Aakarsh Ghai_The domestic role of Indian women_Final

AA HTS2 Term 2

The domestic role of Indian women: A tale on the 'civilising' intent of the British colonial rule

Aakarsh Ghai

Course:

Concepts in Domesticity taught by Ioanna Piniara

Introduction In attempting to impose European ‘modernism’ on the Indian household, the British colonisers (male and female) played a part in further disenfranchising and repressing the Indian woman while the colonised Indian male advanced his own nationalist agenda with the same result. The colonial rule was a catalyst in the social, economic and political situation in India that led to architectural changes in the open courtyard house form that marginalised her 1 as well. By modifying the plan, the British made her invisible from important household spaces and in turn from important household decisions and discussions.

Providing a local lens, in this paper I will show how the precolonial structures allowed for subaltern yet definitive and essential role of the woman in Indian society as a part of the household where she was seen and heard in her domesticity, imbuing her with an identity and visibility. The rigidity and invisibility brought on by changes in the architectural norms made the colonised Indian woman into nothing more than a symbolic entity to be controlled in turn by the British colonisers and the Indian male. This strategy of specifically targeting Indian women has mythologically and historically been used by various oppressor groups to disempower the people of the subcontinent.

Pre-colonial structures and ideas of female domesticity: Ancient India to Mughal times - 16th century From the seventh century BCE, what Roy calls the household organisation or ‘griha’ is “characterised by patriarchal control, exercised on the procreative powers of the wife, and over productive resources, which were ideally transferred from the father to the son(s)”2. In the Hindu scripture Bhagvad Gita in the first century CE, the woman’s role in the domesticity of the ‘griha’ is tied to preserving order within the family and hence, the society in entirety. The connection that is drawn between the politicaleconomy and the family group/organisation or ‘griha’ as a foundational unit of society is clearly visible.

The earlier Indo-Aryan literature was heavily inspired by religious structures within society and the building spaces were in line with the stratification of society. A translation of Vedic treatise called ‘Visvakarmaprakasa’ by Binode Behan Dutt describes the separation of the castes within the citadel, with the royal palaces and upper-class homes taking up a quarter while other classes had a prescribed space as well. Further, the height, size and structure of houses also were directly related to the caste of the owners, with Brahmins and high classes having more storeys, more wings around a central open space and being located on wider thoroughfares than those of lower castes, lowest of all the Shudras.

This segregation of space can be seen from the time of the Mauryas right up to the time of the Mughals.3 An extension of this separation is seen in later Indian homes in the outbuildings built to house servants, even the kitchens used by them, on the same compound as the main house.

Pre-colonial households and ideas from the literature of India (particularly Bengal which was a more literate part of India then) reveal the epitomes of the exalted mother and pure, sacrificing wife that form the ‘adarshgrihini’. 4A number of Bengali and other Indian critics such as Dineshchandra Sen (1867-1938) have expressed the view that precolonial Indian literature set up an impossible standard of ideal housewives who were paragons of chastity and purity while also representing virtues such as tolerance, sacrifice, honesty, fortitude and bravery.5 Poets such as Kabikankan Mukundaram Chakrabarty (1547–?) offer such a female Indian character, while sources such as Shadab Bano’s study of ‘Ardhkathnak’6, suggest that though the male householder is in greater control of the home and its 1

Almost always used for the ‘The Indian woman’ Roy, The Emergence of Monarchy in North India: Eighth to Fourth Centuries B.C, (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994)

2 Kumum

3

Lydia Etta, Sondhi, THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE IN INDIA, Masters Thesis, (Columbia, Missouri: Oklahoma State University Library, 1972) 4 a hindi word meaning – ‘the perfect housewife’ 5 Swapna Banerjee, 2010. Debates on Domesticity and the Position of Women in Late Colonial India, History Compass, 8(6), 455-473 6 the seventeenth century autobiography of a Jain merchant named Banarsidas from Jaunpur

occupants as well as his own destiny, his wives (he describes an accepted polygamy within the home) are vocal women with the power to choose to contribute to or not participate in his, and by extension their own, economic well-being through the fortunes and connections of their own familial ties. 7

Figure (i): A Brahmin family photograph from the 1880s, likely from Maharashtra. Image: Wikimedia Commons, taken from https://thewire.in/caste/caste-history-postcolonial-studies

Household architecture: Mughal times - 16th century to British Imperialist rule - 18th Century While few sources exist that describe the domesticity of common people in the Mughal times, we may turn to two sources – 1) Hindu literature of the times which provides glimpses into the relationship between men and women in the domestic space, as described above, within the traditional Indian narrative where the patriarchal joint family exerted a communal group decision-making power over all females in the structure8 and 2) recent studies of pieces of literary or architectural work from Mughal period, one such being Ruby Lal’s work on the role of women in Mughal palace life, suggesting that their importance has been underestimated by scholars, as personal and political decision-makers and influencers in the lives of Babur, Humayun and other emperors. Disputing the idea that the domestic domain is isolated from public spaces, and assigning a wider meaning to the concept of a ‘haram’, Lal highlights Mughal women’s ‘involvement in matters of succession, arrangement of marriages, brokering of peace’ emphasizing the role of women in matters of the household and beyond, even in a royal palace.9 Another source for information on the architectural structure is Mehrdad and Natalie Shokoohy’s work on studying domestic dwellings in Mughal India. Focusing on the structure and not only on decorative elements, they postulate that the organic structure of Indian buildings even dating back to Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro consist of rooms built around an open yard, often not on a fixed plan but open to addition or demolition of rooms over time. The earliest type of organised plan for domestic 7

Shadab Bano, MASCULINE DOMESTICITY IN PRE-COLONIAL INDIA: BASED ON HOUSEHOLDER’S ACCOUNT, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress 77, (Indian History Congress, 2016), 237-242

8

Swapna Banerjee, 2010. Debates on Domesticity and the Position of Women in Late Colonial India, History Compass, 8(6), 455-473 9

Ruby Lal, Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)

dwellings is clearly the open central courtyard, which indicates the presence of design and mapping layout. From the ancient Buddhist monasteries to the homes of the Mughal city of Tughlaqabad, they trace the appearance of this feature, as also seen in fig. ii. On further study, an additional aspect of the Mughal domestic architecture seen in different parts of India is the colonnaded ‘iwan’ or central enclosed courtyard.10

Figure (ii): Tuqlaqabad House, sketch plan of the foundations (part of) (SHOKOOHY 2000)

Courtyard architecture in India symbolises a particular traditional way of life that is rife with domesticity and ritualistic systems. Inga Bryden speaks of the Rajasthani haveli of the same Mughal period as “a way of life” and unifies “Hindu and Muslim designs” while having “regional variations” the form is seen all over India. Keeping the heat and dust out of the structure while allowing air convection cooling through many openings and central open space, it merges the outdoor and indoor spaces.11 With its enclosed/open architecture, there is much activity visible and noise audible, so I contend that while there is a segregation of domestic spaces, women and their cooking, householding and parenting activities are integrated with the domesticity of the space and their presence is heard, seen and felt.12 13 10

Mehrdad Shokoohy and Natalie H. Shokoohy, Domestic Dwellings in Muslim India: Mediaeval House Plans, (Bulletin of the Asia Institute 14, 2000), 89–110

11

Inga Bryden, "There Is No Outer without Inner Space’: Constructing the ‘Haveli’ as Home" Cultural Geographies Vol. 11, No. 1 (January. 2004), 26-41

12

Sarah Lamb, "The Making and Unmaking of Persons: Notes on Aging and Gender in North India" Ethos 25 (1997), 279–302

13

Susan Seymour, "Some Determinants of Sex Roles in a Changing Indian Town" American Ethnologist 2, no. 4 (1975), 757– 69

History of occupation, background of cultural invasion The prevailing thinking in Britain during and prior to the imperialist era sought to justify the colonists’ motivations and actions by presenting them as “civilising” the natives. Colonial travelogues14 of the time include descriptions of the local people as “savage” or the natives as “medieval” – terms used disparagingly and pictures were drawn that demonised the natives. Civilising missions included but were not limited to Christian missionaries that spread through the colonies, including India. Their impact on society has been characterised by their branding as “workhorses of the empire” or “precursors of the flag”. 15 The very idea of civilising another is to assert authority and display superiority over the other. The British colonisers in India were in a unique position – they held political power over a populated and highly established stratified society. In order to control this society effectively they believed that they had to display themselves as being superior in that their subjects must look up to them and emulate their code of conduct by adopting their behaviours, in both the public and the personal spheres of life.

General John Malcolm gave orders to his English officers in the nineteenth century stating: “Our power in India rests on the general opinion of the Natives of our comparative superiority in good faith, wisdom, and strength, to their own rulers. This important impression will be improved by the consideration we shew to their habits, institutions, and religion, by the moderation, temper, and kindness with which we conduct ourselves.”

In order to further internalise the lessons of the moral civilising mission by Western standards, many etiquette books were written for Indians by British authors such as English Etiquette for Indian Gentleman by William Webb.16 Such manuals intended to establish a standard of moral character that had its roots completely in Western ideology. Books such as Davenport Adam’s Plain Living and High Thinking, first published in 1880 and The Uses of Life by Sir John Lubbock refer to character, which when used as a concept in advice manuals, becomes understood as the cultivated nature of a person – a gentleman who must control and cultivate his emotions. These books and many others like them set a clear set of norms that not only present a clear hierarchy of power but also display the western monopolisation of the meaning of being educated and civilised – in British manners and morals. Many of the English advice manuals had become firmly established in school curricula such as The Uses of Life by Lubbock which was used for the Matriculation exam.

So ingrained in the national consciousness became this moral and cultural instruction that Hindi books on self-help, written in the 1910s to 1920s, either adapted from or inspired by the reading of English models also gained wide popularity as instruction for the educated Indian – an ‘internal colonialism’.

The clear implication is the colonial trope of the colonised people being like children, who need to be properly educated in their duties and, thereupon should obediently follow. It follows in this line of argument that people who receive such an education will carry it forward in their public and private lives.

14

P.P.K. Nayar, "The Imperial Sublime: English Travel Writing and India, 1750-1820", Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 2, (2002), 57-99

15

T. Getachew, Lankina & L., "Competitive Religious Entrepreneurs: Christian Missionaries and Female Education in Colonial and Post-Colonial India" British Journal of Political Science 43, (2013), 103-131

16

M. Freier, Cultivating emotions: Hindi advice literature in late Colonial India, PhD Thesis, (Berlin: Freie Universitat Berlin, 2013)

Figure (iii): Missionaries in India. Image source: https://saberabhayat.com/2017/04/29/missionary-journalsand-a-rhetoric-of-rescue-the-church-of-england-zenana-missionary-society-and-indias-women-1880-1940/

Impacts on the domesticity in Colonial times homes According to editors Tharu and Lalita, historians believed that without the proceeds from the plunder of India after the 1757 Battle of Plassey, the British Industrial Revolution would not have been possible. While all the production shifted to Britain, Indian industry was taken over completely by the colonisers and land taxes were hiked up to their highest levels. Men moved around in search of jobs and women were left with householding and childrearing alone. Nuclear families began to gradually develop as a result of the new economy as well as due to the inculcation of a new Anglicised set of ideal values. Additionally, the English-educated Indian in the late nineteenth century was an emerging new class, separated from the agrarian and elevated in status yet subaltern to the imperialist, with no leadership rights. He embraced the nationalist ideology as an alternative to the imperialist discourse, and yet had been educated in the value system of a Victorian puritanical tradition. The resultant philosophy was hybrid, with the Indian male exerting power within a nuclear family structure over his wife and children, who worshipped and obeyed him within the peace and sanctity of the domesticity of home. Some writers of the time such as Sibnath Sastri (1847–1919) create a parallel between home and state – suggesting that the two conditions are connected.17 The foreign influence extends to domesticity and the Indian male’s changing expectations of women - as the household size becomes smaller imbuing his wife with the status only older women had previously but these women may be figureheads but they do not exercise more power, their power is limited to the interior of the home.

17

Swapna Banerjee, Debates on Domesticity and the Position of Women in Late Colonial India, History Compass, 8(6), (2010), 455-473

The “Indian male/colonial master”18 is not the only oppressor and controller of the Indian woman. The “civilising” intention of the British colonist extended to the physical atrocities perpetrated on the Indian women in the form of the practice of widow-burning, physical chastisement, and other social evils – a step in the right direction but a temporary zeal designed to deflect attention from the high taxes, unfair practices, disenfranchisement of indigenous people. The British “memsahib”, or foreign woman who came to set up her household in the Indian colony along with the English civil servants who came to administer and manage India, also had a hand in supposed upliftment19 of the Indian woman. These English travellers were, according to Indira Ghose20, familiar with Orientalist discourse that reduced Indian culture to being “mythical, dreamlike and irrational” – a cultural ‘otherness’ that steeped the Indian woman in “distorted” generalisations and clichés21, making her the ‘other’ in the gaze of the Western counterpart.

Englishwomen in India, such as the illustrious Maud Diver in the early twentieth century aided with the British “codification” of practical traditions into “rigid” and “unified laws” in the increased domestication of the Indian female. Diver reveals the prevailing conversation around women in India and “the etiquette of their movements within and between public and/private space.” In the nineteenth century, a number of popular manuals were specifically written by English women for improved housekeeping in India, such as Ann Steel and Grace Gardiner’s The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook which was republished over a dozen times. The guiding principle remained that the colonies were in “constant need for civilising as the Englishwoman had to keep the native Indian woman under control in their domestic space.” The implication is that these British women meant to “replicate the empire in their homes.” 22 A case in point is Bengal, where the upper and middle-class female aspired to the epithet of Bhadramahila (part of the male centric Bhadralok, populated with the nationalist/educated Indian male) – she was an Indian woman who had been educated in the Christian missionary schools that were set up by the London Missionary Society in the 1850s all over India. Yet this educated India woman could not drink, smoke, or keep company with men – following the ‘sugrahini’ ideals of Indian womanhood, unlike the English ‘memsahib’ – since she was the vessel of her nation’s culture. In this way, the Indian woman was hemmed by the Indian male into the walls of domesticity and “relegation to the metaphorical/physical home” in spite of newly-acquired education because she was saddled with upholding the national spirituality, keeping it separate from “westernisation.”23 The voice of the Indian woman is thus seen to be “doubly curbed by the colonial and the Indian males”.

Even the reform efforts by the British and Indian nationalists such as Raja Rammohun Roy are critiqued by writer Kalyani Datta for the lack of the documentation of the widows’ own experiences of the misery of widowhood in the archives dedicated to them, created only by the men who viewed it – an objective and reformist gaze steeped in the patriarchal ideas of viewer, removed from the point of view of the female. The influence of prevailing Enlightenment ideas of philosophers like David Hume 18

Sunita Peacock, The “Education” of the Indian Woman against the Backdrop of the Education of the European Woman in the Nineteenth-Century, Forum on Public Policy, Slippery Rock University: Forum on Public Policy, (2009)

19

T. Getachew, Lankina & L., "Competitive Religious Entrepreneurs: Christian Missionaries and Female Education in Colonial and Post-Colonial India" British Journal of Political Science 43, (2013), 103-131 20 Indira Ghose, "Women Travellers in Colonial India: The Power of the Female Gaze’," Victorian Studies 43, (January 2001), 522-524 21

Sunita Peacock, The “Education” of the Indian Woman against the Backdrop of the Education of the European Woman in the Nineteenth-Century, Forum on Public Policy, Slippery Rock University: Forum on Public Policy, (2009)

22

Sunita Peacock, The “Education” of the Indian Woman against the Backdrop of the Education of the European Woman in the Nineteenth-Century, Forum on Public Policy, Slippery Rock University: Forum on Public Policy, (2009)

23

Indira Ghose, "Women Travellers in Colonial India: The Power of the Female Gaze’," Victorian Studies 43, (January 2001), 522-524

is visible in the complete lack of an exploration of the subjectivity in the colonised woman’s narrative, instead a focus only on the objective and application of universal ideals to all situations. The Indian female was reduced to what Ghose calls “progressive domestication” and subject to the “metaphorical and physical surveillance under eastern and western mores.” Furthermore, this philosophy operated to hold “women within gender norms and boundaries” and concurred with the different nationalistic and imperialistic standards of the Europeans and the Indian male. Consequently, under the pretext of societal amends by the coloniser (male and female) and the colonised Indian man, the colonised Indian woman was assigned “an agenda in which to live her life.” She was not given agency to make the changes that she deemed fit or the voice to express her own ideas and emotions, nor a choice in the set of morals and standards that were allotted to her. 24 25 Case Study of Indian Colonial Home The work of Swati Chattopadhyay in studying colonial buildings, particularly urban homes, in Calcutta by reviewing old plans and mapping the modifications that were made to the buildings through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries allows us a look at the establishment of the colonial bungalow – a pervasive building form that spread throughout the colonies even to America and has its roots in Bengal. (The Bungalow Style 1894) As early as the eighteenth century, there is the beginning of a hybrid form – as larger numbers of British army officers, colonial administrators, businessmen and others established homes in India. Chattopadhyay points out that exteriors were the first aspects to meet with alterations by the British – neoclassical elements like pillars were added to make the buildings look imposing and familiar to the Europeans. But the interiors had many doors and windows without locks, blurring the indoor/outdoor boundaries and exposing the interior to outside eyes, ears and influences – in 1821, the wife of a captain in the East India Company's service wrote to a friend in England that even inside the house felt not like a “sanctuary”, asking “who could sleep in a room where four doors and four windows all stand open?”26 Chattopadhyay shows a house on Camac Street (fig. v), Calcutta that has modifications and represents the idea that Indian colonial houses are made malleable to multiple types of usage due to the changing ownership as the economy of India rapidly alters because of British rule. Both houses on Camac Street and Little Russell Street (fig. iv) show the alteration from open courtyard style to the internalised, enclosed interior space, with the latter featuring (as originally labelled) a “courtyard-like hall” and a wraparound veranda, a nod to the necessity of an outdoor space to sit and cool off in the hot weather.

As the bungalow developed and established itself as a residence with British influences but also based on Indian workmanship, the wealthy Indian elite and the colonised educated Indian male/nationalist also takes up residence in it. A larger need for administration is supplied by Indian babu27 who mimics the bungalow living of the Europeans in India. The bungalow has a similar style in many parts of India and while it separates public and private spaces it also brings the kitchen at least partly indoors and the large colonnaded iwan/open courtyards are now removed and replaced with a front veranda and front columns in a European style.

The Indian woman living in these emerging bungalows with the colonised Indian male/nationalist does not have the freedom of the memsahib, to be seen sitting on the veranda at the front of the house, in 24

Sunita Peacock, The “Education” of the Indian Woman against the Backdrop of the Education of the European Woman in the Nineteenth-Century, Forum on Public Policy, Slippery Rock University: Forum on Public Policy, (2009)

25

A Blunt, "Imperial Geographies of Home: British Domesticity in India, 1886-1925", Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 24 (1999), 421-440

26

Swati Chattopadhyay, "Blurring Boundaries: The Limits of "White Town" in Colonial Calcutta, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 59, (2000), 154–179

27

English educated male

public view with male company. She is now confined inside the house. Furthermore, in the absence of the porousness of the courtyards, the Indian female is confined to the interior private spaces of the back of the home, not seen or heard in her domesticity, silenced further. Her voice cannot be heard, and is not taken into account by any subjective views of her experiences, as we see reflected in the condition of the colonised woman.

Figure (iv): House on Little Russell Street illustrates the pattern of early nineteenth-century houses in Calcutta

Figure (v): Early 19th century House on 3 Camac Street, ground floor plan showing some nineteenth-century additions

Conclusion Domesticity in India as a construct and as a physical space was deeply impacted by the British rule.

The surrender to the tenets of internal colonialism led to a surface-level modernisation and reform in the position of the Indian woman. In seeking to reform their surroundings by enforcing a culture steeped in its own puritanical values, an architectural style that reduced the openness of the home and a social standard that emphasised the hegemony of the coloniser, the British rule entrenched the colonised women’s status more firmly to a subordinate and enduringly oppressed place. Western men and women looked to the Indian woman as a symbol of the wrongs of Indian society, and without asking for her experience or validation, imposed a completely foreign set of ideals on her in the form of reformation. The Indian male, oppressed and disempowered in his own right, sought to control her and turn her into a symbol of anti-colonial struggle, which further distanced, dehumanised and disempowered her.

We see her role diminishing along with her voice and presence in the physical surroundings of the new bungalow style house as well as her compromised role in the smaller family structure. These architectural changes were a precursor to the construction of post-colonial Indian society and as a result also informed and motivated contemporary Indian Feminism.

Figure (vi): Colesworthy Grant, View of Hall from Grant Anglo-Indian Domestic Sketch (Calcutta. 1862)

Works Cited Banerjee, Swapna M. 2010. "Debates on Domesticity and the Position of Women in Late Colonial India." History Compass, 8 6: 455–473.

Bano, Shadab. 2016. "MASCULINE DOMESTICITY IN PRE-COLONIAL INDIA: BASED ON HOUSEHOLDER’S ACCOUNT." Proceedings of the Indian History Congress 77. Indian History Congress. 237-242.

Blunt, A. 1999. "Imperial Geographies of Home: British Domesticity in India, 1886-1925."

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 24 421-440.

Bryden, Inga. January 2004. "There Is No Outer without Inner Space’: Constructing the ‘Haveli’ as Home." Cultural Geographies Vol. 11, No. 1 26-41.

Chattopadhyay, Swati. 2000. "Blurring Boundaries: The Limits of "White Town" in Colonial Calcutta."

Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 59 154–179.

Freier, M. 2013. Cultivating emotions: Hindi advice literature in late Colonial India. PhD Thesis, Berlin: Freie Universitat Berlin.

Getachew, T. Lankina & L. 2013. "Competitive Religious Entrepreneurs: Christian Missionaries and Female Education in Colonial and Post-Colonial India." British Journal of Political Science 43 103-131.

Ghose, Indira. 2001. "Women Travellers in Colonial India: The Power of the Female Gaze’." Victorian Studies 43, January: 522-524.

Lal, Ruby. 2005. Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lamb, Sarah. 1997. "The Making and Unmaking of Persons: Notes on Aging and Gender in North India." Ethos 25 279–302.

Nayar, P.P.K. 2002. "The Imperial Sublime: English Travel Writing and India, 1750-1820." Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 2 57-99.

Peacock, Sunita. 2009. "The “Education” of the Indian Woman against the Backdrop of the Education of the European Woman in the Nineteenth-Century." Forum on Public Policy. Slippery Rock University: Forum on Public Policy.

Roy, Kumkum. 1994. The Emergence of Monarchy in North India: Eighth to Fourth Centuries B.C. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Seymour, Susan. 1975. "Some Determinants of Sex Roles in a Changing Indian Town." American Ethnologist 2, no. 4 757–69.

SHOKOOHY, MEHRDAD, and NATALIE H. SHOKOOHY. 2000. "Domestic Dwellings in Muslim India: Mediaeval House Plans." Bulletin of the Asia Institute 14 89–110.

SONDHI, LYDIA ETTA. 1972. THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE IN INDIA. Masters Thesis, Columbia, Missouri: Oklahoma State University Library.

Tharu, Susie J, and K Lalita. 1991. Women Writing in India: 600BC to the Present. New York: Feminist Press at CUNY. 1894. "The Bungalow Style." The Decorator and Furnisher 25, no. 1 5-7.