Forgotten Sisters: Rewriting Women into Indian Art History

KHUSHI RAWAT

Indian women artists, Indian art history, feminist critique

"It's a man's world"- a phrase even if problematic from the beginning, has a seed of truth to it. In the realm of achievements and discoveries mostly the result of man, do the accomplishments of women receive equal celebration oftentimes? The massive accolades received by man, the books not only of his accomplishments but of his existence, outweigh the scale by an exponentially larger number than those by women. The paper seeks to bring to the foreground a couple of such women, borrowing from the premise of Virginia Woolf's monumental text 'A Room of One's Own', in which she talks about the differentiation of the sexes. Judith, the hypothetical sister of Shakespeare, she imagines as equally capable and aspiring, but raising the question of whether she might've survived the patriarchal system of society. Would she've been just as famous as her brother? Woolf seriously doubts it herself. This observation can be extended to the Indian artistic world. The subcontinent celebrates renowned male artists such as Raja Ravi Varma and Abanindranath Tagore, names so prominent that even those distantly familiar with art history cannot escape their presence. They are rightly credited with shaping Indian art and making history in ways that would have been vastly different without them. Yet, what about their sisters? Does anyone even faintly remember their names, their artistic practices, or whether they were allowed the same creative pursuits at all? Unlike Judith, they were not fiction, but reality, real women whose existence and contributions were ignored and erased over the years.

Volume 13 Issue 10, October-2025

Pages : g155-g165