Makers of Modern India

by Ramachandra Guha

  The Constraints of Marriage

  Our final excerpt from the feminist, or proto-feminist, writings of E. V. Ramaswami speaks of the burdens placed on women by that most durable of human institutions, marriage.6

  The married life of a man and a woman in our country is very bad; in no other country it is so bad. The marriage principle, briefly, involves the enslavement of a woman by her husband, and it is nothing else. We conceal this enslavement under cover of marriage rites and we deceive the women concerned by giving the wedding the meaninglessly false name of a divine function.

  Generally speaking, not merely in our country, but in almost all countries of the world, as far as marriage is concerned, women are subjected to unnaturally harsh treatment. This will be accepted as true by all impartial people. But, in this, our country is far worse than other countries.

  If this wickedness against women continues, in the near future, that is, within another fifty years, marriage rites and connected relationships will cease to be; we can be sure of that. Realising this, intelligent people in other countries are gradually relaxing the harsh treatment of women. Our country alone is obstinately clinging to the old practices. Therefore an unconventionally drastic agitation of women has to take place.

  Last year (1929) at the Chengalpattu conference a resolution was passed stating that men and women should have the right to be divorced from their partners. And then in the Women’s Conference held in Madras recently there was a demand for a law to enable women to have divorce when necessary. The so called social reformers raised a hue and cry against the resolutions in the two conferences. But after the Chengalpattu resolution, in some part of India and in other countries divorce laws have been enacted. In Russia marriage itself is treated as a daily contract. All of us know that in Germany, if there is no agreement between a man and his wife, they can be divorced without assigning any reason. The Baroda government7 also has enacted such a law. In many countries of the West, such a law is in force. We have to say that it is foolish on the part of the government in our country not to have enacted such a law. Newspapers report that in South India many husbands have killed their wives suspecting immoral behaviour. Sometimes the husband’s suspicion of his wife’s character has led to many murders. Those who believe in divine dispensation do not have the brains to ask themselves why marriages conducted according to religious rites and the approval of god, end in this fashion. If the world of the women should progress, if the human element should develop in women and if men should have contentment and happiness and if they should experience real love, it is essential that we should give our people the right to seek divorce when it is necessary. Otherwise men and women will have no scope for independent living.

  Many of our ‘social reformers’ raise a violent cry of protest if a man marries two wives. It is not clear what makes them raise this cry. Is it their devotion to religion or rationalism or their interest in the welfare of women or the freedom of human beings or the righteous conduct of human beings? We will discuss this question on another occasion.

  Now, I wish to ask the people who object to a man marrying more than one wife these questions: Is marriage intended to give pleasure and satisfaction to man or is it just a formal rite? If by chance a man gets as his wife a woman whom he does not like, who does not cooperate with him and who cannot give him physical pleasure, then what should the man concerned do? In the same way, if a woman happens to get a man unsuitable to her in every way, then, what is her lot? What is she to do? If marriage has anything to do with divinity, and if it is really dissoluble, will such complications arise in it? When these things are considered it will be clear to any kind of man, that the talk of divinity is utter falsehood. Therefore, if divorce is not facilitated in our country by law as it is done in other countries, we will have to do propaganda against marriage and also for more than one partner for each married man and woman. That apart, at present, we wish to urge the men who find their wives non-cooperative, and useless for giving pleasure and satisfaction, to come forward to marry the women they like. Only then the suffering that results from bringing together, in the name of divine sanction, men and women who do not know each other and who have not given their consent for the alliance, will end. Why man is born and why he dies are questions with which we are not concerned. What we are convinced about is that as long as human beings live, they must enjoy pleasure and satisfaction. For this, a woman must have a man and a man must have a woman.

  When this is accepted, if difficulties which cause sorrow between the couple crop up, it is the first duty of any sensible man to get rid of those difficulties. Those who work for the pleasure and satisfaction of other human beings must do this service. Without getting rid of the difficulties if men and women suffer dissatisfaction and pain, telling themselves that simply because they are married, they must patiently put up with everything, I would say that they betray absence of the essential human qualities and also want of self-respect.

  * * *

  Chapter Twelve

  The Socialist Feminist

  Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay

  Whereas Ambedkar, Jinnah and Ramaswami were critics of Gandhi, our next maker of modern India was a critical sympathizer. In this she was somewhat akin to Tagore. While the poet urged Gandhi not to reject other cultures when demanding national independence, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay asked him to be more sensitive to the rights of women, as well as to be more attentive to the economic bases of social strife.

  Kamaladevi was born in 1903, the youngest child of a middle-class Brahmin family from the south-western port city of Mangalore. Her community of Chitrapur Saraswats had taken early to modern education and reaped its rewards accordingly. Her own father was in the colonial civil service. Growing up, Kamaladevi was deeply influenced by her mother, who read Tamil, English, Hindi and Marathi and also played the classical violin.

  Kamaladevi was married and widowed in her teens. Her mother encouraged her to study in Madras, where she fell in love with and later married Harindranath Chattopadhyay, who was a brother of the poet-patriot Sarojini Naidu and a versifier and actor of some talent himself. Theatre seemed to be a common bond—for Kamaladevi liked to act in and promote plays, particularly those with social themes. In 1926, still in her early twenties, she stood for elections to the Madras Legislative Council, but lost narrowly. By now she was a convinced nationalist in the Congress mould. In 1928 she was elected to the prestigious All India Congress Committee (AICC).

  Kamaladevi became better known when, in 1930, she prevailed upon Gandhi not to restrict the Salt Satyagraha to men alone. She herself made packets of salt and sold them outside the Bombay Stock Exchange, shouting ‘Mahatma Gandhi ki jai’. Then she repeated the procedure in the high court. For this breach of the law, she was arrested and sent to jail, the first of several prison terms she was to—the word is inescapable—enjoy.

  In 1934 a group of idealistic and brilliantly gifted young men and women formed the Congress Socialist Party (CSP). This urged the Congress to be more sensitive to the rights of workers and peasants. At the same time, these Congress Socialists detested the so-called Socialist Fatherland, the Soviet Union. Condemning its one-party state and its brutal treatment of political dissidents, the CSP stood rather for a marriage of democracy and socialism. Kamaladevi was active in the CSP from the beginning, becoming its president in 1936. She had also become increasingly involved in the women’s movement, lobbying for better working conditions for women in factories and farms and for their right to paid maternity leave.

  Kamaladevi was arrested during the Quit India movement of 1942 and spent more than a year in jail. However, after India became independent in 1947, she refused to enter formal politics. With her abilities, and her record as a fighter for freedom, a place in Parliament and in the Union Cabinet was hers for the asking. If she wished, she could have been a governor of a large state or ambassador to an important country. Offers were made in these directions—she rejected them all, in favour of social work. I
n the first, difficult years of freedom she worked to resettle refugees in northern India. Through her Indian Cooperative Union she helped the displaced refugees acquire land, build homes and set up small workshops and factories. Under her direction, the cooperative ran schools and hospitals as well.

  From the 1950s, Kamaladevi turned increasingly to the revival and promotion of India’s rich, varied and endangered craft traditions. She established the All India Handicrafts Board and headed it for twenty years. She travelled through the country, studying existing traditions of weaving, pottery, sculpture, metalwork, toy-making, etc. She formed cooperatives to market the products of craftsmen and to provide them credit. She instituted awards to motivate them. She urged state governments to cut out middlemen and to deal directly with craftsmen, source their products and sell them through their own emporia. A healthy competitive rivalry between the states was thereby created. That Indian crafts are still alive and, moreover, have a visible national and international presence, is owed more to Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay than to any other individual.

  Among the other institutions that Kamaladevi helped create and nurture were the National School of Drama, the Sangeet Natak Akademi and the India International Centre. She is now chiefly known for her work for handicrafts and through the institutions that she founded. But, as the excerpts below demonstrate, Kamaladevi was also an original thinker, whose writings on politics and social reform continue to speak to us today.

  Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay died in 1988, having lived through the most part of a century she helped define and whose finest tendencies she embodied.

  The Women’s Movement in Perspective

  In 1942 Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay was elected president of the All India Women’s Conference. Since she was then in jail she could not assume office. However, after her release from prison in 1944, she presided over the annual conference of the Women’s Conference held that year in Bombay. Excerpts from her address are presented below. Her educated, urbane and modern style makes for an interesting contrast with the more direct and earthy prose of Tarabai Shinde, her fellow worker in the cause of gender equality.1

  Although the women’s movement has fairly advanced and matured, I feel the need today more than ever to restate its case, because of the continued misunderstanding of its nature and growth by a large number of men and quite a few women alike. The women’s movement … operates as an integral part of the progressive movement in the broadest sense, and is not a sex war as so many mechanically believe or are led to believe. For the issues round which it revolves, such as right of votes, inheritance, entry into professions and the like, are an intrinsic part of the bigger issues striving to overcome the prevailing undemocratic practices that deny common rights to certain sections of society. It is therefore a comrade to the struggle of the backward castes and the long-oppressed classes alike, seeking to regain the lost inheritance of man’s inalienable rights. To give it any other interpretation or shear it off to isolate it from the main current, is socially injurious. It is equally erroneous to hold the ‘nature of man’ responsible for women’s disabilities and give the women’s movement an anti-man twist. It is the nature of our society which is at fault and our drive has to be directed against faulty social institutions.

  The women’s movement, therefore, does not seek to make women either fight men or imitate them. It rather seeks to instil into them a consciousness of their own faculties and functions and create a respect for those of the other sex. Thus alone can society be conditioned to accept the two as equals. To fit women theoretically and practically into this scheme, women have to be encouraged to develop their gifts and talents. This has therefore to be one of the main planks of the movement.

  Closely allied to a false conception of the women’s movement is also the false value allotted to the women’s economic worth. The correct premise to start from is the recognition of the social division of labour between the sexes, which gives the lie direct to the middle and upper-class conception of women as domestic and social parasites, living on their husbands and contributing nothing. Woman power is basic and the woman must be recognized as a social and economic factor on her own, not as an assistant to man. Little recognized are the tremendous labours of the housewife, and even in the most highly industrialized countries house-keeping still remains the major industry, and the housewives still form the majority. To state blandly that woman produces children and rears them, cooks food, cleans, washes, is not enough … The housewife is as much of a working woman as a factory worker. She expends more energy and time and skill in the production of commodities than the unionized, legally protected worker, for her hours are unlimited and her tools countless. Tradition has always tended to place a lower value on home production and services. One reason may be because such goods and services do not come on the market but only cater to the family group as consumers. Yet, really speaking, this very fact should make them, as one writer says, ‘priceless’. For, since society depends upon the family not only for biological perpetuation but cultural as well, woman as the guardian of the home and one of its stabilizing factors, will also continue to remain ‘priceless’. The tragedy is that its very non-pecuniary and non-competitive character has lowered the prestige of the woman’s role. Husbands who claim they ‘support’ their wives simply because the latter do not bring home a pay cheque, are being anti-social, upsetting the harmonious social equilibrium and breaking social solidarity. For it is time society recognized that every housewife supports herself though she may not scratch at a desk or run a machine, by the social labour she performs and the contribution she makes towards the maintenance of the home and its happiness.

  The entrance of women into extra-domestic activities has to be welcomed, for it provides a wider field for their talents, breaks the relative segregation of the women as a sex, relaxes the restrictions that otherwise narrow women’s functions. What is strange is that as long as woman confines herself to her domestic duties, she is censured as a burden on man, whereas if she tries to earn a livelihood outside the home, she is equally condemned as a competitor of man, trying to take his livelihood away from him …

  The field of operations that lie before the Conference is ever-widening. Many varied activities beckon and the temptation to rush in all directions is great. But like an autumnal matron who has developed a high sense of discrimination but not lost her youthful vigour and enthusiasm, the Conference would do well to concentrate on a few items and do them well. First in importance I would place the training in social services, so eminently needed yet so grievously neglected … Closely allied to this is the necessity for training women in handicrafts and fostering hand [made] industries. Those of our branches which are already working in this direction, one of them even turning out paper, will testify to the utility of such ventures. They will provide a means of livelihood to many helpless women. Incidentally, they will add to the industrial production of our country at a time when it is not able to meet our needs. Every branch should initiate and run whatever industries it is best in a position to introduce. In such undertakings, I am sure, we can always count on the help and cooperation of other experienced bodies who are already in the field but who do not attempt the special training and employment of women, a task this Conference is best fitted for.

  As essential and as scarce are the health services, particularly nursing … The maternity and child welfare movement is mostly a week-end show and the entire country can boast of only 800 centres to cater to such a vast area and population. All this makes an appalling picture. While admitting that the Women’s Conference is not the body which can build up a complete health service to meet the country’s requirements, I feel sure it can make a small but appreciable contribution. It can recruit women to the nursing profession, encourage many more girls to take courses in public health-nursing, first aid, industrial hygiene, etc., and also get more of such courses introduced in our educational and social institutions. It can help to organize shorter courses in the general principles
of nursing to meet the present emergency in the country. At the same time it should agitate to raise the standard of housing, allowances, training and pay of the nursing staff, with a view to popularizing and securing social recognition to this long-despised but most noble of professions …

  Although the food problem is the most frightening at the moment and tends to overshadow most others, its causes are beyond the Conference’s power to remedy. As long as India’s economy continues to be throttled and perverted by foreign interests, hunger and starvation must stalk this land of plenty. Only a careful development of its vast untapped wealth, based on an economy designed to meet the needs of the people by a free India[n] people’s government, can aspire to overcome this dreadful scourge of perpetual famines. But that can’t by any means be our final word on it. As women happen to be the regulators of food in the home they should be more sensitive now than ever to the care and preservation of food, avoid waste in daily consumption as also in lavish hospitality which in the present setting strikes one as painfully incongruous. Working out balanced diets with the limited things available, would also help. The worst sufferers in this tragic drama are the children. In every responsible society they have the first claim on the available resources, particularly milk. But today in our country the man who pays the price gets the milk. So, while adults who are not wholly dependent on this article are able to get large supplies and sometimes even thoughtlessly waste it, children who solely subsist on it are forced to go without it if they do not have sufficient means. Ways and methods must be sought by us to alter this and see that our children, which in reality means several future generations to come, are not hopelessly undermined. We shall be guilty of a grave crime if we do not get this righted immediately.