Rewriting History

The Life and Times of Pandita Ramabai

Uma Chakravarti

• Publisher: Zubaan Books
• Year: 2001
• ISBN:
  9789383074631
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

This study of Pandita Ramabai's life, one of India's earliest feminists, is now available in a brand new paperback edition as part of the Zubaan Classics series to celebrate Zubaan's 10th anniversary. (Now with a new Afterword)This book outlines the reconstitution of patriarchies in nineteenth century Maharashtra through an exploration of the life, work and times of Pandita Ramabai, one of India's earliest feminists. It examines the manner in which the colonial state's new institutional structures, caste contestations, class formation and nationalism transformed and reorganized gender relations. It also explores the nature of the new agendas being set for women, how these were received by them and in what ways and to what extent their consent to these reconstructed patriarchies was produced.

PART ONE

Ramabai’s critique of a patriarchal system as the locus of women’s oppression, embodied in the tide of her book The High Caste Hindu Woman, highlighted Brahmanical patriarchy as it prevailed in all parts of India but more specifically in Maharashtra. To understand the structure that Ramabai attempted to analyse, break with, and contest through her work, it is necessary to outline those factors, material and ideological, which provided the basis for a specific set of cultural practices. In Chapter One I shall explore the relationship between caste, gender and the state, and the manner in which gender codes, a crucial component of cultural practices prevalent in the eighteenth century, were upheld, reinforced and reproduced in a patriarchal and hierarchical society backed by the coercive power of the Peshwa state. In Chapter Two I shall examine the extent to which the relationship between caste, gender and the state was transformed by the establishment of colonial rule and the impact of this transformation on cultural practices in the nineteenth century. Further, the manner in which the processes of caste contestation, class formation and the emergence of nationalism shaped issues of gender will form a central aspect of the analysis in Chapter Two.

1

Caste, Gender and the State in Eighteenth Century Maharashtra

I

Peshwa rule in eighteenth century western India is unique in recorded and documentable history for its combination of secular and ritual power in the hands of the Brahmanas. Although Brahmanas have been among the dominant groups of society all over traditional India, in Maharashtra they held a position of unrivalled prestige under the Peshwas.1 Their importance in the eighteenth century was noticeable even in the time of Shivaji. Although a Maratha himself Shivaji, like earlier Indian kings, staffed his administration with Brahmanas, who came to be prominent in the Maratha judicial system and in the collection of land revenue, crucial functions of any state. In 1713 Shivaji’s grandson appointed a Chitpavan Brahmana as Peshwa. Thereafter the Peshwas accumulated such prestige and power that the office became hereditary in their family and they became the de facto rulers of Maharashtra. The Peshwas ruled from Poona while the nominal Maratha dynasty sank into insignificance at Satara.

Shivaji had used Brahmanas but had ensured that the balance of caste forces was so maintained that power was not concentrated in any one caste or sub-caste.2 His political system was also an attempt to bridge the gulf between Maratha- Kunbis and the Brahmanas, and knit the conflicting elements into an integrated society while at the same time establishing centralised control over the Deshmukhs, non-Brahmana landed chiefs with extensive powers left intact under Muslim rule.3 As his control expanded he installed Deshastha Brahmanas (who would be joined to him by ties of interest and sentiment and would, therefore, remain loyal to him) in his administration as a counterpoint to the traditional Deshmukhs. When the Peshwas began to wield authority they in turn realised the value of a loyal constituency and appointed the Chitpavans in important positions.4 The initial employment of the Chitpavans in the Peshwai was not so much as clerks but as messengers and spies. In course of time Chitpavan power was consolidated; crucial factors in this process were that, in addition to the possession of literacy and a measure of prestige that they shared with all Brahmanas, the Chitpavans demonstrated great industry and assiduousness and a perfecting of strategic generalship.5 Their militarisation was recalled with pride by one of the prominent nineteenth century Chitpavan Brahmanas, Vishnu Shastri Chiplunkar:

Those people who traditionally were priests and are now clerks threw away in that century (the eighteenth) their priestly functions and pens and became Kshatriyas. Some became kings, some became soldiers. This was an unprecedented and remarkable change in which people of Parshurama’s land demonstrated their bravery all over the country.6

With this militarisation in the eighteenth century the Brahmanas came to combine secular power with sacerdotal status and attained a unique authority (as symbolised by the term Maratha-Brahmana) scarcely rivalled in other parts of India. The terms Poona, Deccan, and Maratha-Brahmana came to be regarded as synonyms of the Chitpavan Brahmanas and also of those other Brahmanas who had followed the Chitpavan example of combining political activity with the traditional pursuits of the Brahmanas.

Success in military and political activities was interlinked with economic prosperity and various kinds of privileges for the Chitpavans. Their clerks and writers (who had a virtual monopoly of all the secretariat or daftar offices) were able to have their goods exempted from customs duties and ferry charges when they imported grain and other goods from places outside the territories of the Peshwas.7 By far the most important economic advantage was the establishment of control over land.8 The Brahmanas adopted various strategies for this. For example, in the seventeenth century, the Deshastha Brahmana family of Moroba Gosavi founded a lineage at Cincvad in the vicinity of Poona where the establishment of a site sacred to Ganesh also meant extending land control over several villages surrounding Poona, particularly after Ganesh became the patron god of the Peshwas.9

Brahmana power in general and Chitpavan power in particular has been summed up thus for Maharashtra:

Of the significant concentrations of power in society, namely the institutions of religion, the administration, and the ownership of land, the Chitpavans virtually controlled all three. Their status in the scale of caste assured their supremacy over the institutions of religion; their ties with the Peshwas secured for them a monopoly over the administration; and finally the ties of caste once again encouraged the Peshwas to create a landed aristocracy which was recruited from Brahmana families and on whose loyalty they could rely in all circumstances. This is not to altogether deny the existence in Maharashtra of landlords, or administrators, or soldiers who were non-Brahmanas. This is merely to assert that the privileges enjoyed by the Chitpavans through their special ties with the Peshwas enabled them to dominate the rest of the community.10

The principal watandars had also been invariably drawn from the two dominant communities, high-caste Marathas and Brahmanas. But because it was the Brahmana watandars who rose to such high positions under the Peshwas, it is not surprising that the Peshwai was called Brahmanya raj.11 The Brahmanas, particularly the Chitpavans, thus became a constituent element in what Gokhale has termed the military-bureaucratic elite. A section of the Chitpavans have been characterised as the ‘aristocratic’ power-brokers in eighteenth century Poona since they had elevated themselves, through dynasty formation, to the status of an aristocracy. Apart from them there were also the ‘money-movers’, prominent banking families who constituted an important segment of the elites, many of whom had earlier been holders of the lucrative offices of Khot, Mahajan and Kamavisdar through which they accumulated capital. With this they began money-lending. The Peshwa’s family married into both the military-bureaucratic elite and the financial elite, cementing their common Chitpavan background and their mutual dependence. There was thus a close nexus between banking, administration and military power and the rural-urban continuities in eighteenth century Maharashtra.12

The most notable feature of these developments had been the successful entry of Brahmanas into military and financial roles, both regarded as alien to their varna.13 Even those Brahmanas who were not part of the military, financial or landed elite were privileged by virtue of their caste. The control of political and social power by the Chitpavans was best expressed through the institution of the dakshina which represented an informal alliance between the Chitpavans and the state.14 The dakshina, literally a gift, was the means through which the Peshwas extended support to the Brahmanas in their role as ‘custodians’ of Hinduism. It involved the distribution of enormous sums of money as charity to thousands of ‘scholarly’ Brahmanas after they had been examined by a body of shastris who ascertained their knowledge of the sacred texts of Hinduism. In return for the recognition that the grant of dakshina accorded, the Brahmanas gave unstinting support to the state.15 The support is also attributable to the general policy of Brahmana pratipalana (protection of the Brahmanas) pursued by the Peshwas. Throughout the second half of the eighteenth century all categories of Brahmana men enjoyed land revenue remissions, exemption from transit dues, house taxes, forced labour, death penalty and enslavement.16

While all Brahmanas shared certain privileges in the form of exemptions, the grant of lands, or large gifts of dakshina, they were subject to competing pulls from within the subcastes among themselves. In this the Chitpavans had a natural advantage as kinsmen of the Peshwas but it is significant that the Peshwas could not openly treat kinship as the rationale for favouring some Brahmanas over others. Religious grants, dana, were supposedly strictly the prerogative of those Brahmanas who were qualified as satkarmi (technically performers of good deeds, more generally bearer of high status), as the inampatra (grant deed) often stated that the recipient Brahmana was a satakarmadhikari and thus qualified for dana. Under the Peshwai, with the Chitpavan Brahmana dominance, political considerations began to affect questions of caste purity. This impinged on the fortunes of sub-castes like the Saraswat Brahmanas. Controversy regarding their status erupted in the reign of Madhavrao I who held that they were not trikarmi (high status) Brahmanas and therefore of a lower order than other Brahmana sub-castes.17 Thereafter he resumed most of the religious lands of the Shenvis around Poona (on the ground that they had had no right to receive them in the first place), and redistributed them among the Chitpavan Brahmanas.18 The Peshwas thus played off one set of Brahmanas against another, projecting themselves as upholders of the dharma while reinforcing the position of, and their alliance with, their own subcaste of the Chitpavans.

In view of the high stakes that internal stratification and ranking among the various sub-castes entailed, it is not surprising that there were a number of disputes between the sub-castes among the Brahmanas, and between the Brahmana sub-castes and other high-status groups. Wagle points out that there is recorded evidence to show that the Chitpavans had disputes with the Chandraseniya Kayastha Prabhus, the Saraswats, the Pathare Prabhus, and the Shukla Yajurvedis.19 The fact that the Chitpavans were one of the parties i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Prologue
• PART ONE
• Caste, Gender and the State in Eighteenth Century Maharashtra
• Caste Contestation, Class Formation, Nationalism and Gender
• PART TWO
• Law, Colonial State and Gender
• Men, Women and the Embattled Family
• On Widowhood: The Critique of Cultural Practices in Women's Writing
• PART THREE
• Structure and Agency: A Life and a Time
• Afterword
• Bibliography
• About the Author