Women in the State: Elected Women and the Challenge of Indian Politics (1957–62)

Abstract

When Parvathi Krishnan (MP, Coimbatore Madras) entered India’s parliament on 28 March 1958, it was just a regular workday. She questioned a government minister about his policies toward railway workers, and solicited funds to repair a post office in her constituency. And yet as a woman legislator, she balanced the everyday tasks of governance with the difficulties of functioning in a male-centred institution. This essay, based on research in legislative debates in Madras and Bihar as well as in parliament, argues that especially for the period from 1957 to 1962, when so much of the legislative process was still in flux, women legislators challenged government structures even as they participated in making them. Their work—for the state and for their constituents—necessarily shaped the institutions to which they were elected. Looking beyond high-profile policies like the Five-Year Plans, this essay reveals the complex task of governing and the critical roles of women in it.

Keywords:

• Bihar
• elections
• governance
• Kolanthai Ammal
• legislative assembly
• Madras
• Manorma Singh
• Maria Lourdhammal Simon
• MLA
• MP
• parliament
• Parvathi Krishnan
• women

Acknowledgments

First of all, I would like to thank Mytheli Sreenivas, Uditi Sen and Anjali Bhardwaj Datta for spearheading this project. From the moment I attended their excellent panel at the Annual South Asia Conference in Madison, Wisconsin, 27–29 October 2017, to the opportunity to participate in the highly productive follow-up workshop at the University of Cambridge, 6–7 September 2018, and now this special section, the process has been a particularly rewarding one. And so also thanks go to all the participants in the Cambridge workshop, many of whom are included in these pages. Their questions and comments benefitted this work, specifically the discussant for my paper, Partha Pratim Shil. In addition, as always, I must acknowledge my ongoing interlocutors on Madras and Bihar politics, among them especially Kailash Chandra Jha and S. Anandhi, with whom I have discussed some of the ideas that generated this paper. I am grateful to Kenyon College, which has supported both the research for this project and my work, generally, with generous travel stipends and faculty development funds. Also critical was the support of a Fulbright-Nehru Senior Research Fellowship in Chennai in 2011–12 and I extend thanks to USIEF (the United States–India Education Foundation) for their multiple levels of assistance. Valuable research took place at the Madras Municipal Corporation Archives and the Connemara Public Library, in Chennai and at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library in Delhi. Also, a number of sources come from the Center for Research Libraries in Chicago; I am grateful to all these institutions. Finally, I am deeply grateful to the anonymous reviewers, selected by the journal South Asia, for their careful reading and invaluable insight, which certainly has benefitted both my thinking about the project and this essay.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Parliament of India, Lok Sabha Digital Library, Indian Parliamentary Debates, 27–28 Mar. 1958 [https://eparlib.nic.in/, accessed 8 Feb. 2021].

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid. Shastri later became prime minister in 1964.

5. For example, from 1957 to 1959, 3 percent of members of the US House of Representatives (thirteen) were women. From 1959 to 1961, the number was sixteen or 3.5 percent [https://history.house.gov/Exhibitions-and-Publications/WIC/Historical-Data/Women-Representatives-and-Senators-by-Congress/, accessed 8 Feb. 2021]. At the same time, in India in 1957, there were 24 women members (about 5 percent total or 6 percent of the elected constituencies).

6. Certainly, the dialogue between Parvathi Krishnan and both government ministers about the distribution of transportation and communications funds expresses her frustration.

7. From the time of the pre-conference on ‘The Long 1950s in South Asia’ at the Madison South Asia Conference in 2006 organised by Itty Abraham, there has been an increase in historical attention to that period. Haimanti Roy, Kamran Ali, Ornit Shani and others have turned their attention to this period. Indeed, the Indian History Congress added a post-Independence section to its proceedings in another recognition of the historical significance of this period.

8. Ornit Shani, How India Became Democratic: Citizenship and the Making of the Universal Franchise (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).

9. There is, of course, the related and rich conversation about women in movement politics, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and other forms of activism, including revolutionary activism. Indeed, from Leslie Calman, Towards Empowerment: Women and Social Movements in India (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992), and Radhika Kumar, The History of Doing: An Illustrated Account of Movements for Women’s Rights and Feminism in India, 1800–1900 (New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1993), to contemporary scholarship such as Ania Loomba, Revolutionary Desires: Women, Communism, and Feminism in India (London: Routledge, 2018), most scholarship focuses on women’s activism outside the legislatures. This research contributes to that discussion of activism, though placing it within governing bodies as well.

10. Geraldine Forbes (ed.), Manmohini Zutshi Sahgal: An Indian Freedom Fighter Recalls Her Life (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1994). In addition, the biographies of early women legislators have made it into a variety of scholarship on adjacent subjects. The most recent entrant into this conversation is Annie Devenish, Debating Women's Citizenship in India 1930–1960 (New Delhi: Bloomsbury India, 2019). But see also Archana Venkatesh, ‘Women, Medicine and Nation-Building: The “Lady Doctor” and Development in 20th Century South India’, unpublished PhD dissertation, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA, 2020, on the ‘Lady Doctor’ (including women physicians turned politicians).

11. In a related conversation about citizenship and gender, see Haimanti Roy, ‘Paper Rights: The Emergence of Documentary Identities in Post-Colonial India, 1950–67’, in South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, Vol. 39, no. 2 (June 2016), pp. 329–49, on the history of documenting citizenship. Similarly, on citizenship (and female citizenship), see Niraja Gopal Jayal, Citizenship and Its Discontents (Boston: Harvard University Press, 2013), pp. 75–81.

12. Debate about the success of reservations for women and about the role of family connections in getting women into office sidesteps the question of what women in office actually accomplish. Nevertheless, those studies are important prerequisites to this: see Wendy Singer, ‘A Constituency Suitable for Ladies’ and Other Social Histories of Indian Elections (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); and, more recently, Shirin M. Rai and Carole Spary, Performing Representation: Women Members in the Indian Parliament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). The Trivedi Centre for Political Data at Ashoka University in Sonipat is currently collecting data on women’s participation in debates, questions and private members’ bills. This material will benefit from a simultaneous humanities-based research on women legislators.

13. There is a practical reason too. These are the states for which I have archival data and where I have studied the historical context most closely, having lived and worked in both Bihar and Tamil Nadu. As a social historian, I am committed to placing the study of legislators and legislatures into the local histories of which they are a part. Obviously, a larger project would include more states and, potentially, collaborations.

14. ‘Members since 1952’, Lok Sabha, Indian Parliament Website, National Informatics Centre (NIC) [https://parliamentofindia.nic.in/, accessed 8 Feb. 2021].

15. For a more thorough discussion of this, see Singer, ‘A Constituency Suitable for Ladies’. Official reports on early elections provide separate data on women candidates: see Report on the First General Election, Election Commission of India [https://eci.gov.in/files/file/4111-general-election-1951-vol-i-ii/, accessed 8 Feb. 2021]; and Report on the Second General Election, Election Commission of India [https://eci.gov.in/files/file/4112-general-election-1957-vol-i-ii/, accessed 8 Feb. 2021].

16. Constituent Assembly Debates, 11 Oct. 1949, Parliament of India website, National Informatics Centre [http://loksabhaph.nic.in/Debates/Result_Nw_15.aspx?dbsl=412&ser=&smode=#M363*5, accessed 8 Feb. 2021].

17. AICC II Instalment, C.E.C.3, Parliamentary Board, Circulars, 1961, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (henceforth, NMML), New Delhi.

18. For more detail about these discussions within the Congress Party, see Singer, ‘A Constituency Suitable for Ladies’.

19. The application for a ticket that all prospective candidates filled out required listing their qualifications. Being a ‘woman’ was considered one of the qualifications to run, along with local connections or resources: see Narinder Kapur, ‘On Selection of Congress Candidates’, in Iqbal Narain et al. (eds), Fourth General Elections in India, Vol I: Political Surveys (Bombay: Orient Longman, 1968), pp. 75–84.

20. V. John Lings, ‘The Life and Works of Maria Lourdhammal Simon’, unpublished PhD dissertation, Manonmaniam Sundaranar University, Tirunelveli, Tamil Nadu, India, 2017 [http://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/200031/12/12_%20conclusion.pdf, accessed 8 Feb. 2021]; and K.K. Thanammal, ‘Lourdhammal Simon—A Model of Women and Leadership’, in RJISAC Journal [http://www.rjisacjournal.com/lourdhammal-simon-model-of-women-leadership-and-capacity/, accessed 31 Jan. 2021].

21. T. Hanumanthappa (comp.), Madras Legislative Assembly 1957–1962: A Review (Madras: Legislative Assembly Department, 1962).

22. File ZR-1 Feb. 1957, Zonal Representatives/Instructions, AICC II Instalment, NMML.

23. The 1957 election included double member constituencies in cases in which there were reservations for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. In those constituencies, the winner overall and the highest vote-getter in the targeted group were both sent to the Assembly. In the case of Bihar, for example, this added four more women MLAs.

24. Rai and Spary, Performing Representation, p. 5, see chapters 5 and 6 for women members during debates. In general, the important contribution of this book is its empirical analysis of the extent of women’s contributions and on which bills.

25. Parliament of India, Lok Sabha Digital Library, Indian Parliamentary Debates, Questions, 18 June 1952 [https://eparlib.nic.in/, accessed 8 Feb. 2021].

26. Ibid.

27. Indeed, that is how the first woman, Muthulaxmi Reddy, gained a seat in the Madras Legislative Council in 1926.

28. Parliament of India, Lok Sabha Digital Library, Indian Parliamentary Debates, Oral Answers, 11 May 1962 [https://eparlib.nic.in/, accessed 8 Feb. 2021].

29. Chakravarty returned to the question later in the same session in a discussion on food and agriculture: ibid.

30. T. Hanumanthappa (comp.), Madras Legislative Assembly, 1957–1962: A Review, p. 69.

31. Ibid.

32. In 1952, Ramachandran was elected from Athoor constituency and in 1957 from Vedasandur constituency.

33. Culled from reading the 1958 debates: see Government of Madras, Madras Legislative Assembly Debates, Vol X, 1958.

34. Government of Madras, Madras Legislative Assembly Debates, Vol. II, no. 1–2, 27 June 1952, p. 757.

35. Kolanthai Ammal (Kolanthaiammal) was a lecturer in Tamil, an author and a broadcaster for All India Radio–Tamil. She was elected to the Sulur assembly seat in 1957, which was part of the Coimbatore Lok Sabha constituency.

36. T. Hanumanthappa (comp.), Legislative Department, Government of Madras, Madras Legislative Assembly: A Review, Mar. 1957, pp. 149, 162 [http://www.assembly.tn.gov.in/archive/1st_1952/Review_1-52-57.pdf, accessed 12 Oct. 2020].

37. Government of Madras, Madras Legislative Assembly Debates, Vol. X, 1958.

38. Personal correspondence with Sachinder Singh; also see Kiran Bala and Sachinder Singh, ‘Trends and Patterns of Seats Won by the BJP in Parliamentary Elections (1984–2004)’, in Transactions, Vol. 36, no. 1 (2014), pp 63–9.

39. This is an overall observation from reading the debates in the Bihar Legislative Assembly (Vidhan Sabha) between 1957 and 1962: Government of Bihar, Legislative Assembly Debates, Vols. 1 and 2, 1957–62.

40. Shrimati Ram Sukumari Devi, speaking in the Legislative Assembly, Patna, on Wednesday 19 Sept. 1962, Government of Bihar, Bihar Legislative Assembly Debates, Part II, 1962, p. 15.

41. Speech originally in Hindi: ibid., p. 15.

42. Pratibha Devi, speaking in the Legislative Assembly, Patna, on Tuesday, 18 Sept. 1962, Government of Bihar, Bihar Legislative Assembly Debates, Part II, 1962, p. 29.

43. Manorma Singh, speaking in the Legislative Assembly, Patna, Mar. 1959, Government of Bihar, Bihar Legislative Assembly Debates, Vol. II, 1959, p. 8.

Additional information

Funding

2011–12 Fulbright-Nehru Senior Research Grant, administered by the US–India Education Foundation. 2012 Great Lakes Colleges Association, NDI (New Directions Initiative) for Tamil improvement. 2017 Roy T. Wortman Professorship Funds for Research and Travel. 2018 Kenyon College Faculty Development Grant, for research in the British Library.