Book review: 'The History of Doing'
Author- Radha Kumar
Year of Publication- 1993
“A political struggle that does not have women at the heart of it, above it, below it, and within it is
no struggle at all1.” - Arundhati Roy
Women’s movements have sparked global and national action towards attaining gender
equality, howbeit; women as a social group continue to be disproportionately impacted by all
sorts of violence and discrimination in various facets of life. The emergence of women’s
movements in India can be retraced to the 19th century social reform movement. It stands in
stark contrast with that of the West as it was started by men and subsequently joined by
women.
‘The History of Doing: An Illustrated Account of Movements for Women's Rights and Feminism
in India, 1800-1990’ by Radha Kumar (Indian feminist, author and academic) compiles the
extensive volume of research on Women’s movement in India from the nineteenth century until
the present day in an extremely comprehensive, analytical and engaging fashion. Given time
and space constraints, Kumar offers a selective account of major campaigns, organizations and
salient figures in her book which is one of the first few attempts at examining the social status
and position of women during almost two hundred years of Indian history.
Distributed into 11 chapters, the book touches upon a plethora of events from women's
participation in the pre-independence reform movements to the emergence of contemporary
feminism in India. “The nineteenth century could well be called an age of women, for all over the
world their rights and wrongs, their 'nature', capacities and potential were the subjects of heated
discussion2.” The social reformers shared a common belief that no society could progress if its
women continued to remain backward. The reformers believed that the status of Indian women
in the 19th century was extremely poor, thus they worked to improve the situation generally via
legislation, political activity, and the promotion of education. The first few chapters illustrate the
nuanced interactions between the social reform agenda and the independence struggle. They
focus on the woman’s role as that of a wife or a mother. Together with the socio-political
contexts, the reader gets a general understanding of the interplay between numerous forces
during the nationalist struggle. For example, traditionalists have long used religion as a means
of restraining women, but during the nationalist movement, goddess-centered rhetoric became
increasingly prominent and the image of the mother goddess began to be associated with that
of Mother India. According to Kumar, the nationalist leaders accepted this as they felt that the
movement needed to have a wider base which could be successfully achieved by granting
religious sanction to women for engaging in popular movements.
1 Arundhati Roy (2006). “Ordinary Person's Guide To Empire”, p.351
2 Radha Kumar (1993). “ The History of Doing: An Illustrated Account of Movements for Women’s Rights and
Feminism in India, 1800-1990” New Delhi: Kali for Women, p.7
