Sunday, May 29 2005 11:19 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: "In the 17th century Vijaynagar Empire of South India, women occupied a high position in society. They played an active role in the political social and literary life of the Country. Sati was very common...."

How can one say that ending of one's life because one's social role as wife is over, even if done voluntarily, represents a high position for women?, asks a contributor to the book 'A Space of Her Own, Personal Narratives of Twelve Women,' questioning the statement, which infact forms part of a seventh standard text book.

As 12 women from different walks of life and different parts of India recall personal recollections of lives of their mothers and grandmothers spanning a period of over 100 years, the outcome speaks volumes on the status of women in India.

"As the narratives reveal," says Carolyn M Elliot, Professor of Political Science Emerita at the University of Vermont in Burlington, in her introduction, "Were the women portrayed able to find any space for themselves? Or were they so constrained by the social roles of greatest importance to their families-wife and mother- that ending these roles meant some kind of death?

In a society where marriage means a girl leaving her natal family to join another family, the project represented a somewhat subvertive voice. It was about hidden relationships, that is, women's relations with each other unmediated by marriage.

It was an effort to bring into view the lives of women who, while often treasured in private memories, have been unavailable to us.

The biggest obstacle of all, however, was being born female in a culture that denigrated, distrusted and ultimately feared women. The book is a product of a project that tried to focus on structures that have been hidden by the normative view of Indian family life as patrilineal and patrilocal.

The outcome is, in the words of Priti Desai who describes her mother as a feminist, who had quietly passed on the message that a woman had an identity, a will and needed a space of her own.

These women, the mothers and grandmothers, thus had come forward in situations of stress to exhibit unforeseen strengths and flexibility. As noted Marathi play writer Vijaya Mehta puts it, while women now have more choices, earlier generations found distinctive and centred identities that made their lives meaningful.

Throughout India, the authors note a change in intellectual climate in the 20th century that diminished religious orthodoxy and brought a new rationalism to social relations.

Can these narratives be considered the social history of the previous generations? "I would argue that these narratives contain the stuff of history, materials to be taken along with others, to help construct a portrait of the past," says Elliott.

The narratives are littered with failed marriages. High caste Hindu families then lived under an unforgiving rule that daughters must be married by puberty.

As the puberty clock ticked away, families made greater and greater compromises in the choice of husbands to fulfill this obligation. Thus, there were a number of marriages arranged with completely unsuitable men, old, already married and so on.