JOURNAL ARTICLES by Elena Borghi
The first nation-wide associations that composed Indian first-wave feminism have often featured i... more The first nation-wide associations that composed Indian first-wave feminism have often featured in the annals of history. Established in the early twentieth century and counting among their members virtually all of the prominent women of the day, they are remembered today for having promoted change in several fields affecting women’s lives, as well as for their role in the process of nation building and national liberation. This article instead looks at the experience of Indian first-wave feminism from a different angle, analysing its role in the construction of a peculiar system of feeling and emotional climate, and suggesting that its ground-breaking force laid precisely in this process. As a lens to elucidate this point, the article utilizes the initial phase of the first major pan-Indian organisation, the Women’s Indian Association (WIA): it looks at the thinking and life trajectory of the main driving force behind it, the Irish Margaret Cousins; at the emotionology looming large within the WIA; and at the reception of the emotional norms it helped to spread, thus uncovering the emotional experiences of some of the women who joined it soon after its foundation, in 1917.
The article investigates the collective self-perception, identity and subjectivity of the women p... more The article investigates the collective self-perception, identity and subjectivity of the women participating in the first Indian feminist associations. It utilises domesticity as a lens to analyse their appropriation of mainstream discourses and development of their own narratives, autonomously shaped within the local and transnational women’s movement, rather than resulting from the interactions of colonial and indigenous patriarchies, on which most historiography has traditionally focused. While apparently espousing received notions and generally not engaging in what would today be considered “radical” critiques, first-wave Indian feminists appropriated such notions, and reworked them to construct their collective identity as powerful subjects. Incorporating various influences, they thus created a new space and new systems of feeling of their own, an “emotional community” that became their community of reference, where pride and hope in the possibilities of womanhood seemed to know no boundaries.
Feminist Review, Nov 2016
Gender&History, 2017
The article focuses on the most prominent Indian nationalist family, the Nehrus, and on their lif... more The article focuses on the most prominent Indian nationalist family, the Nehrus, and on their life in early-twentieth century Allahabad. It uncovers the first steps undertaken by the women of the family for the cause of their sex in the 1910s, and asks questions about the removal of such early feminist engagement from the works of history, autobiographies and archives documenting the Nehru saga, in which women’s independent agency has generally been neglected. The article traces such ‘selective memory’ back to the gendered notions governing private and domestic life at the Nehrus’, questioning ideas of modernity usually associated to this household.
Yearbook of Women's History, ‘Gender and activism. Women’s voices in political debates’ , 2015
The article focuses on the debate over child marriage that agitated the politicized sections of I... more The article focuses on the debate over child marriage that agitated the politicized sections of Indian society in the late 1920s. The country was traversed by a vibrant anti-colonial movement, when a book was published by an American journalist denouncing India’s primitive social practices: Mother India, which aroused fierce nationalist reactions in the subcontinent. At the height of this controversy, when a bill recommending the raising of the minimum age for marriage came up for discussion in the legislatures, organized women took advantage of nationalist India’s wounded pride to secure passage of a law that would decisively ameliorate their condition. The article argues that this peculiar socio-political juncture was momentous for organized Indian women, for it allowed them to lobby for the recognition of their subjectivity, composed of physical, intellectual, emotional and experiential elements, as worthy of a place within high politics.
Storia delle Donne, Jan 2015
The article focuses on the early feminist engagement of some female members of India’s most promi... more The article focuses on the early feminist engagement of some female members of India’s most prominent nationalist family, the Nehrus, whose women undertook from the early 1900s public social and political work for the cause of their own sex.
Despite this, history has not granted them much room, preferring to give accounts of their participation in the Gandhian mobilisations, from the late 1920s. The essay thus
sketches the beginning of Nehru women’s activism, concentrating in particular on the two most significant figures: Rameshwari and Uma. By drawing on the writings in Hindi that appeared on the journal they edited, on the autobiographical narrations and private correspondence of several Nehrus, and on the memories collected through oral interviews, the article suggests that a vibrant and autonomous women’s movement existed before Gandhi’s call to nationalist action.
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L’articolo si concentra su alcune donne della più nota famiglia indiana nazionalista, i Nehru, e sull’impegno che profusero a inizio Novecento per la causa femminista. Nonostante il proprio carattere autonomo e innovativo, tale impegno non ha goduto dell’attenzione della storiografia, che ha ricordato le Nehru soprattutto per la loro partecipazione alle mobilitazioni gandhiane, a partire dalla fine degli anni Venti. Queste pagine tracciano, dunque, le origini dell’attivismo delle Nehru, per dimostrare l’esistenza di un movimento delle donne autonomo e vivace antecedente al periodo delle mobilitazioni gandhiane. L’articolo si concentra in particolare su Rameshwari e Uma Nehru, utilizzando come fonti gli articoli in hindi apparsi sulla rivista che editavano, le autobiografie e la corrispondenza di vari membri della famiglia, i ricordi di alcune discendenti delle Nehru, raccolti tramite interviste.
BOOK CHAPTERS by Elena Borghi
Mapping Women's History. Recovery, resistance, and activism in Colonial and Post-Colonial India, 2022
Edited by Padma Anagol, Paula Banerjee and Swapna Banerjee.
Stree Publishing House, Kolkata
Ving-cinq ans après. Les femmes au rendez-vous de l’histoire
The paper reflects on the historiography on Indian women and gender, tracing its journey up to ... more The paper reflects on the historiography on Indian women and gender, tracing its journey up to the present time. It discusses the turns that have characterised the field and the main authors and texts, which have made it a rich and influential branch of both South Asian and Women’s and Gender History. Moreover, the paper seeks to analyse the close relationship the field has always maintained with the Indian political context, placing scholarly trends and turns within that scenario, and showing the ‘militant’ side of this academic enterprise.
The field of Women’s History gained prominence in India especially from the mid-1970s, fuelled by a wave of social protest and political ferment, which for the first time questioned optimistic views about postcolonial India, and laid bare its unfulfilled promises. The publication, in 1974, of Towards equality, a report commissioned by the Indian government on the status of women in India, was particularly significant for scholars and activists interested in women. Evidence of unaltered gender norms within postcolonial Indian society, and of women’s exclusion from the enjoyment of the rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution, helped to catalyse a new wave of research, setting the agenda for emerging Women’s Studies programs. This moment sealed the intimate relationship between feminist politics and Women’s History, an alliance that has remained the backbone of the historiography on Indian women and gender up to the present time. As members of the protest movements, women historians who first contributed to the professionalization of the field have ever since understood writing women’s history as political activism.
Encyclopedia of imperialism and anti imperialism (Palgrave), 2015
Books by Elena Borghi
Sai Baba di Shirdi, 2010
Sai Babà di Shirdi è uno dei più grandi maestri spirituali di tutti i tempi. Le testimonianze par... more Sai Babà di Shirdi è uno dei più grandi maestri spirituali di tutti i tempi. Le testimonianze parlano di un santo dalle origini misteriose, che visse sempre in estrema povertà e del quale nessuno potè mai appurare se fosse hindu o musulmano, tanto da essere considerato un maestro e un profeta da entrambe le comunità.
Sai Baba sosteneva l'esistenza di un unico Dio, considerando le diverse fedi come tanti sentieri che conducono alla stessa meta. Lunatico, dotato di favolosi poteri spirituali, sprezzante delle convenzioni, Sai Baba compiva per i propri devoti molti miracoli e li estasiava con le sue parabole.
A quasi cento anni dalla sua morte, Sai Baba è ancora oggetto di profonda venerazione, soprattutto in India, dove il suo messaggio è ben vivo nel cuore dei fedeli.
Vivekananda. La verità è il mio unico dio, 2009
Questo libro ripercorre le tappe della vita del grande mistico indiano. Nato a Calcutta nel 1863 ... more Questo libro ripercorre le tappe della vita del grande mistico indiano. Nato a Calcutta nel 1863 da una famiglia di scienziati e pensatori illustri, Vivekananda, giovane colto e talentuoso, si appassionò ben presto al problema dell'esistenza di Dio ricercando inutilmente risposte logicamente corrette e dimostrabili.
Quando incontrò Sri Ramakrishna, questi divenne la sua guida; affascinato dall'intensità spirituale del santo, portò il suo messaggio di pace, amore e fratellanza in tutto il mondo. Fondò un'organizzazione dedicata al suo maestro, la Ramakrishna Mission, per promuovere il miglioramento delle condizioni spirituali e materiali dell'umanità e la fratellanza universale.
Morì nel 1902, consumato dall'intenso lavoro a cui aveva votato tutte le sue energie. Le sue idee di pace, fratellanza e servizio al prossimo hanno dato frutti che sono arrivati fino a noi.
Conference Presentations by Elena Borghi
Il paper analizza il ruolo delle prime due associazioni di donne che, attive a livello panindiano... more Il paper analizza il ruolo delle prime due associazioni di donne che, attive a livello panindiano, costituirono il movimento femminista di prima ondata nel Subcontinente: la Women’s Indian Association (1917) e la All-India Women’s Conference (1927). Le due organizzazioni figurano nella storiografia sull’India tardo coloniale come protagoniste delle campagne per il suffragio e per la diffusione dell’istruzione femminile e, soprattutto, per il loro contributo al progetto di costruzione della nazione indiana e per la vicinanza di molte delle loro aderenti al movimento nazionalista.
Composte da donne delle élite urbane, concilianti nell’approccio, ‘apolitiche’ per statuto, solerti nel rassicurare il pubblico maschile circa la non belligeranza delle proprie intenzioni, queste associazioni possono apparire come le portavoce di istanze conservatrici. In realtà—e proprio in questo risiede la loro importanza—esse hanno apportato cambiamenti significativi nella concezione dei ruoli e delle norme di genere del tempo, tramite la riappropriazione e la risignificazione dei modelli dominanti.
The paper discusses the symbolic reworking operated in the early 1900s by first-wave Indian femin... more The paper discusses the symbolic reworking operated in the early 1900s by first-wave Indian feminists, who reread some cultural constructs weighing on women and supposedly demonstrating their unfitness for public political participation, such as their allegedly natural domestic and motherly duties. Through their own reading of such roles, elite women grouped in the first organisations were able to turn them into sources of power, constructing an idea of Indian womanhood as strong and authoritative—that is, capable and fit to raise their voices in the public political arena.
Looking in particular at the first three decades of the twentieth century, and at the discussions animating the meetings of the All-India Women’s Conference, the paper shows how organised women’s conceptualisation of homemaking and motherhood paved the way for their demand for greater representation in official political bodies, and for direct engagement with political debates such as the one over child marriage, which agitated India in the late 1920s.
The paper reflects on the historiography on Indian women and gender, tracing its journey up to th... more The paper reflects on the historiography on Indian women and gender, tracing its journey up to the present time. It discusses the turns that have characterised the field and the main authors and texts, which have made it a rich and influential branch of both South Asian and Women’s and Gender History. Moreover, the paper seeks to analyse the close relationship the field has always maintained with the Indian political context, placing scholarly trends and turns within that scenario, and showing the ‘militant’ side of this academic enterprise.
The field of Women’s History gained prominence in India especially from the mid 1970s, fuelled by a wave of social protest and political ferment, which for the first time questioned optimistic views about postcolonial India, and laid bare its unfulfilled promises. The publication, in 1974, of Towards equality, a report commissioned by the Indian government on the status of women in India, was particularly significant for scholars and activists interested in women. Evidence of unaltered gender norms within postcolonial Indian society, and of women’s exclusion from the enjoyment of the rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution, helped to catalyse a new wave of research, setting the agenda for emerging Women’s Studies programs. This moment sealed the intimate relationship between feminist politics and Women’s History, an alliance that has remained the backbone of the historiography on Indian women and gender up to the present time. As members of the protest movements, women historians who first contributed to the professionalization of the field have ever since understood writing women’s history as political activism.
Among their main initial concerns was the location and preservation of sources, and the creation of a knowledge base for the emerging field. These preoccupations gave rise, during the 1980s, to initiatives such as the first feminist publishing house, based in Delhi, and specialised archives like the Sound & Picture Archives for Research on Women, in Mumbai. Western scholars of South Asian History also participated in this venture, starting a transnational dialogue with Indian historians which—facilitated by the English medium and by the presence of many South Asian scholars in European and North American universities—would remain another of the hallmarks of South Asian Gender and Women’s History.
After the early attempts documenting the voices and experiences of women living during the colonial era, historians turned to raising critical questions about the gendered implications of modernising projects in that time. Gender and power became the axes around which historical research on colonial rule and its postcolonial aftermath developed in the 1990s, questioning nationalist models of reform and development no less than the colonial past. Historiography on Indian women and gender now saw both projects as fundamentally harmful to women, and solely engaged in the ‘creation and re-creation’ of patriarchy through an endless recasting of women. Postcolonial theorists also engaged in a critique of national modernity, and historians started to interrogate the production of colonial difference through, for instance, the construction of modes of masculinity.
The early 1990s were also a time when the political context aggressively irrupted into Indian feminist research agenda, once again requiring scholars to take position both as academics and activists. As the worst anti-Muslim riots in independent India set the country on fire, historians were forced to question the premise that women can have separate existences away from their communities, and share similar issues, injustices and concerns, irrespectively of their religious and ethnic belonging. The relationship between fundamentalism and communalism, the origins of Hindutva politics, and the role of women within right-wing nationalist organisations took centre stage. Investigations of nationalist ideologies also took the shape of studies on Indian sexualities, and collections have appeared which—as was initially the case for women’s history—aimed to make visible historical actors, texts and practices absent from both colonial and nationalist frameworks of knowledge.
The new century has brought about new directions in the historiography on Indian women and gender. Scholars have grown suspicious of analyses of metastructures and of the relationship between western colonial impact and Indian nationalist response, finding them ultimately unable to uncover women’s agency. Women’s concrete experiences of resistance to, compliance with and reworking of patriarchal arrangements, it has been recently argued, do not feature in accounts investigating the construction of such discourses. These analyses end up reinforcing the stereotype of the powerless Indian women as mere sites for the play of dominant discourses, and stripping them of agency. Recent historical research has thus turned to in-depth, region-based studies locating Indian women’s agency at the centre of their analyses, questioning the colonial archive and incorporating a whole set of hitherto neglected sources to understand the formation of women’s subjectivity and the role women have played as agents of their own history.
The paper discusses the way in which the Indian women’s movement took advantage of a political an... more The paper discusses the way in which the Indian women’s movement took advantage of a political and national-identity crisis that shook India in the late 1920s, marking the start of lasting changes in gender relations in the subcontinent. Recently organised in the pan-Indian All-India Women’s Conference (AIWC), women were able to capitalise on the crisis generated in the country by the publication of a book that set on fire male political elites, deploying nationalist discourses to push for the recognition of female subjectivity in the official political arena.
The book originating the controversy was 'Mother India'. Published in 1927 by American journalist Katherine Mayo to denounce India’s primitive social practices, it aroused fierce nationalist reactions in the subcontinent, and gave rise to a debate of global proportions. The issue touched one of India’s raw nerves, at a time when the nationalist movement was about to come to a head, and nationalist leaders wished India to be globally recognised as a ‘modern’ nation worthy of self-government. The persistence of traditional social practices hindered the image of Indian modernity in the eyes of the world, justifying colonial arguments about India’s unfitness for political independence.
Child marriage was one of the traditional practices denounced by 'Mother India' as evidence of India’s primitiveness. When, at the height of the Mother India controversy, a bill recommending the raising of the minimum age for marriage came up for discussion in the legislatures, organised women took advantage of such an unprecedented political and social climate, to lobby for a law that would decisively ameliorate the lot of Indian womanhood. Strategically constructing their demands in tune with nationalist India’s wounded pride, they presented the passage of the bill as a nationalist priority—something which secured most of Indian politicians’ support to their cause, and made women have their way in 1929, when the bill was finally passed into law.
The paper analyses a critical juncture in Indian history, arguing that it represented an unprecedented occasion for women to introduce crucial changes in their society. Taking advantage of the political and identity crisis generated by Mother India, organised women were able to bring into further focus female subjectivity (composed of physical, intellectual, emotional and experiential elements), laying the ground for women’s presence in the political arena as right-bearing subjects, and introducing lasting changes in the conceptualisation of gender relations in India.
The paper explores the ways in which values related to women’s emancipation, rights and freedom c... more The paper explores the ways in which values related to women’s emancipation, rights and freedom circulated between Europe and India in the early twentieth century. It analyses, in particular, the multiple ways in which the Indian women’s movements reworked such values, appropriated some, and rejected others, in order to shape a theory and practice of female assertion that was deeply rooted in Indian culture, and at the same time fought against some of its norms and behaviours.
Looking at the debates taking place among Indian women activists about their western ‘sisters’, the paper aims to demonstrate that Indian movements were no less powerful and radical than their western counterparts. Creatively reworking some of the values considered to be typical of western feminisms, Indian women shaped their own original and path-breaking movements.
Talks/Lectures by Elena Borghi
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JOURNAL ARTICLES by Elena Borghi
Despite this, history has not granted them much room, preferring to give accounts of their participation in the Gandhian mobilisations, from the late 1920s. The essay thus
sketches the beginning of Nehru women’s activism, concentrating in particular on the two most significant figures: Rameshwari and Uma. By drawing on the writings in Hindi that appeared on the journal they edited, on the autobiographical narrations and private correspondence of several Nehrus, and on the memories collected through oral interviews, the article suggests that a vibrant and autonomous women’s movement existed before Gandhi’s call to nationalist action.
----
L’articolo si concentra su alcune donne della più nota famiglia indiana nazionalista, i Nehru, e sull’impegno che profusero a inizio Novecento per la causa femminista. Nonostante il proprio carattere autonomo e innovativo, tale impegno non ha goduto dell’attenzione della storiografia, che ha ricordato le Nehru soprattutto per la loro partecipazione alle mobilitazioni gandhiane, a partire dalla fine degli anni Venti. Queste pagine tracciano, dunque, le origini dell’attivismo delle Nehru, per dimostrare l’esistenza di un movimento delle donne autonomo e vivace antecedente al periodo delle mobilitazioni gandhiane. L’articolo si concentra in particolare su Rameshwari e Uma Nehru, utilizzando come fonti gli articoli in hindi apparsi sulla rivista che editavano, le autobiografie e la corrispondenza di vari membri della famiglia, i ricordi di alcune discendenti delle Nehru, raccolti tramite interviste.
BOOK CHAPTERS by Elena Borghi
The field of Women’s History gained prominence in India especially from the mid-1970s, fuelled by a wave of social protest and political ferment, which for the first time questioned optimistic views about postcolonial India, and laid bare its unfulfilled promises. The publication, in 1974, of Towards equality, a report commissioned by the Indian government on the status of women in India, was particularly significant for scholars and activists interested in women. Evidence of unaltered gender norms within postcolonial Indian society, and of women’s exclusion from the enjoyment of the rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution, helped to catalyse a new wave of research, setting the agenda for emerging Women’s Studies programs. This moment sealed the intimate relationship between feminist politics and Women’s History, an alliance that has remained the backbone of the historiography on Indian women and gender up to the present time. As members of the protest movements, women historians who first contributed to the professionalization of the field have ever since understood writing women’s history as political activism.
Books by Elena Borghi
Sai Baba sosteneva l'esistenza di un unico Dio, considerando le diverse fedi come tanti sentieri che conducono alla stessa meta. Lunatico, dotato di favolosi poteri spirituali, sprezzante delle convenzioni, Sai Baba compiva per i propri devoti molti miracoli e li estasiava con le sue parabole.
A quasi cento anni dalla sua morte, Sai Baba è ancora oggetto di profonda venerazione, soprattutto in India, dove il suo messaggio è ben vivo nel cuore dei fedeli.
Quando incontrò Sri Ramakrishna, questi divenne la sua guida; affascinato dall'intensità spirituale del santo, portò il suo messaggio di pace, amore e fratellanza in tutto il mondo. Fondò un'organizzazione dedicata al suo maestro, la Ramakrishna Mission, per promuovere il miglioramento delle condizioni spirituali e materiali dell'umanità e la fratellanza universale.
Morì nel 1902, consumato dall'intenso lavoro a cui aveva votato tutte le sue energie. Le sue idee di pace, fratellanza e servizio al prossimo hanno dato frutti che sono arrivati fino a noi.
Conference Presentations by Elena Borghi
Composte da donne delle élite urbane, concilianti nell’approccio, ‘apolitiche’ per statuto, solerti nel rassicurare il pubblico maschile circa la non belligeranza delle proprie intenzioni, queste associazioni possono apparire come le portavoce di istanze conservatrici. In realtà—e proprio in questo risiede la loro importanza—esse hanno apportato cambiamenti significativi nella concezione dei ruoli e delle norme di genere del tempo, tramite la riappropriazione e la risignificazione dei modelli dominanti.
Looking in particular at the first three decades of the twentieth century, and at the discussions animating the meetings of the All-India Women’s Conference, the paper shows how organised women’s conceptualisation of homemaking and motherhood paved the way for their demand for greater representation in official political bodies, and for direct engagement with political debates such as the one over child marriage, which agitated India in the late 1920s.
The field of Women’s History gained prominence in India especially from the mid 1970s, fuelled by a wave of social protest and political ferment, which for the first time questioned optimistic views about postcolonial India, and laid bare its unfulfilled promises. The publication, in 1974, of Towards equality, a report commissioned by the Indian government on the status of women in India, was particularly significant for scholars and activists interested in women. Evidence of unaltered gender norms within postcolonial Indian society, and of women’s exclusion from the enjoyment of the rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution, helped to catalyse a new wave of research, setting the agenda for emerging Women’s Studies programs. This moment sealed the intimate relationship between feminist politics and Women’s History, an alliance that has remained the backbone of the historiography on Indian women and gender up to the present time. As members of the protest movements, women historians who first contributed to the professionalization of the field have ever since understood writing women’s history as political activism.
Among their main initial concerns was the location and preservation of sources, and the creation of a knowledge base for the emerging field. These preoccupations gave rise, during the 1980s, to initiatives such as the first feminist publishing house, based in Delhi, and specialised archives like the Sound & Picture Archives for Research on Women, in Mumbai. Western scholars of South Asian History also participated in this venture, starting a transnational dialogue with Indian historians which—facilitated by the English medium and by the presence of many South Asian scholars in European and North American universities—would remain another of the hallmarks of South Asian Gender and Women’s History.
After the early attempts documenting the voices and experiences of women living during the colonial era, historians turned to raising critical questions about the gendered implications of modernising projects in that time. Gender and power became the axes around which historical research on colonial rule and its postcolonial aftermath developed in the 1990s, questioning nationalist models of reform and development no less than the colonial past. Historiography on Indian women and gender now saw both projects as fundamentally harmful to women, and solely engaged in the ‘creation and re-creation’ of patriarchy through an endless recasting of women. Postcolonial theorists also engaged in a critique of national modernity, and historians started to interrogate the production of colonial difference through, for instance, the construction of modes of masculinity.
The early 1990s were also a time when the political context aggressively irrupted into Indian feminist research agenda, once again requiring scholars to take position both as academics and activists. As the worst anti-Muslim riots in independent India set the country on fire, historians were forced to question the premise that women can have separate existences away from their communities, and share similar issues, injustices and concerns, irrespectively of their religious and ethnic belonging. The relationship between fundamentalism and communalism, the origins of Hindutva politics, and the role of women within right-wing nationalist organisations took centre stage. Investigations of nationalist ideologies also took the shape of studies on Indian sexualities, and collections have appeared which—as was initially the case for women’s history—aimed to make visible historical actors, texts and practices absent from both colonial and nationalist frameworks of knowledge.
The new century has brought about new directions in the historiography on Indian women and gender. Scholars have grown suspicious of analyses of metastructures and of the relationship between western colonial impact and Indian nationalist response, finding them ultimately unable to uncover women’s agency. Women’s concrete experiences of resistance to, compliance with and reworking of patriarchal arrangements, it has been recently argued, do not feature in accounts investigating the construction of such discourses. These analyses end up reinforcing the stereotype of the powerless Indian women as mere sites for the play of dominant discourses, and stripping them of agency. Recent historical research has thus turned to in-depth, region-based studies locating Indian women’s agency at the centre of their analyses, questioning the colonial archive and incorporating a whole set of hitherto neglected sources to understand the formation of women’s subjectivity and the role women have played as agents of their own history.
The book originating the controversy was 'Mother India'. Published in 1927 by American journalist Katherine Mayo to denounce India’s primitive social practices, it aroused fierce nationalist reactions in the subcontinent, and gave rise to a debate of global proportions. The issue touched one of India’s raw nerves, at a time when the nationalist movement was about to come to a head, and nationalist leaders wished India to be globally recognised as a ‘modern’ nation worthy of self-government. The persistence of traditional social practices hindered the image of Indian modernity in the eyes of the world, justifying colonial arguments about India’s unfitness for political independence.
Child marriage was one of the traditional practices denounced by 'Mother India' as evidence of India’s primitiveness. When, at the height of the Mother India controversy, a bill recommending the raising of the minimum age for marriage came up for discussion in the legislatures, organised women took advantage of such an unprecedented political and social climate, to lobby for a law that would decisively ameliorate the lot of Indian womanhood. Strategically constructing their demands in tune with nationalist India’s wounded pride, they presented the passage of the bill as a nationalist priority—something which secured most of Indian politicians’ support to their cause, and made women have their way in 1929, when the bill was finally passed into law.
The paper analyses a critical juncture in Indian history, arguing that it represented an unprecedented occasion for women to introduce crucial changes in their society. Taking advantage of the political and identity crisis generated by Mother India, organised women were able to bring into further focus female subjectivity (composed of physical, intellectual, emotional and experiential elements), laying the ground for women’s presence in the political arena as right-bearing subjects, and introducing lasting changes in the conceptualisation of gender relations in India.
Looking at the debates taking place among Indian women activists about their western ‘sisters’, the paper aims to demonstrate that Indian movements were no less powerful and radical than their western counterparts. Creatively reworking some of the values considered to be typical of western feminisms, Indian women shaped their own original and path-breaking movements.
Talks/Lectures by Elena Borghi
Despite this, history has not granted them much room, preferring to give accounts of their participation in the Gandhian mobilisations, from the late 1920s. The essay thus
sketches the beginning of Nehru women’s activism, concentrating in particular on the two most significant figures: Rameshwari and Uma. By drawing on the writings in Hindi that appeared on the journal they edited, on the autobiographical narrations and private correspondence of several Nehrus, and on the memories collected through oral interviews, the article suggests that a vibrant and autonomous women’s movement existed before Gandhi’s call to nationalist action.
----
L’articolo si concentra su alcune donne della più nota famiglia indiana nazionalista, i Nehru, e sull’impegno che profusero a inizio Novecento per la causa femminista. Nonostante il proprio carattere autonomo e innovativo, tale impegno non ha goduto dell’attenzione della storiografia, che ha ricordato le Nehru soprattutto per la loro partecipazione alle mobilitazioni gandhiane, a partire dalla fine degli anni Venti. Queste pagine tracciano, dunque, le origini dell’attivismo delle Nehru, per dimostrare l’esistenza di un movimento delle donne autonomo e vivace antecedente al periodo delle mobilitazioni gandhiane. L’articolo si concentra in particolare su Rameshwari e Uma Nehru, utilizzando come fonti gli articoli in hindi apparsi sulla rivista che editavano, le autobiografie e la corrispondenza di vari membri della famiglia, i ricordi di alcune discendenti delle Nehru, raccolti tramite interviste.
The field of Women’s History gained prominence in India especially from the mid-1970s, fuelled by a wave of social protest and political ferment, which for the first time questioned optimistic views about postcolonial India, and laid bare its unfulfilled promises. The publication, in 1974, of Towards equality, a report commissioned by the Indian government on the status of women in India, was particularly significant for scholars and activists interested in women. Evidence of unaltered gender norms within postcolonial Indian society, and of women’s exclusion from the enjoyment of the rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution, helped to catalyse a new wave of research, setting the agenda for emerging Women’s Studies programs. This moment sealed the intimate relationship between feminist politics and Women’s History, an alliance that has remained the backbone of the historiography on Indian women and gender up to the present time. As members of the protest movements, women historians who first contributed to the professionalization of the field have ever since understood writing women’s history as political activism.
Sai Baba sosteneva l'esistenza di un unico Dio, considerando le diverse fedi come tanti sentieri che conducono alla stessa meta. Lunatico, dotato di favolosi poteri spirituali, sprezzante delle convenzioni, Sai Baba compiva per i propri devoti molti miracoli e li estasiava con le sue parabole.
A quasi cento anni dalla sua morte, Sai Baba è ancora oggetto di profonda venerazione, soprattutto in India, dove il suo messaggio è ben vivo nel cuore dei fedeli.
Quando incontrò Sri Ramakrishna, questi divenne la sua guida; affascinato dall'intensità spirituale del santo, portò il suo messaggio di pace, amore e fratellanza in tutto il mondo. Fondò un'organizzazione dedicata al suo maestro, la Ramakrishna Mission, per promuovere il miglioramento delle condizioni spirituali e materiali dell'umanità e la fratellanza universale.
Morì nel 1902, consumato dall'intenso lavoro a cui aveva votato tutte le sue energie. Le sue idee di pace, fratellanza e servizio al prossimo hanno dato frutti che sono arrivati fino a noi.
Composte da donne delle élite urbane, concilianti nell’approccio, ‘apolitiche’ per statuto, solerti nel rassicurare il pubblico maschile circa la non belligeranza delle proprie intenzioni, queste associazioni possono apparire come le portavoce di istanze conservatrici. In realtà—e proprio in questo risiede la loro importanza—esse hanno apportato cambiamenti significativi nella concezione dei ruoli e delle norme di genere del tempo, tramite la riappropriazione e la risignificazione dei modelli dominanti.
Looking in particular at the first three decades of the twentieth century, and at the discussions animating the meetings of the All-India Women’s Conference, the paper shows how organised women’s conceptualisation of homemaking and motherhood paved the way for their demand for greater representation in official political bodies, and for direct engagement with political debates such as the one over child marriage, which agitated India in the late 1920s.
The field of Women’s History gained prominence in India especially from the mid 1970s, fuelled by a wave of social protest and political ferment, which for the first time questioned optimistic views about postcolonial India, and laid bare its unfulfilled promises. The publication, in 1974, of Towards equality, a report commissioned by the Indian government on the status of women in India, was particularly significant for scholars and activists interested in women. Evidence of unaltered gender norms within postcolonial Indian society, and of women’s exclusion from the enjoyment of the rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution, helped to catalyse a new wave of research, setting the agenda for emerging Women’s Studies programs. This moment sealed the intimate relationship between feminist politics and Women’s History, an alliance that has remained the backbone of the historiography on Indian women and gender up to the present time. As members of the protest movements, women historians who first contributed to the professionalization of the field have ever since understood writing women’s history as political activism.
Among their main initial concerns was the location and preservation of sources, and the creation of a knowledge base for the emerging field. These preoccupations gave rise, during the 1980s, to initiatives such as the first feminist publishing house, based in Delhi, and specialised archives like the Sound & Picture Archives for Research on Women, in Mumbai. Western scholars of South Asian History also participated in this venture, starting a transnational dialogue with Indian historians which—facilitated by the English medium and by the presence of many South Asian scholars in European and North American universities—would remain another of the hallmarks of South Asian Gender and Women’s History.
After the early attempts documenting the voices and experiences of women living during the colonial era, historians turned to raising critical questions about the gendered implications of modernising projects in that time. Gender and power became the axes around which historical research on colonial rule and its postcolonial aftermath developed in the 1990s, questioning nationalist models of reform and development no less than the colonial past. Historiography on Indian women and gender now saw both projects as fundamentally harmful to women, and solely engaged in the ‘creation and re-creation’ of patriarchy through an endless recasting of women. Postcolonial theorists also engaged in a critique of national modernity, and historians started to interrogate the production of colonial difference through, for instance, the construction of modes of masculinity.
The early 1990s were also a time when the political context aggressively irrupted into Indian feminist research agenda, once again requiring scholars to take position both as academics and activists. As the worst anti-Muslim riots in independent India set the country on fire, historians were forced to question the premise that women can have separate existences away from their communities, and share similar issues, injustices and concerns, irrespectively of their religious and ethnic belonging. The relationship between fundamentalism and communalism, the origins of Hindutva politics, and the role of women within right-wing nationalist organisations took centre stage. Investigations of nationalist ideologies also took the shape of studies on Indian sexualities, and collections have appeared which—as was initially the case for women’s history—aimed to make visible historical actors, texts and practices absent from both colonial and nationalist frameworks of knowledge.
The new century has brought about new directions in the historiography on Indian women and gender. Scholars have grown suspicious of analyses of metastructures and of the relationship between western colonial impact and Indian nationalist response, finding them ultimately unable to uncover women’s agency. Women’s concrete experiences of resistance to, compliance with and reworking of patriarchal arrangements, it has been recently argued, do not feature in accounts investigating the construction of such discourses. These analyses end up reinforcing the stereotype of the powerless Indian women as mere sites for the play of dominant discourses, and stripping them of agency. Recent historical research has thus turned to in-depth, region-based studies locating Indian women’s agency at the centre of their analyses, questioning the colonial archive and incorporating a whole set of hitherto neglected sources to understand the formation of women’s subjectivity and the role women have played as agents of their own history.
The book originating the controversy was 'Mother India'. Published in 1927 by American journalist Katherine Mayo to denounce India’s primitive social practices, it aroused fierce nationalist reactions in the subcontinent, and gave rise to a debate of global proportions. The issue touched one of India’s raw nerves, at a time when the nationalist movement was about to come to a head, and nationalist leaders wished India to be globally recognised as a ‘modern’ nation worthy of self-government. The persistence of traditional social practices hindered the image of Indian modernity in the eyes of the world, justifying colonial arguments about India’s unfitness for political independence.
Child marriage was one of the traditional practices denounced by 'Mother India' as evidence of India’s primitiveness. When, at the height of the Mother India controversy, a bill recommending the raising of the minimum age for marriage came up for discussion in the legislatures, organised women took advantage of such an unprecedented political and social climate, to lobby for a law that would decisively ameliorate the lot of Indian womanhood. Strategically constructing their demands in tune with nationalist India’s wounded pride, they presented the passage of the bill as a nationalist priority—something which secured most of Indian politicians’ support to their cause, and made women have their way in 1929, when the bill was finally passed into law.
The paper analyses a critical juncture in Indian history, arguing that it represented an unprecedented occasion for women to introduce crucial changes in their society. Taking advantage of the political and identity crisis generated by Mother India, organised women were able to bring into further focus female subjectivity (composed of physical, intellectual, emotional and experiential elements), laying the ground for women’s presence in the political arena as right-bearing subjects, and introducing lasting changes in the conceptualisation of gender relations in India.
Looking at the debates taking place among Indian women activists about their western ‘sisters’, the paper aims to demonstrate that Indian movements were no less powerful and radical than their western counterparts. Creatively reworking some of the values considered to be typical of western feminisms, Indian women shaped their own original and path-breaking movements.
(Circolo Vie Nuove - Forum per i problemi della pace e della guerra)
Firenze, 16 febbraio 2015
I due padri della patria, Gandhi e Nehru. Il potere centrale e gli stati federati. Le scelte politiche ed economiche di uno stato indipendente. Il partito del Congresso ha detenuto a lungo il potere con la dinastia Nehru-Gandhi, che si è prolungata fra successi e drammi con Indira. Un modello modernizzante, secolarizzato e inclusivo. Il sistema politico ha garantito l'eguaglianza al di là delle differenze di genere, casta o identità?