WOMEN AND NONVIOLENCE

Gandhi and women’s nonviolence

If nonviolence is the law of our being,

the future is with woman.

Young India, 10 April 1930.

By Laura M. A. Maino

The women of India should have as much share in winning Swaraj

as men. Probably in this peaceful women can outdistance man by

many a mile. We know that she is any day superior to man in her

religious devotion. Silent and dignified suffering in the badge of

sex. And now that the government have dragged the woman into

the line of fire, I hope that the women all over India will take up

the challenge and organize themselves.

Young India, 15 December 1921.

I began work among women when I was not even thirty years

old. There is not a woman in South Africa who does not know

me. But my work was among the poorest. The intellectual I

could not draw... You can’t blame me for not having organized

the intellectuals among women. I have not the gift...but just as I

never fear coldness on the part of the poor when I approach

them, I never fear it when I approach poor women. There is an

invisible bon d between them and me.

8 July 1938

Women and Satyagraha

The case of Orissa women

1920s: Non-Cooperation movement

• Hand-spinning and boycotting foreign products. Simplicity is dharma, women should regard themselves

adorned through it, regard as sacred whatever quality

of cloth is produced from yarn spun by girls and wear

such cloth for the purpose of covering their bodies.Nabajiban, 6 October 1921.

• Picketing of liquor shops.

1930s: Civil Disobedience movement

• Boycott propaganda.

Drink and drugs sap the moral well-being of those who are given

to the habit. Foreign cloth undermines the economic foundations

of the nation and throws millions out of employment. The

distress in each case is felt in the home and therefore by women.Young India, 10 April 1930.

• Early morning processions (prabhat pheris).

•Processions, meetings and demonstrations and organizing strikes.

1940s: Individual civil disobedience movement

Participation of Oriya women

• Early morning processions and public demonstrations.

• Training women for freedom struggle.• Through literature: ex. Kuntala Kumari Sabat

Sixteen crores of women will marry riseTo the spirit and rhythm

Of Bande Mataram!They will swear to save the country

O, brothers and sisters.(Sphulinga)

Gandhi and women’s empowerment

Women’s participation in the national movement was a central moment for the emancipation of women in India.

Gandhi’s role in drawing women into the political arena.According to Sucheta Kripalani, Gandhi’s personality inspired confidence not only in women, but in their guardians-husbands, fathers, brothers who did not object to their womenfolk coming out of their sheltered homes to march in the streets. He recognized them a dignity and gave them specific tasks: his strategy proved successful for political mobilisation.However, women often acted for their initiative, organizing themselves into groups and willing to join processions, facing police firing and going to prison.

Gandhi and women’s empowerment

•Women who joined these struggles faced intensely personal decisions: they were torn in two directions – one towards their duty toward the nation and one towards the family.•The enormous burden of domestic and field work, the

restrictions on their mobility: women were prevented from acquiring leadership roles.•The dependency on men.

Women’s participation was limited, and confined to a small number of urban, middle class women.Limitation of Gandhi’s thinking: oppression as an abstract moral condition, not a social and historical experience related to production relations.

Are women inherently non-violent?

GANDHI’S BELIEF

To call a woman the weaker sex

is a libel; it is man’s injustice to

woman. If by strength, then

indeed is woman less brute than

man. If by strength is meant

moral power, then women is

immeasurably man’s superior.

Has she not greater intuition, is

not more self-sacrificing, has she

not greater powers of endurance,

has she not greater courage?

Young India, 10 April 1930.

WOMEN’S SIDE• Some women helped the

sympathised revolutionary leaders• Especially young college girls joined

secret revolutionary organizations• Many received training and

recruiting ground to become future revolutionaries.

Bibliography• Basu, Aparna, ‘The role of women in the Indian struggle for

freedom’, in B. R. Nanda, Indian women. From purdah to modernity, (London, 1990), pp. 16-40.

• Chaudhuri, Maitrayee, Indian women’s movement, (London, 1993).• Hardiman, David, Gandhi in his time and ours. The global legacy of

his ideas, (London, 2003), chap. 5.• Jaitley, Jaya, ‘Gandhi and women’s empowerment’,

www.mkgandhi.org .• McAllister, Pam, ‘You can’s kill the spirit: women and nonviolent

action’, in Stephen Zunes, Lester R. Kurtz, Sarah Beth Asher, Nonviolent social movements: a geographical perspective, (Oxford, 1999), pp. 18-35.

• Rajendra Raju, V., Role women in India’s freedom struggle, (New Delhi, 1994).