What did everyday Hinduism in India look like a hundred years ago? Was it freer and more diverse than it is today? Were its practices more varied and less politically curtailed than now? Charu Gupta’s Hindi Hindu Histories provides illuminating historical accounts of Hindu life through individual actors, autobiographical narratives, and genres in the Hindi print-public culture of early twentieth century North India. It focuses on four fascinating figures – an anticaste crusader who advocated intercaste marriages and wrote on sexological matters; a pioneering woman Ayurvedic practitioner who specialised in female health and household recipes; a maverick travel writer whose work reflects early ideas of the muscular Hindu nation being forged today; and a Left journalist who sought to bridge Hinduism and communism. These public intellectuals were extremely popular in their time. They harboured vernacular dreams of freedom and Hindi-Hindu nationhood through their vantage points of caste, Ayurveda, travel, and communism. Theirs are the expansive worldviews being stamped out by the narrowing channels into which Hindus are now politically shepherded.
This article is drawn from the book.
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Yashoda Devi (1890-1942, hereafter Yashoda) was one of the most commercially successful and famous women ayurvedic practitioners at the beginning of the 20th century in North India. A Brahmin by caste, she was the daughter of Pandit Dalchand Mishra, an ayurvedic vaid based in the town of Dataganj in the Badaun district of UP, who at some point moved to Bareilly. Yashoda received her training in ayurveda from her father, underscoring the family’s role in producing ayurvedic medical knowledge.
After her marriage in 1906 to Pandit Sri Ram Sharma, Yashoda moved to Allahabad in 1908. At the young age of 16, she began an active practice, soon becoming a leading ayurvedic practitioner. She established her own Stri Aushadhalaya in Allahabad around 1908 and went on to open a Female Ayurvedic Pharmacy. Subsequently, her dispensaries were established in many other towns of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, for instance in Patna, Agra and Banaras. Her contribution to her family’s income was the most substantial. A huge number of women came to her with their personal and physical problems, and she received innumerable letters from all over India. She was so popular that letters reached her even if just addressed to “Devi, Allahabad”. She received a sack full of letters daily; in fact, she had to take a post box at her post office because their inflow was so voluminous.
Post box address for letters to Yashoda Devi. Source: Yashoda Devi, Dampati Arogyata Jeevanshastra (The Science oof a Healthy Conjugal Life), Allahabad: Devi Pustakalaya, 1931, 3rd edn: 673
Yashoda was a prolific writer with over a hundred books to her credit, each running from anywhere between 20 to 1,000 pages. Largely addressed to women, but not limited to them, they covered a broad range, including intricate questions related to marriage, sex, man-woman relations, women’s health and sexology, popular ayurvedic home remedies, food recipes and health guides. The texts were produced for use as household advice manuals, as medical and food recipe books, as social-prescriptive texts, as ayurvedic remedies (particularly for women’s sexual health), as advertisements for the products and aushadhis she manufactured, as case studies of her patients, and as collections of letters of praise that she received.
Covers of some books by Yashoda Devi.
Yashoda had her own publishing house, Devi Pustakalaya, and a printing press called Banita Hitaishi Press, owned by her husband Sri Ram Sharma, which published all her books. Many of her books went into several editions and impressions, revealing their popularity and reach. An examination of the catalogue of Hindi books published in UP between 1900 and 1940 shows that no one was writing as much as Yashoda, and in such detail, on the range that encompassed women, ayurveda and sexology. She probably wrote and sold more books than any other woman writer and was arguably one of the most widely read woman authors of her time. An important journal she edited was Stri Chikitsak, catering solely to the ayurvedic treatment of women’s diseases. While specialising in ayurveda, the range of Yashoda’s practice and publications was so wide that through them she managed to penetrate the everyday lives of women and men, shaping their medical, sex-related and health questions, and, to an extent, their nationalist identities.
Cover of an issue of Stri Chikitsak, the journal edited by Yashoda Devi.
Most studies on ayurveda have pointed out that it was totally a male domain. Indeed, ayurvedic training was technically closed to women practitioners and was mainly in Sanskrit. While indigenous women medical practitioners were present in almost every household, their work was informal and the world of professional vaids was predominantly male. As a woman, Yashoda – commercially successful, practising ayurveda, and writing on matters of sex – was not even mentioned in the established professional circles of vaids and there was widespread indifference, even hostility, towards her by ayurveda’s normative authority. The Ayurvedic Mahamandal, for example, was as late as 1941 a completely male domain. Some of these male vaids also later filed a case against Yashoda, calling her remedies “inferior” and “inauthentic”.
Charu Gupta
Hindi Hindu Histories: Caste, Ayurveda, Travel, and Communism in Early Twentieth Century India
Permanent Black, in association with Ashoka University, 2025
However, even though Yashoda was on the margins and written out of the dominant discourses, her practice and writings attracted a huge following. The denial of epistemic authority to Yashoda was thus in sharp contrast to her popularity, her large clientele, and her high respect in society. She seems to have exerted considerable influence on medical health, particularly of women. Her fame spread to far-off places like Africa and Fiji. Yashoda moved in a relatively new territory. There were hardly any dispensaries in India based on indigenous belief systems which catered exclusively to women. For women in purdah it was difficult to leave home, and even more difficult to be examined by male medical practitioners. Women’s access to cash was limited and there was still a strong bias against Western medical systems. In any case, learned physicians, male or female, were scarce at this time. As a woman and a practitioner of an indigenous medical system, Yashoda thus fulfilled two much-felt needs and so had no difficulty carving out a large space for herself. She thus became the agony aunt for a large number of women.
Contesting male control over ayurveda, Yashoda enlarged the language of sisterhood. Presenting herself as a caring female physician, a beloved wife, and every woman’s friend, she projected herself as living proof of an epistemic investment in women’s sexual problems and diseases. In fact, Yashoda strategically embraced her gender to establish herself as a distinguished healer, foregrounding her identity as a woman to enhance her credibility and popularity. At a time when male practitioners dominated ayurveda, Yashoda declared their approach to women’s health as inadequate, intrusive and voyeuristic. She noted that even the wives of male vaids sought her care for intimate issues, highlighting the trust deficit faced by male practitioners.
At one level, much of Yashoda’s literature was prescriptive and didactic, targeting middle-class Hindu women, and emphasising their social responsibility in maintaining the health of their families and the nation. At the same time, she also envisioned the housewife as a decision-maker, producer, disseminator and authority on medicinal remedies within the household. This fostered networks of medical knowledge exchange among women, creating bonds of sisterhood and promoting self-reliance.
Women sharing medical knowledge and preparing remedies. Source: Yadhoda Devi, Dampati Arogyata; Yashoda Devi, Nari Dharmashastra Grh-Prabandh Shiksha (Education on Home Management for Women), Allahabad: Devi Pustakalaya, 1931, back cover
Sexuality engaged Yashoda’s constant attention and was seen by her in scientific, medical and moralistic terms. Her view was that sexual science and passionate intercourse were an intrinsic part of ayurveda. In her discussions we see an excessive preoccupation with reproduction: she repeatedly stressed that sex was only meant for procreation. As a woman sex reformer catering mainly to middle-class women, Yashoda often imposed self-censorship and endorsed patriarchal stances to appear respectable and acceptable. Her heteronormative, monogamous ethic was based on moderation and self-control. Excessive sexual intercourse with wives, according to Yashoda, was a vice of the worst kind, leading to the waste in men of valuable energies, time and health. She voiced her strong protest against sex without the woman’s consent, calling it a grave crime. Men were also severely reprimanded for adultery and domestic violence and warned of its disastrous implications. Yashoda’s concern was also with the preservation of ethics and morality across the whole nation. No doubt this grandiose claim for national betterment was a discursive strategy to boost the sales of her potions. It worked. Such large endorsements were critical for Yashoda to promote sex reform at a micro level as well as to suggest methods of governing the collective sexual life of the nation.
The aftermath of male adultery and torture of a woman by a tyrannical husband. Source: Yashoda, Dampatya Prem: 164, 508
Amidst the emerging culture of medical consumerism, and through shrewd marketing, Yashoda was an active participant in the surrounding vernacular capitalism and had a vibrant presence in the healthcare marketplace. Yashoda’s roaring practice in the 1920s-40s earned her a few thousand rupees each day. She also acquired substantial wealth from selling her recipes, buying a huge bungalow on Lowther Road, Allahabad, and naming it Yashoda Bhawan.
Yashoda Devi’s house in Allahabad, 1930. Courtesy: Samir Sharma
In Yashoda we see indigenous healing becoming another tool in constructing cultural identity and Indian nationalism. Simultaneously, Yashoda’s spectacular public popularity and commercial success show us how gender dynamics shaped vernacular knowledge-making practices that could sometimes wriggle out of the grasp of colonialism.
Charu Gupta is a professor at the Department of History, University of Delhi.
Hindi Hindu Histories: Caste, Ayurveda, Travel, and Communism in Early Twentieth Century India has been published by Permanent Black in association with Ashoka University.
