The COVID-19 pandemic is widely seen as a potential turning point after which almost everything could be different.
Margaret MacMillan, the eminent historian, has compared this crisis to the French and Russian revolutions – points at which the river of history changed course.
And it’s almost certain that as a result of this crisis there will be big changes: expectations of the state’s ability to look after its citizens will be higher; the public and financial markets may be more accepting of government borrowing; government will be expected to manage the labour market to provide a minimum level of security for vulnerable workers. It will be a far cry from the free-market, small state policies of the 1980s and 1990s.
Yet it is far from obvious that this crisis, even one that is deep and severe, will lead to a turning point of the kind that MacMillan suggests.
The most recent example of a crisis whose bark was worse than its bite was the financial crash of 2008. Many predicted it would be a turning point given the deep dysfunctions in financial capitalism it laid bare. Yet through a combination of quantitative easing, financial support for the banks and re-regulation, the financial system recovered. The wider economic recovery created millions of jobs (albeit many low paid and insecure), profits rose and stock markets went on an extraordinary bull run. What could have been a turning point ended up being a period of extreme turbulence that people were happy to have left behind. The financial institutions at the heart of the crisis were too important, powerful and entrenched to be fundamentally disrupted.
COVID-19 might prove similar if we emerge from the pandemic with as much continuity as change. Many systems, including banking, financial markets and food production, have carried on working much as they ever did. There is pent-up desire to get back to activities once regarded as normal: eating out; socialising with friends; weddings; holidays; visits to the cinema, concerts, festivals and football matches.
A crisis only becomes a turning point when it becomes a ‘critical juncture’ – one of those rare moments when institutions, norms and rules are unfixed, new possibilities for future development open up, new ideas gain currency and social and political forces emerge to take them forward. The choices made in those moments can have lasting effects on how society develops. The US New Deal in response to the Great Depression and the creation of the British welfare state after the Second World War were both critical junctures.
The plague of Florence in 1348, as described in Boccaccio’s Decameron (‘Il decameron’). Etching by L. Sabatelli. Image courtesy of the Wellcome Collection
The Black Death created a critical juncture in the 14th century because the death toll produced such a labour shortage that the status quo could not be restored. Peasants in some parts of Western Europe were able to shake the foundations of the feudal order, winning greater economic and political freedoms. In much of Eastern Europe however, landowners responded by becoming more authoritarian, imposing an intensified serfdom. The two parts of Europe developed in very different ways thereafter. Western European societies became more broadly based, inclusive and productive; Eastern European economies became even more extractive and unequal, ruled over by an implacable feudal elite.
That story told by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson in Why Nations Fail explains the role of the plague this way: “The Black Death is a vivid example of a critical juncture, a major event or confluence of factors disrupting the existing economic or political balance in society. A critical juncture is a double-edged sword that can cause a sharp turn in the trajectory of a nation.” But as the Black Death showed, that turn could go in any number of directions depending on the way the forces at play amplify what can be small differences in the institutions of different societies.
A critical juncture is a relatively short period of time when a broader than normal range of options is open to society. The choices made between those options, by people and organisations with the power to make the choices, will have a significant, long-term impact on how society develops. Is what we are going through now what the philosopher Gershom Scholem called a ‘plastic hour’ when obdurate systems resistant to change suddenly have no option but to open up?
A crisis can create transformative change in four ways. All four are at work in the COVID-19 crisis. It remains to be seen whether these four will make this a critical juncture.
A crisis can rapidly accelerate changes already underway as society suddenly goes much faster along the path it was already on.
The most obvious example of acceleration is the rapid spread of digital services, not only for shopping but also for work and public services. The British government has been able to channel furlough payments to millions of employees and loans to thousands of businesses, thanks to digital service platforms that have been a decade in their development. The crisis has propelled a step change in digital services around the world. Indonesia is just one place where a mobile phone based primary health care system has been scaled rapidly. What was once niche has become mainstream.
The acceleration of digitalisation will have knock-on effects. Home will become even more important for people as a place from which to work and shop. That may change the geography, patterns and routines of work: suburbs and small towns with good internet connections may become more attractive. By accelerating digitalisation, societies will have different options for how they organise themselves. Looking back, historians may pinpoint the crisis as the time when the potential of digital services to radically transform where and how we work were made real.
A crisis can also create a dead end. The path comes to an abrupt halt; in the worst case, it goes over a cliff. That shock forces people to change how they work and live, as old models are no longer viable. Even if it’s not obvious what new models will take their place it is clear that people need to explore and experiment to find them. Historians will look back and identify this crisis as the moment when some old systems finally ran out of road.
For some industries, the dead end has been looming: high streets and the retailers still on them. The crisis has merely brought forward the end. In other cases, the discontinuity has been much more sudden and shocking because it was so unexpected. Entire industries that had viable business models have been brought to their knees by the need for social distancing: among them hospitality and tourism, cultural and creative industries which depend on live performance for audiences. Some of these industries may snap back into shape once effective vaccines have been distributed widely enough and people can eat in restaurants, gather for weddings, board planes and go to concerts. Yet, even so, the crisis will leave lasting scars. Some of the theatres and restaurants that have closed will not reopen. Some consumers jolted out of old habits may permanently revise their behaviour, especially in the light of climate change, which might mean people flying less. In many poor communities high streets could become deserted.
Like the pits, steel works, car factories and docks that closed in the midst of deep recession, never to reopen, at least some of the restaurants, shops and cultural venues closed by COVID-19 may never return. The geography of that impact is likely to be highly uneven.
What do you do when you reach an unexpected dead end? You trace your steps to take forks in the road you previously ignored. That may be what will happen if the crisis brings about a flight from large cities and less commuting, in favour of suburbs and provincial towns where local services, high streets and spaces, like libraries and parks, might fill up again, bringing with it a provincial renaissance.
When society accelerates along one path, while another comes to an abrupt dead end, then society’s arc of development shifts. A crisis then becomes a turning point.
A crisis becomes a turning point when society changes the path it is on. Critical junctures are forks in the road, or, more radical still, a leap to a completely different path, which comes about in part through conscious, deliberate, collective choice.
Regional economies often have to go through such shifts, according to Bjorn Asheim, one of Europe’s leading scholars of regional economic development. Regional economies have a strong tendency to extend the path they are already on, refining existing knowledge and reinforcing existing relationships, serving existing markets with familiar products. However, to create new opportunities for growth, regional economies have to leap to a new path – Asheim calls it a long jump – which requires exploring new markets, engaging with unfamiliar knowledge and making new relationships. Out of all of that a new way forward emerges. Long jumping is a risky business. The shock of a crisis may yet force us to become long jumpers, to find a new path.
The most obvious example of such a long jump is the remaking of our approach to work. Enforced and prolonged distance working is making many employees and employers reassess the importance of having everyone in the office all of the time – or even having an office at all. Home is becoming a workplace for many more people. Many offices, and so the services that cluster around them, will never be the same. Organisations and management hierarchies will be reshaped; people may even be forced to rethink what an organisation is.
At the same time as opening up these opportunities to work differently, many people will find some forms of work much harder to sustain: the frontline staff who have continued throughout the pandemic; the people laid off from jobs in hospitality. Just as digitalisation and automation accelerates, eliminating many routine jobs, so job creation will slow in sectors such as hospitality and services (where it was such an economic lifesaver after 2008). The consequent rise in unemployment among low-skilled workers will likely force the government to sustain a more activist approach to managing the labour market, quite possibly borrowing from European welfare systems that subsidise wages to keep people in jobs for as long as possible.
New models of work will emerge from the crisis and, with that, perhaps a new social safety net offering workers a job guarantee and a measure of security married to flexibility. Ideas for reshaping the labour market figure prominently in the policy platform Joe Biden’s campaigned on in the US presidential election, including a higher minimum wage; three million new jobs in education, childcare and elderly care, with better pay and benefits. Democrats are pushing for more universal benefits for sick pay and family leave. Experiments with universal basic income are becoming practical realities in some places.
What started as a health crisis could leave its lasting mark by creating a new way for society to organise work, one which would have seemed a pipe dream even in 2019. That would be a turning point: a shift onto a new path.
The final option is that the crisis might create so many opportunities for change, on so many different fronts, that rather than creating a clear turning point – a choice between one path and another – it becomes more akin to a large roundabout, with many different exits as society spins around searching for a way out. That may be the best description of the state we are in now, a kind of vortex in which everything moves very fast but stays roughly in the same place because for the moment at least we are going round in circles.
The possibilities are endless. Crisis could lead to: the spread of digitalisation of public and private services; a new economic role in managing work for a larger state with a more relaxed approach to borrowing; a reformed system of social care, in the wake of the toll on older people and their carers; something like a universal work and income guarantee for young people; new alliances between local government and mutual aid groups in civil society; a digitally enabled primary health system, including track and trace technology as standard; a new society-wide commitment to tackle structural racial inequality; a recovery with a Green New Deal at its heart; a return to normality circa 2019. Precisely because it reaches so deep and wide, this crisis may create so many different possibilities that nothing as coherent as a single ‘turning point’ emerges. Instead different parts of society take different exits scattering in different directions pursuing fractured experimentation.
That fragmentation may be the most plausible outcome because there are as yet no clear political and economic actors with enough support to take society in one direction or another. The nationalist and populist wave may have reached its peak. Everyday radicalism, experimenting with new policies, organisations and institutions, may be rising. New coalitions may be forming on the horizon as we embark on a green transition. But as yet there is nothing coherent enough to take society in a definitive direction. It will depend on what coalitions form around which programmes in the next year or so.
These are the four ways in which a crisis can generate lasting, potentially transformative change: accelerator, dead-end, turning point and roundabout. This crisis clearly has the potential to be a critical juncture but that depends on which exit we take from the roundabout. And that will depend on who gets to tell the story of the crisis, how we make sense of it all.
That is the conclusion Mark Blyth comes to in his study of such moments in Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Political Change in the Twentieth Century. According to Blyth, a professor of international political science at Brown University in the US, a crisis becomes a turning point when its story gets told in a certain way which determines what an adequate response looks like.
The first is whether the crisis is seen as an external threat or an internal challenge. Those in power, seeking to justify their actions, will want to present COVID-19 primarily as a global pandemic: an external threat of unprecedented scale. Their challengers will have to persuade people it was also an internal challenge, exposing deep seated weaknesses and failings. Perhaps Joe Biden’s victory also marks a tilt in favour of the latter account.
The second contrast is whether we are all in this together or whether the crisis has exposed and deepened structural social inequalities that need to be tackled. Do we bask in the warm glow of collective goodwill or face the hard and costly reality of inequality?
The alternative narrative is more difficult to convey. The pandemic exposes the limits of individualism; responding to it depends on solidarity and fellow feeling. One person’s health depends on the health of others. Yet that will not yield an agenda for reform unless we also address the growing evidence that we are not in this together, that the economic and health burdens are unequally shared across class, race and age. The post-war welfare state emerged from the fellow feeling of the war but also a recognition of the unequal burdens, carried by older people and women. It was both an expression of solidarity and a critique of unacceptable inequality.
Challengers will need to get this balance right to create a credible narrative. The uneven impact of the economic crisis, the unemployment and business closures that will follow the end of the pandemic, could provide the basis for such a narrative.
Milton Friedman, the intellectual inspiration for the free market policies of Ronald Regan and Margaret Thatcher once wrote: “Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions taken depend on the ideas lying around. That I believe is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.”
The problem is not a lack of ideas. Many of the ideas that might provide the ingredients for a critical juncture are lying around: a version of universal basic income, combined with a Green New Deal, greater local and deliberative democracy and more responsible corporations to create an economy organised around an ethic of care, regeneration and stewardship rather than money, profits and growth.
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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.