Tarabai Shinde : Raging humorously against patriarchy What is most striking about Tarabai Shindes essay is the humour

and the easy colloquial tone which characterises it and which has almost been maintained throughout the whole of its length. The face that it is polemical and satirical adds to its charm and power even though her arguments are sometimes simplistic and even contradictory. The essay is spirited and eloquent but often not factual and precise in the details about the incidents and things discussed but none can doubt its powerful feminist and liberal tone and the playful and almost irreverent attitude towards conservative and patriarchal, societal norms and even religious issues. But what is also remarkable is the wide variety of discourses and aspects of things, the debates and arguments of the time, the anger at the hypocrisies and the narrow-mindedness of male chauvinist discourse(s), speculations about the past and the changes being brought about under colonial rule, details which provided glimpses about the condition of women and many more details about the social life of the times which form the background of the essay which sometimes also includes the British and even the condition of the economy. The frank and almost emotional tone is captivating and so is the force of her conviction that the male dominated society is responsible for most of the problems concerning women but that it is women who are always blamed and the way she gives examples and justifies her arguments. Throughout the essay she appeals for liberal values and more freedom especially for women and highlights the issues concerning them, and points out the injustices faced by them. She is angry at the suffocating pressures on women and she addresses herself to a predominantly male readership and urges them to be reasonable. She says this to men in her introduction, All I ask is if you are really someone with an open mind, think about it carefully and see if what I say is true or not. But if you just kick your horses forward to protect those fancy reputations of yours, Ive got no remedy for you. Such is the admirable and biting satire with which she addresses men and attacks the hypocritical arguments of a patriarchal society. Her essay certainly provides realistic glimpses into the world of nineteenth century colonial India and its problems especially in the areas in the West. She criticises empty talk of idealism which only women are supposed to follow and the stricter code that is enforced upon her. One of the issues that she focuses on at greater length is the condition of widows and the laws and strictures enforced upon them. She brings out with humour the absurd logic of typical notions such as that women should serve men as gods and the logic of Stridhrama and the concept of a pativrata, or the ideal roles women alone were supposed to play. With characteristic irony she says, Because stridharma hasnt never been saved by making people sit at home and control their thoughts. She goes on to add that what it really means is, obeying orders from your husband and doing everything he wants. She also looks at and talks about the anti-feminist and misogynists attitudes being disseminated through the popular literature of the time. She points out the absurdity of making too much of womens virtue and the extreme disorder and chaos caused in some such stories by remarking about one such simplistic plot from a book called Stricharitra, a text supposedly about wicked women. She says about one of its stories about the widowed daughter of one Brahmin that, she gets pregnant, goes through all sorts of ups and downs and dies in utter misery...all this brought about through

copulation. She mocks the excessive patriarchal concern with the chastity of women and adultery which exists only or at least mostly in the case of women. All your big talk-you made it all up on the basis of the shastras. But in fact the people who wrote all these books ought to be ashamed of themselves, shastras, puranas, poothis and so on. You ask me why? Well, when thry picked out women from the previous ages, some of them had gone wrong too, but there they are now, held up as first class pativratas. She highlights the funny side of some of these stories and goes on to say, Arent all these gods and sages of yours wonderful. Each one better than the last. Each of them made a secret love marriage... But when someone has kids like that these days they get called very different names. With her sceptical lenses she puts to careful scrutiny and criticism several manifestations of patriarchal logic especially in Hindu society in Maharashtra about whose condition she was obviously more aware. In her usual satirical style she also talks about the trickery of the sadhus. She says, They have got all the proper merits, they are so detached, they hand out holy mantras. She has got a lot of things to say about the interpretation of religious texts for patriarchal purposes and questions the emphasis on only certain aspects of those. She questions such blatantly unjust demands of being a pativrata and mocks the kind of logic which lauds and praises women like the character Mandodri in the Ramayana who went on behalf of her husband Ravana to persuade Sita not to resist her advances. She says it is foolish to have such expectations from women especially when men can hardly allow women the slightest of freedoms. She mocks the hypocritical language of male chauvinism and the pompous use of words like bravery and honour and says that its of no use if they cant ignore caste rules to bring happiness into the lives of unhappy widows. The reform societies sprouting during that period is also mocked at and she calls them as inconsequential as a spare tit of a goat. When there is less venom in her narrative she pleads passionately for more equality between the sexes and that they should live in harmony. At several points she says that a woman is happy when she meets a like minded husband. She emphasises upon the equality in the relationship between a wife and her husband and says they should like and agree with each other for the marriage to be happy and without problems. She is disgusted with men who give away their young daughters in marriage to old people or as second wives. She also criticizes people who get their husbands to inferior husbands so that the daughter along with her husband can stay at home with them, the seclusion and confinement of women and the biased property rights. She argues that if women in some instances are indeed gullible and foolish it is because she has been pushed, in a dark corner far from the real world, shut up in purdah, frightened, sat on, dominated as if she was a female slave. Quite rationally she questions why men dont have to bear a similar fate as the hardships borne by widows when their wives die and why can they so easily marry again when women are not allowed to do the same and asks, Did the authors of the shastras keep their savage glares just for women. She goes on to say that such laws can only be acceptable if also applied to men. She lambasts the logic which does not prevents old men from getting married to young women especially when they are rich but prevents female widows from doing the same even if young. Her conversational and often rhetorical tone quite effectively reveals the narrow-mindedness of male chauvinist discourse.

She questions the logic of pativrata thoroughly and says that a womans mouth dries with terror when the husband falls sick. She is always conscious of a male readership which she knows is deeply biased against women and she bitingly adds, Its out of devotion you might say-or out of fear. She expects the condition of women to improve under British rule but many critics have pointed out that it actually deteriorated and rules for women sometimes became even stricter. In her essay we also find evidence to the state and extent to which Indian industry and manufacturing was harmed during the time of colonial rule. She mocks at the way Indian men have taken to copying everything from dress to manners from the British. She examines the kind of religious opportunism which allowed men to violate all caste laws by living abroad and returning and becoming a respectable part of society after performing a few rites of penance but no rules were made easy in a similar way for women. There are many instances when she finds faults with the shastras. For example she points out that the same shastras had provisions which allowed certain privileged women like queens to prolong the line with any sadhu of her choice. She must be given credit also for the fact that she also blames the meaningless and often unnecessary praise and flattery lavished upon women. She calls flattery as one of the several factors contributing to their ruin. She compares love to milk and says about it that, once it has gone sour you cant make it good again. After a few lines she goes on to say that, its only natural for people to prefer new things over old, it does not matter who it is. But a mans wife has only to look at someone else with a bit of interest and hell work himself into the most furious rage. So in effect, quite indirectly and by handling this controversial topic with subtlety, she is almost saying that whether it should be considered that fidelity is important or infidelity should be made permissible, the same rules should apply to men as to women. Even if one considers this interpretation far-fetched, it is clear that she leaves space for more possibilities and for negotiations between the sexes. Maybe she is only talking about the fact that men are so easily jealous but dont at all think of the kind of sentiments women can have in similar circumstances. At the same time she is certainly ready to accept or understand the desire for novelty which is the primary argument due to which, presumably, adultery is committed. She talks about this logic as the one used by men but who cant at all tolerate similar attitudes in women. She is always conscious of predominantly male readership who she knows is deeply biased against women. However it must be pointed out that her logic is often contradictory and even naive and sometimes her tone is quarrelsome. But she does not pretend to be intellectually very sophisticated and acknowledges that she is has a clumsy manner has also been brought up in the typical restrictive traditional manner. She acknowledges that women can be sometimes vain and whimsical but she says it is only because they are uneducated. However it can also be said that at certain points in her narrative she seems to be swayed too much by anger and disgust at patriarchy and her criticism takes up a rather shrill tone which is sometimes even contradictory and outright irrational and borders on abuse. For example, addressing the men among her readers she says, And you who are mean and faithless who make promises to others then cut their throats behind a mask of kindness. At another place she calls men abode of debauchery. Similarly about western clothes becoming popular she says that, They look good on people if they are white. But some fellow who is black as coal puts them on, it just looks like a strange disguise. But even her abuse seems not very wrong because she always gives too many examples of male hypocrisy and her ranting is done in the way people do in colloquial language while debating heatedly about something.

At certain other places she makes use of expressions which are almost feudal although many of her arguments are clearly valid even today. For example once again while ranting against men she calls them, betrayers of friends and traitors to kings. She successfully and with a lot of wit contends that women cannot alone be blamed for adultery and that men were guilty of it and many other vices much more than women. She makes a very successful case for men to become more understanding and tolerant towards women and is surprisingly modern at certain instances. The way women are treated as others is also mentioned and the range of issues that she has included in her witty easy is admirable. About the process of othering women she says that, You heap all your contempt on womens heads so its you who becomes the very image of virtue. She talks at some length about love and the relationship between men and women and however biting her satire and however fickle and hypocritical she reveals mens views to be, she inevitably pleads for more egalitarianism and justice for women. .