Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The attempt of the British colonial state to establish a centralized administration in India ended in heightened tensions between Hindus and Muslims. At the same time, British rule defined itself in a gendered manner, seeking to justify itself in part by reference to the plight, real and supposed, of Indian women. Consequently, responses to colonial rule also had to confront gender issues, especially in the context of growing Hindu cultural nationalism in the late nineteenth century, when a number of early nationalists, in their search for definitions of Indianness, identified Indian with Hindu. Having accepted British rule in the public sphere, nationalists decided that battle must be given on the terrain of the private, claiming the illegitimacy of colonial interference in domestic issues and redefining community by modernizing patriarchy.The attempt to create a militant nationalist ideology often resulted in a sharply gendered image. Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, a forerunner of cultural nationalism, wrote novels which envisaged the country as motherland, with its song, Bande Mataram (salutations to the motherland), becoming a rallying cry for nationalists of Hindu origin as well as Hindu communalists. The early writings of Chattopadhyay displayed a great deal of concern for class, caste, and gender oppression, but in his later works his focus changed to a search for an ethico-religious ... log in or subscribe to read full text