Journal of Women's History

Review Essays: The Politics of Dignity Urvashi ButaUa and Ritu Menon, eds. In Other Words: New Writing by Indian Women. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1994. ISBN 0-81332214 -6 (cl); 0-8133-2172-7 (pb). Miriam Cooke and Roshni Rustomji-Kerns, eds. BWd Into Ink: South Asian and Middle Eastern Women Write War. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1994. ISBN 0-8133-8661-6 (cl); 0-8133-8662-4 (pb). Radha Kumar. The History of Doing: An Illustrated Account of Movements for Women's Rights and Feminism in India, 1800-1990. London: Verso, 1993. 203 pp. ISBN 08-6091-4550 (cl); 08-6091-6650 (pb). Manmohini Zutshi Sahgal. An Indian Freedom Fighter Recalls Her Life. ed. Géraldine Forbes. Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1994. 167 pp. ISBN 1-56324-339-3 (cl); 1-56424-340-7 (pb). Mahadevi Varma. Sketches from my Past: Encounters with India's Oppressed. Trans. Neera Kuckreja Sohoni. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1994.167 pp. ISBN 155-5531-989 (cl). Wendy Singer The normal rule in the prison was for all prisoners to line up with their kits neatly rolled and utensüs clean and shiny whenever the superintendent came around for his weekly inspection. We had decided from the first day that since we were not criminals we would not observe this rule. One representative from each category of political prisoner would meet the superintendent at the door of the barracks and explain her group's demands, and answer any questions. (Sahgal, p. 78) This was a smaU act of civil disobedience compared to the others that Manmohini Zutshi undertook during India's Freedom Movement, but it symbolized the whole—a fight for dignity as central to self-determination . By insisting that she be treated according to her own sense of social position, power, and independence, she demanded to be treated with dignity by the government authorities. This act of civil disobedience reminds us of battles among peasant activists to be considered political prisoners—rather than criminals—when arrested for protesting on landlords' property. Dignity is a theme that runs through the five recent © 1997 Journal of Women's History, Vol. 8 No. 4 (Winter) 154 Journal of Women's History Winter publications by and /or about Indian women that are reviewed in this essay. Aspirations to dignity also drove the fight against coloniaUsm in India and what has come to be called "postcolonialism." In fact, the assertion of personal dignity is basic to women's politics in India, and this may explain why much of the dynamism that is palpable in contemporary India is generated by women. Manmohini Zutshi's memoirs, Radha Kumar's The History of Doing, Mahadevi Varma's short stories from her past, and the two collections of women's writings, Blood into Ink and In Other Words, reveal forms and means through which individuals—real and fictional—have aspired to personal dignity, and insisted upon it. In the Freedom Movement and in many of the protests that have comprised women's politics in India, the goal of self-determination or equality with men has often been portrayed through conflicting images. For example, the establishment of nationalist schools for girls in the 1930s, a project in which Manmohini Zutshi participated, aUowed even girls from conservative households to learn to read and write without violating purdah—without being seen in public, in accordance with social custom. At the same time, Gandhi's promotion of handspun cloth allowed women to participate in nationalist movements even as they stayed inside their homes and spun thread. In these ways women pushed the boundaries of socially acceptable behavior and as a result redefined what "socially acceptable" meant. Thus forms of women's protest from at least the time of the Freedom Movement necessarily incorporated dynamic modes of defining and redefining personal dignity. Even after independence, women's organizations continued this mode of politics. First of all, by forming organizations composed exclusively of women, they could maintain gender segregation . Second, many of the roles that powerful women adopted could be interpreted as extensions of "traditional" roles, such as social work and education. And of course, as Amrita Basu so nicely points out in Two Faces of...