Abstract
Jasbir Jain has to be congratulated for trying to bring out a coherent and systematic theory of indigenous feminism, which is deeply rooted in the long tradition of India. She rightly proclaims that one of the Indian brands of feminism is radically different from that of Western version. According to her, feminism is wrongly associated only with protest and resistance. The positive characteristics associated with this term are presence of an agency, a separate space to articulate one’s own ideas and celebrating relationship. These aspects should also be highlighted, which she has tried to do in the present book under review. As per the author, the notion of feminism is deeply embedded in one’s own culture. Hence, Indian brand is no exception. She goes a step further in saying that the Western type of feminism did not influence our brand at all. Tracing the history of the Indian feminism, she says that it has not moved in linear progression but has had many setbacks depending on the prevailing social conditions; so much so that the same type of image has been used to give a patriarchal interpretation as well as that of feminism in different contexts.
To substantiate her viewpoint, she has used literary sources extensively, including from other social science subjects such as sociology, political science, psychology and religion, etc. She has used so many anecdotes and stories, both old and new, that I could not resist reading almost all the stories relating to different characters such as Sita, Draupadi, Sakuntala, Gandhari, Kunti and Ismat Chugtai, to name a few. It seems that she has scanned through a lot of secondary and primary materials on religious scriptures, such as Vedas, Upanishads, Ramayana, Mahabharata, Manusmriti, Bharatmuni’s Natya Shastra, Guru Granth Sahib, Sri Padma Puran, Jatak tales, etc. She has not stopped there. She has also used regional, inter-religious and modern, filmy and folk interpretations of those epics. The author has brought the story up to the present period as well. As noted earlier, her definition of Indian feminism has a distinct flavour since it is rooted in indigenous pluralistic values and is thus quite distinct from that of Western feminism. She also adds that it is certainly different from the male representation of femininity.
But still, one question has not been answered: whether Indian feminism has at all been influenced by the Western feminism, in particular the movement generated due to ‘adult suffrage’ or access to political equality, followed by cultural and other social ones? To this, perhaps Jain would say ‘no’, because she has shown that several stories written in modern period depicting the hatred towards having many children—which touch on reproductive rights—have not resulted in opting for fewer children or raising protest against patriarchy. Similarly, the citation of practice of lesbianism in one of her examples was to show silent protest against the impotency of a husband and not public protest against the conventional form of family structure resulting in the rise of gay–lesbian movement in the West. Before we take up the fault lines in the arguments, let us study a couple of examples which she has used to build her arguments. Due to paucity of space, it will not be exhaustive but will only be indicative. First, we take up the conventional example of Sita. In general understanding of the Indian culture, Sita in Ramayana is the model of an ideal woman that the Indian women should emulate. But one has to find out if the characterisation of Sita is the same in all the versions of Ramayana or not. According to A. K. Ramanujan (Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translation), there are 300 versions of Ramayana that are available throughout India (quoted in Jain, p. 53).
Apart from those, there exist an estimated thousand different versions of the same epic in oral tradition. All the versions of Ramayana are important in one region or another. The folk version is most popular among the women belonging to Dalit community. Regarding the character of Sita in Valmiki Ramayana, she is much more vocal, and on the occasion of agniparikshya, she accuses Rama saying that he is no better than a narrow-minded, ordinary and low-category man who shuns all reasons. After that, she herself prepares for entering the fire to prove her chastity. Similarly, the characterisation of Rama is equally harsh in Tamil version of Ramayana written by Kamban. The author also leads Sita to prepare fire for herself. On the other hand, Tulsidas wrote the Ramayana in the sixteenth century in the aftermath of Muslim onslaught. Hence, Sita’s character had to be really a submissive one to set the example of pativrata nari for the Indian women. So, just before the abduction of Sita, he wrote a long passage on the ideals of womanhood. Therefore, she had to testify her chastity by carrying out actions such as agniparikshya and entering the womb of the earth. In Sri Padma Puran, the Jain version of Ramayana, the episode of agniparikshya is completely missing and Rama accepts her with gratitude. However, she stays with another prince, not related to her by blood, after being banished by Rama again! Nonetheless, she does enter the womb of the earth in Jain version of Ramayana too. Thus, one sees that in one version of the epic, Sita is challenging Rama’s action but in another, she does not question it, and both the versions are important. However, the act of proving her chastity does take place in almost all the versions. In other words, even though she takes up both the actions to prove her chastity, she challenges the patriarchy.
It is important to note that Jain defends Sita’s action to jump into fire or to enter into the womb of mother earth by saying that it is the right to her own body! In order to justify her point, she has quoted David Schulman, ‘…justifiable of a woman’s dignity, courage, and superiority and announces that it is preferable to be a woman like her rather than a common man like Rama’ (p. 63). Of course, many may feel that the non-violent way of protesting is much more superior than that of counter-violence. In fact, Gandhi did adopt those kinds of protests. But by sacrificing one’s own soul for the sake of somebody else to prove one’s own chastity looks a bit odd. I am not sure if Gandhi would have done that to show his chastity. Of course, Jain is quick to add, through a medium of another story, that the model of Sita is not an ideal model. Interestingly, the author also points out the oral characterisation of Sita, particularly in Telugu regions along with others, to show that those versions are quite different. For example, in Telugu folklore, Sita seemed to be as brave as Rama and she could lift the bow that was later used by Rama to lift and break to marry her. 1 But the most important point to note is that the dominant image of Sita in psyche of an average Indian woman is that of a submissive pativrata nari who never challenged her husband. Thus, unfortunately for the feminists, the agency inbuilt in Sita’s character gets missed out.
In contrast to Sita, Draupadi presents a different picture to which we turn next. The author started with Vyas’s interpretation of disrobing of Draupadi and ended with Ashapurna Devi’s story named after Draupadi. In the first version, after being dragged to sabhagriha, Draupadi, of course, argues in her own defence against the disrobing, and asks if Yudhishtra has any moral right to pledge her after his defeat in the game of dice. After that, she seeks help from other husbands and elders such as Bhisma and Dhitrarashtra, and all of them failed because of Raj Dharma. Being disappointed, she publicly seeks help from another man (Lord Krishna). In this sense, she really defies the traditional code of conduct by challenging the patriarchy and seeking the help of another man. But that form of resistance against patriarchy becomes more evident and radical in the story of Ashapurna Devi, where a tribal woman named Draupadi strips herself in front of police after being raped by them at night. By doing so, she rejects the subordination of patriarchy completely.
Similarly, the colonial rulers codified the rules of Manusmriti to deal with the social issues particularly relating to customary laws. By doing that they could overcome the delicate social issues. She also shows how women tried to use those laws regarding sati, age of consent, etc., formulated during the colonial rule, to subvert the tradition. Jain has not forgotten the Partition to highlight how religion maligned women. Finally, she has also touched upon women’s representation in local government system that is the proactive action of the state to further the cause of women’s movement. In all these cases, she has tried to show that Indian women’s movement is really different from the Western one and it has no link at all with the latter.
I do agree with Jain, who has taken a lot of pains to trace the history of indigenous feminism which gets succour primarily from the Indian pluralistic culture. However, I do not agree with her completely on the point that it was not influenced by industrial revolution, which brought colonial rule to India. First of all, the cultural aspects of Indian feminism got a new lease of life after the nationalists tried to reinterpret our own culture to counter the allegations of Katherine Mayo (1927) 2 and others. The colonial rule also brought education and tried to build a cadre of bureaucrats who, in turn, helped them to rule. The middle-class nationalists, being stung by the criticisms, wanted to educate their wives and hence, education became yet another instrument to understand the past traditions. Further, the stir on adult suffrage for women during nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which made voting rights a legal right in the West, did help Indian women to get voting rights in 1951 without any struggle. Thus, Indian women could get public space without it being considered as breaking the boundaries of family.
Second, feminism that Jain has discussed depicts the concept of middle-class feminism that tries accommodating a democratic patriarchy to assert its limited agency. But in recent days, there have been various types of radical feminisms that believe in destruction of patriarchy completely. Some of them are a cross-breed of Western and Indian influence.
On the whole, however, the author has to be congratulated for her effort to bring out a systematic study on Indian feminism by using the so-far neglected but rich cultural resources.