Note :- This is a write up by Ramachandra Guha (The writer of India after Gandhi and Gandhi before India among other things)
There is an article that was written on Rajaji and Gandhi, but Rajaji was a disciple of Gandhi and their thoughts are mostly congruent. However Rajaji and Nehru’s relationship makes it more interesting and gives us insights into the minds of the finest leaders of our previous generations.
Caution:- People usually get sentimental when there is a comparison between leaders and usually are drawn in to sides. However, there is no leader in the world without follies. And as the old saying goes ” Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future”. The caution is not to get sentimental.
Nehru and Rajaji were comrades rather than companions. They were separated by upbringing; one was an aristocrat educated at Harrow and Cambridge, the other a self-made man from small-town South India. They were separated also by a thousand miles of peninsula.
Rajaji was unquestionably the most intelligent of Gandhi’s close disciples, Nehru arguably the most humane, and Patel the most disciplined and practical. The pity is that they could never function together except for a very brief while. The relationship between Nehru and Patel has attracted much attention.
During the freedom movement, Nehru and Rajaji were comrades rather than companions. They were separated by upbringing; one was an aristocrat educated at Harrow and Cambridge, the other a self-made man from small-town South India. They were separated also by a thousand miles of peninsula.
In terms of ideology too there were differences: Nehru was more inclined to militant socialist views, Rajaji more oriented towards accommodation with the adversary. But they were united by a shared ideal—the freedom of India—and a shared devotion to the Mahatma. (It was Rajaji whom Gandhi first designated as his successor, later changing his mind in favour of Nehru.)
They met at Congress meetings, but did not seem to have been especially intimate. Still, the Tamilian had impressed Nehru enough to have him write in his autobiography of how Rajaji’s ‘brilliant intellect, selfless character, and penetrating powers of analysis have been a tremendous asset to our cause’.
It was from 1946 that the two men began to work more closely together. In the next eight years, while Nehru was Prime Minister in New Delhi, Rajaji was, successively, a Minister in the Interim Government, Governor of Bengal, Governor-General of India, Minister in the Central Government, and Chief Minister of Madras State. In all these jobs he had direct and regular dealings with Nehru.
But official business drew them closer at the personal level too. The two men shared a cultivated interest in literature and the arts: it was only to Rajaji, and to no other Congressman, that Nehru could write recommending a recent book on the British character by the anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer or praise the beauty of the folk traditions of India.
After a visit to the north-east, the Prime Minister wrote to his Southern colleague about the ‘most lovely handloom weaving’ he had seen there. He confessed to being ‘astonished at the artistry of these so-called tribal people. I think it will be disastrous from many points of view to allow such an industry to fade away’. ‘Altogether my visit to these north-eastern areas has been most exhilarating’, wrote Nehru to Rajaji: ‘I wish they were better known by our people elsewhere in India. We could profit much by that contact’.
Reading the correspondence between these two men, I was deeply moved by the nobility of their vision for a free India. In different ways they both took heed of the message of the Mahatma’s message, working to reconcile competing points of views and alternative cultural or religious traditions. Particularly memorable was a handwritten letter of Nehru’s dated 30 July 1947, and it read:
My dear Rajaji,
This is to remind you that you have to approach Shanmukham Chetty—this must be done soon.
I have seen Ambedkar and he has agreed…
Yours
Jawaharlal.
This brief note requires some explanation. R. K. Shanmukham Chetty was a businessman in the South widely admired as being one of the best financial minds in India. Ambedkar, the Dalit leader, was a brilliant legal scholar. But both had been lifelong enemies of the Congress. Now, a mere two weeks before the political freedom Rajaji and Nehru had spent years in prison for, they were approaching these old adversaries to join the first Cabinet of free India.
It was a gesture remarkable in its wisdom and in its generosity. In the event, but only after overcoming the hostility of the other Congressmen, Chetty became Finance Minister; Ambedkar, Minister for Law.
In 1950, Nehru hoped to be able to make Rajaji the first President of the Republic, but Patel and the Congress Old Guard thwarted him. Later in the year Rajaji joined the Cabinet, as Minister without Portfolio.
After Patel’s death in December 1950 he was asked to take over the crucial job of Home Minister. Not long afterwards, Rajaji left the Cabinet and returned to Madras. The ostensible reason was tiredness, but he seems also to have felt that he was not being consulted enough.
Anyway, his leaving Delhi was a tragedy, for Jawaharlal Nehru as well as for India. For, as Walter Crocker perceptively remarked in his study of Nehru, after the death of Patel the Prime Minister ‘needed the support of an equal. He needed, too, the criticism of an equal’. Now Rajaji was as close to Gandhi, had sacrificed as much in the freedom movement, and was a man of conspicuous integrity besides. He was indeed ‘the intellectual and moral equal of Nehru’. Had a way been found to retain Rajaji in Delhi, this would have, says Crocker, ‘ended the situation prevailing in which no one could, or would, stand up to the Prime Minister; the situation whereby he was surrounded by men all of whom owed to him their jobs, whether as Cabinet Ministers or as officials’.
In October 1951, after Rajaji had left Nehru’s Cabinet to return to Madras, the Prime Minister sounded him out on the job of Indian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom and, when he refused, asked Lord Mountbatten to try and persuade him.
Mountbatten duly wrote to Rajaji, and in exchange got a blistering reply: ‘My career is truly remarkable in its zigzag…. Cabinet Minister, Governor without power, Governor General when the Constitution was to be wound up, Minister without Portfolio, Home Minister and… now the proposition is Acting High Commissioner in U. K.! Finally I must one day cheerfully accept a senior clerk’s place somewhere and raise that job to its proper and honoured importance’.
The job Rajaji did accept a few months later was that of Chief Minister of Madras. He stayed in that post until April 1954, when his party indicated that they wanted K. Kamaraj to replace him. Now Rajaji entered what neither his astrologer nor his own foresight had anticipated for him, namely, retirement from politics. He settled down in a small house to spend his days, he said, reading and writing.
But, in the end, philosophy and literature proved an inadequate substitute for public affairs. He was moved to comment from time to time on the nuclear arms race between Russia and America, with regard to which he took a line not dissimilar to that of Nehru. Then, when the Second Five Year Plan committed the Government of India to a socialist model of economics, he began commenting on domestic affairs too. Here, however, he came to be increasingly at odds with Nehru.
Consider now an article published by Rajaji in May 1958 under the title ‘Wanted: Independent Thinking’. This examined the ‘present discontent about the Congress’ from the perspective of one who ‘has spent the best part of his life-time serving the organization and who owes many honours and kindnesses to it’.
He worried that ‘as a result of tacit submission on the part of the people of emancipated India, a few good persons at the top, enjoying prestige and power, are acting like guardians of docile children rather than as leaders in a parliamentary democracy’.
‘The long reign of popular favourites, without any significant opposition’, wrote Rajaji, is ‘probably the main cause for the collapse of independent thinking’ in India. But a healthy democracy required ‘an Opposition that thinks differently and does not just want more of the same, a group of vigorously thinking citizens which aims at the general welfare, and not one that in order to get more votes from the so-called have-nots, offers more to them than the party in power has given, an Opposition that appeals to reason…’. Such an Opposition, even if it did not succeed in ousting the ruling party, might yet control and humanize it.
A year later, and touching eighty, Rajaji chose a public meeting in Bangalore to launch an all-out attack on the ‘megalomaniac’ economic and foreign policies of the Prime Minister. This was followed by the formation in Madras of a new political party, the Swatantra Party.
Rajaji also sharply attacked the ‘megalomania that vitiates the present development policies’. What India needed, said he, ‘is not just big projects, but useful and fruitful projects… Big dams are good, but more essential are thousands of small projects which could be and would be executed by the enthusiasm of the local people because they directly and immediately improve their lives’. Speaking more generally, ‘the role of the Government should be that of a catalyst in stimulating economic development while individual initiative and enterprise are given fullest play’.
In September 1952, when Rajaji and Nehru were still friends, the American journalist and pioneering Gandhi biographer Louis Fischer wrote to him of his belief that ‘some straight talk to the power that is [Nehru], would do a lot of good, for I doubt whether time cures certain diseases…. You are the one man who… could appeal to his mind…’
At that time, of course, Rajaji was in the Congress; but now, seven years later, Nehru did not take well to these criticisms from a colleague-turned-adversary. Sometimes he affected a cavalier attitude—when asked at a press conference about his differences with Rajaji, he answered: ‘He likes the Old Testament. I like the New Testament’.
This was spoken in June 1959, but as the months went by the mood turned very sour indeed. In December 1961 Nehru told a group of newsmen that Rajaji ‘stands on a mountain peak by himself. Nobody understands him, nor does he understand anybody. We need not consider him in this connection. All his policies in regard to India, if I may say so, are bad—bad economics, bad sense, and bad temper’. Eighteen months later Nehru claimed that the party Rajaji had started, Swatantra, was ‘a mixture of the rottenest ideas imaginable’.
Sensitive observers mourned and worried about the gulf between the two. In May 1959, his biographer Monica Felton told Rajaji that ‘if I were the mother of you and the Prime Minister, I would bang your two heads together and tell you to stop arguing and to settle down and run things together’.
Walter Crocker thought their differences real, but by no means irreconcilable. Both loved freedom, both were deeply moral beings, and both were passionately committed to social and religious tolerance. Yet they fell out. ‘Here was great drama’, writes Crocker: ‘Two figures of Shakespearean scale in contest. And the drama was tragedy, for the contest was needless. Both men were required by India in the two crucial decades following Independence; and both men shared the blame, though perhaps not in equal measure, that there had been fission, not fusion, between them’.
The assessment of Nehru’s own sister, Vijayalakshmi Pandit, was not dissimilar to this. As she wrote to Rajaji in June 1964: ‘It seemed such a bad thing that two men like yourself and Bhai who had contributed so much individually and jointly to our beloved India should be apart at a time of national crisis. But the moment passed and now it is too late’.
This was written weeks after the death of Nehru. That event had occasioned a brief obituary published by Rajaji in Swarajya:
Eleven years younger than me, eleven times more important to the nation, eleven hundred times more beloved of the nation, Sri Nehru has suddenly departed from our midst and I remain alive to hear the sad news from Delhi—and bear the shock….
The old guard-room is completely empty now… I have been fighting Sri Nehru all these ten years over what I consider faults in public policies. But I knew all along that he alone could get them corrected. No one else would dare do it, and he is gone, leaving me weaker than before in my fight. But fighting apart, a beloved friend is gone, the most civilized person among us all. Not many among us are civilized yet.
God save our people.
These words might serve as an epitaph to the relationship between these two remarkable men. Or one might choose instead the story of Edwina Mountbatten’s visit to Madras in early 1953. Told about the visit, Rajaji drew up a punishing programme, where Lady Mountbatten would have to visit Corporation slums, meet social workers, open a high school, have tea with Army wives, see the temples at Mahabalipuram and dine at the Raj Bhavan.
When this schedule was sent back to Delhi, it provoked this panic-striken telegram from the Prime Minister: ‘Programme sent by Mary Clubwalla for Edwina’s visit to Madras is rather heavy. She has not been very fit. There is no mention in programme of her visit to you. This is main purpose of her going to Madras’.
This, read intelligently, might even be the most generous compliment ever paid by Nehru to a fellow Indian. If Edwina is to have stimulating conversation in India, he is saying to Rajaji, and if it is to be with someone other than myself, then it must only be with you.
RAJAJI AND THE BOMB
Mahatma Gandhi once remarked that the atom bomb was ‘the greatest sin known to science’. After India exploded a nuclear device in May 1998, and the nation swirled around itself in hysteria, it took a contemporary Gandhian to remember what the master had said.
Thus, the first dissenting article in the national press was written by the veteran architect Laurie Baker, who recalled the three tests an invention of science had to pass in a country such as ours. These were: Is it non-violent? Is it eco-friendly? Is it poverty-reducing? The answers, in the case at hand, were No, No, and No.
India is now a certifiable nuclear power. This would have displeased Gandhi, and also displeased C. Rajagopalachari, the Gandhian who, in his lifetime, mounted the most sustained campaign against nuclear weapons. In 1945, after the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he quipped: ‘All this while we knew only of the chemist’s bombs. Now we know of bombs made by physicists.’
A decade later his tone was deadly serious. Rajmohan Gandhi quotes from a letter written by Rajaji to the New York Times at the end of 1954, in which he urged each party in the Cold War not to ‘wait for the other’, but to unilaterally ‘throw all the atomic bombs in the deep Antarctic and begin a new world free from fear’.
In 1959, in a piece directed against nuclear tests, Rajaji wrote in disgust of ‘politicians and technicians who do not believe in co-existence and mutual trust, but are convinced, and have been doing their best to educate the people to believe, that the best defence of national existence is to make it clear that they have terrible weapons of retaliation.
And this is naturally associated with a policy of armament manufacture to achieve that retaliatory strength and purpose’. He was speaking, of course, of America and Russia, then, but he could as well have been speaking of India and Pakistan, now.
Rajaji thought the making of atom bombs was the product of hubris, with man now believing he ‘had the rights and privileges of the sun or even of the Lord God himself.’ It was, he remarked, ‘an unfortunate day when science lifted the curtain of fundamental matter and trespassed into the greenroom of creation’.
Rajaji made a distinction between a ‘free science’ which honestly documented the radiation effects of nuclear tests, and a ‘hired science’ which tried to doctor its results. These tests, he said, were ‘a wholly illegitimate attack on the health of the present and future generations of the uninvolved millions, who have not yet written off their rights in favour of the nuclear pugilists’.
Rajaji’s campaign against nuclear arms culminated in a journey he made to the United Kingdom and the United States in 1962, at the head of a three member delegation travelling under the auspices of the Gandhi Peace Foundation. (The other members were R. R. Diwakar and B. Shiva Rao.)
Rajaji was already eighty-three, and this, believe it or not, was his first trip to the West. In America he met with, among others, Henry Kissinger; Robert Oppenheimer (the man who had led the Los Alamos team that made the atom bomb, but had later thrown his hat into the peace camp); and the Representatives to the United Nations of Soviet Union and the United States. Rajaji also spoke at several universities and at the prestigious Council for Foreign Relations in New York. All through, he pursued his case against the Bomb with (to quote his biographer, Rajmohan Gandhi) ‘the energy of a 40-year-old’.
The highlight of the trip was a meeting with John F. Kennedy, who gave the delegation twenty-five minutes, but was so charmed by Rajaji that in the end they chatted for over an hour. Later, Kennedy told an aide that ‘seldom have I heard a case presented with such precision, clarity and elegance of language’. He added that the interview had ‘a civilizing quality about it’.
The diplomat B. K. Nehru, who was present, later recalled how ‘the secretaries who came in with slips of paper reminding the President of his appointments were shooed away’. Kennedy, it appears, was ‘fascinated’ by Rajaji’.
But Rajaji wasn’t entirely sure that the President was convinced. A week later, the journalist Vincent Shean met him in New York, and sought to gift him a stamp of Mahatma Gandhi just issued by the U. S. Postal Department. ‘You keep it’, said Rajaji to Shean, ‘and use it in a letter to Kennedy asking for the renunciation of the atomic bomb’.
After the delegation’s return to India, B. Shiva Rao wrote to Jawaharlal Nehru of the impact its leader had made. When Rajaji spoke at the Council of Foreign Relations, the leader of the American delegation to the U. N. Disarmament Conference in Geneva told Shiva Rao: ‘Why don’t you send this man to represent India at Geneva?’
Altogether, Rajaji had made ‘a deep impression on all the persons he saw in the U. S. A. and England’. He would, Shiva Rao told the Prime Minister, ‘make an admirable representative for India… in Geneva’. He was ‘extremely able and dignified in his presentation of the case for nuclear disarmament’. Were he indeed to be sent as the Government’s representative to the talks, it would aid India in playing ‘a constructive part in bringing about phased disarmament…’
The suggestion was well meant, and well merited. But by this time Nehru and Rajaji were in rival political parties. True, they agreed on the Bomb, but the older man’s attacks on his economic and social policies the Prime Minister found hard to forgive. ‘Rajaji is undoubtedly a person of high ability’, replied Nehru to Shiva Rao, ‘and we all have respect and affection for him. But I doubt very much if he will at all suit or fit in with the Disarmament Conference at Geneva which consists of senior officials. Also, unfortunately, he disagrees with almost everything in the domestic or international sphere for which some of us stand’. Partisan considerations would not allow India to send its best man to Geneva.
Strikingly, Rajaji was against atomic power as well as atomic weapons. When, in 1954, the Times of India insisted that nuclear energy was vital to a ‘power-starved’ India, Rajaji drew their attention to the ‘terrible character of the risks necessarily attached’ to this industry.
Its process of production ‘totally disregards the rights of those that do not in any way benefit from the enterprises’. Moreover, ‘the general public is almost entirely ignorant of all that the new power source involves. It is not like coal or oil but comparable to a hypothetical case of using the thunderbolt to cook our breakfast’.
This was characteristically acute, as well as prescient, for it took another two or three decades before science, and society, made a proper acquaintance with the risks and costs of nuclear power.
The anti-nuclear movement in India has witnessed the not always comfortable co-existence of Gandhians and Communists. However, after 1998, it has been more-or-less captured by the Left who, on the one hand, do not question the dangers of nuclear energy and, on the other, seem to think that nuclear weapons are somehow safe if placed in the hands of Red regimes.
Rajaji’s work has a more general relevance to questions of scientific ethics and nationalist military rivalry, but it also has a more specific relevance, to the ethics of the anti-nuclear movement. He once expressed his wish to ‘rescue the peace movement from the clutches of the Communist Party’. It is a task that remains unfinished.
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- India’s telecom market has seen monopoly as well as hyper-competition.
- Twenty-five years ago, the government alone could provide services.
- Ten years later, there were nearly a dozen competing operators.
- Most service areas now have four players.
- The erstwhile monopolies, BSNL and MTNL, are now bit players and often ignored.
- India is ranked second globally—after China—in the number of people connected to the internet. However, it is also first in the number of people unconnected.
- Over 50% of Indians are not connected to the internet, despite giant strides in network reach and capacity.
- India’s per capita or device data usage is low. It has an impressive 4G mobile network. However, its fixed network—wireline or optical fibre—is sparse and often poor.
- 5G deployment has yet to start and will be expensive.
Context
Sunil Mittal, the chairman of Bharti Airtel, said recently that it would be “tragic” if India’s telecom-access market was to be reduced to only two competing operators. He was probably referring to the possible exit of the financially-stressed Vodafone Idea and the increasing irrelevance of government-owned operators, BSNL and MTNL. This would essentially leave the market to Reliance Jio and Airtel. A looming duopoly, or the exit of a global telecommunications major, are both worrying. They deserve a careful and creative response.
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]Thus Far
The reduced competition is worrying. Competition has delivered relatively low prices, advanced technologies, and an acceptable quality of services. These gains are now at risk. There is a long way to go in expanding access as well as network capacity.
The Indian Telecom Irony
Vodafone Tragedy
Filling the gaps in infrastructure and access will require large investments and competition. The exit of Vodafone Idea will hurt both objectives. The company faces an existential crisis since it was hit hardest by the Supreme Court judgment on the AGR issue in 2019, with an estimated liability of Rs 58,000 crore.
The closure of Vodafone Idea is an arguably greater concern than the fading role of BSNL and MTNL. The government companies are yet to deploy 4G and have become progressively less competitive. Vodafone Idea, on the other hand, still accounts for about a quarter of subscriptions and revenues and can boast of a quality network.
It has been adjudged the fastest, for three consecutive quarters, by Ookla, a web-service that monitors internet metrics. India can ill-afford to waste such network capacity. The company’s liabilities will deter any potential buyer.
Vodafone+MTNL+BSNL ?
A possible way out could be to combine the resources of the MTNL and BSNL and Vodafone Idea through a strategic partnership. Creative government action can save Vodafone Idea as well as improve the competitiveness of BSNL and MTNL.
It could help secure government dues, investment, and jobs. It is worth recalling here that, about 30 years ago, the Australian government’s conditions for the entry of its first private operator, Optus, required the latter to take over the loss-making government satellite company, Aussat. Similar out-of-the-box thinking may well be key to escape the looming collateral damage.
It is not trivial to expand competition in India’s telecom market. Especially since there are no major regulatory barriers to entry anymore. Any new private player will be driven largely by commercial considerations. Global experience suggests that well-entrenched incumbents have massive advantages. New players are daunted by the large investments—and much patience!—needed to set up networks, lure existing customers and sign new ones.
However, regulators and policymakers have other options to expand choice for telecom consumers. Their counterparts in mature regulatory regimes—e.g., in the European Union—have helped develop extensive markets for resale. Recognising the limited influence of smaller players, regulators mandate that the incumbent offer wholesale prices to resellers who then expand choice for end-users.
This has been virtually impossible in India. There is a near absence of noteworthy virtual network operators (VNOs) and other resellers. A key barrier to resale is India’s licence fee regime which requires licence-holders to share a proportion of their revenues with the government. Thus, resale could hurt exchequer revenues unless resellers are subject to identical levies. Understandably, the levies—and consequently additional reporting and compliance—is a disincentive for smaller players. The disincentive flows from levies based on revenues which comes with considerable costs of compliance. It would almost vanish if the levies were replaced by say, a flat fee computed objectively.
The ball is in the court of the regulator and the government. They have options. But will they take decisive action to exercise them? It will be ‘tragic’ if they can’t.
INTRODUCTION
Since most of the early scholars, researchers and historians were men, many aspects of society did not find a place in history books. For example, child-birth, menstruation, women’s work, transgenders, households etc. did not find much mention.
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]Rather than building a holistic picture of the past, some select aspects such as polity and the different roles of men became the central focus of history writing. Women were confined to one corner of the chapter where a paragraph or two was devoted to the ‘status and position of women’.
Even the details of these paragraphs were hardly different from each other. This made it look like as if history (and thereby society, polity, economy and all culture) belonged to men while women were only a small static unit to be mentioned separately. Of course, there were some exceptions, but these were however rare. This practice is being corrected now and the roles and presence of women are being read into all parts of historical questions.
SOURCES FOR UNDERSTANDING GENDER HISTORY
Sources are the bases of history writing. From simple pre-historic tools to abstruse texts, everything can be utilized to understand life and roles of women in history. The presence as well as the absence of women from sources needs to be duly noticed, deliberated and argued upon and only then to be theorised upon.
Certain objects being directly related to the lives of women or depicting the ideas of the female principle are of central importance. These include but are not limited to female figurines, art objects, texts attributed to or authored or compiled by women, monuments created by or for women, various objects relating to their lifestyle, objects associated with women on account of their cultural roles and so on.
It has been rightly pointed out by Uma Chakravarti that much of the gender history written in early phase was a ‘partial view from above’. This referred to the utilization of select textual sources and focused only on relational identity of women. There were, however, a few exceptions.
GENDER HISTORIOGRAPHY
Amongst the many narratives propagated to denigrate Indian civilization and culture by the British colonial rulers, the condition of Indian women became a point of central reference. Various social evils that made the life of women miserable were pointed out and efforts were also made to introduce ‘reforms.’ Sati, child-marriages, imposed widowhood, polygamy, dowry, educational and economic inequality, purdah (ghoonghat) and many other practices prevailed during the colonial period that made the life of women difficult and pitiable.
Some practices affected women of higher social and economic households while others led to misery for poorer women. Many social reform movements were started in the 19th century to address these issues and contributions were made by Indian reformers as well as British officials and other Europeans.
Women in India came to be treated as a homogeneous category and over generalisation became the norm. While many communities in India practised widow remarriage and did not practise (much less forced) sati and while some practised divorces or separation, the image of the Indian woman who had been subjugated as woman, wife and widow became a dominant theme in history writing.
Secondly, a western vision was placed over the non-western societies and hence interpretations were far removed from the context. For example, notion of stridhan was equated with dowry and little regard was paid to the provisions regarding its use and ownership by women.
The huge social stigma that came along with the selling of jewellery of the household (one of the main components of stridhan) was paid no attention to. Similarly, penal provisions listed by ancient texts for misappropriation of women’s property were not even looked into.
During the Paleolithic age, hunting and gathering was norm. However much importance was given to Hunting than gathering in all literature of history. Studies, however, show that hunted prey formed only 35% of the diet while gathering fruits and other edible material supplied the major portion. Gathering of food resources was ordinarily done by women. Since gathering was an important activity, more than hunting for game, it could point to significant role playing by women.
The gendered understanding of Harappan civilization is being built upon and various archaeological remains have been studied in this respect. The female figurines, idols of pregnant women, the statue of the ‘dancing girl’, various pieces of jewellery and personal belongings that have been discovered at various sites and offer useful insights on the public and private lives of women and men.
The statue of a girl obtained from Mohanjodaro has been called a ‘dancing girl’ on grounds of familiarity with the institution of devadasis in the later times. Such backward looking explanations are problematic.
There is a wide variety of terracotta female figurines that have been found at different sites right from the pre-Harappan times. Women figures are found suckling a baby, holding utensils, kneading dough, nursing infants, carrying objects like drums, seated figures for board games, with steatopygia (fat deposition on the hips and elsewhere), with floral head-dresses and in many other forms.
Even figurines of pregnant women are quite common. However, most of these have been uncritically associated with fertility, religiosity and reproductive ideas, and have been passed off as representations of the Mother Goddesses. While some of them were votive objects, others are held to be toys or other utilities. The focus on female form has been so stereotypical that women have been seen as associated only with home, hearth, fertility, sexuality and divinity. So much so that sometimes even male figurines in assumed womanly roles were classified as female figurines.
POSITION OF WOMEN IN EARLY INDIA
The first literary tradition in the Indian subcontinent (and the oldest in the world) is that of the Vedic corpus. From the four Samhitas to the Upanishads, we find many interesting references to women in various roles. Some of these women have left their mark on the cultural heritage to this day and are remembered in various ritual and social contexts. Their names, stories, some highly revered hymns, and other interesting facets are mentioned in the Vedic corpus.
The Vedic literature has been classified as Early Vedic and Later Vedic. The Rigvedic society and polity seems to be teeming with life and agro-pastoral economy was enmeshed in close kinship ties. Women as well as men participated in society, economy and polity. Some of the most revered hymns including the gayatri mantra are ascribed to women.
Various natural phenomena are depicted as Goddesses and they are offered prayers. While quantitative analysis highlights the predominance of Indra, Agni, Varuna and other male gods, the power and stature of the goddesses is equally well established.
Women participated in all three Vedic socio-political assemblies viz. Sabha, Samiti and Vidhata. They had access to education and were even engaged in knowledge creation. They could choose to be brahmavadinis with or without matrimony.
Hence, there is no reason to believe that they were only confined to home and hearth. T. S. Rukmani attempts to understand if women had agency in early India. Her work has highlighted many interesting details. The author acknowledges the fact that though the patriarchal set up put women at a loss, there were instances where women found space to exercise their agency.
She points out that though the texts like the Kalpasutras (Srautasutras, Dharmasutras and Grhasutras) revolved around the ideology of Dharma and there was not much space to express alternative ideas, still these works also find some leeway to express ideas reflecting changed conditions.
For example, there is a statement in the Apastamba Dharmasutra that one should follow what women say in the funeral samskaras. Stephanie Jamison believes that in hospitality and exchange relations, women played an important role. She says that the approval of the wife was important in the successful completion of the soma sacrifice. In another study it has been shown that women enjoyed agency in deciding what was given in a sacrifice, bhiksha to a sanyasin. The men had no authority in telling her what to do in these circumstances.
Vedic society was the one which valued marriage immensely. In such contexts, Gender Perspectives if a woman chose not to marry, then it would point to her exercising choice in her decision to go against the grain and remain unmarried.
Mention may be made of Gargi. She was a composer of hymns and has been called a brahmavadini. This term applies to a woman who was a composer of hymns and chose to remain unmarried, devoting herself to the pursuit of learning.
Similarly, in the case of Maitreyi, she consciously opts to be educated in the Upanishadic lore and Yajnavalkya does not dissuade her from exercising her choice.
The statement in the Rigveda that learned daughters should marry learned bridegrooms indicates that women had a say in marriage. Though male offspring is desired, there is a mantra in the Rigveda, recitation of which ensures the birth of a learned daughter.
Altekar refers to the yajnas like seethayagna, rudrayajna etc. that were to be performed exclusively by women. Some of the women were known for their exceptional calibre, for example, from the Rigveda Samhita we find mention of women like Apala, Ghosha, Lopamudra, Gargi, Maitreyi, Shachi, Vishwavara Atri, Sulabha and others.
Women have not only been praised as independent individuals but also with reference to their contributions towards their natal or marital families.
The Later Vedic literature shows the progression towards a State society with a change in the organization of the society and polity. The chief comes to be referred to as bhupati instead of gopati. However, within the twelve important positions (ratnis) mentioned, the chief queen retains a special position under the title mahisi.
The importance of the chief queen continued as gleaned from several references to them in the Epics, Arthashastra and even in coins and epigraphs from early historical times.
The other Samhitas also refer to women sages such as Rishikas. The wife is referred to as sahadharmini. Brahmanas or the texts dealing with the performance of the yajna (Vedic ritual), requires a man to be accompanied by his wife to be able to carry out rituals.
For example, Aitareya Brahmana looks upon the wife as essential to spiritual wholesomeness of the husband. However, there is a mention of some problematic institutions as well.
Uma Chakravarti has pointed towards the condition of Vedic Dasis (female servant/slave) who are referred to in numerous instances. They were the objects of dana (donation/gift) and dakshina (fee).
It is generally believed that from the post Vedic period the condition of the women steadily deteriorated. However, Panini’s Ashtadhyayi and subsequent grammatical literature speak highly of women acharyas and Upadhyayas.
Thus, the memory and practice of a brahmavadini continued even after the Vedic period. The Ramayana, Mahabharata and even the Puranas keep the memory of brhamavadini alive.
Mention may be made of Anasuya, Kunti, Damyanti, Draupadi, Gandhari, Rukmini who continued to fire the imagination of the poets. Texts show that the daughter of Kuni-garga refused marriage because she did not find anyone worthy of her.
The Epics also mention women whose opinions were sought in major events. For example, after the thirteen years of exile, while debating upon the future course of action regarding the restoration of their share, the Pandavas along with Krshna asks Draupadi for her views. Similarly, when Krishna goes to the Kaurava’s court to plead the case of Pandavas, Gandhari is called upon to persuade her sons to listen to reason.
Since a woman taking sanyasa was an act of transgression, one can explore women’s agency through such instances. In the Ramayana, Sabari, who was the disciple of Sage Matanga, and whose hermitage was on the banks of river Pampa was one such sanyasin.
Such women find mention in Smriti literature and Arthashashtra. Kautilya’s prohibition against initiating women into Sanyasa can make sense only if women were being initiated into sanyasa. He advises the king to employ female parivrajakas as spies.
Megasthenes mentions women who accompanied their husbands to the forest, probably referring to the Vanaprastha stage. Another category of literature called Shastras that comprises of sutras (aphorisms) and the smriti texts (‘that which is remembered’) becomes important in the postVedic period.
These textual traditions cover many subjects relating to the four kinds of pursuits of life referred to as purusharthas (namely dharma, karma, kama and moksha). In all these texts we find very liberal values and freedom for both women and men.
The setting up of a household is seen as an ideal for men as well as women (though asceticism for learning is equally praised for both). For example, Apastambha Sutra opines that rituals carried out by an unmarried man do not please the devatas (divinities). Similarly, Manusmriti provides that ‘for three years shall a girl wait after the onset of her puberty; after that time, she may find for herself a husband of equal status. If a woman who has not been given in marriage finds a husband on her own, she does not incur any sin, and neither does the man she finds’
Thus, we see that women enjoyed choice in matters of matrimony. It is interesting to note that unmarried daughters were to be provided for by the father. In fact, daughter is stated to be the object of utmost affection. Should a girl lose her parents, her economic interests were well looked after. It was provided that from their shares, ‘the brothers shall give individually to the unmarried girls, one-quarter from the share of each. Those unwilling to give will become outcastes’
With regards to defining contemporary attitude towards women, Apastambha Sutra prescribed that ‘All must make a way for a woman when she is treading a path.’ Later Dharmashastra also makes similar statements.
Yagnavalkyasmriti mentions that ‘women are the embodiment of all divine virtues on earth.’ However, there are several provisions that look problematic.
On one hand, we have reverence assigned to the feminine (divine and worldly) and important roles being played by them, on the other hand we have questionable provisions and descriptions like right to chastise them through beating or discarding.
The post-Vedic phase from 6th century BCE onwards is also rich in literary traditions with ample depictions of women. Interestingly, we have an entire body of literature that is ascribed totally to women who became Buddhist nuns. These are referred to as Therigathas i.e. the Songs of the Elder Bhikkhunis (Buddhist Women who joined the Sangha).
The Arthashastra Gender Perspectives gives us information on women who were engaged in economic activities of various kinds. They formed a part of both the skilled and the unskilled workforce. They were into professional as well as non-professional employment.
Some of their vocations were related to their gender, while the others were not. There were female state employees as well as independent working women. Similarly, some of them were engaged in activities which though not dependent on their biological constitution are nonetheless categorized as women’s domain, e.g. domestic services etc. Some of them were actual state employees, while some others were in contractual relations with the State. For example, we have female bodyguards and spies in the State employment.
Jaiswal suggests that these women perhaps came from Bhila or Kirata tribe. Female spies were not only to gather information and relay it to proper source, but also to carry out assassinations. However, a closer look at the text shows that there were different classes of female spies engaged for different purposes. Amongst others ‘women skilled in arts were to be employed as spies living inside their houses’. Others were required to work as assassins. Some were to the play the roles of young and beautiful widows to tempt the lust of greedy enemy.
We also have various Buddhist and Jaina traditions giving us some glimpses of the ideas and institutions of the times. Apart from the orthodox (Vedic and Brahmanic) and heterodox normative tradition we have many popular texts like the Epics in Sanskrit and Jatakas in Pali.
Even Prakrit language has many interesting narratives and poetic texts. The Therigatha by the Buddhist nuns are an interesting literary source that provides us with a glimpse of various women who attained arhantship or similar other stages of Realisation.
The deliberation on the age and deterioration of the body by Ambapali, the non-importance of sensual or bodily pleasures by Nanda, Vimla and Shubha etc points towards the intellectual and spiritual engagements and attainments of women.
It is interesting to note that an absolutely contrary picture is presented by the Jatakas wherein more often than not, women are depicted as evil. It is important to note that women were given an evil aura mostly in their roles as wives or beloveds.
Both the texts and the archaeological remains have been studied by various scholars and opposing interpretations are not rare. For example, on one side Sita (from Ramayana) and Draupadi (from Mahabharata) have been seen as victims of the patriarchal order; on the other hand, they are also represented as selfwilled women.
Draupadi after the game of dice presents herself as a forceful and articulate woman. It’s her wit that saves her husbands from becoming slaves of the Kauravas. Her incensed outrage at the attack on her modesty, her bitter lamentations to Krishna, her furious tirade against Yudhishthira for his seeming inability to defend her honour and many more such instances show her to be an aggressive woman. This persona is juxtaposed to her representations as an ideal wife elsewhere. However, Draupadi is never idealised as a perfect wife who endures the most severe trials without complaint. This honour is reserved for Sita in the Ramayana. She is also presented as a victim like Draupadi and voices her concern at her fate openly. However, her aggression is directed inwards as indicated by her action against the self which culminate in her union with the mother Earth.
Are the limited number of hymns ascribed to the Vedic women a signifier of their general status? Are the goddesses merely representational with no connection to the ideas and behaviour towards women? Did only princesses choose their spouses? Are the warrior women an exception? Such searching questions need to be addressed with due diligence.
While women studies are a good development there is a need to expand the horizons to include other varieties of human existence. We have narratives of fluid sexuality in various texts. The one year of Arjuna’s life spent as Brihallana and rebirth of Amba as Shikhandi are some interesting instances. The artefacts found at the site of Sheri Khan Tarakai include visibly hermaphroditic figurines. There is a need to understand the notions of the feminine, masculine, neuter, and other forms of gender and sexual identities. These will have ramifications for understanding the ideas of conjugality, family, community, society and even polity and spirituality.
CONCLUSION
Human civilisations were built by men as well as women, however, history writing has a huge male-bias. Women were confined to questions of status and position that were largely evaluated in terms of their roles in the domestic sphere.
Their treatment as wives and widows became a central focus of most research alongside their place in ritual or religious context. This made them peripheral to mainstream history. This was questioned by various scholars from time to time and led to the development of gendered understanding of history. Focusing attention on women’s history helps to rectify the method which sees women as a monolithic homogeneous category. Writing gender history has helped in building an image of the past that is wholesome and nuanced.