Gandhi and Parliament Square: but where are the women?

Mohandas Gandhi was once very unpopular with the British Establishment and was imprisoned on many occasions under colonial rule for his protests and campaigns for an independent India.  No longer, though.  Gandhi already has pride of place in Tavistock Square with a statue installed in 1968 and, earlier this year, it was announced is also due to have a statue placed in Parliament Square sometime next year.  This week, it was announced that Westminster City Council has granted planning permission for the statue to go ahead.

William Hague (then UK Foreign Secretary), announcing the statue on a visit to Delhi back in July said, ‘Gandhi’s view of communal peace and resistance to division, his desire to drive India forward, and his commitment to non-violence left a legacy that is as relevant today as it was during his life. He remains a towering inspiration and a source of strength.”[1]  George Osbourne (UK Chancellor of the Exchequer), on the same visit also joined in, ‘As the father of the largest democracy in the world, it’s time for Gandhi to take his place in front of the mother of parliaments.  He is a figure of inspiration, not just in Britain and India, but around the world.”[2]

Cynics might question the timing of the announcement back in July, uncomfortably juxtaposed with confirmation of a UK £250m arms deal with India only the day before.  It seems the UK government is willing to go to great lengths to woo the power of the Indian rupee and access to the burgeoning Indian consumer market.

Lord Desai (Indian origin economist) plans, apparently, to go on hunger strike to raise awareness of the £1 million needed to build this new Gandhi statue[3]. It has so far raised £100,000.

As I take a walk around Parliament Square, I am reminded of Brian Haw’s long-term protest camp here from 2001 until his death in 2011.  On one side stands the new UK Supreme Court – a place I have entered once just to lodge papers for a hearing, as a lowly trainee solicitor.

I am struck by the tourists who flock there, to take photos of our Houses of Parliament.  I look around the other statues and wonder how Gandhi will get on with the other incumbents here.  Winston Churchill, of course, was an adversary of Gandhi, having once said of Gandhi’s campaign of peaceful resistance that he "ought to be lain bound hand and foot at the gates of Delhi, and then trampled on by an enormous elephant with the new Viceroy seated on its back."  He later went on to say, "I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion."[4]  Despite this, however, Britain was happy to recruit thousands of Indian soldiers in both world wars to fight on behalf of the Empire (see our blog at here).  Indian women also took an active role as nurses, drivers, mechanics and other operational roles, as well as millions of others in India providing indirect support.[5]

But why Gandhi?  Undoubtedly he was one of the most prominent leaders of the Indian Independence Movement, the ‘Father of India’.  But, with one statue of Gandhi already in London’s Tavistock Square, why not mark that other great statesman of Indian Independence – Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar?  Ambedkar, born an Untouchable went on to receive degrees in economics, politics and law and, like Gandhi, was called to the Bar in London.  He served as India’s first law minister and drafted the Indian Constitution.  But Ambedkar is also remembered for rejecting Hinduism and the caste system in India, instead embracing Buddhism along with thousands of other Dalits (‘untouchables’) in 1956, only to die six weeks later.  As far as I can tell, there is only one statue of Ambedkar in London – at the LSE, where he once studied, though not in public view.  Perhaps Gandhi – in embracing, rather than rejecting Hinduism – is a safer bet to appeal to the current Hindu Nationalism of Modi [though here a more ironic connection might be that Nathuram Godse, Gandhi’s assassin was once a member of the Hindu Nationalist organisation the RSS, with which Modi also has close links and for which he was once a full time worker].

But, in Parliament Square, there is one glaring omission among the statues of the great and the good.  There is not one woman.  So, where are all the celebrated women throughout history?  Perhaps, in India, like the wives of Gandhi and Ambedkar (and millions of other women), they were married off at a young age, to spend their life in domestic servitude – without the freedom, means or the backing to go off themselves and pursue degrees abroad or train as barristers.

There are certainly outstanding women in India, though, who managed to pursue education.  For example, Cornelia Sorabji was the first woman to read law at Oxford University and to practise law in the UK and India (see our blog about a play of her life at  http://www.indiainlondon.com/cornelia-calling/).  Also Lotika Sarkar – lawyer and campaigner for women’s rights - was the first Indian woman to graduate from Cambridge University and later also the first woman to receive a PhD in law from Cambridge.  Or perhaps, more controversially, Indira Gandhi, the first female Prime Minister of India.

But my vote might go for a statue commemorating the heroism of ordinary women everywhere, but particularly in India.  Women who are given no choice about their lives, married at a young age and then a lifetime spent raising children, cooking, cleaning and facilitating the comforts of their husband’s and other’s lives and participation in the wider world.  Perhaps a statue to the every day heroism of millions of women such as these would also be a fitting tribute.

[1] The Independent (UK) 8 July 2014

[2] Ibid.

[3] The Economic Times, 6 November 2014

[4] The Independent (UK) 28 October 2010

[5] See http://www.cwgc.org/foreverindia/context/indian-army-in-2nd-world-war.php

Cornelia Calling

I had somehow subscribed or been subscribed to a newsletter listing the Kali Theatre’s future performances and two in particular stood out: Cornelia Calling and Twelve, on 'honour' killings. The Kali Theatre specialises in producing plays written by Asian women. For various reasons, well my failure to note the correct time, we’d missed Twelve but on Friday we had seen Cornelia Calling. For us it pushed a number of potential buttons: my interest in history generally, Sue’s personal interest in feminism and professional interest in law.

The Tristan Bates Theatre is a rather non-descript building near Leicester Square looking like an office. Like Asia House no tickets are required but akin to a private party one’s names are listed.  As usual we were early and killed some time in the bar before the performance.

The theatre is probably the smallest I have ever attended and seated perhaps 100 people.  The set was rather spartan, with just a table and chairs, and a piano. As we entered the theatre the cast were already in situ. As soon as the audience were settled the play or the reading began. The performance was described as a “reading”, with the actors reading from scripts and it was rather similar to a rehearsal.

Cornelia Calling is based on the life of Cornelia Sorabji, an Indian Christian Parsee from Bombay who is believed to be the first woman to read law at Oxford in the 1890s. While she read law she did not receive a degree because she was a woman.  After “graduation” Cornelia split her time between India and the UK, and was often unable to practise law because of her gender.

Much of the reading revolves around Cornelia’s meetings with her friend Mary while students at Somerville College in Oxford, and at times during their lives.  Like Cornelia Mary is also an outsider, from a Geordie working class family. Through their conversations we learn about Cornelia’s background, her motivations in studying law and her life and career after Oxford.  There were two other actors who played various roles including Hindu women in purdah who had been exploited by male advisers and looking to Cornelia’s mother for advice, and Gandhi, who had met with Cornelia, as well as other roles including the narrator.

Most of Cornelia’s life is presented as a struggle, and fighting against the odds.  Even within India she was often regarded with suspicion for coming from a Christian background and for having a mother from a low-caste.  On her return to India Cornelia is forced to work as an informal legal adviser unable, despite some influential supporters, to be allowed to appear as an advocate in her own right.  However, Cornelia was later allowed to practise after legislation was passed in India to enable women to become barristers.

One of the main set-pieces of the reading is a meeting between Cornelia and Gandhi in 1931 in London.  The conversation on stage was recently replicated in The Telegraph.  The two had many elements in common, British educated, and trained in the law, with both unable to practice at times.  Cornelia comes across as a devoted Anglophile opposed to full Indian independence but supportive of dominion status, similar to that of Canada and Australia.

Cornelia castigates Gandhi for being unable to restrain his supporters from engaging in violence despite his non-violent ethos.  She also criticises Gandhi for presuming he represents all Indian opinion; she suggests he only represents the educated and upper classes.  While the independence movement and the Indian upper classes encompassed a wide range of viewpoints I doubt if many would have opposed full independence as Cornelia appears to.

In one of their conversations Mary asks Cornelia “Are you English or Indian?”  The mere fact the question was asked indicates some level of ambiguity.  One is reminded that both Gandhi and Nehru aped Western habits certainly in terms of clothes in their formative years, and Gandhi’s austere lifestyle was heavily influenced by radical vegetarians in the UK when he came to study for the Bar.  Indeed Nehru referred to himself as the “last English ruler of India” perhaps not anticipating that his daughter Indira would become Prime Minister, and the language of the Nehru household was English and not Hindi.  One cannot now imagine an Indian leader making Nehru’s “tryst with destiny” speech in English.

Cornelia’s relationships receive rather cursory treatment, although her friend Mary does propose a lesbian relationship which Cornelia rejects.  There is a suggestion of a relationship with a married lawyer in India, although it is not clear whether the man is Indian or British.

Cornelia’s life is indeed one that warrants exploration principally because of her almost continual battles with male dominated and perhaps misogynistic institutions and professions. At almost every stage in her life there are barriers to be overcome: getting to university in Bombay, a place at Oxford, her putative relationship with a lawyer in Allahabad, and being prevented from practicing.  Some of these situations and incidents could have been an entire play in their own right particularly the encounter with Gandhi.

My own feeling was that Cornelia’s life could have been better portrayed more narrowly and that the format tried to cover too much ground thus giving the audience little of substance.  We had relatively little of Cornelia’s motivations, in particular in taking up the law although there was a focus on unrepresented Hindu women, her seeming lack of feminism, and her Anglophilia.  Cornelia’s passions did not manifest themselves explicitly.  I also found the relationship with and the background of the fictional Mary rather contrived although I do understand that the conversations were necessary for purposes of exposition.  I wonder how many women from working class backgrounds would have made it to Oxford in the 1890s.

Overall a production deserving of a wider audience albeit with some reservations.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1110522/jsp/7days/story_14013867.jsp - Cornelia’s meeting with Gandhi

www.kalitheatre.co.uk