Role of Women in the Indian Independence Movement

By Alex Jubb

The current exhibition in the cases in the Harry Fairhurst corridor at the University of York Library tells the story of the road to Indian independence. The exhibition uses books and archives from the university’s collections and themes include the relationship between coloniser and colonised, and Indian literature.  Highlights include a telegram from Gandhi, and books that belonged to former Prime Minister Clement Attlee. The exhibition will remain in the cases until the end of March 2018.

Alex Jubb worked on the India project as an intern in 2017 and has written several blogs (Aug 2017#1)(Aug 2017#2)(Jan 2018) (Feb 2018) about the collection and the history of the Independence movement. Here he examines the role women played in the Indian Independence.

Role of women in the Indian Independence Movement

An often-untold story of the Indian independence movement is that of the role of influential Indian women; whilst stories of Gandhi, the nationalist writer Raja Rao and other important male political and cultural figureheads are commonplace, members of the opposite gender are rarely taught about in the history of Indian independence. Indian women were not only working to gain independence for their nation, but were seeking enfranchisement and political representation in the local, national, and international spheres. It is clear that one of the most important aspects of the movement for independence from a historical point of view is that it saw mass participation by women; women who had till then been confined to the domestic sphere. 

Crucial figures of the Quit India Movement. Image courtesy of  Quirkybyte.
https://www.quirkybyte.com/blog/2016/08/6-unsung-heroines-independence/

Women were involved in diverse nationalist activities, both within and outside the home. Within the home women held classes to educate other women and contributed significantly to nationalist literature in the form of articles, poems and propaganda material. Moreover, shelter and nursing care were also provided to nationalist leaders who were in hiding from the British authorities. Furthermore, and most importantly, when the nationalist leadership were in jail, the women took over the leadership roles and provided guidance to the movement. The JB Morrell Library at the University of York holds many important works written by leading female members of the Indian nationalist movement, in addition to works from Indian women from every class in society.

Anans and Hutheesing's 1949 work. © amazon.co.uk

Female nationalist authors did not let up in their campaign for further empowerment following the granting of independence. The Bride’s Book of Beauty, written by Mulk Raj Anand and Krishna Nehru Hutheesing, was published in Bombay in 1947. The work served almost as an anthological manual on ‘feminine sensibilities, formulas of female beauty, and female social experience’. One critic described the work as the manifestation of ‘Anand’s affinities with Marxist utopian notions of egalitarian civilisation and women’s empowerment’. The authors developed a perception of Indian female beauty that was adorned with poetry, prose, folktales and myths. [There is a copy in the exhibition]. It was clear that Anand and Hutheesing saw independence as a springboard with which to further the rights of Indian women. Using the very same myths and folklore that were crucial to creating a nationalist fervour prior to independence in 1947 was essential to Anand and Hutheesing’s writings.

Nanda's seminal work. ©amazon.co.uk

Savitri Devi Nanda was the author of ‘The City of Two Gateways: The Autobiography of an Indian Girl’; Nanda writes every detail of her early life in a typical Hindu aristocratic family of the pre-partition Punjab. This is an important work that brings to life the beliefs of many young Indian women both before and after partition. For example, Nanda writes that one night her father took her to Lahore to put her in a school; neither her mother nor her grandmother was in favour of educating her. It was this thirst for freedom and knowledge that was encountered in the young female nationalists and marked a distinct difference and a remarkable gulf between this generation and the previous generations before them. Where Nanda excels is in describing her sense of loss or separation; this stemmed directly from her strong awareness that she was an active participant to the exciting events of the national struggle for freedom.

I shall have to be a feminist…

Sarah Griffin, Special Collections Librarian, introduces a new exhibition

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Putting together an exhibition is always a thrilling and often an unexpected pleasure. My starting point for I shall have to be a feminist: 18th century women writers and their legacy in the Special Collections (currently found in the Harry Fairhurst corridor), was Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the rights of woman.  I was excited to find that we had a wide selection of women writers from around the same period and the idea of the exhibition was born.

I knew from the beginning that I would like to find a way to make the final case more up to date. I am strict about using material that can be found in the Special Collections so I expected that final case to be the biggest challenge. The collection does not hold the writings of such current feminists as Germaine Greer or Caitlin Moran, but I was pleased to find some interesting material from the first half of the 20th century which fitted very well with the writing of women some 200 years earlier. What was particularly fascinating was realising that the demands and challenges faced by Wollstonecraft, Elizabeth Montagu, Hannah More and others were really not that much different to those reflected in the writings of Virginia Woolf and Winifred Holtby.

Portrait of Winifred Holtby
held in the Special Collections

The discovery of Winifred Holtby's book was one of the unexpected pleasures. The title of the exhibition is a quote from her and I would like to explore her life and influence in a bit more detail.

"I dislike everything that feminism implies. … I want to be about the work in which my real interests lie … But while … injustice is done and opportunity denied to the great majority of women,I shall have to be a feminist."

Those of you who have seen the recent film Testament of Youth will know that Winifred was the best friend of Vera Brittain. Special Collections holds a published edition of their letters donated to the university by Brittain. The correspondence show both of them to be warm, funny and generous characters.

Winifred Holtby, Women and the changing civilisation,
London 1934. Photo by Paul Shields.

There is one book by Holtby in the Special Collection, Women and the changing civilisation, which can be found in the final case of the present exhibition. Holtby examines the legacy of 18th century writers such as Mary Wollstonecraft and sees that there is still a long way to go towards full equality for women. Holtby campaigned for equal pay and work in the public sphere as well as measures that would give women a degree of financial independence such as widow's pensions, and child benefit allowance. From 1926 she edited the feminist magazine Time and Tide.

She spent time in South Africa and wrote articles against racism and supporting black trade unionism. The thirties were a difficult time for her as she feared the rise of fascism and the attitude of its supporters towards women. She wrote "I want there to be no more wars: I want people to recognise the human claims of negroes and Jews and women and all oppressed and humiliated creatures. I want a sort of bloodless revolution."

Photo by Paul Shields

As well as being an author Holtby was also a poet and the poem that appears pasted into the front of the Women and the changing civilisation is one of hers. It is the third part of a poem written in 1933 and called For the ghost of Elinor Wylie. Holtby had become ill with Bright's disease, a disorder of the kidney which would eventually prove fatal. She died in 1935. The three parts of the poem reflect the progress of her illness, the final Peace, perhaps signifying that she had reached some sort of acceptance.

Poet and novelist Elinor Wylie suffered from a similar illness to Holtby and was admired by her for her lack of conventionality.

Holtby's prose, poems and plays largely remain in print and many can be found in the University Library. The Drama Channel is repeating the mini-series made of her final novel South Riding. Eighty years on, her writings still reflect many of the issues and challenges that continue to face women today.

For more information about this subject or any other questions about Special Collections, please contact Sarah Griffin.

The Pinecone

The second book in his 'Donating my night shelf' series. Stephen Town explains what women's rights, pinecones and a small church in the North of Cumbria have in common.

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Uglow, J. The Pinecone, in the University Library at G 1.761 LOS

Image courtesy of
Uglow, Jenny, The Pinecone,
2012. ISBN: 0374232873

In the period of the feminist t-shirt debate, the withdrawal from Afghanistan and Remembrance-tide, this week I have chosen a book with some of these contemporary resonances. Now on the Library shelves, nestled (in our curious home grown classification scheme) between tomes on coal miners and dockers, is a small volume on the romantic architect Sarah Losh (1785-1853).

Women’s rights and what makes a feminist has been a debate since my student days. Forty years ago I was part of a campaign to change my Cambridge college’s policy so that women could be admitted. Shocking as it may seem now,
my University at that time had eight times as many male students as female, and the Master of our College suggested that female education might be a passing fad (perhaps an odd position to take in a College founded by a woman!). When I started on my chosen career as a librarian, a profession dominated by a female workforce, it was not much better at the top. The first national University Librarians conference I attended in 1992 had around a hundred men present, and only a handful of women. Thankfully a more proportionate demographic now exists among library leaders, and also in my College.

In her time, Sarah Losh could not attend University, directly manage the family businesses or enter a profession or politics, unlike her male cousins and uncles. She could however, growing up in a radical and reformist family where women were expected to know their own mind, benefit from an excellent education. She developed a deep knowledge of mathematics, science and the arts, and built her own library by subscribing to the publication of a wide range of books. Sarah is variously described as a heroine and a pioneer by reviewers of The Pinecone, but Uglow avoids any stereotyping of her subject.

The Pinecone is a mix of biography, social history and architectural study. Sarah chose to rebuild her local parish church at Wreay, near Carlisle, into what Pevsner later described as the finest Victorian church in Cumbria.

Photo: Wreay, St Mary's Church by Bramhall.
Reproduced under a Creative Commons license

This University has a course of study devoted to the English Parish Church: I don’t know if Sarah’s architecture is featured, but Pevsner was dumbfounded by its originality; influenced as it was by her Grand Tours to Italy and by her intimate sense of connection to place and history. The style of architecture defies simple categorisation, but was described by Sarah herself as ‘modified Lombard’ or ‘Early Saxon’. Funding for the project came from her family’s alkali business, so there were no objections to her method or choices, which included much nature-inspired decoration.

Photo: Wreay, St Mary's Church
by Bramhall. Reproduced under
a Creative Commons license

So finally to pinecones, to Afghanistan and to Uglow’s penultimate chapter entitled ‘Remembering’. Sarah’s friend since childhood, William Thain, of the West Riding Regiment, was one of the sixteen thousand British men, women and children who were killed or died in the passes near Kabul in 1842, just as Sarah’s church neared completion. The mysterious arrow in the baptistery was said by villagers to represent this violent end. Before his death William sent back a pine cone; the seed was planted in the Wreay churchyard, and Sarah placed a sculpted pinecone beside it. But to understand the full significance of the pinecone of the title, I encourage you to read the book.