Understanding Women in Precolonial and Colonial Context in Colonial Bengal
Understanding of women in pre-colonial and colonial Context in Colonial Bengal BY Shrestha Banerjee
No one would contest that the law has been a privileged site of struggle and debate in the contemporary women’s movement. Diverse campaign from those relating to forms of violence to unequal rights in the family, community or the work place –placed direct and central emphasis on legal provisions if women’s socio-political subordination was to be realized. From demands for legal reform, to criticisms among feminist legal scholars, from problems of local concepts of justice to those structuring official policy, the law has become simultaneously the most used and criticized sphere for thinking about justice for women . However, “The struggle to create legal space for women, by the women”-is a fact derived from the colonial periodthough initially it was not women, but a few enlightened men, who took the first steps towards legal reform of social practices. In order to ameliorate the condition of women in India Legislature enacted the some very important enactments, which could give a different slant to women’s legal status in colonial and post-colonial India. The socio– religious reform movements of the nineteenth century advocated a reform of Hindu society whose twin evils were seen as the existence of caste and the low status of women. 1 The women’s question took a central place in the early stage of the national movement. The grave issues that controlled the parameters of justice for a young girl were around the notion of her sexuality. Patriarchy reserved for itself the right to control a young girl’s sexuality in order to harness her reproductive function to the social and religious sustenance of the Hindu religion and community. Hence, her early marriage was a matter of imperative necessity. Thus, any shift regarding the biological age at which young girls could be thus harnessed to regeneration of the Hindu community, could become an explosive question that
No one would contest that the law has been a privileged site of struggle and debate in the contemporary women’s movement. Diverse campaign from those relating to forms of violence to unequal rights in the family, community or the work place –placed direct and central emphasis on legal provisions if women’s socio-political subordination was to be realized. From demands for legal reform, to criticisms among feminist legal scholars, from problems of local concepts of justice to those structuring official policy, the law has become simultaneously the most used and criticized sphere for thinking about justice for women . However, “The struggle to create legal space for women, by the women”-is a fact derived from the colonial periodthough initially it was not women, but a few enlightened men, who took the first steps towards legal reform of social practices. In order to ameliorate the condition of women in India Legislature enacted the some very important enactments, which could give a different slant to women’s legal status in colonial and post-colonial India. The socio– religious reform movements of the nineteenth century advocated a reform of Hindu society whose twin evils were seen as the existence of caste and the low status of women. 1 The women’s question took a central place in the early stage of the national movement. The grave issues that controlled the parameters of justice for a young girl were around the notion of her sexuality. Patriarchy reserved for itself the right to control a young girl’s sexuality in order to harness her reproductive function to the social and religious sustenance of the Hindu religion and community. Hence, her early marriage was a matter of imperative necessity. Thus, any shift regarding the biological age at which young girls could be thus harnessed to regeneration of the Hindu community, could become an explosive question that