Selections from Mother India

Dismissed by Gandhi as a "gutter inspector's report", Katherine Mayo's "Mother India" created a storm of controversy when it was first published in the late 1920s. In her introduction to this work, Mrinalini Sinha locates the debate over Mother India in the broader context of the politics of its production and reception and examines its impact on the "woman question" outside India. The controversy over the book not only facilitated the passage of the Child Marriage Restraint Act in 1929, but also contributed, in the response of Indian women themselves, to the emmergence of a so-called "authentic voice of Indian womanhood". Sinha analyzes the imperialistic-nationalist context for the emergence of a politics of middle-class Indian feminism in the "Mother India" controversy, and traces the legacy of this history on contemporary efforts to address the kinds of oppressive social practices that were highlighted in Mayo's book.