Feministic Concern of Bishnu Rabha in his Non-Fictional Works

Abstract

Bishnu Prasad Rabha (1909-1969) was a doyen of Assamese culture, a genius in the spheres of literature, art and music. Feminism is the advocacy of women’s rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes. Rabha was a thinker and a visionary. The plight of Indian women appalled him. Rabha saw with his own eyes that the women of India and of Assam were bound, deprived and oppressed. He has expressed his sorrow in his essays that the women are still bound by the covert restrictions and inhuman regulations of the society and religion. These were the essays he wrote in the time of the great wars in India’s pre-independence era. In many of these essays the author has adopted the stance of a feminist. He wished to see the Indian woman granted unconditional opportunities for all-round progress as in the Soviet or the West. His philosophy in the support of woman’s emancipation attains strength in the light of the opportunities, rights and freedom accorded to women of the Soviet for the development of their human faculties. Rabha was not a Feminist in the theoretical sense of the term as we may not place him securely within the waves of the movement. Yet, he was no less than a feminist in his attitude, with his deep concern for the absolute evolution of women.