India on Their Minds review: An intimate introduction to the lives and works of 8 women

Published by Women Unlimited, an associate of Kali for Women, this book offers an intimate introduction to the lives and work of Nayantara Sahgal, Qurratulain Hyder, Rashid Jahan, Ismat Chughtai, Attia Hosain, Kamlaben Patel, Capt. Lakshmi Sahgal and Saraladebi Chaudharani. It would appeal to people keen on reading South Asian feminist literature.

Apart from the fact that Menon — founder-director of Women Unlimited — has published books written by all of them, what these women have in common is a history of deep engagement with “the events leading up to the independence of India”. The author writes, “They observed the birth of the nation, and the division of the country at first hand, and recorded that epochal moment, as well as its aftermath, in short story, novel, essay, memoir and autobiography.” Menon, who calls herself “one of midnight’s children”, wrote this book in order to commemorate the 75^th anniversary of India’s independence from colonial rule.

Standing up for democratic freedom, bargaining with patriarchy

Such a study of women’s voices and visions becomes even more important in a year like this one since both houses of the Indian Parliament have now passed the Women’s Reservation Bill to reserve 33 per cent seats for women in the Lok Sabha as well as the State Legislative Assemblies. This is an apt occasion to reflect seriously on how prevalent ideas of nationhood and citizenship have excluded or ignored the challenges faced and concerns raised by women.

The chapter on Nayantara Sahgal foregrounds her insistence on non-violence, secularism and democratic freedoms in her political columns as well as her fiction. Her novel Rich Like Us, for instance, is an indictment of the National Emergency declared by her own cousin Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, which had an adverse impact on the fundamental rights of Indian citizens. Menon writes, “She was unrelenting in her criticism of Mrs. Gandhi and the hangers-on around her, quoting her own words back to her and impaling her on them.”

When the political dispensation changed, the novelist wrote again to make herself heard. Her books When the Moon Shines by Day and The Fate of Butterflies express her despair over an ideology that is “avowedly majoritarian” and advocates “an aggressive, masculinised, cultural nationalism”. In keeping with her political beliefs and values, she has spoken out against the Indian National Congress in the past and the Bharatiya Janata Party more recently.

Interestingly, another chapter in the same book is devoted to Rabindranath Tagore’s niece Saraladebi Chaudharani, who promoted “a virile, implicitly majoritarian nationalism”. She wore khadi, ran an organization focusing on education and income generation for women, was a writer and editor, and wanted to build cadres of men trained in sports and martial arts. She urged women to embrace their role as mothers of warrior sons of the motherland. While her presence in this anthology seems an odd choice, Menon has a convincing reason. She says, “Saraladebi was doing what is now called ‘bargaining with patriarchy’, with an intuitive understanding of the powerlessness of most women when it comes to the said ‘bargaining’.”

The quest for emancipation

The chapter on writer and doctor Rashid Jahan reveals markedly different priorities. She was a full-time member of the Communist Party of India, who “dared to write about women and their bodies” and became notorious because men were not ready to face her stark depiction of reality. In her story “Parde Ke Peeche (Behind the curtain)”, the character Muhammadi Begum says, “My womb and all my lower parts had fallen. I got it put right so that he could get the same pleasure as he’d got from a newly married wife.” The story shows how her body is treated as a baby-making machine and a source of sexual satisfaction, not as something that belongs to her.

Menon points out that the author’s medical practice gave her a chance to interact with people “in various stages of deprivation, distress or ill-health”; this convinced her that freedom from British rule was not enough. Social justice, freedom from poverty, workers’ rights, safe housing, and the release of political prisoners were important causes for her. As a founder-member of the Progressive Writers’ Movement, her political ideas informed her writing.

Jahan became a role model for Ismat Chughtai, whose oeuvre and thought are explored in another chapter of this book. Menon writes, “Running like a steely thread through Chughtai’s writing is the conviction that progressive social change is simply not possibly without the emancipation from orthodoxy for women.” This quest for emancipation was expressed through stories involving a frank discussion of women’s sexuality and patriarchal control.

Those who left and those who stayed

Apart from discussing short stories like “Lihaaf” and “Jarrein”, this chapter also looks at Chughtai’s inner turmoil over the simultaneity of Independence and Partition. “Whose country was it, after all? Who belonged? Who stayed on, who departed? And how, or with whom, was a writer to align herself, when all truths had been vanquished, all allegiances betrayed?” writes Menon. These burning questions became intensely personal matters for millions of people, including Qurratulain Hyder and Attia Hosain, who are featured in this book.

Hyder was 20 years old when she left for Pakistan in 1947. She moved to England a few years later, and returned to India in 1961. Hosain chose to live in England, travelled often to both India and Pakistan between 1947 and 1965, but stopped going to Pakistan after her brother died during the India-Pakistan War in 1965. She continued visiting India. Chughtai’s siblings migrated to Pakistan. She and her husband stayed back in India after Partition. Jahan and her husband too opted to stay in India. This shows that religion was not the sole determinant of where people decided to anchor themselves. There were other factors at play.

Those who left continued to nourish their ties across borders because memories of places and people cannot be erased overnight. Writing about Hyder’s novels Aag ka Darya and Mere Bhi Sanamkhane, Menon remarks, “For Hyder, though, this was not a nostalgic yearning for the past, for she had little use for nostalgia. For her, territory, or even country, had much less valence than the far more powerful value of syncretism, of creative coexistence.”

The Partition destroyed this coexistence, as is evident in the powerful chapter on Kamlaben Patel. Menon describes her as “Mridula Sarabhai’s right-hand woman during the years (1947-1952) that India carried out its Recovery Programme”. As part of this programme, Muslim as well as Hindu women who had been abducted, made to convert against their wishes, and forced to marry their own abductors were brought back to their respective religious communities, families and countries. Patel was stationed at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital in Lahore. She joined this work because it was considered part of nation-building but soon realized her complicity in “the inhumanity of enforcing rules blindly and unthinkingly”.

Menon came into contact with Patel thanks to the latter’s niece Nayana Kathpalia. When Menon, along with her feminist comrade Kamla Bhasin, met Patel, she noticed that “Kamuben (Patel) was still haunted by her experience of that time and the task entrusted to her”. Working with “recovered” women across religious divides had exposed her to so much trauma that she was unable “to eat and digest solid food for a very long time afterwards”.

Learning from the Partition

The book is enriched by these precious behind-the-scenes moments that Menon has carefully documented. They will prove to be of great value, especially for young people who want to work in the publishing industry or even set up an independent publishing venture driven by a clear political vision. In that sense, this book is a continuation of the themes that Menon touches upon in her memoir Address Book: A Publishing Memoir in the time of COVID.

As Menon shows in this book, publishing feminist literature also involves assuring women that their words are worthy of being read, translated, published, and made widely available. In the chapter on Capt. Lakshmi Sahgal, who served in the Indian National Army formed by Subhas Chandra Bose, Menon recalls a meeting in Kanpur when the former captain casually wondered why anyone would be interested in reading her autobiography. She was not even sure if she had the full manuscript but looked for it when Menon and Bhasin insisted.

Menon writes, “Capt. Lakshmi believed (as late as in 1995) when we met her) that an alternative to the Gandhi-Nehru vision would have been possible if Bose had lived. For one, he would never have agreed to a religion-based division of the country”. While the Partition of 1947 cannot be reversed, we can certainly learn from the mistakes of our predecessors, and do our bit to build an India where people of all faiths can live in peace and flourish together.

In a nutshell, this thoughtfully written book deserves a place of pride on your bookshelf.