Indianwomensmuseum

How men and women are different in search

Meera, better known as Mirabai and venerated as Sant Meerabai, was a 16th-century Hindu mystic poet and devotee of Krishna. She is a celebrated Bhakti saint, particularly in the North Indian Hindu tradition. Mirabai was born into a Rajput royal family in Kudki and spent her childhood in Merta

Ahilyabai Holkar was the hereditary noble sardar of the Maratha Empire, India. Ahilya was born in the village of Chondi in Jamkhed, Ahmednagar, Maharashtra. She moved the seat of her kingdom to Maheshwar, south of Indore on the Narmada River.
Ahilyabai's husband Khanderao Holkar was killed in the battle of Kumher in 1754. Twelve years later, her father-in-law, Malhar Rao Holkar died. A year after that she took over the affairs of Holkar fief. She tried to protect her land from plundering invaders. She personally led armies into battle. She appointed Tukoji Rao Holkar as the Chief of her militia.
Ahilyabai was a great pioneer and builder of Hindu temples. She built hundreds of temples and Dharmashalas throughout India. Her greatest achievement was to rebuild the Kashi Vishwanath Temple in 1780, which was dedicated to Shiva; the presiding deity of the city of Varanasi, one of the holiest Hindu sites of pilgrimage, that had been plundered, desecrated, demolished & converted into Gyanvapi Mosque on the orders of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb in 1696.

Razia Sultana was the first woman Sultanate of India, and ruled the court of Delhi from the end of 1236 to 1240. The only ever woman to do so, she defied all odds to occupy the throne, including overcoming conflicts over her gender and her slave ancestry. During her reign, she proved her mettle as a just and capable ruler, and was renowned for her subversive actions, which varied from sporting men’s attire to printing coins in her own name and image.

Source: Google Arts and Culture

Kittur Chennamma (23 October 1778 – 21 February 1829)[1] was the Indian Queen of Kittur, a princely state in Karnataka. She led an armed rebellion against the British East India Company in 1824 in defiance of the doctrine of lapse in an attempt to maintain Indian control over the region, in which she defeated them, but she was dead in the imprisonment of second rebellion by the British East India Company

Jijabai Shahaji Bhosale, referred to as Rajmata Jijabai or Jijau, was the mother of Shivaji, founder of the Maratha Empire. She was a daughter of Lakhujirao Jadhav of Sindkhed Raja

A Punjabi princess who married Maharajkumar Karimjit Singh, the younger son of the Sikh Maharaja Jagatjit Singh of Kapurthala, in 1928, at the age of thirteen. She was born in 1915 as Rani Sita Devi but came to be known as Princess Karam. The House of Kapurthala, one of the five royal houses of Punjab, was famous for its extravagant taste and glamour, with her father-in-law, the Maharaja, being a world traveller and Francophile who modelled his kingdom after Versailles. Princess Karam’s exquisite beauty and style entranced European society and she quickly became a fashion icon during the Jazz Age. She spoke several languages including French, English and German.

"Aswathi Thirunal" Umayamma, known as Queen Umayamma or Queen Ashure, was the regent queen of Venad in southern India from 1677 to 1684 on behalf of her young nephew Ravi Varma. She also served as the Junior Queen of Attingal under Senior Queen Makayiram Thirunal and subsequently as the Senior Queen of Attingal.

Rani Velu Nachiyar was a queen of Sivaganga estate from c. 1780–1790. She was the first Indian queen to wage war with the East India Company in India. She is known by Tamils as Veeramangai.

Born in 1892 and living a long time, until 1983, Fatma Begum spent only 16 years of that 91 year span working in film, but made a big impact as the first woman to direct a movie in India, in 1926.She was also an actress and a writer and founder of a production company, and came from a background in the Urdu language theater

Text: IMDB

The first Indian woman to conquer Mt. Everest in 1984, is widely recognised for her pioneering role in planning, organising & leading pathbreaking expeditions for women. She is also known for her innovative pursuits over three decades in developing Leadership skills through Adventure Expeditions. The Prime mover of any organisation, society or nation is its people and she has made many a leader benefiting them and in turn those whose lives they have touched.

Text: No Mountain Too High

Rachel Thomas is an Indian skydiver. She was the first Indian woman to skydive from 7,000 ft over the North Pole on 20 April 2002, to commemorate 150 years of the Indian Railways.

During the North Pole expedition she stayed on the ice for six days in - 45-55 °C temperature. A former employee of Indian Railways, she was the first woman to compete for India in a skydiving competition in 1987 and has the record of being the first Indian female to skydive over the North Pole in 2002

It is said that her remarkable career can be divided into two phases—first as Akhtari Bai, then as Begum Akhtar after her marriage. When she is remembered now, it is mostly as a singer of great repute, celebrated for her masterful rendition of ghazals,thumri and dadra.

Akhtar “epitomized (Lucknow’s) feudal high culture both in her music and poetry, but also in her speech and manners, as well as her personal style. Her entire persona evoked a nostalgic, feudal Lucknow," writes scholar Regula Burckhardt Qureshi in an article titled “In Search Of Begum Akhtar: Patriarchy, Poetry, And Twentieth Century Indian Music" (2001) that analyses a lessdiscussed but central aspect of Akhtar’s life—that she was a tawaif, a hereditary courtesan performer and professional female musician.

Akhtari Bai Faizabai was born in 1914 in Faizabad to the courtesan Mushtari Bai. She lived through a turbulent time in India’s history, both in terms of the politics of gender and changing performance contexts.

Historian Saleem Kidwai, who knew Begum Akhtar closely and who is deeply interested in the histories of courtesan performers, says her marriage was akin to a social coup. As Akhtari, she had been a singer-actor who had, in the tradition of many accomplished tawaifs, been trained by famous ustads, among them Ata Mohammad Khan of the Patiala gharana. She had briefly acted in films and had a successful run as a recording artist.

As Begum Akhtar, she was well-known as a singer but she could only erase the stigma associated with her origins because of her status as the wife of a “respectable" man, Ishtiaq Ahmad Abbasi, a taluqdar (landowner) and barrister.

Text: Livemint

Leela Dube's Ph.D. (1953, Anthropology) was on women in three adivasi groups, comparing their lives to upper caste women, but she is best known for her work on Muslim matriliny in Lakshwadeep, Matriliny and Islam: Religion and society in the Laccadives (1969) and marriage and kinship relations more broadly. Like many women scholars, it is her own experience which deeply shaped her interests - marriage as she describes it was a relation of both “gratification” and “agony”.

Onake Obavva is celebrated as one of the fiercest women patriot and warrior along with female warriors like Kittur Chennamma, Keladi Chennamma and Abbakka Rani.

During the reign of Madakari Nayaka, the city of Chitradurga was besieged by the troops of Hyder Ali (1754-1779). A chance sighting of a man entering the Chitradurga fort through a hole in the rocks led to a plan by Hyder Ali to send his soldiers through that hole. The Guard (Kahale Mudda Hanuma, who was on duty near that hole) had gone home to have his lunch. During his meal he needed some water to drink, so his wife Obavva went to collect water in a pot[3] from a pond which was near the hole in the rocks, halfway up the hill. She noticed the army trying to enter the fort through the hole. She used the Onake or pestle (a wooden long club meant for pounding paddy grains) to kill the soldiers one by one by hitting them on the head and then quietly moving the dead without raising the suspicions of the rest of the troops.

Mythily Sivaraman: The Veteran CPI (M) leader and an important woman revolutionary from Tamil Nadu, Mythili Sivaraman passed away in Chennai in May 2021. The former All India Democratic Women’s Association’s (AIDWA) Vice President was undergoing treatment for COVID-19, and succumbed to the disease early on May 30, Sunday. She was 81 years old.

Through her personal visits and writings, Sivaraman was at the forefront of protests related to the Keezhvenmani massacre of Dalits in Thanjavur. Being one of the prominent leaders of AIDWA and CPI(M), she worked along with generations of Left activists in Tamil Nadu, and was a leading voice on issues related to caste oppression and trade unions.

Someone had to say it.

Durgawati Devi: Durga Bhabhi of revolutionary freedom fightersIt is rightly said that India’s freedom movement was a mass movement. People from towns and villages responded in thousands to the call for freeing the motherland from foreign yoke. But many of the valiant warriors of our freedom struggle have remained unsung with hardly any mention in our history books.

Text: RSTV

Kumbakonam Balamani Ammal was hailed on the Tamil stage of the early twentieth century as the queen of theatre. The first woman to run a company entirely of women, Balamani was born into a Devadasi family. She and her sister Rajambal ran a theatre company she launched as an asylum for women who needed shelter and security. She became the most popular actress in the Kumbakonam region of Tanjavur district. The story goes that Balamani Special trains from Tiruchchirappalli and Mayavaram in Tanjavur district would stop at Kumbakonam during performance timings, to meet the demands of her fans. The company was the first to dramatise a Tamil novel--JR Rangaraju`s detective bestseller, Rajambal. Balamani Ammal`s death was tragic, with no money left even for her final rites.

Text: Sruti.com
Image: Wiki

From 1887 to 1888, the Madras Christian College Magazine serialised a story in English called Saguna. It was an autobiographical novel by Krupabai Satthianadhan, a young woman in her twenties. In 1895, a year after her untimely death, Saguna: A Story of Native Christian Life was published posthumously by Srinivasa, Varadachari and Co. in Madras. The book was presented to Queen Victoria who, upon reading it, was so impressed that she asked for more books by the same author.

Text by Oindrila Mukherjee for Scroll

One child, one teacher, one pen, and one book can change the world-Malala

A gentle reminder. Madness leads to revolutions.

Begum Hazrat Mahal was one of the few women who challenged the British during the revolt of 1857. Her maiden name was Muhammadi Khanum. She was born at Faizabad, Awadh. Later in life, she performed a mut’ah marriage with Nawab Wajid Ali Shah.

Awadh was annexed by the British East India Company in 1856 and Nawab Wajid Ali Shah, the last Nawab of Awadh was sent into exile to Calcutta. Hazrat Mahal decided to stay back in Lucknow along with her son Birjis Qadir.

After the absorption of Awadh, a rebellion broke out at Meerut and the banner of revolt was raised in Lucknow which spread rapidly to other towns of Awadh. Lucknow was the only place where the English did not leave the Residency building and faced the rebels until they were able to regain their lost power.

There are two faces to Cinderella: there's the European folk tale that evolved into the modern-day story of a girl in a big blue ball gown, and there's the centuries-old plot that has been passed between cultures for millennia.

The story of overcoming oppression and marrying into another social class to be saved from a family that doesn't love or appreciate you is an incredibly powerful one, too powerful to be contained by the story we all know. At the center of most Cinderella stories (whether they use that name for their protagonist or not) is one thing: a persecuted heroine who rises above her social station through marriage.

Text by VOX
Image by Wiki

The idea to create “Priya’s Shakti” comic book series came after the horrible gang r**e that happened on a bus in New Delhi in 2012. There was an enormous outcry in particular from young adults and teenagers —both women and men. Many people felt a cultural shift had to happen, especially views towards the role of women in modern society. Deep-rooted patriarchal views needed to be challenged. As a result, we created a new Indian “superhero” – Priya, who is a r**e survivor and through the power of persuasion she is able to motivate people to change.

Here's an excerpt from a SheThePeople article on Donning a pink Kurta and a brown Salwar along with a green Dupatta, Priya - India's first female comic superhero, dives into a new adventure in the latest series titled Priya and The Lost Girls. In the new comic book, Priya, who is a r**e survivor, returns home on her flying tiger, Sahas, and discovers that all the young women of her village including her sister, Laxmi have disappeared. She learns that they have been taken to an underground brothel city called Rahu ruled by a demon who gets his power through fear and entrapment of women.

Just like the societal movements during World War II, the feminist movement of the ‘70s was reflected in what’s considered the Bronze Age of Comics as the number of female superheroes increased. Some of them were unfortunately man-hating stereotypes but we also saw the creation of the Women’s Liberation Press, whose first publication was a comic titled That Ain’t Me Babe and featured popular female icons such as Supergirl and Betty & Veronica. They later rebranded to Wimmen’s Comix and continued their underground anthologies until 1992.

In 1977, Ms. Marvel was first introduced as an (albeit failed) attempt at a feminist hero. Marvel also gave their existing heroic women a revamp around the same time in The Uncanny X-Men (1975)

Text Credit: HerCulture
Picture Credit: ComicShop

Fantomah is an American comics character, best known as one of the earliest comic-book superheroines. Created by Fletcher Hanks, the character first appeared in Jungle Comics #2, published by Fiction House.

Picture Credit: ComicVine Mag

Wonder Woman first appeared in 1941. She reportedly wasn't the first female comic book hero, but certainly the most prominent and popular one. Interestingly, what was also much talked about was the man who created the character—Harvard-educated psychologist William Moulton Marston, who, according to the History Channel is often credited as the inventor of the lie-detector test.

Marston believed women were mentally stronger than men and would come to rule the United States—albeit on a lengthy timeline. “The next 100 years will see the beginning of an American matriarchy—a nation of Amazons in the psychological rather than physical sense,” Marston told the Harvard Club of New York in 1937, according to an Associated Press report.

Bina Das was a young freedom fighter who took up arms against the British, attempting to assassinate the British Governor of Bengal, Stanley Jackson, when she was just 21. In 1960, she was awarded the Padma Shri for her contributions in social work. Best known as a young revolutionary who took up arms against the British establishment, Bina Das numbers among the heroes of Indian history—alongside Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, Preetilata Wadekar- who took up arms against the colonisers. This short memoir, published by Zubaan Books, movingly recounts the story of her involvement in the shooting of the British Governor of Bengal, Stanley Jackson, at the Annual Convocation Meeting of Calcutta University in 1932, her subsequent incarceration, and her growing involvement in politics. Despite her importance in Indian history, Bina Das disappeared from public view in later life and is rumoured to have passed away in anonymity in Rishikesh

Text: Sahapedia

Beginning of what we do depends on how we are raised. Let's change that.

Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, commonly known as Begum Rokeya, was a Bengali feminist thinker, writer, educator and political activist from British India. She is widely regarded as a pioneer of women's liberation in South Asia

Lakshmi Sahgal was a revolutionary of the Indian independence movement, an officer of the Indian National Army, and the Minister of Women's Affairs in the Azad Hind government. Lakshmi is commonly referred to in India as Captain Lakshmi, a reference to her rank when taken prisoner in Burma during the Second World War