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Social Scientist

Social Pariahs and Domestic Drudges: Widowhood among Nineteenth Century Poona BrahminsAuthor(s): Uma ChakravartiSource: Social Scientist, Vol. 21, No. 9/11 (Sep. - Oct., 1993), pp. 130-158Published by: Social ScientistStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3520430

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UMA CHAKRAVARTI'

Social Pariahs and Domestic Drudges:Widowhoodamong Nineteenth CenturyPoona Brahmins

I

Throughout the nineteenth century the low status of women as

exemplified by the plight of the child widow, condemned to a life of

enforced celibacy, became the subject of a highly visible and

widespread discussion. This debate and various stages of the

accompanying movement for widow remarriage have been fairly well

documented along with a detailed analysis of the issues raised in

western India-the region which is the focus of my study on

widowhoodamong

theupper

castes,especially

brahmins.1 However,till now attention has been concentrated on the writing, speeches and

actions of the men who were the visible participants in the debate. I

propose here to shift the focus on how women understood the

experience of widowhood and the issues they highlighted in order to

expand the arena of our concerns. I shall use the writing of women

themselves, mainly a set of essays on widowhood written in Marathi

roughly around 19102 by widows who were inmates of the Poona

Widows' and Orphans' Home instituted by D.K. Karve, and Ramabai

Ranade's memoirs3

describing

the domestic life of the Ranade

household, to explore the lives of widows in the late 19th and early20th centuries among the Poona brahmins.

Even a cursory look at the issues around widowhood that men

focussed on reveals how limited their discussion was and how little it

was concerned with the material dimensions of widowhood among the

high castes.4 In contrast to the men who tended to outline the

dangerous consequences of enforced widowhood, particularly the

effects of the repressed sexuality of widows upon society, or the crueltyinvolved in denying motherhood to them, the women showed

considerable concern for the material and existential conditions of

widowhood.5 The widows in particular addressed the economic

vulnerability of the widow, and how the lack of property or other

means of security put her in the power of male kin. While men almost

never dwell on the labour performed by widows, the widows describe

ResearchFellow,Nehru MemorialMuseumand Library,Teenmurti,New Delhi.

SocialScientist,Vol. 21, Nos. 9-11, September-November 1993



SOCIALPARIAHSAND DOMESTICDRUDGES 131

graphically how labour is virtually extracted from them in return for

the grudging maintenance they received. The widows also suggest a

close connection between their economic precariousness, the drudgelabour they perform, the lack of dignity they experience, and the

absence of control they have over the quality of their own lives. In this

situation most widows had little option but to submit, without a

murmur, to their fate. Very occasionally there are indications of

attempts at resistance. There was also the possibility of manipulatingelements within the structure of relationships of the household the

widows were placed in, which was grasped by some women, as the last

part of this essay will show.

II

The set of essays written by young widows studying in the fifth and

sixth form in the Widows' Home in Poona is a significant collection for

the insight it gives us into the feelings of widows in contrast to

knowledge about them. In writing about themselves the dominant

emotion described is that of being trapped, a situation that no one else

cared about. 'But who cares' is a continuous refrain in their writing.

Believing that no one cared convinced the widows that only those who

had experienced widowhood could know how miserable it was.6 Thisrefrain of 'who cares' even became the title of H.N. Apte's social novel

on widowhood written in the late 19th century.7 Despite this displayof sympathy the widows felt that their dependence upon others, who

then had the power to humiliate them, was so unique and the paincaused by it so unimaginable that it was only 'we widows who could

understand it'.8

What is ironical is that while the widows experienced in their own

eyes an 'excess' of pain others regarded them as if they were not human

at all but 'like a stone without feeling and without emotion'.9 In thiscontext Harper's account of Havik brahmins who regarded a widow as

a lifeless thing, using the neuter 'it' or the term prani or animal to

describe her is significant.10 Widows were routinely spoken of as if

they did not exist and derogatory references to them would be made in

their presence as if they were objects that had no feeling.11The abject and powerless situation of the high caste widow was

continually reiterated through everyday expressions of power such as

routine subjection to verbal 'lashings', denial of adequate food,

surveillance, performance of drudge labour and even physicalassaults.12 What made the upper caste widow's condition so precariousand put her in the power and control of others was her dependence on

these very people, particularly if she had no son. In western India,unlike Bengal where the Dayabhaga law had given the widow

certain rights in the husband's property during her lifetime, the

widow under the Mitakshara system had no control over coparcenary



132 SOCIALSCIENTIST

property.13 What was recognised by law and custom was a right to

maintenance; thus the widow supposedly had some kind of a right to

food, clothing and shelter, contingent upon 'good' behaviour. Whetherthis right to maintenance was widely enforced during the pre-Peshwaiand Peshwai among the brahmins needs to be explored. But in any case

questions of law in the context of widowhood among the upper castes

seem to be less relevant than the prevalence of social and cultural

norms. This is strikingly evident in the essays of the widows in the

Poona Home. The fact that they focus so much on a perceived sense of

deprivation of the basic survival needs of food, clothing and shelter is

important. Questions of legal entitlement hardly figure; what do

appear in their writing are actual practices flowing from social andcultural norms about widowhood.

In reading the essays of the widows it might be useful to explore the

concept of entitlements.14 This might be a key to understand the way in

which the widows perceived themselves and their ambiguous location

in the household where they were being sheltered. In the case of the

widow the concept of entitlement needs to be looked at both in its

objective material form and the cultural values that perpetuatedifferential entitlements even within the same gender in the same

household.To begin with, as Sen has pointed out, the concept of entitlement is

typically legal whereas household distribution is typically not

governed by law. Nevertheless Sen has convincingly argued the case

for extending the concept of entitlement to be used for distribution

within the household.15 The case for social and cultural norms with

respect to entitlement is relevant for all women but is especially so for

the widow. Since widows are regarded even in the law as having onlya claim to 'maintenance' the question of how much of the resources they

actually get is crucial especially to the sense of worth thataccompanies it. As Papanek suggests, entitlements to food and other

necessities within the household represent the social consensus about

the value of specific categories of persons as expressed in the norms

governing 'who gets what and why'. In the case of the widow we may

put it better as 'who does not get what and why'. Ideas about

entitlement clearly are part of a larger cultural 'repertoire' containing

many other ideas about the relative worth of persons; they constitute a

part of a system of beliefs about distributional justice.16 The widow's

lowest allocation within the household is an outcome of her socialdispensability and of her marginal status within the household.

Cultural norms about widowhood in upper caste Hindu societyenhance the power of the family to make minimal allocations to the

widow. Ideas about entitlement to the widow are also linked to ideas

about self-deprivation for religious reasons. The low entitlement of the

widow is not merely culturally sanctioned but also sanctified in

spiritual terms since the widow is meant to fast often, pursue the




ascetic model and devote herself to the memory of her dead husband.

Notions of self-sacrifice and self-restraint, which in any case are

widely prevalent with regard to women, are doubled in the case ofHindu widows and they play a crucialrole in formulatingan ideologyof low or minimalentitlementto the widow. Thesepoints may be bornein mind in the description of widowhood provided by the widows in

their essays.Fromthe accountsof the widows at the Widows'Home in Poona it is

apparent that those who 'sheltered' or maintained the widow did so

on sufferance rather than in accordance with any respect for thewidow's right to entitlements. There are repeated references to the

widows as 'burdens';widows were made to feel thatby theircontinuedexistence they were eating into the resources17which 'belonged' to

othersand which the widows were not entitled to. The question of who

should or who did maintain the widow in Maharashtra was also

conditionedby personalbehaviourand the circumstancesof individualfamilies rather than a close adherence to legal provision. A widow

often stayed on in her natal family especially if she had been

widowed before she had made a formalentry into the husband'shome.If the in-laws never came to collect her after the death of their son

there does not appear to have been any way that the natal familycould ensure the maintenance of the sonless widow by the affinal

family. In such a situation the widow might stay on in her natal

familybut she could be verymuchon sufferanceheretoo.Nevertheless widows did make a distinction between their affinal

kinsmen and women and their natal kin. Sakhubai Apte wrote that

parents suffered 'much'on behalf of their widowed young daughters,often more than the widows themselves who were too young at that

stage to comprehend what it meant to be a widow. But Sakhubai

recognised that a few years later, once the child widow became anadult, the attitude to her often changed in the natal family.Henceforth the family considered that in the widow they had got a'servantto work for them',even as they continued to feel sorry for herstate of widowhood.18

The perceived lack of status of the widow in her father's house isdescribed by Sakhubai:

If her marriedsisters come to visit the parents they are treated like

guests while the widow is made to 'toil' for them . . . Even her

sisters do not help her. Her brothers and their wives taunt her. Inthe absenceof her parents the poor widow becomes the slave of hersisters-in-law.Even loving brothersbegin disrespectingher... .19

It is evident from some of the essays that the natal household wasnot necessarily a comfortableplace to be in nor was the widow morewelcome there than in her affinal family. But if her condition was so

precarious in her natal home, according to Radhabai, it was worse



134 SOCIAL SCIENTIST

'ten-fold' in her father-in-law's house.20 Sakhubai also recognisedthat in the father-in-law's house people had 'full power over the

widow'. Everybodyhere treats her not only as drudge labour but alsoregards her as the cause of the husband's death and as the source oftheir misfortune.21According to Radhabai:

There is not a particleof feeling for her in that house. She is treatedlike a low-class maid servant. She has to spend the whole of herlife in servitude to her sisters-in-law. If she dies even in the midstof such low and hard work people are glad of it. As a widow awoman is unclaimedproperty.She has no value.. .22

The widow's dependence on others for her physical survival put herin the power and control of others which was reflected in her sense of

helplessness and was perceived by the widow as a lack ofalternatives:she must submit to her fate like a cow in the hands of abutcher (an analogy used by our essayists repeatedly). Along with theinsults and humiliation she must bear, she had to accept a life ofceaseless labour in return for the maintenanceprovided to her. Drudgelabour extracted from the widow is a leit-motif in the writing of thewidows and is likened to that of a slave from Africa.

A widow is worked like a menial . .. if she but stops for a few

minutes, just to take a breath,her mother-in-law throws a volley of

abuses, intermixed with filthy accusations.. .24She does not get her two meals a day ... She is made to work like acoolie.25

After her husband's death a widow does not get sufficient food and

clothes;if poor she has to work near the fire in the kitchen ... she isoverworked like a slave from Africa.26

The accounts of the widows suggest that the widow's associationwith labour,in part the labourall women performed,was perceived asharder and more menial than that of other women. The phrase 'like alow-class servant'27 s expressiveand it was a likely outcome not justofthe labour performed but of the power relations within the familywhich reduced the widow to a more abjectand degraded status thanother women. Furtherthe fact that the widow's labour was demanded

by, and rendered to others in a household which the widow could not

regard as her own, made the performance of such labour more

humiliating, causing the widows to see themselves as 'low-classmaidservants' and 'slaves'.Other factors that could have added to the quantum and quality of

drudge labour was that unlike wives, widows were 'free' from birth

pollution and from feeding and child care preoccupations. Wives,subjectto both, would be exempt froma labouringat particular imes ina life span. Widows on the other hand were always available exceptfor the period of menstrual pollution during a certain part of their




lives.28 Further, because they were excluded from ceremonial and

ritual obligations, or even from witnessing such events, the widows felt

that there was nothing but ceaseless labour in their lives.Being without 'encumbrances' and without a fixed place in the

family widows were also regarded as 'mobile' labour sent from one

household to another, wherever and whenever the need arose. From

accounts of the Karve household and other biographies of the 19th

century it appears that the careers of many professional young men,who came to constitute an important segment of the middle class, were

built upon the free labour of widowed women of their families. These

widows were farmed out to labour and manage houses as substitutes for

dead wives, or as supportive labour for young or sickly wives. As moremen went to the cities to study and pursue professions there was a need

for women's labour to make such moves possible; widows in the familywere the most expendable labour available. Both Karve and his friend

Joshi, who shared a household with a common kitchen with him, had

a succession of widowed relatives to run the kitchen for them.29

While affinal and natal kinsmen sometimes shunted a widow from

one household to another because of their unwillingness to maintain

her it was not uncommon for contesting claims to be made for the labour

of the widow. This was the case with Anandibai Karve. Widowed ateight, she stayed on in her natal family for about three years or so

when her in-laws sent for her. Although they sent for her saying that

they regarded her as a substitute for their dead son it is evident that

her labour would be valuable to the household. Anandibai's parentswere not very happy about sending her but since they were poor, and

there were two other widowed sisters in the household, Anandibai

consented to go as it would mean one mouth less to feed and reduce the

pressure on her precariously placed father.

Anandibai's parents-in-law were economically more stable thanher parents but her mother-in-law had had 20 childbirths. Only thefirst two and the last three had survived but it is likely that themother-in-law would have been worn out with pregnancies,childbirths and child care. She was also asthmatic, so Anandibai tookover all the work outside the home. In her own words:

I had seen my parents get work done by day labourers in our orchardsand fields and I soon began to supervise similar work in my new

home .... I did all the minor chores in the house, the preparationfor the worship of the Gods, cleaning the courtyard, sprinkling amixture of water and cowdung over it .... We had no well; our water

supply was from an irrigation channel passing through the

compound and I had to get up at 4 o'clock in the morning to fill all

the pots with water as otherwise it became muddy because of all

the cattle and human beings who crossed it. Sometimes I got very

weary of all this work and thought about my parental home and



136 SOCIAL SCIENTIST

cried. But I also knew that there was no escape possible ....

Sometime during the first year my husband's brother's wife gave

birth to a baby and I had to do much more work than before. Thenext year when I was twelve I was looking after all the cattle,

milking the cows and buffaloes, feeding the bullocks, cookingbreakfast for the farm hands and more. I went daily to the fields to

supervise the farm hands' work and to pluck green grass for the

calves and when I came home I had to wash clothes and then clean

the dinner plates too. I was busy from early morning till late in the

evening.32

When Anandibai was about 22 she was permitted to go home on a

special visit to her parents since her elder sister was very ill and found

that her widowed brother, Narharpant Joshi, who lived in Bombayand had a small child, required someone to replace his dead wife in

the communal kitchen run by Karve.33 Anandibai's brother was a

member of this communal household consisting of 13 to 14 persons.

Narharpant had sent a letter to his family from Bombay asking for

help and Anandibai was despatched directly from her natal

household without seeking her affinal family's 'approval'.Anandibai wrote that she did not know the details of what happenedthereafter as 'from that day my contact with my parents-in-law ended

and I never again went back. I do not know whether they tried to getme back and what my father told them...'34

In Bombay Anandibai continued to labour in different circumstances.

The humid warm climate was very exhausting. I had to cook for

over a dozen people either in the morning or in the evening. In myhouse, or in the house of my parents-in-law we hardly ever ate roti,

preparing rice is easy by 'comparison'. But in Bombay roti had to be

prepared every day... I was not very happy in Bombay...35

Apart from the cooking for the 'communal household' Anandibai

also looked after her brother's young son. When Ramabai opened the

Sharada Sadan, a home for widows, in 1889 Anandibai joined it,

initially as a day student. She took her young nephew along with her

each day. Soon Anandibai found that it was difficult to study alongwith all the housework and child care so it was suggested that she jointhe Sharada Sadan as a boarder. At her brother's residence, however,her labour could not be spared while at the same time her parents also

pressed their claims to it as they were experiencing a shortage of

family labour. Feeling cornered, Anandibai finally appealed to

Ramabai, who, according to Anandibai, 'rose to the occasion'.

Realising that there were competing claims to Anandibai's labour she

offered Rs. 50 a year to Anandibai's father to enable him to hire a

servant to help in the work at home so that she could reside in the

school and carry on her studies.6



SOCIALARIAHS ND DOMESTICRUDGES137

From Anandibai's account it is evident that the labour of the widow

was a crucial determinant of where she resided and who 'sheltered' or

'maintained' her. If neither her parents nor her in-laws were willingor 'able' to maintain her, a widow simply went to work in the house of

anyone, including strangers, who could use her labour in return for

which she would be fed. As Ambubai Bapat said in her essay:

If she [the widow] be the daughter of a rich man he feeds her, if the

widow of a rich man his family feeds her, but if both her relations

are poor she is forcibly shaved and compelled to become a cook in

profession, having no means of support.37

The non-acceptance by the patriarchal household of a clear notionof a widow's entitlements and an unending life of drudge labour were

most clearly associated with the sonless widow but particularly with

the child widow. If a widow had a son she could look forward to a

time when the son would become a shareholder in the property, if he

had any, or would take over the support of his widowed mother. But

the sonless widow remained a 'dependent' widow right through her

life (as Harper pointed out in his study of Havik brahmins cited

earlier), passing in the words of Varubai Ranade 'a long term of life in

perfect misery'.39

III

Brahminical patriarchy's conceptualisation of the widow as a woman

who was sexually and socially 'dead' but physically alive, a theme I

have explored more fully elsewhere,40 is reflected in the description of

the everyday experiences of widowhood provided by the widows of

the Poona Home. As women who continued to live after the death of

their husbands, they had to be 'maintained' and their survival needs

had to be met. But along with, and in return for, such investment intheir survival went the full utilisation of their labour as outlined in

the previous section. This labour was regarded differently from that of

wives in order to maintain the fiction of the 'parasitical' nature of a

widow's relationship to her relatives and the absence of entitlement.

Thus if she ate out of the 'family's' resources she must render labour in

return. A common charge against the widow, expressive of the

relationship between the widow and those who fed her was: 'she is a

drone, she wants to be fed without doing any work'.41 Illness brought

out this relationship even more clearly. It was hardly ever regardedas real; widows were routinely treated as women who feigned illness toavoid having to work. In the eyes of those who fed her this was anevasion of the unstated code where the widow provided labour in

return for food and shelter.42

The asymmetry of her sexual and social non-existence, unlike otherwomen and men in the household with whom the widow lived, was



138 SOCIALSCIENTIST

paradoxically accompanied with the recognition of her physicalexistence and labour power. Because of the former, widows had to be

marked off from other women; they had also to be shut off from themale gaze and to shut themselves off from their own sexuality. The

essays of the young widows echo the anomalous position of the

widows. Ambubai Bapat describes the condition of the widow without

support who is forced to labour in the homes of others and may be

seduced by the men of the house:

If both her relations are poor she is forcibly shaved and compelledto become a cook in profession having no means of support. If she be

young there is fear of being misled by a wicked master ... youngwidows have to pass through the ordeal of chastity-temptationswhich gods cannot withstand.43

To mark widows off from all others in the household, but especially

women, the widows were given a distinctive appearance and requiredto follow an ascetic code. To safeguard their chastity, measures like

eating less, eating cooling foods, fasting often, and sleeping on the floor

were prescribed to reduce their sexual drives and routinely practised as

recorded by the widows. These restrictions reiterate the low

entitlement of the widows, thereby establishing a reciprocity betweenmaterial and cultural elements within the same structure. In male

discourse ascetic practices were part of the 'cultural tradition,'described as the the 'lofty pitch of moral training of the patient and

single life as typified by the widow.' It was an institution that the

Hindus should be proud of, not one to be regretted.45 However, it is

significant that the widows themselves perceived these practices as

deprivations. According to them 'the widow is compelled to fast as

often as the calender will dictate' (emphasis added).46 Others

conveniently regard it as 'a sin to eat two meals a day, or to ask foranything in the world.'47 Clearly in the view of the widows these

expectations are aspects of normal human behaviour and widows are

normal human beings like everyone else.

The most effective means by which the widow's 'virtue' was to be

preserved, however, was not ascetic practices, the widow's control of

her sexuality or her good sense but a tightly monitored system of

surveillance directed at the widow. The surveillance of the widow

was total; it normally involved watching her every moment of the day

to ensure that she worked in return for her maintenance and also thatshe did not go 'astray'. It involved subjecting every single action to the

scrutinising power of the family 'protecting' her virtue and ensuringthat she did not 'steal' time. In the widows' own words:

People attribute wicked motives to every one of her actions... If she

but smiles they say it must be with some immoral motive. If she




shows unwillingness to have her head shaved they level filthyaccusationsagainst her.48

If she stealthily looks into a mirror her mother chastisesher....49

If she happens to dress herself she is immediately asked forwhom she has been doing this.... If she be late in returningfrom theriverside where she is sent to wash clothes, she is immediatelysuspected of immoralityand assaulted.50

She is closely watched [in case] she speaks of ill-treatmentto anyvisitors; children of her husband's brothers are set to guard her.

They overhear a word or two and distort the story into a regular

complaint against their parents. The poor widow is then taken totask....51 If she can read and write and takesa book in her hand justto relieve her mind of all distressing thoughts, she is calledshameless. If she adjusts her hair [if unshaven] she is accused offlirtationsor the desire to flirt.52

If there be no work for her, there are mothers-in-law who wouldmix up rice and dal and ask her to separatethem simply to keep her

engaged.Shemust notgo out, she must not speakto anybody....3

Among those who were involved in policing the widow at close

quarters were the women and children of the household, especiallysisters-in-law and their children. This added to the power whichother women in the family had over the widow with regard toallotmentsof food and other basicneeds. Suchpowerful and continuoussurveillance was most degrading especially since the widows alreadyregardedthemselves as being subjectedto the male gaze and as victimsof the predatorinessof men. The problem thus lay not in the widowsbut in lasciviousmen. As one widow wrote:

Owing to her husband's death there remains no support to her.What then? The wicked ones have an excellent opportunity. Theycovet her;she is in constant fear of these wretched men. She has to

protecther reputation,she has to remain moral. She gets confused.She bows her head. 'Oh God to whom shall I go for protection?Howshall I save myself? Come oh lord; run quick, do protect this cowfrom the butcher. . .' Such is her state of mind. . . they [sic] preferdeath. . .54

It is evident from the accounts of widows that neither ascetic

practices and bodily mortification,nor surveillance designed to keepthe widows' sexuality under check, nor social rules to keep male

sexuality in control were considered capable, in themselves, of

preventing 'illicit'relationships between widows and predatory men.Thestructuresof controloutlinedabove were completedby the enforced

shaving of widows, a sign both of castration and defeminisation.55Tothe widows the practice was an assault; it was the most humiliating



140 SOCIALSCIENTIST

aspect of their existence, far worse than all the other miseries they

experienced. Signifying castration in the symbolic system it had a most

violent effect upon the widow; the physical violation it involved wasakin to rape both of the body and the mind. The widows express a

whole complex of emotions about their degradation experienced in the

repeated tonsure of their heads:

The greatest of all miseries, the culmination of the enormities of

custom is the forcible shaving of a brahmin and other high caste

widows. The cruel and pernicious custom is horrid beyond conception.[The widow] is simply helpless; she must submit to that cruel

inhuman operation. She often faints, she is dumbfounded, tears flow

in a flood.. . but nobody cares. Her caste people think they have

achieved a great success as soon as she is disfigured. What

demonical work.56

A widow is not allowed to speak to a male stranger but she is,forced to go alone into a closed room to get herself shaved by a low-

class barber. Bravo to such relations [who force her]. Who can

describe her 'happiness' in such a seclusion? She is like a cow in the

power of the butcher ... 57

In the southern Maratha country there are many sacred places,

among them is Narsinghvadi. This is the place where widows aretaken for being shaved.... Huts are raised on the banks of the river

[which] have no roofs and no doors... to such places widows are

taken and made to sit in front of the barbers to be shaved. They crybut nobody listens to them and they are forcibly shaved. If a girlwidow stands at the door along with her brothers and sisters she is

called shameless, while in such an open space... she is exposed to

the mercy of the barber. Shame to such men and to their sense of

modesty.58

The experience of physical violation, of an assault upon the body,had implications at the subconscious level leading to severe trauma in

some cases. Pundalik, a Gandhian worker in his later years, was nine

when his mother was tonsured. He describes movingly his mother's

brutal entry into the state of widowhood:

For nine days none of us was allowed to go to mother's room. On the

tenth day she had to face the ordeal of becoming sacred according to

the traditions of the Hindu religion. This proved to be such a shock

that she went completely out of her mind. At night she had to belocked up. She used to cry out during her fit of insanity 'What is a

head? It is only a vegetable marrow put on one's shoulder ....'

Mother lived only for three months after father's death.59

Pundalik's mother was not a young childless widow. Even so her

trauma was too much for her mind to take. Such trauma was not




uncommon. Ambubai Gumaste, a widow herself, described the

experiences of another young widow.

This custom is a demon in Hindu society. A girl of 13 or 14, so tender

and so young is pushed before a barber .... In the house of a rich man

there was a widow of about 11 or 12. He decided upon getting her

forcibly shaved. She cried and piteously begged to be excused fromthat horrid operation but no one heeded her prayers. She was

shaved. She [then] refused to take food and died. What to say to

such brutes who would stoop to such meanness.60

The trauma of the enforced tonsure and the experience of such a

brutal defeminisation ritual is described by another widow as a'mania' men indulged in that produced a terrible depression which was

beyond description.61It is apparent from these essays of the widows that the humiliating

practices they were subjected to were unambiguously rejected by all of

them. That even those who apparently 'consented' were actuallycoerced into consenting is evident from Anandibai's account of how she

'agreed' to having her head shaved.62 The symbolic system associated

with such practices, whether of tonsure or pollution or inauspiciousness

or danger, was clearly irrelevant to our essayists; in their eyes theywere all similar as they degraded the widow. The belief systemwhich endorsed or provided the rationale for such practices was

treated with scorn. The tonsure for example was believed to be

essential to the happiness of the husband; without it he would be

steeped in night soil and the husband would be tortured by anxietyabout her chastity. A young widow described the kind of beliefs putforward to enforce certain customs:

And the reason people give consists of one word-customs. 'It is an

established custom' they assert. 'Our family gods will not bear its

violation'. 'How long' they add 'would you steep your husband in

night soil, in the lower world? When she is made a shaved recluse,there would be no immoral temptation.'

She then goes on to express her scorn for such beliefs.

But who has discovered that the husband of the widow is throwninto a pit of night soil unless she is shaved? Who will guaranteethat all shaved widows will remain moral?63

Taken up directly or indirectly, the essays are a sharp critique of

custom, society, and religion. This is in contrast to the widelyprevalent view among men that widows were strongly in the grip of

religious belief. For example in Narayan Bhikaji's (a deputy collectorfrom Nasik) view widows attributed all calamities to sins committed

by them in former lives and looked to happiness in the future byconducting themselves piously,64 a formulation reminiscent of the



142 SOCIALSCIENTIST

brahminicaltexts. The widows at the Poona Widows' Home, throughtheir own experienceand throughexposure to a reformistdiscourse on

widowhood, raised certain questions about the role of religion inlegitimising oppressive customs governing widowhood. Theyunderstood also that it was these customs and norms that made eventhe parents of widows regard them as polluting, inauspicious, anddead for all ceremonial and social purposes. Radhabai captured the

complexities of the parentaldilemma thus:

Some people will ask me how it is possible for her own parents to

give the young widow pain. I say yes, it is the social customarylawthat

compelsthem to do so. God knows when we widows shall see

the effacement of such cruel superstitions. Even a father dare not

accept the sandalwood paste and flowers arrangedby his own dearwidowed child for worship of his idols. Even her own dear motherdare not accept food at her hands.65

Parents were thus themselves the victims of a cruel system whichmade them apparently complicit in the oppression of their widowed

daughters. Even the most sympathetic and compassionate of brahminfatherswere unable to protecttheiryoung daughtersor wards from the

ignominy of the public chastisement meted out to them by the familypriests-the real enforcers of brahminical patriarchal codes at the

community level.66 The brahmin priest was thus the fulcrum uponwhich custom, society and religionrested.

The widows, in turn, recognized that the cruel customs were

perpetuated by the custodians of the sacred law-'hard hearted' menwho flaunted broad 'caste marks' on their foreheads, threatened andabused them,67and enforced their 'superior'authority overriding theconcessions sympathetic guardians sometimes permitted to the

widows. It was the priests who in the final reckoning ensured thesocial death of widows.The culpability of the brahmin priests became apparent to our

women essayists fromtheirown experiencesand personalobservations.The reformers, however, were not quite so unambiguous about the

culpabilityof brahminpriests.In factmany brahminreformersfound it

necessary to work within existing structures, accepting punishmentsimposed upon them by the community of brahmins led by the priesteven as they consciously performed actions that were regarded as

breaches of caste norms. In contrast to the perception of the widows,based on theirown contemporaryexperienceof debasingcustoms,somestrands of the male reformist discourse had placed considerable

importance upon locating the precise originarymoment of oppressivepractices.This was the Muslim 'invasion of India'. It appears from the

essays of the widows that parents and families of the widows andteachers at their institution had attributed the abject state of Hinduwomen, as exemplified by the widow, to Muslim rapaciousness and




barbarity. By the turn of the century this was a view deeplysedimented and deeply cherished by middle class Hindu society

functioning in part to exonerate their own complicity in such customs.Thus, practices like early marriage, sati, purdah, and the denial ofeducation were all attributed to the 'fear of Mussalmans abductingwomen' especially 'good-looking widows .68 The disfigurement of

young widows by tonsure too was linked to the 'need'to 'protect' heir

chastity. It is likely that such an explanation reflects attempts made

by the 'ideologues' around the widows to make them feel that theoffensive customs had a rationale, that it was defence of the

'community' or 'nation',and 'necessity', that drove Hindus to create

the customs which the widows found so repugnant.Such paternalisticnotions of the disfigurement of widows 'for their own good' did nothowever fully convince all the widows. At least one of them soundedunsure of the validity of such a singular explanation,69 erasing so

completely the guilt of the men around her-especially since therewas ample evidence of the predatorynatureof Hindu men looking forvictimsamong young widows, even in theirdisfigured state.70

How were the miseries of the widows to end? The essayists were

painfully aware of the fact of social death to which they had been

condemned, of the fact that they were 'regardedas being of no use tosociety'. Desperate to be rescued from such a situation, RadhabaiInamdarspoke for all widows:

If people want to dragus out of this slough of despondency, this bogof widowhood, if they do not wish to see us die like vermin, if theystill wish to recognise us as human beings they should give widowssome training,some education to make them useful. It is not possibleto turn all widows into under-graduates or graduates, but it is

possible to turnthem into nurses, mid-wives, or industrialassistants.

We are now the waste products of the world. Let it be put to gooduse. Our industry will add wealth to the nation.71

In RadhabaiInamdar'spoignant plea, the relationship between thesexual and social dealth of the widow and the unrecognised drudgelabour which characterize her life at present is evident. In her

understanding, the return of widows to a suitable social role impliednot marriageso much as productiveabourwhich would be recognisedas such. This would lend meaning to the lives of the widows,

transforming hem from'wasteproducts'to useful citizens contributinglike others to the 'wealth' of the nation.

Unfortunately for most widows, as Radhabai recognised in her

desperate plea, the onus for the recovery of the widow from socialdeath lay outside her power and in the hands of others. In themeanwhile, was there scope for resistance, for not submitting 'like acow in the hands of a butcher?'



144 SOCIALSCIENTIST

A few acts of resistanceare recordedin stray writings from the earlypart of the 20th century:all of them are acts of non-compliance with

the enforced shaving of the hair. It is significant that the resistanceshould have been expressed thus: symbolic of the state of social death,the widow's refusal of the tonsure was a rejectionof that state. Even amoderate like Parvati Athavale exhorted that widows must notsubmit to the compulsory rite of shaving and that they should asserttheir right to 'their own heads' refusing to subjectthem to the barber.She herself gave up the rite at the age of 42, showing great courageand defiance of social norms in doing so as she became the target orridiculeand the subjectof unsavouryremarks.72

The refusal to have the head shaved was often the only act of openresistance on the part of a widow who might never, for the rest of her

life, ever again express her volition.73But some widows went further.Such was the case of a nameless widow whose acts of defiance wererecorded in passing by her brotherPundalik in his account of his lifeand times. This widow was the daughter of another nameless widowwhose traumatic tonsure and subsequent insanity we have alreadyreferredto. Sobbingas she breathedher last the widowed mother died

clutching the young widowed daughter in her arms, worrying even at

this time for what the daughter must suffer. The family's fortuneswent into severe decline within a few years after the death of her

parents with internal dissensions and misappropriation of the

family's resources taking their toll. The widowed sister of Pundalikwas witness to the humiliation of her married sister at the hands ofher husband who was also her maternal uncle. Beaten severely one

night and unwilling to take the degradation she was subjected to,

including the introduction of a prostitute into the household by her

husband, the married sister committed suicide. This was within

months of their mother'sdeath.74These experiences may have shaped our nameless widow's resolveto fight for her survival. As the fortunes of her natal family went frombad to worse her condition grew more precarious. An unscrupulousbrother, Gopal, who had gained control of the property did not givethe widowed sister enough for her maintenance and she was left tofend for herself while the other brother,Pundalik, went off in pursuitof revolutionary life. Finally in desperation she decided to file a suit

against her late husband'sbrotherand called Pundalik from Belgaum

to help with the legal formalities. However, there was not enoughmoney to file a suit. Gopal refused to give the widow any money tillshe gave him a receipt for all the money she had received as

maintenance, since her widowhood, in her father'shouse. Pundalik's

attitude, despite his patriotic impulses, was that his widowed sistershould live with her husband's people and be helpful to them. He

stronglydisapprovedof hergoing to a courtof law to get money for hermaintenance. In an attempt to settle his widowed sister in her dead




husband's family he entered into negotiations with them. Finally it

was decided by the two 'parties'that the widowed sister would live

with her in-laws and she was taken there. However, the in-laws werevery orthodox people and would not allow a widow who had notshaved her head 'according to the ancient Hindu custom' to live intheir home. Pundalik tried his best to persuade his sister to shave herhead but she was adamant,and refused to 'consent'.Pundalik left her

with the in-laws hoping that the matter would resolve itself after hereturned to Belgaum. But two or three days later the widowed sister

took a night train without informing anybody and returned to her

unoccupied ancestralnatal house that sheltered her even if it did not

provide for her. Without resources once more, the widowed sisterheard that a 'destitute' could declare oneself as such, and then file a

pauper suit. Her brother was horrified at the idea of declaringthemselves as paupers as that would be demeaning for him but shewent ahead anyway and finally won her suit for maintenance,

'retroactively',from the date of her husband's death. She went on tolive alone, keeping her hair and her independence, on the allowanceshe had won by going to court. Her revolutionarybrother went on tobecome a Gandhiansocial worker but the widow never again appeared

in his memoirs. She remained a nameless widow who hadanonymously pursued a lone battle for survival.75

IV

It must be borne in mind that acts of defiance or open resistancewouldnot be easy for most widows as these would imply taking on frontallythe ideologies of upper caste widowhood. The 'anonymous' widow'sbattle just cited required exposing cultural practices, paternalisticideologies and material arrangementswhich could reduce women to

destitution and yet demand the upholding of 'family honour', makingit difficult for widows to declare their denial of consent to thebrahminical ideology of widowhood. What might be easier would beto manipulate the structures to gain a measure of power-that isbecome complicit, or appear to become so, in the arrangements and

thereby attempt to gain control over an otherwise tenuous situation.This seems to have been the case with the sister of the famous 19th

century reformer, M.G. Ranade, who argued the case for widow

remarriagebut was unable to practiseit in his own life..

RamabaiRanade's reminiscences'were intended to be an account ofthe conjugal life of the Ranade's. The book was aptly titled AmchyaAyushatil Kahi Athavani- 'Our life together'. It describes themanner in which the young second wife of M.G. Ranade, who waseleven at the time she was married to a 32 year old husband, was'schooled'by him to become a fitting partner for himself and share inhis work of reform. Central to the account is the manner in which



146 SOCIALSCIENTIST

'change' entered the traditional household of the Ranade's, with itsusual assemblage of widows. In Ramabai Ranade's narrative the

'women', treated as a collective, are cast as blind resisters of changeand this way of representing them echoes a familiar strand in the

writings of 19thcenturyreformersabouthow 'women themselves resist

change', or 'women themselves are the oppressors of other women'.76The tension between the women in the home is described by the adultRamabai (based on the earlier characterisation by Ranade) as aconflict generated by different value systems, as women upholdtradition and resist change through their 'obduracy'.77A close look atthe female domain within the Ranade household, however, suggests

that there were complex issues at the heart of the conflicts expressedas ideology but, which had at their basis a fundamental materiality.

The major crisis points in the self-consciously crafted narrative ofthe conjugal couple in the Ranade household all centred around theactions and speech of the female affinal kin of Ramabai.There were

eight to ten of them who resided in the Ranadehousehold all of whomsave three remain hazy as Ramabai does not describe them. The threefemale kin that she does individualise out of this 'group' are all,

significantly, widows at the point when the crisis erupts and among

them Durga, the only one of the female kin to be named, is dearly themost powerful. Although she is not in any way the focus of RamabaiRanade's account which is built unambiguously around the greatRanade, Durga succeeds in pressing herself upon the narrative toreveal the underside of patriarchyand the tussles generated by it. Shecalls for more attention because despite the passing and negativereferences she gets from RamabaiRanade, she does appear to be thethird figure in a triangular relationship between Ranade, Ramabaiand herself. As portrayed by Ramabai Ranade, it is Durga who

represents the figure of tension in the necessary transformationof thetraditionalhousehold into an affective unit, the home of the conjugalcouple.

Durga was the only full sibling of Ranade,born two years afterhim.In their childhood she is represented as overtly the brighter and thelivelier of the two, and even as his opposite in verbal skills and

general disposition. She certainly must have had extraordinary'natural'intelligence for it to become part of family folklore. Indulgedby her father and by 'too much praise' she was regarded as growing

into a 'termagent' who was aggressive and tried to dominate allconversation. There was both sibling rivalry and affection in the

relationship, with the two sharing games and a common circle offriends. While Madhav Ranade went to school, Durga did not: this,however, did not in any way affect her observation and pragmaticunderstanding which emerge even in the narration of Ranade'schildhood.78




When Durga was nine she was married. Her mother had died that

year during her eighth confinement and within two weeks her father

married again. Her brother was married around the same time at theage of 13.79We get no accountof Durga'smarital household or her lifethere since the narrativeis about her brother.But again, interestingly,while Durga is described as being indulged by her father and clearlysharing a close relationship with him, her brother hardly ever spoketo his father directly, getting things said for him by others. As the

years proceeded Ranade went to Bombay to be educated, performedextraordinarily well and thereafter entered professional service.

During the same period Durga was widowed at the age of 21 and

appears to have returnedto live in her father'shousehold.80From thefact that she returned to her father's house which was less likely ifshe had a son, and the fact that there are no specific references to

children, she appears to have been childless. When Ranade waswidowed at the age of 31, Durga was firmly ensconced in her father'shousehold and a centralfigure in it. This position, possibly as the most

importantwoman in it, may have been facilitatedby the presence of a

stepmotheras young as herself as its nominal mistress.In a householdwhere there were only older female kin who would all have been

related by blood to Durga, many of whom would have mothered her,she would be the 'insider' n relation to the young stepmother.Takingover the complete reins of the household may also have been easier inthe case of widows because their lives were unpunctuated bychildbirth and they were therefore always available to perform thefull range of female duties in the household.

Available thus and uniquely located as an insider where all otherwomen were outsiders, Durgaappearsto have also become the naturalmediator between the various segments of the family, especially in a

situation where the father and son did not communicate;she appearsto have mediated both between generationsand between the male andthe female domains. However, it was not merely her structurallocation but her personality and the circumstances of her life thatconvertedher into a power broker of sorts. We see something of this inthe first crisis referred toby RamabaiRanadewhich preceded her own

entry into the household, the re-marriageof Ranade.The father's orthodoxy, the cause of the crisis with Ranade,

appears to have been of a very high order;his insistence on Ranade's

immediate remarriage to a young girl and his anxiety about apotential marriage with a widow may of course have also been a

strategy of survival. He had a young family through his own second

marriage who would have to be looked after and settled by Ranadeafter his own death, a task that would become extremely difficult ifRanade had pursued his ideals since outcasting was a very real and

powerful weapon that would fall upon the whole family. In theexclusive discussions that preceded Ranade's re-marriage, Durga



148 SOCIALSCIENTIST

figured both as a subject and a witness. Although everyone was

dismissed by the father to enable a frank discussion with the son,

Durga refused to have herself shut out and listened at the door.81Significantly, one of the arguments raised by Ranade to stall a

remarriage was that Durga had been a widow since 21 and no one

considered that she should remarry. As he put it: 'I am not young anymore; I am thirty-two years old. I can certainly lead a life of thoughtand retirement. Durga is younger than I am and has been a widow since

she was 21. You do not love her less than you love me, in any way. And

yet no one thinks of her. Why am I being urged to marry? If you think it

would be good for her to lead a life of restraint it should apply equally

to me.'82This, the only record that the family had of the conversation

between father and son, was Durga's version, and was passed on in

later years to Ramabai Ranade. Whether this allusion to Durga was a

serious view of Ranade's is not clear because there is no evidence to

suggest that when he became the head of the household, he attemptedto have Durga re-married. In any case it would have been too late bythen since she would have been 32 or so and Ranade may have carried

a double sense of guilt about her status and his own failure to marry a

widow placed in a situation like her. What is interesting is thatDurga herself included a reference to the double standards operatingbetween men and women when she passed on the account. In any case

Durga continued to lead a life of 'restraint' while her elder brother

was not required to, indeed not allowed to. The open acceptance of male

sexuality and the denial of female sexuality was a naturalised aspectof the moral order of brahminical society. However, whether it was

'naturalised' by the women themselves in any simple or direct manner

needs to be explored. What we do see in our narrative are two related

features; one a fairly frequent expression of hostility against men,especially against the master/conjugal partner heading the

household; and second, a deep-seated fear of the power of the wife of

the head of the household to marginalise other women in it by

becoming the premier influence in the life of the master through her

sexual and affective power over him as well as the legitimate claim

she had to his material assets. All other categories of women, mostlywidows in this case, were recipients of his 'charity'. In such a situation

the conjugal duo was quite naturally the object of close watching, even

of sustained surveillance. The women of the household made it a pointto know what was going on in the private space of the central pair and

they did so as a 'team'.83

Denied a 'legitimate' home, widows like Durga might well attemptto ensure their own place wherever one could be found. Durga's forceful

character begins to register as Ramabai Ranade's narrative of her

early years with her husband unfolds. She was dearly in charge of the

kitchen and the accounts of the household, possibly the real mistress




of the Ranade household at the time of Ramabai's marriage.Significantly she was called Akkasaheb,84an index of her special

power in the family. Ranade himself relied on her ability to handlecrises of various kinds in the household and shoulder a 'man's'

responsibility within it, keeping a concerned watchful eye on the

grief-striken stepmother at the father's death to ensure that she didnot commit suicide, and even cope with the death rituals while hehimself stayed away because he could not bear the trauma. Finallythe father's separate household was merged with the son's and thefather'sfamily shifted to Poona where Ranade was located.85

It is at this stage that the tension in the household between the

women, portrayed as 'traditionalist and obdurate', and Ranade, aswell as between the older women, all of 'the same age', and the youngwife Ramabai,openly surfaced. It was overtly expressed as a conflictover the young wife's education, especially her English education, the

company she kept and her participation in her husband's social life.But it also had strong overtones of the anxieties generated by the newlocation and changed dimensions of the household: the poweralignments, material arrangements, and familial relationships it was

going to throwup and how its variouscomponentswere going to realign

themselves in such a situationwere questionsyet to be resolved.In Ramabai Ranade's rendering of the tension between the older

women and herself the causes of disapproval were threefold: the

process of the new formsof schoolingfocussed on learning,the learningof English from the 'mleccha' Miss Herford, and finally theassociation of RamabaiRanade with the young and infamous PanditaRamabai who had crossed the threshold of the house, to which allwomen and especially widows were confined, and stepped into the

public space reserved for men. These women, now became the

representatives of the patriarchal elders and, reiterated theauthorityresiding in this group when they witnessed traditionalcodes

being violated, which however they were unable to prevent as therewas now a new 'master' in the house; it was his wife who was

violating the codes in order to please her husband.86As the womencame to recognise their inability to actually dictate what values were

going to be upheld they are likely to have noticed the changefollowing the death of the father. The deeply patriarchal nature ofthis change is significant.As long as Ranade's father was alive the son

accepted every expression of his father's orthodoxy: he marriedaccording to his father's choice of course but also regretted invitingVishnu Shastri Pandit and his new widow-bride to a meal when hisfather was visiting the son's home because this action offended him.87Now after the death of the father Ranade had suddenly taken to

doing what he considered 'right' because there was no patriarchopposing him-only a 'bunchof women whom he ed and housed' as



150 SOCIALSCIENTIST

the widows of the household put it. It was Ranade who was the new

patriarch now and so could do as he pleased.

Ramabai Ranade characterises the elder women as 'blindtraditionalists' while Durga is described as the most intelligent of the

women who knew the value of education but was obstinate, proud and

hot-tempered by nature believing that everything 'old was gold'. She

struggled hard to exert her influence over Ramabai Ranade,

alternately cajoling and haranguing her about her activities and

frequently comparing her 'outrageous' behaviour with the modest and

endearing conduct of Ranade's first wife. The content of many of these

sessions, interestingly, was to persuade Ramabai that men's authority

could be bypassed and even that the husband's wishes were notsacrosanct with a view to detaching her from her husband. Rather itwas really a grander family tradition-the brahminical code- that

was important to a woman.88 Durga was not making a break with

patriarchy; she clearly identified with the brahmanya of the

Peshwai, at least in the politics of the household.

The 'activity' of education, especially its non-instrumental

dimension, was in any case seen as a frivolous activity, as were the

joint attendance of the husband and wife at public meetings. Durga's

words represent a traditional brahmin woman's analysis of therelations between men and women:

Even if the men want you to do these things you should ignore them.

You need not say no but after all you need not do it. They will then

give up out of sheer boredom. Your parents are orthodox and

respectable. Your father and mother have a great sense of decorum.

It is such a pleasure to look at them. The women of their family are

not supposed to learn even Marathi-let alone English. But you - youare outdoing even the European women.89

And since Ramabai continued to act according to Ranade's expectations,

Durga complained to the other women.

... It is she herself who loves this frivolousness of going to meetings.Dada is not so keen about it. Men always say such a lot of things. But

should she not have a sense of proportion of how much the women

should actually do? If men tell you to do a hundred things, women

should take up ten at the most. After all men do not understand

these practical things.

.. What use is the education of women after they are able to read afew sacred books? It's just a fad of his, that's all. He was so much

after the first vahini [sister-in-law] too about this reading and

writing. But she, poor thing, was very docile. She put up with such alot of scolding from him just to please us. That good woman never

turned frivolous like this and never gave up our old ways. That is

why this large family of more than twelve people could live




together in a respectable way. With not so much as the smallest

gesture did she ever indicate that she was the mistress of the house

(emphasis added).90A power struggle in the female domain within the larger householdfor the position of mistress is evident from this passage although therewere clearly many other issues at stake.

Theanxietyand angerabouta new mistressis a runningthemein theverbalexpressionof the politics of the household. Older women fearedthe power of the young 'second' wife over the husband and herultimate 'enthronement' as the undisputed mistress of the femaledomain. The oldest widow in the Ranade household captured the

complex emotions of fear, anger, and hostility about the young wife

during a moment of high tension when the latter had asserted her

'authority', and unilaterally communicated a family lapse to themaster.

The widowers' wives are always tell-tale witches. They alwayscurry favour by tale-telling .... She is gaining a new trait everyday .... Two or three 'nannies' in the house have now become a

nuisance [to her].Letherdrive them out and be rid of them. Then let

the Sahib and Memsahib sit together on chairs, books in hand. Ihave noticed that lately she has come to feel that she is themistress of the house. Theservants should obey her alone.91

And to Ranade, who tried to defend his wife's position by providingher with his protective mantle, the old lady said:

There is no need to stand up for your wife in this way. She is not

being branded, is she? If she is so precious and delicate, keep hersafe with you; put her on a pedestal and worship her like a goddess.

You consider yourself very wise just because you have learnt someEnglish.But this is no wisdom. Ifyou arefed up with us you need notinsult us by taking sides with your wife. We would prefer to be toldto leave the house.92

It was to some extent the tenuous position of widowed female kin inrelation to the wife in any household that generated so much tensionabout the position of the 'mistress'. Called upon to be putativemistresses of the household when experienced wives were notavailable or not free to wield such a position, these 'stand-ins' were

expected to hand over the reins of authority when they had servedtheir purpose. Anxiety about the mistress would be heightened by thedemarcationbetween categoriesof women caused by the new type of

schooling given to the wife and new formsof conjugalitycementing the

relationship between the master of the home and his wife. Thisaccounts for the repeated allusions to 'mistress'used pejoratively, to

reading and sitting together-described by old Tai Sasubai, the eldest



152 SOCIALSCIENTIST

widow in the house, as 'love which had crossed all limits. Wives mustnow sit cose to their husbands as though their clothes were knotted.93

Further the position of the wife as mistress implied the servility ofall other women to her-an anxious thought for elder women schooledin traditional brahminical patriarchy who were becoming insecureabout what forms of domestic arrangements emergent patriarchieswould make: in sum the English-educated mistress was a fearful

prospect. As Durga said to Ramabai Ranade when she began to be

taught English by Miss Herford: 'You are turning yourself into a'Madam'by learning English. It would be only fitting to the pomp of amadam that she should have her food upstairs. After all we are here,

downstairs, all the slaves and servants of my lady.'94At the stage that these feelings were expressed Durga would have

been forty and Ramabai Ranade around twenty one. For some yearsfollowing the relocation of the Ranade household, Ramabai, as thewife and possibly potential mistress, had been carefully schooled byher husband, an activity that separated this one woman from the restof the older female kin who were left within the ideological mooringsof traditional patriarchy which they had been schooled in. Durga'sfather for example had been so strict about maintaining the separation

between the public and the private domains that he had refused tospeak to his wife for days because she had continued to stand in the

courtyard when a clerk came in to have a drink of water.95 Thedomesticideologies of the reformers,by focussingon theyoung wife and

leaving the others to live accordingto traditionalnorms,were bound to

produce a conflictual ideological situation in the household. And wemust recognise the difficulties for women schooled in one set of

patriarchalnorms to suddenly drop them according to the new whimsof men. The 'elder'women may also have been resentful of the change

of values requiredof them with every change of the patriarchheadingthe household.There were also material arrangements at stake in the division of

labour in the household. Since education had no instrumental use for

women, although it did have a social value for the new class, it was

naturallyperceived as fruitless for women by these widows who were

required to render other forms of labour in the household.

Conventionally it was the senior women who organised domestic

labour, allotting tasks within it. Apart from the natural resentment

againstone of its members who could spend time readingand attendingmeetings96while they continued to perform'menial duties' during thesame period, the new domestic ideology was also separating womeninto categoriesof inferiorand superiorand segregatingthem in terms oftheir world views. At least in the Ranade household the embryonicfemale intelligentsia was not enabling the penetration of new valuesinto the female domain but producinganxietyand conflict.Thetensionsin the female world meant also that women were forced to choose




between its warring factions; if you had the emotional sustenance ofone you lost the other. Even the well-schooled Ramabai,wanting to

please her husband but longing also to be acceptedin the female world,slipped once with disastrous results. On her part she inevitablyresolved the conflict by choosing decisively to go with the master ofthe house, recognising the tacit requirementof Ranade that one whomhe looked upon as his 'own' should be able to do just what he wishedwithout being told so.97

Once the conflict of interests was decisively resolved and RamabaiRanade gradually but inevitably moved into the position of themistress of the household, secure in the support of her husband, the

elder women were edged out and more or less disappear from thenarrative. Only Durga remains as a character who continues to be

mentioned, still called upon in a crisis like the critical illness ofRanade(when he was out on tour accompanied by his 'own' family) tocome and help98or when the family is faced with social outcasting andshe worries about how the shraddharituals will be conducted for thedead of the family.99 She remained a member of Ranade's 'other'

family of stepmother and stepbrothers while Ramabai Ranade

presided over 'his' real home. There may have then been a natural

reconciliationbetween the women with relationships coming full circlewhen their respective places were resolved and they finally achievedthe bonding that had eluded them in early years. The last mentionthat Durga gets is when Ranade was terminally ill. Durga organisedprayers in the temple for her brother while Ramabaisilently prayedfor her husband. A widow of long duration, Durga then consoled theterrified Ramabai, tormented by her impending widowhood, withtraditionalcodes of acceptance. 'God is with us', Durga said. 'He willtake care: anushthanas are going on in the temple of Ambabai. She

will look after all. You should trust in her and be at peace. Don't loseheart.When you are alert and about, it gives us courage. You are theLakshmiof the house. You should not let tears soil your eyes at such amoment'.100 Since Ramabai Ranade's narrative ends with herhusband'sdeath we do not know how the two women related to eachother in their final years. By then Ramabai had not only been

undisputed mistress of the household but also the natural heir toRanade'smission.101She completed the task of disseminating the newdomestic ideology both through her own person and through the

institution she helped to create. The female protagonists oftraditional patriarchal practices had inexorably faded away at leastin this one household.

One of the notable silences in Ramabai's account of the politics ofthe female domain and the figures that inhabited it relates to the

experience of widowhood. This appears to be a significant omission

particularly when Ramabai Ranade was mortally afraid of beingwidowed herself which she regarded as a tragic state-102 t is doubly



154 SOCIALSCIENTIST

noticeable because Ranade's name was at one point synonymous with

the widow-remarriage movement. Yet at no point do we get a direct

reference to the way the widows in the Ranade household perceivedand experienced widowhood. We do not know whether Durga, the

youngest of these widows, wore the signs of widowhood, but there is a

telling sentence in the account which captures the essence of

widowhood and might give us a clue to the politics of the female

domain. While journeying to Simla on an official visit the Ranade

couple were accompanied by Durga among others. At Jaipur the partycame upon a number of skilled artisans carving figurines of stone.

Ramabai describes how Durga 'greatly admired a small image of

Lakshmi-Narayana' and then states with compelling wifelyauthority 'which we bought for her'.102 Ramabai's association of

herself with Ranade as 'we', sharing access to his resources from

which Durga was excluded is a powerful reminder of the materialityof relationships within the household and the deep divide between a

wife and a widowed female kin. The latter may be permitted to

'manage' it as Durga had done for many years but were not 'entitled' to

it. Here we may note Ranade's own ruling as judge, in a case where a

widowed daughter had obviously sought a right to support in her

natal household, that while there could be a moral duty on the part ofher natal male kin to provide such support the widow could not claim a

legal right to it.104

In a significant essay Sangari argues that women cannot name their

'interests' in the cultural codes assembled within patriarchal

arrangements.105 These may sometimes be expressed laterally but

never directly. In Durga's person and through the references, veiled

and open, to the 'mistress' of the household articulated by the widows

in Ranade's family we have a powerful example of this crucial

characteristic of a patriarchy-whether traditional or in itstransformed variant. Tensions in the female domain were not merely

personal or ideological, but also deeply material.

v

From the above discussion it is evident that Durga, the traditional

widow, knew how to carve a powerful place for herself within existingforms of patriarchy by manipulating its premises. (I use the world

manipulation rather than subversion consciously because actions which

do not change either the relations or the performed work withinpatriarchy do not subvert it. Also Durga gained only a relative

advantage, not an absolute one.) She was almost contemptuous of male

authority even as she proclaimed the need to adhere to its forms. She

also 'opted', in a sense, for traditional upper caste patriarchal norms

because it gave some women a certain power within the household over

other categories of women. It permitted women to 'arrogate' to




themselves compensatory power within the domestic domain, servingin the process to extend patriarchal practicesbecause this power had

been a way of schoolingand wielding controlover younger women. Itsideology also gave widows bound by traditionalcodes more meaningand acceptance of their 'wasted' lives. However, there are limits in

manipulatinga system imposed by the system itself. Once the girl wife

becamean adult wife it was she who becamethe undisputed mistressofthe household. Durga's marginalisation also meant that she had toreconcile herself to the situation she was placed in. This then was the

realityof widowhood. Evenas one mightgain a measureof controlsuchcontrol was transient. For the majority of the widows living under

brahminical patriarchal practices ih the nineteenth century it wasdifficult to escape being 'social pariahs and drudge labour' as one

contemporary 'Hindu lady' characterised widowhood in the TimesofIndiain September1885.106

NOTESAND REFERENCES

1. See for example Charles H. Heimsath, Indian Nationalismand Hindu Social

Reform,Bombay:OxfordUniversityPress, 1964;C.Y.Chintamani,Indian Social

Reform, (Madras: Minerva Press, 1901); S. Natarajan, A Centuryof Social

ReformnIndia,Bombay:Asia PublishingHouse, 1959.2. Radhabai Inamdar et.al., Positionof Widows, ypescript 1911, Eur. MS.D 356,

India Office Library.3. Ramabai Ranade, Amchya Ayushatil Kahi Athavani, tr. Kusumvati

Despande, Ranade:His wife's Reminiscences, Delhi: Publications Division,Governmentof India,1963).

4. See for example Dayanand Gidumal, Statusof Womenn Indiaor A Handbook

forHinduSocialReformers,Bombay:FortPrintingPress, 1889),pp. XX,LXXIV,LXXVI,CI,27.

5. ParvatibaiAthavale,

HinduWidow,

anAutobiography,

r. Rev. AustinAbbott,(Delhi:ReliancePublishingHouse [reprint]1986),pp. 18-19.

6. Inamdaret.al,Position,pp. 3-4, 11, 13-14.7. H.N. Apte, Pan LakshayantKonGheto, r. Shreenivas Kochar,KaunKya Deta

Hai, (Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1961).8. Inamdaret.al., Position,p. 3.9. Ibid.,pp. 2,17.

10. Edward Harper, 'Fear and the Status of Women', South-WesternJournalofAnthropology, o. 25, (1969),pp. 81-85, p. 90.

11. Inamdaret. al, Position,p. 14.12. Ibid.,pp. 5, 6, 11, 26, 28. The widows show an acute awarenessnot merely of

what they were given to eat but also the mannerin which they were treatedinthe giving of the meal.Wheninsulted the food is like poison (p. 8).13. D.N. Agarwala, A Text Bookof Hindu Law, (Allahabad: Ram Narain Beni

Prasad, 1960),pp. 35, 205ff.14. HannaPapanek, ToEachLessThan SheNeeds: From EachMoreThanShe Can

Do:Allocations,Entitlementsand Value',and AmartyaK.Sen, 'Genderand Co-

operative Conflicts' in Irene Tinker, ed., Persistent Inequalities, WomenandWorldDevelopment,New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 162-184,and123-149.



156 SOCIALSCIENTIST

15. Sen, 'Gender'p. 140.

16. Papanek,To each'pp. 169-174.17. RadhabaiInamdaret. al., Position,pp. 10, 14.

18. Ibid.,p. 27.19. Ibid.,p. 28.20. Ibid.,p. 1.21. Ibid.,p. 27.22. Ibid.,p.l.23. Ibid.,pp. 14,15.24. Ibid.,p. 26.

25. Ibid.,p. 9.26. Ibid.,p. 23.27. Ibid.,p.1.28. See M.K.

Indira, Phaniyammatr.

Tejaswini Niranjana,(Delhi: Kali for

Women,1939).29. Anandibai Karve Maze Puranatr. and ed. KaveriKarve,in D.K. Karve,New

Brahmans:Five MaharashtrianFamilies, (Berkeley: University of California

Press,1963),pp. 58-79,p. 67.

30. Ibid.,p. 64.31. Ibid.Herewe have a significantreferenceto the double position of the brahmin

widow simultaneously sharing the class power of her kinsmen and rendering

managerial abour from which otheryoung marriedwomen were exempt.As a

memberof a cass Anandibaiwas requiredto assert her cass power over those

who labouredfor this brahminfamily. The widows own powerlessness is thus

relative. What the widows perceive is the loss of power theysuffer on

widowhood which separates them from other women; further they see onlytheir own labour, not that of others including women belonging to a different

class.32. Ibid.,pp. 64-65.33. The communalkitchenwas set up as a way of cuttingcosts.However, the women

dearly regarded the labour, put in by them into such a 'household', more

oppressiveand more like that of a servantwoman since cooking would be done

forlargernumberswithout the moderating nfluenceof beingable to regardsuch

persons as 'family'.34. AnandibaiKarve,Maze,p. 67.

35. Ibid.,p. 68.36. Ibid.,p. 69.

37. Inamdaret.al, Position, p. 6. See also pp. 26-29. The 1864 census records for

Bombay list 1795 brahmins (among 30,604 brahminresidents in Bombay) as

domestic servants. At least some of them might have been destitute widows

withoutmeansof supportsinceit appearsto have been the only 'profession'opento them (Census data from Christine Dobbin, Urban Leadershipn Western

India: Politics and Communities n BombayCity, 1840-1885, (London, 1972),

p. 8).38. However, during the interim period widows had a hard time at the hands of

those who controlled the family's resources.According to AmbubaiBapat the

young widowed mother had to protecther infants 'like the young ones of a catbeing takenfrom one corer to anotherforshelter'(Inamdaret.al.,Positionp. 6).

Another widow describes the situation of the widow with children thus: 'The

anxietyof educatingher sons and getting her daughtersmarried,the distressing

thoughtof starvationstaringin the face,and the completewant of provisionfor

medical treatmentduring illness add to the mental sufferings of the widow

compoundingthe loss of thehusband(Ibid.,p. 26).39. Ibid.,p. 25.




40. Uma Chakravarti,'Widowhood as Social Death: Wifehood and Widowhoodin BrahmanicalPatriarchy,Unpublished Manuscript1991.

41. Inamdaret.al, Position,p.

6.42. Ibid.,p. 6.43. Ibid.44. Ibid.,pp. 2,11.45. Gidumal, The Statusof Women, p. LXXV,LXXVI,LXXXI.46. Inamdaret.al, Position,p. 2.47. Ibid.,p. 11.48. Ibid.,p. 6.49. Ibid.,p. 10.50. Ibid.,p. 26.51. Ibid.,p. 27.52.

Ibid.,p.28.

53. Ibid.,p. 5.54. Ibid.,p. 15.55. Uma Chakravarti, Widowhood as Social Death', op.cit.56. Inamdaret.al, Position,p. 2.57. Ibid.,p. 15.58. Ibid.,p. 11.59. N.C. Katagade,'Pundalik' n D.K. Karve,ed., New Brahmans, p. 196-197.60. Inamdaret.al, Position,p. 19.61. Ibid.,p. 23.62. Anandibai Karve in D.K.Karve,ed., New Brahmans, p. 65-66.

63. Ibid.,pp. 14-15.64. Gidumal.,Statusof Women, p. 9-10.65. Inamdaret. al, Position,p. 1.66. Ibid.,pp. 8-9.

67. Ibid.,pp. 8, 25.68. Ibid.,p. 5,7,20.69. Ibid.,p. 20.70. Ibid.,p. 2.71. Ibid.,pp. 3-4.72. Athavale, Hindu Widow,p. 47.73. Interview with Gomati,New Delhi, 1988. Widowed at 16 around the year 1924

she had led a conventional widow's existence until she went to live with thefamily of 'Sister'Subbalakshmiwho had set up a widow's home in Madras.Shewas deeply unhappy with her natal kin before her rescue but submitted to thewidows fate except for finding the strength, she 'herself does not know from

where',to refuse to have her head shaved.74. N.C. Katagade,'Pundalik',D.K. Karveed., New Brahmans, p. 201-203.75. Ibid.,pp. 226-227.76. Gidumal, TheStatusof Women, p. ii, LXXI,LXXII.77. RamabaiRanade, Ranade:His wifes Reminiscences,p. 47-49.78. Ibid.,pp. 19-23.79. Ibid.,p. 24.

80. Ibid.,p. 34.81. Ibid.,p. 36.82. Ibid.,pp. 34-36.83. Ibid.,p. 47.84. Ibid.,p. 21.85. Ibid.,pp. 44-46.86. Ibid.,pp. 47-50, 79-85.87. Ibid.,p. 41.88. Ibid.,pp. 47-50.



158 SOCIALSCIENTIST

89. Ibid.,pp. 84-85.90. Ibid.91. Ibid.,

p.100.

92. Ibid.,p. 101.93. Ibid.,p. 89.94. Ibid.,p. 79.95. Ibid.,p. 88.96. Ibid.,pp. 100-101.97. Ibid.,pp. 105-108.98. Ibid.,p. 137.99. Ibid.,p. 137.

100. Ibid.,p. 211.101. Ibid.,p. 5.102.

Ibid.,pp. 120-122,129.

103. Ibid.,p. 110.104. 'Bai Mangalvs Bai Rukmini',IndianLawReporterXXII,p. 291 cited in Richard

Tucker, Ranade and the Roots of Indian Nationalism,(Bombay: PopularPrakashan,1977)p. 295.

105. KumkumSangari,'Consent,Agency and the rhetoricsof Incitement,'Economic

and PoliticalWeekly,XXVIII,18, (1993),pp. 867-882, p. 871.106. The Timesof India,19 September,1885. The writerdescribedthe Hindu widow

as 'unbelovedof god anddespisedof man'-a socialpariahand domesticdrudgewho must continue to pine in solitudefor centuriesuntil socialattitudeschanged.

pandita ramabai social pariahs and domestic drudges

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