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The lives of the bhadramahila (generally, upper-caste educated women) and the rise of the ‘New Woman’ in late-colonial Bengal has attracted significant critical interest. However, For Home, Family, and Nation, is the first full-length study to focus on the evolution of gender issues in nationalist politics in Bengal and study the complex relationship between feminism, nationalism, and communalism, over a period of eight decades, from the 1870s onwards.

This book examines the flexibility of this strand of nationalist thought, which constantly adjusted to new methods of selection and appropriation. It shows how the nineteenth-century nationalist ‘resolution’ of ‘the woman question’ accommodated material and political changes in the twentieth century, against a backdrop of growing economic crisis, rising unemployment, declining public health, rural degeneration, the dislocation of war, and the increasing participation of women in employment and politics. It demonstrates how gender politics, among the bhadralok—Bengal’s educated Hindu and primarily upper-caste middle classes—transformed from a movement against colonial interference in the ‘private sphere’ to a communally charged campaign to protect Hindu women from the ‘Muslim threat’.

In lucid prose, the author delves into women’s writings, and critically examines elite perceptions in contemporary journals, newspapers, and popular politics in the pulp literature from Battala, to offer important insights, not only into the changing self-image of the bhadralok but also to show how the bhadramahila adapted to, or resisted, such discursive constructs.

Tracing the reconstitution of the controversial figure of the late-nineteenth century ‘New Woman’ into the ‘modern’ women of today, this book breaks new ground in the fields of history, gender studies, and South Asian studies. It will also captivate scholars of sociology, cultural studies, literary and critical studies, and general readers.