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Gandhi's Feminist Politics, Gender Equity and Patriarchal Values

By Kiran Saxena
GANDHI'S socio-political philosophy is feminist, which addresses to gender equity,
constructed on patriarchal values. There is a contradiction in them; however Gandhi
based the edifice of his philosophy on this contradiction. Politics and social life has
always been associated with masculinity. It is concerned with power struggle, coercion,
war, greed, selfishness, domination, bloodshed, hatred, deceit, cruelty and above all
violence. They are masculine values and incapacitates women to participate in it as
they are against the feminine character. The history of social and political life is an
evidence that brute and aggressive people captured power and used it to perpetuate
their self-interest. They exploited the poor, the needy and the helpless. In the slave
society politics create situations which facilitated the slave owners to ruthlessly exploit
human beings converting them as slaves. The desire to acquire land, money and
women as property led to war and killing of innumerable human beings. In a feudal
society the landlords indulging in wasteful luxuries usurped the fruits of labour of serfs.
Hunger of land and wealth and the egoistic desire to dominate others resulted in war,
in the killing of millions of people and large-scale destruction. In modern times
capitalism, imperialism became great sources of dehumanizing colonial people. A vivid
description of this has been given by R.P. Dutt in India Today showing how industrial-
capitalist-imperialism of Britain destroyed the Indian economy. The effects of this
wholesale destruction of the Indian manufacturing industries on the economy of the
country can be imagined. The old populous manufacturing town Dacca, Murshidabad
(which Clive had described in 1757 to be "as extensive, populus and rich as the city of
London), Surat and the like, were in a few years rendered desolate under the "Pax
Britannica with a completeness which no ravages of the most destructive war or foreign
conquest could have accomplished.
Gandhi's Hind Swaraj echoed the same sentiment. He called modern civilization as
"Satanic civilization." Fascism and Nazism, the twin most devastating phenomenon of
modern times have created immense havoc for human kind by creating jingoist
militaristic politics of masculine culture which eclipsed all that has been soft, humane,
subtle, or can be characterised as feminine. The communist regimes promised a world
free from exploitation, but built on bloodshed and regimentation collapsed like a house
of cards.
The post-cold war world situation is quite dismal. The rivalry among the countries of
developed capitalist system, their efforts to dominate the people of developing
countries, the religious fundamentalism and ethnic strife, the mutual suspicion and
hatred amongst the people of the developing countries. The inherent violence in the
system represents a culture which is opposite of feminine- character. Coming back to
Indian history one finds that the situation here has not been better. The social
hierarchy creating a large segment of human population as untouchable, was rooted in
the most heinous injustice. The Indian political history as the history of other countries
is replete with wars, struggles, bloodshed, treachery and back stabbing. Whatever
period of history, it remained out and out masculine. Devoid of feminist qualities it
closed the door for women for the social and political life. Masculinity created a
boundary for women and dismissed them from the outside world. Imprisoned in the
four walls of the house, they became outcastes, invisible from dark, brute and
inhospitable public life.
The greatest contribution of Gandhi was 'Satyagraha' which not only aimed at creating
a society which would be based on feminine values but also advocated a feminist
strategy to achieve that ideal. Gandhi aimed at creating a non-violent society based on
truth. He had mystified the concept of truth using an abstract language, like his
definition of truth "that there is an unalterable law governing everything that exists or
lives. It is not a blind law, for no blind law can govern the conduct of living beings. For
Gandhi this unalterable law was truth. This truth is non-violence which is love. These
virtues according to him are not sensory or empirical but are also transcendental.
Nevertheless, behind Gandhi's mystical explanation there is an advocacy of a society
based on humanitarian values.It envisages a society free of exploitation, establishing
equality-social, political and economic--which would not discriminate against human
beings on the basis of birth, colour, sex or nation. The basis of this society will be love,
cooperation, care, sympathy, all those virtues with which women are associated,
against coercion, selfishness or brute force.Indeed this kind of society will be congenial
for providing a place for women they have been denied so far. It is "Sarvodaya" - for all
including women.
The remarkable feature of this society is women's participation in creating it. Gandhi's
enunciation of a feminine strategy that is 'satyagraha' is a unique strategy which has
never been used as a practical method of socio-political change. Asoka, the great
Emperor, at the fag end of his political career after going through the devastating
experience of the immense suffering, agony of the people slaughtered in the Kalinga
war realised the futility of war and worked on the principles of Gautam Buddha's
philosophy of love and peace. Gandhi had started his experiment with truth from the
very beginning of his political career. The satyagraha technique he started Africa
continued throughout his life refining, sophisticating and sharpening it. In South Africa,
Gandhi introduced the method of passive resistance against the unjust "Transvaal
Asiatic Registration Act" as civil disobedience. Gandhi explained, "passive resistance is
a method of securing rights by personal suffering, it is the reverse of resistance by
arms. When I refuse to do things that are repugnant to my conscience, I use soul
force. "... It involves sacrifice of self. Everybody admits that sacrifice of self is infinitely
superior to sacrifice of others.'
Gandhi had launched many struggles in India for innumerable causes like those against
untouchability, cow protection, basic education and above all the freedom
struggle.They were termed as non-cooperation movement, civil disobedience
movement and Quit India movement and were based on his philosophy of satyagraha.
Its basic meaning is holding on to truth, hence truth-force. He added: "I have also
called it love force or soul force. In the application of satyagraha, I discovered in the
earliest stages that pursuit of truth did not admit of violence being inflicted on one's
opponent but that he must be weaned from error by patience and sympathy. He made
it clear that "in the method (satyagraha) we are adopting in India, fraud, lying, deceit
and all the ugly brood of violence and untruth have absolutely no room. Everything is
done openly and above board, for truth hates secrecy. The more open you are the
more truthful you are likely to be." There are different manifestations of satyagraha, it
could be individual or mass civil disobedience, assertive or defensive civil disobedience,
fast and boycott or 'Hijrat' (running away from the place if the violence of the
oppressor is unbearable).
Since Gandhi based his programme of action not on traditional political methods, its
source was those virtues, would be suitable for women. Gandhi had admitted that he
had designed his strategy and chosen his particular forms of struggle very consciously
and deliberately, so as to encourage women's participation in them. He wrote: "My
contribution to the great problem (of women's role in society) lies in my presenting the
acceptance of truth and ahimsa in every walk of life, whether for individuals or nations.
I have hugged the hope that in this, woman will be the unquestioned leader and having
thus found her place in human evolution, will shed her inferiority complex.
Indeed Gandhi's advocacy of nonviolence created favourable condition for mass
participation of women in all the movements he launched. They came out from home
instead of hiding in fear, as they usually did when the movements were violent. The
satyagraha made women feel that because of their feminity they are not inadequate or
inferior to men.Their feminity has not been down-graded because of their propensity to
face violence is considered less, but rather they we made to feel that as women they
are strong because of their feminine character. Madhu Kishwar explains "Gandhi saw
woman as the embodiment of sacrifice and suffering" and felt her advent to public life
should therefore result in purifying it, in restraining unbridled ambition and
accumulation of property.
Interestingly, Gandhi had admitted that he learnt technique of non-violent passive
resistance from women, especially from his wife and mother. It was Kasturba's passive
resistance against Gandhi's, as a man and husband, unreasonable actions and
attitudes, that compelled him change himself from a domineering husband to an
understanding husband realizing the spirit of equality and acted upon principle of
mutual consideration.
Nevertheless, there were some occasions when Gandhi suggested women to play a
supportive role in political movements. The case in point is the famous Dandi March of
1930. Gandhi wanted to keep women out amongst the core group of 79 Satyagrahis to
break the salt law. The women however resented it. Gandhi pleaded with the women
that there were other reasons to exclude the women from the movement than their
frailty, that he did not want to give opportunity to the British administration to accuse
the Satyagrahis that they used women as a shield to protect themselves. Women did
agree with Gandhi's plea and Mrs. Sarojini Naidu had participated in the Dandi March,
and large number of women also associated with Gandhi's civil disobedience movement
by breaking the Salt Law.
Whatever task Gandhi was involved women were always participating in all the
constructive activities Gandhi had undertaken. They managed the various Ashrams he
had setup on the basis of his philosophy at Phoenix, Sabarmati and Sevagram. Besides
his wife, many distinguished women like Sarojini Naidu, Dr. Sushila Nayar, Rajkumari
Arnrit Kaur, Sucheta Kriplani et. al. were his associates.
Peace-loving Gandhi felt that only women can fight militarism.In Paris he said,
"I have no doubt that they can do infinitely more than men against war." He elaborated
his argument to the women there. "Answer for yourselves what your great
soldiers and generals would do, if their wives and daughters and mothers
refused to countenance their participation in militarism in any shape or form."
Speaking to a group of women in Italy he said that "the beauty of non-violent war is
that women can play the same part in it as men. In a violent war women have no such
privilege, and Indian women played a more effective part in 'our' last non-violent war
than men. The reason is simple. Non-violent war calls into play suffering to the largest
extent, and who can suffer more purely and nobly than women". Giving the example of
women of India, he added, "The women in India tore down the purdah and came
forward to work for the nation. They saw that the country demanded something more
than their looking after their homes. They manufactured contraband salt, they picketed
foreign cloth shops and liquor shops and tried to wean both the seller and the customer
from both. At late hours in the night they pursued the drunkards to their dens with
courage and charity in their hearts. They marched to jails, and they sustained lathi
blows as few men did. If the women of West will try to vie with men in becoming
brutes, they have no lesson to learn from the women of India. They will have to cease
taking delight in sending their husbands and sons to kill people and congratulating
them on their valour".
Gandhi's unflinching confidence in women did not blind him to the real situation of
women in the country. The unjust social structure, anti-women religious practices,
rituals and conventions have debilitated women that have been not only marginalised
women but were victims of inhuman cruelty. Gandhi wanted cessation of that cruelty
and wanted an end to their marginalisation. He wrote: "I have always had a passion to
serve the womankind. Ever since my arrival in India, the women have recognised in
.me their friend and servant. Women have come to look upon me as one of
themselves. I hold radical views about the emancipation of women from their fetters
which they mistake for their adornment...........My experience has confirmed the views
that the real advancement of women can come only through their own efforts.'
Gandhi, as friend, philosopher and guide of women used to receive large number of
letters wherein the women wrote about their pitiable conditions. Gandhi had advised
them to face them bravely and also suggested solutions. He opposed sati, child
marriage, evil system (purdah) or husband's domination over his wife. He had
supported widow marriage, advocated women's education.
There is a strong streak of gender sensitivity in Gandhi's analysis of man-woman
relationship, marriage and sexuality. He asserted that woman is the companion of man
gifted with equal mental capacities. She has a right to participate in the minutest detail
of the activities of man, and she has the right of freedom and liberty as she is entitled
to supreme place in her own sphere of activity as man is in his. This ought to be the
natural condition of things only as of learning to read and write. By sheer force of a
vicious custom, even the most ignorant and worthless men have been enjoying a
superiority over women which they do not deserve and ought not to have.
About marriage, using Ram-Sita symbols he delineated his ideal relationship between husband and wife, that
they have equal rights and status.He was aware of the fact that in a household "more often than not a woman's
time is taken up, not by the performance of essential domestic duties, but in catering for the egoistic pleasure
of her lord and master and for her own vanities. To me this domestic slavery of woman is a symbol of
barbarism." He opined that "the slavery of kitchen is a remnant of barbarism only. It is high time that our
womankind be freed from incubus. Domestic work ought not to take the whole of woman's time."
Celibacy was Gandhi's ideal. Gandhi's view on sexuality revolves around his advocacy
of observing abstinence. Gandhi considered sexual union between man and woman
should be only for procreation. Otherwise their relationship should be asexual. Gandhi
was a protagonist of control of sexuality of women, but that control is not social, or
outside control but self-control and women should observe celibacy, out of will and not
by social coercion. Indeed Gandhi's advocacy for celibacy was not gender oriented. Men
should also observe celibacy. The greatest contribution of Gandhi in this regard is that
he very vehemently stood for the rights of women over their own body, which the
feminists of today have been crusading for. Men do not have a right to violate a
woman. He even exhorted women that they should resist the advances of their
husbands in marriage and should not succumb to their carnal desires. The modern
women's movement has been raising the voice that marriage does not legitimize rape
in marital life. Gandhi stood for this long back and admitted women's inalienable right
over their body and marriage does should not and cannot take away that right from
her.
Nevertheless, Gandhi had a great insight into man-woman relationship ensuring
women's total equality. However, his advocacy of rights of women within the
patriarchal values was his undoing. Gandhi's revolutionary ideas are trapped in
established socio-cultural values, which created a contradiction in his
understanding of woman's place in family, society and politics. He reverts back
to the dominant values of gender relationships as it exists in society. The basic gender
explanation is that man and woman are biologically different: therefore, their work
roles in society are different. The contention is that the determination of role is not
social but biological, that woman, who plays an important role in reproduction should
play a marginalised role in social production.Janet Saltzman Chafetz explains: "Gender
permeates all aspects of socio-cultural and personal life in most societies. The term
'gender system' refers to socio-cultural status quo in stable systems, as it relates to
gender. When the term 'gender system" is used, it includes systems of gender
stratification and differentiation, as well as the gender division of labour, gender social
definitions, and power inequities between the genders."
Gandhi thinking within the parameters of reformist patriarchal social order was not able
to see that treatment to women in this social order is fundamentally
discriminatory.Gandhi, like the religious social reformists of India in the nineteenth
century stood for the end of inhuman treatment to women. Women's special social role
as 'reproducer' all the religions have accepted and always propagated that. For that
reason all the care and comfort should be provided to her. Manu, the Hindu law giver,
and others like him in all religions understood the importance of women in a patriarchal
system as a reproductive specie, and in spite of passing extremely degrading
statements against women, always, side by side had said that where women are
respected there is heaven (Yatra Pujyate Naryastu, Ramante Tatra Devata). Gandhi,
aware of the fact that "Smritis bristle with contradictions" did not analyse the root
cause of contradictions and in a peripheral way stuck to half truth that legislation has
been mostly the handiwork of man, and man has not always been fair and discriminate
in performing that self-appointed task. The largest part of our effort in promoting the
regeneration of women should be directed towards removing those blemishes which are
represented in our Shastras as the necessary ingrained characteristics of women. Here
Gandhi puts the blame on men who wrote the Shastras not the patriarchal system, its
ideology which constructs the mind of men and women which is articulated in the
religious, social and traditional culture.
Basing his basic premise that men were responsible for anti-women character of the
Shastras Gandhi's delineation of the role of women in society is blurred with gender-
dominated patriarchal value system. His explanation "since the beginning of time there
has been a division of labour between and women--Adam wove and Eve spun. The
distinction persits to present-day and "nevertheless that at some time is a bifurcation.
Whilst both are fundamentally one, it is also equally true that in the form there is a
vital difference between the two. Hence the vocations of the two must also be different,
the duty of motherhood which the vast majority of women always undertake, requires
qualities which man need not posses. She is passive, he is active. She is essentially
mistress of the house. He is the bread winner; she is keeper and distributor of bread.
She is care-taker in every sense of the term. The art of bringing up the infants of the
race is her social and sole prerogative"... Gandhi emphasising the reproductive role
over other roles, woman as mother and keeper of hearth-exhorts her to keep off from
public life. Politics and professions were to be, by and large, exclusively male domains"
Gandhi asserted, "and you sisters, what would you do going to parliament? Do you
aspire after the Collectorship, Commissionership or even Vice royalty? You would not
care for the Viceroy has got to order executions and hangings, a thing you would
heartily desist"
Thus Gandhi's framework for w omen's position in social life is a "long suffering, selfless and self-effacing"
one. The capacity for silent suffering which Gandhi idealised was in fact one of the key symptoms of her
subordination, a glorified cult of eternal womanhood.
Gandhi's life mission was to save humanity from barbarity and he had insight that in
any social situation where "violence and brute force reign supreme or when social
conflicts are sought to be resolved through the use of weapons, women tend to be
pushed into more and more peripheral roles, and all the positive qualities tend to be
looked upon with contempt". Gandhi did realize that women's entry in the national
movement of India was a life-preserving and humanising force which would prevent the
movement from getting dissipated by senseless and self-destructive violence.
Having realized the important role women could play in purifying public life Gandhi, a
great visionary constructed feminist politics and himself became an embodiment of
feminine virtues, understood the plight of women specially in Indian society, however,
remained imprisoned in the mindset of patriarchal values and was unable to subscribe
that "unfair treatment of women is a disease as bad as untouchability."
The remarkable insight that he had, was blurred with the traditional logic. The
consequence is that post-Gandhi politics, in the fiftieth year of independence in India, is
witnessing fifty per cent population of marginalised women begging for 33 per cent
reservation in the legislative bodies, so that they could have a say in the policy
decisions of the country so that the crass politics of corruption and criminalisation give
way to politics of love, peace, goodwill and non-violence to feminise politics Gandhi
strove for. What a pity?

[Source: Empowerment of Women: Miles to Go By Dr. Savita Singh]

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