Women’s Emancipation and Feminist Praxis: Reclaiming the Radical Legacy of M.N. Roy

This work examines M. N. Roy's engagement with feminist thought in colonial India. It focuses on his critique of imperial domination and indigenous patriarchy as impediments to freedom and progress. It also probes Roy's silence on the intellectual and political contributions of his partners, Evelyn Trent and Ellen Gottschalk, embodying the patriarchal paradox of progress, and proposes to reclaim this neglected dimension within feminist historiography. It argues that while the politics of erasure in dominant discourse has suppressed alternative voices, Roy challenged the early twentieth-century conventional ideals. He challenged the traditional values that portrayed women as embodiments of purity, devotion, sacrifice, and passive symbols of virtue. Instead, Roy articulated a feminist and humanist vision grounded in rationality, equality, and resistance to authoritarianism. He recognized women as active agents of social transformation. This work also examines Roy's ideas of feminism in contrast to those of his contemporary progressive thinkers from the Third World, such as B. R. Ambedkar and Jawaharlal Nehru, who similarly sought to dismantle caste and gender hierarchies. This work concludes that Roy's renunciation of religious orthodoxy, social conservatism, and embedded patriarchal injustices aligns him with the broader feminist thought. His emancipatory philosophy, infused with a distinct feminist sensibility, represents a cosmopolitan feminism. It offers valuable insights into gender justice, humanism, and imagining an inclusive and egalitarian society. These progressive ideas, which were ahead of their time, deserve renewed attention and reclamation in today's socio-political context.