S03E06 - Hansa Mehta

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. "The resolution I am making in front of you is presenting the objectives resolution, which outlines a set of principles to guide the constitution making process." "It is a way of making a decision, to make a decision, to explain something, to tell you where we are going and how we are going to go on this path." Man after man stands to respond to the resolution. At one point, a striking person stands up. She is petite, clad in a saree, the palupin 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 is 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 is Hansa Maheta, one of just 17 women elected to the Assembly. "Members were elected by the provincial legislatures. I was one of the elected members and he started work on the Constitution Assembly." That's Maheta 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, Maheta 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. She met 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 rule at the United Nations. She was a key figure in shaping the global discourse on human rights. In this episode, we explore Hansa Maheta'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'm your host, Supriya Nyer. [Music] For 60 years, the Maharaja Geikwa has ruled in Bharata and celebrates his Daam and Jubilee. In this year of Indian Jubilies, with the Maharani beside him, he presides at a great derby in his capital. The man who was a peasant boy of 12 was set up on the throne of the most important native state in Western India. This is a news clip from 1936 about the Daam and Jubilee celebrations of Maharaja Sai Ajirao Geikwa's rule in the princely state of Bharata. 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 benefited from these measures was Hansa Maheta. She was born in 1897 to Harshadha Gauri and Manubhai Maheta. Manubhai was a philosophy professor who was later appointed the Divan or Prime Minister of Bharata. Hansa Maheta was born in Gujarat and as I mentioned her grandfather was Nansranka Maheta who was the actor of the first novel written in Gujarati. And he was as she says, a Sudhavarvala, a reformer and he really emphasized education in his family. This is Radhavat says, a fiction writer and essayist based in New York. 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. In March 2024, Watsal wrote a piece on Maheta for a New York Times series called Overlooked No More. The series as the name suggests intended to pay tribute to remarkable people whose debts the paper had previously overlooked. Here she's telling us about the progressive environment in which Maheta was raised. And again in another essay she talks about who the main influences on her life or and the first was her father who was a very liberal and educated man. The second was the Maharaja Saiyajira 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 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 among the earlier students that were women students there. And she actually had a mother. Maheta 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, Maheta 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, Maheta led a cocooned existence and spent her time reading Gujarati in 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 master's degree in journalism and sociology. But 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 Nidu in person. The poet and freedom fighter Sarojini Nidu was visiting London at the time. The two women hit it off and Maheta would later count Nidu as one of the greatest influences in her life. Nidu was an active figure in the suffrageite movement or the movement to win women the right to vote in the United Kingdom and in India. She took Maheta along with her to conferences and protest meetings including one in Geneva. And she says that Sarojini Nidu 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 I 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. Maheta finished her studies in 1921 and returned home to India to work in education. In an interview to the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library in Delhi years later, Maheta said that a professor at Baruda 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, Maheta visited women's colleges across the US. Soon after she returned to India in October that year, she met her future husband, Dr. Jivraj Maheta. We weren't able to confirm where they met or who introduced them. Jivraj was 10 years older and also came from Baruda State. The proposed union caused a far-row because Hansa was a Brahmin and Jivraj Avaishya deemed lower in the caste hierarchy. Members of her caste strongly opposed it, but Hansa was unfazed. She married Jivraj anyway. I think in one of her oral histories, she says that her community wanted to outcast her. She says 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. There were other norms that didn't seem to apply to Maheta. In interviews, neither Hansa nor Jivraj Maheta spoke about how marriage affected her work. Hansa spoke of how she could not join Gandhi 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. Towards the end of 1926, a curious circular appeared in newspapers across the country. It called on women all over India to form committees to discuss the problems in the way of girls' education. The circular was written by an Irish software. a religious called Margaret Cousins, a vocal reformer and an expatriate who had been living in India since 1915, Hansa Mehta was one of the 2000 women who responded to her appeal. In January 1927, women of all religions, mostly upper class and upper caste women gathered in Pune, known as Puna 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 in India. And 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 education, like open the field of education for women and so on. This is Aachut Cheitan. Cheitan 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 Cheitan 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 of hindering women's education. Most of the delegates agreed that child marriage was a key barrier. How to design meaningful educational programs for girls if their schooling could be abruptly curtailed by marriage. Mehta moved a resolution to declare child marriage invalid. But 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 was aided by a controversy that erupted later in 1927, as this clip from the Hindi digital news platform Lalanto explains. The American author Catherine Mayo published her book Mother India in 1927. The book was backed 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 burned in Bombay and New York. M.K Gandhi famously called it a "Drain Inspector's Report". The book is, you know, infamous in the context of the period 1920s, it was published in 1927. This is Minalini Sinha. My name is Minalini Sinha and I'm a professor of modern South Asian and Indian history University of Michigan. And I work a lot on colonial India and particularly on gender politics. Sinha's book, Specters of Mother India, the global restructuring of an empire, argues that Mayo's book galvanized Indian feminists. And in 1929, two years later, nationalist leaders in the Imperial Legislative Council banded together to pass the Child Marriage Restraint Act or the Sardar 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 three months of present time or a fine. The AIWC's annual report of 1930 records that its members actively campaigned for the Sardar Act. They organized 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, "But I think it was a game changer because until then marriage issues were all in civil law. This was criminalizing it." 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 patriarchy's 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 Sardar 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. So, it addressed child marriage as a general issue and applied it to all communities. That was another reason why for the Indian women's movement, child marriage was so significant. They had already got a sort of created cross-communal alliance on this question and this allowed them in 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 or allow them to do. In her told us that earlier reforms like Satyabhali's should 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, Sinhar argues, the Sardar Act began a fresh chapter in the relationship between Indian women and the state by taking religion out of the equation. 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 may or may want 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. In short, the Sardar Act was the women's movements way of asserting that women were individuals and citizens on their own. They were not just members of the religious community as they were born into. 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, women like Hansa Ametha, why I know you're interested in, were important in developing. The passage of the Sardar Act in 1929 infused great zeal into the Indian 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. 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 recognizing the economic rights or economic value of domestic work that is done by women housewives at home. The homemakers worked, right? So that was as early as in the 1930s, early 1930s. Hansa was already then leading feminist activist and bombie. 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. It started developing white papers, surveys of the status of women and political, economic and social rights of women, the various fears 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. All this while, the organization 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 Amritkar or Kamala Devi Chattopadhyay from actively participating in the national movement. Hansa Maheta, who had initially been hesitant to join that movement, finally took the plunge in 1930. Long resolved and undonted look, as the epic march began, multitudes thundered out their welcome to the revolution and express their will to do and die through the cries of Inkalab Zindabad. 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 Sathya Grahas but understood that their domestic responsibilities kept them from full-time involvement. Has Matha explained in an interview? At a place called Karadi, he invited women from all over India to participate in the meeting. He asked women to take up picketting of foreign cloth and liquor shop. Women were not prepared. All women were not prepared and suddenly I was not prepared to break the salt's law because I had my little children to look after. Matha joined her mentor, Srinjani Nidu in Bombay to form the Deesh Savika Sankh, an all-women volunteer group. They picketed shop selling liquor and foreign goods. At one point, their picketing activities brought Bombay's largest cloth market, the Mooljitah market, to a standstill for three months. A few months into the agitation, the colonial police arrested Nidu and other prominent leaders of the Congress and Matha 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 Chopati, a beach side locality in South Bombay, to the municipality office, opposite what was then known as Victoria Terminus. Matha describes it vividly. "We are the lack of people, men and women." Matha evaded arrest that day, but a plethora of other Congress leaders could not. After the civil disobedience movement, Matha's involvement in the freedom struggle steadily increased. During this period, she served as the vice president of the Harijan Seyvaksanga, which Gandhi had founded in 1932 to eradicate untouchability. Then, in 1935, fresh political developments would give Matha her first taste of government office. "Congress government for the souls 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 or industrial labor, uplift of the schedule card, development of village industries, and research for resolutions to the communal problem, to free India, to build up a strong and prosperous nation." In 1935, the British government passed the Government of India Act. It reserved 41 seats for women in the provincial legislatures. Matha was offered one sat seat in the Bombay legislature, but she declined it. She explains why. "In the Bombay assembly, there were two seats reserved for women. I was offered one of the seats, but I did not contest from the reserved for the reserved seats. As the members we all in the women's conference had always been against reservation of seats." 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, Matha was elected to the Legislative Council of 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 on mass to protest against the decision of the viceroi of India, Lord Linnithgarh, to drag India into the Second World War without consulting Indian leaders. "These are the first pictures to be released of the arrival of a contingent of Indian troops. Once again, these hardy little men from the hills and the plains have come to fight for Britain in their own individual way. And Germany will know that there are no more philous fighters in the world. This rich jewel of the empires crown is given without stint to the cause of the allies. From the horror and co-cutter they have come." 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 B. N. 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, this 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 intercast marriage, abolished polygamy, gave women the right to inheritance, and introduced divorce. Meanwhile, Mehta had become the president of the AIWC in 1945, at a time when communal tensions consumed every corner of public life. Some of her prominent fellow travellers, like Begum Jahanara Shanavas, had left the AIWC to join the Muslim League. But despite the odds, the AIWC kept its non-sectarian character intact under Mehta's leadership. Here's Chetan explaining. The biggest crisis 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 the 1945-1946. When Muslim women had to choose between AIWC and largely patriarchal community, which, what they would represent, Hansa held the women together. That was one of the greatest contributions of ensue. In her presidency, India came within touching distance of freedom. In 1945, the postwar 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. That whole charter of Indian women's rights and duties was drafted by Hansa Mehta. Of course, with great inputs from Kamaladvi Chattu Patair, Renuka Rihanna Sen and many others. So I think what Hansa did before 1946 was also, she ensured that the Indian women's movement has a very definite written set of demands. Not just weak demands or not just peace-meal demands and that's I used the word peace-meal for a particular purpose. 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. In his work, Chita argues that the charter needs to be treated as an important incident of the constitution. At par with the Nairu report prepared by Motila Lahru in 1928. The charter 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 recognized the right of all women to vote and their right to work. It also recognized 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 emphasized access to health and education for all women. Mehta said that the charter was meant to serve as a moral framework for future legislation. As Mehta and the AIWC hashed out the women's charter, the elections for the Constitution 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 that 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. Chaitan explains, "The truth is that as I said earlier also, women were very keen on getting elected to the Assembly. They were already campaigning for their elections. Three names were foremost." Kamala Devi Chattapadhyay, Anusa Mehta and Rajkumari Ambitkar. It was very clearly suggested in the meetings of all the holiday women's conference that whatever it takes, at least these three should be elected to the concentration. The AIWC was also writing to the provincial assemblies with names of potential nominees. The list included 40 women from all communities and provinces. 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 Anusa Mehta was sent from Bombay because that is she had already been a member of the Bombay list literally assembly. So she was always there and she was a member of the AIWC. Of the 17 women who were eventually elected to the assembly, seven were recommended by the AIWC. They included Mehta and her longtime colleagues Rajkumari Amritkar, Renuka Reh, Amuswaminathan, Perinbaruja, Vijay Lakshmi Pandit and Sujita Kriplani. 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 that 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 front. 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 know you got a microphone and you spoke that was not the case. So that itself I think is a very gendered kind of a space. Some women's voice says 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. Some male members were openly misogynistic and the women members were constantly jostling to be heard. Then there have been occasions when women wanted to say something. For example, Renuka Reh when she was arguing on the right to property, someone has been interested in her and she heckled her. And she was not allowed to speak that happened. There were many occasions when women were speaking the chairperson would make paternalistic remarks. Sometimes he would say that you are a woman and I am for speaking or sometimes they would say that because you are a woman I am giving you two extra minutes. But other spaces like the subcommittees which met in smaller groups to discuss specific issues were less intimidating. So it's not surprising that some of the methods most significant interventions were in the subcommittee on fundamental rights headed by J.B. Kriplani. Here's method talking about her experience on that committee. It was quite an interesting work. There were some members who did not believe in fundamental rights. Mr. Kriplani was the chairman of the committee. He used to somehow ridicule the fundamental rights. Though it seems today he believes in them. We had Mr. Munshi also who was all the time championing the cause of the rightist Sumeikaldan or vested interests. The fundamental rights chapter has been therefore a kind of compromise on many things. From and in members of the assembly. B.R. Mbettkar, Aladi Krishn Swami Ayyar, Malana Azad, K.T. Shah, K.M. Munshi and Minumasani were all a part of the subcommittee on fundamental rights. Crucially, methods old colleague and friend from the A.I.W.C., 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 A.I.W.C. had done over the years in advancing the idea of progressive citizenship for Indian women. As we saw in the Sardha Act, removing religion from the equation between women and the state was at the heart of this project. Mehta and Kaur, Tawalously advocated for this idea in the subcommittee. Chitnam tells us more. One is the opposition or the note of dissent that Mehta Amrit Kaur wrote on the question 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 has initially agreed upon when the fundamental rights subcommittee met and Allah the Krishna Swami, I 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 religions. 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 Chitnam explaining Mehta and Kaur's vision for such a code. But the idea of the uniform civil code in the minds of unsurpassed Mehta and her colleagues was very different from the idea of the uniform civil code which is now presented or which know of which there is a kind of an anxiety about which there is a kind of an anxiety. So it was not just about the uniformity, it was 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, with its regarding adoption, marriage, divorce and so on. Along with Ambedkar and Minumasani, the women argued that it was the state's responsibility to guarantee a UCC. They believed that it would help establish a national identity that would supersede religious and ethnic identities. This idea however had no takeers. And the uniform civil code found a place in the chapter on the directive principles of state policy which was sort of a to-do list for the Indian state. No government could be taken to court for failing to achieve these goals. But Chetan says that method and court played a pivotal role in ensuring that this chapter was not entirely ineffective. And the single most contribution of these women to the Constitution of India is in the form of the note of dissent which led to the drafting or the wording of the article 37. You know, 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 non-delis fundamental, is taken from the, lifted from the note of dissent that court in Hymeta had written. In another crucial intervention, Metha and court proposed including a clause on affirmative action for women. There was still against reservations but supported other kinds of measures to help women overcome social and economic disadvantages. This they said was crucial to developing women's skills and potential. Chetan summing up, first is that women never said that we do not want reservations but it 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 create substantive equality between men and women. They demand a period in the form of article 53 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've seen, Metha, court and their colleagues at the AIWC had vehemently opposed such reservations for women. How would they have responded to the new reservation law? Professor Mreenalini Sinhar takes a guess. I think these were women who were also very grounded in the moment, in the politics of the moment and were less interested in theoretical abstractions for their own sake. So I would imagine, and I have no way to, to, eventually, acquire her, but I would imagine that given the really low representation of women in 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 would add up almost earlier. So I think the context might make it very different now. As India was reimagining its future, the global order was also being reshaped after the Second World War. Indigne freedom fighters, diplomats and politicians, many of them women were a part of that effort. Along with Vijay Lakshmi Pandit, Lakshmi Manan and others, Hansa Maheta represented India at the newly formed United Nations. They confidently projected their identities in the emerging post-colonial world. In 1945, Maheta 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 Nairu to be India's representative on the drafting committee of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Human Rights Commission was also a very interesting experience. The students, Mr. Thruzels, was the chairman and the women's chairman for nearly six years. 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, Eleanor Roosevelt, led the effort that would affect millions of people and likely be an important blueprint for the future. And I was a member of that committee for six years, so I had a pleasure of working under her chairmanship. The Declaration of Human Rights was actually drafted by a subcommittee 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 the human rights and also the fundamental rights. Mehta was the right person for the job because she took the wording of such letters 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 Weisencook, Roosevelt's biographer, in an old interview clip. And it's Hansen 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 inelienable 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." 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. 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-cater of all men everywhere. 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. It allowed her varied experiences to seep into and speak to each other, and she did it all with a land. And you know, when you look at the photos of her as well, you know, she wears the saree with the palu over her head and pinned in place and stuff. And when you even see her in the commission on the status of women, she is the only one in ethnic dress, the other women, and they are many from the global side. They are still wearing sort of western clothes and hats and stuff like that. She is the only one who was there in her saree and she is quite tiny and petite, and there she is holding her own crown. After India became a republic in January 1950, method earned full time to her other passion, education. She was appointed as the vice chancellor of MS University, Baroda, a position she held for nine years. She also contributed to debates on the Hindu Code Bill and Women's Education. Metta 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 are 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, the 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 Metta 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. And each of those people was more than their designated social role. Man and women alike. There were sovereign individuals. All human beings, born free and equal. Friend of the court is an initiative of the Anil Devan Foundation and the School of Legal and Sociopolitical Studies at Embedkar University Delhi. Thank you to the guests on this episode. Archut Chetan, Munalini Sinha and Radha Vatsel. This episode was presented by Supriya Nair. It was researched and written by Ramiya Bodu Palli and Bhavya Dore. It was edited by Sukhada Tatke. Malikad Dandiker provided fact-checking and additional research. It was recorded at Stitch Studio Mumbai and produced by Gaurav Vaz. Sachi Rajethe Aksh worked on the sound design and Ayanday mixed and mastered it. Gauri Devan, Lawrence Liang, Ranveer Singh, Sham Devan and Vivek Devan advised the show. Thanks to Justice Gautam Patel, Alok Prasad Nakumar, Arun Tiruvangadam, Kiran Mehta, Jadev Mehta and Rithika Subramanyan.