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ASK the average Indian woman, in the urban as well as rural areas, about their role models and they will immediately mention Sita and Savitri as epitomising the most admired quality in women: sacrifice. Then they will, if encouraged, slightly update their opinion by mentioning the Rani of Jhansi, except that her sacrifice was for the country and not her husband. I have known young, fiery, women activists even dismiss the spouses of Sita and Savitri as male chauvinists — certainly the way Ram treated his faithful wife at the end. More prodding, and we might get Indira Gandhi. I frankly think that it was Mahatma Gandhi, in his own unique way, who brought about the emancipation of Indian women by treating them with full equality in the freedom movement. To such an extent that Sarojini Naidu was able to refer to him affectionately as "Mickey Mouse". My own eyes were opened to the strength, the courage, the spirit, the creativity and the many-sided genius of Indian women when, in 2001, The Centre for Women’s Development Studies mounted an extraordinary exhibition. The exhibition covered the years 1875 to 1947, with photographs collected from a variety of institutions and individuals from India and abroad, in which they covered every possible aspect of Indian womanhood. After a travelling exhibition, the final result was a richly researched and produced book, rightly titled Visualising Indian Women, because its main strength, to use cinematic language, lies in its visuals, its wealth of photographs. And they would not have been successful without the accompanying text and the professional way in which the different chapter heads are worded and the accompanying meticulous description of change of everything, from lifestyles to saree borders, which form captions to the visuals. It is impossible, in the space of a brief review, to do justice to such a rich book. The introduction makes a valuable point, that it is only the upper middle classes that loved being photographed, for family albums (page 3 not yet having been invented) and therefore pictures of working class women are rare in comparison. But in the section on ‘Worlds Beyond’, a brave attempt has been made to restore the balance. And so the book starts with an account of how a young man in the nineteenth century tried to sit close to his wife, but she moved away. From that in the section on showcasing ‘The Family’, the camera has moved to the more extrovert family group, with studio owners and photographers imposing some uniformity in the way they were to be photographed. But this, in turn, is redeemed by the virtual pictorial histories of families from every possible part of India. Equally fascinating is the section on ‘The Learning Experience’, where the start of education for women, often encouraged by fathers and husbands, is further embellished with the case histories of women educators, pioneers in their line and how everyone, from Rabindranath to missionaries to dedicated individuals on small budgets helped the process. The section on women in culture and the arts, from Amrita Sher Gil to Zohra Sehgal, and Devika Rani to Kanan Devi will be of most interest to many of us and, once again, the visuals are embellished by detailed texts. The national movement brings out many unknown facets, such as women practising with rifles in Telengana and a tribal woman with a bullet in her arm. And as we approach the last section, ‘Towards the Midnight Hour’, everything is covered, from the terrible sufferings of women over Partition to brave pioneers who did their utmost, as they did during the Bengal Famine, to try to alleviate all suffering. The text shakes you, as it should. I shall end this review with two suggestions. Conceding that a book with so much research and such valuable photographs cannot be sold cheap, the price Rs 1500, puts it beyond the reach of just those readers who would benefit the most from reading it and will thus be only for institutions and libraries. Less forgivable is the omission of an index. Even the most reputed of publishers are now stinting on this necessity and I am shocked that Oxford University Press has fallen in line. Even if a lower priced paperback may be difficult, an index is not.
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