Zakir Husain Delhi College

Name- Masira Noor

Roll Number- 22/725
Course- BA Honours
Psychology
Year- First Year
Subject- General Elective-:
Ideas in Indian political
thought [Political Science ]
Teacher- Nandita Pal
 Tarabai Shinde
Introduction
Tarabai Shinde (1850-1910) lived in obscurity as a
member of the socially elite Marathi (warrior peasant
community) caste in a small town called Buldhana in
Maharashtra.

She was home-schooled by her father, Bapuji Hari

Shinde, a radical, and head clerk in the office of the
Deputy Commissioner of Revenues, who taught her
Marathi, Sanskrit, and English. She was an avid reader,
proficient in classical and modern literature, a fact that
set her apart from the other women of her time. She
married very young and was said to have quickly lost
regard for marital life. But even in her marriage, she was
different, for she had a form of marriage
called gharjamai, where the husband came to live in her
household, an unusual practice in the patriarchal society
in which she lived where the woman must leave her
household to live in her “new” house. She had no
children, a choice she made actively and defended in the
face of a society in which a childless married woman
was a travesty. She tells us in her work that she spent
her life in marathomal, the Marathi seclusion of women.
Her father’s association with the reformer Jyotirao Phule
contributed to her engagement with the reform
movements of the time.

Her Struggles and Contributions

Tarabai was a compatriot of activists Jyotirao and Savitribai Phule.
She was a member of the Satyashodak Samaj (“Truth Finding
Community”) organisation. The Phule’s started a school for lower-
caste girls in 1848. In 1854, they started a shelter for upper-caste
widows who were forbidden from marrying and ostracised from
mainstream society. Later, they involved Tarabai in both these
initiatives and groomed her in this area.
She received most of her experience through her work with Jyotirao
and Savitribai Phule who shared the same ideas of the oppression of
gender and caste in Indian society
Tarabai raised awareness on the double-standards of men and
women in society. She also discussed the unfair treatment of the
different castes in the Indian society. This allowed citizens to begin to
question the standards they have set for women.
Her Work
Tarabai asked the one question that fuelled a fire in the hearts of
women, one nobody dared to openly ask: “But do men not suffer
from the same flaws that women are supposed to have?”
Tarabai wrote Stree Purush Tulana (A Comparison Between Men and
Women), originally in Marathi, in response to the unfair treatment of
women and religious prejudice that permeated society. It was her
first and only published work.
There was a specific incident that fuelled her: Vijayalakshmi in Surat,
an upper-caste widow, was sentenced to death for having an
abortion. After Surat’s death a series of articles were published
in The Pune Vaibhar (a weekly known for its extremely orthodox and
anti-reformist politics) insulting women for their, “new loose
morals,” and portrayed the Indian woman as detestable. Tarabai
wrote her book in response to this article to show Indian society that
there are double-standards for men and women and that women
deserve more rights. She claimed to be writing the 40-page prose to
defend women’s honour, stating, “I’m doing it out of hope that you
might stop treating all women as though they had committed a crime
and making their lives a living hell for it.”
In her work, Tarabai implores the reader to consider the notion that
men might not be the indestructible beings they put themselves out
to be, but as flawed as they considered women. In a point by point
note, she sets out the flaws women are said to have and refutes
them. The quick-witted repartee exposes the males in society at that
time for their hypocritical norms and argues for widow remarriage,
the abolition of strict behavioural codes for women, and even
criticises the religions (then, Hinduism) that constricted women. At a
time when adultery was considered the biggest sin a woman could
commit, she shifts the blame onto the husband for not being able to
keep his wife happy. Furthermore, she argues that women should
have husbands of their choosing in order to prevent adultery.
In defending a widow’s right to remarry, she speaks of the atrocities
committed against discarded widows and invokes religious scriptures
to solidify her point. On remarriage, she notes that the shastras
allowed for a queen to choose a rishi of her own liking to beget a
child with upon the death of her husband. A charge against women
that she vehemently argues against is their supposed transgressions:
she tries to reason out the need to end child marriages and
caste/income based marriages. In blatantly calling out the patriarchy
for what it is, she is unapologetic in breaking “standards” of
womanhood.
Viewing this work in the context of her social milieu, Tarabai was not
only a courageous heretic but also an analytical thinker who could
look beyond the prejudice that existed and formulate reasoned
notions for change. She was blatant in her allegations against the
men around her, causing quite the stir when she published her piece.
Importantly, Tarabai was also a satirical writer who engaged with
irony and travesty to explicate her arguments. Her language is
robust, powerful, and biting.
Struggle
Immediately following the publication of her work, the local
newspapers ran articles that condemned Tarabai and went so far as
to ridicule her work. These diatribes are said to have silenced her, for
she published no other works. It was not until Jyotirao
Phule’s Stasar(1882) made a reference to her work that it was
resurrected once more. Phule suggested that the sharp criticism
levelled at her was owing to the fact that the very men she
condemned were the ones publishing the newspapers.
Conclusion
Invoking Tarabai from the sands of time is important in
understanding how the counter-model for womanhood was
constructed by her juxtaposing the norms that were pre-existent.
Her text is the first full-fledged extant feminist argument after the
poetry of the Bhakti period. At a time when intellectuals and activists
were primarily concerned with easily identified/ostensible atrocities
against women, she isolated problems and broadened the scope of
analysis to include the entire ideological fabric of the patriarchal
society. Women everywhere, she implored, are similarly oppressed.
She refused to accept the superiority of men in gender relation and
was extremely pragmatic in admitting that women did have faults,
but none that made them inferior to men.
In destroying the several charges levelled against women to deem
them immoral creatures who must be controlled, Tarabai struck one
of the earliest notes of revolt.