Fighting for suffrage in 1920s India By Harini Nagendra

LUCY BURDETTE: I loved our guest's first mystery, set in Bangalore, India--and I wasn't the only one. It made a huge splash. I'm delighted to welcome Harini to talk about the background for book two, coming this spring. Welcome Harini!

HARINI NAGENDRA: Mary Poppins was one of my favourite movies as a child. I love musicals (always have). It’s been years since I saw the movie, but I remember the song “Sister Suffragette” so well. For a young girl growing up in India in the 1970s, its message was heady and hilarious. Soldiers in petticoats, these women sang defiantly, “Our daughters’ daughters will adore us.” 

That’s why it was such a thrill for me when I dived into documents about 1920s Bangalore, for book 2 in my colonial Bangalore cosy mystery series, The Bangalore Detectives Club – and found a treasure trove of documents about women fighting for the right to vote in India. Why had I never heard these stories before? 

Reading more, I learnt that although Britain granted the rights for women to vote in 1918 (though only for women who held property), the same rights did not extend to other parts of the British Empire. Women across India organized to demand change, arguing for the right to vote, and to be voted to power. 

Their fight was dismissed by many prominent men, but supported by others. In a long debate in the 1922 Mysore Representative Assembly (colonial Bangalore belonged to the Mysore State), one member argued that “my sisters are as intelligent as my brothers” – a fact that should have been self-evident. Another man rejected his argument, saying that it would be an insult to women to ask them to take on outside responsibilities, exposing them to the indelicacies of the public eye. Women were goddesses of their homes. In short, the ‘right’ place for women was in the kitchen, taking care of their families. 

Undeterred by such specious arguments, women in India continued to fight for suffrage. Since they were not allowed into the assemblies where such matters were debated, it was not easy to make their voice heard where it mattered. The Women’s Indian Association held protest meetings across British India. Their leaders communicated with counterparts in Sri Lanka, Britain and the USA, exchanging news and encouragement.  

The suffrage movement in India and Sri Lanka was more restrained than in the UK and USA. Public protests were rare, and protestors refrained from public acts of dissent like chaining themselves to carriage wheels. Indian suffragists were aware of the need to respect the social mores of the times. Instead, they linked themselves with the Indian Nationalist Movement, thereby gaining wider support, and working strategically within each province. In 1919, the movement obtained its first victory, when the Madras City Council allowed women to vote (but not to stand for elections). From there on, they made steady inroads across the British Provinces and Princely States. 

In April 1922, after the series of debates in the Legislative Council that I described, women in Mysore State were given the right to participate in elections. 19 year old Kaveri Murthy, the heroine of my series, would have been thrilled. A strong feminist with a supportive husband, Kaveri struggles to deal with the strictures passed by her judgmental mother-in-law Bhargavi in the first book of the series, The Bangalore Detectives Club. Bhargavi disapproves of everything Kaveri does – studying mathematics, swimming in a public pool, sleuthing to solve crimes, everything. To simplify the plot and let Kaveri get on with her sleuthing, I sent Bhargavi to visit a sick relative part-way through book 1, keeping her off-stage.

But you can’t escape your mother-in-law forever. In Murder Under A Red Moon, the second in the series, Bhargavi is back – and Kaveri wants to figure out a way to make peace with her. She’s not willing to change her character and become meek, mild and compliant, though. Drawn into investigating another murder, Kaveri gets to meet a number of strong independent women, including a suffragist. Coffee Pudi Sakamma, a child widow who reinvented herself as a coffee entrepreneur, establishing a prominent coffee powder business in Bangalore in 1920, was the first woman nominated to the Mysore Representative Assembly. I was so inspired by Sakamma that I had to work her into my second book – she is the inspiration for one of the main characters in Murder Under A Red Moon. 

I had loads of fun following up on the research for this book, even though it took me down a number of fascinating rabbit holes and I wasted far too much time on it. Winifred Banks was spot-on when she sang in Mary Poppins that “Our daughters’ daughters will adore us”. We do, we do!  

Questions for Harini? She’ll be visiting us when the time difference allows!

Bio:

Harini Nagendra is a professor of ecology at Azim Premji University. She is internationally recognized for her scholarship on sustainability, with honors from the US National Academy of Sciences and the Indian National Science Academy, among others.

Her non-fiction books include Nature in the City: Bengaluru in the Past, Present and Future, and Cities and Canopies: Trees in Indian Cities, which received the 2020 Publishing Next Awards for best English non-fiction book in India.

The Bangalore Detectives Club, her first crime fiction novel, is a New York Times Notable Book of 2022, nominated for an Agatha and a Left Coast Crime award.

Harini lives in Bangalore with her family, in a home filled with maps. She loves trees, mysteries, and traditional recipes. She can be reached via her website, www.harininagendra.com, on twitter @HariniNagendra, Instagram @harini.nagendra and Facebook. 

About Murder Under A Red Moon: 

The latest novel in the acclaimed Bangalore Detectives Club series finds amateur sleuth Kaveri Murthy uncovering a new murder during the blood moon eclipse.

When new bride Kaveri Murthy reluctantly agrees to investigate a minor crime to please her domineering mother-in-law—during the blood moon eclipse, no less—she doesn't expect, once again, to stumble upon a murder.

With anti-British sentiment on the rise, a charismatic religious leader growing in influence, and the fight for women's suffrage gaining steam, Bangalore is turning out to be a far more dangerous and treacherous place than Kaveri ever imagined—and everyone's motives are suspect.

Together with the Bangalore Detectives Club—a mixed bag of street urchins, nosy neighbours, an ex-prostitute, and a policeman's wife— Kaveri once again sleuths in her sari and hunts for clues in her beloved 1920s Ford.

But when her life is suddenly put in danger, Kaveri realizes that she might be getting uncomfortably close to the truth. So she must now draw on her wits and find the killer . . . before they find her.