In the nineteenth century, spurred by colonial criticism of Indian social practices, Indian male intellectuals embarked on a project of social reform, at the heart of which was improving the condition of women. Education was central to their efforts, and as print cultures flourished across the subcontinent, the reformers launched Telugu-language journals and magazines that focused exclusively on women readers. From the first journals—Sathihitha Bodhini and Telugu Zenana—to the later Hindu Sundary, Andhra Mahila and others, they became a site for new discourses on the ‘woman’s question’.

A comprehensive history of Telugu women’s journals from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, this book highlights women’s own engagement with the social reform movement. While the initial publications were spearheaded by Western-educated male social reformers, from 1903 onwards, women in Andhra emerged as editors, managers and publishers of women’s journals. Led by an awareness of their duty to lead the women’s movement for change, women intellectuals focused on key issues: debates on child marriage, widowhood and widow remarriage, a reformed domesticity, lack of civil and political rights for women, and modern education for women. Their efforts encouraged the formation of a network of women readers and writers.

Drawing from a wealth of largely untapped archival sources that include personal papers, letters, memoirs, stories and photographs, the book visibilises women’s words and deeds, their views on the emerging anti-colonial struggle, and their efforts to create a new print-public sphere. This meticulous analysis of women’s print culture is supplemented with appendices that include the publication timeline of important journals and translations of select articles. The book will be essential reading for scholars of Telugu print history, nineteenth-century social reform and the women’s movement.

Shaik Mahaboob Basha is Associate Professor of History, Centre for Distance and Online Education, Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad.

Foreword xv

Introduction   1

1. The Woman’s Question: Intellectual Currents and New Modes of Collective Action   37
2. The New Print-Public Landscape: A Survey of the Journals   108
3. Autonomy and Legal Reform: Debates on Child Marriage and Kanyasulkam   178
4. Representing Widowhood: Tragedy, Defiance and the Conservative Backlash   264
5. Equality or Patriarchal Benevolence? Education and Domestic Training   348

Conclusion   426

Appendices   440
Bibliography   472
Index   500