan, ‘‘Unique Legislation to Protect Girl Child,’’ The Hindu, May 12, 2003, at http://www.hinduonnet.com/2003/05/12/stories/200305120 4460100.htm. 21. Visaria, ‘‘Infant Mortality in India,’’ 1447–50. 22. Sen, Development as Freedom, 197–98, 217–18. 23. K. P. Srikumar, ‘‘Amniocentesis and the Future of the Girl Child,’’ in Girl Child in India, ed. Devasia and Devasia, 51–65; Sharma, ‘‘No Girls Please, We’re Indian,’’ at http://www.hindu.com/mag/2004/08/29/stories/2004082900130100 .htm. 24. Barbara Hariss-White, ‘‘Gender Cleansing: The Paradox of Development and Deteriorating Female Life Chances in Tamil Nadu,’’ in Signposts: Gender Issues in Post-Independence India, ed. Rajeswari Sunder Rajan (New Brunswick: Rutgers University, 2001), 125–54, 132–33. 25. Government of India, Census 2001, Series 1, vol. 4 (Primary Census Abstract, and Total Population Table A-5), vol. 9 (Report and Tables on Age C-14), New Delhi: Controller of Publications, 2003. 26. Ranjana Kumari, ‘‘Dowry Victims: Harassment and Torture,’’ in Widows, Abandoned and Destitute Women in India, for Mahila Dakshata Samiti (Society for Women as Wealth), ed. Pramila Dandvate, Ranjana Kumari, and Jamila Veghese (New Delhi: Radiant Publishers, 1989), 10–26; Pramila Dandvate, ‘‘Social Legislation and Women,’’ in ibid., 84–89. 27. Kumar, History of Doing, 115–26. 28. Kiran Singh, ‘‘It’s Only a Family Affair!’’ in In Search of Answers, ed. Kishwar and Vanita, 186–90; Madhu Kishwar, ‘‘Denial of Fundamental Rights to Women,’’ in ibid., 191–203. 29. Mehrotra, ‘‘Child Malnutrition and Gender Discrimination in South Asia,’’ 912–18. Mehrotra cites United Nations, Second Report on the World Nutrition Situation, vol. 1 (Geneva: United Nations, 1992). See also V. Ramalingaswami, U. Jonsson, and J. Rohde, ‘‘The Asian Enigma,’’ in Progress of Nations (New York: United Nations Children’s Fund, 1996). 30. Alka Barua, Hemant Apte, and Pradeep Kumar, ‘‘Care and Support of Unmarried Adolescent Girls in Rajasthan,’’ Economic and Political Weekly 42, no. 45–46 (November 3–23, 2007), 54–62. 31. Kavita Sethuraman and Nata Duvvury, ‘‘The Nexus of Gender Discrimination with Malnutrition: An Introduction,’’ Economic and Political Weekly 42, no. 45–46 (November 3–23, 2007): 49–52. 32. Personal experience with a Punjabi friend after the birth of her daughter in 1965. 33. Agarwal, A Field of Ones Own, 30, 257 n. 24. Also Deepa Mehta’s film Water (2000) on destitute widows in north India. On Bangalore slums, see Sarayu Pani, ‘‘Poverty, Ageing and Gender,’’ India Together, November 14, 2007, at http:// www.indiatogether.org.

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34. Smita Jain, ‘‘Bringing the Virus Home,’’ The Hindu, November 27, 2005, at http://www.thehindu.com/thehindu/mag/2005/11/27/stories/2005112700190400 .htm; ‘‘Cutting Across Barriers,’’ The Hindu, November 24, 2004, at http:// www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/mag/2002/11/24/stories/2002112400400400.htm; Dilip D’Souza, ‘‘The AIDS Challenge’’ (Review of Siddharth Dube), Sex, Lies and AIDS (New Delhi: Harper Collins, 2000), Frontline 18, no. 19 (September 15, 2001); Madeleine Morris, ‘‘Indian Women Face Peril of HIV,’’ BBC World News, September 21, 2005, at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4260314.stm. 35. Pratima Chaudhary, Women’s Education in India (New Delhi: Har Anand Publications, 1995), 40; Usha Agrawal, Indian Woman Education and Development (Ambala: Indian Publications, 1995), 15; Raman, ‘‘Walking Two Paces Behind,’’ 375–95; and Sita Anantha Raman, ‘‘Women’s Education,’’ in Encyclopedia of India, ed. Stanley Wolpert, 4:237–38. 36. Vibhuti Patel, ‘‘Schools to Empower Women,’’ Frontline 20, no. 15 (2003), at http://www.flonnet.com/fl2015/stories/20030801006209600.htm. 37. Census of India 2001, Series 1, vol. 4 (Primary Census Abstract, and Total Population Table A-5), vol. 9 (Report and Tables on Age C-14). See also Government of India National Portal at http://www.india.gov.in/knowindia/literacy.php. Also see National Literacy Movement in India, ‘‘Female Literacy in India,’’ with tables from Census 2001 at http://www.nlm.nic.in/women.htm; and Azad India Foundation, ‘‘Literacy in India,’’ at http://azadindia.org/social-issues/literacy-in-india.html. 38. Sen, Development as Freedom, 187, 191–203, 336 n. 15. 39. Anil Sadgopal, ‘‘Gender and Education,’’ Frontline 20, no. 24 (2003), at http://www.flonnet.com/fl2024/stories/20031205006910000.htm. 40. Mehrotra, ‘‘Child Malnutrition and Gender Discrimination in South Asia,’’ 912–18. 41. Agarwal, ‘‘The Idea of Gender Equality,’’ 43. 42. Lalitha Subrahmanyam, Women Scientists in the Third World: The Indian Experience (New Delhi and Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1998). 43. Personal knowledge of some of these scientists. Also see Vineeta Bal, ‘‘Women Scientists in India: Nowhere Near the Glass Ceiling,’’ Current Science 88, no. 6 (March 25, 2005): 872–82; Parvati Menon, ‘‘For More Women in Science,’’ Frontline 22, no. 26 (December 2005). 44. Bina Agarwal, ‘‘Gender Inequalities: Neglected Dimensions and Hidden Facts,’’ a Malcolm Adiseshiah Memorial Lecture, Madras Institute of Developmental Studies (MIDS), November 2004 (printed copy), Adyar: MIDS. 45. Ela Bhatt, National Commission on Self-Employed Women and Women in the Informal Sector (Ahmedabad: SEWA, 1988), 3–6. 46. Mythili Sivaraman, ‘‘A Struggle Without Borders: The World March for the Eradication of Poverty and Violence against Women,’’ Frontline 17, no. 25 (December 9–22, 2000), at http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl1725/17250460.htm. 47. Isa Baud, ‘‘In All Its Manifestations: The Impact of Changing Technology on the Gender Division of Labour,’’ in Indian Women in a Changing Industrial Scenario, ed. Nirmala Bannerjee (New Delhi and Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1991), 35, 78, 98–100. 48. Areeba Hamid, ‘‘Domestic Workers: Harsh Everyday Realities,’’ Economic and Political Weekly 41, no. 13 (April 1–7, 2006): 1235–37.

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49. Agarwal, A Field of Ones Own, 19–33; also Govind Kelkar, ‘‘Development Effectiveness Through Gender Mainstreaming: Gender Equality and Poverty Reduction in South Asia,’’ Economic and Political Weekly, Review of Women’s Studies, 40, no. 44–45 (October 29–November 4, 2005): 4690–95. 50. Kelkar, Ibid. 51. Agarwal, A Field of Ones Own, 206–10. 52. Leela Kasturi, ‘‘Report of the Sub-Committee, Women’s Role in Planned Economy, National Planning Committee Series (1947),’’ in Feminism in India, ed. Chaudhuri, 136–55. 53. Basu and Ray, Women’s Struggle, 62–65. 54. Renuka Ray, My Reminiscences: Social Development during Gandhian Era and After (New Delhi: Allied Publishers, 1982), 148–49. 55. Kiran Devendra, ‘‘Redefining Hindu Family: The Hindu Code Bill,’’ in Changing Status of Women in India, 3rd ed. (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1996), 43, 84. 56. Basu and Ray, Women’s Struggle, 65. 57. Letter from Rajendra Prasad to Jawaharlal Nehru on the Hindu Code Bill, September 14, 1951, Appendix III, in Devendra, Changing Status of Women in India, 183–90. 58. Agarwal, A Field of Ones Own, 209–10; and Agarwal, ‘‘The Idea of Gender Equality,’’ 37–39. 59. Appendix V, ‘‘Rights of Women under the Constitution,’’ in Devendra, Changing Status of Women in India, 199–210. 60. Savitri Goonesekere, ‘‘Sex Equality in South Asia,’’ in Men’s Laws, Women’s Lives, ed. Jaising, 217, 223–24; Parmar, ‘‘Gender Equality in the Name of Religion,’’ 245–51. 61. Agarwal, A Field of Ones Own, 175, 249–50, 279, 292; Agarwal, ‘‘The Idea of Gender Equality,’’ 37. 62. Gail Omvedt, ‘‘New Movements and New Theories in India,’’ in Feminism in India, ed. Chaudhuri, 291. 63. Basu and Ray, Women’s Struggle, 112. 64. Agarwal, ‘‘Gender and the Environment’’ lecture at Santa Clara University, May 2000, and personal communication. 65. Farzand Ahmed and Sanjay Kumar Jha, ‘‘Mother’s Methods,’’ India Today, October 13, 1997. 66. A. K. Verma, ‘‘Backward Caste Politics in Uttar Pradesh,’’ Economic and Political Weekly 40, no. 36 (September 3, 2005): 3889–92. 67. Purima S. Tripathi, ‘‘Delay and Doubts,’’ Frontline 20, no. 21 (October 11, 2003). 68. Editor, ‘‘Political Tour De Force,’’ The Hindu, May 12, 2007. 69. T. K. Rajalakshmi, ‘‘Miles to Go,’’ Frontline 24, no. 22 (November 3–16, 2007), http://www.flonnet.com/fl2422/stories/20071116506309000.htm. 70. Aditi Kapoor, ‘‘Break the Silence,’’ The Hindu, November 21, 2004. 71. National Literacy Movement in India, ‘‘Female Literacy in India,’’ with Census 2001 statistical tables at http://www.nlm.nic.in/women.htm; and Azad India Foundation, ‘‘Literacy in India,’’ at http://azadindia.org/social-issues/literacy-in -india.html.

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72. Government of India, Census of 1991, Series 1, Paper 2 of 1992, Statement 21, p. 70. 73. On Roop Kanwar’s sati, see Neerja Mishra, ‘‘The Murder of Roop Kanwar,’’ in Widows, Abandoned and Destitute Women in India, ed. Dandvate, Kumari, and Verghese, 49–53; Indu Prakash Singh and Renuka Singh, ‘‘Sati: Its Patri-Politics,’’ in ibid., 54–61; Kumar, History of Doing, 172–81. 74. Special Correspondent, ‘‘Special Feature: Rajasthan,’’ Frontline 22, no. 27 (January 13, 2006): 85–204, vide, 99–103, showcasing Vasundhara Raje’s work. 75. Tanika Sarkar and Urvashi Butalia, eds., Women and the Hindu Right: A Collection of Essays (New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1995). 76. Gail Omvedt, ‘‘Women in Governance in South Asia,’’ Economic and Political Weekly 40, no. 44–45 (October 29–November 4, 2005): 4746–52. 77. Ibid., 4746–49. 78. Ibid., 4750. 79. Staff Correspondent, ‘‘We Will Go Ahead with the Women’s Bill: P.M.,’’ The Hindu, March 8, 2003, at http://www.thehindu.com/2003/03/08/stories/ 2003030804350100.htm. 80. Special Correspondent, ‘‘UPA Blamed for Delay on Women’s Reservation Bill,’’ The Hindu, December 4, 2005, at http://www.hindu.com/2005/12/04/stories/ 2005120406110700.htm. 81. Kumar, History of Doing, 96, 100–101. 82. Ibid. 83. Mahasweta Devi, ‘‘Paddy Seeds,’’ in Women, Outcastes, Peasants, and Rebels, trans. Bardhan, 158–84. 84. Madhu Kishwar, ‘‘Introduction: Indian Women—The Continuing Struggle,’’ in In Search of Answers, ed. Kishwar and Vanita, 31–40. 85. Darryl D’Monte, ‘‘Mass Rape in Bihar by Police’’ (1979), in In Search of Answers, ed. Kishwar and Vanita, 206–7. 86. This ballad is based on real events at Pipariya, Madhya Pradesh. Vasantha Surya, trans., The Ballad of Budhini, from the Bundeli Hindi poem by Veerendra Kumar, Narendra Kumar, and Raghuvanshi Krishnamurthi (Calcutta: Writers’ Workshop, 1992). 87. Handwritten records shown to me by an official of All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA), Chennai in 1997. 88. Arundhati Roy, An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire (London: Penguin Books, 2006), 96–106. 89. Sunderlal Bahuguna, ‘‘The Chipko Movement, Part I—Women’s NonViolent Power’’ (1980), in In Search of Answers, ed. Kishwar and Vanita, 149–53; Gopa Joshi, ‘‘The Chipko Movement, Part II—Community Opposes Activists’’ (1981), in ibid., 153–57. 90. Guha, Unquiet Woods, 152–64. 91. Bina Agarwal, ‘‘Neither Sustenance Nor Sustainability: Agricultural Strategies, Ecological Degradation and Indian Women in Poverty,’’ in Structures of Patriarchy, ed. Agarwal, 83–120, vide, 104–13. 92. Bahuguna, ‘‘The Chipko Movement, Part I,’’ 152. 93. Kumar, History of Doing, 183. 94. ‘‘Medha Patkar Ends Fast,’’ The Hindu, September 28, 2001; ‘‘Medha Patkar Mobbed, Scribes Injured in Police Lathi Charge,’’ The Hindu, April 8, 2002; ‘‘Medha

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Patkar Continues Fast,’’ The Hindu, January 28, 2004; ‘‘Medha Patkar Held,’’ The Hindu, February 17, 2004, at http://www.hinduonnet.com. 95. Gupta, India’s 50 Most Illustrious Women, 159–64. 96. Kalpana Sharma, ‘‘Unrecognized Heroines,’’ India Together, December 21, 2007, at http://www.indiatogether.org/2007/dec/ksh-heroines.htm. 97. Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things (New York: Harper Collins, 1997). 98. Roy, An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire, 96–106. See also Sanjay Sanghvi, The River and the Life: People’s Struggle in the Narmada Valley (Mumbai: Earth Care Books, 2000). 99. Gupta, India’s 50 Most Illustrious Women, 205–12. 100. Ibid., 199–204. 101. Tharu and Lalitha, eds., Women Writing in India: 600 B.C. to the Present: The Twentieth Century (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995), 2:234. 102. Devi, ‘‘Paddy Seeds,’’ 158–84; Devi, ‘‘Dhowli,’’ 185–205; Mahasweta Devi, ‘‘The Witch-Hunt,’’ in Women, Outcastes, Peasants, and Rebels, trans. Bardhan, 242–71. 103. Gupta, India’s 50 Most Illustrious Women, 213–18. 104. Ismat Chugtai, ‘‘Lihaf’’ (The Quilt), trans. Syed Sirajuddin, in Tharu and Lalitha, eds., Women Writing in India: 600 B.C. to the Present: The Twentieth Century, 2:129–38. 105. Vaasanthi, Kadaisee Varai (Birthright). 106. Vasantha Surya, The Stalk of Time (Chennai: K. Suryanarayanan, 1985); Vasantha Surya, A Word Between Us (Chennai: Sandhya, 2003); Chudamani Raghavan, Yamini, trans. from Tamil by Vasantha Surya (Chennai: Macmillan, 1996). 107. Gupta, India’s 50 Most Illustrious Women, 241–47. 108. Ibid., 27–37.

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INDEX

Adivasis, 211, 213 Agarwal, Bina, 189, 192 Age of Consent Bill, 102, 107–8, 110– 11, 125; Gour’s Age of Consent Bill, 147, 156. See also Child marriage; Rakhmabai controversy; Sarda Act Al-Arabi, Ibn, 31, 33 Ali, Aruna Asaf, 127, 165, 175 Ali, Mumtaz, and Muhammadi Begam, 123 All-India Women’s Conference, 156– 59, 162, 167, 169, 171–74, 176–77, 201–3 Ambedkar, B. R., 139, 176, 201–2, 205 Anglo-Indians, 88, 59, 63, 67, 86–88. See also Eurasians; Portuguese Estado da India, Luso-Indians Anjuman-e-Khawatin-e-Islam, 137, 145, 152 Appasamy, Swarnam, 150, 158, 164, 170 Arundale, Rukmini, 214 Arya Mahila Sabha (Aryan Women’s Society), 108, 137 Arya Samaj, xv, 103, 112. See also Dayananda Saraswati Azmi, Shabana, 216 Badauni, 33 Barni, Zia-uddin, 13 Batuta, Ibn, 12, 14 Begam Akthar, 215

Begam of Bhopal (AIWC president, 1928), 126, 152, 157–58 Bernier, Francisco, 25, 28–29. See also Manucci, Nicolao; Monserrate, Fr.; Pelsaert, Francisco Besant, Annie, 51, 77, 103, 109, 117– 19, 170, 172 Bethune School, 70, 79, 152 Bhagavad Gita, 62, 66, 72, 75, 146, 160. See also Bhakti; Karma Bhakti, xvii, 2, 31–32, 34, 48–51, 71, 102, 114, 133 n.96, 135, 139, 146, 160, 215 Bharati, C. Subramania, xv, 104, 117. See also Madhaviah, A. Brahma Samaj, 62, 74, 102, 148. See also Roy, Ram Mohan Cama, Bhikaiji, 196–97 Charter of Women’s Rights, 177, 202 Chatterjee, Swatilekha, 216 Chatterji, Bankim Chandra (Vande Mataram), xv, 103–4 Chattopadhyaya, Kamala, 127, 155, 157, 165–66, 168–69, 171, 175 Chattrams (charitable trusts) of Thanjavur, 52–53; princess Vijaya Mohana Muktambal, 53; raja Sarabhoji, 52–53; raja Tulsaji, 52–53 Chaudhurani, Sarla Devi, 137, 152, 168, 174 Child marriage, xv, 6, 49, 65, 68, 78,

250 101–3, 109, 112, 126, 136; feminist plank, 110, 128, 157–58, 166, 168. See also Age of Consent Bill; Sarda Act Chipko Movement, 210–11 Chittagong Armory Raids, 175 Chugtai, Ismat, 214 Court poets (female), 51–52 Cousins, Margaret, 77, 119, 151–54, 157, 169–70, 172 Dalit women, 66, 161, 205, 210 Dayabhaga laws (twelfth-century Hindu code), 47, 73–75. See also Hindu Code Bill; Manu Smriti; Mitakshara laws Dayananda Saraswati, 103, 112 Desai, Anita, 213 Deshmukh, Durgabai, 163–65, 177, 201 Devadasis of south India, 33, 49–52, 214; education, 66–72, 105–6; feminist rehabilitation efforts, 155, 163; Muthulakshmi Reddi’s reforms, 169–71 Eurasians, 59, 63, 67, 86–88. See also Anglo-Indians; Portuguese Estado da India, Luso-Indians Evangelicals, xiv, 63, 71, 87, 111, 119, 142 Female infanticide, 1, 5, 49, 206, 214; colonial penal laws, 62, 64, 110; Indian penal laws against feticide, 189, 192, 194. See also Sex ratio Feminist associations, 108–9, 212 Gandhi, Indira, 127, 163, 167, 176, 203–5, 207; Sonia Gandhi, 204, 208 Gandhi, Kasturba, 159–61, 178 Gandhi, Mohandas K., xviii, 116, 119, 159–64, 167, 175 Goddess (Devi): Durga, xii, 32, 206–7, 216; Shakti, xi, xvi, 32, 45, 73, 206, 208 Gokhale, G. K., 102–3, 111, 166, 168, 172

Index Grameen Bank, 190 Hamid Ali, Sharif Begam, 126, 156– 57, 203 Hindu Code Bill, 201. See also Dayabhaga laws; Manu Smriti; Mitakshara laws Hindu epic heroines: Savitri (Mahabharata) and Sita (Ramayana), xii, 31, 117, 163, 178, 216 Hossain, Rokeya Sakhawat, 66, 106, 137, 144, 150 Hunter Commission on Education, 85, 105–6, 122 Indenture, 44, 81–83, 161 Indian Ladies’ Samaj, 170 Islam, 1–38; hijab, 2–5, 8–9, 20; Prophet Muhammad, 1–13, 34 n.3; his wives, 3–4, 6–9; his daughters, 3, 4, 9, 32–33; Qur’an on marriage, 6– 8; Sharia laws on women, 2, 5, 7, 9, 33, 46, 73, 124–26 Jayalalitaa, 204 Jinarajadasa, Dorothy, 151, 153 Jinnah, Mohammad Ali, 125–26 Karma, 48, 160 Karve, D. K., 80, 108–9, 140, 146 Kaur, Rajkumari Amrit, 152, 156, 158, 165–66, 203 Kerala, 9, 14, 46, 50, 54, 57; literacy and sex ratio, xviii n.1, 191–93, 196–97; matriliny, 6, 203; Travancore, 50, 53, 67, 72, 88, 107, 203 Khan, Sayyid Ahmad, 103, 113, 121, 123 Ladies’ Social Conference, 136, 152 Lakshmi, C. S. (Ambai), 214 Madhaviah, A., xv, 65–66, 135. See also Bharati, C. Subramania; Pillai, S. Vedanayakam Madras Vigilance Society, 170–71

Index Mahasweta Devi, 213 Malabari, B. M., 109–10 Mangeshkar, Lata, 216 Manu Smriti, xiii, 46–47, 52–53, 65, 72–73, 75, 120. See also Dayabhaga laws; Mitakshara laws Manucci, Nicolao, 25, 29, 39. See also Bernier, Francisco; Monserrate, Fr.; Pelsaert, Francisco Manushi (journal), 191, 194 Mayawati, 205 Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act (1971), 192 Mehta, Deepa, 216 Mehta, Hansabehn, 167 Mehta, Usha, 167 Missionaries, 44, 51, 64, 66–69, 74, 87, 105, 115, 136, 141, 149, 151, 179 n.4 Mitakshara laws (eleventh-century Hindu code), 47, 73 Monserrate, Fr., 18–19, 28, 40. See also Bernier, Francisco; Manucci, Nicolao; Pelsaert, Francisco Mortality, 54, 78, 81, 84, 106–7; children, 113, 191–92, 197; females, xviii, 61–62, 81, 85 Muddupalani, 51 Mughal empire: Akbar, 10, 14–24, 27– 28; Aurangzeb, 10, 22, 24–27, 29; Babur, 16–18, 20, 22; Dara Shikoh, 22, 25, 27; Humayun, xiii, 16–18, 20; Jahangir, 19–24, 28, 40; Shah Jahan, 19–22, 24–25, 27–28, 30, 39 n.111 Mughal women: Gulbadan Begam, xiii, 17–20, 28; Hamida Begam, 17– 20; Jahanara, 20, 22, 24, 26–30; Mumtaz Mahal, 20–21, 24–25; Nur Jahan, 20–22, 26; Roshanara, 24– 25, 29; Zebunissa, 22–27; Zinatunissa, 27. Rajput queens: Jodh Bai, 19; Manmati, 19, 24 Muslim laws (colonial era), 124–25; Dissolution of Muslim Marriages Act, 125 Muslims, 2–4, 6, 9–10, 14–15, 19, 22, 27, 31; British India, 71, 103–5, 112,

251 121, 124–26; in Goa, 54, 57–59, 62– 63, 66; independence era, 198, 205, 207; nationalist era, 136, 156–58, 164, 168, 170, 177; women performers, 33–34, 215–16 Naidu, Sarojini, xv, 78, 117, 119, 127, 135, 150, 153–56, 165, 167, 169, 172–73 Nair, Mira, 216 Naoroji, Khurshed, 127, 165, 168, 172 Nargis, 216 Narmada Bachao Andolan, 211–12. See also Patkar, Medha National Conference of Women in India (NCWI), 126, 137, 145, 152, 155–56 Nayar, Sushila, 166–67 Nehru, Jawaharlal, xviii, 126–27, 155, 165, 177, 200; Kamala, 178; Rameshwari, 151, 153, 163, 178 Noble, Margaret (Sister Niveditta), 116–17 Pandit, Vijayalakshmi, 163, 177, 201, 203 Pantulu, Viresalingam, 72, 80, 106–7, 109, 146, 152 Pardah, xv, 2, 8–10, 12, 15–17, 19, 23, 29, 31, 62–63, 65 Patkar, Medha, 211–12. See also Narmada Bachao Andolan Pelsaert, Francisco, 21, 29–30. See also Bernier, Francisco; Manucci, Nicolao; Monserrate, Fr. Phule, Jotiba, 108, 138, 143, 212 Phule, Savitribai, 66, 108, 138–39, 196 Pillai, S. Vedanayakam, xv, 106, 113. See also Bharati, C. Subramania; Madhaviah, A. Portuguese Estado da India, 43–45, 54–61; Albuquerque, 54–59, 61; Camoes (The Luciads), 54, 57; Civil Code, 61; female orfa (orphan) settlement, 58–59; Inquisition in Goa, 28, 44, 54, 58–59, 61; interracial marriages, 44, 55, 60; Luso-Indians, 44, 56, 87–88

252 Prarthna Samaj, 102, 106, 112, 140–41 Prostitutes, 34, 44, 55, 57–59, 72, 82, 87, 106, 165, 216; prostitution, 58– 59, 79, 84, 86, 114, 163–64, 169– 71, 178, 191, 218 n.14 Rahamatnissa Begam, 126, 150, 154, 164, 169–70 Rakhmabai controversy, 110–11, 142 Ramabai, Pandita, xv, 66, 80, 106, 108–9, 111, 137, 139–43, 147, 172 Ramabhadramba, 51 Ramakrishna, 114–15; Sarada Devi, 115. See also Vivekananda, Swami Ramakrishna Mission and Vedanta Society, 103, 114. See also Ramakrishna; Vivekananda, Swami Ranade, M. G., 102, 106, 108–9, 111, 120–21, 136, 140–41, 143 Ranade, Ramabai, 108–9, 136, 139– 41 Rao, Raghunatha, 80, 107, 111 Rassundari Devi, 148 Rasul, Qudsia Aizaz, 126, 177, 201 Raziyya, Sultana, 10–13, 121, 174 Reddi, Muthulakshmi, 147, 150, 152– 56, 158, 164, 168–69, 172, 204 Roy, Arundhati, 212–13, 222–23 Roy, Ram Mohan, 64–65, 70, 73–74, 79, 102 Sadasivier, Mangalammal, 153, 170 Sahgal, Lakshmi, 175–78 Sarabai, Mridula, 162, 178 Sarda Act, 108, 126, 150, 157, 170. See also Age of Consent Bill; Child marriage Sati, xiii–xv, xvii, 28, 46, 48–49, 61– 62, 72–76, 78–79; Bengal Sati Regulating Act, 64, 72, 74; myths, 77–79; Roop Kanwar, 206 Sattianadhan, Kamala, 136, 150 Sattianadhan, Kripabai, 149–50 SEWA (Self-Employed Women’s Association), 190 Sex ratio, xvi, xviii n.1, 62, 80–82; post-1947, 190–94, 197, 204–6, 217 n.3

Index Shanteswar, Veena, 214 Shergil, Amrita, 214 Shias: Khoja customs, 33–34; Muharram female rites, 9, 33 Shinde, Tarabai, 108, 143–44 Sikhs, 27, 48–49, 62–63, 79–80, 156, 176–77, 201, 204 Slade, Madeleine (Mira Behn), 209 Sorabji, Cornelia, 11 Stri Zarthoshti Mandal, 137, 152 Stridhan, 47, 52–53, 73, 79–80, 194, 202 Stri-Dharmapadhati, 53–54 Subbalakshmi, R. (Sister), 140, 146–47 Subbulakshmi, M. S., 215 Sufis, 19, 31; women sufis, 31–32, 74 Sunnis, 7, 9 Surya, Vasantha, 214 Swaminathan, Ammu, 153, 175, 177– 78, 201 Swarnakumari Debi (Thakur-Ghosal), 62, 108–9, 137, 148–49, 152 Talib, Mirza Abu, 122 Tamil Mathar Sangam, 137, 152–53 Thakur, Rabindranath, 65, 104, 109, 148, 152, 168; Abanindranath, 104; Debendranath, 62, 148 Thanawi, Maulana Ashraf Ali, xv, 121 Theosophical Society, 103, 137. See also Besant, Annie; Cousins, Margaret; Naidu, Sarojini; Reddi, Muthulakshmi Tilak, B. G., xv, 108, 110–11, 143, 172 Upanishads, 25, 75, 102, 114–15, 141, 146. See also Vedas; Vedanta Society Ustad-bi, 16, 22, 63, 66 Vaasanthi, 214 Vedanta Society, 102–3, 114–15. See also Ramakrishna; Upanishads; Vedas; Vivekananda, Swami Vedas, xii, 62, 66–67, 72, 101, 114, 116, 140–41

Index Verma, Mahadevi, 213 Vivekananda, Swami, xv, 101, 103, 114–16. See also Ramakrishna Mission and Vedanta Society Widow remarriage, 46, 48, 64, 76, 80, 101–4, 106, 109, 113; levirate, 120; Remarriage Act, 78–80, 102, 107

253 Women workers, 82–84, 127, 137, 164, 198–99, 200 Women’s Indian Association (WIA), 103, 117, 125–26, 137, 147, 151– 58, 164, 168–72, 175–76 Women’s Reservation Bill, 207–8 Wood, Charles (Educational Despatch of 1854), 69

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About the Author SITA ANANTHA RAMAN is Associate Professor Emerita, History, Santa Clara University, California; member of the Board of Directors, Pacific Coast Immigration Museum, California; and Adjunct at the University of Georgia, Athens. She is the author of Getting Girls to School: Social Reform in the Tamil Districts, 1870–1930 (1996) and A. Madhaviah: A Biography and a Novella (2004).