Episode 6: Hansa Mehta

Transcript

Host: It is December 1946. Nearly 400 people are packed into the Central Hall of the Constituent Assembly. They have been elected by their provinces to participate in the writing of a Constitution for free India. Jawaharlal Nehru is presenting the objectives resolution, which outlines a set of principles to  guide the constitution-making process. 

<Clip of Constituent Assembly speech by Jawaharlal Nehru on December 13, 1946 plays>

“Jo resolution main pesh kar raha hoon aapke saamne, wo iss tarah ka ek maksad ko saaf karne ka, kuch thoda sa naksha batane ka, kidhar hum dekhte hain aur kis raaste par hum chalenge is mazmoon ka hai.”

Host: Man after man stands to respond to the resolution. At one point, a striking person stands up. She’s petite, clad in a sari, the pallu pinned over her head. She welcomes the resolution: she says that Indian women are hopeful that freedom will bring them “not only equality of status but equality of opportunity.” She’s already well-known: as the first woman to hold government office in the Bombay Presidency and as the president of the All India Women’s Conference. She’s Hansa Mehta, one of just 17 women elected to the Assembly.

<Clip of interview with Hansa Mehta from the oral history archives at Cambridge University>

Hansa Mehta: “Members were elected by the legislatures, the provincial legislatures. I was one of the elected members. And we started work on the Constituent Assembly.”

Host: That is Mehta, from an interview clip from a wider oral history database stored in the Cambridge University archives. She was a freedom fighter, educationist-reformer, politician, and human rights activist. As one of the most prominent women in public life in the early 20th century, Mehta often found herself in rooms full of powerful men making important decisions for the whole country and even the entire world. But, through her sharp interventions, she made her presence felt in all these important rooms. Mehta led the drafting of the first charter of rights for women in India. She spoke in favour of women’s right to property and inheritance. She was an early proponent of a secular Uniform Civil Code. And through her remarkable role at the United Nations, she was a key figure in shaping the global discourse on human rights.  In this episode, we explore Hansa Mehta’s life and work as one of the most renowned female public figures in early 20th century India. This is Friend of the Court and I am your host Supriya Nair. 

<INTRO MUSIC> 

<Clip from the diamond jubilee celebration of Maharaja of Baroda plays>

“For 60 years, Maharaja Gaekwad has ruled in Baroda. He celebrates his diamond jubilee in this year of Indian jubilees. With the maharani beside him, he presides at a great darbar in his capital. He was a peasant boy of 12 when he was set up on the throne in the most important native state of western India.”

Host: This is a newsclip from 1936 about the diamond jubilee celebrations of Maharaja Sayajirao Gaekwad’s rule in the princely state of Baroda. Beginning in the late 19th century, the maharaja implemented a slew of reforms that would change the state forever: he banned child marriage, abolished untouchability and made primary education compulsory. Among the many who benefitted from these measures was Hansa Mehta. She was born in 1897 to Harshadagauri and Manubhai Mehta. Manubhai was a philosophy professor who was later appointed the Diwan or Prime Minister of Baroda. 

Radha Vatsal: So Hansa Mehta was born in Gujarat. Her grandfather was Nandshankar Mehta, who was the author of the first novel written in Gujarati. And he was, as she says, a sudharwala, a reformer. And he really emphasised education in his family. Basically what she says is that the tradition of education and even education for girls was very important in the family. So she and her sister were not denied educational opportunities.

Host: This is Radha Vatsal, a fiction writer and essayist based in New York. In March 2024, Vatsal wrote a piece on Mehta for a New York Times series called “Overlooked No More”.  The series, as the name suggests, intended to pay tribute to “remarkable people” whose deaths the paper had previously overlooked. Here, she’s telling us about the progressive environment in which Mehta was raised:

Radha Vatsal: And again, in another essay, she talks about who the main influences on her life were. And the first was her father, who was a very liberal and educated man. The second was the Maharaja Sayajirao of Baroda…. 

And she was lucky to grow up in, I believe she grew up part of the time in the sort of kingdom of Baroda where the Maharaja of Baroda was also a noted reformer. And he started a school for girls. I think maybe the first school for girls in the area. And she and her sister attended that school. And then they were among a small group of girls who went to the university there, the earliest students that were women students there. 

Host: Mehta was one of three women in a class of 150 at Baroda College. The women usually sat in the front row but barely participated in class or interacted with their male counterparts. The professors were unsure of how to deal with the brand new phenomenon of female students. In her writings, Mehta describes how the Sanskrit lecturer was mortified while discussing a suggestive verse from a classical poem; while the maths teacher made no concessions to them. 

Apart from this exposure, Mehta led a cocooned existence and spent her time reading Gujarati and English literature. She did not seem to show any particular interest in the burgeoning freedom movement or in women’s rights. But this changed after she graduated in 1918 with a degree in Philosophy and went to the London School of Economics to pursue a Masters degree in journalism and sociology. 

Radha Vatsal: So she went to England, clearly, and she talks about staying for a while at this Lyceum Club, which is a club for women artists and intellectuals and things like that, where she must have been exposed to a lot of different types of thinkers, but where she also met Sarojini Naidu in person… 

Host: The poet and freedom fighter, Sarojini Naidu was visiting London at the time. The two women hit it off and Mehta would later count Naidu as one of the greatest influences in her life.  Naidu was an active figure in the suffragette movement, or the movement to win women the right to vote in the United Kingdom and in India. She took Mehta along with her to conferences and protest meetings, including one in Geneva. 

Radha Vatsal: And she says that you know, that Sarojini Naidu encouraged her to come out of her shell and do things that she wouldn’t normally do, like speaking in public. And she took her to, I think, a women’s conference in Geneva, and really exposed her to different types of political activities. And so I think that time in England must have been also very eye-opening for her.

Host: Mehta finished her studies in 1921 and returned home to work in  education. In an interview to the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library in Delhi years later, Mehta said that a professor at Baroda college encouraged her to travel to the US to study the education system for women in that country. And so she did. For eight months in 1923, Mehta visited women’s colleges across the US. Soon after she returned to India in October that year, she met her future husband Dr Jivraj Mehta. We weren’t able to confirm where they met or who introduced them. Jivraj was ten years older and also came from Baroda state. The proposed union caused a furore because Hansa was a brahmin, and Jivraj a vaishya, deemed lower in the caste hierarchy. Members of her caste strongly opposed it. But Hansa was unfazed. She married Jivraj anyway. 

Radha Vatsal: I think in one of her oral histories, she says that her community wanted to take her out, outcast her, she says. And she said, it didn’t matter to me because I don’t believe in caste and I told them I’m going to go out of the community myself. 

Host: There were other norms that didn’t seem to apply to Mehta. In interviews, neither Hansa nor Jivraj Mehta spoke about how marriage affected her work. Hansa spoke of how she could not join Gandhi’s satyagraha in the 1930s because of her young children, but marriage or motherhood didn’t stop her from contributing to an emerging women’s movement.

<BEAT>

Towards the end of 1926, a curious circular appeared in newspapers across the country. It called on women across the country to form committees to discuss the problems in the way of girls’ education. The circular was written by an Irish suffragist called Margaret Cousins, a vocal expat and reformer who had been living in India since 1915. Hansa Mehta was one of the 2000 women who responded to the appeal. In January 1927, women of all religions, mostly upper class and upper caste women, gathered in Pune, known as Poona at the time. This was the first meeting of the All India Women’s Conference or AIWC, which would go on to become a leading voice on women’s rights. 

Achyut Chetan: Initially it was founded with a very narrow focus on social work, not even social reform or legal reform. It was largely meant to encourage women to go to schools and colleges and develop more, like open the field of education for women and so on. 

Host: This is Achyut Chetan. Chetan is an English literature professor in Kolkata whose interests include feminism, post-colonial theory and modern Indian history. He has written about Hansa Mehta in his book Founding Mothers of the Indian Republic, which is about the women members of the Constituent Assembly. Here, Chetan is telling us about the aims of the AIWC in its early years. At its first meeting, the body discussed ways to “remedy the educational backwardness of women”. The conversation took a sharp turn when the delegates explored the deeper obstacles hindering women’s education. Most of the delegates agreed that child marriage was a key barrier – how to design meaningful educational programes for girls if their schooling could be abruptly curtailed by marriage? Mehta moved a resolution to declare child marriage invalid. Despite her compelling arguments, the motion faced strong resistance and ultimately failed. The AIWC adopted a resolution that stipulated the minimum age of marriage; and its members continued to campaign for a law to regulate child marriage. 

Their campaign against child marriage was aided by a controversy that erupted later in 1927, as this clip from the Hindi digital news platform Lallantop explains:

<Clip of the news organisation Lallantop explaining the Sarda Act>

“Mother India jo 1927 mein likhi gayi thi. Lekhika ka naam tha Katherine Mayo.. Katherine ki kitaab darasal ek propaganda thi. Katherine Bharat ko azadi diye jaane ki sakht khilaaf thi. Unhone iske liye Bharat ke mahilaon ke haalat ko namoone ke taur par pesh kiya.”

Host: The American author Katherine Mayo published her book Mother India in 1927.  The book was packed with racist portrayals of Indian life and held up the treatment of women as an example of India’s primitive culture. It was widely seen as a hit piece against the national movement which was beginning to gain global support, particularly from the US.  The book provoked sharp reactions across the world. Copies were burnt in Bombay and New York; MK Gandhi famously called it a drain inspector’s report. 

Mrinalini Sinha: So yeah, the book is, you know, infamous in the context of the period 1920s. It was published in 1927.

Host: This is Mrinalini Sinha. 

Mrinalini Sinha: I’m a professor at the Department of South Asian and Indian History at the University of Michigan. And I work a lot on colonial India and particularly on gender politics in the colonial period.

Host: Sinha’s book “Specters of Mother India: The Global Restructuring of an Empire” argues that Mayo’s book galvanised Indian feminists; and in 1929, nationalist leaders in the Imperial Legislative Council banded together to pass the Child Marriage Restraint Act or the Sarda Act, as it became known. For the first time, this law set a minimum age of marriage, 14 for girls and 18 for boys across all religions. Violating this law would attract 3 months of prison time or a fine. 

The AIWC’s annual report of 1930 said that its members actively campaigned for the Sarada Act. They organised public lectures, drafted petitions and sent postcards to the members of the legislative council. This was the first time that women influenced a major social reform. It shaped the women’s movement in unprecedented ways. Sinha explains: 

Mrinalini Sinha: I think it was a game changer because until then marriage issues were all in civil law. This was criminalising it. 

Host: Back then, civil matters like marriage were governed solely by ‘personal’ laws, that is, laws or legally recognized practices based on religion. Typically, these laws perpetuated patriarchies that disadvantaged women. While many women were commonly subjected to patriarchal dominance irrespective of their religion, colonial law differentiated women by their religion — Hindu women, Sikh women, Muslim women, and so on. The Sarda Act on the other hand took a radically different approach. It looked not to religion, but to gender. It treated all women as one, irrespective of their personal or religious affiliation. Thus, it addressed child marriage as a general issue and applied it to all communities. 

Mrinalini Sinha: And that was another reason why for the Indian women’s movement, child marriage was so significant. They had already sort of created a cross communal alliance on this question. And this allowed them and their first real, major legislative victory to kind of claim that cross communal subject, which I think other issues might not have permitted them to do, allowed them to do. 

Host: Sinha told us that earlier reforms like Sati abolition began out of concern for women, but the discourse quickly turned into something more: did Hindu scriptures sanction the practice?This triggered debates on the need to reform Hindu society — women just happened to benefit from it. On the other hand, Sinha argues, the Sarda Act began a fresh chapter in the relationship between Indian women and the state by taking religion out of the equation. 

Mrinalini Sinha: But also, I think, even as the act is being debated, they are making this claim that this is about all women, not about community. So it is insisting that this is not a question about whether India is backward. Those are the terms in which Mayo wanted the Act to be, or child marriage to be understood. But the Indian women’s movement is very clearly saying this is not a question of whether India is backward or not backward. It’s a question of — women deserve to have a direct relationship to the state. 

Host: In short, the Sarda Act was the women’s movement’s way of asserting that women were individuals and citizens on their own. They were not just members of the religious communities they were born into.

Mrinalini Sinha: that this particular moment allowed a nascent Indian women’s movement to really seize the opportunity and to kind of construct what I call an agnostic Indian liberalism, in which the Indian woman rather than the male emerges as the classical subject of rights and of citizenship. And I think this was a unique moment when people, like Hansa Mehta, who I know you’re interested in, were important in developing.

Host: The passage of the Sarda Act in 1929 infused great zeal into the women’s movement. It quickly expanded to focus on social and legal reforms and not just women’s education. Alongside, the AIWC grew into a powerful force that articulated women’s rights in a way and in a language that was entirely new. 

Achyut Chetan: But very soon, by, I think, 1930-31, within four or five years, the AIWC started becoming the platform for very radical women, and Hansa being one of them. By 1931-32, they had actually started making such demands like recognising the economic rights or economic value of domestic work that is done by women, housewives at home, the homemakers’ work, right? So that was as early as in the 1930s, early 1930s. Hansa was already a leading feminist activist in Bombay.

Host: They saw the disadvantages stemming from patriarchal laws and customs as “legal disabilities” that women had to overcome. The AIWC continued its campaign for reforming personal laws related to marriage, property and inheritance. Apart from this, they also produced detailed reports on the status of Indian women. Chetan tells us more:

Achyut Chetan:  It started developing white papers, surveys of the status of women and political, economic and social rights of women, the various ways in which women are discriminated against and so on. So from the 1930s, the feminist consciousness in India was oriented towards a form of constitutional politics. 

Host: All this while, the organisation maintained a strategic distance from politics. They believed that affiliating themselves to a party or movement would dilute their focus on women’s rights. But that did not stop many of its members like Rajkumari Amrit Kaur and Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay from actively participating in the national movement.

<beat>

 Hansa Mehta, who had initially been hesitant to join the movement, finally took the plunge in 1930. 

<Clip from the Dandi March plays> 

“The great march for liberty began. Gandhi started his 241 mile long trek from the ashram to Dandi, a village on the sea coast along with the chosen band of 78 ashram inmates, symbols of national determination with a strong resolve and undaunted look. As the epic march began, multitudes thundered out there to welcome the revolution and expressed their will to do and die through the cries of inquilab zindabad!”

Host: That year, Gandhi kicked off the Civil Disobedience Movement against the British government’s repressive salt tax regime. Gandhi had always encouraged women to participate in his satyagrahas. But understood that their domestic responsibilities kept them from full-time involvement. Here’s Mehta explaining in an  interview:

<Clip of interview with Hansa Mehta from the oral history archives at Cambridge University>

Hansa Mehta: “At a place called Karadi, he invited women from all over India to participate in the meeting. He asked women to take up picketing of foreign cloth and liquor shops. Women were not prepared—all women were not prepared, and certainly I was not prepared to break the salt law, I had two little children to look after.” 

Host: Mehta joined her mentor Sarojini Naidu in Bombay to form the Desh Sevika Sangh, an all-women volunteer group. They picketed shops selling liquor and foreign goods. At one point, their picketing activities brought Bombay’s largest cloth market, the Mulji Jetha Market, to a standstill for three months. A few months into the agitation, the colonial police arrested Naidu and other prominent leaders of the Congress. Mehta suddenly found herself thrust into a leadership role — as president of the Bombay Congress Committee, the regional wing of the national party. Within a few weeks of becoming president, she led a massive march of men and women under the Congress flag. They walked from Chowpatty, a beach-side locality in south Bombay to the municipality office, opposite Victoria Terminus. Mehta describes it vividly:

<Clip of interview with Hansa Mehta contines> 

Hansa Mehta: “There was a big regiment of police on horseback and they asked us not to proceed further but to go back and disperse. I refused to do so and we all sat down there on the spot. It was raining and raining very hard but we all sat through the night. It was a procession of nearly a lakh of people—men and women.” 

Host: Mehta evaded arrest that day, but a plethora of other Congress leaders could not. After the civil disobedience movement, Mehta’s involvement in the freedom struggle steadily increased. During this period, she served as the Vice President of the Harijan Sewak Sangh, which Gandhi had founded in 1932 to eradicate untouchability. Then, in 1935, fresh political developments would give Mehta her first taste of government office. 

<Clip on Government of India Act, 1935 and elections being announced> 

“Congress governments were formed/ installed in seven states on the 7th of July, 1937. The task before the Congress was transformation of the agrarian system, improvement of standards of living of industrial labour, uplift of the scheduled castes, developments of village industries and a search for the solution to the communal problem, to free India, to build up a strong and prosperous nation.”

Host: In 1935, the British government passed the Government of India Act. It reserved 41 seats for women in the provincial legislatures. Mehta was offered one such seat in the Bombay legislature but she declined it. She explains why: 

<Clip of interview with Hansa Mehta from the oral history archives at Cambridge University>

Hansa Mehta: “In the Bombay assembly there were two seats reserved for women. I was offered one of the seats but I did not contest for the reserved seat as we members of the All India Women’s Conference had always been against the reservation of seats.“

Host: The AIWC and its members had a long standing tradition of rejecting special privileges granted on the basis of gender. They saw it as paternalistic and wanted to be treated on the same terms as men. Shortly after she rejected the seat, Mehta was elected to the Legislative Council or the upper house of the Bombay assembly. She also became the first woman to serve as the parliamentary secretary of health and education, which is roughly like the position of a cabinet minister. She introduced vocational skills in the school curriculum and established a secondary school examination board. 

But, her stint was cut short in November 1939. The Bombay government resigned en masse to protest against the decision of the Viceroy of India, Lord Linlithgow to drag India into the second world war without consulting Indian leaders. 

Host: During wartime, a fresh debate about personal laws and women’s rights emerged in India. The AIWC had long been demanding that such a committee be set up to study personal laws and suggest a civil code, one that would apply to all Indians. But, the government responded by appointing the Hindu Law Committee in 1941, headed by the eminent jurist BN Rau. Hansa Mehta was not a part of this committee, though she actively participated in the discourse through her writings. She spoke in favour of divorce, women’s right to property and inheritance and against the practice of polygamy. 

In 1946, the Committee recommended sweeping changes to Hindu personal law. It proposed a new code based on progressive ideas and gender equality that would apply to Hindus. The code recognised intercaste marriage, abolished polygamy, gave women the right to inheritance and introduced divorce. 

Meanwhile, Mehta became the president of the AIWC in 1945, at a time when communal tensions consumed every corner of public life. Some prominent fellow travellers like Begum Jahanara Shahnawaz left the AIWC to join the Muslim League.  

Despite the odds, the AIWC kept its non-sectarian character intact under Mehta’s leadership. Here’s Chetan explaining: 

Achyut Chetan: The biggest crisis that the AIWC had faced in Hansa Mehta’s leadership was the rise of the demand for Pakistan. So when the two -nation theory was being propagated, then it took a very, very serious and very enormous shape in 1945 -1946 when Muslim women had to choose between AIWC and the largely patriarchal community which is what they would represent, Hansa held the women together. That was one of her greatest contributions. 

Host: During her presidency, India came within touching distance of freedom.  In 1945, the post-war government in Britain announced its intention to leave India soon. In India, there was great hope and excitement about what the future would bring. Various individuals and groups began putting forward their own manifestos for what the new nation should look like. This was on Mehta’s mind too. She initiated the drafting of the Indian Woman’s Charter of Rights and Duties. 

Achyut Chetan: That whole charter of Indian women’s rights and duties was drafted by Hansa Mehta, of course, with great inputs from Kamala Devi Chattopadhyay, Renuka Ray, Hannah Sen, and many others. So I think what Hansa did before 1946 was also a kind of, you know, she ensured that the Indian women’s movement has a very definite written set of demands, not just vague demands or not just piecemeal demands. So she made sure that there is a comprehensive list of demands internally consistent with each other, which are part of a larger framework of political rights.

Host: In his work, Chetan argues that the Charter needs to be treated as an important antecedent of the Constitution, at par with the Nehru report prepared by Motilal Nehru in 1928. It laid down fundamental rights for the first time in our history. The Woman’s Charter was a comprehensive list of civic, social and economic rights of women and men. It recognised the right of all women to vote and the right to work. It also recognised household work and women’s reproductive rights. It advocated for Hindu women’s right to inherit property on the same footing as men. The Charter also emphasised access to health and education for all women. Mehta said the Charter was meant to serve as a moral framework for future legislation. 

<Clip from the Shimla conference of 1936 plays>

“Shimla now becomes historic as it becomes the scene of the last conference before the start of a new era. Attending the last session are the men who are playing a big part in their country’s destiny. The crossroads have been reached and India’s future will shortly lie in her own hands.”

Host: As Mehta and the AIWC hashed out the Women’s Charter, the elections for the Constituent Assembly were just around the corner. Members would be elected or nominated by the provincial legislatures to help frame the Constitution for independent India. Mehta knew this was a rare, once-in-a-lifetime chance for women to have a say in shaping their future. So, she and her AIWC colleagues got to work, pushing to get more women elected to the Assembly. Chetan explains:

Achyut Chetan: The truth is that that women were very keen on getting elected to the Constituent Assembly. They were already campaigning for their elections. Three names were foremost Kamala Devi Chattopadhyay, Hansa Mehta and Rajkumari Amrit Kaur. It was very clearly suggested in the meetings of All India Women’s Conference that whatever it takes at least these three should be elected to the Constituent Assembly. 

Host: The AIWC was also writing to the provincial assemblies with names of potential nominees to the assembly. The list included 40 women from all communities and provinces.  

Achyut Chetan: So that is something that was happening from the women’s end. They wrote to the various provincial assemblies, and the provincial assemblies nominated them. There was an election, of course, and then after the election, they were nominated. So Hansa Mehta was sent from Bombay, because she had already been a member of the Bombay Legislative Assembly. So she was always there, and she was a member of the AIWC.

Host: Of the 17 women who were eventually elected to the Assembly, seven were recommended by the AIWC. These included Mehta and her long time colleagues Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, Renuka Ray, Ammu Swminathan, Perin Bharucha, Vijayalakshmi Pandit and Sucheta Kripalani. The atmosphere in the Assembly was not particularly welcoming to the women. It met in the Central Hall of the old Parliament building in Delhi. Most of the women sat in the back benches of the large, cavernous chamber. Every time someone wanted to speak, they would have to walk past rows of men to go up to the microphone in the front. 

Achyut Chetan: So you can imagine the kind of difficulty it would have entailed for a woman to come all the way and then make an intervention. You just simply couldn’t stand from wherever you are sitting and you got a microphone and you spoke. That was not the case. That itself, I think, is a very gendered kind of a space you know, men’s voices could subsume your voice. Men’s gaze can, you know, deter you from making your statements. You might feel shy in speaking. So that was something that happened.

Host: Some male members were openly misogynistic and the women members were constantly jostling to be heard. 

Achyut Chetan: Then there have been occasions when women wanted to say something, for example, Renuka Ray, she was arguing on the right to property. Someone as eminent as Kanhaiya Lal Manik Lal Munshi heckled her. And then she was not allowed to speak. That happened. There would be many occasions when women were speaking, the chairperson would make paternalistic remarks. Sometimes he would say that you are a woman, enough of speaking. Or sometimes they would say that because you are a woman, I’m giving you two extra minutes. 

Host: But other spaces, like the sub-committees, which met in smaller groups to discuss specific issues, were less intimidating. So it is not surprising that some of Mehta’s most significant interventions were in the sub-committee on fundamental rights, headed by JB Kriplani. Here’s Mehta talking about her experience on the committee:

Hansa Mehta: It was quite an interesting work. There were some members who did not believe in Fundamental Rights. Mr. Kriplani was the Chairman. He used to somehow ridicule Fundamental Rights though it seemed to me that he believed in them. We had Mr. Munshi also who was all the time championing the cause of the rightists, should I say, vested interests. The Fundamental Rights chapter has therefore been a kind of compromise on many things. 

Host: Prominent members of the Assembly –  BR Ambedkar, Alladi Krishnaswamy Iyer, Maulana Azad, KT Shah, KM Munshi and Minoo Masani – were a part of the Subcommittee on Fundamental Rights. Crucially, Mehta’s old colleague and friend from the AIWC, Rajkumari Amrit Kaur was also a member. Together, the two made spirited interventions on various ideas, from a uniform civil code to compulsory military service. In some ways, their interventions were a culmination of all the work that the AIWC had done over the years in advancing the idea of progressive citizenship for Indian women. As we saw in the Sarda Act, removing religion from the equation between women and the state was at the heart of this project. Mehta and Kaur tirelessly advocated for this idea in the sub-committee: Chetan tells us more:  

Achyut Chetan: One is the opposition or the note of dissent that Mehta and Amrit Kaur wrote on the question of the freedom of religion, particularly to the word, to the insertion of the word free practice of religion. So they wrote a note of dissent which was initially agreed upon. When the fundamental rights subcommittee met and Alladi Krishnaswamy Iyer actually agreed with this idea that yes, the free practice of religion will give a constitutional validity to a number of religious practices which are discriminatory and which might undo a lot of advances that we have made in the field of social and legal reforms, particularly regarding religion. 

Host: Mehta and Kaur feared that privileging religious freedoms could come at the expense of women’s individual rights. They also supported a proposal to make a Uniform Civil Code a fundamental guarantee. Here’s Chetan explaining Mehta and Kaur’s vision for such a code. 

Achyut Chetan: But the idea of the Uniform Civil Code in the minds of Hansa Mehta and her colleagues was very different from the idea of the Uniform Civil Code which is now presented or which, of which there is a kind of anxiety. So it was not just about the uniformity. Number one, it was an internally consistent set of personal laws. And personal laws that affect all fields of human life, not just one or two, which was happening earlier. So they wanted to have one consolidated, comprehensive list of reforms in the personal law, whether it’s regarding property, whether it’s regarding adoption, marriage, divorce, and so on.

Host: Along with Ambedkar and Minoo Masani, the women argued that it was the state’s responsibility to guarantee a UCC. They believed it would help establish a national identity that would supersede religious and ethnic identities. This idea however had no takers and the Uniform Civil Code found a place in the chapter on the Directive Principles of State Policy, which was a sort of to-do list for the Indian state. No government could be taken to court for failing to achieve these goals. But Chetan says that Mehta and Kaur played a pivotal role in ensuring this chapter was not entirely ineffective: 

Achyut Chetan: And the single most contribution of these women to the constitution of India is in the form of the note of which led to the drafting or the wording of the Article 37. It says that the directive principles of the Indian Constitution will nonetheless be fundamental for the governing of this country. So the very phrase, the nonetheless fundamental, is taken from the, lifted from the note of dissent that Kaur and Hansa Mehta had written. 

Host: In another crucial intervention, Mehta and Kaur proposed including a clause on affirmative action for women. They were still against reservations, but supported other kinds of measures to help women overcome social and economic disadvantages. This, they said, was crucial to developing their skills and potential. Here’s Chetan summing up:

Achyut Chetan: That women never said that we do not, they said that we do not want reservations, but they did not say that we do not want affirmative action or positive discrimination. So it’s one thing to say that we need reservations. It’s another thing to say that reservations are not the only form in which you can, you know, you create substantive equality between men and women. 

Host: Their demand appeared in the form of Article 15 (3) of the Constitution which allows the state to make “special provisions for women and children.” Over the years, governments have used this provision to legislate on matters like maternity leave and domestic violence. 

Recently, the Modi government passed a law to reserve 33% of seats for women in Parliament and state legislatures. As we have seen, Mehta, Kaur and their colleagues at the AIWC had vehemently opposed such reservations for women. How would they have responded to the new reservation law? Professor Mrinalini Sinha takes a guess: 

Mrinalini Sinha: But I think these were women who were also very grounded in the moment, in the politics of the moment were less interested in theoretical abstractions for their own sake. So I would imagine, and I have no way to ventriloquise her, but I would imagine that given the really low representation of women in by all the major political parties, that I think they might have kind of been willing to accept or consider seriously the question of reservations for women and maybe even reservations within reservations, which is of course the other issue that they had opposed earlier. So I think the context might make it very different now. 

<beat>

Host: As India was reimagining its future, the global order was also being reshaped after the second world war. Indian freedom fighters, diplomats and politicians – many of them women – were a part of that effort. Along with Vijayalakshmi Pandit, Lakshmi Menon and others, Hansa Mehta represented India at the newly formed United Nations. They confidently projected their identities in the emerging postcolonial world.

In 1945, Mehta was first appointed as a member of the UN Sub-Commission on the Status of Women. It was formed to address women’s rights and gender equality globally. A year later, she was picked by Nehru to be India’s representative on the Drafting Committee of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 

<Clip of interview with Hansa Mehta from the oral history archives at Cambridge University>

Hansa Mehta: The Human rights commission was also a very interesting experience. Mrs Roosevelt was the chairman and remained chairman for nearly six years. 

Host: The allied powers believed that it was important for a body like the UN to come up with a clear charter—a common set of fundamental human rights to protect and empower people across the world. The first lady of the United States, Elenor Roosevelt led the effort that would affect millions of people, and likely be an important blueprint for the future. 

Hansa Mehta: And I was a member of that commission for six years so I had the pleasure of working under her chairmanship. The declaration of human rights was actually drafted by a sub-committee of which I was a member… It was a very good experience because I was at the same time on the fundamental rights committee of our Constituent Assembly so I could compare human rights and also the fundamental rights. 

Host: Mehta was the right person for the job because she took the wording of such charters seriously. She feared that vague phrasing could be misinterpreted to strip people of their rights, no matter what the intentions of the authors may have been. Which is why she raised a point about the first article in the draft charter which opened with the words “All men are created free and equal”. Here’s Blanche Wiesen Cooke, Roosevelt’s biographer, in an old interview clip. 

<Clip of Blanche Wiesen Cooke speaking about the UDHR Conference plays>

“And it’s Hansa Mehta who makes some very stirring contributions to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. She says, “Excuse me, Mrs. Roosevelt. I must tell you, if you say all men are created with certain inalienable rights around the world, it will be limited to all men.” And so we get all human beings are endowed by their creator. And that is how it reads.”

Host: The text was circulated among the member states of the United Nations in 1948 and it was adopted in December that year. It is considered a milestone moment. Here’s Eleanor Roosevelt herself:

<Clip of Eleanor Roosevelt addressing the United Nations on the adoption of the UDHR>

“We stand today at the threshold of a great event both in the life of the United Nations and in the life of mankind. This Universal Declaration of Human Rights may well become the international magna carta.”

Host: The charter encompassed the rights to asylum, property, fair trial, free expression and several others. It has gone on to form the basis of international law as we know it today. And it is the basis of at least 70  human rights treaties. 

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Mehta allowed her varied experiences to seep into and speak to each other. And she did it all with elan. 

Radha Vatsal: And when you look at the photos of her as well, she wears the sari with the pallu over her head and pinned in place and stuff. And when you even see her in the commission on the status of woman. She’s the only one in ethnic dress, the other women, and there are many from the global south. They are still wearing sort of Western clothes and hats and stuff like that. She is the only one who was there in her sari and she’s quite tiny and petite. And there she is holding her own ground.

Host: After India became a republic in January 1950, Mehta turned full-time to her other passion: education. She was appointed as the Vice Chancellor of the MS University Baroda, a position she held for nine years. She also contributed to debates on the Hindu Code Bill and women’s education. 

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Mehta more or less withdrew from public life in her later years. But her contributions to the women’s movement and in the Constituent Assembly have had an enduring relevance. They’re worth considering in moments of  renewed interest in subjects like political reservations for women, and the Uniform Civil Code. 

Until a few years ago, no one in independent India really thought of women as an independent political base. But for this early generation of feminists, the relationship between Indian women and the state was of paramount importance in women’s own march to freedom. The common thread running through their debates was the recognition that tradition and cultural conservatism were incompatible with the emancipation of women – that was something that could only be achieved by building solidarities across social divides. Looking back, we can see how instrumental Hansa Mehta and her peers were in  shaping a new idea of citizenship that was rooted in the common experiences of Indian women. This was a bold reimagination of the role of women in a society which prized collective identity over individual rights. It was a message that eventually found expression in our constitutional scheme:  India was no more and no less than the Indian people –– but each of those people was more than their designated social role; man and woman alike, they were sovereign individuals. All human beings, born free and equal.