Abstract
‘Like man, woman too, is a distinguished member of a family, a society, a city and a nation. The result of each one of her actions can either hamper or contribute to the progress of all’, wrote Hindi poet and essayist Mahadevi Varma in 1931. The terrain of women’s agency and self-assertion invoked by Varma, then editor of Chand, forms the subject of Shobna Nijhawan’s rich and nuanced study of Hindi women’s periodicals of the early twentieth century. Adding to a growing body of work on the emergence of women as political subjects in late colonial India, the author sets out to contribute to ‘the new historical visibility of individual women and women collectives’ against the backdrop of Indian nationalism and the Hindi public sphere. Hindi women’s periodicals have received a fair bit of attention and Nijhawan fully acknowledges her indebtedness to the seminal contributions of Francesca Orsini, Vasudha Dalmia and others. However, by charting the discursive possibilities of the periodical as a new publishing genre, her book provides important fresh insights into how women in north India gained entry in the male-dominated public sphere, and carved out their own place in the debate on women’s shifting roles in society. Nijhawan asks us to read Hindi women’s periodicals as ‘social feminist documents’. Periodicals, she argues, were critical in creating networks of female activists and asserting women’s role as political subjects. Their refusal to adopt western feminist demands for equality and enfranchisement does not make them ‘less feminist’ than their western counterparts.
Nijhawan claims the importance of her archive on several grounds: First, in appealing to a sisterhood of women, periodicals were ‘effective in forging bonds among a newly imagined yet heterogeneous community of women’. Aware of the limits of this collective identity, the author characterises periodicals as an elite medium for upper caste, middle-class Hindu women, but then only gestures at the complex dynamic of inclusion and exclusion of lower-caste and working-class women. Second, as a participatory genre that encouraged readers’ contributions, periodicals created an alternative female space to the mainstream male public discourse, while also engaging in conversation with it. In lending women a public voice, they became critical instruments in the women’s movement, but did not exclude men as (co-)editors, contributors and readers. Third, women’s periodicals were a flexible and polyphonic medium that both upheld and contested patriarchal norms and ideology.
Nijhawan also seeks to explore the intersection of women’s periodicals with mainstream Hindi literature. In highlighting the creative and experimental nature of the journals, which included both traditional forms (varta, katha, romance) and new genres in their columns, she convincingly shows how periodicals functioned as a multivocal field of literary production. Significantly, they championed ‘sahitya seva’, service to literature, as a new sphere of nationalist activity for women.
Divided into two parts, the book combines an in-depth analysis of the form, structure, editorial agendas and thematic concerns of women’s and girls’ periodicals with a comprehensive reader. The introduction traces the emergence of the genre at the juncture of social reformism and nationalism, and explores what Nijhawan calls ‘the nationalization of women’s periodicals’, underscoring the interconnectedness of women’s emancipation and nation formation that animated the genre. Chapter 2 discusses four women’s periodicals that marked the shift from older normative notions of Indian femininity and prescriptive idioms of improvement and reform to more open discourses on the modern female subject. ‘Editors conceptualized their project as a dialogic endeavour rather than as a normative project’, Nijhawan suggests. This shift was signalled by the thematic expansion of stri upayogi sahitya (literature useful to women) from domestic advice to socio-political topics, critical opinion pieces and news on the global women’s movement. Stri darpan, a journal founded by women of the Nehru family, pioneered the ‘politicization of women’ with nationalist and feminist themes. The more conservative Grihalakshmi focused on women’s domestic responsibilities and the new ideal homemaker (a well-educated if traditional Lakshmi), but also carried essays on women’s education, rights and social reform, inviting critical debate on the very ideals it propagated. Arya Mahila, a self-proclaimed religious periodical, linked women’s agency to nationalist issues in making the protection of sanatana dharma a female project. The integration of women’s and nationalist concerns reached its height in Chand, which redefined notions of moral duty and service in the nationalist idiom of seva-dharma constructing ‘a natural relationship between servitude, morality, and (Indian) womanhood’. Nijhawan juxtaposes these journals with the ‘Women’s entertainment’ column (‘Mahila Manoranjan’) in the mainstream Hindi periodical Madhuri, which similarly focused on instruction and information. One would have wished for more critical reflection on the central category of manoranjan here, and a fuller exploration of the place of recreational reading and pleasure for pleasure’s sake in what still seems a restrictive notion of women’s entertainment.
Chapter 3 proceeds to examine an understudied genre, the girls’ periodical. Targeting a mixed audience of mothers (child rearing advice was a prominent topic), children and adolescent girls (invariably conceptualised as future wives and mothers), periodicals like Kumari Darpan and Kanya Manoranjan effectively collapsed the stages of girlhood and womanhood. Nijhawan’s findings tally with the pointed suggestion in Ruby Lal’s recent study of girlhood that ‘the girl-child was already a woman’. Nijhawan reads girls’ periodicals as agents of nationalist socialization that aimed to inculcate patriotism in its young readers and, even as they recognised children’s need for play and recreation, emphasised moral instruction, character formation and scientific knowledge. Their primary purpose, she states, was to create model citizens. For all its compelling insights, the chapter leaves the reader wanting for more on children’s reading experience (the suggestively titled journal Khilauna, ‘Toy’, is all too briefly referenced).
Chapter 4 offers a perceptive discussion of the ‘polyphonic’ debate on domesticity, womanhood and gender relations that emerged in women’s periodicals, challenging received notions of the gendered private-public binary and ‘nationalist resolution’ of the woman’s question. The spatial orientation and generic flexibility of the periodical format, Nijhawan argues, created an inter-textual reading experience that facilitated the simultaneous endorsement, contestation and rejection of old and new patriarchies. As women redefined their domestic and public responsibilities, they also critiqued male gender roles. In a particularly striking example, nationalism’s Home Rule was subversively reconfigured as women’s rule over the home, with men becoming objects of domestic advice.
Turning to north India’s multilayered linguistic landscape and language politics, the substantive final chapter examines the journals’ contribution to politically charged debates over Hindi as the national language. Nijhawan’s detailed analysis of linguistic choices, while tedious for non-specialists and at times overstating the case, amply demonstrates how women’s periodicals grappled with reconciling two conflicting imperatives, that of using simple language accessible to a general female audience and that of promoting a refined Sanskritised idiom befitting the Hindu nation. Editors theoretically prioritised comprehensibility over sophistication, but often used a Sanskritised style in their writings. Not surprisingly, readers resisted standardisation and the Sanskritised Khari Boli favoured by proponents of the Hindi movement.
More than a mere supplement, part two, the Reader, is a most welcome and valuable resource. Nijhawan’s sensitive translations of a wide range of sample readings illustrate the richness of her archive, providing access to the ideas, concerns and emotions of women as editors, writers and readers. Along with their voices, the book’s evocative illustrations afford us a fascinating glimpse into the real and imaginary life of early consumers of women’s periodical literature. This well-researched and engaging book will appeal to scholars of various disciplines and can be commended as a significant contribution to Indian social and cultural history.