Debating Women's Citizenship in India, 1930-1960

Description

Debating Women's Citizenship, 1930-1960 is about the agency of Indian feminists and nationalists whose careers straddle the transition of colonial India to an independent India. It addresses some of the critical aspects of the encounter, engagement and dialogue between the Indian state and its women citizens, in particular, how this generation conceptualised the relationship between citizenship, equality and gender justice, and the various spheres in which the meaning and application of this citizenship was both broadened and narrowed, renegotiated and pursued. The book focuses on a cohort of nationalists and feminists who were leading members of the All India Women's Conference (AIWC) and the National Federation of Indian Women (NFIW). Drawing on the richness and depth of life histories through autobiography and oral interviews, together with archival research, this book excavates the mental products of these women's lives, their ideas, their writings and their discourse, to develop a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the feminist political personas of this generation, and how these personas negotiated the political and social terrains of their time. The book attempts to produce a new picture of this era, one in which there was far more activity and engagement with the state and with civil society on the part of this generation than previously acknowledged.

Annie Devenish (Researcher, African Ombudsman Research Centre (AORC) School of Law, University of KwaZuluNatal, South Africa) is a South African historian working on the history of feminist politics and organisation in India and South Africa. She is particularly interested in the intersections between gender, development and democracy in the Global South, and identity politics in the context of political transition.

In this amazingly comprehensive and confident history of women's enactment of citizenship in the struggle for and experience of Indian national independence, Annie Devenish has provided readers, historians of India and of women alike, with an entirely new investigation of the years of early nationhood and women's role as agents of change. -- Ellen Dubois, Distinguished Professor, Department of Gender Studies, University of California Los Angeles In this lucid account of the modern Indian women's movement, Annie Devenish invites us to consider the variety of ways that citizenship was conceptualised at the intersection of nationalist and feminist politics at key moments in the history of Indian democracy. -- Antoinette Burton, Professor of History, The University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign It is a very well-researched book and should be read not only by scholars interested in women's studies but by all students of modern Indian history. -- Aparna Basu, Former Professor, University of Delhi