Mahadevi Varma: Political Essays on Women, Culture, and Nation B ...

instrumental in her decision to give up writing poetry and, more importantly, in compelling her to devote her time entirely to social service and education. After entering the field of education, as she notes in an autobiographical essay, she could no longer remain content with just writing poetry.⁴⁷ She was not an armchair intellectual; while devoting herself to an artistic life might suggest a lack of social consciousness, not participating in politics according to Mahadevi, would be “like sitting in a burning house giving orders to put out the flames”.⁴⁸

It is interesting to note that long before she met Gandhi, Mahadevi resisted her child marriage to Svarupnarayan Varma. Even after completing her bachelor’s degree, Mahadevi remained adamant about her decision not to live with her husband and even considered becoming a Buddhist nun. In an interview conducted by Karine Schomer, Mahadevi speaks of her decision to not honour her marital commitment: “[I decided] to lead the life of a bhikshuni (nun) without taking on the ochre robe or withdrawing from the world”.⁴⁹ But even as she chose this life of celibacy without affiliation to a particular religious order, Mahadevi wondered about the extent to which her lifestyle was accepted publicly: “It would have been better if I had become a nun. If I had, perhaps the world would not have kept on trying to discover individuals it could imagine I was romantically involved with”.⁵⁰

Gandhi’s programme of satyagraha (adherence to the principle of truth, or truth-force) had created a space for women to participate in the nationalist movement by breaking through the dichotomy between the domestic and the public spheres of everyday life. By extension, the spinning of khadi (homespun cloth) and the exercise of moral restraint—what Gandhi extolled as “feminine” virtues—made possible the practice of satyagraha while conforming all the while to women’s prescriptive roles as being fundamentally confined to the household. In the Gandhian vision, women could enter the public space if they wished to do service (seva) for the nation.⁵¹ Therefore, Mahadevi’s involvement with the Prayag Mahila Vidhyapith (Allahabad Women’s University) helped to project her impeccable Gandhian persona, whereas poetry offered her a means of creating a larger “private” world, in which she