![]()
PART I
Beginning prior to 1850
![]()
1
INDIAN WOMEN’S AGENCY THROUGH INDIAN WOMEN’S LITERATURE
Sheetal Bharat1
Patriarchy has been a dominant institution influencing the structure of society through recorded human history. In this chapter, I bring out the various ways in which Indian women have engaged with this institution from the fifth century BCE till colonial times. I use Amartya Sen’s construct to identify the well- (or ill-) being of women as it is represented in their own writings, and go further to identify their exercises of agency in effecting welfare.
Welfare, according to Sen (1985), is determined by more than a certain state of wellbeing of the individual concerned. It must also include agency in choosing among a range of aims, including those unrelated to personal wellbeing.2 Freedom is the central idea in Sen’s notion of wellbeing and is incorporated in the analysis through agency, a related and wider concept (Sen 1985, p. 203).
The historical source material must be suitably broad-based to afford an understanding of women’s “aims, objectives, allegiances, obligations”, a task critical to understanding agency. I look at a sample of the surviving and accessible literature produced by Indian women through recorded history. For reasons of economy, I restrict the sample to works for which an English translation is accessible. This reduces the sample size to a few dozen works spread over two millennia. Tharu and Lalita’s exhaustive two-volume anthology of Indian women’s writings is a primary resource, supplemented by other works, as available.
The oldest anthology consulted is the Therigatha (Theri: nun; gatha: songs), by Buddhist nuns who lived and composed verses about their religious experience in the time of the Buddha around the fifth century BCE. This is the earliest surviving literature by women anywhere in the world (Tharu and Lalita Vol. I 2015, p. 65). Around the time that these verses were composed, script was not in common use. This meant that if these experiences of realisation were to be shared, they had best be in poetic form that is easy to commit to memory (Murcott 1991, p. 5).
The Bhakti (meaning devotion) movement produced rich literature in several languages across the subcontinent from the eighth till the nineteenth century ce. The aspect that ties this vast body of literature together is that it was composed by people who formed a wave of revolt against brahmanical supremacy (Nadkarni 2013, pp. 67, 97). The idea was that salvation is not the sole prerogative of the elite male. Anyone can achieve the highest religious goal by unconditional devotion to their chosen idol.
Two Mughal3 women’s works are included in this study: Empress Nur Jahan (1577–1645) did not leave any written works, but the train of her thoughts and actions is available to the modern scholar through travellers’ records. Princess Zeb-un-Nissa (1638–1702), daughter of the last powerful Mughal emperor, Aurangzeb, composed poetry for her pleasure.
Literary and political works from the nineteenth century, when India was under colonial rule are innumerable. The range of works includes poetry, novels, speeches, newspaper contributions, journal articles and official communication with the government, covering themes of politics, social issues, religion and science.
Since literary composition demands use of higher mental faculties, the women who composed poetry, wrote novels and made speeches may be considered intellectually abler than the average woman in each age. There is no reason to believe that the lived experience of an intellectually abler woman would be any worse than average. Judging by the content of their writings, these literary women write of troubles that reflect the experience of the masses, and so their descriptions can be considered representative of the women of the age, even though these women themselves might not have been representative. Appendix 1 has a list of women named through this chapter with some details for quick reference.
In the following section titled Lack of wellbeing achievement and the vicious cycle of gender discrimination, literature from across the ages is cited to illustrate instances of women’s ill-being. Chronological continuity is unnecessary as women’s lived experiences from across two millennia are strikingly similar in respect of their lack of wellbeing, and the material is rather presented to reveal the elements of a vicious cycle. The latter section titled Agency in effecting wellbeing highlights instances of women exercising their agency in expanding freedoms for themselves and other women.
Lack of wellbeing achievement and the vicious cycle of gender discrimination
One starting point in a cycle is as good as another (see Figure 1.1). I begin a description of this vicious cycle with girls not being given opportunities to learn skills that would be valuable outside the house. A word of justification is due for the expression – skills valuable outside the house. It is valid to argue that women who work in the house develop skills related to the house and provide a valuable service in sustaining the family. Members of a family working outside rely, for their sustenance, on those staying in. Sen explains that “the activities that produce or support that sustenance, survival or reproduction [of earning members] are typically not regarded as contributing to output, and are often classified as ‘unproductive’ labour” (1987, p. 11, emphasis in original). Boserup (1970) and Papanek (1979) have written extensively on the supporting role played by women in creating family status. Given the acknowledgement that both men and women do productive work, the unequal status appears to be due to valuation. Work done outside the house is valued more than that performed within. Sen (1987, p. 25) points out that it is a person’s ‘perceived contribution’ to household income that determines their status. “The impact of ‘perceived contribution response’ may have been primitively associated with acquiring food from outside” (Sen 1987, p. 29, emphasis in original), and this perception lingers to the modern day. Gender disparities tend to be strikingly unfavourable to women, and even sex ratios (number of women to number of men) tend to be lower in northern India where women work more indoors, compared with the south (Sen 1987, p. 31).
Women staying at home results in them not being perceived as economically productive. Historically, property was handed down through sons, while daughters commanded ownership only over movable property such as jewellery and clothes gifted at the wedding (Altekar 1956, pp. 217–20). This meant that parents had to spend a lot for their daughter’s wedding. They were not sent to school or made to feel a valued member of the family, and so the cycle continued. King and Hill (1997, p. vi) mention a vicious cycle vaguely in the form discussed above. The details of the elements are substantiated with reference to the human capital literature (Schultz 1990; Becker 1994).
In the remainder of this section, I cite women’s literature from across the ages to illustrate each element in the vicious cycle.
Mutta, the fifth-century BCE Buddhist nun, celebrates the freedom she won from domesticity: “O free indeed! O gloriously free / Am I in freedom from three crooked things:-- / From quern, from mortar, from my crookback’d lord!” (Rhys Davids 2007, p. 15). She is clearly overjoyed with the new opportunity she found in Buddhism, while being relieved of her domestic responsibilities involving hand-milling and cooking for her husband. Similarly, Sumangala’s mother, the rush-weaver’s wife (her own name unknown4) expresses complete frustration with her domestic chores and even her husband (Rhys Davids 2007, p. 25): “Me stained and squalid ’mong my cooking-pots / My brutal husband ranked as even less / Than the sunshades he sits and weaves alway”. These women’s alienation is evident in the use of the words “crookback’d” and “brutal”.
This gendered occupational segregation begs justification for this early age. Rhys Davids (1901, pp. 310, 313; 1923, pp. 205–65) and Altekar (1956, p. 179) confirm that there was division of labour in the early Buddhist period not just at the level of a household, but also at the level of the community. Men engaged in occupations that took them outside, while women tended to stay at home. The economic background to the sentiment in these quotes is therefore consistent with current knowledge about the economy of the age.
Newer-age evidence of the occupational segregation of women is revealed in Bahinabai’s life story (1628–1700, Bhakti poet, Marathi language). After a series of supernatural occurrences involving a calf and a travelling preacher,6 Bahinabai at age eleven, had to decide whether or not to continue with her deep devotion of Lord Vitthal, while simultaneously performing her responsibilities at home. Her husband had a foul temper and “[w]hen it came to his mind to do so he beat [Bahinabai] violently. He tied [her] (hand and foot) into a bundle and threw [her] aside” (Tharu and Lalita Vol. I 2015, p. 113). The preacher, after gauging the devotion that the girl was capable of, advised the husband:
Nonetheless, her husband vowed to leave home, because he did not want a wife who was more interested in prayers than in him – he took it as a personal insult. “Perhaps out of sagacity, perhaps out of timidity” (Tharu and Lalita Vol. I 2015, p. 109), Bahinabai says (pp. 114–15):
The composition of these lines follows an advanced level of religious attainment. This is a decision that Bahinabai arrives at after a thorough consideration of her choices. One interpretation is that she exercised her agency and chose to serve her husband with all her attention. Alternatively, her decision could be a result of internalising and rationalising harsh patriarchal social relations. Any agency, then, is rendered meaningless. Being part of multiple generations of the vicious cycle, Indian women typically came to internalise the inferiority society imposed upon them and made choices that benefited the socially valued men, even to their own detriment.
Rassundari Devi’s (1810–?, Bangla7 language) autobiography is among the most fascinating works in Indian literature. She has no meaningful choices in her life. Married at the age of twelve, mother of eleven, she was caught in an unending stream of domestic responsibilities. She describes her pitiful emotions at her wedding. Though she was happy through the festivities, Rassundari Devi cried through most of the journey to her new home which lasted a few days (Tharu and Lalita Vol. I 2015, pp. 192–4):
Girls even younger were married and sent off to distant villages, and the trauma of separation was assumed to be something a girl had to go through unquestioningly. At her new home, though she accepts that her family were kind to her, Rassundari Devi led a far from contented life (p. 196).
The above instances of women speaking out against their social experiences and of being buttonholed to the house, are not petulant complaints of mildly difficult circumstances, and neither are they anachronistic projections of modern sensibilities. These women made specific comparisons with men to highlight a relative deprivation. The fifth-century BCE Buddhist nun Patacara says (Rhys Davids 2007, pp. 72–3):
Other nuns make similar comparisons (pp. 73, 94). Patacara feels that she was being kept out of an opportunity by the force of tradition. That she managed to...
