The young generation of feminists is inspired by their previous generations and carries on their legacies. The foundations built by some are brought to their final phase by others. Prem Chowdhry is one such foundation of feminist writing in Haryana. Her first book entitled “The Veiled Women: Shifting Gender Equations in Rural Haryana (1880-1980)” and the title sketch, drawn by Prem herself, showing a group of rural Haryanvi women holding each other in their arms, fill you with joy, a kind of “feminist joy”.
A joy in which one sees that the pain of a people who have always lived in the shadow of deprivation, shame and violence has not gone unnoticed. The joy that while the nation fought for its freedom, someone who was born unfree stood by.
Who is Prem Chowdhry?
Prem Chowdhry is an eminent Indian historian, social scientist and renowned artist. An alumna of Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, Prem has held various positions including former Professor of History at Miranda House, University of Delhi, Senior Professorial Fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML) and Senior Fellow at the Indian Council of Social Science Research ( ICSSR), Academic Fellow at the Indian Council for Historical Research (ICHR) and Life Member of the Center for Women’s Development Studies (CWDS).
Source: Outlook India
Prem Chowdhry’s academic career was long and wide-ranging. Prem Chowdhry’s artworks have been exhibited in various art galleries and museums in India and abroad. Her paintings depict the status and reality of Haryanvi women, focusing on their clothing, facial expressions and body language in contrast to the flora and fauna of the rural milieu.
Prem’s personal background
Born in Chhara village in Jhajjar district of Haryana to Hardwari Lal, a former MP, Education Minister and MP in the Government of Haryana. Prem comes from a family with a strong academic tradition where, in her own words, she was “literally pushed to get her BA, MA and Ph.D. close”.
When asked by a journalist how much of her passion for science she inherited, she replied replied“Quite a lot. But in reality, when I was growing up, there were very few careers a woman could choose. In contrast to these times, when women were offered a variety of opportunities, including unorthodox ones, back then it was academics or doctors that were socially accepted professions for women. If I had been left to my own devices, I might have chosen fine art – but that was out of the question at the time, as my father had a strong preference for higher education.”
Despite these limitations, Prem managed to incorporate her art into her studies or, we could say, transform her studies into art. Although Prem’s works largely fall into the category of academic and scientific research, they break the boundaries of monotonous and comfortable academic writing and represent a radical examination of the social and political condition of Haryanvi women. In the 1970s and 80s, when Prem with When her fieldwork began, Haryana, despite being on the wheels of economic and industrial growth, was a deeply regressive society in which educated and strong women were responsible for the majority represented a burden. The decision to take part in this feminist research trip was in itself an act of resistance and strength.
What makes Prem Chowdhry stand out?
Haryana has produced prominent feminist literary figures including poets, writers and scientists working in various fields of humanities and social sciences. However, what makes Prem worthy of the title of “The Feminist of Haryana” is her deep commitment to documenting the lived realities of Haryana women, which she has followed for many decades through her fieldwork in the state. Others have given their feminisms a poetic or fictional path, a path that often saves one the trouble of becoming one with the women whose liberation one seeks. Prem not only becomes one with the woman she writes for, but also gives her the space to fully express herself.
Nowhere in her work does Prem speak on behalf of her rural women, who are often illiterate. Prem uses the technique of oral history to document the original accounts of women and men in their own languages and to share their experiences, opinions and views on collective life. Although Prem Chowdhry belongs to Haryana’s most dominant caste, the Jats, and comes from a very privileged upper-class background, her work with women and men across class and caste lines and across all age groups and professions proves that she is gives up her privilege and actually takes a pro-marginalized stance in all her writings.
An overview of their work
Prem Chowdhry’s first book in the series of her most outstanding works is The Veiled Women. “The Veiled Women” uses archival sources to try to understand the life of a farmer’s wife in the colonial era, when Haryana was a part of Punjab and colonial interests colluded with the interests of local men to exploit the farmer’s wife.
Source: Flipkart
Prem highlights certain particular customs that worked against the agency of peasant women, such as the “karewa,” whereby a widow was forcibly married to another man in the family, only to then prohibit her from demanding a share of the ancestral property or doing so to practice child marriage, dowry and female infanticide. Prem has paid particular attention to the “household” as a center of women’s exploitation, where the structure of the family and the power dynamics between them contribute to reducing the role of women as a purely utilitarian figure for production and reproductive purposes.
Prem also deconstructed the ‘Ghunghat’ tradition in Haryana and explained in simple terms how that piece of cloth on a woman’s face is a symbol of her inferior identity. In her subsequent works, Contentious Marriages, Eloping Couples: Gender, Caste, and Patriarchy in Northern India, published in 2007, Prem delves into the notorious extrajudicial justice system operating in Haryana and adjoining areas in the name of “khaps.” in the headlines because he commits the worst crimes in the name of caste and honor.
The couples who decide to marry against caste and class norms are generally the targets of these Khap men’s frustrated masculinity. Prem also highlights how the state apparatus and police are complicit in these cases. Through her later works, “Political Economy of Production and Reproduction,” published in 2011, and “Gender, Power, and Identity: Essays on Masculinities in Rural North India,” published in 2019, Prem Chowdhry advances the task that changing or to understand not so changing relationships between gender, caste and power. Her historically informed insights are translated into contemporary research and commentary on gender conflicts in contemporary Haryana. Her understanding of how modernity has impacted patriarchally organized peasant castes and threatened notions of masculinity can be traced in the issues of Economic and Political Weekly and is cited by journalists and activists against caste and gender violence as well as by social scientists.
Why is Prem Chowdhry relevant today?
Chowdhry’s work assumes significance in today’s times when a state-sponsored, anti-feminist, anti-gender minority brigade has made it its mission to dehumanize, criminalize, and terrorize all efforts toward women’s and gender minority rights. The defense of the misogyny of the Hindu majority in the past and especially in India in the name of protecting India’s culture and values has become a veritable trend, where the challenge of any regressive and discriminatory practice is immediately seen as “Western propaganda” or as a defamation of our great Religion is labeled. In this atmosphere, intellectuals like Prem Chowdhry, who have presented factual, evidence-based and well-founded research on gender historiography, gain much prominence. Their texts need to be revised and reinterpreted, especially in the context of Haryanvi society.
It is not easy to document the lives of disadvantaged and vulnerable women anywhere in the world, especially in places guarded and controlled by male forces. Haryana is one such place. There are eyes that look for anything that might “corrupt” or “brainwash” their “innocent women” into agency and a better life. The importance of Prem Chowdhry to Haryana is not going away anytime soon; it only increases. It is the responsibility of the younger generation of feminists to carry on their legacy.
