Feminist Identities in Gujarati Folklore: "De-Civilizing" Indian Womanhood.

Samiha Chandwani, Georgia State University

This paper contributes to the conference theme of decentering modernity by interrogating the gendered ideologies of the civilizing mission through the analysis of Gujarati folklore. Shaped by Victorian patterns, womanhood in nineteenth-century India was used as a model of morality and social reforms. Indian women were viewed as oppressed individuals who needed salvation through the intervention of the West. This paper aims to debunk this assumption by analyzing two Gujarati folklores, Chhud Vijogan and Jasma Odan that keep feminist consciousness at their center. The narratives present women not as damsels in need of rescue but as authoritative, self-sufficient, capable heroines who negotiate power and define feminist terms of honor, loyalty, and resistance. Instead of embodying passivity ascribed to women in the colonial discourse that continues to shape feminist historiography in India, the protagonists assume autonomy and fight gendered kin and caste-based norms. The feminist agency these women hold is rooted in local culture rather than Western liberalism. By situating these folk women within the ongoing debates on modernity and feminism, this paper argues that feminist identities in Gujarat, and consequently in South Asia were natural historical and cultural developments rather than a result of colonial interventions. By doing so, these stories reflect the complexity of “modern” vs “traditional”, and reveal that feminist indigenous frameworks challenge both traditional patriarchy as well as colonial morality. The paper, thus decolonizes the civilizing mission by repositioning South Asian women as agents of social transformation. Instead of moving towards Western modernity, women of Chhud Vijogan and Jasma Odan represent an alternative feminism that decenters Western womanhood and colonial ideologies.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 29. Decentering Modernity : Women, Household, and Decision Making in Colonial and Postcolonial South Asia