Current and Forthcoming Figures in the Feminist Foremothers of South Asia Series
Sant Phulibai Jat (1568-1646)
Compiled by Namrata Chaturvedi
Sant Phulibai Jat is a major historical figure in the Jat community and in the history of devotional literature of north India. The Jat community is an agrarian community that is widespread all over north India as well as other parts of India and the world. The medieval period of India was marked by the spread of devotional poetry from southern to northern India and from the western to eastern India. From the Tamil literature of the 8th century to the Hindi literature of the 18th century, bhakti or devotion was a diverse yet unifying poetic force in India.
Pandita Ramabai Saraswati (1858-1922)
Compiled by Raj Hansh Ojha and Priyanka Jha
Known as the Feminist Foremother, Ramabai Saraswati’s immense contributions significantly improved the condition of women in the late 19th and early 20th Century, offering a blueprint for the future generations. A social reformer, educationist, and women's rights activist, Pandita Ramabai Saraswati was a pioneer in advocating for an egalitarian and dignified selfhood for women. Her critical engagement with the patriarchal religious and social order of her times, as an erudite scholar of the Shastras and the religious canon, paved a new path for Indian Women. Her work, ‘The High Caste Hindu Women’ (1887), a pioneering feminist text of her times, raised significant questions about the entrenched nature of dual patriarchies of the colonial and native masters and demanded the necessity of education for the girls and women for their dignified selfhood. Her Seva Sadan and Mukti Sadan (Residential schools) were groundbreaking institutions for women’s education.
Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay (1903-1988)
Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, in the truest sense, is one of the shapers and makers of Modern India. As a key leader in the nationalist struggle, she was an Anti-Imperialist, Socialist, and a leader of the Women’s movement. She played a key role in the formations of organizations like All India Women’s Conference, Congress Socialist Party, and was a formidable leader of the Indian National Congress. Her contributions, both well-known and those in want of attention and research, are numerous. For instance, she advocates for reproductive rights and bodily autonomy for women. In the post-Independence, partition-torn country in 1947, she played a key role in the rehabilitation of the refugees, followed by her setting up of the Indian Cooperative Union, which not only helped in providing opportunities for the humane rehabilitation of many men and women but was also significant in creating the town of Faridabad. One of her most crucial interventions was towards the revival and revitalization of the umpteen arts and crafts of India and South Asia, which were on the brink of extinction. As an institution builder, she set up a large number of Akademis and Institutions, dedicated to the ‘cultural life’ of the newly Independent India, which still stands tall and continues to work on the vision and ideas she had for India.
Mahadevi Varma (1906-1987)
Invoked as one of the leading feminist literary voices of Modern India from North India, her voluminous contributions have brought light to the many concerns of the times, but most significantly, the ‘condition of women.' As one of the pillars of ‘Chhayavaad,' the literary renaissance in Hindi writing, Mahadevi was one of the foremost woman writers, who through her poetry, prose, essays, editorials, and other contributions, demanded the necessity of contesting the binary of ‘personal’ and the ‘political,' arguing of this as an artificial and the need to understanding the ‘cultural’ and the ‘social’ realms as, deeply ‘Political’ ones. Her editorship of ‘Chand,' the leading women’s journal of the 1930s-40s, was instrumental in bringing pieces with deep imprints of nascent feminism. She was also a key participant in the nationalist struggle for Independence against British Colonialism, with pronounced Gandhian Influence.