It is an undeniable fact that the culture of a nation is expressed in the importance it gives to the dignity and rights of its women. Apart from her reproductive function for the continuation of the race, a woman has played an extremely important role since the origin of the human species.
Because by her very biological function, she creates, cares, shares, and does not normally destroy. Many firmly believe that the Chinese revolution has been primarily a woman’s revolution. That is to say, it is China’s women, more than the peasants and workers, who have benefitted from the communist revolution.
The women of today’s China are fortunate, they have a taste of freedom. The women of today’s Russia enjoy an equal position with men. Since ages, Indian women were living in abject conditions, homebound, caught in the grip of fear, illiteracy and social discrimination.
Mahatma Gandhi was concerned about the emancipation and empowerment of women from the early stages of his life. He also felt that a country could not move forward unless there was an awakening among the country’s women.
However, in the formative years, he was deeply influenced by his mother Putlibai, who imparted in him a strong sense of personal ethics and compassion that is conveyed through his favorite prayer song (bhajan) written by the 15th-century religious reformer, Narsinha Mehta: ‘Vaishnav jan to tene re kahiye je peed parai jane re’ (A godlike man is one, who feels another’s pain, who shares another’s sorrow).
Indeed, motherhood was something that was natural to Gandhi. He was involved in a number of tasks that were considered largely feminine ~ nursing, cleaning, cooking and taking care of the ashram members. He firmly believed that the difference between men and women was only physical, and they play complementary roles.
He also expressed several times in his writings in ‘Young India’ and ‘Harijan’ that in many matters especially those of tolerance, patience, and sacrifice the Indian woman is superior to the male.
Gandhi’s views regarding the man-woman relation were very similar to Tolstoy’s. Tolstoy, while reviewing the famous short story entitled ‘The Darling’ written by the famous Russian author Anton Chekhov, made some profound observations. The author made fun of women who lacked originality, and were shadows of men and whose tastes would change with a change of husbands. Tolstoy did not agree with the observation.
He believed that women had their own uniqueness and that both men and women had equal abilities and rights, although they had different roles to play in society.
Gandhi was a keen observer of the women’s movement for voting rights in the UK, which at times did not practice the principled type of non-violence that he had advocated all along.
But he had tremendous faith in women’s inherent capacity for non-violence. In his words: “If non-violence is the law of our being, the future is with the women… who can make a more effective appeal to the heart than women? … God has vouchsafed to women the power of non-violence more than to men.
It is all the more effective because it is mute. Women are the natural messengers of the gospel of non-violence if only they attain high state.” Women in the Phoenix Settlement, founded by him in 1904 in South Africa, were unrestrained by social taboos and had more freedom than their counterparts anywhere in India.
With his experience of South Africa behind him, Gandhi was aware of the potential of women as satyagrahis. He also firmly believed that “women of India should have as much share in the winning of swaraj as men.”
In India, Gandhi’s first experiments with trying out the method of satyagraha was in Champaran district in Bihar in 1917. It was here that a few women such as Pravabati Devi, Rajbanshi Devi and Bhagawati Devi facilitated the entry of women into the freedom struggle.
These women led the fight against the purdah system. Social works gradually led to a political awakening among women. From Champaran Gandhi went to Kheda district (Gujarat) where peasants were protesting against unjust taxation. Gandhi was received with great enthusiasm by women everywhere.
In his historical march to Dandi on 12 March 1930, women came out in thousands. Women’s participation in large numbers in Gandhi’s mass movements was a kind of social revolution which made a breakthrough in their lives.
Gandhi is known to be one of the few people who encouraged women’s active participation in the freedom struggle – making him a rare promoter of woman’s liberation.
And his experience of participation by women in politics from his days in South Africa till the end of his life bears testimony to the fact that they never failed his expectations. In his letters and speeches to women, Gandhi repeatedly emphasized that women were not weak.
Addressing a meeting in Bombay in 1920, where women expressed their views on the atrocities committed in Punjab, Gandhi said: “I, therefore, want the women of India not to believe themselves weak. It is ignorance to call women weak, women who have been the mother of mighty heroes like Hanuman.” And he wrote in ‘Young India’ in 1930, “To call women the weaker sex is a libel; it is man’s injustice to women”.
Gandhi asked women to be fearless. As Jawaharlal Nehru wrote: “The dominant impulse in India under British rule was that of fear-pervasive oppressing, strangling fear; … It was against this all-pervading fear that Gandhi’s quiet and determined voice was raised: Be not afraid” (Discovery of India). Not only did he inspire women to be brave, he taught men too to respect women. Gandhi did everything to correct gender imbalances and bring women to the forefront in India’s social, economic, cultural and political mainstream.
Empowerment and uplift of women and the poor became his prime concern. He repeatedly pointed out that seeking freedom by imitating men would be a mockery of freedom. In his words: “Man and woman are equal in rank but they are peerless pair being supplementary to one another.”
As a result, women became prominent during the freedom struggle. Initially, many highly-educated women took part in the women’s movement launched by Gandhi, but as the movement spread among the masses, women from middle and lower class families ~ educated, uneducated and half-educated ~ came out and joined hands with each other to strengthen the movement.
Many observers of the Indian scene during those times were amazed at the phenomenon. Depicting the picture of those days Pandit Nehru wrote: “Most of us menfolk were in prison. And then a remarkable thing happened. Our women came to the front and took the charge of the struggle.
Women have always been there, of course, but now there was an avalanche of them, which took not only the British Government but their own menfolk by surprise” [Discovery of India]. With Gandhi’s inspiration, they took the struggle right into their homes and raised it to a moral level. Women organized public meetings, sold khadi and proscribed literature, started picketing shops of liquor and foreign goods, prepared contraband salt, and came forward to face all sorts of atrocities, including inhuman treatment by police officers.
They came forward to give all that they had ~ their wealth and strength, their jewelry and belongings, their skill and labour ~ for this unusual and unprecedented struggle. During the 40 years of his political career, Gandhi only found more reasons to deepen his faith in what he wrote. He never had a specific programme for women, but women had an integral role to play in his programmes.
For this reason, women participated in all programmes overwhelmingly. “Womanhood is not restricted to the kitchen”, he opined and felt that “only when the woman is liberated from the slavery of the kitchen, that her true spirit may be discovered.” It does not mean that women should not cook, but only that household responsibilities be shared among men, women and children. He wanted women to outgrow their traditional responsibilities and participate in the affairs of the nation.
He connected women with services and not with power. In his words: “If by strength is meant moral power, then a woman is immeasurably man’s superior.”
(The writer is a retired IAS officer Cambodia sets record for origami hearts display in charity effort SECULA)