Welfare Populism and Changing Gender Stereotypes in Colonial South India

Politically propelled welfare-oriented populism has often been diffused with notions of nationalism, justice, and equality worldwide. In colonial India, the idea of welfare populism emerged as a gender backlash in response to limited or nonexistent women’s education, and deep-rooted gendered spaces. On many occasions, the welfare populism impelled women into a dialectical process either by raising an intricate social issue or by eliciting a struggle as a solution to the issue. Hence, the welfare-oriented populist rationality, in this context, is based essentially on disgruntlement with the patriarchal system and a desire to create a discourse on gender equality. Welfare populism in South India as enunciated by missionaries, who were profound in their leadership, and populists in their everyday treatise, played a crucial role in confronting the entrenched gender stereotypes. Fostered on the premise of industrial pedagogy, welfare populism exhibits how women missionaries adeptly employed it as a potent instrument to create a discourse on equality and emancipation among women. Lace-making, an inalienable component of industrial pedagogy and welfare populism, generated inquisitiveness among marginalized women to purchase their economic freedom without essentially depending on men. The political economy of welfare populism with an emancipatory impulse created an egalitarian rigor emboldening women to dislodge deep-rooted gender stereotypes in a more nuanced manner.