Ordinary women, extraordinary times

A flurry of activity, a fresh coat of paint and media attention enlivened the mood at the  tranquil Mani Bhavan Gandhi Sangrahalaya in November last year, when US President Barack Obama visited the house where Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi once lived.
Thanks to Gandhiji, during the freedom struggle, the quaint 100-year-old bungalow on Laburnum Road has been witness to many historical events. The Civil Disobedience, Satyagraha, Swadeshi, Khadi and Khilafat movements were launched here. In 1955, Mani Bhavan, situated in the heart of Mumbai, was turned into a museum and research centre.
In addition to a vast collection of books, photographs and other Gandhi memorabilia, the museum has an installation of dioramas depicting significant events in Gandhiji’s life. One striking feature is the significant number of female figures in each recreated scene.

Women in India have always responded to nationalistic calls. They turned out in large numbers during the Raksha Bandhan demonstration by Rabindranath Tagore in 1905 and took part in the Tilak’s Swadeshi movement. But all of this came together only after Gandhiji’s non-violent strategy came to define the freedom struggle .

“Gandhiji was the first person to breach the private and public world of women,” says Dr Usha Thakkar, academician/researcher and Director of the Mani Bhavan Gandhi Sangrahalaya. “Because of the Gandhi tag attached to the protest, active participation of women did not draw as much ire from society as expected.”

His innate respect for women, communicative skills and his non-disruptiveness of family structure were the keys to success in mobilising women, says Dr Thakkar.

“He never told them to neglect their roles as mothers and wives, or to rebel against the family. Although he was a strong advocate of gender equality, he favoured changing the system rather than breaking it down. He offered strong but pacific role models like Sita, Draupadi and Meera. ‘Do what you can’, he would tell the women.”   And the women certainly did not hold back. They picketed shops that sold liquor and foreign goods and propagated khadi (hand-spun cloth). They took to the streets, singing patriotic songs during Prabhat Pheri (morning vigils). They delivered fiery speeches at public meetings. They made salt and they sheltered political activists. They taught their children nationalist ideals. They faced lathi charge, tear gas and the rigours of jail. “In effect, every home turned into a satyagraha unit, and that made it difficult for the British to breach the ramparts of the home,” says Dr Thakkar.

In her essay, ‘Discovering New Horizons’ (Non violent Struggles of the Twentieth Century: Retrospect and Prospect), Dr Thakkar notes that, of the 80,000 people arrested during the Salt Satyagraha, 17,000 were women. First-person accounts of a few of the participants are tucked away in the Mani Bhavan library. Take, for instance, the Marathi book, Te Mantarlele Diwas (‘Those Enchanted Days’). Compiled by Rohini Gawankar and Nanda Apte, it reads like micro-diaries of ordinary women, who remained courageous in epoch-making times. Mai Tikekar from Nagpur writes: “During the Salt Satyagraha, Sarojini Naidu brought sea water from Mumbai. We evaporated this in large pans, made salt, and publicly auctioned it. During our protests against foreign cloth and liquor, mounted guards were unleashed on us. I was arrested, fined Rs 200 and sentenced to three months of jail.”

Prabhavati Butala from Mahad recounts an event that has all the edge-of-the-seat excitement of a thriller. She and her husband were involved in the clandestine printing and distribution of nationalist literature.

“In the dead of the night, at 2 am, we would sneak out and toss the bulletins onto the verandah of a school. Authorities got suspicious and raided our house. We wrapped the cyclostyling machine in a dhoti and smuggled it out to a friend’s house. The police could find nothing in our house and went back disappointed,” she writes.

Then there are amusing stories too. Kamalabai Lele from Wardha speaks about the tribulations of wearing khadi. “The khaddar nine-yard sari was thick and very difficult to wash. So I cut it up and started wearing it in two pieces. Even then, it did not drape well. So I just abandoned it and began wearing the simpler five-yard version in khaddar!”
Jailed once for protesting, Lele reminisces: “Thirty-six women were crammed into a cell meant for eight. We couldn’t breathe. We would take turns to stand near the bars to grab a few gulps of air.”  Upon her release from prison, she conducted camps in Wardha to train women as volunteers and freedom fighters.

“It was not only the educated, liberated, upper-class women who were drawn to the cause. The larger mass had ordinary urban and rural women from all over India. India had intergrated into one unit with women from every class, culture and religious background joining in to become freedom fighters,” says Dr Thakkar.

In her essay, Dr Thakkar also mentions that the entry of women in national politics through non-violent means brought on a lasting change. Women gained awareness and confidence in their own strength. In a way, it paved the way for women to become an integral part of politics and public life even after independence.

As an example, Thakkar speaks about her mentor and erstwhile president of  Mani Bhavan, the late Dr Usha Mehta. The latter entered national service at the age of eight, shouting “Simon, go back!” in a protest march against the Simon Commission. She emerged as one of the leaders of the ‘Quit India’ movement in 1942, when she hoisted the Indian flag at Gowalia Tank on August 9, 1942.

The diminutive and soft-spoken Mehta was the prime mover of a particularly subversive activity: the clandestine broadcasting station, Congress Radio, on which she sent out messages from imprisoned leaders and news of underground activities during the ‘Quit India’ movement. Changing location almost daily to avoid getting caught, the station ran for four months before Mehta and her colleagues were arrested, tried and sentenced to harsh imprisonment. The government offered to release her in exchange for an apology.
Following this, Usha’s mother sent her a lunch box in prison. Concealed in the food was a note that read: “If you are my daughter, don’t apologise!” Mehta served her full four-year term and was released in 1946. She chose to remain unmarried, preferring to devote herself to academics and public service, until 2000.

“A generation of women came under Gandhiji’s life-changing spell, but the story does not end there. He continues to have contemporary relevance,” says Dr Thakkar. During a camp she had organised to teach women elected to village panchayats the essence of Gandhi’s vision for rural India, she found that women could instantly connect to Gandhian concepts of decentralisation, panchayats and rural development. “When they were given with a copy of his autobiography, the women first touched it to their heads, as though it sacred scripture,” she says. Gandhiji has indeed left a rich legacy for the women of India.