Examines the intersections of gender, religion, and politics among various Indian religious communities, from early British rule to the late twentieth century.
In Religion and Women in India, Tanika Sarkar provides an account of gender prescriptions and proscriptions and their operation among various Indian religious communities, beginning with early British rule and concluding in the late twentieth century. Tracking various shifts and displacements in doctrinal thought and practice, she argues that Indian modernity was initiated largely through debates on gender, scripture, custom, and caste, which shaped ideal forms of masculine and feminine conduct. She demonstrates the organization of a modern public sphere around the controversies, cultural imaginaries, and political agitations over such issues as the age of consent, child marriage, widow remarriage, rape laws, and intercaste and interfaith relations. Gender norms are shown leaching into social attitudes, labor processes, and legal rights-leading eventually to modern Indian feminism. Closely analyzing the interpenetration and co-constitution of religion, politics, and gender in India, while also comparing parallel developments in Pakistan and Bangladesh, this pioneering work offers a brilliant and synthesizing account of the battles between orthodoxy and its opponents over two hundred years. No historian, no feminist, no student of politics can afford to miss it.
Preface
1. Women's Histories, Gender Studies: An Overview
Historiographical Shifts: A Very Brief Glance
Pre-Modern Gender
The British at Home: How Similar and How Different
References and Suggested Readings for Chapter 1
2. Redesigning Gender Laws
Colonial Lawmaking
Personal Laws
Parsis
"Tribal" Custom
Muslim Laws
Christian Personal Laws
Hindu Personal Laws: The War Over Widows
War Over Widows: Remarriage
Beyond Personal Laws: Female Infanticide
Beyond Personal Laws: Civil Marriage
War Over the Child Wife: The Age of Consent Act of 1891
Matriliny
Property Laws
Back to Civil Marriages: The New Century
Back to Child Marriages: The New Century
References and Suggested Readings for Chapter 2
3. Redesigning Gender: Reformers and the Orthodoxy
Changes in Tribal Culture
Hindu Reformers and the Orthodoxy
Widowhood
Rebellious Women
Educating Women
Dalit Social Reforms
Christian Reforms
Muslim Reformers
Sikh Reforms
Births, Birth Control, and the Spectre of Female Sexuality
References and Suggested Readings for Chapter 3
4. Gendering Work
Work Within Households
Slaves, Servants, Artistes
Factory Work
Labour Reformism
New Professions
References and Suggested Readings for Chapter 4
5. Gendering Politics
The Queen of Jhansi
Associations and Movements
Mass Movements
Armed Revolutionaries
Gender on the Left
Gender on the Right
War, Independence, and Partition
References and Suggested Readings for Chapter 5
6. Holy and Unholy Gender
Holiness
Unholy Gender – Beyond the Two Genders
Courtesans, Concubines, Sex Workers
Interracial Relationships
Beyond Heteronormativity
Prisons and Lunatic Asylums
References and Suggested Readings for Chapter 6
7. Writing and Performing Gender
The World of Printed Books
Gender in the Modern Journals
Gender on the Stage
References and Suggested Readings for Chapter 7
8. Post-Colonial India
Gendering Births and Deaths
Gendering Labour
Gendering Property
Gender in Households
Social Work for Gender Reform
Legal Reformism
Women's Political Activism and Feminist Politics
Gendering State Repression
Gendering Pogroms
Re-Presenting Literature: Gender
Gender in the Cinema
References and Suggested Readings for Chapter 8
9. The "Others", Pakistan and Bangladesh
Early Political Vicissitudes
Scripture, Custom, Norms
The Gendering of Dress
Women's Activism
The Hudood Decade
Bangladesh: An Outline History
Gendering War
Culture vs Labour
Political Women
Gender and Faith
References and Suggested Readings for Chapter 9
Index
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