The Nation and its Limits: Womens Question in

the 19th Century and the Nationalist Resolution

While 19th century is considered the era of social reforms, its last decades saw a shift, as womens issues
disappeared from public agenda. Partha Chatterjee attributes this shift to the rise of nationalism, which
prompted nationalists to remove womens issues from the outer domain of public action- in a classic
compartmentalisation of the inner and outer domains. This essay studies instances from 19th century
literary and legal arenas to contextualise the womens question, illustrating both supportive and
counteractive evidences in a bid to prevent an essentialist approach.

The 19th century saw the Indian public involved in reform movements, wherein womens issues
such as child marriage, kulin polygamy, widow immolation, widow remarriage and female education
were central. Rammohan Roys campaign against widow immolation, Vidyasagars efforts to legalise
widow remarriage, and the activities of associations like Brahmo Samaj or Prarthana Samaj is testimony
to this. The womens question referred to an entire gamut of religious and social reforms prompted by
the educated middle-class primarily in the Bengal and Bombay presidencies. However, several scholars
notice a sudden disappearance of womens issues from the agenda of public debates towards the end of
the century. While Ghulam Murshid calls it retrogression from a modernising tradition influenced by
occidental ideals 1 , Sumit Sarkar maintains that limitations of caste distinction, shastric norms and
patriarchy had coloured even the early 19th century reformist tradition. Womens rights remained an
affair of male philanthropy, where women themselves were rarely, if ever, involved.2 Geraldine Forbes
explains that 19th century male reformers viewed women as their subjects- to be changed through
argument, social action, education and legislation.3 Womens question was not about what the woman
wanted, but how she was to be modernised. Colonial racist ideas about an inferior Indian civilisation
partially prompted such reforms, and the new ideology that emerged to redefine gender relations was
thus an amalgam of foreign and indigenous concepts.4 It is at this juncture that Partha Chatterjee argues
that the relative unimportance of womens issues in the last decade of the 19th century came of the
nationalists situating the womens question in an inner domain of sovereignty and national culture, far
removed from the arena of political contest with the colonial state.5

Chatterjee finds that the womens question was not censored out of the nationalists reform
agenda or overtaken by more pressing issues of political struggle. The nationalists rather resolved the
womens question within their own ideological paradigm, and in complete accordance with their
preferred goals; refusing to use it in political negotiations with the colonial state. This resolution was
built around the inner and outer domains of culture. The former was the material sphere involving
science, technology, statecraft, economic organization and such, and the latter was the spiritual domain.
While the material sphere warranted an imitation of the West, it was imperative to retain and strengthen
the distinctive spiritual essence of the national culture in the inner domain- a domain where the East
was superior. Women, representing the home, had to remain outside the rhetoric of public agenda to
prevent colonial encroachments into the inner sanctum and maintain the true identity of the nation. The
new woman created by nationalist agenda differed from the westernised or the coarse common woman
in terms of national identity, social emancipation and cultural refinement. She was educated in

1Ghulam Murshid. Reluctant Debutante: Response of Bengali Women to Modernization, 1849-1905(1983: Sahitya Samsad, Rajshahi
University, Dhaka)
2
Sumit Sarkar, A Critique of Colonial India. (Papyrus, 1985): 86, 76.
3 Geraldine Forbes, The New Camridge History of India (1996): 27.
4 Geraldine Forbes and Geraldine Hancock Forbes. Women in Modern India. (Cambridge University Press, 1999): 14.
5 Partha Chatterjee. "The Nationalist Resolution of the Women's Question in Sangati and Vaid ed. Recasting Women: Essays in Indian

Colonial History (1988): 237.

1
indigenous traditions, often wrote in chaste sanskritised vernacular and possessed feminine virtues of
discipline; thus suiting the modern world while maintaining national culture. This hegemonic national
culture was essentially built upon an exclusion of the non-elite. The nationalist resolution in fact
prescribed different degrees of westernization for men and women; consistent with both the
masculine/feminine and home/world dichotomies. 6 Sangari and Vaid opine that notions of female
emancipation in the 19th century were tied up with the self-definition of class.7

II

With women creating a separate and problematic space for themselves, nationalists constructed
new, sacred principles to reorder the terms of human relationship. Through the concept of motherland
(often associated with Shakti in Bengal), India was sacralised and feminised. 8 Nationalists often
conceived of women in terms of sati-savitri-sita in a bid to replace her sexuality by spirituality;9 thus
forming in her a curious blend of abject victimhood and triumphant strength. Abanindranaths
Bharatmata or Bankims Motherland was the archetypal victim, while the image of Kali openly
articulated the anger, shame and exploitation of the colonised people. Themes of self-destruction (like
satidaha or jawhar) recurred in contemporary texts as means to avoid fatal invasion of the sacred space.10
Contemporary literary works portrayed Indian women in a critical light, often using parody or satire to
describe their westernisation. The westernised Ketaki was juxtaposed against Labanya in Tagores Sesher
Kobita and the educated Haimabati in Jyotirindranaths Alikbabu was modelled on western romantic
heroines. Bhudev Mukhopadhays Paribarik Prabandha (1882) laments the decay in household and
family life as women become modernised. In Lajjashilata, he talks of feminine virtues like modesty,
and declares that interaction between men and women causes coarseness and degeneration of the female
character.11 Bankimchandras Prachina Ebang Nabina (1870s) stated that as compared to women of the
past, the new woman had refined tastes, but was lazy, prone to illness and luxury, and had no faith in
dharma.12 Debendranath Tagores Tattabodhini Patrika wrote in 1872 that according to natural division
of labour, men worked outside, while a womans place was in her home. 13 At the other end of the
spectrum however, Bankims Debi Chaudhurani, or Pramila in Michael Madhusudan Duttas
Meghnadbadhkavya represented aspirations of emancipated feminity. Dipesh Chakarborty examines how
Bankim and Rammohun created widowed protagonists involved in illicit love affairs, but whose love was
pure. The woman was therefore perceived as a part of the domestic space, who could improve society
only through her dharma.14 Sumanta Banerjee argues that cultural emancipation ultimately boiled down
to weaning off women from those forms of popular culture that the bhadralok now associated with the
vulgar populace. This included agamani and vijaya songs of Durga Pujo, or kheur and jatras in Bengal;
whose idiom and mode of expression remained largely outside bhadralok homes.15

Female writers often mirrored the bhadralok sentiment. Bhadramohilas internalised the concept
of new womanhood, especially to uphold the traditional responsibilities of a respectable home.
Kailashbasini Debis Hindu Mohilar Heenabastha (1863) professed that subversiveness of women was
Gods will, while Hemangini Choudhury commented in Antahpur that a woman should never disobey her
husband.16 Partha Chatterjee argues that the womans voice can be heard only in the inner space of
middle class homes, such as autobiographies, which often portrayed the social history of the times.17
Citing writings of Rassundari (1809-1900), Saradasundari (1819-1907), Kailashbasini (1830-95) and

6 Partha Chatterjee, ibid.

7 Kumkum Sangari, and Sudesh Vaid. Recasting Women: Essays in Indian Colonial History. (Rutgers University Press, 1990): 14.
8 Tanika Sarkar, Nationalist Iconography: Image of Women in 19th Century Bengali Literature, Economic and Political Weekly, 22, No. 47

(Nov. 21, 1987): 2011.

9 Chatterjee, op cit 5: 248.
10 Tanika Sarkar, op cit: 2012, 2014.
11 P. Bisi ed. Bhudevrachanasambhar. (Calcutta: Mitra and Ghosh, 1969): 445-8.
12 Cited in Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories. 11. (Princeton University Press, 1993): 135-6.
13 Cited in Sumit Sarkar, op cit 2: 88.
14
Dipesh Chakarbarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. (Princeton University Press, 2000): 129.
15 Sumanta Banerjee. "Marginalization of Women's Popular Culture in Nineteenth Century Bengal." Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial

History (1989): 127-179.

16 Ibid: 165.
17
Chatterjee, op cit 12: 139.

2
Prasannomoyi (1857-1939), Chatterjee shows how the nationalist ideal of new woman as a hegemonic
construct was actualized. 18 When Rassundari Debis book was published in early 20th century,
Dineshchandra Sen saw it as an original picture of the long suffering but compassionate Bengali woman
who represented all feminine virtues. Her work was thus interpreted in terms of the ideals of nationalist
resolution. Chatterjee further includes the writings of the theatre personality Binodini Dasi (who broke
all rules of feminine scholarship by including a personal element in her smritikatha, which accounted
betrayal in a world that never accepted her) to show that the nationalists defined cultural identity of a
nation only by excluding many from its fold.19 A different picture emerges in the Bombay Presidency,
where the womens movement made use of instruments of colonial economy to disseminate their
message of reform.20 An example can be made of Savitribai Phule, whose poetry and letters illustrated
the problems of women in everyday life, and insisted on the importance of female education.21

Although Christian missionaries had opened the first schools (under Bombay Native Education
Societies, Calcutta School Society, British Foreign School Society and the like), it was only when
Indians opened girls schools and wrote textbooks in the vernacular that sending girls to school became a
legitimate practice. Tanika Sarkar locates this disenchantment with western education in the notion of the
colonized self that arose in context of the 1857 uprising, Lyttonian policies of 1870s and the Ilbert Bill
controversy.22 Nationalist ideals of womanhood often coloured this exercise. The Brahmo Samaj under
Keshubchandra Sen emphasised female education in the 1860s, but their efforts were limited to religious
instruction, sewing lessons and discussion of social issues. 23 In Madras the Theosophical Society
encouraged female education, while its founder-member Madame Blavatsky criticised child marriage,
child widowhood and sati not in itself but as perversions of ancient Indian tradition. Besant advocated
that India needed trained wives and mothers to maintain the household, instead of girl-graduates.24 Even
Pandita Ramabai Saraswatis Sharada Sadan in Bombay and Poona (1889), Mataji Tapaswinis Mahakali
Pathshala of Calcutta (1893) and D. K. Karves school for widows (1896) conformed to the norms set by
the nationalist resolution.25 Women were rarely allowed to study for professional reasons, or just for the
sake of it. Journals read, written, edited and published by women, such as Savitri, Zenana, Khatoon,
Stree Darpan, Bambodhini Patrika and Karnataka Nandini, functioned on similar lines.

III

The last decades of the 19th century were also an era of incessant agitations against reform laws-
a direct consequence of the nationalist resolution. Laws such as the Sati Regulation Act (1824), Widow
Remarriage Act (1856), Age of Consent Act (1860) and Prohibition of Female Infanticide Act (1872) had
been originally spearheaded by both Indian and British officials to bring about socio-religious reforms.
However, Indian nationalists now refused to use womens issues as a point of negotiation with the
colonial state. This coincided with non-interference of the colonial state in religious practices, and
recognition of unwritten laws after the Queens Proclamation of 1858. The laws themselves were
problematic since womens rights of inheritance after second marriage, or inheritance of stridhana
(among others) were curbed. By assuming the hegemony of Brahmanical religious texts and complete
submission of all Hindus to its dictates, the colonial state rigidified and homogenised social customs,
often employing Victorian notions of womanhood and domesticity. Interestingly enough, agitations
against legal reforms bypassed these critiques, insisting rather on a complete removal of womens
question from the legal space. As Partha Chatterjee puts it, false essentialism of home/world,

18 Ibid: 140-51.
19 Ibid: 151-55. Chatterjee compares the terms atmacharita used by male autobiographers and smritikatha, as used by women. This
represented a visible difference in terms of identity and self-discovery (pp.138-39)
20 Padma Anagol, Rebellious wives and dysfunctional marriages in Sumit Sarkar and Tanika Sarkar, ed. Women and Social Reform in

Modern India: A Reader. (Indiana University Press, 2008): 286-7.

21 Susie Tharu and K. Lalita. Eds. Women Writing in India: 600B.C. to Early 20th Century. (New York: The Feminist Press, 1991): 211-212.
22
Tanika. Op cit 8: 262.
23 Meredith Borthwick, The Changing Role of Women in Bengal, 1849-1905. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985): 291.
24 Annie Besant, Annie Besant on the type of education for Indian Girls, 1904 in Sabyasachi Bhattacharya et. al. ed. The Development of

Womens Education in India: A Collection of Documents, 1850-1920 (New Delhi: Jawaharlal Nehru University, 2001): 316.
25
Forbes, op cit 4: 46-52.

3
spiritual/material and feminine/masculine propagated by the nationalist ideology led the resolution of
womens question to a dead end.26

The Age of Consent Act lay at the heart of such controversies. The Bill on Consent Age was
introduced by Sir Andrew Scoble on 9th January 1891, to revise Section 375 of the Penal Code of 1860.
This bill proposed to raise the age of consent from 10 to 12; thereby defining intercourse with married or
unmarried Hindu girls below the age of 12 as rape. Interestingly, this bill did not interfere with the
institution of child marriage in India; only its premature consummation. Nationalist reaction was fierce
and unprecedented. Newspapers in Bengal portrayed it as an insult to national pride and integrity,
pointing to the garbhadhan ceremony (obligatory cohabitation immediately after puberty). Bengal saw
the first open mass-level anti-government protest in Calcutta and official prosecution of a leading
newspaper (Bangabashi)27. Dainik-o-Samachar Chandrika charged that passage of the Bill would plunge
Hindu girls into sin.28 A new chronology of resistance overcame erstwhile loyalism. In northern and
southern India natives were split over the question, while Bombay became the hotbed of debate between
pro-reformers and anti-reformers. Tilak saw it as a religious issue and asked people to refrain from
seeking British help in domestic matters, while Ranade maintained that the bill, initiative for which had
come from native sources, would be a useful agency to reinstate ancient social regulations. Although the
British had bypassed the Queens Proclamation in introducing the Bill, the agitations led the Viceroy to
issue an executive order that made it virtually impossible to bring cases under trial under the Consent
Act. The next major social reform legislation would come only in 1929 (Sarda Act).

This was a historic moment in 19th century social legislation- a culmination of debates on child
marriage, conjugal rights and shastric normativity in the 1880s. Natives argued the proposed law was the
first of its kind to breach Hindu norms, since sati had never been compulsory and the Widow Remarriage
Act had limited scope. Tanika Sarkar discusses Bengals reaction to the Phulmonee Dasi case of 1890
(where the 10/11 year old bled to death after intercourse with her 35-year old husband) to insist that the
household space had become a zone of autonomy and self-rule for the Hindu male.29 Consent became a
biological, even a medico-legal category as men discussed the correct age of conjugality. Mrinalini Sinha
argues that the bill was tied to the notion of colonial masculinity since it curtailed conjugal rights of the
husband. The politics of colonial masculinity had constructed an autonomous sphere for indigenous
masculinity, where even the justification of social reform was based on shastric interpretation.30

Other issues related to the womens question also came into limelight. The Widow Remarriage
Act (1856) had curbed inheritance rights of even lower-caste widows in imitation of the Brahmins. This
introduced new ways of masculine control over social and sexual behaviour of women. 31 R.G.
Bhandarkar even remarked that shastras favoured perpetual widowhood.32 Tanika Sarkar maintains that
ideas of Hindu conjugality lay at the heart of militant nationalism in Bengal.33 Similar agitations against
the Native Marriage Act of 1872, which prohibited polygamy, legalised divorce, raised the marriageable
age and removed caste or religious barriers to marriage, led to narrowing down of its scope to only the
Brahmos. The polemic hardened when in 1887 Rukhmabai refused to live with her husband and was
threatened with arrest for non-constitution of conjugal rights. The womans body had emerged as a site of
struggle- a deeply politicised matter.

26 Chatterjee op cit 5: 251.

27 Reported in the Nottingham Evening Post, 10th August 1891.
28Charles Heimsath. "The Origin and Enactment of the Indian Age of Consent Bill, 1891." The Journal of Asian Studies 21, no. 04 (1962):498
29 Tanika Sarkar, "Rhetoric Against Age of Consent: Resisting Colonial Reason and Death of a Child-Wife." Economic and Political Weekly

(1993): 1873-75. Dhumketu wrote in this context on 04.07.1887 that it is very strange that the whole Hindu society will suffer for the sake
of a very ordinary woman.
30 Mrinalini Sinha. Colonial Masculinity: The'Manly Englishman'and the'Effeminate Bengali'in the Late Nineteenth Century. 1. (Manchester

University Press, 1995):146, 140

31 Rosalind O'Hanlon. "Issues of Widowhood: Gender and Resistance in Colonial Western India." Contesting Power: Resistance and

Everyday Social Relations in South Asia (1991): 72.

32 Dayaram Gidumal, The Status of Women in India (Bombay, I889): I36.
33
Tanika Sarkar. "Hindu Conjugality and Nationalism in Late Nineteenth Century Bengal." Indian Women: Myth and Reality (1995):259.

4
 IV

However, history is also replete with examples that ran counter to the nationalist resolution.
While the general opinion went against British interference in domestic matters, people like Tirmal Rao
Venkatesh and Behramji Malabari actively sought British action. Female writers such as Tarabai (who
wrote Stri-Purusha-Tulana) exposed the true nature of social degradation and gender relations. Womens
active involvement in public agitations (such as in the Age of Consent controversy, where a Bombay
Women Committee sent 2000 signatures to the Queen; or Ramabais attempts at educating women),
albeit restricted, provides a counter-rhetoric. On the one hand, the nationalist resolution was hardly a
resolution; more a bypassing of womens issues in keeping with nationalist agenda. On the other, the
argument of a singular nationalist resolution acceptable to all is essentialist in itself. That scholars
generally confine themselves to Bengal is a further handicap. Chatterjee is criticised for seeking a linear
connection between 19th century reform movements, growth of nationalism in the 20th century, and role
of women in Indian nationalism. While it is true that womens issues took a step back and was replaced
by issues of nationhood (and later statehood), it is relevant to also ask how much the nationalists actually
had conscious control over such issues, and how much of it came of prevailing misogyny.34 The shift in
focus is also attributable to gendered images of cultural inferiority or norms of colonial masculinity.

Nationalist action did not resolve the womens question, rather swept it under the carpet. That
the nationalists were motivated by orthodoxy is evident from the fact that the institution of purdah, which
limited female liberty and mobility, was never resisted. Illustrations from the literary and legal fields
testify that while womens issues generally remained outside late 19th century political rhetoric, it is
problematic to view the situation in a singular light. Women creating an autonomous space for
themselves needs to be juxtaposed against restricted female involvement in anti-colonial protest to
counteract essentialisation.

34Shahid Amin showed us that nationalists and their ideals rarely had direct control on the actual course of popular movements in Gandhi
as Mahatma (Ranajit Guha ed. Subaltern Studies III)