Enfranchised Selves: Women, Culture and Rights in Nineteenth-Century Bengal
Author(s)
Sarkar, Tanika
Abstract
India’s colonial administrators left the management of private life in the hands of Hindu and Muslim communities. The 19th-century movement to reform customs that controlled life and death for Hindu women acquired an authenticity from its origins within Hindu society that reform imposed from outside lacked. By the late 19th century, the availability of printing had created a widening public arena in Bengal where the immutability of custom came into question. An increasing number of literate Indian women drew parallels between Indian men’s oppression under colonial rule and the oppression of women in Hindu culture.
