‘The Touchstone of a Nation's Greatness is the Status of its Women’—Responses to Colonial Discourses on Indian Womanhood

Abstract

Civilizing discourses about the degradation of womanhood in Indian society have featured as a central reference point not only among colonial rulers and missionaries, they also inserted themselves into the consciousness of indigenous elites and emerging middle classes and remain of relevance even today. This article explores the interventions of women's periodicals in Hindi into colonial civilizing discourses of the late 1910s–1920s. Many contributors suggested that more attention should be turned towards a presumed ideal Hindu past and women's revered status therein rather than using ‘the West’ as a model for civilization, especially with regard to female emancipation. Seeking ‘measurement scales’ from within Indian society became instrumental to reformist and nationalist agendas that ultimately wanted to prove cultural superiority over the West. The article demonstrates how civilizing discourses were not only appropriated in women's periodicals, but were also transformed to serve another civilizatory purpose that made Indian women's rights and citizenship a precondition rather than a logical consequence of the independence struggle. Articulate women writers rebutted the ‘victim-syndrome’, claiming that moral improvement was not to be received from British actors or Indian men, but needed to be achieved by women themselves.