Feminism In India

2085 Words9 Pages

To be or not to be a writer has always been a dilemma for a woman at all times in all communities. It is only after the European enlightenment and its consequent followed –the industrial growth and the resultant modernity that more and more women became visible as artists, writers and individuals. Moving from Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792) to Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own(1929), this movement for the empowerment of women is generally studied under the label –‘feminism’. But the feminism is theorized differently in India than in the west. The condition of women is not same all over the world. With the change in the geographical area, women’s situation also undergoes a change. Set parameters are not sufficient …show more content…

But man is imprisoning her personality. Women become devoid of choices and became the puppet in the hands of social power. The purdah is no more than the woman's prison house. This shows the internal suffering of a woman, who is near dead by the practice of wearing purdah. The female body becomes the terrain on which nationalists distinctions are made visible. As P. Chatterjee opines that “Dress, behaviour, eating habits fix a certain form of essential feminity in terms of certain culturally visible signifiers all of which are mapped on to the body” (Chatterjee …show more content…

We must empower ourselves to re-construct the filthy minds of the society. Gandhiji, in 1927, gave a call to Women of India to “tear down” the purdah that stunts their growth and enslaves them to inhumane conditions, “Chastity is not hot-house growth. It cannot be super imposed. It cannot be protected by the surrounded wall of purdah. It must grow from within it must be capable of withstanding every unsought temptation...it must be a poor thing that cannot stand the gaze of man” (Young India

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