MOHANDAS KARAMCHAND GANDHI’S VIEWS ON WOMEN: AN OVERVIEW

This paper focuses attention exclusively upon the views that the Father of the Nation – Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi held about women – their role and position within the family and in the society at large. Gandhi is overtly credited for giving a mass base to the nationalist movement of India beginning with his unique Satyagraha movements in Champaran and Kheda at the beginning of his political career in India. There is no doubt that masses of rural India, both men and women responded to his call of passive resistance along the lines of Satya (Truth) and Ahimsa (Non – violence) to resist the massive and powerful colonial state apparatus. However, what needs closer examination is whether the leader who embraced women as co – patriots in the nationalist struggle was a believer in the equal agency and autonomy of women as men. This paper does not intend to judge Gandhi’s views on or regarding women from the essentially Feminist lens but simply revisits his notions about women’s role and responses that Gandhi held to be appropriate. In this paper, the author has used Gandhi’s own writings and well – known scholarly secondary resources to examine Gandhi’s views on women related to specific issues that were relevant in shaping the lives of women during Gandhi’s times like: equality of the sexes, marriage, child marriage, dowry system, divorce, women’s chastity, honour, birth control and artificial sterilization, purdah system, women’s participation in the Satyagraha movement, economic self – reliance.