Abstract
This well researched book sets out to explore the interface between women’s writings and politics, the latter not being defined in a narrow conventional sense, but also as ‘politics in the social sense in relationships of power: to sexual politics in everyday life between men and women in the family, in public institutions and in political parties’ (p. 4). Locating itself at the cusp of a critical period in Indian history when writing by women saw an unprecedented surge, it illustrates that this phenomenon was not unconnected to the context of the times. Even as it lays out the terrain of women writing and writing/publication by and about women, the book moves away from a solely textual analysis to trace the links between this writing and the everyday re-negotiation of rights and roles by women in the public domain. Whereas this may appear to be a replay of the lives of some prominent women who were themselves living in and drawn from families in public life, the manner of exploration is such that it conveys a rich sense of how the public sphere was being re-configured through such activity. Focusing on women’s discursive and polemical writings during the two decades before and after independence and partition, the book explores how women were relating to the significant political times through which they were living and seeks to analytically reflect on how ‘politics constructs gender and gender constructs politics’ (p. 4, quoted in Scott, 1999). In so doing, a number of methodological issues are raised.
Dutta Gupta takes off from Tharu and Lalitha’s observation that the nationalist movement ‘was hardly reflected in women’s writing’ (pp. 6–7, quoted in Tharu and Lalitha, 1993), by pointing out that women’s emergence into the public sphere with the growth of nationalist movements has not been traced before through their non-fiction writings. She undertakes an examination of the fashioning of different kinds of ‘selfhood’ of Bengali middle-class women through journals subscribing to different ideologies. The genre of non-fiction is chosen with the intent to challenge the conventional boundaries within which women’s creativity is expected to operate.
The book focuses on ‘disparate histories of periodicals with different ideological moorings which have a constitutive relationship with the history of emergence of different selfhood narratives by women,’ to explore ‘the construction of the multiplicity of their identities through distinct histories of spaces, which their writings inhabited…’ (p. 3). The format of the book marks a conscious selection of journal-based chapters rather than theme-based ones, and she states her reasons for doing so on page 9.
The author draws attention to the fact that though in the last decade some significant work has been done correlating gender, politics and class with reference to the peasant and labour movements in Bengal, there is little work on the women’s movement with this perspective, or on how left-led movements challenged the class dimensions of upper-class women’s movements. While individual communist men and women were differently affected by the struggles of which they were a part, it is also true that implicit notions of gender were made use of and re-inscribed structurally and functionally within all parties, including the left parties. Notwithstanding this, caste and Muslim women’s presence remained low.
The study bases itself on three monthlies (Jayashree, Mandira and Gharey-Bairey) edited and produced by women; two periodicals (Probasi and Saogat); and a daily (Swadhinata) edited and produced by men. The journals selected for the study represent a wide range in terms of ideology as well as social outreach. The author contends that the ‘field of print journalism was not a monolithic site and the kinds of writings produced by women differed from one space to another and even changed dramatically in certain spaces in relation to the change in positions of people who controlled editorial policy’ (pp. 10–11), reflecting ‘the connections between what women produced and the politics of the public as well as the private spheres ….’ (pp. 10–11). Women, she argues, sought to make maximum use of their new found collectivities to stretch the boundaries of their intellectual freedom in a space occupied mostly by men and organised in very gendered ways, which aimed at limiting the scope of women’s writing and decision making so as to maintain the status-quo in the literary public sphere hinging on the sex divide. The book emphasises the role played by women’s support groups to encourage women to overcome their isolation and voice their opinions ‘on issues that would rarely find a place in papers produced by men, either because such issues were thought of as too “insignificant” to merit a discussion or too “political” to let women have their say’ (p. 11). Attention is also continuously drawn to the ‘heterogeneity of Bengali middle-class women’s identities, the range of their disparate roles in the new nation-state, as well as their fluctuating positions vis-à-vis the women’s movement,’ while the journalistic discourse, by determining the kind of voice given to women, continued the ‘privileging of certain identities at specific historical moments by both men and women,’ thereby also contributing to problematising and foregrounding an alternative site of knowledge construction/development (p. 15).
Probasi, founded in 1901 by Ramanand Chatterji, with assistance from his wife, represented the nationalist social reform agenda of the home as a ‘centre of enlightenment’ and ‘pure spiritual influence’. Proclaiming that ‘the woman’s cause is man’s’ at the Third Social Conference, Chatterji argued that the happiness of domestic life and the manners and morals of a nation were at stake unless one focused attention on the ‘guardian angels at home: mothers, wives and sisters’ (p. 21). Summoning women to be ‘social actors’ in select spheres, Probasi ‘tried to guide elite Hindu women in the self-making of their class and in the process contained their subjectivity’ (p. 42). Published till the 1980s, it mirrored the paternalist voice of Chatterji, which foregrounded social work as the ‘special calling’ of middle-class women and never aimed at making women politically conscious. It also chose to keep women away from the writings of Sarat Chandra and others in an attempt to keep them safe from their ‘corrupting influence’. Dutta Gupta concludes that Probasi reflected the ‘basic limitation of the social feminist trend’ wherein there was support for the ‘theoretical principle of equality in the context of unequal situations’ and stress on mainstreaming women within a patriarchal state without questioning the assumptions of what constituted the same (p. 56).
Saogat, edited by Mohammad Naseeruddin, first published in 1918, marked the emergence of the Bengali Muslim intelligentsia, which towards the latter part of the year coincided first with the Khilafat agitation and subsequently with the rising wave of communalism. The changing context had a direct impact on the debate on Muslim women’s rights from different approaches, with some writers locating these within the framework of the Sharia. Saogat counted Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, Mosamat M Khatun and Razia Khatun Chowdhurani among its contributors. Dutta Gupta observes that while ‘attempts’ were being made to project a forward-looking view of the community, in effect Muslim women largely remained ‘sequestered even more within the four walls of their homes’. The prevailing discourse within the community pushed women into thinking and writing only on select issues pertaining to the public sphere, with men being expected to determine the fate of the nation and expostulate on questions of identity and politics.
This later changed to confining women to Mahila Saogat and finally to Begum, launched shortly before Partition, thereby more sharply defining the division of male–female roles/spaces. In 1950 both Begum and Saogat moved to Dacca. The question of Muslim women’s rights in fact needs deeper analysis to capture the complexity of contestation and differing interpretations, including of the Sharia, rather than merely seeing it as an issue of ‘projection’ of the community in progressive terms. Minault’s work based on Urdu journals/writings gives an indication of this and it would have been useful to get insights on the regional flavour of the discourse from Bengali women’s writings.
This complexity attempted with regard to a more general category of women—somewhat inadequately explored in the case of Muslim women’s writing—in fact offers deeper insights on issues of women’s rights, though largely with reference to Hindu women. Jayashree was started in 1931 by Leela (Nag) Roy, the first woman to be part of a core group in a revolutionary party. In 1923, Roy had started the Deepali Sangha, a women’s organisation. Described as a platform for Nationalist–Feminist women, it sought to politicise and draw women into politics of all hues, including the radical stream. From not being the mouthpiece of any political party initially it changed track, post 1940s, to become identified with the Forward Bloc and Subhashism, described as ‘a syncretic ideology of socialism, nationalism and Indian spiritualism’ in opposition to the Marxist bloc (p. 126). The author argues that despite the journal ‘offering a counter discourse to Probasi on issues like women’s rights over their bodies and economic independence,’ on abduction and protection it ‘seemed to act on behalf of those forces which divided women on the basis of their religious identity,’ thereby showing a concurrence with the male-centred Hindu press (pp. 118–119). Dutta Gupta also argues that over a period of time Jayashree too ceased to be the voice of Bengali women, with the focus shifting from prioritising women’s rights in the public and private sphere and confronting nationalist patriarchy, to ‘mobilising public opinion in favour of a hard hitting and non-compromising stand towards the imperial masters’ (p. 129). She avers that the editorial choice Leela Roy made in 1941 ‘was not on behalf of the new political constituency of educated women but as a leading member of a political party representing a particular historical self’, this being ‘in the “larger” interests of the nation even if it meant loss of voice to women’ (p. 130). By itself this formulation is problematic, in so far as it pits women and women’s rights against the nation and the struggle for freedom and posits the goals as being exclusive. Whereas the course adopted by Jayashree and the forces it represents may reflect this, to deduce an opposition or exclusivity in conceptual and historical terms is problematic. It reflects an incipient tendency—visible in much of the writing on women’s movement in India—to pit women and women’s rights’ struggles against politics and political goals. This is despite substantial irrefutable evidence from several countries, including India—and that includes Dutta Gupta’s own work—that it was in the context of national liberation struggles that a larger debate on women’s rights was opened up.
Dutta Gupta tracks the course of two other women’s journals Mandira and Gharey-Bairey in the context of the national liberation struggle. The former, started in 1938 with Kamala Mukherjee (Chatterjee) as editor, had both men and women writing in it. The story of the changing track of the journal reflects some part of the flavour of the times: avowedly launched to raise political awareness among women, it was prone to publishing skilled writers and political workers, male and female, rather than guiding new entrants among women; its defining moment marked the confluence of anti-fascist, anti-imperialist political workers of all shades and alliance with the Congress around 1937–38 (p. 152). However, tension surfaced as Mukherjee became critical of Congress, and joined the CPI. Her mentors found it difficult to accept that the ‘little sisters who they had recruited and tutored to become helpmates in their struggle to free the motherland, would not only choose to follow a different political path but also dare to critique a leader of theirs’ (p. 163). Kamala Dasgupta was ordered to replace the ‘renegade’ Chatterjee, despite her reluctance to do so. The author notes that ‘the autonomy emerging out of women’s education and female bonding posed a threat to the “big brothers” who had grown accustomed to seeing their “little sisters” follow in their footsteps’ (pp. 164–165). With the mantle passing to Arun Chandra Guha in 1948, the character of the monthly underwent a drastic change in terms of women’s writings, to ‘exclude women’s voice from the body politic’ (p. 167). Dutta Gupta concludes that ‘provincial politics, the gendered nature of the political organization and definitions of femininity intersected to produce a major change in the character of Mandira, where women’s potential contribution to politics and society was reined in tightly in newly independent India’ (p. 169).
In an informative chapter on Swadhinata, Gharey-Bairey and Communist Women, focusing on publications of the Communist Party of India (CPI) and the Mahila Atma Raksha Samiti (MARS), the author shows how ‘foregrounding the rights and entitlements of the toiling masses of women not only meant questioning the very basis of class theoretically, but also in practice thinking of inclusive programmes that would let women of lower social orders represent themselves’ (pp. 180–181). From this emerged new ways of ‘doing’ politics, with communist middle-class women taking to the streets in a manner considered ‘unrefined and unbecoming of her class’. This fractured abstract notions of the homogeneity of women and drew forth the label of ‘bazar women’ for communist women activists, even as it marked a shift from the beneficiary approach to one of claiming rights. In the meantime, there emerged a ‘chasm between the party and women’, which found reflection in the growing disinterest in women, making it difficult to sustain Ghare-Bairey as a non-party journal (p. 182).
Dutta Gupta notes that though it was ‘revolutionary in fostering partnerships leading to marital alliances between comrades across caste, community and religion in the 1940s and was not prejudiced against divorced or widowed women remarrying male comrades’ (p. 187), the CPI was uncomfortable with the idea of women as sexual beings, apparently wanting to control and silence sexual desire within marriage. Attired in ‘sexually moral apparel’ that marked out the ‘good from the bad woman’, the author observes that these women ‘functioned as class subjects, seeking to distinguish themselves by being dignified and civilized in the way they performed their public roles’ (p. 179). The author fails to take adequate note of the inherent tension faced by activists in a specific historical context, even though, as per her own research, Renu Chakravartty recalls that when her comrades went door-to-door in middle-class neighbourhoods of Calcutta or even Burdwan, the male heads of families often shooed them away saying, ‘this is a respectable family. Our women won’t come out before you’ (p. 180). Despite good empirical research, the author shows a tendency to generalise when there is clear indication that there is need to explore the nuances within a political contextual formation. A glance through publications from the left, such as National Front and others in the 1940s, shows that the papers regularly carried advertisements announcing theatre performances/cultural programmes, wherein evolving and changing attitudes to marriage, divorce and relationships were being discussed in a public manner. The author herself notes that life in the communes that were set up reflected a different approach to social relationships. The impression conveyed is that the author is unaware of the enormous pressure and hostility from some sections of society that women political activists—particularly those who were left-oriented—face(d) in the course of their work, which requires mass contact, providing leadership on account of social prejudices precisely in order to confront/change societal attitudes, especially with regard to gender roles and stereotypes.
The author shows greater sensitivity with regard to differences amongst women, observing that communist women did not only face hostility and resistance from their male comrades. The AIWC too had a problem, since ‘the divide in AIWC between members and beneficiaries—between those who could afford to pay for travel and other expenses related to organizational activities and those who could not—was threatened by MARS’. The politics of respectability resisted confrontational approaches with regard to challenging social hierarchies, questioning the admittance of ‘these girls’ into ‘our ranks’ and in ‘training women to agitate on various issues’ (p. 181). One could not agree more with the author’s perception that ‘…when the CPI and the MARS women demanded socio-economic transformation and started working with new constituencies—peasant women, factory workers and working class women in the early 1940s—they changed the way middle class Bengali women had participated in politics till then’.
Another issue which echoes contemporary dilemmas relates to patriarchal conventions according to which women worked in the mahila samity while men were in peasant cells, or the fact that women labourers in jute mills were sidelined, as also were their demands. It is noted that Manikuntala Sen and others of her time considered it relevant that peasant and women workers also be organised equally within class organisations in their capacity as peasants and workers, since experience showed that when organised in these capacities, they questioned the patriarchal perceptions within the party as well as wife beating, etc. (pp. 184–85). Notably, unlike the Deepali Sangha’s Mahila Atmaraksha Samity set up earlier, MARS worked with both communities and across classes with the secular character of the organisation attracting both Hindu as well as Muslim women. It ‘did not train Hindu women to defend themselves against probable Muslim male rioters’ (p. 186).
However, according to Dutta Gupta, in Swadhinata too, a ‘widening gulf between the women’s front and the party, between the party members’ became visible, with the issue of gendered division of labour going uncontested. Whereas till 1953, there were no separate pages reserved in Swadhinata for women’s writing, in 1954 a new section Meyder katha (women’s story) was added. Later this too was renamed Meyder Jagat, (women’s world), which at the end of the 1950s became a subset of Paribar O samaj (family and society) with women’s writing finally being relegated to the column ‘Nari O Shishu’ (Women and children). With this shift from the mid-1950s, which she ascribes to revisionism, Dutta Gupa observes that accounts of women political workers and their participation in struggles were noticeably absent in Swadhinata and there was a gradual disappearance of women as social actors. The author argues that this recasting of leftist women’s activity as a familial one continued well into the 1990s, with comrades being addressed as mothers and sisters (pp. 204–205). These shifts in women’s perception of their own activity and the party’s perception of women’s activity/issues, raised by Dutta Gupta, require more analysis.
Comments on contemporary avatars of these early publications are somewhat sketchy. What is really needed is a more nuanced framing of the link between party, politics and women’s activism. It is not enough to show that there were shifts in perceptions of women’s issues and activism which were determined by changes in the political formation, since this may only reinforce women’s and women organisations’ prejudice against the political establishment in Bengal. It is more challenging to show how these shifts compromised new ways of envisioning women’s roles and contributions as well as how women confronted these fresh challenges, even when they emerged from within the political spaces that they had negotiated. Feminist approaches have for long now identified patriarchy within political formations. There is a need to map how this in fact deflects the sharpness of the political agenda. In other words, there is a need to go beyond pointing to patriarchal conspiracies, to identify how patriarchy intervenes to collude with factors and forces which intervene to reconfigure the political field so as to keep larger vested interests intact. This book deserves a read since it takes a step forward by mapping the empirical steps marking the different processes across a range of ideological platforms, to go beyond documenting common ‘women’s issues’ to exploring the formations within which these shifts remained embedded.