The word Durga itself means one who is invincible, strong and a protector against injustices. Reading about Durgabai we come across several events where her name resonated with her work. She was a Gandhian women activist during the anti-colonial movement, lawyer, member of the Constituent Assembly and the Planning Commission. Born on 15 July 1909 at Rajahmundry, Durgabai was an epitome of women empowerment. She was married off at a tender age of 8 to her cousin Subba Rao. After a couple of years, she walked out of her marriage. Little did those around her foresaw her becoming a major female figure propagating woman’s right.
Deeply influenced by Gandhian principles, she along with her family rejected western clothes and donned hand-spun Khadi. At the age of 12, she quit English medium under the nationalist movement of boycotting British institutions and went on to establish a Hindi-medium school called Balika Hindi Pathshala in her native town of Rajahmundry.
She led the Salt Satyagrah during the Civil Disobedience Movement for which she was jailed for three years. During her time in confinement, she came across women from around the country who faced injustice and discrimination due to lack of education and social awareness. This void led them to become ignorant of their basic rights. Agitated, this phase motivated Durgabai to take up the study of criminal law from Madras University after completing her B.A. as well as M.A. in Political Science.
Laying foundations of women’s social welfare work in India, she established the famous Andhra Mahila Sabha (Andhra Women’s Conference). This organization provided women with vocational training, encouraged them to pursue higher education and generated funds for securing women’s welfare. She was also the president of the Blind Relief Association where she set up school-hostel and a light engineering workshop for the blind.
Owing to her extraordinary contribution in the field of social welfare and fighting gender-based injustices, she was appointed as the sole female chairmen in the panel member to the Constituent Assembly which undertook the gargantuan task of framing the laws governing the country. After her unsuccessful tread at getting elected to the Parliament, she was given a position at the Planning Commission where she designed policies on social welfare. In 1953, she organized the Central Welfare Board to coordinate, mobilize and fund village level development projects aimed at educating, training and rehabilitating displaced and poor women. She was successful at constructing several successful welfare policies and generated funds for supporting marginalized women.
She has also been credited towards emphasizing the need to establish family courts. Between 1960 and 1962, Deshmukh served as the chairman of the National Committee on Girls' and Women's Education, a position that made her responsible for obtaining funds for and publishing several reports on the state of national social welfare in India, such as the Encyclopedia of Social Services in India, the Report of the Commission on Child Care, the Grants in Aid Code Committee Report, and Social Legislation and Its Role in Social Welfare. She served as a delegate to the Second Commonwealth Education Conference. In 1963 she was a member of the Indian delegation to the World Food Congress in Washington, D.C., and in 1965 she was invited as a UNESCO expert to prepare the Draft Asian Model for Educational Development. She also had been felicitated with Padma Vibhusan by the Indian Government for her remarkable contribution in the field of social work.
In 1953, she married the then Finance Minister of India Chintaman Deshmukh. C. D. Deshmukh had a daughter from a previous marriage but the couple remained otherwise childless. Though she had parted ways with Subba Rao, she supported his widow Timmaiamma after his death. Timmaiamma lived with Durgabai and Chintaman Deshmukh, and Durgabai also organised for her to get vocational training.
Durgabai penned a book called The Stone That Speaketh and her autobiography Chintaman and I, where she chronicled her journey from being a child bride to India’s leading women activist.
Piece by- Fuhaar Bandhu (fbandhu.02@gmail.com)
About the author:
Fuhaar is a first-year Political Science Honours student at Daulat Ram College, Delhi University. An avid reader and a cinephile, she’s always on the lookout to find her next big read or surfing IMBD for her next binge-watch. Deeply involved in everyday politics her own experiences with the society yearned her to find a platform to voice out her opinions and thus pushed her to join Women’s Development Cell.
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