: गीता जनार्दन साने) (1907 - 1991) was a feminist writer from Maharashtra

Maharashtra

Maharashtra is a state located in India. It is the second most populous after Uttar Pradesh and third largest state by area in India...

, India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

.

Early life

Sane was born in Amravati

Amravati

Amravati is a city in the state of Maharashtra, India and the seventh most populous metropolitan area in Maharashtra. It is also the administrative headquarters of the Amravati district...

. Her father was a teacher who later trained to be a lawyer. Both parents of Sane were progressive in their thinking. They conducted their daughters' weddings without any religious rituals. The weddings “must have cost a rupee and a half, each,” Sane once said.

Among students studying at Nagpur University in her days, Sane was the first female to receive a bachelor's degree in the faculty of Science. Before her, females at that university, just like at most other universities in India in those times, studied liberal arts. After graduation, she taught mathematics.

Progressive ideas

In her college days, Sane was influenced by Marxism.

In 1927, while she was in college, a Muslim

Muslim

A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...

 male student with the last name Khan and a Hindu

Hindu

Hindu refers to an identity associated with the philosophical, religious and cultural systems that are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent. As used in the Constitution of India, the word "Hindu" is also attributed to all persons professing any Indian religion...

 female student with the last name Panandikar got married, and there was a furor, expressed by conservatives especially in the then-influential Marathi

Marathi language

Marathi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people of western and central India. It is the official language of the state of Maharashtra. There are over 68 million fluent speakers worldwide. Marathi has the fourth largest number of native speakers in India and is the fifteenth most...

 daily Pune Waibhawa (पुणें वैभव), about the interfaith marriage. Sane wrote her angry progressive response to the conservative furor.

As a feminist, she advocated a matriarchial system. She retained her last name Sane after marrying at age 26 a lawyer named Narasimha Dhagamwar, and advanced the same name retention idea for other women. She advocated that married women in Maharashtra do away with the strong social custom of their placing on their foreheads a kuṅkūṃ dot and wearing a mangalsootra as symbols of their holy matrimonial state.

Husband and daughter

In the late 1920s, Sane's future husband Dhagamwar had been an active participant in the Indian freedom movement, and the then British government ruling over India had charged him with participation in the 1929 Meerat conspiracy.

Sane's daughter Vasudha Dhagamwar has a law degee, and is a journalist and a civil liberties activist.

Authorship

Bharatiya Stree Jeewan (भारतीय स्त्रीजीवन) (1985) is a nonfictional work by Sane.

The following are some of her novels, most of which develop feminist themes.

• Nikhalati Hirakani (निखळती हिरकणी) (1935)
• Wathalela Wruksha (वठलेला वृक्ष) (1936)
• Hirawalikhali (हिरवळीखाली) (1936)
• Avishkar (आविष्कार) (1939)
• Pheriwala (फेरीवाला) (1939)
• Dhuke Ani Dahi.nwar (धुके आणि दहिंवर) (1942)
• Deepastambha (दीपस्तम्भ) (1950)