Documento sem título

labrys, études féministes/ estudos feministas
julho/dezembro 2015 - juillet/décembre

UNVEILING VISTAS: TRACING MULTIPLE ORIENTATIONS
OF THE FEMINIST MOVEMENTS IN INDIA

In the Indian social contexts, Feminism is generally viewed as a Western import and feminist ideas for the most are often seen as having been casually imposed on Indian values, often neglected and deliberately marginalized by the mainstream. While feminism in India in the contemporary age, did draw upon Western models, it obviously maintained its unique Indianness. While theorizing that feminism did exist in India, although it did not go by the same nomenclature, this paper looks at indigenous social structures that were women-friendly. This paper is an attempt to trace the lineage of feminist voices in India through some of the contemporary Indian women’s movements in an effort to understand their impact on everyday women’s lives in independent India.

Key-words: feminism, Indian feminism, gender, matriliny, Woman Question in India

Feminism, in the Indian social context, for the most, is viewed as an ideological import from the West, and in the eyes of its inveterate critics, the entire project of feminism in the subcontinent infringes on the inviolable nature of Indian values tangibly.

This general distrust and ambiguity has indeed often led to the entire project of women’s movements being taken either in a light hearted manner or discredited or even shunned by the mainstream or masses. Its ontological standing has been repeatedly questioned and its ideological position relegated to the background.

However, even while feminist movements (the plural is deliberate) in India in our own times, has certainly drawn upon its Western models, it has obviously maintained its own unique Indianness, and identity in terms of culture and conceptual issues [i]. A closer analysis would reveal a different, interesting and a little more complex picture.

The essential construction of gender and the distinct male-female role models is of prime significance here. Gender has been defined theoretically as a socio-cultural construct and therefore any study of feminism has of necessity be concerned with race, caste and class differentials alongside local less obvious cultural concerns. The situation in a pluralistic society like India thus becomes all the more complicated due to the presence of multiple religions and classes, castes and regional factors that come into play.

Further, a brief glance at the history of Indian feminist societal constructions from the past would hasten us evidences of the existence of Indian feminist models. Prior to the arrival of the British, there have been records of the existence of several indigenous feminist social structures.

One potent example is the existence and prevalence of matriliny in many Indian communities. The acceptance of matriliny, had for the most ensured that the society was more woman friendly in the main and relatively progressive in terms of women’s emancipation ensuring a space for her own.

This form of society as is quite well known, foregrounds the importance of woman in family and lineage is traced through the mother rather than the father. The reality of woman presence is accepted, a girl child is welcomed and cherished as she is the herald of economic prosperity.

Such social structures validate the importance of women in society by tracing descent through the mother and by extension ensuring her a significant place in the given social sphere.

Matriliny customarily was practiced in India among the khasis in Megalaya and among the Nairs in Kerala, as well as in several other communities of multiple religious affiliation in Northern Kerala.

Matriliny cuts across religion, caste, race and region in Kerala. Though matriliny is no longer officially accepted, its positive effect on women’s lives in Kerala can still be felt. [ii] The status of women and their general well-being is reflected in the census data which reflects higher female-male ratio in Kerala (1084-1000) compared to the rest of India (940), as per the Census Report of 2012. There is low rate of maternal (66 in Kerala and 178 in rest of India) and infant mortality (12 compared to 40 in the rest of India)[iii] (National Health Mission, Govt. of India updated 14/8/2015). But contemporary Indian feminist movements did not draw strength and sustenance from such regional, culture-specific, woman-friendly kinship structures.

What follows is an attempt to trace the lineage of feminist thinking in India through some of the contemporary Indian women’s movements in an effort to understand their impact on everyday women’s lives in independent India. Studies and analytical research reflect the presence of feminist thinking in India long before the Western feminist thinkers and activists became widely known, As Maitrayee Chaudhuri maintains, in her introduction to Feminism in India, “ … yes, feminism has been debated in India, notwithstanding the often active denial of the term itself”.v [iv]

It is a fact that Western feminist theory has moved slowly in the direction of looking up to Indian women’s movements with a view to understanding the complexity of a non-Western frame that required a different identity and varied cultural response. As far back as 1986, Chandra Mohanty had, in her essay, “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses” [v]drawn attention to the complexities of working across race, class, sexuality, and nationality in the context of multiple colonial legacies. The challenges faced by the multiplicity and the diverse directions that exert influence with relation to the “woman question” make the situation more defying. The new feminist directions and the importance of significant individual culture specific theories were called onto the foreground and these become more relevant in the context of India.

In twentieth century India, the “woman question” was definitely very much a part of the Nationalist agenda. Most notably Gandhian idealism, for the first time encouraged women from all walks of life to participate in the freedom movement with a self-confident faith that could move mountains. It might have been true that the roles women assumed within the framework of nationalism seemed to put women in stereotypical roles-- in the Sita- Savitri image--, foregrounding tolerance, forbearance and self-sacrifice as the essential requirements for women participating in such a broad-spectrum movement [vi]vi. But the participant women themselves were often radical in their approach. For example, there were radical voices articulated with vigour, like that of Sarojini Naidu in the case of reservation for women.

Rejecting reservation for women, Sarojini Naidu in her presidential address to All India Women’s Conference, in Bombay (1930) speaks in a radical feminist voice, while rejecting the appellation of the term “feminist”. Her speech serves the double purpose of conforming to the Gandhian ideal of Sita for Indian womanhood, while assuming a strong independent stance:

We are not week, timid, meek women. We hold the courageous Savitri as our ideal, we know how Sita defied those who entertained suspicion of her ability to keep her chastity….I will, however, confess to you one thing. I will whisper it into this loud-speaker. I am not a feminist. To be a feminist is to acknowledge that one’s life has been repressed. The demand for granting preferential treatment to women is an admission on her part of her inferiority and there has been no need for such a thing in India as the women have always been by the side of men in council and in the fields of battle”.

Sarojini Naidu, while whispering into a loud speaker here makes an ardent demand for equal status which was achieved on paper in the Indian Constitution through the Fundamental Rights where women and men were given equal rights. But the sad fact remained that these rights did not translate into social realities.

Three women’s organizations came into being one after the other in the early part of the 20th century – Women’s India Association (WIA) in 1917, National Council of Women in India (NCWI) in 1925 and All India Women’s Conference (AIWC) in 1927.

They made a joint memorandum supporting adult suffrage including women. Their demand was the idealistic one of equal rights, and their expectation that of equal representation for women. These organisations of women which supported the Indian feminist movement through the Nationalist phase, however, rejected any idea of reservation for women in legislatures. But The Indian Franchise Committee, chaired by Lord Lothian, recommended reservation for women fearing social prejudices that would prevent women from assuming office.

The issue of Reservation for women was then marginalised for many years as was the case with many feminist issues. In the midst of the patriotic fervour, these issues were temporarily put aside and found no space among the mainstream patriarchal decisions relating to national level matters.

Interestingly, despite the significant women presence in the Nationalist movement, there are very few records of their involvement or a proper analysis or understanding of their contribution. The women’s organisations worked towards improving the Indian women’s status through education. Yet the real work of women and their contribution to the nation was largely ignored. Leela Kasturi and Vina Mazumdar in their study titled “Women and Indian Nationalism”[vii] explain it thus:

“The social reformer’s attempts to alter social values relating to women’s status through the education of women succeeded in creating a dominant social ideology of gender roles which bore no relation to the critically important roles that the mass of women played in the family and the national economy; and ignored many of the effects of subordination that crippled the growth of intellectual and moral freedom and social responsibility of many women in the growing middle class.”

The attitudes and mind-set that held back women’s protest movements in the Nationalist movement continue even today. The adherence to the Sita model kept women within their roles in the family giving them roles that were supportive rather than aggressive. The men continued in their traditional leadership roles and women were often subordinated.

But very often the men were quite sensitive to the issues taken up and supportive of the views of the women leaders, so that the women revolutionaries did not have to take up a confrontational stance. Therefore the protests rarely became anti-male or allow for rejection of family unlike many Eurocentric women’s movements.

Prevention of violence against women has been one area where all the movements in short converge at some point. More recent protests have veered around multiple forms of violence against women in Indian society. Women’s movements have taken up cudgels against rape, dowry murder, sex-selection, sexual harassment in the workplace, alcoholism, domestic violence, property rights for women and discriminatory personal laws.

While SEWA, the Self Employed Women’s Association demanded women’s right to work with dignity from Ahmedabad, the Working Women’s Forum (WWF) took its roots in Chennai, and the fish workers movement as well as the tea plantation workers protest was located in Kerala. The movements tended to be region-specific and localized and rarely carried much national significance.

In the context of these contemporary movements, the one the acquired a great deal of public attention in the recent past was the protest movement consequent to the rape of the young girl in a moving bus in New Delhi, the national capital.

On 16th December 2012, a young paramedical student travelling with a male companion in the late evening was brutally raped by six men in a moving bus. Protests against different forms of violence against women was always a serious concern of all the women’s movements - whether at home, in the workplace, or in the public sphere.

This was one specific area that shared common ground. But what shocked the nation was not merely the brutality of the crime but also the casualness with which it was committed. The mass protest against the rape in the Delhi case was totally unprecedented and unexpected. Both men and women, regardless of region, caste, class, race or political affiliation spontaneously participated in the movement. The vulnerability of an ordinary citizen whose right to freedom was casually dismissed by the organized criminals was forcible made evident to a shocked nation.

The wide media coverage of the protest gave it mass support and national significance. Overnight every sane individual anywhere within India or elsewhere pledged support to the cause of women’s safety. Responses stating that zero tolerance to such violence was a right of the citizen not responsibility of the individual woman came to be accepted.

The stray dissenting voices had to withdraw hastily in the face of such solidarity. Protest marches and candle light vigils became the order of the day. Those who could not be physically present at these occasions took to the social media to express their views on the matter.

Perhaps it was the social background of the girl that lent unity to the protest. The picture of the middle class and upwardly mobile individual whose dreams of a life of service and dignity brought to an abrupt end by the mindless violence of a couple of criminal minds was seen as a national waste, not merely a personal problem.

By rendering her personal desires public, the media played up the feminist ideals and became truly democratic. The urban- rural connect became not just possible but inevitable.

Despite a few remarks by politicians to the contrary, there was no justification of gender based violence as an expression of natural lust. It was understood as the contesting of power over a woman’s body and her sexuality. All efforts to justify the crime drawing upon factors such as dress code, her presence in public space at an inappropriate time and so on were brushed aside and efforts to justify moral policing were quickly brushed aside.

The significance of the protest lay in the fact that the movement was able to channelize the protest to demand freedom for the woman and her safety rather than curb her freedom or impose further restraints.

Faced with such widespread response perpetrated through media and the press, the normally indifferent administration was finally forced to act. While the legislature went into an uproar with immediate effect and worked to enact new provisions in the legal system to ensure more justice for women.

The Justice Verma committee, formed to review laws for sexual crimes, identified “failure of governance “as root cause for sexual crime. For the first time voyeurism, stalking and acid attacks were identified as crimes requiring punishment of up to seven years of rigorous imprisonment. The police were required to register any case of sexual crime immediately. For the first time crimes against men, homosexuals and transgenders received mention.

Consequent to the recommendations of the committee, the Criminal Law (Amendment ) Bill 2013 came to be passed wherein many of the recommendations of the committee became law. The judiciary formulated fast track courts to try the criminals and four of them were given the death sentence. This happened in record time and the nation sighed in collective relief.

The offenders then appealed for clemency to the higher court which has still not heard the case after three years. The new law provided hope for a large number of women who were/are being victimized. The number of crimes against women being reported increased drastically signifying the feeling of hope among women victims for justice.

More fast track courts, better street lighting and policing, more surveillance cameras in public places were some of the new developments recommended and sometimes applied. But the success story was far from perfect. The offenders on death row have not been punished yet and the juvenile among them, despite his proven brutality, was to walk free after 3 years. The offenders seem to experience no feels of guilt or remorse as reported in their statement to the filmmaker of the documentary, “India’s Daughters”, and appear to be quite unrepentant of their crime [viii] .

A survey published by Hindustan Times newspaper on Tuesday, 10th November 2015, the anniversary of the Delhi gang rape, revealed that 90 per cent of 2,557 women surveyed did not see any improvements in safety. [ix] Politicians and persons in power still continue to hold the same patriarchal attitudes towards women’s issues as evidenced in the response of the Karnataka minister to the rape of a tennis player on court[x]. Notwithstanding these drawbacks, the movement was successful in bringing about awareness and greater sensitivity with regard to sexual crimes.

Feminist movements then, in contemporary India, have come full circle, moving from being isolated, class, caste or regional movements to a position of greater bargaining power with their presence on the national scene.

The popular media, especially the social media played a huge part in the hyping and publicizing of the Delhi rape case which came to be later called the Nirbhaya case. But such common grounds cannot be covered by all Indian feminist movements.

Many feminist issues are also issues that are region specific or have some caste/class significance embodied in a specific locality. Such issues will, of essence be, of a smaller scale, even though they are of much significance.

They often give succeed in providing a voice to the subaltern and the underprivileged while dealing with issues that have been marginalized and devalued. Nevertheless they must be made a part of the mainstream, and be representative of the thus far silent groups. Their timely force can be mustered and their popular momentum marshalled for a greater cause.

It must also be understood that the fragmentation and isolation of these regional protest groups does not take away from their relevance. Only when efforts are made to mainstream them or articulate the issues that concern them, can they be understood in their larger significance. However, among the problems of such efforts would be the tangential appearance of hegemonial and homogenizing forces in the bargain.

Multiplicity, diversity, and to a large extent, isolation are very much a characteristic of most postcolonial i feminisms, where feminist issues have specific caste, class or regional differences, which stand out in stark contrast to Eurocentric feminisms. This is not untrue of Indian feminism: the ideology is essentially indigenous, the force, passion and significance global.

Dr USHA V.T is currently Head at the Centre for Women’s Studies, Pondicherry Central University, Pondicherry, India. Her publications currently include five books and more than forty scholarly articles in the field of feminist theory, women’s discourse, literature, women and media. After her postgraduate degree in English Literature and Ph.D in British poetry and poetics, her postdoctoral research moved toward the emerging areas of women-centred discourses. She has guided and supervised a number of projects and dissertations in the fields of women’s studies, media, popular culture, social planning and issues and action-plans for empowering the underprivileged sectors of society. Under her eminent guidance and direction the Centre for Women’s Studies in Pondicherry University has produced a large number of dissertations and research papers as well as long-term research projects. Dr. Usha has travelled widely in India and abroad, and lectured and made presentations in several academic forums as well as nonacademic bodies. She has organized a large number of seminars and workshops particularly relating to gender and Women’s Studies.
Her significant contributions include The Real and the Imagined: The Poetic World of Ted Hughes (1998; now recognized as a pioneering work from India on the oeuvre of Ted Hughes); Figuring the Female: Women’s Discourse Art and Literature (2006);Tradition and Terrain: Aesthetic Continuities( 2006) (with S.Murali);Women and Moral Policing ( 2009); Gender based Violence: Some Primary Facts (2009); Women’s Issues in South India (in press); and Re/Cognising Women’s Studies: Issues, Texts, Contexts (2011)
She has been an Associate of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, and was an active member of the Curriculum Development Committee for Women’s Studies of the University Grants Commission. Dr Usha is member of the Board of Studies for Women’s Studies, and has also served in the capacity of member of advisory committees in many universities. Her current interests include gender and the environment. Some of the postdoctoral projects she has worked on include:

• Gender, Value and Signification: Women and Television in Kerala KRPLLD, CDS. Trivandrum
• Women, Bhakthi and Poetry: A Study of the Poetry of South Indian Women Mystics of the Medieval period
• Matriliny, Women and Society

Dr Usha V.T can be reached at: usha_vt@rediffmail.com; usha_vt.cws@pondiuni.edu.in

[i] In a recent interview Gayatri Spivak censures those Indian scholars who reject feminism as a western construct and champion instead the rights of women. Dubbing such a stance nativist, she concludes that it is “a real denial of history not to acknowledge that the opposition between (non-western) women’s rights and (western) feminism is false” because the concept of human rights, including women’s rights, has a deep complicity with the culture of imperialism”.(Neocolonialism,232) “ Women’s Rights versus feminism: a Postcolonial Perspective” Harveen Sachdeva Mann, Postcolonial Discourse and Changing Cultural Contexts: Theory and Criticism. ed Gita Rajan, Radhika Mohanram, Greenwood Publishing, 1995, 69

In The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures, Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffins, a triad of Australian critics, …note that the western feminists of the 1960s and 1970s were “exclusivist” and “essentialist” functioning from a middleclass, Eurocentric locus.. and imply that international feminism is a contemporary reality because… first world feminists have now overcome their biases because the “principle of ‘difference’, lying at as it does at the very heart of (women’s) construction as ‘ Other’, is basic to any contemporary feminist theory…It is only as the international feminist movement concerns itself equally with the very real third-world issues of race, class, caste, illiteracy, poverty, and (neo)imperialism as “feminist” that the term “feminism” will gain acceptance in the non-west(Johnson-Odim and Strobel) Harveen Sachdeva Mann, Postcolonial Discourse and Changing Cultural Contexts: Theory and Criticism. ed Gita Rajan, Radhika Mohanram, Greenwood Publishing, 1995, 70.

labrys, études féministes/ estudos feministas
julho/dezembro 2015 - juillet/décembre