Home science and the nationalization of domesticity in colonial India

This paper investigates the late colonial origins of Home Science in Britis h India. It deals most intensively with the institutionalization of Home Sc ience in Madras Presidency and attends to the roles played by both the colo nial state and Indian women's organizations in its establishment. Though th e focus is on Madras because the efforts of those based there influenced th e later course of Home Science education, the activities of Madras educator s, policy makers and reformers are also situated within a wider frame of tr ansregional and imperial relations forged through reform projects, missioni zation, travel and education. Consideration of Home Science education in th is wider context reveals the socio-political constraints and opportunities of, as well as the ideological interests at work in, its establishment. The paper finds that, at its inception, Home Science was the product of strate gic alliances among colonial authorities, Indian social reformers, and Indi an nationalists-all of whom, despite other differences, considered the home a site of and symbol for nationalist modernity. Home Science is shown to h ave relied on and helped shape a set of discourses that can be deemed 'femi nist nationalist' in that they were engaged dialectically with anti-colonia l nationalisms and with internationalist feminisms. Using Home Science as a lens, this paper provides a window on a set of late colonial debates that, informed by nationalist struggles and goals, sought to reshape the meaning and scope of both female agency and domesticity.