Modern architecture and Indian womanhood in the Indian Ladies’ Magazine

The Indian Ladies’ Magazine was a women’s magazine in India edited by the Satthianadhans, a mother-daughter team writing at a pivotal moment in India’s struggle for independence from British colonial rule. The magazine is compelling for its reporting on the very latest in European avant-garde design, which the editors fused with modern ideas of individuality, citizenship, and education to prescribe a new type of Indian womanhood to their readers. The readers of the Indian Ladies’ Magazine were not exposed uncritically to images of international modern architecture but received them within a web of influences: the impact of Britain’s interwar economy, the impending partition of the subcontinent along religious lines, the Satthianadhans’ location on India’s southeastern coast, and their very particular editorial voice inspired by the Indian feminists and social reformers who came before them.