Feminism - a force for social transformation

And finally we find some good news to read about feminism - as communicated in the 'mainstream media'.

During the course of a two-day seminar on the 'many faces of feminism in India', organised by the Centre for Women's Studies and Development which was held at Banaras Hindu University, Professor RK Mani Tripathi told the audience feminism was always conditioned by the place and the time it developed. Whether in Europe or America, the focus of feminist discourse varied according to the type of exploitation women experienced. Gradually as more reflexion developed, he said it became a critique and a struggle against the institutional structures of patriarchy.

In India, feminist discourse developed in 19th century as a result of initiative taken by Raja Ram Mohan Rai and other reformers for women's freedom and education, he said and added in Gandhian thinking, feminist discourse took a definite form. Gandhi considered non-violence as a feminine quality and accepted feminity not as a weakness but as a culture, he pointed out.

Had Professor Tripathi had access to the scholarly resources that Dale Spender did when she wrote "Women of Ideas and What Men Have Done to Them", he would have also been able to share what she discovered about Gandhi and his connection to feminism. Spender makes a case for the influence of the suffragists' tactics - and their eventual success - upon Ghandi's choice to use passive resistance to draw attention to the many outbursts of British armed violence against the Indian people.