>Thenexttalk at 07:50, 8 January 2022

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{{EngvarB|date=August 2014}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2014}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Tarabai Shinde
| image =
| alt =
| caption =
| birth_date = {{Birth year||1850}}
| birth_place =[[Buldhana]], [[Berar Province]], British India.(Currently in [[Maharashtra]])
| death_date = {{Death year and age|1910|1850}}
| death_place =
| nationality =Indian
| other_names =
| notable_works =''Stri Purush Tulana'' (A Comparison Between Women and Men) (1882)
| known_for =
| occupation = feminist, women's rights activist, writer
}}

'''Tarabai Shinde''' (1850–1910)<ref>{{cite book |title=Complete Works of Mahatma Phule |year=1991 |language=mr |editor-last=Phadke |editor-first=Y.D. |editor-link=Yashawant Dinkar Phadke}}</ref> was a [[feminist]] activist who protested [[patriarchy]] and [[caste]] in 19th century [[India]]. She is known for her published work, ''[[Stri Purush Tulana]]'' ("A Comparison Between Women and Men"), originally published in [[Marathi language|Marathi]] in 1882. The pamphlet is a critique of upper-caste patriarchy, and is often considered the first modern Indian [[feminist]] text.<ref name="tr"/> It was very controversial for its time in challenging the [[Hindu]] [[Religious text|religious scriptures]] themselves as a source of women's oppression, a view that continues to be controversial and debated today.<ref name="uni">{{cite book|last=Delhi |first=University of |author-link=University of Delhi |title=Indian Literature : An Introduction |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mivv3p-msd8C&q=%22Tarabai+Shinde%22+-inpublisher%3Aicon&pg=PA133|publisher=Pearson Education|isbn=978-81-317-0520-9|page=133|date=September 2005 }}</ref> She was a member of [[Satyashodhak Samaj]].

==Early life and family==
Born in Maratha Family in the year 1850 to Bapuji Hari [[Shinde]] in [[Buldhana]], [[Berar Province]], in present-day [[Maharashtra]], she was a founding member of the ''[[Satyashodhak Samaj]]'', Pune. Her father was a radical and head clerk in the office of Deputy Commissioner of Revenues, he also published a book titled, "''Hint to the Educated Natives''" in 1871. There was no girls' school in the area. Tarabai was the only daughter and was taught Marathi, Sanskrit and English by her father. She also had four brothers.<ref name="fe">{{cite book|last=Feldhaus|first=Anne |title=Images of women in Maharashtrian society |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=r_qf_OYAdqgC&q=%22Tarabai+Shinde%22+-inpublisher%3Aicon&pg=PA205|year=1998|publisher=SUNY Press|isbn=978-0-7914-3659-2|page=205}}</ref><ref name="ch">{{cite book|last=DeLamotte|first=Eugenia C.|author2=Natania Meeker|author3=Jean F. O'Barr|title=Women imagine change: a global anthology of women's resistance from 600 B.C.E. to present|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZO4n5-Y2UMAC&q=%22Tarabai+Shinde%22+-inpublisher%3Aicon&pg=PA483|year=1997|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-0-415-91531-1|page=[https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780415915311/page/483 483]|chapter=Tarabai Shinde|url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780415915311/page/483}}</ref> Tarabai was married when quite young, but was granted more freedom in the household than most other Marathi wives of the time since her husband moved into her parents' home.<ref name=":0" />

== Social work ==
Shinde was an associate of social activists [[Jyotiba Phule|Jotirao]] and [[Savitribai Phule]] and was a founding member of their [[Satyashodhak Samaj]] ("Truth Finding Community") organisation. The Phules shared with Shinde an awareness of the separate axes of oppression that constitute gender and caste, as well as the intermeshed nature of the two.

== "Stri Purush Tulana" ==
Tarabai Shindes popular literary work is "Stri Purush Tulana" .In her essay, Shinde criticised the social inequality of caste, as well as the patriarchal views of other activists who saw caste as the main form of antagonism in Hindu society. According to Susie Tharu and K. Lalita, "...Stri Purush Tulana is probably the first full fledged and extant feminist argument after the poetry of the [[Bhakti]] Period. But Tarabai's work is also significant because at a time when intellectuals and activists alike were primarily concerned with the hardships of a Hindu widow's life and other easily identifiable atrocities perpetrated on women, Tarabai Shinde, apparently working in isolation, was able to broaden the scope of analysis to include the ideological fabric of patriarchal society. Women everywhere, she implies, are similarly oppressed."

''Stri Purush Tulana'' was written in response to an article which appeared in 1881, in ''Pune Vaibhav'', an orthodox newspaper published from [[Pune]], about a criminal case against a young [[Brahmin]] (upper-caste) widow, Vijayalakshmi in [[Surat]], who had been convicted of murdering her illegitimate son for the fear of public disgrace and [[ostracism]] and sentenced to be hanged (later appealed and modified to transportation for life).<ref name="fe"/><ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.tribuneindia.com/2002/20020224/spectrum/book1.htm|title=On the other side of society|last=Roy|first=Anupama|date=24 February 2002|work=The Tribune}}</ref><ref name=":0">{{Cite book|title=Makers of Modern India|last=Guha|first=Ramachandra|publisher=The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press|year=2011|pages=119}}</ref> Having worked with upper-caste widows who were forbidden to remarry, Shinde was well aware of incidents of widows being impregnated by relatives. The book analysed the tightrope women must walk between the "good woman" and the "prostitute". The book was printed at Shri Shivaji Press, Pune, in 1882 with 500 copies at cost nine annas,<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2000/02/04/stories/18044401.htm|date=4 February 2000|title=Poignant pleas of an Indian widow|last=Devarajan|first=P.|work=Business Line}}</ref> but hostile reception by contemporary society and press, meant that she did not publish again.<ref>{{cite book|last=Anagol|first=Padma |title=The emergence of feminism in India, 1850–1920|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YICroPrSyz4C&q=%22Tarabai+Shinde%22+-inpublisher%3Aicon&pg=PA239|year=2005|publisher=Ashgate Publishing|isbn=978-0-7546-3411-9|page=239}}</ref> The work however was praised by [[Jyotirao Phule]], a prominent Marathi social reformer, who referred to Tarabai as chiranjivini (dear daughter) and recommended her pamphlet to colleagues. The work finds mention in the second issue of ''Satsar'', the magazine of ''Satyashodhak Samaj'', started by [[Jyotiba Phule]] in 1885, however thereafter the work remained largely unknown till 1975, when it was rediscovered and republished.<ref name="tr">{{cite book|last=Tharu |first=Susie J. |author2=Ke Lalita |title=Women Writing in India: 600 B.C. to the Present (Vol. 1)|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=u297RJP9gvwC&q=%22Tarabai+Shinde%22+-inpublisher%3Aicon&pg=PA221|year=1991|publisher=Feminist Press|isbn=978-1-55861-027-9|page=221}}</ref>

==See also==
* [[Jyotirao Phule]], another revolutionary who fought for the rights of women and [[Dalit|dalits]].
*[[Savitribai Phule]], Wife of [[Jyotirao Phule]], and social reformer.

==References==
{{reflist}}

==Sources==
* Shinde, Tarabai. 1882. ''Stri purush tulana''. (Translated by Maya Pandit). In S. Tharu and K. Lalita (Eds.) "Women writing in India. 600 B.C. to the present. Volume I: 600 B.C. to the early 20th century". The City University of New York City : The Feminist Press.
* [[Gail Omvedt]]. 1995. ''Dalit Vision'', Orient Longman
* Chakravarti, Uma and Gill, Preeti (eds). ''Shadow Lives: Writings on Widowhood''. Kali for Women, Delhi.
* O'Hanlon, Rosalind. 2000. ''A Comparison Between Women and Men : Tarabai Shinde and the Critique of Gender Relations in Colonial India''. Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2000, 144 p., {{ISBN|0-19-564736-X}}.
* O'Hanlon, Rosalind. 1991. ''Issues of Widowhood: Gender and Resistance in Colonial Western India'', in Douglas Haynes and Gyan Prakash (eds) "Contesting Power. Resistance and Everyday Social Relations in South Asia", Oxford University Press, New Delhi.
* O'Hanlon, Rosalind. 1994. ''For the Honour of My Sister Countrywomen: Tarabai Shinde and the Critique of Gender Relations in Colonial India'', Oxford University Press, Oxford.

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Shinde, Tarabai}}
[[Category:1850 births]]
[[Category:1910 deaths]]
[[Category:Indian feminist writers]]
[[Category:Women writers from Maharashtra]]
[[Category:Indian women's rights activists]]
[[Category:Marathi people]]
[[Category:Indian social reformers]]
[[Category:Indian feminists]]
[[Category:Marathi-language writers]]
[[Category:Writers from Maharashtra]]
[[Category:19th-century Indian women writers]]
[[Category:19th-century Indian writers]]
[[Category:20th-century Indian women writers]]
[[Category:20th-century Indian writers]]
[[Category:People from Buldhana district]]
[[Category:Indian women activists]]
[[Category:Activists from Maharashtra]]

Tarabai Shinde - Revision history

>Thenexttalk at 07:50, 8 January 2022