WOMEN, EDUCATION AND THE INDIAN SCENARIO: A STUDY OF MANJU KAPUR’S NOVELS ARPITA GHOSH Research Scholar, Department of English, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India ABSTRACT Manju Kapur is one of the most renowned women writers of the contemporary era in India. She not only portrays the vulnerable condition of women in the Indian society but also delineates how they are being kept ignorant about education and emancipation. In her novels she gives vent to the gender discrimination still overtly prevalent in the field of education. A study of few feminist theorists has also been included to expose how patriarchy creates havoc in the lives of women by denying proper education. With the British invasion, Indian men became aware of women education but the enthusiasm died out half way. So even after 65 years of Indian Independence, the condition of women has barely changed. Manju Kapur‘s novels circumscribe the condition of women education since Independence till the present era. KEYWORDS: Manju Kapur, Feminism, Indian Women Novelists INTRODUCTION Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman’s scepter, the mind shapes itself to the body, and, roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison. (58-59) … I do not wish them [women] to have power over men, but over themselves. (81) - Mary Wollstonecraft Mary Wollstonecraft deftly asserts her claims about women‘s hindrance towards freedom and independence by these two most straightforward sentences in her masterpiece A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792). It has been rightly said that this book speaks as much to the problems of women in the twenty-first century as it did to those of the contemporaries of Wollstonecraft during the 18 th century. What makes the book so grounded even in this era is that – the social and economic realities of women‘s place in society has barely changed since then. A Vindication of the Rights of Women voices woman‘s right to education. Wollstonecraft delineates that not only is it an inherent right of women to be educated, it is a social imperative as well; else succeeding generations would inherit their parents‘ ignorance instead of their wisdom. According to her opinion the most perfect education is ―to enable the individual to attain such habits of virtue as will render it independent‖ (31). WOMEN AND EDUCATION IN THE NOVELS OF MANJU KAPUR In this paper I have taken up the novels of Manju Kapur namely Difficult Daughters (1998), A Married Woman (2003), Home (2006), The Immigrant (2008) and Custody (2011) and tried to pin point how discrimination still prevails in the Indian society when it comes to education. According to Vrinda Nabar, in India, discrimination based on ―gender‖ begins right at the birth, or even before it. However, the societal preoccupations carry on the war between the sexes further and stretch and spill it in every aspects of life. From earliest times the gender discrimination was operative in several International Journal of English and Literature (IJEL) ISSN 2249-6912 Vol. 3, Issue 2, Jun 2013, 15-22 © TJPRC Pvt. Ltd.