An Indian academic, feminist and writer, Madhu Kishwar was the founder editor in 1978 of Manushi, a journal about Women and Society, in which she pioneered women’s studies in India and championed the causes and rights of street vendors, cycle rickshaw pullers and traditional art performers, among other marginalized or vulnerable groups. She has taken prominent part in national social controversies and debates; in particular, she has criticized India’s laws and regulations that trap legitimate unorganized-sector occupations in a web of illegality, and laws that have been enacted ostensibly to protect women’s rights.
Madhu Kishwar has authored many titles and papers on Indian social and legal issues. Among her books: In Search of Answers: Indian Women’s Voices from Manushi (co-edited with Ruth Vanita, 1984-1996); Gandhi and Women (1986); Women Bhakt Poets, Lives and Poetry of Women Mystics in India from 6th to 17th Century (co-edited with Ruth Vanita, 1989); Off the Beaten Track: Rethinking Gender Justice for Indian Women (1999); Deepening Democracy: Challenges of Governance and Globalization in India (2004); Zealous Reformers, Deadly Laws (2008). She is currently working on four more books.
From 2001 to 2016, Madhu Kishwar was professor at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi, where she directed the Indic Studies Project. She is currently Maulana Azad National Professor at the Indian Council of Social Science Research.
Abstracts of the lectures
- Society in Command: Non-Statist Tradition of Social Reform in India
This lecture will deal with the millennia-long tradition of social reform in India with special reference to women’s role and status in society. It will draw upon the following movements as illustrative examples:
1) Women as leaders of Bhakti movements in different regions of India originating in the 7th century in the South (now parts of Tamil Nadu and Kerala). From there it spread northwards up to Kashmir and swept over eastern and western regions, reaching its zenith in the 17th century. What do we learn from the mass popularity of the Bhakti songs and poetry composed by these women, the extraordinary lives they lived in radical defiance of social norms and the ease with which they were accepted as spiritual and thought leaders not just by women but by entire society?
2) What were the motivations and aspirations of 19th -century social reformers in different regions of India to put the question of strengthening women’s rights on top of the reform agenda, even though these movements were mostly led by men? How did these reform efforts differ from the reforms that the British colonial rulers imposed through coercive legislation?
3) Why did Gandhi insist on women playing a leading role in the freedom movement? What kind of space did women actually occupy? How is it that the freedom movement leaders of India committed themselves to constitutional and legal equality of women, including equal right to political participation, much before British or other European democracies did?
- Government in Command: Carrying Forward Colonial Tradition of Statist Reform in Post Independence India
As opposed to “samaj”-led social reform, the Nehru-led government in post-independence India opted for a statist approach to reform for the ostensible purpose of strengthening women’s rights. The second lecture will use the controversies around the enactment of Hindu Code Bill in the 1950s. Why did an ultra-secular Nehru government opt for selective imposition of legal reforms singling out one religious community while leaving out Muslims and Christians to continue with whatever their male leaders chose to define as their religious personal laws? How far did state-enacted laws for Hindus meet with the test of equality? Why is it that the most articulate and forceful resistance to Hindu Code Bill came not from orthodox Hindus but from representatives of regions and communities that had much stronger rights for women, including those practising matrilineal inheritance?
This lecture will also include examples of legislation enacted at the behest of feminist organizations in the last three decades to illustrate how the legacy of statist reform left behind by British colonial rulers has acquired deeper roots in post-independence India.
Readings