widow remarriage, age of consent, and child mar-
riage were the glaring injustices to be rectified.
Muslim reformers were in a more difficult situation
as they invoked the minority Muslim identity
against the dominant Hindus and the English
colonists. For them to identify the disadvantages
of their tradition was not politically viable in this
context.
Lack of education for women became a major
concern in India partly because the colonial rulers
constructed the Woman Question in such a manner
that it came to signify their moral superiority over
the colonized (Ray 2002). In slightly different ways
both Hindu and Muslim reformers sought to con-
struct ideas about the modern woman that drew
upon the Victorian ideal of womanhood but also
depended on a glorified golden past of their own
traditions. The reformers were, however, less
focused on education as enhancing women’s devel-
opment and more concerned to make them better
partners and mothers. This manifested as valoriza-
tion of motherhood in the nationalist discourse.
There is evidence in women’s writings in the con-
temporary journals that seems to indicate that most
educated women accepted these ideas and empha-
sized the nurturing roles of wives and mothers.
Muslim community leaders also tried to address
the problem of non-education for Muslim girls and
women especially since the dictates of purdah
(seclusion) made it more difficult for them to access
public institutions of education. Muslim male lead-
ers were divided about the need and use of educa-
tion for Muslim girls. The most contentious issue
turned out to be whether Muslim girls should be
tutored at home or in schools. Many individual
Muslim women supported girls’ education by
endowing schools. Rokeya Sakhawat Husain is one
of the better-known women who started a school
for girls and ran it successfully. Unlike many men,
Rokeya saw education as the means for enabling
women to fend for themselves and live with dignity.
The availability of formal education for women
led to the emergence of a group of women with a
desire for organized action to improve the position
of women (Kasturi and Mazumdar 1994). A number
of associations were formed in the early nineteenth
century. Invariably the members of these associa-
tions were from reformist middle-class families.
Such associations faced much opposition in the
early part of the century but in the latter part the
resistance decreased as the revivalist ideology pro-
vided an alternative rationale for improving the
position of women. By the end of the century a nas-
cent women’s movement was under way.592 political-social movements: feminist
The newly educated younger women thus found
themselves in the throes of nationalist struggle.
However, the religious divide between Hindus and
Muslims complicated matters. Although the main
leaders of the nationalist movement declared time
and again that theirs was a secular struggle on
behalf of all Indians, Muslims nevertheless found
themselves in another camp. Many Muslim women
continued to be part of the women’s and national-
ist political organizations but others felt compelled
to join Muslim-only associations. The All India
Muslim Ladies Conference was founded in 1914
(Minault 1981).
There is considerable disagreement among schol-
ars about the exact effect of the nationalist move-
ment on the women’s movement. One stream of
thought suggests that issues of reform and in par-
ticular the women’s issue, were subsumed within
nationalism (Natarajan 1959). Another suggests
that the politics of nationalism fostered conser-
vatism in social beliefs and practices as it glorified
India’s past and tended to defend everything tradi-
tional (Ghulam 1983). Another view is that nation-
alism resolved the Woman Question by relying on
the ideological framework of the home-world
dichotomy and giving women the responsibility to
maintain the cohesiveness of the family and kin
group to which men could not give much attention
(Chaterjee 1989).
Kasturi and Mazumdar (1994) disagree with all
these analyses as they all seem to look for a linear
connection between the nineteenth century reform
movements and the growth of nationalism in the
twentieth century and the roles prescribed for or
played by women in Indian nationalism. Moreover,
these analyses totally ignore the way women them-
selves responded to the challenges of colonialism.
There is ample evidence that once mobilized,
women moved on their own, acquiring new confi-
dence and articulating new priorities. A number of
scholars (Forbes 1982, Minault 1982) have sepa-
rately analyzed Gandhi’s role in mobilizing women
in the nationalist struggle as one dependent on the
ideology of a self-sacrificing paragon of virtue.
However, Kasturi and Mazumdar (1994) see
Gandhi’s success in his perceptiveness that the
plight of women was a direct consequence of the
economic depredation of colonialism. He preached
gender equality in economic rewards and political
decision-making and women responded in great
numbers to Gandhi’s call for khadi (spinning and
weaving of thin cotton fabric) because it repre-
sented a method of employment generation for the
masses.