LALA LAJPAT RAI AND INDIAN WOMANHOOD 41 What is noteworthy, however, is that a feminist consciousness, that was capable of challenging the patriarchal parameters of the nationalist agenda, did not develop into a movement.3 What occurred instead was an advocacy of various reforms for women, including their education, that were not meant to challenge the overarching programme of nationalism. Thus, we come across a situation where women in the Indian state never really had to fight to achieve a constitutional recognition of their rights, where individual women acquired recognition and status, but where the majority of women continued to suffer myriad disabilities, despite or perhaps because of their eulogization as mothers, or domestic devis. The whole range of ambiguities, contradictions and possibilities, that went into making the nationalist programme for women was reflected in Lajpat Rat's thoughts on this issue. Lajpat Rai, as a leader of national standing from Punjab, participated in the creation of the ideology of the new nation. This was a nation in the making, so to speak, trying to wrest its independence from the colonial powers, and grappling with numerous problems in its attempt to restructure society. Lajpat Rai, like some other militant nationalists of the period, was interested in this 'modern' project of nation formation, and was at the same time conscious of imparting to it a distinct identity garnered by preserving India's 'tradition*. The ensuing conflict between the 'invented* notions of 'modernity' and 'tradition', at times closed all options of imbibing new role models by women and a fuller participation by them in national life. But at other times, when perhaps the programme for modernity was by no means defined, yet the need for it was compelling, it could open up immense opportunities for women. As Lajpat Rai got entangled in the various projects conceived as necessary for the nation, he increasingly also came to change his positions on the womens' question. It is these changing perceptions of Lajpat Rai on women's issues that this paper attempts to explore. Lajpat Rai moved from a narrow, 'worked-out', and apparently resolved understanding of this question, to one that envisaged radical changes in women's lives. That this radical stand was short-lived, and that it crumbled in the face of apparently overwhelming nationalist demands, is another dimension that I seek to probe. My contention is that Lajpat Rai came ultimately to construct a womanhood for India that was to be the model of a pure, pristine and sacred motherhood, and to a lesser extent, a pativrata wifehood. This was a womanhood symbolic of the spiritual quality of Aryan India, the 'real Hindu India', which he came to contrast with the materialist West, with its immoral womanhood and loose sexual mores. But this construction was by no means a straightforward process. It contained within it other possibilities which, by and large remained ignored, and were not taken