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How Tarabai Shinde Challenged Patriarchy In 19th-Century India

As Women라이브 바카라 Day approaches, 바카라 profiles trailblazing women who have broken barriers in male-dominated fields. Among them is Tarabai Shinde, a 19th-century feminist thinker and one of the first to author a modern feminist text in India

Illustration by Saahil

“Let me ask you something, Gods! You are supposed to be omnipotent and freely accessible to all. You are said to be completely impartial. What does that mean? That you have never been known to be partial. But wasn’t it you who created both men and women? Then why did you grant happiness only to men and brand women with nothing but agony? Your will was done! But poor women have had to suffer for it down the ages.”

— Tarabai Shinde, Stri Purush Tulana

As Women라이브 바카라 Day approaches, 바카라 us profiling trailblazing women who have broken barriers in male-dominated fields. Among them is Tarabai Shinde, a 19th-century feminist thinker and one of the first to author a modern feminist text in India. 

Her iconic work Stri Purush Tulana, written in Marathi, came as a response to an 1881 newspaper article condemning a young Brahmin widow, Vijayalakshmi, who was sentenced to death for killing her illegitimate child. The conservative publication Pune Vaibhav used the case to shame women for their "loose morals." Outraged by this sexist narrative, Shinde wrote her ground breaking work, challenging the hypocrisy of a society that judged women.

Through her work, Shinde challenged society's views on gender roles and questioned the unfair social norms that oppress women. She opposed child marriage, polygamy, and forced marriages, and argued for women라이브 바카라 right to make their own choices and called out the patriarchal ideas of honour and morality.

Tarabai Shinde, born in 1850, herself experienced child marriage, a common practice at the time; and this experience shaped Stri-Purush Tulana.

Tarabai Shinde라이브 바카라 work faced strong opposition and remained largely unnoticed until S.G. Malshe republished it in 1975. Rosalind O’Hanlon later translated it into English in 1994.

Tarabai Shinde played an important role in the fight for gender equality, being one of the first in India to openly challenge societal norms and advocate for women라이브 바카라 rights. She worked with social reformers Savitribai and Jyotirao Phule and was a member of the Satyashodak Samaj (Truth Seekers' Society). In 1885, Jyotirao Phule defended Stri Purush Tulana in the society라이브 바카라 magazine, Satsaar.

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