Men, Women and the. Embattled Family /

Men, Women and the. Embattled Family /

Men, Women and the Embattled Family I This chapter shifts the focus from external processes shaping gender to social processes which acted directly upon the household, as well as internal pressures which operated within the households of upper castes/classes. Certain elements tied the two processes together.

Both external forces in society and internal pressures on the family meant that many levels of social authority were at stake in reformulations occurring during the second half of the nineteenth century; the criss-crossing positions on women that we will see below need to be seen in this larger context.

We have outlined the contestatory nature of class formation in Maharashtra, with its double tensions between castes and between different class segments intensifying pressures on the various strata.

As Sangari has argued, "The conflictual and uneven development of "class" did not make for cultural and ideological coherence — rather it made for a heterogeneity producing contradictory positions and multiple voices,' sometimes even in the same person. In such a transformatory situation the 'necessary reconstitution of patriarchies and modes of authority itself acquired an uneven character; conflict between the traditional authority structures and patriarchies with the emerging modified structure with its own attendant patriarchy' was an inevitable aspect of the period.

Problems were compounded because there was a 'need for the Hindu woman's ideality to be measured against caste and class arrangements; from a range of prototypes there had to be a "marking out" of a middle-class private sphere.' Further, in the reconstitution of authority, the colonial state had its own stake in social and material arrangements. In sum, as the processes unfolded

Men, Women and the Embattled Family 201 the domestic economy was left intact structurally but modified outwardly both by the state and by middle-class reformers.!

Nevertheless, the family became a major site for conflict engendered by different world-views reproducing the conflicts of the public sphere within it.

The female world had conventionally been limited to the household, which was the focal point of female reproduction, domestic labour and of kinship relations of upper-caste women in Maharashtra as in other parts of the country. The colonial state and the reformers had found that the domestic arrangements of the dominant classes were not easily amenable to radical alteration by the legal changes introduced in the nineteenth century. The process of generating change within the household thus became imperative and a female constituency to facilitate the process was identified.

Such women were to mediate between the public and the private worlds of the emerging class.?

First they would publicly demonstrate their acquiescence in the changes recommended by the male social reformers and then help to disseminate the reformed ideas within the female world and also socialise the new generations into the new norms. The 'schooling' of women thus was a major platform of middle-class reform.

The need to school women to make them governable and equip them for wifehood was not new, being a major concern of all extant patriarchies. Brahmanical patriarchy's fear of an unregulated female sexuality's potential to subvert the moral and social order underlay the elaboration of codes whose purpose was to make women of the upper castes in particular, governable. Prescriptions in the texts going back to the formation of caste and class structures had dealt with the essential qualities of women'— their strisvabhava which is libidinous and the need to get them to perform their stridharma, their social roles, by harnessing their sexuality for acceptable ends.'

Ideology and coercion were both used to achieve social control.

Processes of 'schooling', achieved through Shastric 'education', were periodically reformulated and restated as is evident from the eighteenth century text Stridharmapaddhati, a Sanskrit text prepared at the Maratha court at Tanjore and commissioned by Dipamba, chief wife of the Tanjore ruler Ekoji. Prescribing the code for the 'perfect wife' whose religious and secular duties converge in service to the husband, the text opens its introductory verses with 'Obedient service to one's husband is the primary duty enjoined by

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the sacred tradition for women.' The verses outline 'schooling' recommending the proper attitude of the wife to her lord, obedience in matters of principle, and diligent and attentive service.

Conventional training of upper-caste wives neatly combined the dual actions of religious duties and the daily chores in the household in the formulation: the wife's service to her husband is her worship of god. Two Marathi works designed for a wider audience were written by the same author on stridharma, the code by which women were 'schooled', one aptly titled Pativratadharma and its underside titled Narakavarnana, written especially to counter what was regarded as a Muslim threat to cultural ideals of Hindu womanhood. Virtuous women, properly schooled, attain a good reputation, immediate happiness in this world, and heaven after death, according to the eighteenth century text.4 Most importantly, women schooled into stridharma keep their libidinous natures in check.

Apart from Brahmanical patriarchy's conceptualisation of women's nature as libidinous, there was the corollary feminisation of evil itself: the latter includes a recognition of women's agency which is perceived negatively. Women displaying agency as they pursue material and social benefits not 'due' to them by employing the instigative method, or through deceit, also need to be schooled.

All intrigues attributed to women in the royal household as well as the households of ordinary men are perceived to adopt either incitement or deceit to gain their ends. Women were thus

'naturally' more prone to disrupting social harmony, being innately quarrelsome. Historical memory of these qualities was powerfully embodied in the figure of Anandi, who masterminded the murder of her nephew during the Peshwai.> The power of women to create disorder became a metaphor for ungovernability or fitma, a term which originally meant seducing; it was applied in the context of seducing women to elope with other men. It ultimately came to imply sedition. Suppressing fitna had the highest priority for the Maratha state.° In its original connotation then, fitna had been peculiarly feminine and had represented ungovernability in the domestic domain. Significantly, disorder in the private domain was the model for disorder in the public domain, rather than the other way around. The schooling of women in the domestic domain was as necessary as the governance of the social domain: conceptually the two were linked.

Men, Women and the Embattled Family 203 Since control over women and the desire for schooled women is primary for any patriarchal arrangement the necessity of tutoring women was not in dispute in nineteenth century Maharashtra; women of the upper castes were already being schooled by 'domesticity and Shastric injunction'.? However, there was a divergence between the traditional elites and the 'reformed' elites on various issues, including the inherent nature of women, what was required of them, and the kind of training and cultivation they should receive.

Pre-colonial conceptualisations of women, although not static, had been restated rather than dramatically reworked; in contrast, the middle-class reformers both restated and recast notions of womanhood. The reconceptualisation of womanhood in the second half of nineteenth century Maharashtra was 'embedded in the aspirations of the emergent middle class which [was] required to restructure the family, to produce suitable ideologies for the reproduction of households, to relate patriarchal practices to the emerging forms of stratification, and to align personal with general class interests'.8 In sum there was, because of the special nature of social and economic forces generated by the presence of a colonial state, a need for patriarchies to be reassembled according to the changed circumstances giving rise to various discourses of reform.

Thus the colonial encounter was both directly and catalytically mutative for the middle classes.

The discourses of reform on women, especially because the legal reforms relating to the excesses of traditional patriarchal practices had reached a dead-end, came to be concentrated on women's education. The importance of education in order to school women into their new roles, crystallised around them as companionate wives, good mothers, and class socialisers, and was a key theme in nineteenth century discourse.' Evident in the writings of the period is the specific function of education in the case of women for whom it was not an instrumental factor as it was for men. Men were to be educated, especially in English, both in the view of the state and its subjects, for jobs. In contrast, it was only in the last fifteen years of the nineteenth century that education for women was perceived as having an instrumental dimension when the colonial state identified the need for trained professional women to service the sectors of medical care and teaching in order to reach out to the female population.!° Initially, then, education was a tool to

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'fashion' a new class of women through appropriate schooling. For the reformers it was also the tool by which women could be converted into moral beings for a changed social order, a new means by which their strisvabhava could be transformed into a suitable variant of the traditional conception of stridharma.

The need for education to 'school' women was directly tied to a new meaning to be given to the home. While the separation between public and private and a division of labour continued to govern the female world centred around reproduction, the role of reproduction was enlarged to encompass the nurture of a whole class and the creation of a new culture. The residences of the middle classes for the reformers became 'homes', an affective and moral unit rather than a space occupied by a conglomerate of individuals, thus acquiring an 'ideological clarification'. Into this reworked female world, which still corresponded to a broad division between public and private as before, the new project of mothering and conjugality was introduced, whose central actor was the young wife, the new woman of the present and the future. The responsibility of turning the older household into a 'home' and creating an affective unit was that of young wives and it was to prepare them for such a responsibility that education was required. Thus, middle-class reformers were giving women a defined and limited 'agency', making them social actors through education for specific purposes.!

This new notion of a home was however an abstraction, as many of the accounts of women writing in nineteenth centu Maharashtra suggest. Young men, in whose hands the ideological reins of this venture were firmly held, battled an army of kin who actually occupied the household. From this web of relatives young men tried to create two distinct units — the husband and wife, and the mother and child — the new roles for women thus being those of conjugality and mothering. Ideologically the two units were made to stand separate from other kin in the family.!* In the accounts of Ramabai Ranade, tensions within the home between father and son and between the older women and the young wife were over what husbands expected of their wives. Equally, the process of such an extraction of the husband-wife unit in particular implied that men were battling their relatives to gain full control over their wives so that they could fulfil the new missions set for them.!3

The roles of women as instruments of nurture and as class socialisers were closely connected. Through women the culture of

Men, Women and the Embattled Family 205 a whole class of people was to be regenerated; the socialising by proper nurturing of children, especially male children, would lead to organising the culture of both the class and the nation,!' since it was the dominant class that stamped its culture in any case upon the nation. It was for this task that women had to be prepared through proper attention and education. Addressing the Ninth

National Social Conference in the last decade of the century, the well-known but cautious reformer Sir R.G. Bhandarkar outlined the need for women's education thus:

A good many proposals have reference to the condition of the female portion of our society. Gentlemen, one half of the intellectual, moral and spiritual resources of our country is being wasted. If our women were educated they would be a powerful instrument for advancing the general condition of our country. They will bring up every new generation in a manner to perform its duty efficiently and will shed the influence of benign VIRUES peculiar to them on men and, so to say, humanise them....

Since the task of nurturing and class socialising was unique to women, they therefore needed a special education. A carefully chosen, distinctive, syllabus was imperative and women were not to have the same education as men!° (the kind necessary for acquiring jobs). Nurturing required a knowledge of medical care, child care, cleanliness etc., and this required a 'domestic economy'- type syllabus; religious and moral instruction and literature were necessary to cultivate the self and the personalities of children.

Parvati Athavale, a widow who was lifted out of her obscurity and given a place in the reformist agenda (raising funds for the Widows'

Home set up by Karve, her brother-in-law), outlined the features of the new home and the training women required to create it. In a chapter entitled 'Social Questions', Parvati dealt with two categories of women, married and unmarried, and then focused on the former, the 'natural' state for women. Firmly arguing the need for married women to stay home, never seeking 'servitude' outside in the form of employment, she wrote:

Women have to remain at home for its protection. In our homes there is not as much effort as there should be to teach children what in English is called 'good manners'. Our men have little connection with their homes and no special relations with their servants and children.

So the responsibility for the right conduct of the family and for the right manners

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falls now on women. As women are the mothers-to-be of this country it is necessary to give them an education suited to their special domestic life.

Such an education should include the first principles in medical care, care of children, cooking, care of the garden, how to keep the house clean, the purchase and care of food, singing, and religious and moral instruction, and such like important subjects... If the mother brings into the home regularity of habits and polite manners, the children and servants will follow her example. The home is a school. The mistress and master are the principal teachers in this school. If the teachers throw aside their dignified position and cease to teach the children that home is sure to be the scene of wild strife...

In many places one sees that the home is to the men merely a place to eat. Men should feel an attraction for their homes as they do in the west...

Our children and the man of the house must consider the home his place of joy and comfort. And that this may be so must come from the efforts of the women. Every mistress of the home should know how to beautify the home and how to make the home more healthy. To this end there should be instruction given in all girls' schools on the management of the home... The advantage of female education must show itself in the reformation of the home, if it is to be of any advantage to the country.!"

Education for women, then, was to be a 'private acquisition' first to school them and thereafter to create appropriate personalities, familial social relations, and households, and in a more general sense, a 'moral basis' for the everyday life of the emergent middle class.!8

A corollary of women as nurturant mothers and class socialisers in the new domestic ideology of the middle class was the model of the companionate wife marking a break from the traditional notion of the wife as primarily a ritual and sexual partner of the husband.

Like the nurturant mother the companionate wife too needed to be carefully schooled to fit the role. Dayaram Gidumal outlined the means by which the companionate wife could be created: 'Do not starve women's intellect, shut them out of the light, opportunities for acquiring self knowledge, self awareness and self control. They will not only become your helpmates but your better halves'.!? The notion of the 'companionate' wife was however an abstraction, and at this point still being constructed. A product of the social needs and the imagination of upper-caste reformers, its contours remained vague, making young wives aspire to live up to such a model but also causing them intense heartache because it was never very clear to them what exactly their husbands expected of them. Men on the

Men, Women and the Embattled Family 207 other hand were eloquent in their descriptions of the companionate wives they were seeking. Karsondas Mulji, a prominent reformer whose own marriage was far from companionate,2° wrote:

Look at the picture of a woman who delights the heart of a man who overpowers him by her pure love; observe her traits: she walks gently, she speaks only melodious words. She is both mild and guileless. She neither sits idly nor wanders here or there. She neither eats or drinks like a glutton, but like a temperate woman. By her good and amiable disposition her smiling face is suffused with love. From her lips only kind and affectionate words come out as from good trees we get only fragrant flowers and sweet fruits. She carries out all her husband's wishes and passes her time peacefully and happily. In all her work she uses her god given intelligence and tries to remain virtuous in all her deeds. Her heart is fully virtuous and the perennial spring of ardent love ever flows from ps it.

The disappointment of the men whose expectation from wives remained unfulfilled was also eloquently expressed:

Where is the Hinduani, wise and pure who can quote Shakuntala and the Merchant of Venice, play the Sitar or Sarangi and sing divinely? Every educated Hindu would like to have such a Kumud [the heroine of the famous nineteenth century Gujarati novel Saraswati Chandra by Goverdhan Das Tripathi], such a lovely maiden for his wife. But where are these phantoms of delight in Hindu society? They exist in the brains of those who have read Kalidas and Shakespeare, but otherwise we know them not (anonymous Hindu male, 1884)."7

These are women who are self-consciously fashioned figures, crafted by middle-class men to be the objects of a new notion of conjugality. The major problem about transformed notions of conjugality in the nineteenth century, unfortunately, was the difficulty of making such powerful images of 'sweet womanhood' come alive. While men of the reforming elite identified education as the means by which such visions of womanhood could be actualised (women needed literacy especially in order to know what they should embody), the institution of marriage hinged on early marriage, which implied that young wives went to their husbands with very little education, if any at all.

It was this major contradiction that led to the phenomenon of the husband as teacher for the first generation of married couples among the reformers. It was a process fraught with many tensions

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as documented in autobiographies and letters by a few of the first 'victims', the young wives themselves. Kashibai Kanitkar for example, wrote that she felt compelled to be educated because she overheard her husband remarking that he could never share a meaningful existence with an illiterate wife.?? Her husband Govindrao, who was sixteen when she was married to him at nine, was from a wealthy family and had an 'English' education.

Conscious of her plain looks and humiliated by her rejection, Kashibai began to secretly teach herself how to read and write and received some assistance from Govindrao.

The project did not, however, have the sanction of her in-laws (being a private venture to win the affections of her husband), so she had to hide her attempts to acquire her skills. Since young wives lived under extreme surveillance within the household, she would often be caught out and humiliated in public. Bridging the gap of many years of slow learning that men had access to but which was squeezed into a few stolen moments in the case of the young wives, they found that far from being regarded as partners in a companionate marriage their husbands often heaped further abuse and humiliation upon them. Kashibai's husband dismissed her attempts to learn English remarking that it was impossible for a 'stone' to learn anything.?* Sheer grit and the desire for dignity and respect kept Kashibai going and she went on to become a well-known writer and an intellectual who ultimately outstripped her husband's writing skills, but there was much heartbreak in the process. But from Kashibai's example we can see that given the traditional taboos against female literacy and the power relations within the family in extant forms of patriarchy, the male fantasy of a companionate marriage was a new source of power that husbands wielded over their wives.

Similarly Anandibai Joshi,2? who went down in Maharashtrian consciousness as the best known example of an educated, professional female had a hard time in her early years. She was married at nine to a 'mature' widower whose erratic and unconventional career was amply expressed in his relationship with his young wife through whom he partly achieved his own ambitions. At one stage his educational demands on his wife led him to leave her to negotiate the streets alone in Bombay so that she might attend school while he went out of town. Anandibai recalls that she faced harassment including obscene remarks and

Men, Women and the Embattled Family 209 gestures from men, forcing her to go back to her parents.26 The case of Ramabai Ranade, whose relationship with her famous husband has been regarded as a model to be followed by all respectable modern' women,' is also noteworthy. When she began to receive an education members of the household subjected her to severe harassment which her husband could not, or did not, do anything to stop.78

Part of the tension inherent in the early experiments with educating young wives to be companionate partners was the dissatisfaction of a new generation of men with the existing structures of marriage and the lack of choice that they faced as individuals in a situation of repressive collectivities. The frustrations arising from these institutions were transferred upon the young wife as in the case of Govindrao Kanitkar, Kashibai's husband, who was disappointed at being 'saddled' with a woman regarded as unattractive." She was not the kind of woman who was the object of attention of an English-educated male sensibility. Further, the non-consensual marriage combined with pre-pubertal marriage for girls meant that men old enough to be fathers could be husbands as in the cases of Ramabai Ranade and Anandibai Joshi. A companionate marriage, at least in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was virtually an impossibility. Non-consensual marriage also made male desires about finding romantic love difficult to fulfil within marriage. All these elements went into the many contradictions clustering around the notion of companionate wives for which women could be 'schooled' through education. The process of extracting a husband-wife unit, who shared a companionate marriage, out of the larger family structures and social institutions within which the middle-class male was located, remained a non-starter for most of the nineteenth century.

The project of education for women faced great opposition from within upper-caste societies since traditional codes and taboos relating to the subject were still very strong. Female education had been viewed as not just redundant (learning being associated in tradition with sacred knowledge, which was a closely guarded preserve) butreprehensible. Its association with widowhood in traditional beliefs is significant as widowhood was the most dreaded state for women. Ramabai Ranade and Kashibai Kanitkar both record this taboo as the reason why they had been kept illiterate in their parental homes.?? There was also a great fear (prevalent across

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regions) that literacy would give women the means by which they could engage in clandestine correspondence, set up liaisons with men?! or even elope with them and thus cause fitna. Widely-shared fears such as these in the household, given its internal power structure, made many women themselves ambivalent about education and often made it a new source of power between men and women — it was one more way by which women had to please their husbands. It is important to bear in mind that the project of education for women was largely executed within a patriarchal structure in which women were caught as subjects — rarely were they actual agents. When women did not have to pick up education at their husbands' behest they had to ensure that it remained a secret, to the extent of even mispronouncing words that they knew perfectly well because this would give them away.>?

Further, the relationship of education to 'schooling' women rather than equipping them to utilise it in any way, or empowering them, remained the core of the new domestic ideology. In this it was not radically different from the traditional schooling of women to absorb the ideological premises of Brahmanical patriarchy, which was required in order that they accept the sum of social practices that were operating in the nineteenth-century: child marriage, early motherhood, the possibility of co-wives, widower husbands as old as fathers, as well as step-children often as old as them, and also the ever-present recourse to violence against women. Upon this traditional value system which all women were schooled in, the new focus on education was an add-on; the new domestic ideology, even from its best proponents, muted the extreme features of extant patriarchal arrangements but did not begin afresh since none of the middle-class reformers wanted a major overhaul.

Traditional pativrata merely became for example 'the pure love shining forth' from the devoted wife.

The new wife still accepted the unquestioned authority of her husband. For the reforming elite of Maharashtra the excesses of traditional patriarchy were reprehensible but it was from the field of tradition and its notions of womanhood that new notions were to be forged. Patriarchy was both to be reformed and preserved. Women, educated schooled women, thus 'became the subjects and the vehicles through whom both the retention and modernisation of newly defined Hindu patriarchal forms were achieved'? as our examples will show.

Men, Women and the Embattled Family 211 II I begin an account of the 'schooling' of women among certain sections of the emerging professional class with Anandibai Joshi, who became a legend in her own time in western India. Born in 1865 into a high-status Chitpavan Brahmana household, which had been prosperous but was by then in somewhat straitened circumstances, Anandibai appears to have had a conventional childhood, 'schooled' into accepting as natural the traditional

Brahmanical patriarchal practices. However, she was permitted access to rudimentary literacy as a school was located within a part of the house she lived in. Being a vivacious and spirited girl, she picked up enough reading to be shown off by her father to visitors, much to their horror. Anandibai clearly missed the presence of a nurturing mother and recalled later her mother's physical aberession towards her and wrote that, if she had children, she would 'ensure that they received a loving upbringing.*4

In the nineteenth century 'childhood' was all too brief in the case of women. Anandibai was married at nine following a period of great anxiety for her parents, very common in the lives of women who have left accounts of their early years. This was because of the Brahmanic injunction that girls must be married before they menstruate. Anandi was a well built girl and the public gaze, which never let Brahmana parents forget that the community was keeping track of the need to uphold social norms, aroused the characteristic fears in the parents.°? (Similarly, Parvati Athavale records that her quick growth and the family's insecure financial situation led to great anxiety about organising a marriage for her since the women in the village had begun to remark on her unmarried status. Finally a husband was found for Parvati but the man was lame, and only modestly employed.*°) Being poor added to the general anxiety and finally a match was arranged for Anandi to a widower, Gopalrao

Joshi, many years her senior.

The rest of Anandibai's life was dominated by her husband and the travails she experienced, (including physical violence at his hands) have been attributed to Gopalrao's eccentricity.°' We suggest, however, that his behaviour was not individually idiosyncratic. There are numerous examples dotting the accounts of women in which fathers, husbands, brothers behave like Gopalrao

Joshi did. Clearly they were not individual acts of eccentricity but

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located in the structure of patriarchy which put women under the power and authority of certain men. But at the same time it was also structural in another sense, being an expression of the fragmented, decentred, individuals characteristic of the new middle class who often did not know what they wanted. Men of these classes were ambivalent about the norms and values of their traditions without being clear about the changes that were necessary. The only certainty they displayed was the authority they wielded over their wives. Gopalrao Joshi's 'behaviour' suggests that as men found that they had to change they both experimented with women and burdened them with their own contradictions.

Anandibai's biography tells us that Gopalrao had talked about educating his young wife even as the marriage was being settled.*®

Whether he wished this to be a form of 'schooling' that was merely designed to make Anandi a suitable wife or not, Gopalrao exercised his marital rights according to traditional practice. Anandibai had her first and only child at fourteen, but the child did not survive.

(She wrote later that a child's death did not affect the father but that the mother did not want to see it die. This may have been a statement based on her own personal experience of the way the death of her child affected her but did not have the same effect on Gopalrao.*") Although we are told that Anandi was 'well developed', and in normal health before she married, she was unable to have more children after this early pregnancy and there are innumerable references that in later years she suffered severe ill-health; she died finally of consumption at the early age of 22.

Gopalrao's obsessive ambition for Anandibai may have been a consequence of guilt that he suppressed about the early motherhood and trauma that Anandi experienced on his account. By the time she was fifteen Gopalrao had corresponded with missionaries abroad seeking help for his wife's education in America and finally she left, at the age of 17, to study medicine in Philadelphia.

As the first 'Hindu' woman to travel to America and to enrol for a course in medicine there, Anandi became visible in India and made a dramatic impact on American women. At around the same time Pandita Ramabai was leaving for England to attempt to pursue a similar course. The two, who were distant cousins, finally met in America when Anandibai graduated.

The years Anandi spent in America have been sedimented in public memory as 'heroic'. Racked by ill-health but sticking closely

Men, Women and the Embattled Family 213 to traditional customs, Anandibai was the embddiment of Hindu womanhood. This made an impact on American women too, who admired her courage and traditional virtues.4° Her sponsors do not appear to have been shacked by such views as her defence of child marriage and in India this ensured that she would be regarded as a true daughter of India, an upholder of the 'national' culture. Before Anandibai left America to return to India she had been joined by Gopalrao (who in a characteristic instance of middle-class ambiguity now publicly berated university education for women as disruptive of family life).4! Anandibai already had a job waiting at Kolhapur which unfortunately she never took up. She died a few months after her return — a tragic denouement to a life that had come to be celebrated throughout India.

Two aspects of Anandibai's life are striking: the first is the troubled relationship of the husband-wife unit, almost an exclusive one separated from the usual larger kin group of most upper-caste households. (Gopalrao's job in the postal department and his mobile existence coupled with his extreme 'individuality' may have contributed to the domestic structure.) The second was the way

Anandi became an icon for the virtues of ideal Hindu womanhood.

Public memory of the very middle class that was investing in 'companionate' marriages erased her experiences at the hands of her husband and kept alive only her Hindu womanly qualities. In private correspondence with her husband she refers to the fact that their relationship had witnessed much violence, that even as a young wife of ten she had been hit by Gopalrao with pieces of wood, had chairs flung at her, and had been threatened with abandonment. She bore the violence of one expression of patriarchy to uphold another, writing that she did not leave Gopalrao because it would have tarnished her father's honour. Only death could be a resolution to such a stormy existence. At twenty she recalled some of her anguish in a letter to her husband:

; I pleaded with you to end my existence. There is nothing in the law to stop such things against women. If there are any [laws/rules] they work against women. Therefore I had no option but to bear everything silently.

A Hindu woman has no right to speak even a word against her husband or to advise him. She has only the 'right' to allow her husband to do what he wants and remain silent.* Anandibai had been well schooled into internalising the ideology

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of traditional patriarchy even though she was aware of other norms of conjugality.47 On her part she continued to evoke female guilt but deployed it as a sort of armour, using it sometimes to soften her critique of Gopalrao's behaviour and sometimes to sharpen it.

Her letters to Gopalrao simultaneously speak of what women suffer in marriage and of her sorrow at not being able to 'please' Gopalrao and make him 'happy What is noteble is that she did not exonerate Gopalrao's violence towards her even as she used the conventional mode of a wite writing to her husband and expressed the usual wifely sentiments in them. While she reminded him of what she had suffered at his hatids she did not indict him directly even in private letters, merely letting him know that she had experienced anguish.** But by using the double mode she helped to construct the image of Gopalrao as an eccentric man rather than a husband who had been violent with his child wife as he had complete power over her. Anandibai's life exemplifies the point I wish to emphasise: the new educated woman did not, and was not expected to, shed the unique virtues of chasce, suffering, Hindu womanhood.

Further, the '"companionate' marriage of new domestic ideologies was one-sided; it gave the husband the right to have expectations and desires but denied them to the wife. (It is significant that it was roughly at the same time that Rakhmabai was challenging child marriage and declining to accept forced conjugality, thereby rejecting the valorised model of suffering

Hindu womanhood. Rakhmabai too demanded the right to a companionate marriage like the new class of men but, as we have seen, this met with hysterical opposition.) For Anandibai Joshi and many other young wives of her generation there was no major transformation wrought by 'education'.

Anandi was so well 'schooled' that she made it possible for the contradictions of the new conjugality to be erased. It is not surprising that she should be valorised for being a 'good wife' above everything else. When she returned to India she was given a noticeably warm welcome, but when she died soon after, the emotions overflowed; she was given what was probably one of the most honoured and traditional funerals received by a woman in Poona. And it was in the characteristic garb of the married woman, and adorned by the signs of the sumangali, that she was cremated. The newspapers summed up public emotion thus:

Men, Women and the Embattled Family 215 Although Anandibai was so young, her perseverance, undaunted courage and devotion to her husband were unparalleled. We think it will be long before we shall see again a woman like her in his country. We do not hesitate to say that Dr. Joshi is worthy of a high place on the roll of Piston women who have striven to serve and to elevate their native land.

Clearly the native land was honoured in the eyes of the world through its pativrata wives. Even in far-off America her life and death were summed up as a model of Hindu womanhood 'inspired by the code of Manu'. 'Until death she was patient of hardship, self-controlled... striving to fulfill that most excellent duty which is prescribed for wives'.*° Public adulation. for Anandibai Joshi is a reflection of the values cherished by sections of the middle classes in the nineteenth century. She had shown that intrinsically there was nothing dangerous in women's education; rather that it was perfectly possible to reconcile a professional training, overseas travel, and close interactions with western women with Hindu wifely virtues.

Before Anandibai left for America she had publicly defended her need to travel abroad for her medical studies, as well as her plans to go alone, without her husband.47 She had also successfully carried out her resolve to leave as a Hindu and return as a Hindu. While in America she had defended the Hindu child marriage system.*® Anandibai had conclusively proved that well schooled Hindu wives were in no danger of losing their religion or their values.

Finally, we may also note that the public adulation for Anandi was a recognition of her defence of tradition and Hindu patriarchal practices even though she herself was one of its victims. When we recall that at that very moment both Rakhmabai and Pandita

Ramzbai were in different ways challenging 'Hindu' patriarchy, Anandi was a powerful counter to these women: the recalcitrant wife whose 'education' was the source of her desire for a companionate marriage and the disavowal of her conjugal obligations, and the subversive widow who renounced her religion and publicly denounced Hindu patriarchal practices. Anandi's compliance with Hindu patriarchal practices was balm to Hindu society; Hindu conjugality was being vindicated at the moment of its severest stress.

Another, more congenial, example of the companionate marriage valorised significantly by both the reformist and traditional elite was

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, the case of Ramabai Ranade — the most 'perfectly schooled' wife who has left an account for us of the process and values that the new Hindu domestic ideologies'? sought to inculcate into the wife.

It began on a tense note, being one of most unwillingly accepted marriages that have been documented for the region. However, it went on to become one of most celebrated examples of 'conjugality' that middle-class reformers had envisaged for reasons that will be evident in the following account.

Ranade had, initially, been one of the most visible supporters of the crusade for widow remarriage in Maharashtra. In 1873 when

Ranade was 31, his first wife, whom he had married when he was thirteen, died following a prolonged illness. Immediately thereafter he began to receive telegrams persuading him to marry a widow. It is worth noting that nobody expected him to remain a widower; both the reformers and his family, especially his father, expected him to remarry immediately, the only question was whether the bride would be a young pre-pubertal virgin, or a 'virgin' widow.

Using a mix of subterfuge, emotional blackmail and moral coercion, Ranade's father made sure that his son capitulated and married eleven-year-old Ramabai within a month of the death of his first wife.°° The father had effectively subverted any possibilities of Ranade's practising his reformist ideals and at the same time facilitated the completion of the traditional requirements for Brahmana males as outlined by Manu: 'A twice born man, versed in the sacred law, shall burn the wife of equal caste who dies before him. Having thus, at the funeral given the sacred fires to his wife who dies before him, he may marry again... and dwell in his own house during the second period of his life.'*!

Coerced thus, Ranade retreated from the festivities.

The reformers however were deeply let down and became the laughing-stock of Brahmanical society. Whatever Ranade did thereafter continued to be judged by this early failure to measure up to his ideals.°" This controversial beginning to the marriage also gives us a clue to the relationship between Ramabai and Ranade.

Following the ceremony, Ranade retreated without partaking even of the ceremonial dinner and locked himself in his room. After Ramabai's father left and she went up to Ranade and their 'room', her 'education' began."

Much has been made of this event, celebrated in public memory.

It has been seen as evidence of the reformist zea! for women's

Men, Women and the Embattled Family 217 education. That, however, is only part of the meaning that may be attributed to this 'extraordinary' beginning of conjugal relations.

But let us stop for a moment and consider the circumstances: the bridegroom is a 31-year-old officer in the courts, the bride is a young, most likely pre-pubertal, girl of eleven. What could a mature prominent man of 31 do with a girl young enough to be his daughter?>4 With a wife too young to understand his confused feelings, share his intellectual and social interests or be the object of his 'romantic' yearnings in any way, short of brutally consummating the marriage what would one do in such a situation except to begin teaching the illiterate wife the alphabet? One agenda for raising women's status was nullified — the other more possible one, that of women's education, was a natural and almost inevitable substitute.

At a more substantive level the circumstances were ideal for the process of 'schooling' the young wife. The great difference in age which certainly put the young wife in the 'authority' and awe of the husband was an important aspect of 'schooling' women to be good wives and ultimately intelligent partners through education.

The pair of mature husband and young wife was the only situation in which women could really be 'schooled' through education within the household in the nineteenth century. It was not easily achievable with daughters as they were married very young — too young to properly accomplish anything with. Further, one had to consider the potential marital home where the process of education was likely to be abruptly terminated. (Since each marital home was unique, schooling into it was also to be uniquely organised.) In the case of couples closer to each other in age, attempts at educating the wives lacked the 'authority' and awe that older husbands had.

Since education was in any case not an instrumental need, and further, women's agency was not the motivating factor, many of the ventures in learning followed a different course. Lakshmibai

Tilak (married at 11 to the 18-year old Narayan Tilak) had her first lessons at 17 at her husband's hands, abruptly dissolving into an uncontrollable fit of laughter. The first day's lesson was climaxed by the husband tearing the books to shreds." As Lakshmibai describes it, the lesson failed because, first, she was not 'young and, second, Tilak was no stranger to her. Reading between the lines it is also apparent that Lakshmibai was laughing at Tilak's authority as teacher over her. Lakshmibai was never 'schooled' and certainly

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not through education. (Ultimately Lakshmibai learnt not only enough of the alphabet to read widely but also to become one of the most celebrated writers of memoirs in Marathi.)

Ramabai Ranade's awareness of her very vulnerable situation in the conjugal home, given the nature of the conflict over the marriage, would have added to the sense of awe that Ranade aroused in her. Writing about his personality, as recounted to her by women of the household, she described his 'serious narure', even in childhood.*© His inability to make decisions about his own life despite his 'public figure' status, had made him deeply unhappy and humiliated him in public. There was his genuine grief, which young Ramabai was acutely conscious of (she records that he wept every night fcr almost a year®'), over his first wife's death. These would have been chastening elements shaping Ramabai's own responses in the early months. She had also been well schooled in traditional practices. Born in a high status, very orthodox jagirdar family which was well known (Ranade had insisted that his new wife was to be from just such a family even as he resisted his father's pressure for a quick remarriage'), she had been carefully brought up but guarded against picking up even the basics of literacy. This is because her father's sister had learnt just enough to read and utter some stotras (such as the Venkatesh Stotra) but was widowed early.

The widowhood was attributed to her violating the taboo on women's learning and it was decided that teaching girls how to read and write brought ill-luck. Ramabai records the horror this example generated among the women. "When the women heard of this they came to fear even the thought of reading or writing so it was inevitable that all our girls should be completely illiterate'.°" It was also no wonder until she herself learnt how to read that the relationship between reading and knowing was a mystery to Ramabai.©? Ramabai started married life with the firm conviction, shaped by her own mother's belief which had guided all her actions, that to a wife her husband was God. Ramabai recounts the parental relationship which was the model for her own:

My father was a person of strong convictions and awesome temper. None in the family dared to utter a word when he was present. My mother suffered a lot in the early days but she won his confidence and pleased him by quiet endurance and modest demeanour. She believed that the husband should be everything to the wife, a god and a guru. She had even

Men, Women and the Embattled Family 219 taken the guru-mantra from him and used to recite it with great devotion.°!

Before she left her parents' house for her husband's, Ramabai's father had taken her aside and reminded her of the patriarchal code

— that she must never bring dishonour to her father's name. He had said:

You are my daughter. Let your demeanour be worthy of our family. Put up with everything patiently, however unbearable it might be.... You are fortunate. If you cultivate forbearance, you will rise to your real worth and prove worthy of the family you were born in. Remember my words. If I ever learn that you have behaved contrary to this I shall never bring you back to your mother's home again."

After recounting her father's words Ramabai sums up her own reaction to this powerful message, a violation of which would mean banishment from the mother's house — the only emotional space a girl had:

My father. was a man of firm determination. I knew he would do what he declared. His words impressed me deeply. I decided to engrave on my mind's tablet the principles he gave me and act accordingly. It was not an easy thing....° Armed thus with a positive role model and a set of injunctions,

Ramabai was well schooled into the central motif of a woman's training — pleasing her husband and conforming to his authority.

At the same time it may be noted that when Ranade broke the taboo operating in her home against education he was also creating the basis of a relationship with her. Through learning, she thus discovered a way of pleasing him and receiving his attention. The enterprise of education was the new way of bonding between the husband and wife within the traditional marriage practices, especially in the situation prevailing between Ramabai and Ranade.

It was the only means by which the husband-wife unit, the ideal of new domestic ideologies, could be extracted from the larger family unit in which both were actually still enmeshed.

That Ramabai's interest in the educational agenda began and survived only as a way of 'pleasing' Ranade is evident from her

. account of its various stages. After about two months of personally devoting attertion to Ramabai's elementary education and unable to devote more than a couple of hours to her education at night,

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Ranade decided to provide her with a female teacher whe would come in during the day and take her through a school curriculum.

Since she was still a child in many ways and not enthusiastic about acquiring learning for its own sake, Ramabai's 'schooling' immediately ran into trouble. She writes:

And that was the end of everything. Who was going to listen to that teacher? More than half an hour would be spent in looking for the books and slate. The teacher was also a young thing. How could she control me ?...° Six months later Ranade discovered that Ramabai had made no progress beyond what he had originally taught her. When he upbraided the teacher for failing in her responsibilities she flashed back angrily that all labour was wasted upon Ramabai anyway since she lacked the necessary discipline to learn anything, being a rustic.

The teacher also handed in her notice and quit. A thoroughly chastened Ramabai burst into tears at the sight of a humiliated

Bengali she remarked that she would do so only if Fe taught her.

Ramabai's 'schooling' extended beyond the formal educational processes. To be the companionate wife of a prominent public figure she had to learn to share his interests and identify with his activities. Significantly, however, throughout Ramabai's recounting of the activities she shared with Ranade her own enthusiasm for or investment in the issues is never dwelt upon: they are always described as things Ranade suggested or wished her to do. Fairly early on in the 'companionate' stage of their marriage, when

Ramabai had just graduated to adulthood, she once, and only once, acted on her own in an attempt to seek the approval of the women in Ranade's family as well as the 'orthodox' women of the community. The incident related to Ramabai's accompanying

Ranade to a public session where a woman, Annapurnabai, rendered Puranic stories to a mixed audience. Among those attending the session was Pandita Ramabai, a thoroughly « 'disreputable' character in the eyes of the orthodox, including

Men, Women and the Embattled Family 221 Ramabai Ranade's female kin. Some of the orthodox women manoeuvred to make the 'reformist' women sit along with men since they were perceived to be fraternising with them anyway.

Caught between her husband's desire for the conjugal couple to go to public meetings together and the disapproval of the womenfolk,

Ramabai Ranade pleaded a headache and returned home rather than be publicly ostracised by the orthodox women.®"

When Ranade returned home and caught Ramabai out in her lie the matter became a severe test of their relationship. As Ramabai recalls the event, the meaning of 'schooling' and the strategies a husband conventionally had recourse to, without using violence, become clear. Ranade communicated his severe disapproval by punishing Ramabai with a studied silence. As Ramabai massaged his feet at night (as usual) she suddenly noticed his rejection of her presence:

I felt sleepy as I sat there massaging his feet. When I realised that he was only pretending to sleep and that there was no chance of his talking to me I became miserable. I wept for a long time. Never before had he done this. If I had done something wrong I would beg forgiveness. But [this time] I could not utter a word. The heart may grow all humble; but one's proud nature still resists supplication [emphasis added]. I thought of all this a thousand times but still could not say a word... The whole night passed like this. Neither of us could sleep. When dawn broke he got up and went out. I could not bear such punishment and broke down in tears... ag Finally a chastened Ramabai begged forgiveness and promised never to do such a thing again. Ranade was silent for a while and then said:

You do something silly to begin with and then get agitated. It upsets me too. Can one be happy to see one's dear behave contrary to one's inclination

[emphasis added]. Once the direction is clear you should keep to it firmly.

Please don't do this again."

Ramabai immediately resolved never to do anything against her husband's wishes. In her own words, 'I felt that there could be no greater punishment than his refusal to speak to me. And throughout the rest of my life I never gave occasion for such punishment again'." She was 21 at the time this incident occurred and had been married to Ranade for 10 years — long enough to realise the place of 'disapproval' in their relationship. It is evident that the

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general ideological direction was continuously reiterated by those in charge of schooling women. The guiding hand made clear that certain forms of activity were given the official seal of approval, others were placed beyond the pale. As Corrigan and Sayer conclude, 'This had cumulative and enormous cultural consequerices for how women identified themselves and their place in the world'."! In Ramabai Ranzde's case the 'schooling' continued throughout her life in different ways. Her reading was carefully guided; it comprised the publications of the Dakshina Prize

Committee, works which were written vy Brahmana men focusing on themes approved of by other scholars like them.'? (For example

Phule's ballad on Shivaji with its unconventional interpretation was not accepted by the committee as we saw earlier.'°) Later, the reading of the Raghuvamsa is recorded by Rarnabai along with the information that Ranade weuld carefully explain the slokas to her."4

This was clearly the ideal text for the ideal relationship. A noticeable silence on Ramabai Ranade's familiarity with, or conscious introduction to, radical English works like those Phule was reading or Kashibai Kanitkar was expected to read and comprehend'? indicates the carefully restricted nature of the 'schooling' of wives by husbands within what may appear to be an extended educational agenda.

Ramabai would also accompany Ranade on his tours, where she attended to his personal needs, cooking special savouries, locking after the camp inmates, writing his letters for him, receiving instructions and reporting their completion twice a day, and finally massaging his feet with ghee at night. Sometimes they played chess together while the servant massaged his feet. These special occasions when the 'schooling' was uninterrupted by the presence of the other kin, when the nusband-and-wife unit was accualised iri experience, were the happiest days for Ramabai — cherished more than the days at 'home'.'"° And in these moments Ramabai experienced also the godliness of her husband, and tears of reverence and love would well. up from her heart. In Ramabai's own words: 'When I was alone, I often thought that aithough I regarded him from the point of view of an earthly relationship there was such divine power and godliness in him'.'" Here then was the perfect example of a woman who regarded the husband as God. The new domestic ideology had pulled off a real feat as a traditional model of womanhood provided

Men, Women and the Embattled Family 223 a suitable extension into the nineteenth century fiom a 'thousand year old tradition'.

From the point of view of the dornestic ideologies being outlined by the reformers the Pygmalion situation provided by the traditional marriage system with an older husband and a child bride was not a disadvantage: it might even be regarded as an ideal way to shape the 'perfect' wife according to the requirements of the emergent forms of patriarchy. It gave men a time when the wife was totally under their 'guidance' and conirol, when she was pliant, maileable and obedient.

The transition from one set of pairiarchical practices to another was eased because it was oniy the externalia of schooling that were different in the overlapping patriarchies. The central motif of obedience to the husband and the acceptance of his authority remained the basis of the "corapanionate' model too. It was the endeavour of the 'reformers' to extract consent from women to this new incarnation of patriarchy. Trained to please husbands and approve their actions, 'new' women like Ramabai Ranade provided early models of consent for the emerging variations of patriarchy.

Ramabai for example accepted Ranade's norms in every arena of her life (she identified sc completely with Ranade that she frequently refers to 'our party' when she mentions the reformers).'®

She echoed his concerns, executed his suggestions on how to expand the arena of consent by holding meetings of upper-casie women and setting up units of tne Arya Mahila Sabha, and finally after his death, by creating the Seva Sadan,"" an institution for women which was launched to train women to fulfil their domestic, social and national responsibilities. She abstained froin going beyond the agenda set ovt by Ranade during his lifetime; thus while others like Kashibai Kanitkar and Pandita Ramabai attended the Congress sessions ir Bombay, Ramabai Ranade stayed away as Ranade disapproved of women's participation in 'politics' 8° Her first speech in English at a prize distribution ceremony in a girl's school is a representative example of the very limited agenda. She dwelt on the need for humility in order to dispel the notion that education made women unruly, callous and immedest, and reiterated the need for the educated woman to be 'all the more gentle and obedient to husband and elders'.*!

It is not surprising that Ramabai Ranade was regarded as the embodiment of Hindu wifely virtues by those who inherited

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Ranade's political and social mantle. In the foreword of her book Amchya Ayushatil Kahi Athavani (Our life together), Gokhale wrote:

This is probably the first book written in this manner about a husband by his wife. It is but proper that Vahinibai [Ramabai] should have written it for she occupies a unique position among our women today. She spent twenty-seven years as a comrade, inseparable as a shadow of that saintly personality. Her innate lustre was heightened by education and by the ennobling company of her husband. Her mind is forever engrossed in Rao

Sahib... It is important to refer to one or two things which cannot but make a deep impression [on us]. A deep love between husband and wife is often found in western society. That is a relationship of equality. But even when there is a similar deep love, that the wife should devote herself wholly to the service of the husband and consider this as the fulfilment of her life is a special characteristic of women in the East, particularly of India. This characteristic is a fruit of the culture and tradition of thousands of years and here [in Ramabai] we have a beautiful specimen of it. This fundamental characteristic remains unaffected in women like Vahinibai, although the pattern of their jife may be modified by new education, new ideas and new environment.®"

In Ramabai Ranade's example the reformers found the model of the new Indian womanhood, schooled so perfectly by her husband that she could reproduce the male voice exactly and was thereby representative of the type of womanhood who could be 'modern' without losing the traditional Indian wife's virtues. Women thus became the means by which newly-defined Hindu patriarchal practices came into being through their acceptance by women who consented to the agendas set by men of their class. There was no essential contradiction between traditional Brahmanical patriarchy and new forms of it, regarding women. Hindu wifely virtues just got a new lease of life. The characteristic quality of Indian womanhood then came to be the ability to survive any modernising onslaught and keep its essence.

Ill There was another side to the contentious presence of multiple and overlapping forms of patriarchy when they were ideologically opposed to each other in nineteenth century Maharashtra, and that was the manner in which these were expressed within the household, specifically in the female domain. Ramabai Ranade's

Men, Women and the Embattled Family 225 account of life with her husband is thus also significant for a latent oppositional narrative indicative of the not so successful slide from the values of traditional patriarchy to the new domestic ideology of a class segment. While this was not her intention, Ramabai Ranade captures also the contradictions and tensions within a family where women of different generations and differing degrees of relationship to the 'men' of the house find themselves playing out their relationship to each other in a changing situation. Looking at this suppressed narrative of mostly nameless and some named women

(as portrayed by the central figure of the new family, the young wife), one can see that the period as a whole, when the battle between traditional patriarchy and its transformed version was unfolding, was deeply confusing for women — despite the essential similarity of 'wifely' virtues in the two forms of patriarchy.

It is clear from a range of male writings that many male reformers portrayed the conflict of values as a case of women themselves resisting change; we often come across the familiar

'women themselves are the oppressors of other women' there in such writing.*? This is also how Ramabai Ranade portrays the tension between women in the home, an echo of Ranade himself who sees the conflict as one of women who uphold traditional values and 'resist' change through their obduracy.** A close look at the female domain within the Ranade household suggests that there were complex issues at the heart of the conflicts. While these conflicts were expressed as ideological, they had, at their base, a fundamental materiality.

The major crisis points in the self-consciously crafted narrative of the conjugal couple in the Ranade household centred round the actions and speech of the female affinal kin of Ramabai. There were

'eight to ten' of them who resided in this household,® all of whom save three remain hazy as Ramabai does not describe them. The three female kin that she does individualise out of this 'group' are all, significantly, widows at the point when the crisis erupts. Among them Durga, the only one of the female kin to be named, is clearly the most powerful. Although she is not in any way the focus of Ramabai Ranade's account, which is built unambiguously around the great Ranade, Durga succeeds in pressing herself upon the narrative to reveal the underside of patriarchy and the tussles generated by it. She calls for more attention than she gets in passing, mostly in negative terms, from Ramabai Ranade because

226 REWRITING HISTORY

she does appear to be the third figure in a triangular relationship between Ranade, Ramabai and herself. As portrayed by Ramabai

Ranade it is Durga who represents the figure of tension in the necessary transformation of the traditional household into an affective unit, the home of the conjugal couple. The ever-present widowed dependent kin could easily disrupt the creation of the conjugal unit in the eyes of a young wife. But another way of interpreting Durga is to see her relationship to both Ramabai and Ranade as a playing-out of the contradictions inherent in the life of a Brahmana widow in the nineteenth century.

Durga was Ranade's only full sibling, born two years after him.

In their childhood she is represented as overtly the brighter and the more lively of the two, even as his opposite in verbal skills and general disposition. Certainly she had extraordinary 'natural' intelligence for it to be regarded as part of family folklore. Indulged by her father and by 'too much praise', she was regarded as growing into a 'termagant' who was aggressive and dominating.®° There was both sibling rivalry and affection in the relationship, with the two sharing games and a common circle of friends. However, while

Ranade went to school, Durga aid not: but this did not in any way affect her observation and pragmatic understanding which come through in the narration of Ranade's childhood.

When Durga was nine she was married. The same year their mother had died during her eighth confinement and within eighteen days their father married again. (Her brother was married soon after tne father's remarriage.) We get no glimpse of Durga's marital household or her iife there in Ramabai Ranade's account, as the narrative is about her brother. (But in a letter to a friend written in 1870, Ranade commiserated with him on family troubles and also mentioned his own distress at a situation in which his poor

'orphan sister ts kept away from me for months together'. Whether this was because she was in her marital home which was repressive and did not permit interaction with the natal household or because

Ranade was away from his family home and could not devote any attention to his sister is not clear.)®" What is interesting is that while

Durga is described as being indulged by her father and clearly sharing a close relationship with him, her brother hardly ever spoke to his father directly, getting things said for him by others.®® As the years proceeded Ranade went to Bombay to be educated, where he did extraordinarily well and thereafter entered 'service'. During the

Men, Women and the Embattled Family 227 same period Durga was widowed at the age of 21 and appears to have returned to live in her father's household. From the fact that she returned to her father's house, less likely. if she had a son, and the fact that there are no specific references to children, she appears to have been childless. When Ranade was widowed at the age of 31, Durga was firmly ensconced in her father's household and a central figure in it.®? This position, possibly as the most important woman in it, may have been facilitated by the presence of a stepmother as young as herself as its nominal mistress. In a household where there were only older female kin who would all have been related by blood to Durga, many of whom would have mothered her, she would be the 'insider' in relation to the young stepmother. Taking over the complete reins of the household may also have been easier in the case of widows because their lives were unpunctuated by childbirth and they were therefore always available to perform the full range of female duties in the household.

Available thus and uniquely located as an insider where all other women were outsiders, Durga appears to have also become the natural mediator between the various segments of the family, especially in a situation where the father and son did not communicate; she appears to have mediated both between generations and between the male and the female domains.

However, it was not merely her structural location but her personality and the circumstances of her life that converted her into a power-broker of sorts. We see something of this in the first crisis referred to by Ramabai Ranade, Ranade's remarriage, which preceded her own entry into the household.

The father's orthodoxy, the cause of the crisis with Ranade, appears to have been of a very high order; his insistence on Ranade's immediate remarriage to a young girl and his anxiety about a potential marriage with a widow may of course have also been a strategy of survival. He had a young family through his own second marriage who would have to be looked after and 'settled' by Ranade after his own death.?? Doing so would become extremely difficult if Ranade pursued his ideals since outcasting was a very real and very powerful weapon that would fall upon the whole family. In the exclusive discussions that preceded Ranade's remarriage, Durga figured both as a subject and a witness. Although everyone was dismissed by the father to enable a frank discussion with the son,

Durga refused to have herself shut out and listened at the door.

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Significantly, one of the arguments raised by Ranade to stall a remarriage was that Durga had been a widow since 21 and no one considered that she should remarry. As he put it, 'I am not young any more: I am thirty-two years old. I can certainly lead a life of thought and retirement. Durga is younger than I and has been a widow since she was 21. You do not love her less than you love me, in any way. And yet no one thinks of her. Why am I being urged to marry? If you think it would be good for her to lea a life of restraint it should apply equally to me.'"?!

This is the only record that the family had of the conversation between father and son and it was Durga's version, passed on in later years to Ramabai Ranade.?? Whether this allusion to Durga was a serious view of Ranade's is not clear because there is no evidence to suggest that when he became the head of the household, he attempted to have Durga remarried. In any case it would have been too late by then since she would have been 32 or so and Ranade may have carried a double sense of guilt about her status and his own failure to marry a widow placed in a situation like her.

What is interesting is that Durga herself included a reference to the double standards operating between men and women when she passed on the account. In any case Durga continued to lead a life of 'restraint' while her elder brother was not required to, indeed not allowed to. The open acceptance of male sexuality and the denial of female sexuality was a naturalised aspect of the moral order of Brahmanical society. However, whether it was 'naturalised' by the women themselves in any simple or direct manner needs to be explored. What we do see in our narrative are two related features; one an expression, fairly frequently stated, of hostility towards men, especially against the master/conjugal partner heading the household. The second was a deep-seated fear of the power of the wife of the head of the household. She, it was felt, would marginalise other women by becoming the premier influence in the life of the master through her sexual and affective power over him as well as the legitimate claim she had to his material assets. All other categories of women, mostly widows in our case, were recipients of his 'charity'. In such a situation the conjugal duo was quite naturally the object of close scrutiny, even of sustained surveillance. The women of the household made it a point to know what was going on in the private space of the central pair and they did so as a 'team',

Men, Women and the Embattled Family 229 Denied a 'legitimate' home, widows like Durga might well attempt to ensure their own place where one could be found.

Durga's forceful character begins to register as Ramabai Ranade's narrative of her early years with her husband unfolds. She was clearly in charge of the kitchen and the accounts of the household, possibly the real mistress of the Ranade household at the time of Ramabai's marriage. Significantly, she was called 'Akkasaheb',?4 an index of her special power in the family. Ranade himself relied on her ability to handle crises of various kinds in the household and shoulder a 'man's' responsibility within it, for example, keeping a concerned watchful eye on the grief-stricken stepmother at the father's death to ensure that she did not commit suicide, and even cope with the death rituals while he himself stayed away because he could not bear the trauma." Finally, the father's separate household was merged with the son's and the father's family shifted to Poona where Ranade was located.

It is at this stage that the tension in the household between the women, portrayed as 'traditionalist and obdurate', and Ranade, as well as within the female domain between the older women and the young wife Ramabai, openly surfaced."° It was overtly expressed as a conflict over the young wife's education, especially her English education, the company she kept and her participation in her husband's social life.?" But it also had strong overtones of the anxieties generated by the new location and changed dimensions of the household. What power alignments, material arrangements and familial relationships the new situation was going to throw up and how its various components were going to realign themselves were questions yet to be resolved.

In Ramabai Ranade's rendering of the tension between the older women and herself the cause of the disapproval was threefold: the process of the new forms of schooling focused on learning, the learning of English from the mleccha Miss Herford, and finally

Ramabai Ranade's association with the young and infamous Pandita Ramabai, who had crossed the threshold of the home, to which all women and especially widows were confined, and stepped into the public space reserved for men.?® These women, now the representatives of the elders and patriarchs, threw into relief the authority residing in this group as they witnessed but were unable to prevent traditional codes being violated as there was now a new

'master in the house; it was his wife who was violating the codes

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in order to please her husband. As the women came to recognise their inability to actually dictate what values were going to be upheld they are likely to have noticed the change following the death of the father. The deeply patriarchal nature of this change is significant. As long as Ranade's father was alive the son accepted every expression of his father's choice, of course, but also regretted inviting Vishnu Shastri Pandit and his new widow-bride to a meal when his father was visiting the son's home because this action offended him.?? Now, after the death of the father, Ranade had suddenly taken to doing what he considered 'right' because there was no patriarch opposing him — only a bunch of women whom

'he' fed and housed, as one of the old widows put it.!°° It was Ranade who was the new patriarch now and so could do as he pleased.

Ramabai Ranade represents the elder women as blind traditionalists; Durga is described as the most intelligent of the women who knew the value of education but was obstinate, proud and hot-tempered by nature, believing that everything 'old was gold'; she struggled hard to exert her influence over Ramabai

Ranade, alternately cajoling and haranguing her about her activities and frequently comparing her 'outrageous' behaviour with the modest and endearing conduct of Ranade's first wife. The content of many of these sessions, interestingly, was an incitement to Ramabai that men's authority could be subverted, and even that the wishes of husbands were not sacrosanct: rather it was really family tradition — the Brahmanical code — that was important to a woman. Durga clearly identified with the Brahmanya of the Peshwai.!°!

The 'activity' of education especially its non-instrumental dimension, was in any case seen as frivolous, as was the joint attendance of the husband and wife at public meetings. In Durga's own words here is the traditional Brahmana woman's analysis of the relations between men and women:

Even if the men want you to do these things you should ignore them.

You need not say no but after all you need not do it. They will then give up out of sheer boredom. Your parents are orthodox and respectable. Your father and mother have a great sense of decorum. It is such a pleasure to look at them. The women of their family are not supposed to learn even

Marathi — let alone English. But you — you are outdoing even the European women.!°

Men, Women and the Embattled Family 231 And since Ramabai continued to act according to Ranade's expectations Durga complained to the other women:

It is she herself who loves this frivolousness of going to meetings. Dada is not so keen about it. Men always say such a lot of things. But should she not have a sense of proportion of how much the women should actually do? If men tell you to do a hundred things, women should take up ten at the most. After all men do not understand these practical things...

What use is the education of women after they are able to read a few sacred books? It's just a fad of his, that's all. He was so much after the first vahini (brother's wife, i.e., his first wife) too about this reading and writing. But she, poor thing, was very docile. She put up with such a lot of scolding from him just to please us. That good woman never turned frivolous like this and never gave up our old ways. That is why this large family of more than twelve people could live together in a respectable way.

With not so much as the smallest gesture did she ever indicate that she was the mistress of the household'®? (emphasis added).

A power struggle in the female domain within the larger household for the position of mistress is evident from this passage, although there were clearly many other issues at stake.

The anxiety and anger about a new mistress is a running theme in the verbal expression of the politics of the household. Older women feared the power of the young 'second' wife over the husband and her ultimate 'enthronement' as the undisputed mistress of the female domain. The oldest widow in the Ranade household captured the complex emotions of fear, anger, and hostility about the young wife during a moment of high tension when the latter had asserted her 'authority', and unilaterally communicated a family lapse to the master:

The widowers' wives are always tell-tale witches. They always curry favour by tale-telling... She is gaining a new trait everyday... Two or three

'nannies' in the house have now become a nuisance [to her]. Let her drive them out and be rid of them. Then let the Sahib and Memsahib sit together on chairs, books in hand. I have noticed that lately she has come to feel that she is the mistress of the house. The servants should obey her alone. 1% And to Ranade who pried to defend his wife's position by providing her with his protective mantle the old lady said:

There is no need to stand up for your wife in this way. She is not being branded is she? If she is so precious and delicate, keep her safe with you;

REWRITING HISTORY

put her on a pedestal and worship her like a goddess. You consider yourself very wise just because you have learnt some English. But this is no wisdom. If you are fed up with us you need not insult us by taking sides with your wife. We would prefer to be told to leave the house. !°

It was to some extent the tenuous position of widowed female kin in relation to the wife in any household that generated so much tension about the position of the 'mistress'. Called upon to be putative mistresses of the household when experienced wives were not available or not free to wield such a position, these 'stand-ins' were expected to hand over the reins of authority when they had served their purpose.

Anxiety about the mistress would be heightened by the demarcation between categories of women caused by the new type of schooling given to the wife and new forms of conjugality cementing the relationship between the master of the home and his wife. This accounts for the repeated allusions to 'mistress' used pejoratively, to reading and sitting together — described by old Tai Sasubai, the eldest widow in the house, as 'love which had crossed all limits. Wives must now sit close to their husbands as though their clothes were knotted.'!°° Further, the position of the wife as mistress implied the servility of all other women to her — also an anxious thought for elder women schooled in traditional Brahmanical patriarchy who were insecure about what forms of domestic arrangements emergent patriarchies would make: in sum, the English-educated mistress was a fearful prospect. As Durga said to Ramabai Ranade when she began to be taught

English by Miss Herford: "You are turning yourself into a "Madam" by learning English. It would be only fitting to the pomp of a madam that she should have her food upstairs. After all we are here, downstairs, all the slaves and servants of my lady.'!°"

At the stage that these feelings were expressed Durga would have been forty and Ramabai Ranade around twenty-one. For some years following the relocation of the Ranade household Ramabai alone, as the wife and possibly potential mistress, had been carefully schooled by her husband, an activity that separated this one woman from the rest of the female kin who were left within the ideological moorings of a traditional patriarchy which these older women had been schooled in. Durga's father for example had been so strict about maintaining the separation between the public and the private domains that he had refused to speak to his wife for days

Men, Women and the Embattled Family 233 because she had continued to stand in the courtyard when a clerk came in to have a drink of water.!°8 The domestic ideology of the reformer, by focusing on the young wife and leaving the others to live according to traditional norms, was bound to produce a conflictual ideological situation in the household. And we must recognise the difficulties for women schooled in one set of patriarchal norms to suddenly drop them according to the whims of the 'patriarchs'. The 'elder' women may also have been resentful of the change of values required of them with every change of the patriarch heading the household.

There were also material arrangements at stake in the division of labour in the household. Since education had no instrumental use for women, although it did have a social value for the new class, it was naturally perceived as fruitless to women who were _ required to render other forms of labour in the household. Conventionally it was the senior women who organised domestic labour, allotting tasks within it. Apart from the natural resentment against one of its members who could spend time reading and attending meetings while they continued to perform 'menial duties', the new domestic ideology also separated women in terms of their world-views. At least in the Ranade household the embryonic female intelligentsia was not enabling the penetration of new values, which was part of the agenda of female education, into the female domain but producing anxiety and conflict. The tensions in the female world meant also that women were forced to choose between its warring factions; if you had the emotional sustenance of one you lost the other. Even the well-schooled Ramabai, wanting to please her husband but longing also to be accepted in the female world, slipped once with the disastrous results we have already described.

On her part she inevitably resolved the conflict by choosing decisively to go with the master of the house, recognising the tacit requirement of Ranade that one whom he looked upon as his 'own' should be able to do just what he wished without being told so.

Once the conflict of interest was decisively resolved and Ramabai Ranade gradually but inevitably moved into the position of the mistress of the household, secure in the support of her husband, the elder women were edged out and they more or less disappeared from the narrative. Only Durga remained as a character who continued to be mentioned, still called upon in a crisis like Ranade's critical illness!!° (when he was out on tour accompanied by his

234 REWRITING HISTORY

'own' family), or when the family was faced with social outcasting and she worried about how the shraddha rituals would be conducted for the dead.!!! She remained a member of Ranade's

'other' family of stepmother and stepbrothers while Ramabai Ranade presided over his 'real' home. There may have then been a natural reconciliation between the women with relationships coming full circle when their respective places were resolved'!? and they finally achieved the bonding that had eluded them in early years. The last mention that Durga gets is when Ranade was terminally ill. Durga organised prayers in the temple for her brother while Ramabai silently prayed for her husband. A widow of long standing, Durga then consoled the terrified Ramabai, tormented by her impending widowhood, with traditional codes of acceptance.

'God is with us,' Durga said. 'He will take care: anushthanas are going on in the temple of Ambabai. She will look after all. You should trust in her and be at peace. Don't lose heart. When you are alert and about, it gives us courage. You are the Lakshmi of the house. You should not let tears soil your eyes at such a moment.'

Since Ramabai Ranade's narrative ends with her husband's death we!!3 do not know how the two women related to each other in their final years. By then Ramabai had not only been undisputed mistress of the household but also the natural heir to Ranade's mission. As we have already indicated, she completed the task of disseminating the new domestic ideology both through her own person and through the institution she helped to create. The female protagonists of traditional patriarchal practices had inexorably faded away at least in this one household.

One of the notable silences in Ramabai's account of the politics of the female domain and the figures that inhabited it relates to the experience of widowhood. This appears to be a significant omission, particularly when Ramabai Ranade was mortally afraid of being widowed herself and regarded widowhood as a tragic state.!!4 It is doubly noticeable because Ranade's name was at one point synonymous with the widow remarriage movement. Yet at no point do we get a direct reference to the way the widows in the Ranade household perceived and experienced widowhood. We do not know whether Durga, the youngest of these widows, wore the signs of widowhood such as the tonsured head. There is, however, a telling sentence in the account which captures the essence of widowhood and might give us a clue to the politics of the female domain. While

Men, Women and the Embattled Family 235 journeying to Simla on an official visit the Ranade couple were accompanied, among others, by Durga. At Jaipur the party came upon a number of skilled artisans carving figurines of stone.

Ramabai describes how Durga 'greatly admired a small image of Lakshmi-Narayana' and then adds with compelling wifely authority

'which we bought for her'.!!? Ramabai's association of herself with Ranade as 'we', sharing access to his resources from which Durga was excluded, is a powerful reminder of the materiality of relationships within the household and the deep divide between a wife and a widowed kinswoman. The latter may be permitted to 'manage' it as Durga had done for many years but was not 'entitled' to it. We may recall Ranade's ruling as judge in a case where a widowed daughter had obviously sought a right to support in her natal household: while there could be a moral duty on the part of her natal male kin to provide such support, the widow could not claim a legal right to it.!!° In a significant essay Sangari argues that women cannot ever name their 'interests' in the cultural codes of patriarchy. These may sometimes be expressed laterally but never directly.!!" In Durga's person and through the references, veiled and open, to the 'mistress' of the household articulated by the widows in Ranade's family we have a powerful example of this crucial characteristic of patriarchy

— whether traditional or its transformed variant. Tensions in the female domain were not merely personal or ideological but also deeply material.

The juxtaposition of different sets of patriarchal practices within a given society may be seen to have produced both conflict and a happy co-existence. While men had a certain choice in opting for one or the other variant of patriarchal codes, or even a blend, women had less choice in the matter even though we can see them asserting themselves within the structure of patriarchal institutions.

It would be mechanical on our part to make an easy association of the new woman as relatively 'liberated', or less enmeshed by patriarchal structures, or consider that those women who were in traditional structures of patriarchy were more in its stranglehold.

From the Ranade household it is possible to discern that the reverse situation could obtain. While the carefully schooled new woman considered her husband a virtual god, Durga, the traditional widow, knew how to carve out a powerful place for herself within existing forms of patriarchy by manipulating its premises. (I use the word

236 REWRITING HISTORY

'manipulation' rather than 'subversion' consciously because actions which do not change the relations and work within patriarchy are not subversive of it. Also, Durga gained a relative advantage, not an absolute one.) She was almost contemptuous of male authority even as she proclaimed the need to adhere to its form. She also

'opted', in a sense, for traditional patriarchal norms because it gave some women a certain power within the household over other categories of women.

It permitted women to 'arrogate' to themselves compensatory power within the domestic "domain, serving patriarchal ends in the process, because this power had been a way of schooling younger women. Its ideology also gave them more meaning and acceptance of their 'wasted' lives. Further, traditional Brahmanical patriarchal practices had in a sense 'inherited' the consent of women. The oppressive practices had been invisibilised as aspects of 'tradition', 'custom', 'honour' and religious practice. And most notably we need to recognise that pre-existing patriarchal forms were perceived by both men and women as demarcating upper-caste, especially Brahmana, women from castes below them and thus as being a necessary aspect of class order and social stability: women then would and did resist its reformulation.

It was the privileging of the emergent forms of patriarchy over its traditional variants within the same generation and same household that produced intra-familial tensions amongst women and confused them about their ideological position.

Durga epitomised the traditional values of her father and had been respected for upholding the Brahmanya, but was an anachronism in her brother's household which had found new ways of defining

'respectability' for elite women. It was only natural that she, and women like her, would resist readily consenting to the new form of patriarchy which in any case concentrated its energy on the wife, who needed to be schooled into becoming a companionate wife and nurturant mother. For the widow who could be neither, despite all the rhetoric, there was less concern shown by the new domestic ideology except to consider making them wives. The expectation of a quick production of consent among widows requiring them to switch from one articulation of patriarchy to another, was not easy because there was no husband to demand it of them. Since the husband was the pivot of traditional patriarchy as well as its variant, his demand for conforming to one or his disapproval of another

Men, Women and the Embattled Family 237 legitimised which form of patriarchy the wife must consent to as exemplified by Ramabai Ranade.

We must not however conclude from Ramabai Ranade's example that emergent forms of patriarchy met with no resistance from wives. As we have suggested earlier, the whole business of 'pleasing' husbands and living up to their notions of womanhood could well have appeared to be among the visible forms of patriarchy which women might resist and instead prefer to live by tradition where patriarchal practices were rendered invisible within the general framework of religion, custom, and family traditions. While traditional patriarchy had the sedimented consent of women who saw themselves as upholding social and community norms by living in certain ways which marked them off from others below them, the new patriarchal requirements were more difficult to mask, especially in the early stages before women were schooled into it.

We have the example of Lakshmibai Sardesai, the wife of the well-known historian of Maharashtra, G.S. Sardesai, employed in ~ the princely state of Baroda at the turn of the century. She records two attempts at making her do what she did not want to by her husband as part of the new domestic ideology. One was the fad among the new professional class of men to put their wives through a formal course in 'nurturing' — a nursing and midwifery course which her husband suggested.!!® Clearly, men considered that a casual and unstructured picking-up of nurturing skills was insufficient for an important feminine task. Fortunately for her,

Lakshmibai was required to actually nurture a baby niece whose mother had died, so that gave her an excuse for not conforming to her husband's plans for her.

The second occasion had to do with the 'fashioning' of a new self by an emergent class. Sardesai desired that his wife give up wearing the conventional nine-yard sari and take on the creation of an appropriate apparel for the nineteenth century middle-class woman, cutting across regions: the six-yard version of the sari regarded as more modern, more modest and the really respectable way to 'cover' the female body. Lakshmibai hated it, and argued vociferously against it with her husband, but finally gave in.

However, the mother-in-law was so outraged by the daughter-in-law's transformation that she threatened to leave her son's house during a visit and actually left because the son refused to change his position. But a few days after the mother-in-law had

REWRITING HISTORY

gone Lakshmibai Sardesai quietly reverted to her traditional nine-yard sari.

In the following postscript to the episode Lakshmibai records: 'Apparently my husband either did not notice or decided not to say anything'.!!? Earlier she had recorded that she had already disappointed her husband and made him angry by failing to learn English as he desired, since she did not have 'enough time and energy for it'.!2° Using her Marathi effectively, Lakshmibai put into writing her own view of what was happening between husbands and wives in a secret 'voluminous' diary which her husband only discovered after her death. Fortunately for us, he had it published, but only as a 'supplementary' account to his own autobiography. !*!

We can see that at least some wives, among other categories of women, did not fully endorse the view Ramabai Ranade held about women necessarily accepting male authority when she recognised that all women knew that they had to do what men desired in order to please them.!*? Schooling to 'please' men under the emergent forms of patriarchy was still tenuous and the household remained an embattled space between men, between women, and between men and women. It was being subjected to double pressures: from forces in society working externally and its echo within the family working internally. Neither patriarchal forms nor cultural practices were satisfactorily settled for the new elites. Gender relations continued to be reworked, and dynamically tied to social processes as class and nation were being born.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

1. Kumkum Sangari, 'Relating Histories: Definitions of Literacy, Literature, Gender in Nineteenth Century Calcutta and England', in Svati Joshi (ed.), Rethinking English: Essays in Literature, Language,

History, New Delhi, Trianka, 1991, pp. 32-123, pp. 37-40.

2. Gail Pearson, "The Female Intelligentsia in a Segregated Society — Bombay, a Case Study', in M. Allen and S.N. Mukherjee (eds.),

Women in India and Nepal, Canberra, Australian National University Press, 1982, pp. 136-54, pp. 136-38.

3. Uma Chakravarti, 'Conceptualising Brahmanical Patriarchy in Early India: Gender, Caste, Class and State', Economic and Political

Weekly, Vol. 28, No. 14, 3 April 1993, pp. 579-85.

4. Julia Leslie, The Perfect Wife, pp. 20-21.

Men, Women and the Embattled Family 239 Sudhanwa Deshpande, "Theatre and Nationalism: The Plays of Krishnaji Prabhakar Khadilkar', M.Phil. thesis under preparation.

Also see Kumkum Sangari, 'Consent, Agency and the Rhetorics of Incitement', Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 28, No. 18, 1993, pp. 867-82, especially pp. 872-77 for an account of Kaikeyi's agency, represented, and sedimented, as incitement in public memory.

Sumit Guha, 'Fitna in Maratha Theory and Practice', paper presented at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, 15

September, 1993.

Kumkum Sangari, 'Relating Histories', p. 58.

Tbid., p. 56. oa See for example Himani Banerji, 'Mothers and Teachers; Gender and Class in Educational Proposals for and by Women in Colonial

Bengal', Journal of Historical Sociology, Vol. 5, No. 1, March 1992, pp. 1-30, p. 3.

Gail Pearson, 'Female Intelligentsia', pp. 139-40. In 1884 Ramabai made an eloquent plea before the Hunter Commission for the education of women in order to train them as teachers, nurses and doctors. A few years later the Lady Dufferin Fund was set up to train women as doctors (Manisha Lal, Ph.D. thesis under preparation, University of Pennsylvania).

Himani Banerji, 'Mothers and Teachers', pp. 2, 7, 27.

Parvati Athavale describes the shift in the structure of families in the early twentieth century thus: 'Formerly there were large families but now the "king", the "queen" and the "crown prince" seem to be all that is wanted' (Parvati Athavale, The Hindu Widow, pp. 136).

Based on a reading of Ramabai Ranade's Reminiscences.

See discussion on pp. 216-24 below.

Himani Banerji, 'Mothers and Teachers', p. 3.

C.Y. Chintamani, Indian Social Reform, p. 178.

10. ne. bi ioe 14.

15; Ibid.

Parvati Athavale, The Hindu Widow, pp. 134-36, 141.

Himani Banerji, 'Mothers and Teachers', p. 4.

C.Y. Chintamani, Indian Social Reform, p. 105.

B.N. Motivala, Karsondas Mulji: A Biographical Study, Bombay, Karsondas Mulji Centenary Celebration Committee, 1935, pp.

361-65.

Tbid., p. 366.

Dayaram Gidumal, Status of Women, pp. xcix-c.

Y.D.

Phadke, Women in Maharashtra, Delhi, Maharashtra Information Centre, 1989, p. 23.

16.

17; 18.

13, 20. ae pe 2%

REWRITING HISTORY

Sarojini Vaidya, Shreemati Kashibai Kanitkar: Atmacharitrani Charitra, Bombay, Popular Prakashan, 1991, pp. 75ffThe information on Anandibai Joshi is derived from various sources.

These include Kashibai Kanitkar's biographical account of the former's life which also contains letters written by Anandibai Joshi to various persons including her husband Gopalrao Joshi (Kashibai

Kanitkar, Dr. Anandibai Joshi: Yanche Charitra va Patre, Bombay, Manoranjan Grantha Prasarak Mandali, 1912).

A _ recent biographical novel (S.J. Joshi, Anandi Gopal, tr. and abridged by Asha Damle, Calcutta, Stree, 1992) is useful in reconstructing the 24.

Zon 'legend' surrounding Anandibai's tragic life and death. The life of Anandibai as perceived and documented by an American woman who met her in America was published in 1888 and contains useful contemporary material on Anandibai's American location (Caroline

Healey Dall, The Life of Anandabai Joshee, Boston, Roberts Brothers, 1888). The cross-currents that brought Anandibai and Pandita

Ramabai together and Anandi's American sojourn are detailed in Pandita Ramabai's The High Caste Hindu Woman, Philadelphia, printed by Ramabai Dongre Medhavi, 1888, pp. i-viii, and Sister

Geraldine's Letters and Correspondence of Pandita Ramabai, (A.B.

Shah ed.), Bombay, Maharashtra Board for Literature and Culture, 1977.

Women's particapation in learning was regarded as a sign of kali yuga (Dall, The Life, pp. 85-86; Kashibai Kanitkar, Dr. Anandibai

Joshi, pp. 4142).

26.

Sarojini Vaidya, Shreemati Kashibai Kanitkar, p. 163.

Ramabai Ranade, Ranade; His Wife's Reminiscences, translated by Kusumvati Deshpande, Delhi, Publications Division, 1963, pp.

47EF.

Zhe 28.

Susie Tharu and K. Lalitha, Women Writing in India: 600 BC to the Present, Vol. 1, Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1991, p. 256.

Ramabai Ranade, Reminiscences, p. 38; Sarojini Vaidya, Shreemati Kashibai, p. 20.

Kashibai Kanitkar, Dr. Anandibai Joshi, p. 25. Also see Tanika 22, 30. aL:

Sarkar, 'A Book of Her Own, A Life of Her Own: Autobiography of a Nineteenth Century Woman', History Workshop Journal,

No. 36, 1993, pp. 35-65, p. 57.

Sarojini Vaidya, Shreemati Kashibai Kanitkar, p. 75. The traditional prejudice against education continued to be reiterated by fiery nationalists, not just by the older generation of patriarchs, although a2, it was now dressed up in the content of education rather than mere acquisition of literacy skills. Tilak for example mounted an attack on the Huzurpaga school set up by the reformers in 1884. He

Men, Women and the Embattled Family 241 accused it of following a syllabus which would train women to be clerks rather than to become good housewives and great mothers.

All that was required in the case of women's education were reading and writing skills and study of carefully selected Shastric texts (Y.D.

Phadke, Women in Maharashtra, p.-12)!

Kumkum Sangari, 'Relating Histories', p. 57.

33.

34.

Dall, The Life, pp. 17-21; Kashibai Kanitkar, Dr. Anandibai Joshi, pp. 17, 12-13 a 36.

37.

Ibid., p. 17; S.J. Joshi, Anandi Gopal, pp. 2-3.

Parvati Athavale, The Hindu Widow, p. 8.

See for example S.J. Joshi, Anand: Gopal, p. vii; Jayant Raghunath Joshi, 'Anandibai Joshi: Triumph and Tragedy',

Span, December 1988, p. 15; Meera Kosambi, 'Reality and Reflection. Personal Narratives of Two Women in Nineteenth Century Maharashtra', in Kumkum Sangari and Uma Chakravarti (eds.), From Myths to Markets: Essays on Gender, Shimla, Indian Institute of Advance

Study, Forthcoming.

S.J. Joshi, Anandi Gopal, pp. 8-9.

38. o> 40.

Ibid., pp. 103-06; Dall, The Life, p. 32.

Pandita Ramabai, The High Caste Hindu Woman, pp. ii-v; Dall suggested that American women could learn from Anandi's wifely conduct (Dall, The Life, p. 116).

Gopalrao publicly stated that higher education for women made them 'unfitted' for the domestic duties of wives and mothers (Dall,

41.

The Life, p. 123); S.J. Joshi, Anandi Gopal, p. 188.

42.

Kashibai Kanitkar, Dr. Anandibai Joshi, pp. 188-89, translated for author by Madhu Malti Deshpande.

S.J. Joshi, Anandi Gopal, p. 211; It is significant that Anandibai wrote a long account of Savitri in one of her letters to Mrs.

Carpenter extolling her virtues of complete obedience and loyalty to her husband (Dall, The Life, pp. 64-68).

Anandibai's letters, conveying distress at Gopalrao's volatile behaviour and his expressions of anger in his letters to her, begin and end with wifely and loving phrases. Between the conventional beginning and end Anandibai however revealed other emotions and responded to his accusations, sometimes with a fairly spirited defence of herself and her actions. In a typical letter she began with 'Tam your loyal wife, still I have not been able to give you anything.

43.

44, Since the kind God has sent me to this earth in the form of a woman, I am accepting with obedience and equanimity whatever he has given to me.' Then she proceeds to take up the substantive issue in Gopalrao's letter to her where he has been critical of a photograph Anandibai sent him in which she is not wearing the

242 REWRITING HISTORY

conventional nine-yard Maharashtrian-style sari but the 'Gujarati' or Hindustani style. From Anandibai's letter to Gopalrao it appears that not only has Gopalrao castigated her for changing the manner in which the sari is worn but also because the draping of the pallu has revealed too much of Anandibai for his liking. Anandibai's response includes disbelief at the fact that he has been unnecessarily critical, and being double-faced for saying one thing to her when she left for America and another when he wrote to her. She nominally 'concedes' that she had committed a 'mistake' by not telling him in advance that she would change to the Gujarati/Hindustani style, but also makes clear that she had to change into it for practical reasons, and finally that she did what she thought was right. She also pointed out with sarcasm that it was

'after all our country's dress (emphasis added) and made clear that she did not think it was flashy or bad. Then she reverts to the conventional female sentiments towards a husband with phrases like, 'I am not unhappy for myself but I am unhappy from the depth of my being because you are not getting anything from me.

It was not my intention to hurt your dear heart' (Kashibai Kanitkar, Dr. Anandibai Joshi, pp. 186-89), translated by Madhu Malti

Deshpande. Given the double voice she had to use in her relationship with Gopalrao it is not surprising that she considered the summer of 1883, which she spent with her 'aunt' Mrs.

Carpenter soon after her arrival in America (who was a loving mother figure for Anandibai), 'as the happiest in her life, living among those who really loved her' (Dall, The Life, p. 96).

While Anandi was critically ill the Poona papers had issued daily 45. bulletins on her condition. Anandibai had reverted to an undiluted

Brahmanic ideology, objecting to the maidservant stepping on the mat near her bed (Dall, The Life, pp. 181-83) so it is no wonder that 'all' Poona valorised her and prayed for her (Gyanachakshu, 2

March 1887, tr. from Marathi by Pandita Ramabai and cited in the The High Caste Hindu Woman, p. vi).

46.

Pandita Ramabai, The High Caste Hindu Woman, p. iv.

Catherine Healey Dall, The Life, Boston, pp. 82-91.

47.

48.

Ibid., p. 109; Pandita Ramabai, The High Caste Hindu Woman, pp. iii-iv.

The discussion on the 'schooling' of Ramabai Ranade, the pressures the new domestic ideologies generated among Brahmana households, the 'politics' of the 'family' and the materiality of the 49, 'politics' in this section and the next are based on a reading of Ramabai Ranade's Reminiscences. This book has been extensively

Men, Women and the Embattled Family 243 used by other scholars but mainly to describe the focus on women's education by reformers in the nineteenth century.

Ramabai Ranade, Reminiscences, pp. 32-37; Richard Tucker, Ranade, pp. 78 81.

Manu, V, 167-69.

We do not know whether Ranade seriously intended to marry a widow or considered the alternative of remaining a widower. It is significant that Ramabai Ranade does not dwell on this dimension of the issue of the remarriage of Ranade.

Ramabai Ranade, Reminiscences, p. 37.

More than a decade later Karve described his decision to marry a widow as based partly on 'humanitarian' grounds but also because he was 'terrified' of marrying a girl young enough to be his daughter

50.

DF Da 2EN 54.

(D.K. Karve, My Life Story in D.D. Karve, New Brahmans, p. 39.) Lakshmibai Tilak, J Follow After: An Autobiography, tw. by E.

Josephine Inkster, London, Oxford University Press, 1950, pp.

55.

65-66.

Ramabai Ranade, Reminiscences, pp. 21-23.

Ibid., p. 28.

Ibid., p. 34.

Ibid., p. 38.

56.

Bie 58. a9:

60.

61.

62.

63.

64.

65.

66.

67.

68.

70.

71.

TIbid., p. 39.

Ibid., pp. 29-30.

Tbid., p. 49.

Ibid., pp. 39-40.

Ibid.

Ibid., p. 40.

Ibid., p. 126.

Ibid., pp. 105-107.

Ibid., p. 107.

Ibid.

Philip Corrigan and Derek Sayer, Great Arch, 1985, p. 6, cited in Himani Banerji, 'Mothers and Teachers', p. 5.

Ramabai Ranade, Reminiscences, p. 47.

Rosalind O'Hanlon, Caste, Conflict and Ideology, p. 179.

Ramabai Ranade, Reminiscences, p. 92.

Rosalind O'Hanlon, Caste, Conflict and Ideology, p. 112; Kashibai Kanitkar was 'required' to read Mill's Subjection of Women by her husband as soon as she was literate in English (Y.D. Phadke, Women in Maharashtra, p. 23).

Ramabai Ranade, Reminiscences, p. 91.

Tbid., p. 94.

Ibid., pp. 54-55.

72:

73:

74.

75.

76. ieee 78.

REWRITING HISTORY

. Ibid., pp. 220-24.

In her later years Ramabai Ranade may have made up for her obedient and pliant behaviour during her husband's lifetime as she became a supporter of Tilak's militant stance on nationalism which was a contrast to Ranade's moderate position (Susie Tharu and K.

Lalitha, Women Writing in India, Vol. 1, p. 282). The shift is significant because Tilak in his characteristic style, had even referred to the Reformers as eunuchs like Shikhandi Seis

Tilak and Gokhale, p. 37).

Ramabai Ranade, Reminiscences, p. 97.

Ibid., pp. 10-11.

One reformer proclaimed that it was 'the female that in India, directly or indirectly, offers the greatest resistance to the cause of social reform (Dayaram Gidumal, The Status of Women, p. cviii).

Another was of the opinion that it was women who were responsible 81.

82.

83. for early marriage since they were impatient to experience 'the fun of having festivities' (Dayaram Gidumal, The Status of Women, p. \xxi).

Ramabai Ranade, Reminiscences, pp. 49-50, 76, 89-90.

Tbid., p. 47.

84.

Soe 86.

Ibid., pp. 19-22.

Tucker, Ranade, p. 72.

87.

88.

Ramabai Ranade, Reminiscences, pp. 24, 41. An important aspect of this text is the conflict between the orthodox father and the reformist son in the Ranade household. The relationship between them was extremely complex and tense and needs further work as a theme since it will reveal a great deal about the relationship between men in a patriarchal context.

Ibid., pp. 34-36.

Ibid., p. 36.

89.

I0: oi 92:

Tbid., p. 34.

Ibid., p. 36. o3:

Durga had been made literate, along with her stepmother, by her father partly to maintain household accounts ( Reminiscences, p. 47).

Ramabai Ranade, Reminiscences, p. 21.

Ibid., p. 45.

94.

Do 96.

OF:

Ibid., p. 47.

Ibid., p. 48ff. It is important to note that this was the only area where a difference of values is recorded. There would be little difference in other arenas as the upholding of Brahmanical caste norms and endogamous marriages was never under question by the reformers.

In this context Ranade's statements that one was unconsciously influenced by the traditions in which one was born, by the very milk drunk at the mother's breast, is an eloquent

Men, Women and the Embattled Family 245 reminder that there was a common culture that he and the more orthodox Brahmanas shared (Tucker, Ranade, p. 81).

Ibid., pp. 48fF, 79FF.

Ibid., pp. 40-42.

Ibid., p. 100.

Ibid., pp. 83ff.

Ibid., p. 84. bid.

Ibid., p. 100.

Ibid., p. 101.

98. oo:

100.

101.

102.

103.

104.

105.

106.

107.

108.

109.

110.

111.

Ti.

Ibid., p. 89.

Ibid., p. 70.

Ibid., p. 88.

Ibid., p. 108.

Ibid., p. 131.

Ibid. p. 138.

Ibid., p. 197. Ramabai recounts that when she required surgery, causing Ranade great anxiety, Durga made arrangements for a close friend of Ranade's to be present to keep him 'company'. Here she enacts her role as a considerate sister looking after her brother's emotional needs. At the same time the established nature of the conjugal relationship is taken for granted. Ramabai in turn describes how she agreed to Ranade's decision on the proper treatment for her because it was a wife's 'sacred duty to see that her husband had to suffer nothing on her account... That was her highest bliss and her sacred rule.' In an extraordinary role reversal, Ramabai Ranade epitomised the new domestic ideologies by concluding that Ranade would not be able to bear the burden of sorrow if she died first.

Therefore if one of them had to go it should be him rather than her. Here was a very new way of looking at widowhood (J/bid., pp.

196-97).

Ibid., p. 211.

Ibid., pp. 120-22, p. 129.

Ibid., p. 110.

Ibid.; Bai Mangal v. Bai Rukhmini, ILR, 23 Bombay 291.

Kumkum Sangari, "Consent, Agency and the Rbhetorics of Incitement', p. 873.

G.S. Sardesai, 'Excerpts from Mai's Diary', in D.D. Karve, The New Brahmans, pp. 120-21.

Ibid., pp. 121-22.

Ibid., p. 120.

Ibid. p. 119.

Ramabai Ranade, Reminiscences, pp. 76, 84, 90. if et 114.

115!

116. ny 118. bl D, 120.

IAG 122,

On Widowhood: The Critique of Cultural Practices in Women's Writing :

Much historical writing on the nineteenth century has looked at what impelled social reform, why men were inspired to intervene in social processes, and how action on these was executed on various fronts. Since social reform was for many years synonymous with the widow reform movement, the issue of the 'status' of the widow has almost been overworked in writing. This has produced a striking imbalance because we know very little of what women, especially widows, had to say on the subject of widowhood. | propose to look here at the writings of women.! As women were drawn into literacy and education to school them to be companionate wives and fitting mothers, they began to use their newly acquired skills to articulate their understanding of the 'status' of women, and especially the 'plight' of the child widow among the upper castes. It is important to take note of the issues highlighted by them not merely to expand the arena of our concerns but to shift the attention of history from 'knowledge' about widowhood produced by men to the experience of widowhood as described by women.

The sample of women's writing that I present below is representative rather than exhaustive and the focus is more on unpublished or lesser-known material but it is supported by some of the writing of women which feminist scholars have begun to take note of in recent years. I am, however, not dealing with the writings of women, whether known or unknown, who consented to traditional cultural practices in relation to widowhood, i.e., to women like Durga and the unnamed older women in Ramabai

Ranade's household, or Parvati Athavale's mother (see below),

On Widowhood

because my interest in this work lies in the formation of a critique of enforced widowhood and the extant forms of Brahmanical patriarchal practices. And finally, since women's writing was both describing the experience of widowhood and also outlining the structure of relations in which that experience may be located, the purpose of this chapter is to present the writing of women and draw out its implications.

The reformist discourse on widowhood, especially on the miseries of the child widow (outlined in Chapter Two), had become widely influential by the late nineteenth century in western

India. The body of writing in journals and pamphlets by those engaged in the widow 'remarriage' movement, some of which was extremely impassioned, was supported by the publication of the first novels in Marathi: Baba Padmanji's Yamuna Paryatan (The Journey of Yamuna) and H.N. Apte's Pan Lakshyant Kon Gheto (But Who Cares).* Both dealt with oppressive practices for women, climaxed by widowhood, but the latter in particular was widely influential because of its graphic and moving portrayal of the experiences of a young widow whose attempts at retaining her dignity are cruelly terminated by her forcible tonsure. But although these writings were crucial in drawing attention to the young widow's plight it is important to recognise that the male reformist discourse was essentially a humanist rhetoric which was confined to a description of the oppressive cultural practices that spelt the social death of the upper-caste widow.

The analysis of men had in the main concentrated on the place of custom and the 'aberrations' of tradition,? rather than the structural elements in which the upper-caste widows' social death was located. Male writing had tended also to exonerate religion, and to carefully distinguish custom from religion. Most significantly, there was a complete silence on the crucial issue of the material and_ ideological arrangements of Brahmanical patriarchy which underpinned the practices associated with widowhood among the upper castes.4

From the sample of writing presented below it will be evident that women absorbed the humanist rhetoric but, in important ways, added to it and went far beyond it. From their accounts we can see that as women were being schooled to perform their roles in the transformed patriarchies of the emerging classes in the late nineteenth century, and even as they were schooled to provide consent to the new ideologies, they also resisted the limitations of

248 REWRITING HISTORY

the ideologies to lay bare the full range of oppressive practices imposed upon all women, but particularly upon widows. They used their skills of reading and writing to intervene in debates which often bypassed them or were conducted by men on their behalf.

There is a sense in which they went public in a variety of ways, from expressing themselves in essays written in schools to writing to the newspapers and even publishing full-length monographs on the oppression of women. What is significant is that, almost always, the motivation for writing came from the miseries of widowhood among the upper castes but the actual writing then went far beyond this to provide an embryonic critique of patriarchal power.

A typical example of women writing on widowhood is a prize-winning essay by Sushila Devi? who combines the liberal reformist position on the problem of widowhood, concerns about widows being led 'astray', and the conventional solutions for widowhood with a sensitive rendering of the anguished relationships between mothers and daughters, and the ambivalent relations between mothers-in-law, daughters-in-law and the wider community of female kin. The core of the essay, written in 1907, is set as a narrative of a young girl who is married at nine to a 'mature adult male of 40'. Immediately thereafter the new bride gets a taste of her changed status as she is broken into the 'distrust system' in which a man is always represented by the older womenfolk as a wolf in sheep's clothing and always to be shunned.

The woman is made out to be still worse in this system. She is a 'burning fire' so dangerous that to glance at one, even during the day, causes destruction to man.° Since she is too young for the marriage to be consummated the girl is described as being forcibly 'ripened' by the mother-in-law, who feeds her well with 'cream and curds', like 'fattening a pigeon before the kill'. But when the girl is widowed everyone's overriding concern is with the inability of the beautiful and youthful widow to keep her widowhood 'sacred'. The surveillance of the women begins at the funeral itself. As they mourn the death of the husband the female mourners begin to recount the misdeeds and lapses of other widows. The poor mother of the widow is so pained by the 'distrust system', and the idea that female nature is more evil than good, so ingrained in the Hindu mind (an obvious reference to the notion of strisvabhava of the Brahmanical texts), that she begins to feel that it would have been better if the widowed daughter had

On Widowhood 249 died when she was born.' Sushila Devi's description of the mother's feelings provides us with an intuitive decoding of the 'consent' of women to patriarchal practices.

Transformed into a household drudge, always at the beck and call of others in the house, the widow is the first to rise and the last to retire. For the mother-in-law who had 'nourished' the daughter-inlaw only a while ago the girl now becomes a viper.

'To harbour a young widow is like cherishing a viper. One does not know when it may sting the hand that gives it milk,' says the mother-in-law repeatedly. Finally it is only death (through neglect and overwork) that brings peace to the anguished widow. For everyone else the widow's death is a relief,® especially since the family honour of both households, the natal and the affinal, has been upheld through a 'sacred' widowhood.

Sushila Devi's prize-winning essay, which relies heavily on the narrative style to capture the experience of widowhood, drops this style and adopts a pragmatic stance when it proceeds to outline solutions. According to her, child widows in India are comparable to the 'old maids' or 'spinsters' of Europe who have been unable to find husbands; she suggests that the lives of child widows can be made 'pleasant' and 'endurable' through a cultivation of the mind and of their artistic skills. Education of women, especially widows, is thus crucial. Through it widows can escape 'drudge labour' and become productive, useful members of society."

What is notable about Sushila Devi's essay is that she is acutely aware of the cross-currents in Hindu society on the issue of widow remarriage. Realising that while some reformers are in favour of the marriage of widows, most upper-caste Hindus are strongly opposed to it, and that consequently not enough men are coming 'forward' to marry widows, she herself advises that the happiness of widows should not be staked solely on remarriage. Finally, she argues for a return to the spaces women were believed to have had as Brahmavadinis (women scholars, versed in the Brahman) in Vedic

India.!° Sushila Devi thus simultaneously evokes a double image of control, one traditional, the ancient renunciatory model, the other the educated, creative existence prevalent in the west, which enables the assertion of a developed self-control and releases energy for a useful purpose for the benefit of society. From her account of 'spinsters' in the west and Brahmavadinis in ancient India and the degraded status of widows in the nineteenth century, it is evident

REWRITING HISTORY

that Sushila Devi is advocating a careful handling of the 'problem' of widowhood, skilful cultivation of the self through education and useful industry, thus granting a limited agency to widows who would conduct themselves with propriety and win the respect of their society.!! This position, that widows could in a sense

'sublimate' their sexuality, pre-figures Gandhi and was an important strand in the 'nationalist' resolution of widowhood. The widows' energies here get channelised into serving the nation.

Much more polemical and hard-hitting is the analysis of-Tarabai Shinde who wrote Stri Purusha Tulana in 1882.'* Tarabai's father was a member of Jyotiba Phule's Satyashodhak Samaj and was prominent in non-Brahmana politics, but Tarabai herself made only a single venture into the public domain when she published her critique of patriarchal double standards. Tarabai's work is unique for its style and the quality of its polemics. The text itself was written in reaction to a criminal case involving a young

Brahmana widow, Vijayalakshmi, who was charged with murdering her 'illegitimate' infant at birth. The sessions court sentenced her to hang for moral depravity although the higher courts took a more lenient view and commuted the sentence to transportation for life.

Vijayalakshmi's case was widely discussed with strong views being expressed, mostly by men.!4

Tarabai was the only woman who intervened in this discussion with Stri Purusha Tulana but the text she wrote went far beyond the immediate circumstances of the trial, and the predicament of widows, to take on patriarchal practices itself. Tarabai's work begins with a lambasting of the position that only women's bodies were

'home to all kinds of vices', a stock theme in male writing from the Brahmanical texts onwards but now given a hysterical edge through the circumstances of the Vijayalakshmi case. Because the entire focus of the attack was on the poor widow and not on the man who fathered the child, Tarabai asks pointedly, 'Or have men got the same faults as are found in women?' She thus contests head on the position held from the time of Manu that women are innately lascivious and sinful,!4 a position that continued to have wide currency in the nineteenth century as is evident from Tarabai's

Opening statements.

Tarabai's account of widowhood and of the double standards of men with regard to it is scathing:

On Widowhood 251 Once women have lost their position as wives they have to hide their faces and spend the rest of their lives shut away in a dark corner. So why don't you hide your faces when your wives have died, shave off your beards and mustaches and go off and live in the wilderness for the rest of your lives?

Oh no not you! One wife dies and you just get in another on the 10th day itself.!° Describing the travails of widowhood Tarabai attributes them squarely to men by addressing them as the perpetrators:

Once a woman's husband has died not even a dog would swallow what she's got to. What's in store for her? The barber comes to shave all the curls and hair off just to cool your eyes. All her ornaments are taken away

... She's stripped and exposed in all sorts of ways as if she belonged to no one; she becomes a widow-pot hidden in the corner. She's shut out from going to wedding receptions women go to — And why all these restrictions? Because her husband has died!!°

According to Tarabai men were directly responsible for the social codes which oppressed widows. But more importantly they are culpable on the count of sexually enticing the widow. Tarabai's version of the fall of widows and the trap they are led into is thus described from the woman's standpoint; it springs, according to Tarabai, from the woman's gullibility and desire to be loved.

Tarabai differentiates between the emotion of love, the fulfilment of which women seek, and men's emotions, which are confined to lusting after women, seeking pleasure and taking no responsibility for the consequences. This accounts for women like Vijayalakshmi going wrong:

Even when women do horrible bold things they're still better than you.

First of all you find all sorts of ways to get her captivated. Then once you've got her she puts complete trust in you and begins to love you ... she deserts her stridharma, the most priceless jewel she has in this world and offers her life to you. How is she to understand your dirty tricks?

How long does this love of yours last? Till your lust is satisfied. When she is pregnant you throw ail the misery and responsibility upon her and go into hiding... There's this poor doe, her face like death under the burden when she goes to ask that tiger of a man what to do; he'll answer as if he's respectability itself 'What do you mean what should we do? You did

it, you take the consequences ...' What can the poor woman do? In the end she gives up in despair. To save her honour she even gets herself an abortion. She takes up her bundle of shame and goes off to prison. Some women take their lives, others go into exile....

REWRITING HISTORY

In Tarabai's view the miseries of enforced widowhood and the lapses of the widows from stridharma are attributable to the structures men have created and the advantage they can take even of the enforced celibacy of widows. But what is notable is that despite her direct contest with patriarchal norms Tarabai does not outline alternatives which would help women step out of marriage altogether, nor does she explicitly argue the case for economic independence. She exhorts men to be courageous to enable widows to remarry and to treat them with affection. Since remarriage was contingent upon men rising to the occasion, Tarabai challenges men to live up to the 'heroic self-images' they have created for themselves. She says, 'Seeing as you're such almighty heroes why is it so impossible for you to pull widows out of this pit of shame?

Why can't you break some caste rules, put the kumkuma back on their foreheads and let them enjoy the happiness of marriage again?'!8

Tarabai's agenda for widowhood is linked to her understanding of women, and the kind of marriage they are seeking; she argues for an ideal, loving marital relationship in the place of an unequal one. But at the same time in her bitter tirades against men she even seeks governmental intervention in order to 'discipline' them.!?

Throughout Stri Purusha Tulana she simultaneously exposes men and shames them as well as appeals to them to make a better world for women. Her polemic resists and contests that of men, creating a dissonance on all issues but particularly with regard to the sensual nature of women. She shares the reformist view of some men on the need for widow marriage (while exposing their complacency and cowardice in not going far enough). Unlike the male reformers she does not confine widow marriage only to child widows. In Tarabai's view all widows require a home and a husband to love.?°

Thus she rejects unambiguously the social and sexual death of widows. However, she confines the recovery of the widow from social death only to a social personhood as contained within marriage. Tarabai successfully exposes patriarchy but is not quite successful in conceptualising an alternative to it. Nevertheless her critique was one of the most important pieces of writing on gender in the nineteenth century, indeed a unique one that dismantled male discourse on women and widowhood and provided an alternative. Such a discourse was bound to be marginalised. Tarabai

On Widowhood 253 did not write anything else for the rest of her life. What she had written was bitterly criticised?! and was concealed from public view.

While Tarabai's polemical and impassioned critique was marginalised, women's voices could not be completely stifled.

Between 1884 and 1891, as a fierce debate raged in western India in particular over the custom of child marriage and enforced widowhood, an important intervention in the discussion was made by a woman who clearly sought anonymity by writing under the pseudonym of 'a Hindu Lady'. This debate had originated, as we saw earlier, in Behram Malabari's initiative in seeking the opinions of a wide cross-section of people. What is important for us here is that it was restricted operatively only to men in order to suggest legislation on increasing the age of marriage, especially for girls.

Malabari had sought submissions from various 'public' figures across India including Ranade, Mandlik, Bhandarkar, Phule, and a large number of men from the professional class.2* The absence of women from this 'public' discussion is striking, particularly when we recall that by the early 1880s women's forums such as the Arya

Mahila Samaj were in existence. Further, the Hunter Commission had sought the opinion of women who had testified before it on what they looked forward to in a new educational programme.

Among the women who had testified was Pandita Ramabai?? but, most importantly, by 1882 Tarabai had already published her scathing attack on male power, social customs, and the oppression of women. The absence of women who could speak for themselves rather than have men speak for them is notable. It can only be read as evidence of nineteenth century men's reluctance to concede agency to women, thereby consigning them to be the subjects of a discourse in which men almost had a natural right to decide their fate by virtue of their concern for them.

It is not as if women did not want to speak. Tarabai's work 1s a permanent testimony to the desire of women to speak on their own behalf and contest the point of view that men were projecting.

Ramabai was writing, speaking and travelling across the globe in order to communicate her understanding of the oppression of Hindu women as well as a need for change. Kashibai Kanitkar had written her essay titled "Women: Past and Present' which was published in the Subodh Patrika in 1881 and by 1884 she had begun writing her first novel Rangarao.?4 Thus there was a climate in which women wanted to speak to men and women around them,

REWRITING HISTORY

using every available form of communication, and yet they were not being included in the public discourses of the time.

It is in this context that two letters to the Times of India in May and September 1885 by the 'Hindu Lady' assume significance. This

Hindu Lady was Rakhmabai who, as we know, was in 1885 already embroiled in a court case as she was contesting the practice of child marriage and the burdensome obligations it imposed upon women.

Perhaps it was because she was already the subject of a dispute that she sought anonymity for her viewpoint, or perhaps it was because the reformers regarded women as having no opinion of their own and left them out of the public debates, and she wished to communicate what was an informed opinion based on personal experience.

Something of this tension between women like Rakhmabai, Tarabai, and Pandita Ramabai and the 'Reformers' comes through in all their writing. Rakhmabai's first letter?? more or less opens with the sense of betrayal at the apathy and the lack of moral courage among people which makes real reform so difficult, and the rest of the letter is punctuated with similar sentiments.2° Her own account is a contrast to the submissions made by the reformers to Malabari, even the testimony of her stepfather, because she describes what child marriage has meant for her personally. And because she wrote from experience, although the letter she sent to the Zimes of India in June 1885 was supposed to be about child marriage and enforced widowhood, she never managed to get down to the subject of enforced widowhood, having so much to say on the issue of child marriage. She then wrote a separate letter on enforced widowhood a few months later.

Rakhmabai outlines the distinctive ways in which the custom of child marriage affects women, even though she recognises that both men and women are affected by Hindu social customs. In her view, these customs did not burden men with half the difficulties they entailed for women because marriage did not impose any insuperable 'obstacles' in the course of their studies. Here she dwells upon a crucial aspect of child marriage which relates to the loss of power that affects only women, in making decisions regarding education following marriage.

This loss of power was of fundamental importance to Rakhmabai as it meant the loss of both mental and physical freedom for the girl. Whatever possibilities a girl might retain with respect to learning even after marriage, were

On Widowhood 255 she to have a liberal husband or in-laws, are however abruptly terminated when the girl begins the reproductive cycle of childbirths, most often when she is fourteen.

Rakhmabai deals at some length with the power relations in the household of the in-laws as the full complement of oppressive practices are operative here. Unpaid labour is extracted from the daughter-in-law who is worse off than the servant because the daughter-in-law has no bargaining power. And despite her parents being her natural guardians she is abandoned by them as they will not provide support to her once she is married. Rakhmabai also describes the use of physical violence as part of the disciplining process which operates within the affinal family to ensure she becomes a compliant member of the new household. Her insightful description includes a recognition that the young husband, should he wish to intervene, is unable to do so because he himself is not a free agent as he is as yet economically dependent on his family.

If he is not sympathetic he, of course, joins in the oppression.

Hindu women were thus, in Rakhmabai's opinion, worse off than beasts on the one hand and playthings and objects of enjoyment on the other, unceremoniously thrown away when their temporary use was over. She is particularly pungent when she turns her attention to the relationship between women's oppression, social customs and Shastric sanction. Since all the writers of the Shastras were men they have produced 'knowledge' which ensures that women are believed by men to be 'unclean' but yet created specifically for their gratification and special service.

This 'knowledge' about women which devalues them has led to women devaluing themselves.

On a personal note, Rakhmabai describes how child marriage has destroyed the happiness of her life as it obstructs what she prizes above everything else — study and mental cultivation. That this viewpoint, which Rakhmabai represents through her obstinate refusal to consummate her marriage, is unique, is evident when she separates women from men, even supposedly sympathetic men who 'cannot in the least understand the wretchedness we Hindu women have to endure'. No wonder then that women would have to turn to the government, given the narrowness of the social reform base and the isolation of people like Malabari. Since the opposition to reform was so vocal, by the 1880s Rakhmabai, who was clearly monitoring the formation of 'public' opinion, was also deeply

256 REWRITING HISTORY

disappointed that the leaders of the Hindu community, instead of being aroused to a sense of their duty, had dashed the hopes of women like Rakhmabai to pieces. Painfully aware of the display of anti-reform sentiments of the Hindu community, Rakhmabai recognises in her letter to the Times of India that the government would be most 'chary to pass a law if the very community for whose welfare the law has to be enacted protested it so strongly'. She thus recognises the limits of the government's reformist agenda, There is a circularity of argument here but it does not reflect the limitations of Rakhmabai's analytical ability as much as an understanding of the overwhelming odds against women. But even as she recognises these odds, Rakhmabai rejects as specious the arguments of Mandlik and other nationalists that it is humiliating to ask for help from the government and that it endangers 'our freedom of action'. She also demolishes the argument of the anti-reformers that a few educated persons cannot decide for the people as a whole by pointing out that when Manu drew up his celebrated code he was working in similar circumstances. Manu's code, she thus suggests, had emanated from as restricted a social group as the reformist legislations being recommended in the nineteenth century.

Rakhmabai concludes her letter on child marriage by suggesting certain legal measures which are comprehensive, far-reaching, and bold in their conceptualisations, following the proposals of Malabari in spirit. The first, and most strikingly personal, provides an exit for women like her by suggesting that 'any marriage' performed without the sanction of the government, if disputed within a certain period, should be null and void. The boldness of her suggestions is cloaked before and after by conventional statements that women often make, such as the difficulties of a young unknown girl like her attempting to draft legislation which would affect the 'whole country'. But what is significant is that she claims the authority to proceed with making recommendations because as someone who has experienced misery and has had her life destroyed by the evil custom of child marriage, she cannot rest till she carries her appeal to the government on behalf of the young men and women of India. And because most women have not intervened in the public debate it is important not to read their silence as assent or infer from it that women do not suffer as a consequence of the 'evil' customs. Breaking the silence of women,

On Widowhood 257 Rakhmabai made her appeal not merely on her own behalf but also on behalf of 'my suffering sisters' as she put it. Addressing the 'gentlemen' dominating society she said:

Because you cannot [emphasis added] enter our feelings do not think we are satisfied with the life of drudgery that we live, and that we have no taste for, and aspiration after, a higher life...77

This in essence was Rakhmabai's position; women too aspired to mental and physical freedom, study and mental cultivation.

These represented a higher life which domesticity and early motherhood made impossible.

She was convinced that the regeneration of India that the men desired and was being associated superficially with material progress was actually contingent upon the regeneration of the Indian people, particularly the coming generations. That would ensure that India would revert to its once proud position, its old lost glory.

In her second letter on widowhood, published in the Times of India*® a few months later, Rakhmabai used a mixture of sarcasm, allusions to medieval forms of barbarism, and devastating irony in critiquing the discourse of the anti-reformers as she outlined the degradation of Hindu widowhood. What is most striking however is that her critique is based on the experience of widowhood among the upper castes, especially Brahmanas, not the practices prevalent among the Sutars, certainly not the experiences of her own mother.

It appears that Rakhmabai identified herself with a certain class, and within that a specific reformist circle — something that may have been typified by the women in the Arya Mahila Sabha. On the whole the letter is suggestive of the way in which women absorbed the reformist discourse (with all its limitations) but inscribed it indelibly with the stamp of their own insight which came from feeling the oppressiveness of being a woman.

Rakhmabai's letter addresses certain questions which do not normally appear in the writing of nineteenth century men on the subject of widowhood. However, these issues are often a response to the 'popular' opinion on women and widowhood which were crucial components of the existing beliefs and ideologies of Brahmanical patriarchy. For example, a stock argument which had

| the sanction of the Shastras and was kept alive by the shastris was that men were 'pure by nature', and if necessary could be purified by penance. In contrast women were 'by nature unclean' and must

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therefore be rightly debarred from anything sacred.2? Rakhmabai cites this widely prevalent opinion and notes that while her 'educated countrymen' will not use these puerile arguments in public they hold them privately. What surprises Rakhmabai is how men never question these opinions even though they ought to know that since these 'dicta were formulated by men they were of necessity one sided'. As far as Rakhmabai is concerned there is little doubt that since it was men who constructed women as inherently bad they did so because this would legitimise their having privileges and women being denied basic rights.

Thus, for Rakhmabai, a double standard of morality between men and women was a consequence of men monopolising legislative and religious power which they used to their own advantage, and their representation of women as inherently bad was essential to legitimising the double standards. Most men, in Rakhmabai's view, accepted the brutal injustice against Hindu widows, while they themselves quickly remarried, even if they had something of 'that unconvenient commodity' called a 'conscience', because the Shastras and shastris had naturalised a dual set of practices as following from the distinctive nature of women.

Rakhmabai classifies widowhood into different categories based on the age at which women enter widowhood and the differences in the manner in which they experience and cope with it. This distinction is important to Rakhmabai because one of the points on which she takes issue with the shastris (or the religious law-givers as she calls them) is that they have dictated the same practices upon widows regardless of whether they are six or sixty. Thus, children who do not know what wifehood is must experience the tortures of widowhood — torture which she compares with the Inquisition, except that the tortures of the Inquisition are temporary. Since, on the other hand women live under a permanent Inquisition the tortures of widowhood end only with the death of the widow.

While the system of oppression is dictated by the 'butcher-priests', the agents of the persecution, the perpetrators of the social exclusion imposed on the widow are the members of her 'own' family.

Widows are consigned to perform menial work, subjected to rigid austerities, live on coarse fare and all this is a consequence of their economic vulnerability as 'dependents' of their relatives.

One of the striking features of Rakhmabai's analysis of widowhood is the manner in which she 'deconstructs' the ideologies

On Widowhood 259 by which a Hindu woman laments her daughter's birth, but particularly what makes her wish her daughter dead when her son-in-law dies. When the child widow appeals to her mother at the agonies she is subjected to her mother answers:

My darling, you were married to a very rich husband when you were four years old. But consequences of your guilt in your former life have pursued you here and therefore you have lost your husband. The joy and happiness of this world is therefore shut out to you. Misery is your lot. You must never think of taking part in the world and its joys. Your life must be therefore devoted to the observance of fasts and the practices of austerities.

Do therefore darling follow thy husband...*° These statements from the mother come not because the mother does not feel the anguish of her daughter but because this is the only explanation she has and the only comfort she can offer the young widowed daughter.

The mother's feelings and the manner in which ideology is extended by women, the apparent consent they provide but the reality behind what we may mistakenly read as complicity are linked in Rakhmabai's writing to her perception of most women as effectively having no choice and no agency. This is in contrast to the manner in which she represents men as they rehearse similar arguments to their young daughters and granddaughters. Although the statements they make are similar to the ones the mothers make, men, even old men, quickly remarry (even before the ten conventional days of mourning are over) and yet are 'philosophically' rigid in the cases of widowed daughters or granddaughters. But because these men are implicated in the double standards that they perpetuate even their similar statements have a different ideological edge to them. In Rakhmabai's words the 'affectionate' father consoles his daughter:

My darling, fate has ordained this widowhood for you and what human effect can upset the decree of fate! This is punishment for the sins of your previous birth and you can only expiate your sins by a life of austerity and devotion. Give up, dear, the vanities of this world [emphasis added], and live a life of purity and preserve the reputation of your family.'

Thus while the father lives in this world he exhorts his widowed daughter to be 'in the world but not of the world'. Apart from conscious perpetuation of an ideology which gives the male privileges that it denies women it is significant that Rakhmabai

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represents the men as evoking family honour.*" Men share in the construction and perpetuation of patriarchal ideologies, women are its subjects in Rakhmabai's understanding.

Rakhmabai also deconstructs the statements of a renowned champion of Hinduism, one of the foremost leaders credited with much wisdom and keen judgement, and reveals its ideological underpinnings:

The patriot seems to have lost himself completely when this gentleman held forth for the pure and noble life which widows of India led and which, if my memory serves me right at this distance of time, was in his opinion such a balm to their souls, such an incentive to self-abnegation, that widowhood was more a blessing than a misfortune from a spiritual point of view...?

Rakhmabai tells the reader that she cannot understand how this patriot's 'keen judgement' can comprehend only one aspect of the question. The 'dry light of his cold philosophy' is unmoved by the wails of the widows which have failed to reach the heart of this gentleman who has however publicly insisted that justice must be done to the 'people of India'. She implies that the patriot's notion of people does not include women and she herself has used the letters column to speak publicly on behalf of her 'sisters', the Hindu widows, whom she describes as 'unbeloved of God and despised of man — a social pariah and a domestic drudge >* — and exhorts the government to intervene through legislation to end their miseries.

II In contrast to the men and women who wrote about widowhood from outside the framework of experience the writing of the widows themselves was deeply pagel rather than polemical. A set of essays written in 1910°? by young widows of the fifth and sixth form?® at the Widows' Home in Poona is significant for the insight it gives us into the feelings of widows in contrast to knowledge about them. The collection is illustrative of the easy slide that occurs in the essays between widows as objects and widows as subjects; the form of the writing itself reflects the difficulty of maintaining a distinction between the two when the writer is herself a widow.

Some of these accounts begin in the third person. But when it comes to emotional passages recounting the sufferings of the widow

On Widowhood 261 they slip into the first person. For example Radhabai Inamdar begins her essay with, 'There is no humane heart which will not feel for a widow ...' She sustains the use of the third person for the bulk of the essay but shifts to the first person in the middle with "There is no end to the tale of "us" miserable widows ... Our cries have no value.' She returns to a more objective expression when she speaks of each person needing someone to listen to their tale of misery but falls again into the first person when expressing the anguish of 'us widows who are in the slough of despondency and the bog of widowhood who will die like vermin if we are not lifted out of the bog'. Finally she exclaims piteously: "We are now the waste products of the world, let it be put to good use. Our industry will add wealth to the country."?"

Even those widows who did not actually slip into the first person were not writing about widowhood as an object of analysis but of widowhood as the subject of experience; in writing about themselves the dominant emotion they express is of being entrapped, a situation that no one else really cared about. 'But who cares?" was a continuous refrain.?® Believing that no one cared convinced the widows that only those who had experienced widowhood could know how miserable it was.

Radhabai Inamdar for example used Tukaram's verses to illustrate her conviction that the experience of widowhood was so unique and incomprehensible that no one who was not a widow could understand what it was like to be one. Language itself was incapable of expressing the experience of widowhood. Tukaram's metaphor came closest to expressing the inexpressible — "How a fish can sleep under water can only be learnt by being born a fish'; similarly, 'we widows alone can realise the pain,' says Radhabai.*?

Struggling painfully to express the inexpressible, the widows nevertheless movingly describe the vulnerability, the lack of dignity and personhood of the widow, and her dependence upon others who have the power to humiliate her. These were experiences that the widows felt were unique to their own lives, the pain that others could not even imagine. What is ironical is that while the widow experienced, in their view, an 'excess' of pain, they were regarded by others as if they were not human at all but like a 'stone without feeling and without emotion'. Harper's description of a widow as a lifeless thing, an 'it' or an animal (prani) may be recalled here.*°

Widows were routinely spoken of as if they did not exist;

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derogatory references would be made to them by others in their presence without the slightest concern for their feelings. *!

The abject and powerless situation of the high-caste widow was continually reiterated through everyday expressions of power such as a routine subjection to verbal 'lashings',#? denial of adequate food,*3 surveillance, performance of drudge labour, and even physical assaults.44 What made the upper-caste widow's condition so precarious and put her in the power and control of others was her 'dependence' on these very people, particularly if she had no son. In western India, unlike Bengal where the widow had tenuous rights in the husband's property during her lifetime, she had no control at all over coparcenary property. The Mitakshara system merely granted her a vague notion of maintenance: the widow supposedly had some kind of a right to food, clothing, and shelter, contingent upon 'good' behaviour.*> Whether this was actually enforceable under the pre-colonial Peshwai needs to be explored but that the lack of a definite notion of rights led to incidents of sati is suggested in the Peshwai offering pensions to the relatives of widows to maintain them, a practice briefly supported by the early colonial state in western India.

In any case, questions of law in the context of widowhood among the upper castes seem to be less relevant than the prevalence of social and cultural norms. This is strikingly evident in the essays of the widows in the Poona Home. The fact that they focus so much on a perceived sense of deprivation of the basic survival needs of food, clothing, and shelter is important. Questions of legal title hardly figure; what does appear in their writing is actual practices flowing from social and cultural norms about widowhood.

In reading the essays of the widows it might be useful to explore the concept of entitlements.*" This could be a key to understanding the way in which they perceived themselves and their ambiguous location in the household where they were being sheltered. Here, the concept needs to be looked at both in its objective material form and the cultural values that perpetuate differential entitlements, even within the same gender, in the same household.

To begin with, as Sen has pointed out, the concept of entitlement is typically legal whereas household distribution is typically not governed by law. Nevertheless, Sen has convincingly argued the case for extending the concept to be used for distribution within the household.*8 The case for social and cultural

On Widowhood 263 norms with respect to entitlement is relevant for all women but is especially so for the widow. Since widows were regarded, even in the law, as having only a claim to 'maintenance' the question of how much of the resources they actually got, is crucial — especially to the sense of worth that accompanied it. As Papanek suggests, entitlements to food, etc., within the household represent the social consensus about the value of specific categories of persons as expressed in the norms governing 'who gets what and why'. In the case of the widow we may put it better as 'who does not get what and why'. Ideas about entitlement are clearly part of a larger cultural

'repertoire' containing many other ideas about the relative value of persons; they constitute a part of a system of beliefs about distributional justice.*? The widow's lowest allocation within the household is an outcome of her social dispensability and of her marginal status therein.

Cultural ideas about widowhood in upper-caste Hindu society enhance the power of the family to make minimal allocations to the widow. Ideas about entitlement to the widow are also linked to ideas about self-deprivation for religious reasons.

The low entitlement of the widow is thus not merely culturally sanctioned but also sanctified in spiritual terms since she is meant to fast often, pursue the ascetic model and devote herself to the memory of her dead husband. Ideas about self-sacrifice and self-restraint, which in any case are widely prevalent with regard to women, are redoubled in the case of Hindu widows, and they play a crucial role in formulating an ideology of low or minimal entitlement to the widow. These points may be borne in mind in the description of widowhood provided by the widows in their essays.

From the accounts of the widows at the Widows' Home in Poona it is apparent that those who 'sheltered' or maintained the widow did so on sufferance rather than in accordance with any respect for the widows' right to entitlements. There are repeated references to the widows as 'burdens'; widows were made to feel that by their continued existence they were eating into resources which 'belonged' to others and which they were not entitled tec"

The question of who should or who did maintain the widow in Maharashtra was also conditioned by personal behaviour and the circumstances of individual families rather than a close adherence to legal provision. Widows often stayed on in their natal families especially if they had been widowed before they had made a formal

264 REWRITING HISTORY

entry into the husband's home. If the in-laws never came to collect her after the death of their son there does not appear to have been any way that the natal family could ensure the maintenance of the sonless widow by the affinal family. In such a situation, the widow might stay on in her natal family but she could be on sufferance here too.

Nevertheless, widows did make a distinction between their affinal and natal kinsfolk. Sakhubai Apte wrote that parents often suffered more than their widowed young daughters who were probably too young to comprehend what it meant to be a widow.

But Sakhubai also recognised that once the child widow became an adult, the natal family's attitude to her often changed. Henceforth the family considered that in the widow they had got 'a servant to work for them', even though they continued to feel sorry for her.?!

The perceived lack of status of the widow in her father's house is described by Sakhubai:

If her married sisters come to visit the parents they are treated like guests while the widow is made to 'toil' for them ... Even her sisters do not help her. Her brothers and their wives taunt her. In the absence of her parents the poor widow becomes the slave of her sisters-in-law. Even loving brothers begin disrespecting her..."

It is evident from some of the essays that the natal! household was not necessarily a more comfortable or welcoming place than that of her affinal family. But if her condition was so precarious in her natal home, according to Radhabai, it was 'ten-fold' worse in her father-in-law's house.®? Sakhubai recognised that in the father-in-law's house people had 'full power over the widow'.

Everybody treated her not only as drudge labour but also as the cause of the husband's death and the source of their misfortune.*4

According to Radhabai:

There is not a particle of feeling for her in that house. She is treated like a low class maid servant. She has to spend the whole of her life in servitude to her sisters-in-law. If she dies, even in the midst of such low and hard work, people are glad of it. As a widow a woman is unclaimed property.

She has no value...°° The widow's dependence on others for her physical survival was evident from her sense of helplessness: she had no alternative that she could see. She had to submit to her fate like 'a cow in the hands

On Widowhood 265 of a butcher',*® an analogy used by our essayists repeatedly, and bear the insults and humiliation of a life of ceaseless labour in return for the maintenance provided to her. Drudge labour, extracted from the widows, is a J/eitmotif in the writing of the widows:

A widow is worked like a menial... if she but stops for a few minutes, just to take a breath her mother-in-law throws a volley of abuses, intermixed with filthy accusations...°"

She does not get her two meals a day ... She is made to work like a coolie.** After her husband's death a widow does not get sufficient food and clothes; if poor she has to work near the fire in the kitchen... she is overworked like a slave from Aftica.>?

The accounts of the widows suggest that the widow's association with labour, in part the labour all women performed, was perceived as harder and more menial than that of other women. The phrase

'like a low-class servant'®® is expressive and was a likely outcome not just of the labour performed but of power relations within the family which reduced the widow to a more abject and degraded status than other women. Further, the fact that the widow's labour was demanded by, and rendered to, others (in a household which the widow could not regard as her own) made the performance of such labour more humiliating, causing the widows to see themselves as 'low class maid servants' and 'slaves'.

Other factors added to the quantum of drudgery. Unlike wives, widows were free from birth pollution and from feeding and child-care preoccupations. Wives, subject to both, would be exempt from labouring at particular times. Widows, on the other hand, were always available except for periods of menstrual pollution.°!

Further, because they were excluded from ceremonial and ritual obligations, and even from witnessing such events, the widows felt that there was nothing but ceaseless labour in their lives.

Being without 'encumbrances' and a fixed place in the family, widows were also regarded as 'mobile' labour and could be sent from one household to another as the need arose. From accounts of the Karve household and other nineteenth century biographies it appears that the careers of many professional young men, who came to constitute an important segment of the middle class, were built upon the free labour of the widowed women of their families.

These widows were farmed around to labour and manage houses

REWRITING HISTORY

as substitutes for dead wives, or as support labour for young or sickly wives. As more men went to the cities to study and pursue professions, women's labour was needed to make such moves possible; widows in the family were the most expendable and were therefore much in demand. Both Karve and his friend Joshi, who shared common housing, had a succession of widowed relatives to run the kitchen for them.°?

Thus, while affinal and natal kinsfolk sometimes shunted a widow from one household to another because of their unwillingness to maintain her, it was not uncommon for contesting claims to be made for the labour of the widow. This was the case with Anandibai Karve. Widowed at eight, she stayed on in her natal family for about three years until her in-laws sent for her. Although they said that they regarded her as a substitute for their dead son it was evident that her labour was what was valued.®? Anandibai's parents were not very happy about sending her but they were poor, and had two other widowed daughters. Anandibai consented to go as it would mean one mouth less to feed, thus relieving some of the pressure on her father.

Anandibai's parents-in-law were economically more stable than her parents but her mother-in-law had had 20 childbirths. Only the first two and the last three had survived but it is likely that the mother-in-law would have been worn out with pregnancies, childbirths and child care. Moreover, she was also asthmatic, so Anandibai took over all the work outside the home. In her own words:

I had seen my parents get work done by day labourers in our orchards and fields and I soon began to supervise similar work in my new home...

I did all the minor chores in the house, the preparation for the worship of the gods, cleaning the courtyard, sprinkling a mixture of water and cow dung over it... We had no well; our water supply was from an irrigation channel passing through the compound and I had to get up at 4 o'clock in the morning to fill all the pots with water as otherwise it became muddy because of all the cattle and human beings who crossed it. Sometimes I got very weary of all this work and thought about my parental home and cried. But J also knew that there was no relief possible... Sometime during the first year my husband's brother's wife gave birth to a baby and I had to do much more work than before. The next year when I was twelve I was looking after all the cattle, milking the cows and buffaloes, feeding the bullocks, cooking breakfast for the farmhands and more. I went daily

On Widowhood 267 to the fields to supervise the farmhands work and to pluck green grass for the calves and when I came home I had to wash clothes and then clean the dinner plates too. I was busy from early morning till late in the evening.©° When Anandibai was about 22 she went home on a special visit to her parents since her elder sister was very ill and found that her widowed brother, Narharpant Joshi, who lived in Bombay and had a small child, required someone to replace his dead wife in the communal kitchen run by Karve.® Anandibai's brother was a member of this communal household consisting of 13 or 14 persons. Narharpant had sent a letter to his family from Bombay asking for help and Anandibai was despatched directly from her natal household without seeking her affinal family's 'approval'.

Anandibai wrote that she did not know the details of what happened as 'from that day my contact with my parents-in-law ended and I never again went back. I do not know whether they tried to get me back and what my father told them ...'°

In Bombay Anandibai continued to labour in different circumstances:

The humid, warm climate was very exhausting. I had to cook for over a dozen people either in the morning or in the evening. In my house, or in the house of my parents-in-law we hardly ever ate roti: preparing rice is easy by comparison. But in Bombay roti had to be prepared everyday...

I was not very happy in Bombay...

Anandibai also looked after her brother's young son. When Ramabai opened the Sharada Sadan, a home for widows, in 1889,

Anandibai joined as a day student. She took her young nephew along with her each day. Anandibai found it difficult to study along with all the housework and childcare, so it was suggested that she join the Sharada Sadan as a boarder. At her brother's residence however her labour could not be spared and at the same time her parents also pressed their claims to it. Feeling cornered, Anandibai finally appealed to Ramabai who, according to Anandibai, 'rose to the occasion'. Realising that there were competing claims for Anandibai's labour, she offered Rs 50 a year to Anandibai's father to enable him to hire a servant so that Anandibai could reside in the school and carry on her studies."

From Anandibai's account it is evident that the labour of the widow was a crucial determinant of where she resided and who

REWRITING HISTORY

'sheltered' or 'maintained' her. If neither her parents nor her in-laws were willing, or 'able', to maintain her, a widow simply went to work in the house of anyone, including strangers. As Ambubai

Bapat said in her essay:

If she [the widow] be the daughter of a rich man he feeds her, if the widow of a rich man his family feeds her, but if both her relations are poor she is forcibly shaved and compelled to become a cook in profession having no means of support."° An unclear notion of a widow's entitlements and an unending life of drudgery were most clearly associated with the sonless widow, but particularly with the child widow. If a widow had a son she could look forward to a time when the son became a shareholder in the property, if he had any, or would take over the support of his widowed mother.'! But as Harper pointed out in his study of Havik Brahmanas,'? the sonless widow remained a 'dependent' widow right through her life, 'passing a long term of life in perfect misery', according to Varubai Ranade in her account of widowhood."?

Brahmanical patriarchy's conceptualisation of the widow as a woman who was sexually and socially dead"* but physically alive is reflected in the description of the everyday experiences provided by the widows of the Poona Home. As women who continued to live after the death of their husbands they had to be 'maintained'. But along with, and in return for, such investment in their survival went the full utilisation of their labour.

A common charge against the widow, expressive of the relationship between her and those who fed her, was, 'She is a drone, she wants to be fed without doing any work'."> Illness among widows, for example, was hardly ever regarded as real and was seen as an excuse to avoid having to work.

In the eyes of those who fed them this was a subversion of the unstated code in which the widow provided labour in return for food and shelter."° Along with the recognition of the widow's physical existence was the anomaly of her sexual and social non-existence, unlike other women and men in her household. Widows thus had to be marked off from other women; they had to be shut off from the male gaze and from their own sexuality. The essays of the young girls echo the anomalous position of the widows. Ambubai Bapat describes the condition of the widow without support who is forced to labour

On Widowhood 269 in the homes of others and may be seduced by the men of the house:

If both her relations are poor she is forcibly shaved and compelled to become a cook in profession having no means of support. If she be young there is fear of being misled by wicked masters ... Young widows have to pass through the ordeal of chastity, temptations which gods cannot withstand."'

To mark widows off from all others in the household, but especially women, they were given a distinctive appearance and an ascetic code which they were required to follow. To safeguard their chastity, measures like eating less, eating cooling foods, fasting often, and sleeping on the floor were prescribed and routinely practised and were meant to reduce their sexual drives. These restrictions reiterate the low entitlement of the widows, completing the circle of material and cultural elements within the same structure. In male discourse ascetic practices were part of cultural tradition, 'the lofty pitch of moral training' of the 'patient and single life' as typified by the widow. It was an institution that the Hindus needed to be proud of, not one to be regretted.'® However, it is significant that the widows themselves perceived these practices as deprivations. According to them the 'widow is compelled to fast as often as the calendar will dictate'(emphasis added).'? Others conveniently regard it as a 'sin to eat two meals a day, or to ask for anything in the world'.8° Clearly, in the view of the widows these expectations are aspects of normal human behaviour and widows are normal human beings like everyone else.

The most effective means by which the widows' 'virtue' was to be preserved however was not left to ascetic practices, nor the widow's control of her sexuality; it was not left, also, to her good sense, but to a tightly monitored system of surveillance mounted upon her.

The surveillance of the widow was total as it normally involved watching her every moment of the day to ensure that she worked in return for her maintenance, but also so that she did not go

'astray'. It involved subjecting every single action of hers to scrutiny, 'protecting' her virtue and ensuring that she did not 'steal' time. In the widows' own words:

People attribute wicked motives to every one of her actions ... If she but smiles they say it must be with some immoral motive. If she shows

REWRITING HISTORY

unwillingness to have her head shaved they level filthy accusations against her.®! If she stealthily looks into a mirror her mother chastises her ...°? If she happens to dress herself she is immediately asked for whom she has been doing this ... If she be late in returning from the river-side where she is sent to wash clothes, she is immediately suspected of immorality and assaulted...* She is closely watched [in case] she speaks of ill treatment to any visitors; children of her husband's brothers are set to guard her. They overhear a word or two and distort the story into a regular complaint against their parents. The poor widow is then taken to task ...84 If she can read and write and takes a book in her hand just to relieve her mind of all distressing thoughts, she is called shameless. If she adjusts her hair [if unshaven] she is accused of flirtations or the desire to flirt.8° If there be no work for her, there are mothers-in-law who would mix up rice and dal and ask her to separate them simply to eee her engaged. She must not go out, she must not speak to anybody ...°

The policing of the widow at close quarters was done, among others, by the women and children of the household, especially sisters-in-law and their children. This added to the power which other women in the family had over the widow with regard to allotments of food and other basic needs. Such powerful and continuous surveillance was most degrading especially since the widows already regarded themselves as being subject to the male gaze and as victims of the predatory nature of men. The problem thus lay not in the widows but in lascivious men. As one widow wrote:

Owing to her husband's death there remains no support to her. What then? The wicked ones have an excellent opportunity. They covet her; she is in constant fear of these wretched men. She has to protect her reputation, she has to remain moral. She gets confused. She bows her head. 'Oh God to whom shall I go for protection? How shall I save myself?

Come oh lord; run quick, do protect this cow from the butcher' ... such is her state of mind... they prefer death ...°"

It is evident from the accounts of widows that neither ascetic practices nor bodily mortification or surveillance designed to keep their sexuality under check, nor social rules to keep male sexuality in control were considered capable of preventing 'illicit' relationships. The structures of control were completed by the enforced shaving of widows, a sign both of castration and

On Widowhood 271 defeminisation.88

Referring to it as 'that ceremony', widows invariably describe it as enforced. To the widows the practice was an assault; it was the most humiliating aspect of their existence, far worse then all the other miseries they experienced. Signifying castration in the symbolic system, it had a most violent effect upon the widow; the physical violation it involved was akin to rape both of the body and the mind. The widows express a whole complex of emotions about their degradation.

The greatest of all miseries, the culmination of the enormities of custom is the forcible shaving of a Brahmana and other high caste widows. The cruel and pernicious custom is horrid beyond conception. [The widow] is simply helpless; she must submit to that cruel inhuman operation. She often faints, she is dumb founded, tears flow in a flood ... but nobody cares. Her caste people think they have achieved a great success as soon as she is disfigured. What demonical work...8? A widow is not allowed to speak to a male stranger but she is forced to go alone into a closed room to get herself shaved by a low class barber. Bravo to such relations [who force her]. Who can describe her 'happiness' in such a seclusion? She is like a cow in the power of the butcher..."°

In the southern Maratha country there are many sacred places, among them is Narsinghvadi. This is the place where widows are taken for being shaved. Huts are raised on the banks of the river [which] have no roofs and no doors ... to such places widows are taken and made to sit in front of the barbers to be shaved. They cry but nobody listens to them and they are forcibly shaved. If a girl-widow stands at the door along with her brothers and sisters she is called shameless, while in such an open space

.. she is exposed to the mercy of the barber. Shame to such men and to their sense of modesty."!

The experience of physical violation had implications at the subconscious level leading to severe trauma in some cases. Pundalik, who went on to become a Gandhian worker in his later years, was nine when his mother was tonsured. He describes movingly his mother's brutal entry into the state of widowhood:

For nine days none of us was allowed to go to mother's room. On the tenth day she had to face the ordeal of becoming sacred according to the traditions of the Hindu religion. This proved to be such a shock that she went completely out of her mind. At night she had to be locked up. She used to cry out during her fit of insanity "What is a head? It is only a vegetable marrow put on one's shoulder.' Mother lived only for three months after father's death."

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Pundalik's mother was not a young childless widow. Even so, her trauma was too much for her to take. Such trauma was not uncommon. Ambubai Gumaste, a widow herself, described the experiences of another young widow:

This custom is a demon in Hindu society. A girl of 13 or 14, so tender and so young, is pushed before a barber ... In the house of a rich man there was a widow of about 11 or 12. He decided upon getting her forcibly shaved. She cried and piteously begged to be excused from that horrid operation but no one heeded her prayers. She was shaved. She

[then] refused to take food and died. What to say to such brutes who would stoop to such meanness..."° The trauma of the enforced tonsure and the experience of such a brutal defeminisation ritual is described by another widow as a 'mania' men indulged in leading to a terrible depression that was beyond her powers of description."4

It is apparent from the essays of the widows that they unambiguously rejected the humiliating practices they were subjected to. Those who apparently 'consented' were actually coerced, as is evident from Anandibai's account of how she 'agreed' to have her head shaved.?> The symbolic system associated with such practices, whether of tonsure, or pollution, or inauspiciousness, or danger, was clearly irrelevant to the essayists; in their eyes the practices were all similar as they degraded the widow. The belief system which endorsed, or provided the rationale for, such practices was treated with scorn. The tonsure for example was believed to be essential to the happiness of the husband as without it he would be steeped in night-soil and tortured by anxiety about her chastity.

A young widow described the kind of beliefs put forward to enforce certain customs:

And the reason people give consists of one word — 'customs'. 'It is an established custom' they assert. 'Our family Gods will not bear its violation'. "How long' they add 'would you steep her husband in night soil, in the lower world? When she is made a shaved recluse, there would be no immoral temptation."° She then goes on to express her scorn for such beliefs:

But who has discovered that the husband of the widow is thrown into a pit of night soil unless she is shaved? Who will guarantee that all shaved widows will remain moral?"

On Widowhood 273 The essays are a sharp critique of custom, society, and religion.

They stand in contrast to the widely prevalent view among men that widows were strongly in the grip of religious belief. For example, in the view of Narayan Bhikaji (a deputy collector from Nasik), widows attributed all calamities to sins committed by them in former lives and looked to happiness in the future by conducting themselves piously,?® a formulation reminiscent of the Brahmanical texts. The widows at the Poona Widows' Home, through their own experience, understanding, and through exposure to a reformist discourse on widowhood, raised certain questions about the role of religion in legitimising oppressive customs governing widowhood.

They understood also that it was these customs and norms that made even the parents of widows regard them as polluting, inauspicious and dead for all ceremonial and social purposes.

Radhabai captured the complexities of the parental dilemma thus:

Some people will ask me how it is possible for her own parents to give [the young widow pain]. I say yes, it is the social customary law that compels them to do so. God knows when we widows shall see the effacement of such cruel superstitions. Even a father dare not accept the sandalwood paste and flowers arranged by his own dear widowed child for the worship of his idols. Even her own dear mother dare not accept food at her hands."?

Parents were themselves the victims of a cruel system which made them apparently complicit in the oppression of their widowed daughters. Even the most sympathetic and compassionate of Brahmana fathers was unable to protect his young daughter or ward from the ignominy of public chastisement meted out to them by family priests — the real enforcers of Brahmanical patriarchal codes at the community level!

The widows, in turn, recognised that the cruel customs were perpetuated by the custodians of the sacred law — 'hard hearted' men who flaunted broad 'caste marks' on their foreheads threatened and abused them,!®! and enforced their 'superior' authority, overriding the concessions sympathetic guardians sometimes permitted to the widows. It was the priests who, in the final reckoning, ensured the social death of widows.

The culpability of the Brahmana priests was apparent to the essayists on the basis of their experiences and personal observations.

The reformers, however, were not quite so unambiguous. In fact,

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many Brahmana reformers found it necessary to work within existing structures. They accepted punishments imposed upon them by the community of Brahmanas led by the priest, even as they consciously performed actions that were regarded as breaches of caste norms. Some strands of the male reformist discourse had placed considerable importance on locating the precise originary moment of the oppressive practices. This was the Muslim 'invasion of India'. It appears from the essays of the widows that their parents and families, and teachers at their institution, had ascribed the abject state of Hindu women as exemplified by the widow, to Muslim rapaciousness and barbarity. By the turn of the century this view was well entrenched and deeply cherished by middle-class

Hindu society functioning in part to exonerate their own complicity in such customs. Thus, practices like early marriage, sati, purdah, the denial of education were all attributed to the 'fear of Mussalmans abducting women', especially 'good looking widows' .!°? The disfigurement of young widows by tonsure too was linked to the 'need' to 'protect' their chastity. Such an explanation possibly reflects attempts made by the ideologues around the widows to make them feel that the offensive customs had a rationale, that it was defence of the 'community' or 'nation' and 'necessity that drove Hindus to create the customs which the widows found so repugnant. Such paternalistic notions of the disfigurement of widows, 'for their own good', did not however fully convince all the widows. At least one of them was unconvinced of the validity of such a singular explanation, erasing so completely the guilt of the men around her — especially since there was ample evidence of predatory Hindu men looking for victims among young widows even in their 'disfigured' state. !04

The essayists were painfully aware of the state of social death to which they had been condemned. Desperate to be rescued from such a situation, Radhabai Inamdar spoke for all widows:

If people want to drag us out of this slough of despondency, this bog of widowhood, if they do not wish to see us die like vermin, [and] they still wish to recognise us as human beings they should give widows some training, some education to make them useful. It is not possible to turn all widows into under graduates or graduates, but it is possible to turn them into nurses, midwives, or industrial assistants. We are now the waste products of the world. Let it be put to good use. Our industry will add wealth to the nation.!%

On Widowhood 275 In Radhabai Inamdar's poignant plea, the relationship between the sexual and social death of the widow and her unrecognised drudge labour is clear. In her understanding, the return of widows to a suitable social role implied not marriage so much as recognised productive labour. This would lend meaning to the lives of widows, transforming them from 'waste products' to useful citizens, contributing like others to the 'wealth' of the nation.

Unfortunately, as Radhabai recognised in her desperate plea, the recovery of most widows from social death lay outside their power and in the hands of others. In the meanwhile, was there scope for resistance, for not submitting 'like a cow in the hands of a butcher'?

A few acts of resistance on the part of widows are recorded in stray writings from the early part of the twentieth century; all of these are acts of non-compliance with the enforced shaving of the hair. It is significant that the resistance should have been expressed thus: the widows' refusal of the tonsure was a rejection of the state of social death it symbolised. Even a moderate like Parvati Athavale

(see pp. 278-281 below) exhorted that widows must not submit to the 'compulsory rite' of shaving and that they should assert 'their right to their own heads', refusing to subject them to the barber.

She herself gave up the rite at the age of 42, showing great courage and defiance of social norms in doing so as she became the target of ridicule and the subject of unsavoury remarks.!°° The refusal to have the head shaved was often the only act of open resistance on the part of the widow who might never, for the rest of her life, express her volition again.!°" But some widows went further. Such was the case of a nameless widow whose acts of defiance were recorded in passing by her brother Pundalik in his account of his life. This widow was the daughter of another nameless widow whose traumatic tonsure and subsequent insanity we have already referred to. Sobbing as she breathed her last, the widowed mother died clutching the young widowed daughter in her arms, fearing for what the daughter must suffer. The mother's anxiety was amply borne out. The family's fortunes soon went into a severe decline within a few years after the death of the parents. Pundalik's widowed sister was witness to the humiliation of her married sister

Gita at the hands of her husband who was also her maternal uncle.

Beaten severely one night and unwilling to take the degradation she was subjected to, including the introduction of a prostitute into the

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household. by her husband, Gita committed suicide. This was within months of their mother's death.!%

These experiences may have shaped our nameless widow's resolve to fight for her survival. As the fortunes of her natal family went from bad to worse, her condition grew more precarious. An unscrupulous brother Gopal, who had gained control of the property, did not give the widowed sister enough for her maintenance and she was left to fend for herself while Pundalik went off in pursuit of a revolutionary life. Finally in desperation she decided to file a suit against her late husband's brother and called Pundalik from Belgaum to help with the legal formalities.

There was not enough money to file a suit. Gopal refused to give her any money till she gave him a receipt for all the money she had received as maintenance since her widowhood while she was living in her father's house.

Pundialik's attitude (despite his patriotic impulses) was that his widowed sister should live with her husband's people. He strongly disapproved of her going to a court of law to get money for maintenance. In an attempt to settle her in her dead husband's family, Pundalik entered into negotiations with them. Finally, it was decided that the sister would live with her in-laws. However, the in-laws were very orthodox people and would not allow a widow who had not shaved her head 'according to the ancient

Hindu custom' to live in their home. Pundalik tried his best to persuade his sister to shave her head but she was adamant and refused to 'consent'. Pundalik then left her with the in-laws hoping that the matter would resolve itself after he returned to Belgaum.

But two or three days later the widowed sister took a night train without informing anybody and returned to her unoccupied ancestral natal house.

Without resources once more, the widowed sister heard that:a 'destitute' could declare oneself as such and then file a pauper suit.

Her brother was horrified at the idea of declaring themselves as paupers but she went ahead anyway and finally won her suit for maintenance 'retroactively' from the date of her husband's death.

She went on to live alone, keeping her hair and her independence, on the allowance she had won by going to court: her revolutionary brother went on to become a Gandhian social worker, but the widow never again appeared in his memoirs. She remained a nameless widow who anonymously pursued a lone battle for

On Widowhood 277 survival and dignity.' It must be borne in mind that acts of defiance or open resistance were not easy for most widows as these implied taking on the ideologies of upper-caste widowhood. The anonymous widow's battle just cited required exposing cultural practices, paternalistic ideologies, and material arrangements which could reduce women to destitution and yet demand the upholding of 'family' honour. Widows could not, therefore declare their denial of consent to Brahmanical patriarchy's ideology of widowhood. It would perhaps have been easier to manipulate the structures to gain a measure of power — that is, become complicit, or appear to become so, in the arrangements and thereby attempt to gain control over an otherwise tenuous situation. It was to provide an alternative to the miserable lives of widows that institutional support and a meaningful location in society were sought by Pandita Ramabai.

Only an institution which would take the widow out of her marginal location in the family, whether natal or affinal, would make it possible for widows to collectively resist oppressive practices and not leave it to individual effort and individual solutions.

Ill Pandita Ramabai and Parvati Athavale, two Brahmana widows, who were involved in providing institutional support to widows in western India, also wrote on widowhood but analysed its structures and conceptualised the woman's question in noticeably different ways. Through their writing!!° I want to show how new forms of consent were being produced among widows to domestic ideologies of a certain class and how a critique of the same ideologies of the upper castes were being formed at the time.

Parvati Athavale might be regarded as the typical widow, fully schooled in the Brahmanical ideologies prevalent in nineteenth century Maharashtra and located squarely in its material structures.

However, she was drawn into the moderate reform programme in the last decade of the nineteenth century through the marriage of her widowed sister Anandibai to Professor D.D. Karve. After some years Parvati began an education and finally joined the institution which Karve set up for widows. She gradually became one of its major fund-raisers and travelled alone, first in India and then all the way to America, as part of her effort at raising money. She wrote her autobiography in 1928 in Marathi, dedicating her book to all

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the 'brothers and sisters' who were working for the welfare of women, especially widows.

Parvati was an 'adult' widow with a son, a category that was not the 'object' of the Reformers' attention. Her younger sister Anandibai was, on the other hand, a virgin widow and that distinction alone accounted for the 'remarriage' of one and not the other. Parvati had been widowed at nineteen, by which time she had had three childbirths but with only one child that survived.

Her husband left her no property and had no home of his own and no relatives or in-laws to whom she could go, so she went back to her parents' home. There were three widows among the daughters of the family, leaving a major sense of burden upon the parents.!!!

According to prevalent customs whereby a man's corpse had to be accompanied by the hair and the bangles of the widow, Parvati underwent what she describes as 'that ceremony',!!* the mandatory tonsure, which had a traumatic impact on her young son. For the sake of her parents and her son Parvati states that she put on a brave front and tried to cope with her widowhood.!!

In Parvati's own understanding her sister's 'remarriage' to Karve was an event that changed the 'whole course of her life'.!!4 While it had the support of Parvati's father and brother, her mother had not approved as she 'belonged to the old way of thinking'.!!

Further, she was deeply fearful that the other widowed daughters might follow Anandibai's example. To ward off such a possibility the mother did not want to leave Parvati at Anandibai's home when she went on a pilgrimage and insisted on taking her along, even though she might have been exposed to cholera. The mother's position was that if Parvati remarried it would mean a stain on the family's honour. It would be better to go on a pilgrimage and die of cholera.!!° After much manoeuvring Parvati finally moved to her sister's residence in Poona, overtly to facilitate an education for her son. But the new location gave her the opportunity to first study and then join Karve in his work of providing institutional support to widows.

These developments were of critical importance in the life of Parvati. In a chapter titled "The Change in My Opinion',!!" Parvati describes the way in which she graduated from sharing with many other women a commonsense everyday ideology on widowhood to acquiring a new 'service' orientation. Living in Poona and 'gaining an education' had included walking to the Widows' Home with

On Widowhood 279 Professor Karve, and talking to him about the 'condition of widows in India', and what 'means could be adopted for their relief. The process of education and interaction with the Karves raised certain questions in Parvati's mind about the real meaning of 'the country of India, her national life and what is needed to be done for the national uplift'.''® This sentiment wherein 'nationalism' for middle-class women came to mean 'serving the people', rather than concentrating their energies on throwing out the British, was not unique to Parvati and was shared by Anandi Gopal and Pandita

Ramabai, among others. Thus while many men were preoccupied with 'political' and social issues, women were both influenced by, and were allotted an important role in, the formation of a service orientation by the new paternalist ideologies emerging in the nineteenth century.

Parvati insightfully distinguishes between the line of 'independence' and 'equality' being pushed by the 'Reformers', as part of their public activity and support for nationalism, and the 'special calling' she imbibed from Professor Karve's service to the motherland. In her understanding she could serve her motherland by bringing a ray of hope to the unhappy daughters of India — the widows. Thus she would redefine her higher spiritual duties.!!?

What is significant is that for Parvati this was also a way of handling 'the problem of her latent sexuality. It would enable her to withstand the temptations of entering married life and was a way of sublimating her sexual drive. She rationalised this decision to remain a widow as a means by which one could be of service to the extended family of the nation, rather than being of 'use to one family only' as she put it.!"° Parvati describes the decision to serve the 'country', and remain a widow, as one that she took, consciously. !?! I want to suggest, without in any way undermining Parvati's assertion of female agency, that the agency itself was structured by nineteenth century paternalist ideologies for the specific category of widows, through a normative resolution of a major problem. No one, not even nineteenth century Reformers, advocated or even approved of the remarriage of the adult widow who had 'tasted the joys of married life'!22 (a euphemism for a consummated marriage in nineteenth century discourse). Therefore widows like Parvati had no means by which they could re-enter married life. Traditional Brahmanic ideology had prescribed an ascetic religious life for them; the new

REWRITING HISTORY

paternalist ideologies were engaged in the formation of a 'service to the nation' code. However we must assert that Parvati found the new ideologies less oppressive and more meaningful and therefore chose it in preference to traditional Brahmanic ideology.

Parvati's statements, devoted to outlining a suitable agenda for women, were shaped directly and indirectly by ideologies which best suited ther situation, temperament, and caste and class location.!*3 Since Parvati had had the rare experience of living in American homes, she wanted to make certain comparisons and alert women about the direction that their lives should take. What

Parvati suggests as the proper code for women is an outline of the new 'Hindu' bourgeois domestic ideology that changing class, professional and familial structures were throwing up.

At the very outset Parvati naturalises the sexual division of labour where men work outside the home to procure money and women remain in the home 'for its protection'.!24 Women were also the mothers-to-be of the country and were to be trained accordingly.

This was necessary to ensure that women rather than servants were its actual mistresses.!?° Further, the home was to be made the place of joy and comfort for tired husbands so that they felt like coming home to it.!?° Apart from managing the home and _ being compassionate, married women were to also help in social work.

Female education was linked entirely to a reform of the home, if it was to be of advantage to the country.!?" Parvati was strongly disapproving of women seeking outside 'servitude' as she describes employment.!8 Service within the home and to the husband must be and remain the norm for Indian women. She expanded on the subject thus:

If by freedom from servitude is meant freedom from men and a life of independence from them, then that freedom is unnatural, impossible, disastrous and opposed to the laws of right living [emphasis added]. In India there are certain legal rights that women have yet to obtain... But their freedom from suffering can best be accomplished by co-operating with men. In order to escape servitude to their husbands they must not accept the servitude of outside employment. Our sisters in this country must learn a lesson from the sorrowful condition of European women who have obtained their material liberty... [But in] Europe there is now a strife between men and women. Women have entered into the occupations of men and at times made themselves strangers to the home, the sacred place for their duties [emphasis added]. We do not want such conditions in

On Widowhood 281 India... In India every woman must place before her mind the ideal of being the best sister, the best mother, and the best wife. For women there is greater servitude in outside employment than there is in married life.

There is no reason why women should not choose the servitude of love to that of money.!??

Outside employment for women, according to Parvati, resulted in the loss of the 'riches' of domestic life and also of spiritual riches.

In Parvati's formulation it was through domestic servitude that women would find the path to bliss. Through this re-creation of a familial ideology Parvati distanced herself from an understanding, and a critique, of patriarchy. In privileging the married state Parvati reiterated both the traditional Brahmanical ideology of giving a central place to the wife and the nineteenth century male reformers' focus on the wife as the object of considered attention. Was Parvati expressing a sense of regret that she had not fully experienced the joys of domesticity or a desire for a life that could have been hers?

Had Parvati, even as she pressed herself into the service of the nation, at the same time accepted the devaluation of the woman as the widow? In the final analysis it appears to me that Parvati could not step beyond the limits of the new family ideologies to take a long hard look at the sole option it provided for a widow like her, or to question the formation of a single model of companionate wife and nurturant mother in the case of other women.

While Parvati began her life as the typical widow, Pandita Ramabai, as we shall see later in this work, began and remained the most untypical widow of her times. Her writing on widowhood in the The High Caste Hindu Woman is marked by two features: first, it is almost self-consciously not drawn from her own experiences as a widow of which we never get a glimpse;'°? and second, her understanding of widowhood is located in her understanding of the upper-caste woman's status in society. Thus her writing on widowhood is analytical, insightful, and sharply presented, unlike much of the writing discussed here which flows out of the pens of our writers in a jumble of statements and pleas for help, and is invariably based on personal experience. However, in her letters and correspondence Pandita Ramabai writes movingly about specific and generalised oppressions suffered by widows who came to seek shelter in the institution she set up for them.'?!

The analytical frame that Pandita Ramabai used in her discussion

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may be partly ascribed to the kind of text she was creating, which was aimed at a wide audience of primarily non-Indians whose help she hoped to enlist for her work in setting up a widows' home.'**

She did not restrict herself to the oppression of widows but tried to show how widowhood, for the upper castes especially, was to be seen as part of an integral whole rather than an aberration in an otherwise acceptable structure. She divided her book into chapters on childhood, married life, and widowhood corresponding to the stages in a woman's life, telling us in her 'prefatory remarks' that such a division corresponded to the way the 'Sacred Laws'!?? divided a woman's life. But even in using this conventional device she overturns the logic of the Sacred Laws, which simply follow the division of man's life into brahmacharya and grahastha and the respective duties in each stage, and builds a continuum of oppression which reaches a climax in the state of widowhood. She displays masterly control when she lays bare the ideologies and practices of widowhood. In this, she is able to draw both from texts, to which she has a unique access for a woman of her times through her knowledge of Sanskrit, and an acute observation, having looked at things with a woman's sensibility, of practices prevailing in different parts of the country.

Further she draws upon an understanding of historical knowledge which nineteenth century men had access to through books, newspaper articles and the spoken word.!34 Her understanding of the stratification of the texts into earlier and later is crucial to the arguments she builds up about the prevalence or otherwise of particularly oppressive practices. But unlike most men writing on the same theme she uses it to draw attention to the need for textual sanction, even if it meant interpolating something into the earliest texts, in order to legitimise and sediment ideologies as new practices expanded the field of control over women.!%? An important dimension of Pandita

Ramabai's analysis is to probe, as she herself had gradually come to do over the years of her intellectual growth, the ideologies by which Brahmana men dominated society.

The distinction between the way she perceives the existing ideologies which rationalise widowhood in Brahmanism and most other widows' perceptions is evident even as Ramabai opens her discussion on the subject. While Parvati, echoing her mother and other women, presents it as attributable to a neutral 'fate',!3¢

Ramabai tells us about the patriarchal ideology prevalent all over

On Widowhood 283 India which is to regard widowhood as a punishment for crimes committed by the woman in her previous birth, including disobedience or disloyalty to her husband. The length of her widowhood would be determined by the magnitude of the 'crimes' being punished.'*' Ramabai then grades widows according to whether they are mothers of sons or childless. Observant and analytical as she is, she points to one category, the older widow, who draws respect which all older people get but which is enhanced because she has withstood temptations and persecutions.

!38 The aged widow is at the opposite end of the spectrum from the child widow upon whom falls the greatest abuse and hatred of the community.

Ramabai outlines the social practices that degrade the widow such as the common term used to refer to both the widow and prostitute.!°? The young widow is the object of suspicion and is closely guarded because she might ruin the family's honour through her 'lapses'. In order to make her less attractive to a 'man's eye' she is disfigured and made to fast so that her youthful nature and desire are repressed.!40 The anxiety about family honour!4! makes even

~ her own parents, who otherwise sympathise with her, reproduce the entire set of oppressive social and cultural practices. Faced with an unending cycle of degradation, with no possibility of employment, the high-caste Hindu widow has no options and no exit from the dark tunnel in which she is trapped. The only 'alternatives' available are suicide or prostitution!4? which are not real choices, because they are forced upon what may appear to be her circumstances but are actually a consequence of 'cruel customs'.

Having outlined the unending humiliation and miseries of high caste Hindu widowhood,!43 Ramabai turns her attention to the programme of reform being suggested by the 'Sudharaks'. What is striking is how clear-eyed Ramabai is about the limitations of their single-point agenda.

In her view the Reformers were being simplistic in assuming that by establishing the system of remarriage

'all the wants of the widow' would be met. While she agreed that the system needed to be introduced for the infant widows who wished to marry, this measure alone was insufficient and incapable of meeting their wants. Further, because she knew upper-caste society so well, she was convinced that widow marriage among high castes would not become an approved custom in the immediate future. Conventional beliefs were too strong to disappear overnight,

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men lacked the courage to marry widows, and there was a great gap between advocating something and actually doing it oneself.!44 She is scathing in her dismissal of the hypocritical men. In her words:

I have known men of great learning and high reputation who took oaths to the effect that if they were to become widowers and wished to marry again they would marry widows. But no sooner had their first wives died than they forgot all about the oaths and married pretty little maidens. ..'"°

Of course Ramabai was objective enough to recognise that men failed to live up to their stated ideals because of the tremendous power of the weapon of excommunication and of emotional blackmail. There would be few men who had the courage to make sacrifices and withstand social pressure; those who had it could feel so overwhelmed by the burden of transgressing social customs and the persecution suffered at the hands of the community that a desperate few took their own lives.14° Ramabai ends the discussion of remarriage by pointing out that it was not always an available option nor would it always be desirable. !47

The limitations of the remarriage agenda may also be understood by looking at what Ramabai wrote about niyoga, the practice by which a widow cohabited with her dead husband's brother to raise offspring for him. In discussing niyoga Ramabai brings in a remarkable perspective which is completely missing from all the discussions on the "Vedic Age'. This was a clarity about niyoga which was not to be confused with a general principle recognising the widow's right to remarry. Ramabai described the specific function of niyoga which was to provide offspring to the dead husband because dying without male offspring was the greatest tragedy that could befall a man for it would deny him immortality.!48 Niyoga was firmly located within a patriarchal structure, not something that dealt with a widow's needs and certainly not her general right to remarry.!*?

The ancient past was not so golden after all. A survey of the textual prescriptions for men and women gave Ramabai an opportunity to dramatically highlight the double standard of morality contained in them. She arranged her material from Manu to show how a widow was to fast, emaciate her body, refraining from even mentioning the name of another man, but a widower was to complete the funeral rituals for his dead wife and then marry once more.!°?

On Widowhood 285 Ramabai's_ writing on widowhood is also continuously interspersed with an account of how priests have created consent and why women are 'willing' agents in a self-destructive act like sati. Ramabai writes:

[The widow] was conscious of the miseries to which she would be subjected now that she had survived her husband. The momentary agony of suffocation in the flames was nothing compared to her lot as a widow.

She gladly consented and voluntarily offered herself to please the Gods and men...!>!

Ramabai like feminists today, looks closely at the notion of a 'voluntary' sati,!°* recognising that many occasions were not directly a result of coercion. She wrote:

The act was supposed to be altogether a voluntary one, and no doubt it was so in many cases. Some died for the love, stronger than death, which they cherished for their husbands. Some died not because they had been happy in this world but because they believed with all the heart that they should be happy hereafter, some to obtain great renown, for tombstones and monuments were erected to those who thus died... others to escape the thousand temptations and sins and miseries which they knew would fall to their lot as widows...!*?

The 'voluntary' sati was ideologically and materially structured to display female agency in certain constructed ways. It is not surprising after all that Ramabai should have been so controversial: she had done some real decoding of patriarchal ideologies which had legitimised the cultural practices prevalent in the nineteenth century.

To conclude this discussion of women's writing on widowhood I want to draw out the implications in the issues addressed by women as well as their silences on certain issues. I also want to highlight the contrasting manner in which certain issues were addressed by men and women. It is striking that men writing on widowhood rarely attacked male power in the home and in society.

Their focus was usually on notions of 'tradition', 'customs', and 'superstitions', which are treated as abstractions, that had a certain autonomy and staying power, to perpetuate them. This way of presenting 'tradition' is also shared by some of the women writers.

However, in the writing of women like Tarabai, Rakhmabai, and Ramabai, who make a critique of male power in varying degrees,

'traditions' and 'customs' are not mere abstractions but continue

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« through the agency of men and women. In Rakhmabai's writing the unequal manner in which Hindu social customs apply to men and women is specifically noted,!*4 suggesting a recognition that Hindu social customs are an articulation of patriarchal structures as they are not gender-neutral.

Also, the double standard of morality operating on men and women is integrated into the writing of women like Tarabai,

Rakhmabai, and Ramabai. This distinguishes their understanding of social and cultural practices from moderate critiques of custom by women like Parvati, as well as most men who rarely, if ever, specifically highlight the issue of double standards. Consequently, in the writing of Tarabai, Rakhmabai, and Ramabai there is a certain forthrightness in naming the oppressive forces and the power of men to perpetuate the oppressive structures. And having named the oppressive forces, and recognised their hold, women's writing is often pessimistic because there is both a sense of having to battle too many institutions and powers at the same time with very little support.!>? A critique of the failure of the Reformers and a sense of betrayal at their lack of courage is also unique to women's writing.

Women's writing, especially the writing of Rakhmabai and Ramabai, discusses the relationship between women, particularly the question of women against women or what should be identified as the politics of the household, very differently from men's writing.

In women's writing it is a powered relationship between women who are hierarchically placed. Those wielding power are related to the husband under whose custody the young wife or widow is placed.!°° Thus, while men sometimes shifted the onus of the oppression of some women and exonerated themselves,!°" women's writing tried to show how some women were complicit with men in oppressing other women. It is significant that the writing of women also tried to grapple with why women consented to certain practices which degraded them. There is an attempt to understand for themselves and their readers, especially in the work of Ramabai, how women's consent is produced, a distinctive feature of women's writing which is absent in the writing of men.

The manner in which the sexuality of the widow is treated is also distinctive in women's writing where the widow is seen as being vulnerable to predatory men, or her own natural impulses which can lead to her being seduced by men who escape both the

On Widowhood 287 responsibility for their actions and the ignominy which falls entirely on the widow.'? Women's writing focussed instead on the protection the widows required from men on the prowl but was strongly opposed to the severe strictures imposed on widows.!>? In the extraordinary and devastating description of a young girl wife who is soon widowed, cited earlier, Sushila Devi pointed out the paradox of female sexuality which was to be ripened one moment and crushed at another:'® female sexuality is, in this passage, portrayed as an object of use in which men are the agents, women the passive objectified beings. In such a repressive situation it was inevitable that the widows were unable to express their own needs.

All the young women in the Poona Widows' Home dwelt upon the sexuality of the widow as making her more vulnerable.!°!

Finally, but most significantly, men rarely recognised the labour performed by widows, which as we have just seen was a major theme in the writing of the women, particularly widows. It is hardly surprising then that men's discussion of the 'problem' of widowhood never outlined its distinctive cultural codes within the context of production relations and patriarchal structures, or analysed it in terms of the relationship between caste, gender, and labour. This restricted discussion on widowhood, even when it was recognised that widowhood was different among upper and lower castes, established the parameters within which women themselves framed their own discourses. Tarabai's polemical writing could sense the working of patriarchal power but could not clearly see its relationship to other structures of inequality.! Thus, while women sought to express thernselves outside the discourses of men they were effectively limited by them. What women managed to do however was to step out of the boundaries of the discussion by dealing with issues obliquely. They brought in issues which men had hardly addressed, for example, economic independence, the extraction of labour from widows, gainful employment and a right to control their own lives. They also did the reverse, which was to contest men's judgement of certain issues as central to the problem of widowhood, such as the sexuality of the nubile widow.!%

REWRITING HISTORY

Further, they imbued certain terms like 'nation' with a distinctive meaning. For some of the widows this was a place which could solve their problems and patriotism was to be demonstrated by working to change the quality of life for the widow. !®

Given the limited nature of men's understanding of the larger context in which widowhood was located, despite the expanded but marginalised way women wrote about widowhood, it is not surprising that the Reformers hardly changed anything for the widow in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They were unable to attack either caste or patriarchy, so the structure in which upper-caste cultural codes for women were located remained intact. The problem of the upper-caste child widow finally sorted itself out not so much through the intervention of the Reformers or through the large-scale remarriages of widows but because the age of marriage gradually went up. Women began to be educated and as certain occupations opened up for them the 'destitute' widow could find ways to support herself. Without breaking up the relationship between caste, gender and labour, structural changes occurred within the upper castes which reduced the magnitude of the problem of the upper-caste child widow by the second half of the twentieth century.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

1. The writings of women in this chapter, especially those of the widows themselves, are subjective testimonies. In the context of understanding these testimonies it may be useful to draw from the work of Teresa de Lauretis who suggests that experience is a particular kind of consciousness to be distinguished from reason and knowledge. According to her, experience is the process by which subjectivity is constructed for all social beings. It is through this process that one is placed in social reality, and so it is that one perceives and comprehends as subjective (in the sense of originating in oneself) those relations — material, economic, and interpersonal

— which are in fact social, and in a larger perspective historical (Teresa de Lauretis, Alice Doesnt, Bloomington, Indiana University

Press, 1984, p. 159).

2. Meenakshi Mukherjee, Realism and Reality: The Novel and Society in India, Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1985, pp. 28-30,

On Widowhood 289 pp. 85-91; Sisir Kumar Das, A History of Indian Literature, Vol.

VII, Delhi, Sahitya Akademi, 1991, pp. 115, 299-300.

. For an extended discussion of the reinvention of tradition in which the 'status' of women in the ancient past was projected as very high in the writings of nineteenth century men but according to whom serious aberrations later led to women's degradation, see my paper

'Whatever Happened to the Vedic Dasi: Orientalism, Nationalism, and a Script for the Past', in Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid, eds., Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial History, Delhi, Kali for Women, 1989, pp. 27-87, especially pp. 50-52.

. Uma Chakravarti, 'Gender, Caste and Labour: the Ideological and Material Structure of Widowhood', Economic and Political Weekly,

Vol. 30, No. 36, September 9, 1995, pp. 2248-57.

. Sushila Devi's essay entitled "The Ideal of Hindu Womanhood with Practical Suggestion for its Realisation' won the Gaekwar prize and was published by the Civil and Military Gazette Press, Lahore, in 1907. The longish essay of some 60 pages was not the only work of Sushila Devi to have been published. Her other publications include "The Cosmopolitan Hinduani: Indian Stories in English',

'Uttam Acharan Siksha: Eight Lectures in Hindi Chiefly Intended for Hindu Women', and the 'Life of Queen Victoria' which was written under the order of the Director of Public Instruction,

Patiala, for distribution in girls' schools. Sushila Devi ran an institution for widows entirely managed by 'ladies' and called the Hindu Widows'

Industrial School.

The institution provided instruction in 'plain and fancy' needlework to Hindu widows of respectable families to enable them to earn a "quiet living' at their own homes.

Although Sushila Devi lived and worked in North India I have included her work here partly because as a Gaekwar prize-winning essay, this work is likely to have circulated in central and western

India, especially since a pan-Indian context existed to the discussion on women's status and the enforcement of oppressive practices upon widows. This is reflected even in Sushila Devi's description of widowhood which shows familiarity with the cultural practices confined to peninsular India and draws upon them to flesh out the full range of practices imposed upon widows.

Sushila Devi was herself a 'cosmopolitan Hinduani' in the values she had absorbed and projected, enlightened and modest at the same time. She had been educated in England and travelled in Europe.

In Munich an artist had expressed a desire to paint her but as a 'Hindu' wife she had refused to pose for a man. The artist who respected the high values of Hindu womanhood had then painted

REWRITING HISTORY

her from memory. Sushila Devi had fully absorbed the rhetoric of nineteenth century 'enlightened' men with its inevitable component of a great, ancient Hindu past where women were educated and knowledge was available to 'all classes', not confined to the chosen few. Sushila Devi believed that women had at that time held the power entrusted to them most sacredly, and thereby uplifted the Hindu race. They attended public ceremonies and took part in the great sacrifices of the day. With their judgement formed through proper training, the accomplished maidens, glowing with youth and health, chose their partners in life by the Svayamwar_ceremony.'

Thus by the combined efforts of both men and women 'our beloved Bharat' had excelled, according to Sushila Devi, in 'spiritual prosperity as well as social and material prosperity'. Despite this full-scale reproduction of the construction of a glorious past, when

Sushila Devi gets down to dealing with the present she drops the thetoric (but not the domestic ideologies of the nineteenth century) and draws upon female experience and female popular discourse to discuss widowhood. This had relevance for western India as much as for the rest of India and for this reason her work has been included in this discussion.

Cs Sushila Devi, The Ideal of Hindu Womanhood, p. 28.

Ibid., pp. 30-31. A.S. Altekar in his widely influential work, The Position of Women in Hindu Civilisation (Delhi, Motilal Banarasidas,

1987, p. 5, first published in 1938) used a similar argument but in a somewhat circular manner. According to him parents felt unhappy at the birth of daughters because of the miseries a possible widowhood in the future might entail.

Ibid., pp. 33-34.

Ibid., pp. 55-56.

Ibid., pp. 57-58.

Ibid., pp. 32, 55-56.

Tarabai Shinde, Stri Purusha Tulana, tr. and ed. by Rosalind O'Hanlon as A Comparison Between Men and Women, Tarabai Shinde and the Critique of Gender Relations in Colonial India (with an Introduction), Madras, Oxford University Press, 1994.

Ibid., pp. 1-2, 93, 96.

. Ibid, p. 75.

. Ibid, p. 88.

. Ibid, pp. 89-90.

. Ibid, pp. 117-18.

Ibid., p. 85.

. Ibid. pp. 97, 118.

Ibid., pp. 96-97,117-18.

On Widowhood 291 Ibid., p. 59.

Responses to Malabari's initiative were published in Dayaram Gidumal, Status of Women in India, and include the reactions of the established figures of nineteenth century western India.

These developments are discussed in detail in the next chapter.

Susie Tharu and K. Lalitha, Women Writing in India, Vol. Il, p.

256.

The Times of India, 26 June 1885.

Although Rakhmabai displays a sense of betrayal for the failure of 21.

os 24. yo 26. men of her class background to push reform she excludes Malabari from among those men who lack the 'courage to withstand adverse reactions from the anti-reformers'.

The Times of India, 26 June 1885.

The Times of India, 19 September 1885.

Julia Leslie, The Perfect Wife, pp. 22-34. She shows the antecedents Pap 28.

29, of popular ideologies in ancient Brahmanical texts and their reiteration in texts compiled in the eighteenth century which would have the effect of refurbishing the circulation of Brahmanical ideologies at a 'popular' level.

The Times of India, 19 September 1885.

Ibid.

We may recall Ramabai Ranade's father also evoking family honour to ensure suitable behaviour when she was leaving her natal home after marriage to live in her husband's home (see Chapter 4, p. 218-19).

The Times of India, 19 September 1885.

Ibid.

These essays appear to have remained unpublished. The collection of essays was addressed to Sir Herbert Risley by B.A. Gupte from Calcutta on 27 April 1911, requesting that they be published in book form. The essays were written in Marathi by widows who were inmates at the Poona Widows' and Orphans' Home and prizes of Rs 12 were offered. The manuscript sent by Gupte to Risley was a translation from the original in Marathi and was entitled 'Position of Widow: Experiences of Widows and Other Girls'. Gupte hoped that the published version of the essays could be submitted to the government for its consideration in order to make the law of cruelty to animals applicable to the forcible shaving of young and minor widows. The essays in typescript form are currently located in the India Office Library, London (Eur. Ms. D. 356). Hereafter the Ms. is cited as Radhabai Inamdar et. al., Position of Widows. Page numbers cited will follow the pagination in the original typescript.

30.

Of.

S23 fe 34. ob It is difficult to estimate the age of the widows since it was common

36.

REWRITING HISTORY

for the widows to go to institutions such as the Poona Home at different moments in their life and only then begin their education.

See Parvati Athavale, Hindu Widow, p. 22.

Radhabai Inamdar et.al., Position of Widows, p. 3.

H.N. Apte's title in his book on widowhood provides the girls a phrase to express their sense of marginalisation.

The writing of the girls attempts to describe the anguish of their everyday lives and they use any phrases or metaphors that help them to express themselves. They are probably aware that the essays will have a limited readership so they are noticeably forthcoming in describing their experiences and in communicating their sense of despair. The essays of the girls are in marked contrast to the writing of widows like Pandita Ramabai, Anandibai Karve, or Parvati

Athavale who are 'reformers' in their own eyes. The latter attempt ar:

38.

to conceptualise and provide a structure to the experience of widowhood as they are consciously speaking to an audience — they know they are publishing, unlike the girls in the Widows' Home.

Edward Harper, 'Fear and the Status of Women', South Western Journal of Anthropology, No. 25, 1969, pp. 81-95, p. 90.

40.

Radhabai Inamdar et al., Position of Widows, p. 27.

41, 42.

Ibid. Any and every situation would be an opportunity to indulge in abuse and taunts. Bhimabai Kale describes how even the occasional illness of the mistress of the house in which the widow was being 'sheltered' could bring forth barbs like "Why is she [the widow] not taken ill instead? This useless burden, who wants to feed her? (p. 10). Another widow recounts that taunts and abuses would include wishing the death of the widow: "Who cares for her? She is

Lakshmi turned into a broom. Let her die, it will be a relief" (p.

14).

Radhabai Inamdar et al., Position of Widows, pp. 5, 9, 11, 26, 28; the widows show an acute awareness not just of what they were given to eat but also the manner in which they were treated as they were being given the meal. "When insulted the food is like poison'

43, (p. 8).

Radhabai Inamdar et al., Position of Widows, p. 26.

D.N. Agarwal, A Textbook of Hindu Law, Allahabad, Ram Narain Beni Prasad, 1960, pp. 35, 205f— B.D. Sirvya, Hindu Woman's

Estate (Non-Technical Stridhana), Calcutta, Butterworth and Company, 1913, pp.7—8. We must note that a very large number of widows were child widows whose husbands themselves would have died at a young age while they lived in a joint family and therefore held undivided coparcenary property. The child widow's vulnerability in the Mitakshara system came from this situation

44, 45.

On Widowhood 293 since she had no right to seek a partition of the property; all she was entitled to 'legally' was maintenance.

46.

47.

K. Ballhatchet, Social Policy, p. 28.

Hanna Papanek, "To Each Less than She Needs: From Each More than She Can Do: Allocations, Entitlements and Value', and Amartya K. Sen, 'Gender and Cooperative Conflicts', in Irene

Tinker, ed., Persistent Inequalities: Women and World Development, New York, Oxford University Press, 1990, pp. 162-84 and 123-49.

Sen, 'Gender', p. 140.

Papanek, "To Each', pp. 169-74.

Radhabai Inamdar et al., Position of Widows, pp. 10, 14.

Ibid., p. 27.

Ibid., p. 28.

Ibid., p. 1.

Ibid., p. 27.

Ibid., p. 1.

48.

49.

50.

OE: spat 53.

54. one 56. ete 58.

Sak 60.

61.

Ibid., pp. 14, 15.

Ibid., p. 26.

Ibid., p. 9.

Ibid., p. 23.

Ibid., p. 1.

See M.K. Indira's biographical novel, Phaniyamma (tr. from the original in Kannada by Tejasvini Niranjana, Delhi, Kali for Women,

1989) for a graphic, real-life account which depicts the ceaseless labour performed by a widow who is always available to perform heavy labour since she does not reproduce.

Anandibai Karve, Maze Purana, tr. and ed. by Kaveri Karve, in D.D. Karve, New Brahmans, pp. 58-79, 67.

Ibid., p. 64.

Ibid. Here we have a significant reference to the double position of the Brahmana widow simultaneously sharing the class power of her kinsmen and rendering managerial labour from which other young married women were exempt. As a member of a class Anandibai was required to assert her class power over those who laboured for this

Brahmana family. The widow's own powerlessness is thus relative.

What the widows perceive is the loss of power they suffer in widowhood which separates them from other women: further, they see only their own labour, not that of others belonging to a different

62.

63.

64. class.

Ibid., pp. 64-65.

The communal kitchen was set up as a way of cutting costs.

However, the women clearly regarded the labour, put in by them into such a household, more like that of a servant woman since

65.

66.

REWRITING HISTORY

cooking would be done for larger numbers without the moderating influence of such people being regarded as family.

Anandibai Karve, Maze Purana, in D.D. Karve, New Brahmans, p.

67.

67.

Ibid., p. 68.

Ibid., p. 69.

Radhabai Inamdar et al., Position of Widows, p. 6. See also pp.

26-29. The 1864 census records for Bombay list 1,795 Brahmanas (among 30,604 Brahmana residents in Bombay) as domestic servants. At least some of them are likely to have been destitute widows without means of support since it appears to have been the only 'profession' open to them (census data from Christine Dobbin,

68.

69.

70.

Urban Leadership in Western India, p. 8).

However, during the interim period widows had a hard time at the hands of those who controlled the family's resources. According to Ambubai Bapat, the young widowed mother had to protect her,

Fis infants 'like the young ones of a cat being taken from one corner to another corner for shelter' (Radhabai Inamdar et al., Position of Widows, p. 6). Another widow describes the situation of the widow with children thus: "The anxiety of educating her sons and getting her daughters married, and the distressing thought of starvation staring the face, the complete want of provision for medical treatment during illness add to the mental suffering of the widow compounding the loss of the husband' (p. 26).

Edward Harper, 'Fear and the Status of Women', p. 90.

Radhabai Inamdar et al., Position of Widows, p. 25.

Uma Chakravarti, 'Gender, Caste and Labour', pp. 2248-49.

Radhabai Inamdar et al., Position of Widows, p. 6

Ibid.

Ibid.

Dayaram Gidumal, "The Status Of Women', pp. lxxv, lxxvi, Ixxxi.

Radhabai Inamdar et al., Position of Widows, p. 2.

Tbid., p. 11.

Ibid., p. 6.

Ibid., p. 10.

Ibid., p. 26.

Ibid., p. 27.

Ibid., p. 28.

Ibid., p. 5.

Ibid., p. 15.

Uma Chakravarti, 'Gender, Caste and Labour', p. 2252.

Radhabai Inamdar et al., Position of Widows, p. 2.

Ibid., p. 15. dhe io:

74. rey 76.

Tike iE hale 80.

81.

82.

83.

84.

85.

86.

87.

88.

89.

90.

On Widowhood 295 91:

92: lbid., iG: Eenee 'Pundalik' in D.D. Karve ed., New Brahmans, pp.

195-97.

Radhabai Inamdar et al., Position of Widows, p. 19.

Ibid., p. 23.

Anandibai Karve, 'Maze Purana' in D.D. Karve, New Brahmans, pp.

Lot 94. a 65-66.

Ibid., pp. 14-15.

Ibid., pp. 14-15.

Dayaram Gidumal, Status of Women, pp. 9-10.

Radhabai Inamdar et al., Position of Widows, p. 1.

Ibid., pp. 8-9.

96.

Ib 98. a> 100.

101.

Ibid., p. 8, 25. Many of the essayists describe an incident which appears to have been recounted to them by the father of a young widow. A Brahmana father was celebrating some occasion in his home to which the 'house priests' had been invited for a meal. The Brahmana father had a young widowed daughter who had been tonsured. Unaware, or unmindful, of her 'inauspicious' status, she ran about playing with the other children, when she was sighted by a Brahmana priest. He immediately ordered her out of sight; when the little girl asked him why she must go in when her friends were allowed to be present she was told that it was because she was a 'shaved widow'. She was then sent off to a dark corner to eat her food while her father looked on miserably, unable t to prevent the girl's humiliation.

Ibid., pp. 5, 7, 20.

Ibid., p. 20. The same widow had no doubts at all bese the double standards prevalent with regard to explanations about denial of education to girls on the grounds that it would spoil them. If the same education did not spoil boys why would it spoil girls, she asked pertinently. Double standards with regard to tonsuring are also condemned by another widow: when men don't tonsure themselves at the death of their wives why should widows have to do so, she asks with asperity (p. 7).

Ibid., p. 2.

Ibid., pp. 3-4.

Parvati Athavale, Hindu Widow: An Autobiography, first published in 1928, reprinted at Delhi, Reliance Publishing House, 1986, p.

47.

Interview with Gomati, New Delhi, 1988. Widowed at 16 at around the year 1924, she had led a conventional widow's existence

102.

103.

104.

105.

106.

107. until she went to live with the family of 'Sister' Subbalakshmi who had set up a widows' home in Madras. She was deeply unhappy

REWRITING HISTORY

while living with her natal kin but submitted to the widow's fate except for finding the strength, she herself 'does not know from where', to refuse to have her head shaved.

N.C. Katagade, 'Pundalik', in D.D. Karve (ed.), New Brahmans, pp.

201-203.

Ibid., pp. 226-27.

'108.

109.

110.

Parvati Athavale, Hindu Widow, and Pandita Ramabai, The High Caste Hindu Woman, 1888.

Parvati Athavale, Hindu Widow, pp. 14-15.

Lit.

Pz.

113.

114.

115.

116.

117:

118.

HPS!

Tbid., p. 15.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid., pp. 15-20.

Ibid., p. 20.

Tbid., pp. 27fF.

Tbid., p. 27.

Ibid., p. 29. Characteristic of the new spirit of service and a high-caste woman's unique understanding of patriotism is an account Parvati provides of how a young Bengali patriot tried to force Parvati to return forthwith to India when he found her washing dishes as a maidservant in the house of an American. The self-styled patriot told Parvati that her actions were making 'us

Indians extremely ashamed' of her and that it was a stain on her Brahmanahood. Parvati responded by saying 'I have as much national pride as you have'; she was in America to raise funds for the widows' home, not to enjoy herself. What could be more patriotic than acting on behalf of the widows? She ultimately got brow-beaten into promising that she would return only because a severe disagreement between a Bengali and a Maharashtrian in a foreign land would give the wrong signal about India: nationalism then was unity, apart from meaning service for her (pp. 102-107).

Ibid., p. 30. Here Parvati is both prefiguring and echoing Gandhi who had a similar resolution of the problem of young widowhood: service to the nation as the extended family.

A major display of volition and agency for Parvati was her discarding the signs of widowhood at the fairly mature age of 42. In a chapter which is devoted entirely to the subject of how and why she discarded the signs of widowhood Parvati contested the traditional

Brahmanical ideology's requirement of the tonsure. In Parvati's view this was a rite that compelled the widow to renounce worldly things.

She recommended that widows refuse to submit to the barber's razor when they reached the age of 'discretion'. Instead they should assert their rights to their own heads, let their hair grow and 'take

120. pa

On Widowhood 297 their place in human relationships' as they did before widowhood.

She knew that such a display of 'volition' on the part of widows would be criticised but it was important nevertheless because it would enable the widows to adopt a way of living that they themselves felt was right. For Parvati the crucial reason why widows must do so was because the rite itself was false since it had been associated with a sannyasi's outward manifestation of an inner state, a withdrawal from the world. The widow should tonsure her head only if she herself wished to enter the renunciatory state, 'wished to renounce worldly living of her own accord' (emphasis added). As the practice existed it was a violation of the woman's body and that too by a stranger. Parvati not only gave up the tonsured head but vigorously campaigned for doing so. It was the only issue over which she was critical of the so-called Reformers for not doing enough, but what she wanted them to do was to take on the shaving of the widows rather than leave it to the barbers.

Throughout the discussion on the tonsuring of a widow's head Parvati was making a strong statement on the right of the widow to choice, to agency, and for customs and rites to correspond to meaning behind the symbolic actions. As she ended her discussion of the theme of forced tonsure she appealed to the agency of the widows by urging them to take the lead against the unjust custom, which in the name of religion, sorely pressed upon them (pp.

46-54).

Ramabai Ranade, Reminiscences, p. 82.

Sister Geraldine, The Letters and Correspondence of Pandita Ramabai, edited by A.B. Shah, Bombay, Maharashtra State Board for Literature and Culture, 1977, pp. 241-242, 247, 280-83, 285-89.

Pandita Ramabai Saraswati, The High Caste Hindu Woman, pp. 1, 130.

I3t, 152.

118-19.

Ibid., p. 11.

Ramabai refers to the controversy regarding sanction for sati in the Vedic texts which she describes as an interpolation, citing Max

Muller's work on the question of interpolation. She also cites from articles published in journals and newspapers (pp. 79, 87-90).

Pandita Ramabai, The High Caste Hindu Woman, pp. 74-75.

Parvati Athavale, Hindu Widow, p. 26.

Pandita Ramabai, The High Caste Hindu Woman, p. 69.

| fe eB 134.

135136.

137.

138.

13% 140.

141.

142.

Ibid., p. 70.

Tbid., p. 83.

Tbid., pp. 82fF.

Tbid., p. 85.

Tbid., p. 86.

REWRITING HISTORY

Ibid. Ramabai is one of the few women writers who are conscious of distinctive cultural norms operating on widows according to the position occupied in the hierarchy by the caste to which the widow belongs. It was because she did not subsume all widows into the same structure that she titled her book The High Caste Hindu

143.

Woman and outlined the specific practices for the widow of the upper castes in her chapter on widowhood. She also recognised that oppressive practices like shaving the head which were unique to the Brahmanas were spreading to the lower castes as the lower castes took 'great pride in imitating their higher caste brethren'. This awareness of sanskritisation is notably rare in nineteenth century writing and is evidence of Ramabai's keen sociological observation

(p. 82).

Pandita Ramabai, The High Caste Hindu Woman, pp. 90-91.

Ibid., p. 91.

Ibid., p. 92.

Ibid., p. 93.

Ibid., pp. 70-72.

Ibid. Ramabai cites while discussing niyoga the example of a custom among the Jews who also used a system of 'appointment', to raise up 'seed for the deceased husband' of the widow (p. 71).

Pandita Ramabai, The High Caste Hindu Woman, pp. 72-73.

Ibid., pp. 75-76.

Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid, 'Institutions, Beliefs, Ideologies:

Widow Immolation in Contemporary Rajasthan', Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 27, No. 3, April 27, 1991, pp. WS 2-18.

Pandita Ramabai, The High Caste Hindu Woman, pp. 76-77.

The Times of India, 26 June 1886.

_ Ibid.; Times of India, 19 September 1886; Pandita Ramabai, The High Caste Hindu Woman, p. 93.

Rakhmabai, The Times of India, 26 June 1886; Sushila Devi, The Ideal Wife, pp. 32-34.

Dayaram Gidumal, The Status of Women, pp. xxi, cviii.

Tarabai Shinde, Stri Purusha Tulana, p, 117.

144.

145.

146.

147.

148.

149.

150.

151.

1D2.

153.

154.

155:

156.

157.

158.

159% Pandita Ramabai, The High Caste Hindu Woman, pp. 84-85, Radhabai Inamdar et al., Position of Widows, pp. 6, 15.

Sushila Devi, The Ideal Wife, pp. 29-32.

Radhabai Inamdar et al., Position of Widows, pp. 6, 15.

Letter from Dhankore Bai to Madhavdas Raghunathdas, reproduced in B.N. Motivala, Karsondas Muli, p. 209; letter from Dhankore

Bai to her mother, Jbid., pp. 211-12.

Tarabai had pointed out, as Pandita Ramabai also did, that enforced widowhood which had been restricted to the upper castes in the 160.

161.

162.

163.

On Widowhood 299 past was now spreading to the lower castes (Stri Purusha Tulana, tr. by O'Hanlon, p. 75, and The High Caste Hindu Woman, p. 82).

Even one of the young women in the Poona Widows' Home had remarked on enforced widowhood as an aspect of the upper-caste practices which did not operate on Shudra women who could remarry. Their lives were therefore not as miserable as those of upper-caste women, according to Ambubai Gumaste (Radhabai

Inamdar et al., Position of Widows, p. 19).

See Chapter II, pp. 82ff.

Radhabai Inamdar et al., Position of Widows, pp. 4, 29; Parvati Athavale, Hindu Widow, pp. 29, 49, 105.

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PART THREE

I have tried to outline in this work the complex factors working at a transitional historical moment which can help us understand the relationship between structure and agency with particular reference to gender. Women of a specific caste and class location were subject to multiple pressures in nineteenth century western India such that their agency was shaped by certain material and ideological structures. Although it is not being suggested that women's agency was so determined that they had no volition or individual will, the discussion in Part II has attempted to lay out the range and complexity of institutions within which women were located and within which they could, or sometimes had to, act, or be acted upon. We have also seen that even in a transitional moment the lives of women were more circumscribed than those of men so that effectively women had fewer choices than men. Their agency tended to be articulated in certain ways and it has been my attempt to probe these through discussions on law, the state, the family and religious and cultural institutions.

I want now to draw my explorations to a close by looking at the relationship between structure and agency, or a life and a time, through the person of Pandita Ramabai, the most visible of nineteenth century women in Maharashtra and yet, necessarily, the most controversial upper-caste woman of her times. A question that has occurred to me is: did the fact that Ramabai was a Brahmana widow have something to do with why she was so controversial?

Was the upper-caste widow in the nineteenth century structurally so located that the gender question for a certain class was most sharply articulated through her? Did her location mean that her choices were even more limited than those of other women and that therefore when such a woman became an agent rather than a subject, when she took control of her own life and that of other

302 REWRITING HISTORY

women like her, she came into conflict with established structures of authority? Through Ramabai's life I hope to show something of the 'conflictual and uneven resolution' of the gender contradictions of her time for a particular class of women. Through an account of her struggle one may recover also a sense of the struggle, potential and actual, of many women of her time.

Structure and Agency: A Life and a Time A close look at Ramabai's life' and work reveals that it was unique in relation to the social location of many Brahmana men of the nineteenth century. Born into a Chitpavan Brahmana family and thus capable of sharing in the social power of the Brahmanas,

Ramabai's father had, however, begun to suffer the consequences of non-conformism." Brahmanical structures were tightly organised and internally coherent; social and ritual power was available to one within that structure only if its basic premises and contemporary practices were accepted.

Ramabai's father's experiences with Brahmanism in western India both shaped her life and directly fed into it; the break with Brahmanism was therefore inevitable and almost predetermined, given the extraordinary nature of his life and the legacy she inherited.

Ramabai's father, Anant Shastri Dongre, was born and trained as a Sanskrit scholar in the last days of the Peshwai.? During the four years when he studied under a teacher attached to the Peshwa's court he had been deeply impressed by the sight of his guru teaching Sanskrit to Varanasibai, the wife of the last Peshwa Bajirao

II. When the British took over Poona and the Peshwai territories, Anant Shastri returned to his home in Malherambi (Mangalore).

He made an abortive attempt to teach his wife Sanskrit but failed due to family disapproval. Following the Brahmana convention of seeking patronage for the pursuit of learning and teaching from the court, Anant travelled to Mysore where he was rewarded handsomely. After ten years he travelled to other centres such as Banaras and Nepal, combining pilgrimage and the accumulation of knowledge with the search for patronage. On his way back to Mangalore, at the great pilgrimage centre of Paithan, he chanced

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upon another travelling Brahmana who was on the look-out for grooms for his two young daughters. On finding Anant Shastri (by then a widower of forty-four) a suitable match for the older of the two girls, the nine-year-old Lakshmibai was given to him in marriage. Anant Shastri took his young bride home and attempted once more to teach Sanskrit to a woman, this time to his second wife.'

While Lakshmibai proved an able pupil, Anant Shastri's action was regarded as 'heretical', and a confrontation with' family and established Brahmanical authority quickly ensued. Many years later

Ramabai recapitulated Anant Shastri's battle for democratising sacred learning:

My father though a very orthodox Hindu and strictly adhering to caste and other religious rules was yet a reformer in his own way. He could not see why women and people of the shudra caste [could] not learn to read and write the Sanskrit language and learn sacred literature. He thought it better to try the experiment at home instead of preaching to others. He found an apt pupil in my mother. She devoted many hours of her time in the night to the regular study of the sacred Puranic literature and was able to store up a great deal of knowledge in her mind.

The Brahmana pandits living round about my father's village tried to dissuade him from the heretical course following in teaching his wife the sacred language of the gods. His extensive studies in the Hindu sacred literature enabled him to quote chapter and verse of each sacred book

[which gave such authority]. His misdeeds were reported to the head priest of the sect to which he belonged and the learned Brahmanas induced the guru to call this heretic to appear before him and before the august assemblage of the Pandits to give his reasons for taking this course, or be excommunicated ... ° Ramabai's father had thus found that the sanction for teaching the Peshwa's wife did not extend to ordinary women. However, he participated in a long-drawn-out debate about scriptural sanction for women learning Sanskrit and provided an impressive amount of evidence from the smritis and the epics. He succeeded in staving off excommunication and became known as an 'orthodox reformer'.

Nevertheless, he decided to move to the forest and set up an ashrama with his young wife where he could teach according to his convictions; it was here that Ramabai, the youngest of his children, was born and where Lakshmibai brought up her young family. The family ran out of the economic support they had relied upon

Structure and Agency: A Life and a Time 305 thirteen years after the ashrama was set up since everyone who came to it had to be fed and looked after. Anant Shastri was thus obliged to leave the ashrama and take up a pilgrim's life once more when

Ramabai was only six months old. They travelled around as pauranikas, public narrators of the Puranas at temples or other sacred spots, and received gifts of food, clothes and flowers from the people to whom they narrated the stories.®

It was during these travels across the country in search of mukti (salvation) that Ramabai's learning began. Since her father was by now too old to teach, Ramabai was taught Sanskrit by her mother,

(or picked up what she heard as her father taught her brother),' doubling the unconventionality of the venture. The difference in Ramabai's early experiences from those of the new Brahmanas is striking. Men like Ranade, Telang, and even Tilak went to school to avail themselves of the new opportunities provided by English education. Their families invested in such an education because it was imperative to the pursuit of a career in the administration or the judiciary.

They all learnt English literature, history, mathematics and western philosophy.® In contrast Ramabai and her brother trained for no profession; unconventional though it was to teach a woman, Anant Shastri's family still carried on with the traditional ideals of the truly religious vocation prescribed for the Brahmanas — teaching, worship, and living off gifts. How rare this ideal was is evident even for a time as far back as the sixth century

B.C. because it was the basis of the critique of contemporary Brahmanism by the Buddha. In the nineteenth century especially, following the unprecedented militarisation and secularisation of the Brahmanas in western India it appears to have been, to put it mildly, clearly unusual, almost certainly unique.

For many years the Dongre family lived thus on the margins of society pursuing a way of life which was peripatetic, a sort of combination of the vanaprastha and sanyasa stages outlined by the traditional Brahmanical texts. Anant Shastri reworked these stages, first running an ashrama with his wife and then taking his family in a collective quest for mukti. The collective quest was most unusual as in the normal course Ramabai would have had a very different life. The 'normal' householder compulsions of living within the tight grip of caste and kin had been consciously

'renounced' by Anant Shastri's family because of their claustrophobic control over individuals, compelling them to be part

306 REWRITING HISTORY

of a system of oppressive practices. They also tried to escape becoming victims of such a system, which their resistance would have made them.!° In search of space for themselves, the entire family tried to create an alternative existence by living away from the stranglehold of Brahmanical society. They managed to succeed only partially because even in their unusual existence, caste norms had to be upheld, especially with regard to marriage. Ramabai's elder sister was married, according to convention, as a child; the marriage was tragic, as the groom refused to abide by the arrangement agreed upon of living as a member of Anant Shastri's family!! and devoting himself to learning. Drawing upon this unfortunate experience, Anant Shastri did not arrange a similar marriage for Ramabai. This was a unique aspect of Ramabai's life

— she remained unmarried far beyond the acceptable limit for Brahmana girls. Such an arrangement would have been impossible had it not been for Anant Shastri's peripatetic existence. One can see in Ramabai's future life the same search for space, the need to cut away from oppressive practices and carve out a meaningful existence.

The alternative existence adopted by Ramabai's family also entailed great physical hardship. Her old father became too feeble to direct the reading of the Puranas by his children. Unfortunately, the family was not equipped to do anything else and menial work was proscribed for Brahmanas. At the same time, severe famine struck Madras presidency, the area in which the Dongre family then lived. Like the rest of the poor, the Dongre family too wandered from place to place in search of sustenance. As the family was too proud to beg, the strain was severe. Following days of eating leaves and wild berries, Anant Shastri determined to end his life by performing'* the jal samadhi like Jnaneshwar and Muktabai's parents, but died of exhaustion even before the ritual could be formally undertaken. Ramabai poignantly recalled the last moments many years later:

I shall never forget his last injunctions to me. His blind eyes could not see my face, but he held me tight in his arms, and stroking my head and cheeks he told me in a few words, broken with emotion, to remember how he loved me and how he taught me to do right and never depart from the way of righteousness. His last loving command to me was to live an honourable life, if I lived at all, and serve god all my life....'As you are the last of my children, you are dearest to me' he said. 'I have given you into god's keeping, he will guard you'.'?

Structure and Agency: A Life and a Time 307 Ramabai was soon to witness more suffering. Worn out through privation, her mother was unable to stand the painful loss of her husband and the rigours of starvation during the famine years.

Ramabai helplessly watched her mother on the verge of death and finally in a desperate bid to save her, went out to beg for food, only to find that it had come too late to save Lakshmibai. Unable to eat the piece of bajri (roti made of millet) Ramabai brought her,

Lakshmi became unconscious and died a few days later. Srinivas and Ramabai had the utmost difficulty in carrying their mother to the cremation-ground and performing the appropriate death rituals.

With the help of two sympathetic Brahmanas, Ramabai and Srinivas personally carried their dead mother's bier. Ramabai's small stature meant that she had to carry the bier upon her head in order to reach the burning ghat and complete the last rites.!4

Writing about the months when, as a young woman of 16, Ramabai suddenly lost both her parents and her elder sister, she described the gradual erosion of faith in the traditional gods following the trauma:

I cannot describe all the sufferings of that terrible time. My father, mother, and sister, all died of starvation within a few months of each other. My brother and I survived and wandered about still visiting sacred places bathing in rivers and worshipping the gods and goddesses in order to get our desire. We had fulfilled all the conditions in the sacred books and kept all the rules.... For three years after the death of our parents and eldest sister we walked more than 4000 miles on foot without any sort of comfort, but the gods did not appear to us. After years of fruitless service we began to lose our faith.... We still continued to keep the caste rules, worshipped the gods and studied sacred literature as usual. We wandered from the south to the north as far as Kashmir and then to the east

[reaching] Calcutta in 1878.'

The visit to Calcutta proved momentous. Ramabai and her brother met the intellectual elite, including pandits and reformers, and were welcomed and feted by them. These were the halcyon days of Ramabai's public life as she appeared as a godsend to the reformers, !° providing them with a living embodiment of their perception of ancient Indian womanhood. To them Ramabai represented the recovery of the lost figures of Gargi and Maitreyi, women who were learned in Sanskrit at a time when women did not have learning of any kind and those who wished to learn still had to do so secretly. The euphoric reception she received also

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suggests that the second half of the nineteenth century was in some senses a historical conjuncture ripe for a Ramabai to appear. There was already a space for her, especially in Calcutta. For 50 years or more reformers had been talking of the glory of ancient Hindu womanhood, with its figures of Gargi and Maitreyi. Ramabai easily fitted into that space as ancient womanhood thus came alive in her person. She ceed into that already prepared frame and captured the public gaze.!

In later years Ramabai also recalled two landmarks of her Calcutta sojourn: she was asked to lecture on women (among the topics she lectured on was female emancipation, the education of women and the 'Rise and Fall of the Aryan Race')! and was advised by the leading Brahmo reformer, Keshub Chandra Sen, to study the Vedas. Ramabai describes her encounter with Sen thus:

K.C. Sen and his family showed great kindness to me and when parting he gave me a copy of one of the Vedas. He asked if I had studied the Vedas. I answered in the negative and said women were not fit to read the Vedas and were not allowed to do so. It would be breaking the rules of religion, if I were to study the Vedas. He could not but smile at my declaration of this Hindu doctrine. He said nothing in answer but advised me to study the Vedas and Upanishads... New thoughts were awakening in my heart. I questioned myself, why I should not study the Vedas and Vedanta. Soon I persuaded myself into the belief that it was not wrong for a woman to read the Vedas. So I began to first read the Upanishads, then the Vedanta and the Veda. I became more dissatisfied with myself...!?

At the same time, in order to lecture on the duties of women according to the Shastras, Ramabai had to first study the Shastras herself. The reading of the 'forbidden' texts had some unintended consequences. It is ironic, but characteristic, that reformist men let

Ramabai into their charmed circle, pointed out to her their vision of high Hinduism, set an agenda for her in relation to uplifting other women, but did not conceive of a situation in which Ramabai could go beyond it according to her own understanding. Her reading of the Dharmashastras led her to question the fundamental propositions of Brahmanic Hinduism. She writes:

While reading the Dharmashastras I came to know many things which I never knew before. There were contradictory statements about almost everything. What one book said was most righteous, the other book declared as being unrighteous... but there were two things on which all

Structure and Agency: A Life and a Time 309 those books the Dharmashastras, the sacred epics, the Puranas and modern poets, the popular preachers of the present day and orthodox high caste men were agreed, that women of the high and low caste, as a class were all bad, very bad, worse than demons, as unholy as untruth and that they could not get moksha [like] men. The only hope of their getting this much desired liberation from karma and its results, that is countless millions of births and deaths and untold suffering, was the worship of their husbands.

The husband is said to be a woman's god; there is no other god for her.

This god may be the worst sinner and a great criminal; still he is her god and she must worship him.... The woman is allowed to go into higher existence (only) thus far but to attain moksha or liberation she must perform such great religious acts... by which she will be reincarriated as a high caste man, in order to study Vedas and the Vedanta and thereby get the knowledge of the true Brahma and be amalgamated in it. The extra-ordinary religious acts which help a woman to get into the way of getting moksha are utter abandonment of her will to that of her husband.... The woman has no right to study the Vedas and Vedanta and without knowing them no one can know the Brahma; therefore no woman can get moksha.Q.E.D."° Analysing the Dharmashastras for herself, Ramabai became deeply conscious of the contempt with which women of all castes and men of the lower caste were regarded. The rules did not permit the Shudras to perform the same religious acts as the upper castes.

They too, like women, were exhorted to serve the upper castes faithfully and then they would be reborn as high-caste men. The low-caste untouchables must lead degraded lives and after repeated births in such conditions, perchance after faithfully serving the high castes as their bondservants with contentment, they might be reborn into a higher caste and then gradually be 'uplifted'.*! Struck by the common degradation of women and the low castes, about which the Shastras were unanimous, Ramabai's early Brahmanic socialisation was deeply shaken. She documents her growing awareness thus:

I had a vague idea of these doctrines of the Hindu religion from my childhood but while studying the Dharmashastras they presented themselves before my eyes with great force. My eyes were gradually opened: I was awakening up to my own hopeless condition as a woman, and it was becoming clearer and clearer to me that I had no place anywhere as far as religious consolation was concerned. I became quite dissatisfied with myself. I wanted something more than the Shastras could give me but I did not know what it was that I wanted."

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It was precisely these oppressive features of Brahmanic Hinduism that her father had attempted to escape from. Sheltered during her wandering years from the stranglehold of an oppressive ideology, and imbued with the fervour of her father's quest for salvation,

Ramabai had little direct experience or even definite knowledge of the social power of Brahmanism. The travails of the wandering years followed by the failure of the family's collective search for salvation had been one aspect of her trauma. Now followed the further erosion of a spirited young woman's faith in her traditional religion. Before she could recover or resolve her growing sense of alienation, Ramabai suffered another severe blow; her brother

Srinivas also died following a sudden illness.

All alone in the world for the first time with the last of her close kin taken from her, homeless and without economic support,

Ramabai accepted a marriage proposal from an acquaintance in Sylhet." Bipin Behari Medhavi, a friend of her brother Srinivas, was active in debates on the reform of caste and religious beliefs.

He was of a different caste, a Shudra, and in accepting the proposal Ramabai chose to break decisively with tradition. By making a pratiloma marriage, she was defying Shastric injunctions which viewed such a marriage with horror. What is significant is that she did so consciously, even though there were other offers from fellow-castemen. One such highly 'qualified' Brahmana suitor, a Sanskrit scholar but also a 'modernist' from Maharashtra, an officer in the Bombay Civil Service, travelled to Assam to press his proposal.?4 From a contemporary account it is apparent that some learned Brahmana men regarded themselves as 'fitting' partners for Ramabai with whom an intellectual kinship could be established while upholding caste norms. And yet unlike them, Ramabai chose to cross the caste divide, describing it simply thus: 'Having lost faith in the religion of my ancestors I married a Bengali gentlemen of the Shudra caste'.?° Ramabai and Bipin Behari were married according to the Civil

Marriage Act as neither of them believed in traditional Hinduism.

The marriage was subjected to much criticism and Bipin Behari was promptly excommunicated. Tragically, the marriage was brief as Bipin Behari died within two years and Ramabai was left alone once more, but this time with a baby girl to support.?° Like

Vassitha in the Buddhist narrative who lost -all her kin and, maddened with grief, turned to the Buddha for support,?/

Structure and Agency: A Life and a Time 31} Ramabai's own search for meaning in life and for solace was now intensified.

Her early life on the margins of society, though unusual, was uncontroversial because the family was unknown. However, once she had stepped into the limelight in Calcutta her unconventional past began to be viewed with some suspicion, especially as her unmarried status at 22 was inexplicable in a society where even the Brahmo reformers such as K.C. Sen were wont to marry off their daughters around adolescence."® It is not surprising therefore that a great deal of speculation about her 'status' circulated as authentic information about her. One view was that Ramabai was not married because she was dedicated to Krishna as a child?" — this explained her unmarried status. Another assumption was that she was a 'child' widow.*° Both these speculations indicate notions of womanhood among the Hindu middle classes in the nineteenth century: women must be either given in to a religious community or widowed, if they were not married.

Now, with actual widowhood, Ramabai became visible in a different way.

Her break with traditional codes now reached a decisive point.

Her early life, unusual as it was with her late marriage, had, however, been compensated by her learning; her image had thus been one that could be played into the nineteenth century reformist agenda. Her cross-caste marriage was unprecedented (all the male reformers were still marrying very much within caste) but it was probably intellectually 'acceptable' in the reformist circles of Bengal, especially the Brahmos (although it was viewed with horror by traditional Hindu society). With widowhood however Ramabai became potentially a dangerous figure. Her life was henceforth subjected to much greater surveillance by a public that was unused to seeing women except in the domestic space. Ramabai refused to stay in the domestic space; she refused also the traditional role for the widow, that of withdrawal from society. Instead, following widowhood, she turned once more to a 'public' career, this time with a focused mission of serving the oppressed women of India.

Her background, her life choices, her personality and her career now catapulted her into the public gaze, making her the most controversial Indian woman of her times.

On her part Ramabai began cautiously; like widows in Bengal she wore white and cropped her hair close. Left to fend for herself and her baby, without an income or property (her husband does

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not appear to have left Ramabai with any assets and is described as coming up the hard way, with Ramabai clearing off some of his debts), Ramabai decided to return to western India, the home of her ancestors.?! The moderate reformers in the Prarthana Samaj like

Ranade and Bhandarkar had invited her back and promised to provide support for her.?* Ramabai arrived in Poona in 1882 and worked with this group of reformers, setting up a chain of Arya

Mahila Sabhas. Here, a certain class of women could meet and discuss issues relating to the larger body of women.*? She continued to narrate the Puranas, but this time to a new urban middle-class audience, and to propagate the objectives of the Arya Mahila

Sabha.*4 She also appeared before the Hunter Commission and made a fervent plea for the introduction of facilities for the education of women, with special training for them as teachers and doctors so that they could serve other women.*? But the task with which she most identified — the setting-up of a widows' home for high-caste Hindu widows, whose oppression was the subject of much concern — made little progress. She had fitted into the reformers' agenda but as yet there was no substantial move on their part to act in setting up the widows' home.

The sense of social isolation was compounded by the absence of religious moorings. Her peculiar location as a woman without any close kin in a world of male reformers 'intellectually' engaged in transforming Brahmanical Hinduism without addressing central questions, all well established in professions and surrounded, in the main, by docile and loving women, needs to be borne in mind.

Ramabai's search for personal fulfilment as well as her struggle to understand, and conceptualise women's oppression from her own position as a woman were vastly different from the motivations and worldview of the men around her.

As a widow, Ramabai was also vulnerable in a way no man could ever be. Poona was orthodox and could be vicious in its 'defence' of Brahmanic Hinduism. Except in the sheltered atmosphere of like-minded reformers Ramabai's public appearances, speaking on behalf of women, were too threatening and she was often shouted down by aggressive men. Documenting one such lecture, Tagore wrote from Poona that the present-day Bargis (Maharashtrians) turned rowdy as soon as she got up to speak and that she had to sit down without finishing her speech.2° Even Ramabai's

Structure and Agency: A Life and a Time 313 extraordinary courage must have been severely tested by such incidents.

The scorn with which Brahmana women treated Ramabai (and which she could not have been unaware of) also increased her sense of alienation from the dominant elite of Poona. This is graphically described by Ranade's wife (in her memoirs about her famous judge-husband), who was exhorted to be kind to the sorrowful

Ramabai.

She records that other women in her family and neighbourhood regarded her as a wretched convert (long before she became a Christian). Unable to accept her background, they railed against her:

We cannot tolerate such sacrilege. What an accursed thing. Her father had turned her into a devotee and wedded her to the heavenly bridegroom

_ Shri Dwarkanath. And yet this wretch married a Bengali baboo and polluted herself. And did she at least build a home for herself after that?

No fear. She brought utter ruin on everyone connected with her and is now out to pollute the whole world.*"

Apart from the very fact of the widow occupying a public space, her speech was also dangerous. The Arya Mahila Sabha was regarded as an institution set up to do away with the domination of men. Ramabai was reported as arguing that according to existing social practices women had to obey men, or be treated like slaves, without being cared for at all. They toiled without end all day.

They had to serve their husbands hand and foot, even when they themselves were tired, and still be prepared to receive kicks and blows at the slightest pretext. It was believed that the Pandita only exhorted women to free themselves from the tyranny of men at these meetings in the Arya Mahila Sabhas, causing horror to the orthodox, both men and women.?® Thus even if Ramabai was a Brahmana woman herself she had no 'community', no social base and no real emotional bonds to fall back upon. Ranade's wife describes how, despite the approval and support of her husband, she was caught in a dilemma and, in trying to seek the support of her female kin, reneged once in public on her association with Ramabai.2? While Ranade could, through his disapproval of his wife, force her to continue her relationship with Ramabai, the fragility of such a relationship was probably no consolation to Ramabai herself.

These experiences heightened Ramabai's vulnerability. Despite

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her public location she was alone and dependent upon the charity of the reformers even for her daily needs. The sense of urgency, both at the personal level and in connection with the work that she wished to pursue — the setting-up of a widows' home — was not shared by the reformers. The religious search, too, had remained unfulfilled. Throughout the years of hardship when the family had wandered about, they had collectively been sustained by their search for mukti. The intensity of those early experiences had left a lasting need in Ramabai to find religious meaning in her life. Her tragic losses had added to this quest. Her association with the Brahmos and the Prarthana Samajists — a variant of the Brahmos in Maharashtra — did not fill the void. Recalling her state of mind during this period, Ramabai wrote:

I was desperately in need of some religion. The Hindu religion held out no hope for me. The Brahmo religion was not a very definite one. For it is nothing but what a man makes for himself. He chooses and gathers whatever seems good to him from all religions known to him.... The Brahmo religion has no other foundation than a man's own natural light and the sense of right or wrong which he possesses in common with all of mankind. It could not and did not satisfy me...*°

What Ramabai appears to have been in need of was not some abstract notion of God but a figure that she could express an intense devotion to, one that could satisfy her both intellectually and emotionally. In an earlier age she may have found satisfaction among the Bhakti saints. In the nineteenth century, however, the Bhakti tradition itself had been absorbed within a larger Brahmanic

Hinduism and does not appear to have been perceived as a distinctive alternative to it.*) Also, Ramabai was a product of nineteenth century social forces, a widow who had a social agenda on widowhood. Her need and search was thus for a solution that could simultaneously accommodate her social agenda as well as her personal quest for religious fulfilment.

It was at this point that Ramabai first came into contact with Christian missionaries. Her own unfulfilled searches had made her susceptible to outside influences. At the same time her public visibility, would have brought her to the notice of Christian missionaries. They began to woo her as a potential catch.42 On her part, Ramabai had read a Bengali translation of the Gospel according to Saint Luke, one of the most moving renderings of

Structure and Agency: A Life and a Time 315 Christ's life, which made an immediate impact upon her. Attracted by its content, she had considered becoming a Christian, but she wrote later that her husband did not like the idea of her becoming

'publicly Haptised thus joining the 'despised Christian community'.*? Now in Poona, a missionary, Miss Hurford, taught her English and introduced her to the Bible in Marathi

But the most crucial influence in the move to Christianity, came from someone who shared her own background, Nilkantha Goreh, known after his conversion as Father Goreh. A Chitpavan Brahmana like Ramabai and a 'true' seeker too like her, Goreh had found personal fulfilment in Christ rather than in Christianity as it was institutionalised. He spent his later years wandering around like Ramabai's father, having found his faith in Christ though not a community among the Christians.*4 It was following Ramabai's reading of a book written by him that she became 'intellectually' convinced*> of the truth of Christ but this was still in the future.

As suggested earlier, while in Poona (with its strong Brahmanical ambience) Ramabai's lifework had crystallised and come to focus on the need to provide practical support to battered and oppressed child widows. One such victim, a young widow of 12 who had been married at the age of five and been widowed a few days later, was brought to her in 1882. Regarded as the killer of her husband, she had been thrown out by her in-laws. Ramabai took the young widow into her home and began to form an idea of a widows' home. She wrote:

As I looked on that little figure, my vague thoughts about doing something for my sisters in a similar condition began to shape.... I began to place a plan for starting a home for Hindu widows before my countrymen and to ask for their help. For six months or more I tried my best to get help but could not..."

Disappointed thus in her 'countrymen', she decided to build up her own skills and make contact with people 'outside'. In order to get a medical education as a preliminary step, she made up her mind to go to England 'if the way opened'.*" Through contacts in the Church of England Mission in Poona she finally found an opening and in early 1883 she left for England. In order to raise money for her passage she wrote and ipviblished the Stri Dharma

Niti, a book about 'morals' for women.*° Dedicated to the memory of her deceased husband and in many ways a contrast to The High

316 REWRITING HISTORY

Caste Hindu Woman which she wrote after her conversion, it represents the reformist approach to Hindu womanhood and is indicative of the close links she had with her moderate, male

Brahmana associates. However, even this early work carries her unique stamp; in my view it is less about the companionate wife and more about women's self-cultivation even as they performed the roles of wife and mother. The writing and publication of the book to raise money, a practice she continued for some years, is also evidence of her uncertain economic position. She was probably one of the first known women who wrote and lectured for a living in the nineteenth century."

On her voyage to England, Ramabai was accompanied by her three-year old daughter Manoramabai, and Anandibai Bhagat, a friend. Till she left, the competing pulls of the Prarthana Samajists and Christianity do not appear to have been resolved; she had publicly stated at Pandharpur in November/December 1882 that she had no intention of becoming a Christian.*? Anxious about her independence, Ramabai also made sure before she left that she should not be beholden to the missionaries in England who were arranging her stay and education, by organising support for herself as a teacher of Marathi.*!

However, Ramabai's visit to England was crucial in decisively resolving the tension she had been experiencing about religion in favour of Christianity. She was warmly welcomed by the sisters at Wantage where one of them, Sister Geraldine, became her spiritual mother. Thereafter she always referred to her as Ajibai or Grandmother." Ramabai's decisive move to Christianity appears to have followed her introduction to the 'rescue' work carried on by the sisters in London. She was particularly moved by her meeting with women who had once been inmates at the 'Rescue Home', an institution for 'fallen women', who were now so 'completely changed', and so filled with love for Christ and compassion for 'suffering humanity', that they had gone on to devote their lives to the service of the sick and the infirm. Ramabai was drawn to the service aspect of Christianity.* At this point in her life she was still in search of her 'mission' rather than the philosophical aspects of faith. What appealed to her about Christianity was that it drew people into action. In this she thus differed from other high-caste Brahmana men such as Goreh or even Waman Narayan Tilak who were drawn to Christianity on

Structure and Agency: A Life and a Time 317 rational and philosophical grounds. She was also struck by the fact that Christians, regarded as outcastes by Hindus, were attempting to help those 'unfortunate women who were degraded in the eyes of society'.

I had never heard or seen anything of the kind done for this class of women by the Hindus in my country.... The Hindu shastras do not deal kindly with these women. The law of the Hindu commands that the king shall cause fallen women to be eaten by dogs in the outskirts of the town.

They are considered the greatest sinners and not worthy of compassion.™4 Notions of sin and redemption appealed to Ramabai, particularly after she heard the story of Christ's meeting with the Samaritan woman and his message to her on the nature of true worship. To Ramabai, Christ then became the divine saviour, one who could

'uplift' the downtrodden women of India.

It was after this, according to her official account of her move into Christianity, that she made a decisive break with the religion of her ancestors and was baptised along with her daughter on 29 September 1883.>°

Adrift emotionally since the loss of her natal kin and a religious seeker for as long as she could remember, she finally sought an anchor in Christ for her emotional and religious needs.

Ramabai's traumatic experiences were, however, not yet over. If _ anything they intensified. What is significant is that the otherwise courageous and honest Ramabai suppressed, in her own testimony, one of the most painful experiences of the last few months of 1883, immediately before and after her conversion. This silence is eloquent and suggests that she could not, even in later years, deal with the anguish of these days during which her companion, who saw herself as a daughter to Ramabai, killed herself, either fearing conversion or regretting a baptism that had already occurred. The episode is difficult to reconstruct because it is only alluded to by Max Muller in whose house Ramabai stayed after her own baptism.*° There is also a brief account of Anandibai's death in a letter written by the Mother Superior of St Mary's Home, Wantage, where Ramabai and Anandibai were living. It was here that Anandibai, in what was believed to have been a fit of temporary insanity, took poison and died after a few hours of intense suffering.

Sister Geraldine, who compiled the letters to, from, and about Ramabai, also noted that the shock occasioned by the death of

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Anandibai brought Ramabai to experience a great sense of sin and to prepare with great humility for her baptism."

Max Muller's account captures Ramabai's state of mind with much greater sensitivity than the official version of the sisters at Wantage.°® Muller recounts the tragic months of September and October:

But even then her tragedy was not yet ended. She had declared to the sisters that grateful as she felt for their kindness she would never become a Christian because, as she often said, a good Brahmani is quite as good as a good Christian. Her friend, however was frightened by the idea that she and Ramabai would be made Christians by force; and to save Ramabai and herself from such a fate she tried one night to strangle her (Ramabai).

Failing in that she killed herself. It was after this terrible catastrophe at Wantage that Ramabai came to stay with us at Oxford, and such was her nervous prostration that we had to give her a maidservant to sleep every night in the same room with her. Nor was this all. After all the arrangements had been made to enable her to attend medical lectures at Oxford [where she was visiting the Mullers] her hearing became suddenly so much affected that she had to give up the idea of a medical career.>?

The events as recorded by Max Muller starkly convey Ramabai's trauma; even the dramatic collapse of an already impeded hearing seems to be connected with the double stress of the conversion and the suicide of a friend for which Ramabai may have felt responsible.

Years later, writing her Testimony, Ramabai merely records that she knew full well that her conversion would displease 'her friends and countrymen', and goes on to say that she has never regretted having taken that step.°° But the anguish she felt led to a withdrawal. She shrank from being a public figure and wanted to work quietly and unobtrusively. She was pained by the knowledge that many eyes were upon her and her 'future work'.°!

Father Goreh's support was instrumental in her recovery from the trauma. Goreh had convinced her that the theism of the Prarthana Samajists was no different from Christianity. She wrote later that "his humble "sweet voice" had pierced my heart', and she recognised that only he had the power to turn her away from the Brahmana religion.°* Max Muller also recounts a more pressing concern that led Ramabai to Christianity. She had told him that it was not so much that she felt her former religion was entirely false or mischievous but that she could no longer stand quite alone. She needed support. She wanted particularly to be able to worship

Structure and Agency: A Life and a Time 319 een with those whom she loved and who had been kind to ef.

The outcry in India following the news of her conversion was immediate and characteristic. The supposedly liberal reformist press in the hands of Brahmana men was particularly vociferous and swung from eulogising her to damning her for her 'fickleness' which was portrayed as 'peculiarly female' [emphasis added]. The editor of Indu Prakash complained:

We were all taken with awe and wonderstruck by her charms of appearance [!] and the fluent tongue wielding the language; her modest and intelligent speeches, all so sweet and juicy, all now gone and wasted.

Oh Pandita Bai. You are after all a woman, whatever your culture and achievement be — you are thus rendered a woman helpless. We however wondered, how you could take so many years to become sa hy You have disappointed a number of friends and admirers, be assured.

The Indu Prakash also wrote mockingly of Ramabai's so-called , religious quest:

The honeymoon with the liberals was clearly over, as the double condemnation of Ramabai contained above indicates. What could very well have been perceived as a 'rational' choice on Ramabai's part, and as evidence of her ability to decide for herself despite being a woman who was subject to multiple pressures, her decision is turned into an act of fickleness 'natural' to women.

But, significantly, the editorial also echoes a sense of injury at Ramabai's failure to fall in line with the liberal reformist agenda in the creation of a new kind of woman: educated, but pliant. Unlike Brahmana conservatives such as Tilak, who defined the nation in exclusivist terms, and had ideologically placed themselves against British imperialism while regarding Christianity as its handmaiden, the reformists had no such ground for opposing Ramabai. Her choice of religious belief could not be critiqued on 'rational' grounds. It was explicable only in terms of the limitations of the reformers' liberal position embedded within a patriarchal ideology, tied inextricably with their upper-class/caste position.

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Only Phule defended Ramabai and did so publicly. He argued that Ramabai, as a truly educated woman, had seen for herself the bias of the Shastras towards the low castes and women and therefore could not but break with Brahmanic Hinduism. He castigated newspaper editorials for their denunciation of Ramabai's conversion. He suggested that the hysterical reaction of the male writers was because they were unwilling to accept a situation where women had taken to writing and expressing their dissent in print.

In sharp contrast to Phule were the conservatives, who lashed out at Ramabai calling her a batli (impure, fallen, polluted), and accused her of committing a grave and unpardonable sin against Hindu society.°" She was regarded as having fooled everybody. The anger of the middle-class Hindu intelligentsia across the country at Ramabai's renouncing Hinduism for Christianity was partly because they could no longer use her as an example of an educated,

'Hindu' woman who fully endorsed 'Hindu' culture. It was also partly because women had no right to choose to break from Hinduism anyway. Even Vivekananda and Ramakrishna denounced her.

For Ramakrishna, Ramabai was too ambitious — she represented a kind of egotism and idealism which was not 'good' as it was a mere pursuit of name and fame.°® Vivekananda on the other hand could see the potential gains that Ramabai could have brought to his 'cause' if she had remained a Hindu. Ramabai would go on to make quite an impact on America but how much more would be gained if an Indian woman, in Indian dress, preached the religion which fell from the lips of the rishis of India. A great wave would inundate the whole western world, he had said. "Will there be no women in the land of Maitreyi, Lilavati, Savitri, and Ubhayabharati, who will venture to do this?" he had mourned.®

The significant point is that after her conversion Ramabai represented not the glory of the ancient Maitreyi but a discordant voice who spoke for the subjugated woman of nineteenth century

India.

In September 1884 Ramabai joined the Women's College, Cheltenham, as a student and as a teacher of Marathi. The new role envisaged for her as a teacher, and possibly as a public lecturer addressing students and assemblies of women and men (in order to provide her with an income), threw her into the first of her many brushes with Church authority. It is important to point out that Ramabai never at any point in her post-conversion life, became a

Structure and Agency: A Life and a Time 321 plant tool in the hands of the missionaries. Too independent for the Church, she had a relationship with various segments of Christianity, in India and in England, marked by considerable tension. Among the missionaries, distrust of her as a person never quite ended.

The first early brush was symptomatic of her volatile relationship with the Church which was patriarchal and racist.

It was precipitated by the suggestion that Ramabai should teach young English men and women Indian languages and philosophy in order to help establish an understanding of India in them. The Bishops of Lahore and Bombay reacted sharply to this suggestion and dismissed it on the grounds that it would create a scandal in India if a woman were to teach men."? When Ramabai was told that the suggestion had been shot down by people who were 'eminently' fit to judge the situation in India, she was furious. She refused to accept that any set of English men, however long they may have lived in India, could be better judges than her. She rejected outright their notion of a code of behaviour befitting an 'Indian woman'.

She was, after all, the daughter of a woman who had taught the inmates of an ashrama, so it was unlikely that such an argument would be convincing to her. Further, she strongly believed that by accepting the rationale of the bishops she would be acting against her father, mother, brother and husband who had 'approved of young girls speaking in mixed assemblies'. She argued that the bishops' reactions betrayed a lack of trust in her, but most importantly it was against her understanding of God who, she believed, was neither male nor female. This understanding had been central to her acceptance of Christ. Ramabai concluded that imposing Church authority on this matter would infringe her personal liberty.' Clearly it was a matter not just of faith but of principles.

Surprised by the fierceness of Ramabai's arguments, the sisters at Wantage, attempted to make a subtle distinction between her lecturing to mixed assemblies in India 'to arouse the conscience of men about their oppression of women'"* and doing the same in England (where presumably no conscience needed to be stirred).

The latter, they held, could not be justified on any ground.

The clumsy approach of the Church authorities to the question of the propriety of Ramabai teaching English men was merely a facade. At the core of the proposition was the fear that the status

322 REWRITING HISTORY

of a 'professor' might go to Ramabai's head and make her more difficult to 'control'. The utility of such a 'vain' person, who refused to accept that as a Christian she must also accept the authority of the bishops, was held suspect by the Anglican Church.'? The confrontation with the authorities of the Church of England which failed to break Ramabai's independent spirit was summed up by her thus:

I have a conscience and a mind of my own [emphasis added]. I must myself think and do everything which God has given me the power of doing....

I have with great effort freed myself from the yoke of the Indian priestly tribe so I am not at present willing to place myself under another similar yoke by accepting everything that comes from the priests as authorised command of the Most High. Can you, or your friends prove that giving lessons to boys is wrong? I am not [that] anxious to give lessons to men, but I am anxious to do away with all kinds of prejudices which deprive a woman in India of her proper place in society.... I do not think I shall say anything on behalf of my liberty [but] as far as I know from the time

I have had a real liberty, I have not acted as a lawless woman. When people decide anything for me without consulting with me about it I do of course call it interfering with my liberty and am not willing to let them do it. Would you feel bound to accept every word or rule which comes from the bishop as an expression of the will of the Most High? Perhaps you would... but I do not, and will not."4

The Anglican Church's attitude to Ramabai, a 'native' of a country ruled by the English, was a combination of colonial arrogance and racial contempt.

It was, at the same time, a recognition of the need to have her as a pliant instrument for the Church's missionary agenda. Ramabai was unwilling to play the role they found for her and at one stage instilled in them the fear that she would Hes Christianity rather than give up her right to think for herself.' She turned the tables on them and found fault with the conventional approach of the missionaries who went out to teach those of whose 'language and philosophy and modes of thought they are utterly ignorant, with whom they have no sympathy'. This was in contrast to the apostles of old, especially St.

Paul, who 'became to the Jews as a Jew, to the Greeks as a Greek'.

She was critical especially of the missionaries concentrating their arguments on the errors of Hinduism. Let the missionaries put themselves in the place of the Hindus and see from their point of view and then think whether they would like their own Christianity

Structure and Agency: A Life and a Time 323 learnt by the Hindus merely to have its errors and weak points exposed.'"° She also disagreed with the understanding prevalent among missionaries and others in England that it was only worthwhile educating the upper strata of Indian society. When a low-caste convert Marathi girl was not accommodated for a course of study in England on the grounds that she was of low caste and therefore would not be accepted as a 'teacher' when she returned to India, Ramabai argued:

Why would we think others low and ourselves great? We are the same in God's sight are we not? Perhaps, the humblest shoe-maker is greater in his sight than a proud Brahmin. Our Lord Himself was born a humble carpenter and he did all things for the humble in spirit. Is it not so ?77

It was Ramabai's ability to argue and turn the arguments of the authorities round on themselves that was so devastating. She was just too 'self-reliant' for them. This self-reliance was demonstrated not only in non-theological matters but also over issues central to Christian philosophy. She had a long drawn out dispute over the miraculous birth of Christ as well as the concept of the Holy

Trinity. During this discussion she refused to accept the view that the Anglican Church in particular represented the sole treasury of truth whereas all other Christians were followers of false doctrines.

She infuriated Sister Geraldine, her mentor in the Anglican Church, who turned 'mad with rage' when she argued that the latter had no right to characterise dissenters as 'heretics', since she herself belonged to a heretic church in the eyes of the Roman Catholics.'8

It is not surprising, therefore, that the missionaries who had thought that they had gained a prize catch when they converted her were deeply disappointed and annoyed. She was variously described as someone whom the devil was attempting to get hold of, or as too self-reliant, which in the case of a 'neophyte was intensely dangerous'.'? There was great anxiety also that if she returned to India too soon Christianity would lose its hold over her completely.°° Ramabai's refusal to allow the missionaries to dictate the nature of her relationship to God, to India and to Hinduism were at the heart of the reproaches they directed against her. Her lifestyle, (for example, following a vegetarian diet), was regarded as caste prejudice and evidence of her false pride.*' In response she argued that she liked to be called a Hindu, 'for I am one', and wanted to

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keep all the customs of her forefathers as far as she could, as long as they were not hurtful to her neighbours.8? She went on to say decisively that she would not allow anyone to 'lay hands on my personal liberty'. Declaring that she had a mind strong enough to resist 'meaningless social customs' which deprived a woman of her proper place in society, she had refused to accept a decision of the Church to disallow her to teach men. She described the bishops' position as a personal insult to her which she would not accept.*?

Unable now to pursue her study of medicine, thwarted in her role as teacher and refusing the authority of the Church to interpret

God to her, Ramabai decided that it was better to have the 'shade of an old tree, or the meanest hut', rather than be dictated to. For Ramabai, faith had to be consistent with conviction, with the inner voice which she often used to great effect in any controversy, or with conscience which would at all times guide one's actions, and was above any authority or anyone's belief.*4

Perhaps the dual burden in Ramabai's relationship with the Anglican Church, in which she had to accept the direct colonial mentality of the Church and its male authority structures, as well as its missionary ambitions, explains her decision to go to America in search of support for her work in India. The Anglican missionaries were ambivalent about her going. She became the prize catch, the rare Indian jewel, whom America stole from England.®

Yet, they felt it was better that she went since they had been unable to make her work within their framework of priorities. But they made some attempt to hold on to Manoramabai, the Pandita's daughter. The missionaries may have recognised that ensuring a degree of pliancy in an adult, even if she was a woman without definite support, was difficult to achieve. Training one from childhood onwards might have better success.

Ramabai's continuous travels in America and her preoccupation with lecturing, writing and raising funds meant that she found it difficult to keep Mano with her. The sisters at Wantage were more than happy to have her and later tried to resist the child's return to her mother. Ramabai, however, was adamant that Mano must grow among her own people, live like them so that she could serve them and decide for herself what her particular religious beliefs within various Christian sects must be. The missionaries were quite scornful of the Pandita's ideas, describing how Mano's early cultivated training was ruined when she returned to India and how

Structure and Agency: A Life and a Time 325 much like a "little pig" she was thanks to her mother's peculiar notions about a simple Indian upbringing.®° The Anglican missionaries were not sympathetic to Pandita Ramabai's attempts to integrate in her life and work a commitment to her own people and culture with a deep faith in Christ.

This lack of space to manoeuvre different aspects, needs and beliefs was a continual problem that Pandita Ramabai faced in her life. The Anglican missionaries demanded that she work in a kind of structure and were suspicious of her 'Indian' side; the Brahmana intelligentsia with whom she tried to work later were deeply suspicious of her 'Christian' side. Wedged between the two, Ramabai alienated first one set,of people and then another.

Ramabai went to America ostensibly to attend the graduation of a distant cousin, Anandibai Joshi, in 1886,°" and stayed on for two years travelling from coast to coast. From her experiences it would appear that a certain 'secular' support was available to women pursuing professional and social goals. This came from women's groups such as the Christian Temperance Union, the Suffragettes, and the Abolitionists (of slavery) who mobilised women for social change.®* Anandibai Joshi's medical education had been facilitated through the intervention of Mrs Carpenter and Dr Rachel Bodley, and a number of women provided hospitality and ae to Ramabai during her two-year stay in the United States.8 During this period Ramabai addressed hundreds of meetings, sometimes as many as four in a day, and travelled over 50,000 kilometres, doing an incredible amount of 'writing, speaking travelling, entertaining, and thinking' as part of her effort to collect money for the Widows'

Home."

Ramabai was apparently the first public figure from India to solicit funds for setting up social institutions back home. A few years later Vivekananda, too, would do the same, using a very different strategy and for a very different agenda. Ramabai appealed to the American women as women, to help the oppressed widows of India. It was to publicise their miserable state that Ramabai wrote her best-known work The High Caste Hindu Woman. The book was widely sold; proceeds from its sales helped to repay the Wantage sisters for their support in England (this would end her obligation to them) and to set up a fund for the opening of a widows' home in India.2! At the same time the book functioned to disseminate information about the plight of the high-caste Hindu widow. It

326 REWRITING HISTORY

resulted in the formation of the American Ramabai Association to provide funds for the opening and continued maintenance of the Widows' Home in India. When she finally set sail for India from San Francisco in 1888 she had completed the initial task of raising funds, but was clearly nervous about the road ahead which, she wrote, 'seemed dark, unknown, and so difficult' that she felt almost as if she were going back to a strange people." It was not without reason, because her actions continued to be independent and defiant, plunging her repeatedly into controversy. j Ramabai's visible achievements during the years she spent in America and the drive with which she proceeded to set up the home for widows, could not but impress the elite of Bombay and Poona.

She called her home Sharada Sadan, the home of learning. The disappointment and opposition expressed even by the reform party at her conversion, melted, at least for the moment, since Ramabai had succeeded where others had not even seriously begun, in setting up such an institution. Ramabai desired to open and run the widows' home with support from Brahmana men, some of whom she had worked with in 1882-83, since the concept of such an institution was still somewhat unorthodox and required public support from at least a section of the communities from which the high-caste widows were to be drawn.

Sharada Sadan was inaugurated in March

in Bombay, with Mrs Kashibai Kanitkar presiding over the function. Characteristically, Ramabai's initiative was hailed by the press as an indication that 'native' society was alive and vigorous. The 'race' that had produced her had nothing to ear proclaimed a journalist in the Bombay

Educational Record."

In the first three years the number of inmates in Sharada Sadan gradually rose. Ramabai continued in her role as champion of women's issues and participated in the annual Congress meeting held in Bombay in December 1889. Speaking before an assembly of 2,000 delegates, including 10 women, at a time when the liberal

Ranade considered it undesirable that women should take part in politics, she pointedly drew the attention of the men to the way they had marginalised women. 'It is not strange, my countrymen,' she said, 'that my voice is small, for you have never given a woman the chance to make her voice strong'.°* A few days later she took a strong stand at the meeting of the third National Social Conference on the humiliation of child widows. On the issue of

Structure and Agency: A Life and a Time 327 introducing a regulation banning the tonsuring of widows, Ramabai argued that women should be left to decide for themselves 'freely' whether they wished to be tonsured. Recognising the agency of women, she insisted that a widow must decide how she would live: if she wished to have her head shaved she should be allowed to do so. But at the same time Ramabai made it amply clear that although she had come across a great number of widows she had never yet met one who was willing to have her head shaved. Driving home her point, she demanded to know from the men whether any of them would have their heads shaved on the death of their wives.

Using the by-now common arguments of the nationalists of their right to free speech, about which a great deal had been said in that very hall, she ended by demanding the same privilege for women.

On her part, she said, she was convinced that if Indian women were given the opportunity to decide for themselves they, like the women of Sparta, would then join their husbands in the defence of their people.*> Ramabai's understanding of patriarchy, her ready wit and quick repartee also came in extremely handy when she was faced by hostile men and women. When the Age of Consent controversy created a polarisation among elites, with the militant nationalists championing tradition, Ramabai drew back the attention of the audience to the real issues that needed focusing on: the rights of women. At a women's convention in Bombay, women reformers such as Kashibai Kanitkar and Ramabai were charged with sacrificing family relations.

A woman participant demanded to know from Mrs Kanitkar if she would like her son-in-law to be sued in a court for infringing the conditions laid down in the Bill.

While Mrs Kanitkar fumbled for a suitable reply Ramabai shot back, 'Never mind the son-in-law, his life is not worth more than that of the daughter'.*° Despite unsympathetic audiences Ramabai continued to weigh in with her opinion on any issue that affected women, even if she was shouted down. And, in a characteristic reformulation, she redefined loyalty and patriotism in terms of the worship of mothers rather than some tokenist display of loyalty to the 'Queen'.2" Finally, her pragmatic approach to social and national questions is revealed in her advocacy of Hindi as the most effective language for the nation."

Within the Sharada Sadan Ramabai tried to provide the widowed inmates with a new understanding of themselves. Over

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the years, particularly after she moved to Kedgaon, she experimented with ideas that could provide women with space to grow and be self-sufficient, a sort of female community for women of all castes

(unlike other institutions where only Brahmana women were admitted), providing a sanctuary for them within the larger society which was dominated by men."? Since widows had been regarded as social outcasts and were expected to lead joyless lives, Ramabai attempted to return them to the larger social body, as well as to help them build a new and meaningful life. Within threemonths of the opening of Sharada Sadan she noted a change in the nature of her girls who had happy times singing together with Ramabai in the evenings, enjoying the simple joys of just being alive.!°°

Significantly, Ramabai's attitude to the remarriage of widows was very different from that of the male reformers as we have already seen. It was just one way of returning widowed women to society but not the only way since, in her view, they were not merely sexual beings whose sexuality posed a threat to the social order. There were a number of ways by which widows could live, as teachers, nurses, or workers. At Mukti Sadan in Kedgaon her girls did everything from weaving, dairy farming, cooking, gardening, running a printing press and even farming.'®! What she did insist upon was that all categories of women, including widows, were to be fully integrated into the social community in which no woman was regarded as inauspicious. When her first student, the child widow

Godubai (named Anandibai after her marriage), was to be remarried to Dr Karve, a grand reception was attended by fifty or sixty widows who had organised the whole function.!®" By integrating widows into society, Ramabai was reconceptualising widowhood and womanhood in a way that most male reformers could never think of.

It was probably this unique social vision, born out of a personal understanding and based on her own experiences, that led to what was almost an inevitable conflict with Hindu society, including the 'reform party'. In setting up Sharada Sadan, the Ramabai Association of America had decided that it should be 'secular', with no religious teaching of any kind. Further, a number of the Brahmana male reformers were appointed to the Advisory Board which functioned also as the Managing Board. Evidently, although the Ramabai Association had been generous with its support, it was not free of male authority structures; it had put Ramabai in charge

Structure and Agency: A Life and a Time 329 of the women but placed the reformers in authority over Ramabai.

(As represented by the latter, however, it was Ramabai who had refused to function without 'absolute power'.) Over a period of time Ramabai found herself obstructed over basic decisions, even on the subject of which girls could be admitted since such decisions were made by the "Managing Board'.!° Apparently, the Ramabai

Association of America wanted to work within notions of existing social norms and so, both in America and in India, men were put in charge of the Widows' Home. In November 1890, a year after the Sadan was opened, Ramabai moved to Poona since Bombay was proving too expensive. Orthodox Poona maintained a more effective surveillance of the Sadan and soon a series of controversies arose about the impending or actual conversion of Brahmana widows in the institution. Brahmanical society in Poona became hysterical. Deep-seated fears about what an institution for widows, where they were to be educated and made useful, would do to Hindu society, partly explained the lack of enthusiasm for setting up such an institution. The fact that the institution was headed by a Christian woman had added to the anxiety but now the rumours about conversion gave a hysterical edge to the fears. That widows, the dregs of Hindu society, should have the audacity to seek conversion was unthinkable. This would imply a recognition of women's agency — a right to determine the course of their own lives which even the reformers were unwilling to grant them, but which Ramabai insisted on. Further, such an assertion of choice was a rejection of the moral order of Brahmanism. It would also be a declaration by the widows that they found Brahmanical patriarchal practices unacceptable and therefore they wished to break from them. The attack on Ramabai by Tilak and others was virulent: not only was she a Christian but she was in charge of an institution housing young women away from the control of male kin. In recalling the controversy over Ramabai's own conversion and about the widows in Sharada Sadan, we need to note that other women, like Lakshmibai Tilak, who converted (following their husbands) did not arouse such strong emotions. Their conversion was regarded as natural. It was only women who decided for themselves who were perceived as dangerous.

The entire 'conversion' controversy brought to the fore the hypocrisy of upper-caste Hindu society. While the conservative among them were not uncomfortable about the degradation and

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humiliation inhering in widowhood, the reformers went along with the idea of an institution because it would provide a home for their social outcasts. But even they did not want an open recognition of the widows' abandonment of their ancestral faith since this was tantamount to a critique of Brahmanical patriarchal tradition within which they had comfortably accommodated their own agenda of reform.

Ramabai summed up the Board's limited agenda and her relationship with it thus:

; We must never expect to give anything better than food and raiment, and teach a few letters to the girls. I had from the beginning intended in all sincerity to give my girls full religious freedom. I would not prevent them from reading the sacred books of their own religion, so too I did not mean to prevent them from reading the Bible if they wished to do so fully understanding what they were doing. I would never have tried to decide then not to induce minors to learn my religion against the wishes of their parents and guardians... but now as the case stands I shall be obliged to let the girls have full freedom regarding their ancestral religion and prevent them from reading the Bible even if they or the guardians wish me to let

Dae ox something about Christianity. Here my conscience smites me.!° Ramabai found out the hard way that along with American funds went conditions, that there were no funds without controls.

The members of her Board who reacted sharply to her position, on practising her own faith on the premises without having to shut the doors against her girls!°° (who otherwise had free access to her rooms), in their turn were insecure about how the widows of their communities would react to religious ideas other than their own and did not want to antagonise Brahmana men from whom they

(the Board members) were drawn.! At the core of the controversy was the question: who has custody of women? Can women be permitted to decide for themselves? Clearly the reaction over the conversions indicates that men were not willing to give up their control over the women of their community even when they had little use for them otherwise.

The controversy regarding conversions finally ended with the reformers on the Board, including Ranade and Bhandarkar, resigning.'°" For a while many high-caste widows were withdrawn.

But as long as there was no other institution, upper caste widows who had no home had perforce to be sent to the Sharada Sadan.

Structure and Agency: A Life and a Time

Ramabai describes how even when rancorous attacks were being made against her and her institution, the orthodox neighbours of a poor Brahmana widow who was being persecuted by her relatives, pointed to the Sharada Sadan as the place for her to go. Ironically, it was Ramabai Ranade (whose husband was on the Board and who went on to resign) who brought in the young widow, accompanied by her child. The girl had been so miserable that she did not want to think twice about going to Sharada Sadan. The account of this event suggests that it was a number of 'orthodox' Brahmana women who spearheaded this move; they went to Ramabai Ranade's house and got her to act with the support of two 'orthodox' widows in the house who had earlier been very critical of the Pandita.!%8

The threat posed by Ramabai's institution, given her refusal to submit to an agenda set by middle-class reformers, finally led to the setting-up of a widows' home in Hingne by D.K. Karve in 1896.

Karve's institution was very cautiously administered and his work on widow remarriage was strictly separated from the institution he set up for widows. Its regulations were so framed that a widow of the school who remarried had to leave it. Further, the institution was open only to Brahmana widows.'!® In Karve's institution Brahmana reformers finally found the perfect institutional answer to their project for young widows: a widows' home safely in the hands of a moderate, respectable, Brahmana man

— a marked contrast to that 'disastrous' first experiment they had supported, an institution in the hands of a defiant widow herself.

Looking back at the controversy over the possible conversion of widows from the vantage-point of today, how do we understand

Ramabai's action? It has been suggested that with her conversion, particularly after the confrontation with the Board of Advisers,

Ramabai ceased to influence her society.'!! This view is only partially tenable. It is possible that Ramabai could only have

332 REWRITING HISTORY

influenced Brahmanical society in a certain way if she had remained a Hindu widow. But the argument can also be turned around — how far could she have gone in her own life and in her conceptualisation of society and of women's place in it, if she had remained a Hindu widow, contained within the agenda set by men of her caste and class? Ramabai had tried to work within certain norms even if she did not agree with them. For example, she made arrangements for the widows at Sharada Sadan to pursue their caste practices; cooking and living arrangements followed caste rules at all costs, even if they affected Ramabai personally.'!? But as the preceding account indicates, there were real constraints on an independent woman like her which made it difficult for Ramabai to work within certain structures of authority.

Further, it is necessary for us to understand, without prejudice, that as a deeply religious woman with social concerns Ramabai's dissatisfaction with Hindu social practices led her to find fulfilment in Christianity. !!9 Thereafter she insisted on the right of all, including the widows at Sharada Sadan, to have the same choice.

While she believed in the higher value of Christianity and wished to proselytise, she did not approve of intolerance and sectarianism.

She continued to have very close relations with Godubai (Anandibai Karve) who had expressed an impulsive desire to become a Christian but finally remained a Hindu. Many years later Godubai, who regarded Sharada Sadan as her 'mother's home' and returned to it to have her first child, went on to describe her own religion as Ramabai's, service to others.!!4 Characteristic of the combination of Ramabai's acceptance of others' beliefs and her own desire to lead them to the 'truth' she had found, was an incident recorded by Ramabai Ranade. After a forty-year association with the latter during which she had remained an active Prarthana Samaiist,

Pandita Ramabai preached Christianity to her, even as she lay dying.'!> Clearly Pandita Ramabai never gave up trying, although it was not the primary basis of a relationship with people she came in contact with.

She clung to the principle of free will despite the awareness that it would annoy those whose feelings she cherished as, for example, when she insisted that Manorama, her daughter, must decide for herself when she became a major which particular sect of the Christian church appealed to her.'!® Ramabai's position on religion was summed up as 'neutrality in Sharada Sadan in matters of

Structure and Agency: A Life and a Time 333 religion along with liberty', the right to exercise choice in matters of faith.!17

If the break with Brahmanical/Hindu society came it came consciously, but it was also inevitable, given Ramabai's personality and the work she set out to do. Further it is also necessary to bear in mind that the years of the controversy over the working of Sharada Sadan coincided with the peak of the struggle between various factions within the Poona elite. Tilak had used every issue of gender or religion to consolidate his base among the upper castes and had successfully wrenched leadership away from the moderate reformers. The marginalised reformers were caught on the horns of a dilemma. They broadly supported Ramabai's work but, in the face of the conservative assault upon them, did not wish to be marginalised further. The reformers' break with Ramabai was inevitable, given their own larger concerns of continuing to stake their claim for social leadership in Maharashtra against Brahmanas like Tilak. By the last decade of the nineteenth century the struggle among contending parties to define the social and national agenda had reached a flash-point. The years of the controversy at Sharada

Sadan also coincided with Vivekananda's address to the Chicago Parliament of Religions, and his public denial in the USA of oppressive practices imposed on widows in India. Vivekananda's travels in the US to collect funds for his work were a counter to the appeals Ramabai had earlier made.

The controversy in America between the followers of Vivekananda and the members of the Ramabai Association was noteworthy because it raised certain issues which have resurfaced in Indian politics. The question that was at the heart of the controversy was: were widows in India oppressed and deprived of their rights? The basis of Ramabai's lectures and writing had been to make amply clear that widows were oppressed in Brahmanical society. She had aroused American women's sympathy for, possibly even guilt about, their 'sisters' on the other side of the globe.

Vivekananda's lecture (that triggered off the controversy) was about the status of women in India. In January 1895 Vivekananda's lecture on 'Ideals of Womanhood — Hindu, Mohammedan and Christian' was reported in the Daily Standard Union of January

21.118 The ideal of womanhood, according to Swamiji, centred in the Aryan race of India, the most ancient in the world's history. In that race men and women were priests, or 'co-religionists'. But with

334 REWRITING HISTORY

the advent of a distinct priest class the co-priesthood of the woman took a step back. It was the Semitic races which first proclaimed that women had no voice. The degeneration of women's status over time throughout the world was however ultimately replaced by another ideal of womanhood: in the west it was the wife, in India the mother.!!? Then followed the remark that set off the controversy: in India woman has enjoyed property rights for thousands of years. Here (in America) a man may disinherit his wife, in India the whole of the estate of the deceased husband must go to the wife, 'personal property absolutely, real property for life',!2° the Swami proclaimed.

The Swami then went on to outline the spirituality even of the act of reproduction. The Aryan was one who was born through prayer, the non-Aryan one who was born through sensuality. So deeply was this recognised in India that there was adultery in marriage unless marriage was consummated in prayer. The secret of the Aryan race lay in chastity.

After this 'stupendous speech' Vivekananda wrote that the men did not quite appreciate his lecture but the women were ecstatic about it.!*? However, women of the Boston circle of the Ramabai

Association contested the Swami's emphatic statement on the property rights of widows.!*? In the course of the controversy both sides brought in the opinions of European scholars, Rhys Davids for Vivekananda and Max Muller for Ramabai, to establish the 'honesty' of the two Indians.!*4 While the controversy ran its course without either side giving in, what is significant is that, the recurrent theme of India's image came up. The attack on Ramabai was directed at the 'poor opinion' of India that she evoked in the American mind so that American papers were replete with statements such as 'Widows are not allowed to marry again, and are left to starve and drudge'.!*5 Another point made was about the acceptance of funds. The Swami was represented by his followers as making a distinction about taking money from distant countries of an alien faith which respectable high-caste Hindus would be repelled by and the 'voluntary, free will offering from people of calm judgment, intellectually convinced of the importance of the work' he was doing.'?° Throughout the controversy Vivekananda was reported as reiterating that widows were not oppressed; if they did not remarry it was because there was a scarcity of men,!?" that even if old men

Structure and Agency: A Life and a Time 335 married young girls and then died leaving them widows, 'if the husband was wealthy it was all the better for the widow the sooner he died.' He was also reported to have said, 'I have travelled all over India, but failed to see a case of ill treatment mentioned.' He later corrected the report by saying that while he denied that all widows were ill-treated some cases of ill-treatment might occur. These, however, were sporadic and exceptional. He repudiated the statement that the ill-treatment of widows was an accepted and traditional part of Hindu custom.'78

Throughout the controversy both sides were careful not to have either Ramabai or Vivekananda directly making references to each other. It was their viewpoints about Indian women, especially

Indian widows, that were in contest. Further, the issue of Indian women was somewhat rhetorical for Vivekananda — an aspect of India's great tradition and its ability to provide spiritual solace to the west — but the Swamiji had a grand agenda in which opinion about widowhood was important only to the extent that it did not prick the bubble of spiritual greatness. In keeping with this mode of reconciling what might be an uncomfortable reminder of the mundane concerns of widows, Vivekananda's supporters argued that Ramabai had misrepresented, wilfully or otherwise, the condition of widows as decreed by Hindu religious law and custom.

The truth, instead, according to Swamiji's supporters was that the life of the Hindu widow, rich or poor, young or old, was one of religious asceticism, that is to say, of poverty and self-denial.!?? The widow's life, by custom, was one in which spiritual and moral values were held supreme and therefore it was, by custom, austere.

Outsiders (read the American public) were unaware of this fact but to those who understood it the widow's life was entirely different from that portrayed by Ramabai. Widows in Hindu society represented an informal order of nuns; in India the life of spiritual renunciation, which the widow undertook, was universally considered to be a far more exalted and fruitful life than that of matrimony. And most importantly, it was argued, the remarkable fact was that the widow, whatever her previous disposition may have been, often developed the prized qualities of endurance, fortitude, selflessness and serenity. 'Devoting herself to religious practices she became spiritually alive'.!3° On the sticky question of the widow's rights to inheritance, it was argued that the Swamiji should know, he had studied law; but to clinch the issue it was held

336 REWRITING HISTORY

that the status of the Hindu mother was so high and unassailable that the Hindu lawgivers never thought of legislating specifically for her support by her sons.!?!

Given this construction of Hindu widowhood, it is not surprising that Ramabai was bitter about India's spiritualists.

Travelling in north India, a year after Vivekananda's storming of America, Ramabai's ire was in full evidence, especially in Banaras,

Mathura, and Brindavan where widows lived out their 'ascetic' existences: at these centres where 'sublime' philosophies were daily taught, she found that widows were oppressed, neglected and (sexually) exploited without any 'Mahatma championing their cause'. The image of India in the west surfaced once more and she appealed to the 'learned brothers and comfortable sisters' there that they take a good look, beyond the poetry, into the prose of women's lives and decide for themselves (after living like them as beggars, going in and out of their dirty huts), about the nature of the fruits of the 'sublime philosophies'.

!3* The reality of the widow's life was not a matter that could be settled in America and in any case the Swami said different things about caste and women's status to Indian audiences. Even in America Vivekananda, probably for tactical reasons, decided to take donations for Sasipada Banerji's home for widows in Calcutta,!%4 scoring a point about more 'patriotic' attempts at social work than

Ramabai's efforts in Poona. The controversy is notable for the larger question of gender versus nation; taking funds from people, especially women, whose guilt about not being 'womanly' enough or spiritual enough had been evoked by Vivekananda with his exhortations to them to invest in their own spiritual regeneration and that of the west as a whole, was respectable and patriotic.

Ramabai's strategy, on the other hand, was undignified and by implication unpatriotic because it tarnished the image of the proud and noble Hindus, whose history and culture were the oldest, and whose spirituality was untarnished even if they were materially impoverished.

Vivekananda's strong disapproval of Ramabai's conversion to Christianity and her appeal on behalf of Hindu widows were aspects of cultural nationalism that obscured oppressive Hindu social practices and gender contradictions, especially when addressing a western audience. A complex of pressures was simultaneously working on Ramabai and her attempt to integrate

Structure and Agency: A Life and a Time 337 a range of positions in her own life and work. The intersection of caste, class, religion and gender had, by the end of the nineteenth century, worked to form a particular construction of the nation which was exclusivist in orientation. Ramabai and her standpoint on gender and religion could not be accommodated in this construction and so she became the 'betrayer' of her nation because the nation itself came to be viewed in terms of a predominantly

Hindu ethos. Ramabai's direct and indirect experiences with liberal and radical Hindu nationalists alienated her from her original social moorings and reduced the space for her intervention and participation in the contemporary agendas of her male counterparts in western India. After the abandonment by 'liberal' Hindus,

Ramabai appears to have gradually turned away from the upper-caste intelligentsia in Poona and Bombay and broadened the arena of her operations. The famine of 1897 proved to be decisive in the shift. Ramabai recalled the last famine in which her own parents had died. The memory of human beings forced to fend for themselves, a situation in which many women, especially widows, were abandoned, and the great danger to young women from predatory men as they wandered about in search of food, made her decide to rescue as many girls as she could. 134 Travelling into Central India where the famine was severe, she brought, at first a few, and then hundreds, of girls back to Mukti Sadan in Poona.

However, some prominent citizens comprising Europeans, Parsis and Mohammedans who were horrified by the 'rabble' she brought in to live in the Sadan, objected on the ground that there would be problems of civic amenities and sought municipal intervention.

Not to be thwarted, and demonstrating a high degree of initiative, she moved all the famine-stricken girls to Kedgaon where she had a plot of land.!3> It was here that she set up the institution that occupied her for the rest of her life. By now Hindus showed less interest in what she did; rescuing poor starving girls was not a matter to be concerned about even if they were certainly to be converted into Christians. Only Tilak, consistent with his earlier position, objected. It mattered to him that any Hindu girl, upper caste or lower, rich or poor, became Christian, although there is little evidence that Hindu social reformers themselves did anything concrete for famine victims. They may of course have exhorted and criticised the government for not doing enough. Even the American

Ramabai Association did not approve of the move to Kedgaon as

REWRITING HISTORY

it put the institution out of the reach of the upper castes for whom it had been intended.!3° Resourceful as ever, Ramabai turned to Australia for financial support.'*"

Ramabai's sense of alienation from groups and institutions around her was heightened by a decisive confrontation with the colonial state. Until the plague episode Ramabai had steered clear of the colonial government, although its existence and patriarchal bias had come in for a scathing attack during the Rakhmabai controversy. Pointing to the interlocking nature of patriarchies and distinguishing between Christianity and the British government, she had denounced the latter's judicial decree sending Rakhmabai to jail. Noting the compact between the British government and the male population of India, she said that there was no hope for the women of India, whether they be under Hindu or British rule,!38

In 1897 however Ramabai became embroiled in a controversy that brought on the wrath of the colonial state and the Anglican missionaries. (This is an episode which some of Ramabai's missionary supporters and biographers usually pass by in their accounts of her life and work.) The government's anti-plague measures were unpopular with many Brahmanas, those of Poona in particular, with many charges of high-handedness, and invasion of homes being levelled by Indian leaders against the authorities.

Ramabai, characteristically, was concerned as always with the gender dimensions of the measures and the sexual hazards faced by girls from the state's employees. She wrote to the Bombay Guardian criticising the plague measures and the government's handling of the epidemic. She gave details of one of her girls who, on mere suspicion of plague, was forcibly taken to the segregation camp and later abducted by one of the watchmen. The letter created a furore and the matter was taken up by a member of the British Parliament.

She repeated the charges a few months later, accusing the British authorities of not recognising that 'Indian women were modest' and needed special consideration. In any case she wished to know if the English woman 'poor though she may be' would like to be exposed to the public gaze and roughly handled by male doctors.

Was the Indian woman not as modest as the English, she queried. The Indian woman had deserved better treatment at the hands of the Governor and the Plague Committee, Ramabai asserted, !9?

Furious at the charges, the Governor of Bombay, Lord

Structure and Agency: A Life and a Time 339 Sandhurst, dismissed them as grossly inaccurate and misleading without even conducting an enquiry. This provoked Ramabai once more to write to the Bombay Guardian, this time taking on the 'Honourable' Governor himself for playing upon the supposed failings of the 'Orientals' of not substantiating their charges. But as Ramabai sharply pointed out the 'Occident' could also boast of such people, including the 'worthy' Governor, who had made certain charges against her without offering any proof of their truth.

Since the letters she was writing were being published in a newspaper edited by the American missionary Alfred Dyer, she appealed to the 'conscientious Christian public' in the name of truth and justice to decide whether Lord Sandhurst had done the proper thing by dismissing the charges she had made.!4°

Unfortunately for Ramabai, at least on this occasion the conscientious Christian public in the Anglican Church, including her dear friend Sister Geraldine (Ajibai), stood by the colonial state and regarded her letter as childish, sensational and seditious. She suggested that Ramabai had contributed to the agitation which culminated in the murder of Ayerst and Rand, two officials believed to have acted brutally towards the people. The Christian Patriot warned her that she was treading a dangerous path, and other

'Christian well-wishers' in England suggested that she make a written recantation of the statements in her letter.!4! Ramabai, however, stood her ground and for a while it was believed that she was close to arrest.

!4 Unfortunately, Sister Geraldine, did not really understand either the stand Ramabai had taken while in England, or this one back on her native soil, and believed that her actions had put her at a disadvantage vis-a-vis the government. !43

Ramabai's persistence with her charges and her refusal to be brow-beaten by the colonial state or a section of the missionaries

(which earned her some respect from her old adversary Tilak) was a contrast to the behaviour of Poona Brahmana men. While in England to give evidence before the Royal Commission on Finance,

Gokhale had, on the basis of accounts sent to him from Poona, suggested that the conduct of Ayerst and Rand had been high-handed. When Gokhale returned an enquiry was instituted into his allegations but his 'friends' were no longer willing to substantiate his charges. They besought him not to reveal their identities. Finding that, except for Ramabai, everyone had retreated,

Gokhale decided to tender an apology.!4

340 REWRITING HISTORY

By the turn of the century Ramabai's alienation from her erstwhile middle-class compatriots, the Hindu nationalists, the colonial state, as well as the Anglican missionaries, was complete.

Unable to fit into anyone else's agenda, she was often castigated but sometimes grudgingly admired. The gradual shift away from the middle-class base in which Ramabai had worked initially, and for a while even after she adopted Christianity as her faith, had an unfortunate consequence: the possibilities of a dialogue berween her and middle-class reformers, and between reformist Hinduism and Indian interpretations of Christianity, were reduced.!*° Increasingly, in her later years, Ramabai turned inwards much more to a gospel-based Christianity (while retaining a distance from any particular denomination) and then to an emotional rather than

'intellectual' relationship with Christ.!4° In 1905 Mukti Sadan was visited by a Pentecostal Christian preacher and following this the Ramabai community of women experienced an 'awakening'. They

'spoke in tongues', there was much weeping and hysterical laughter as part of the 'Revival'.!47 At least for a while this form of worship, described as 'mass hysteria', may have expressed the feelings of Ramabai and her girls. It did not last long and the institution reverted to its quieter forms of worship, singing Marathi irtanas composed by the Christian poet Waman Narayan Tilak.!48

Ramabai learnt Greek and Hebrew in order to provide a more authentic Marathi translation of the Bible, which then 'her girls' would print in the press at Mukti. This was her last piece of work as she grew increasingly hard of hearing. When she died in 1922 she had experienced tragedy anew:

Manorama had died unexpectedly a few months earlier. The Marathi press gave her a typical obituary, admiring her initiative and spirit but bemoaning her adoption of Christianity.!4? The ambivalence persisted. Perhaps the most liberal summing-up she got was from D.K. Karve, the husband of her first widow pupil at Sharada Sadan, who had taken

Brahmana widows into safe custody following Ramabai's decisive split with Hindu society in 1893. When Ramabai's centenary was being celebrated in 1958 he said reflectively, 'It was our own fault that this great woman, like Dr Ambedkar, was lost to the Hindu religion'.!°° Perhaps this is one way to read Ramabai's stormy relationship with her society. But equally perhaps this is too simple a reading of Ramabai's complex interaction with her times.

Structure and Agency: A Life and a Time

EPILOGUE If we look closely at the history of individuals and of a region such as Maharashtra in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries we can see that recourse to the theme of 'betrayal' of a culture and of the country was a highly emotive way of marginalising certain individuals and their points of view. It was also a way of establishing others as the 'truly authentic' spokespersons of their people. In the Poena Deccan region the label of 'betrayers' was easily applied and was a construct of Tilak who at the height of the Age of Consent controversy had gone so far as to say that the moderate Reformers should form themselves into a separate nationality. If this was

Tilak's reaction to the Reformers' moderate agenda for the improvement of the condition of women without transforming the real bases of Brahmanical patriarchy, what chance did Ramabai have of inclusion in the embryonic nation as defined by Tilak? She had rejected a whole set of oppressive practices which she saw as integral to Hinduism and had thus rejected the culture of the dominant class of her time. Branding her a betrayer was intended to marginalise her as a person as well as suppress her critique of Hindu society.

It was possible to 'sediment' the image of Ramabai as a 'betrayer' because in the constructed perception of a certain class (comprising mainly the upper castes) Christianity was regarded as a handmaiden of imperialism and was conflated with colonialism. A conversion to Christianity then became a betrayal not just of ancestral 'religion' but of the nation because the nation is ipso facto 'Hindu'.

And it is because the 'nation' has come to be viewed, even by those who regarded themselves as secular, in terms of a predominantly Hindu ethos that there has been a certain ambiguity about Ramabai's place in Indian society. If it was not so, it would be apparent that neither the conversion to Christianity nor her use of funds from American supporters nor her advocating Christianity to others can make her a 'betrayer' of the nation. Ramabai's conflict with the colonial government, her understanding of the manner in which colonial patriarchy interlocked with indigenous patriarchy to tyrannise women and her conflict with the Anglican Church should indicate that her focus was at all times on the women of India living under oppressive structures and practices. On our part we need to recognise that it is time to break down the false divide on 'loyalty'

342 REWRITING HISTORY

to the nation created by those with little concern for its oppressed sections or those for whom there could be only one oppressive relationship, that between the colonising and the colonised. As Phule argued, was it patriotic to oppress one's own people, the lower castes, while one might be eloquent in opposing the colonial government?!>! It was not that Phule and Ramabai betrayed the nation — rather they were the ones who were betrayed — as were their concerns — by the 'narrow' basis of a nationalism which itself was merely a construct of upper caste men.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

1. For a theoretical discussion of agency in the context of gender see Kumkum Sangari, 'Consent, Agency and the Rhetorics of Incitement', Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 27, No. 18, 1 May

1993, pp. 867-82.

, 2. At least from as early as the sixth century B.C,the Buddhist texts describe the existence of two types of Brahmanas, the ascetic

Brahmana and the grahastha Brahmana. The former was the 'ideal' type, as he had the minimum of material possessions and devoted himself fully to the pursuit of salvation. The grahastha Brahmana was the 'deviant' Brahmana who was indistinguishable from the rest of society as he pursued the same material goals as everyone else. By the nineteenth century the ascetic type of Brahmanas were almost extinct as a category and it was they who were now regarded as the deviants by the rest of the Brahmanas. For a more extended discussion of the ascetic Brahmana see Uma Chakravarti, The Social

Dimensions of Early Buddhism, Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1987, pp. 39-46. From the writing of Ramabai and early biographies of her, it appears that Anant Shastri Dongre tried to live out the 'ascetic' type of existence in terms of his search for truth but combined it with the grahastha type since he lived as a 'family' man even in his later years. The contradictions of the two types of life took their toll on the family as the discussion here shows.

3. Nicol Macnicol, Pandita Ramabai, Calcutta, Association Press (Y.M.C.A.), 1926, pp. 5-6.

4. Ibid., pp. 6-7.

5. Pandita Ramabai, A Testimony of Our Inexhaustible Treasure, Kedgaon (Poona), Ramabai Mukti Mission, 1907, (1992 reprint), pp. 10-11.

6. Ibid., pp. 12-13.

Structure and Agency: A Life and a Time 343 7. Pandita Ramabai Saraswati, The High Caste Hindu Woman, p. xi;

Max Muller, "My Indian Friends', in Life and Letters of F. Max Muller, Edited by his Wife, London, Green and Company, 1902,

Vol. Il, p. 125.

8. See for example the accounts of five Brahmana families in D.D.

Karve, New Brahmans.

9. Uma Chakravarti, 'Renouncer and Householder in Early Buddhism', Social Analysis, No. 13, May 1983, pp. 70-81.

10. Pandita Ramabai, Testimony, pp. 11-12.

11. Pandita Ramabai, The High Caste Hindu Woman, pp. 62-63.

12. Macnicol, Pandita Ramabai, p. 25.

13. Ibid., pp. 25-26.

14. Pandita Ramabai, The High Caste Hindu Woman, p. xiii.

15. Pandita Ramabai, Testimony, p. 16.

16. B.C. Pal, Memories of My Life and Times, Calcutta, Bipin Chandra Pal Institute, 1973, pp. 305-06.

17. Uma Chakravarti, "Whatever Happened to the Vedic Dasi:

Orientalism, Nationalism and a Script for the Past', in Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid, Recasting Women, p. 33.

18. Padmini Sengupta, Pandita Ramabai Saraswati: Her Life and Work, Bombay, Asia Publishing House, 1970, p. 69.

19. Testimony, p. 22.

20. Jbid., pp. 18-20.

21. Ibid., p. 20.

22. Ibid., p. 21.

23 alba... 0.422.

24. The suitor, according to Bipin Chandra Pal's memoirs, was Shreepad Babaji Thakur who was fluent in English, having been to England to pass the Civil Service Examination. He spoke at a meeting in Sylhet on comparative philology and enthralled his audience. However he had not gone to Sylhet to speak on comparative philology but had visited it incognito to press his proposal of marriage to Ramabai. He had tried to lecture from the same platform as Ramabai and 'conquer' her if possible by establishing a 'strong intellectual kinship with her'. B.C. Pal writes that the whole venture was abortive as Ramabai refused to attend his lecture. The unsuccessful suitor for the hand of the famous

Pandita then saw no reason to conceal his identity any further and went back to Bombay after revealing it. B.C. Pal's account suggests that Bipin Behari Medhavi too pursued Ramabai with tenacity, following her from Sylhet to Dacca, before she agreed to marry him

(B.C. Pal, Memories, pp. 306-7).

25. Testimony, p. 22; Sister Geraldine, The Letters and Correspondence of

REWRITING HISTORY

Pandita Ramabai, Bombay, Maharashtra State Board for Literature and Culture, 1977, pp. 17-18.

Dall, The Life of Dr Anandabai Joshee, p. vi; Sister Geraldine, Letters and Correspondence, p. 18.

I1.B. Horner, Women in Primitive Buddhism: Laywomen and Almswomen, Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass, 1975, p. 196.

Heimsath, Indian Nationalism, p. 96.

. Ramabai Ranade, Reminiscences, p. 82.

. B.C. Pal, Memories, p. 307.

Letters and Correspondence, p. 18.

Testimony, p. 24.

. Ramabai Ranade, Reminiscences, p. 83; D.G. Vaidya, "The Arya Mahila Samaj: Extracts from the History of the Prarthana Samaj',

Bombay, Prarthana Samaj, cited in Padmini Sengupta, Pandita Ramabai Saraswati, Bombay, Asia Publishing House, 1970, pp.

348-51.

. Ramabai Ranade, Reminiscences, p. 83; Sengupta, Pandita Ramabai, pool.

. Education Commission, Bombay, Vol. II, September 1882; Pandita Ramabai, The High Caste Hindu Woman, pp. xvi-xviil.

Rabindra Racanabali, Vol. 13, centenary edition, Calcutta, West Bengal Government Publication, 1961, pp. 101f.

Ramabai Ranade, Reminiscences, p. 82.

Ibid., p. 83.

Ibid., pp. 105-06.

Testimony, pp. 23-24.

. See Chapter 1 p. 12 of this work.

. C.E. Gardner, Life of Father Goreh, London, Longman Green and Company, 1900, pp. 274-76; Sengupta, Pandita Ramabai, pp.

116-17.

Testimony, p. 26.

. Max Muller, 'My Indian Friends', pp. 47-65.

Pandita Ramabai, Testimony, p. 26.

. Mukti Prayer Bell, Kedgaon, Ramabai Mukti Mission, September 1907, cited in Macnicol, Pandita Ramabai, p. 59.

Sister Geraldine, Letters and Correspondence, p. 18; Pandita Ramabai, Testimony, p. 24; Pandita Ramabai, The High Caste Hindu Woman, p. xviii.

Pandita Ramabai, Stri Dharma Niti, (first published 1882), Kedgaon, Pune, Ramabai Mukti Mission, 1966 (reprint). The government had bought six hundred copies of the 1882 edition for distribution in schools (Letters and Correspondence, p. 18).

The Subodh Patrika reported (12 and 19 November 1882) the gift 48.

49.

Structure and Agency: A Life and a Time 345 of purses at her public recital of the Puranas. The Cheltenham

College Magazine reported in September 1884 that Pandita Ramabai's expenses had sometimes been defrayed by princes such as the Nawab of Junagarh (see Sengupta, Pandita Ramabai Saraswati, p. 98).

Gardner, Life of Father Goreh, p. 275.

Pandita Ramabai, Letter to Sadashiv Pandurang, 1883, cited in Sengupta, Pandita Ramabai, p. 129.

Letters and Correspondence, p. 24.

Pandita Ramabai, Testimony, pp. 25-26.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Max Muller, 'My Indian Friends', pp. 127-29.

50. ahs

eh 54. a2:

56.

DT.

58.

Letters and Correspondence, p. 11.

It appears that an unposted letter Anandi Bhagat had written to her old schoolmaster in Poona was found among her things after she died.

It was included among the letters published by Sister Geraldine in the Letters and Correspondence of Pandita Ramabai (pp.

11-14). Although we do not get biographical details of Anandi Bhagat from this letter we do get an 'insight' into her state of mind while she was in England. The letter is a mixture of longing to go back to India and a justifying of her decision to come to England.

She says that her mind is always looking forward, like a bird, to 'my India', but there are frequent references to England, its progress and its beauty. There are references also to money she had to pay for her board in England, and a scholarship she got from the government which had to be repaid. She was insecure and lonely as she could not understand why her brothers to whom she had been writing, were not replying. She was emotionally dependent on 'Pandita Bai' who loved her like her own daughter Mano, with a mother's love. The mixed feelings, and the ambivalence about home where her family and friends were and England where she was being educated, would have multiplied with the conversion and made her feel she would lose all her kin. An exit from her new place in England would be difficult as she was so far away from home.

Ramabai's guilt and sense of loneliness following Anandi's death were probably the reason why she did not write about it. Five years later when she was returning from America to India she recalled that earlier journey when she and Anandi Bhagat had set forth from home to be educated. She wrote to Sister Geraldine that she greatly missed Anandibai 'that dear faithful friend', and she hoped that Anandi rested in peace. 'It seemed very sad to return without her', wrote Ramabai (Letters and Correspondence, p. 212).

REWRITING HISTORY

Max Muller, 'My Indian Friends', pp. 127-28.

Testimony, p. 26.

. Letters and Correspondence, p. 22.

. Gardner, Father Goreh, p. 275.

. Max Muller, 'My Indian Friends', pp. 128-29.

Indu Prakash, 22 October 1883.

. Ibid., 19 November 1883.

Satsar, September 1885, reproduced in Y.D. Phadke, Collected Works of Jotiba Phule, Bombay, Maharashtra Rajya Sahitya ani

Sanskriti Mandal, 1991, pp. 345-62.

Ibid.; N.C. Kelkar, Lokamanya Tilak Yanche Charitra, Tr. by D.V.

Divekar as Life and Times of Lokamanya Tilak, Delhi, Anupama (reprint), 1987, p. 223.

Gospel of Shree Ramakrishna, p. 377, cited in Padmini Sengupta, Pandita Ramabai, p. 163.

Selections From Swami Vivekananda, Almora, Advaita Ashrama, 67.

68.

69.

1946, p. 356.

Letters and Correspondence, pp. 38-45.

70. fal fe» fk 74.

70.

Tbid., pp. 48-51, 25:

Ibid., pp. 51-52.

Ibid., pp. 43, 76.

Ibid., p. 59.

Ibid., pp. 55, 78.

Cheltenham Ladies College Magazine, Autumn 1885, Spring 1886, cited in Padmini Sengupta, Pandita Ramabai, p. 49.

Letters and Correspondence, p. 119. Ramabai's ability to rise above her Marathi Brahmana background, which she was conscious of and on occasion could evoke with pride, is notable

(Letters and Correspondence, p. 60.) Ibid., pp. 33, 159-60, 169-70.

Ibid. pp. 75-76.

Vas 78. as 80.

Ibid., p. 40.

Ibid., pp. 100-101.

Ibid., p. 109.

Ibid., p. 124.

81.

82.

83.

84.

Ibid., pp. 126, 33. The Church hierarchy was anxious about Ramabai's independence for less erudite reasons, too. At one point while she was at Cheltenham, away from the Sisters, Ramabai went to meet a Brahmana male friend in Bristol. This caused the Sisters at Wantage much embarrassment as the gentleman.had been a sort of 'attache' to the Pandita (Letters and Correspondence, p. 20). There is a certain anxiety here about Ramabai's conduct which was

'improper' in the eyes of the Sisters if it included interaction with

Structure and Agency: A Life and a Time 347 men. For Ramabai England thus became a place of restrictions, rather than of freedom and liberty (See Inderpal Grewal, Home and Harem: Nation, Gender, Empire and the Culture of Travel, Durham,

Duke University Press, 1996, pp. 179-229.

Letters and Correspondence, p. 99, 406, 300.

85.

86.

Ibid., pp. 116, 196-99, 240, 256. The case of Father Goreh's motherless baby daughter might bear out the point of the missionaries making up for their inability to control the high-caste converts by taking over the children. Lakshmi Goreh, Nilkantha's wife, had died two days after the birth of the baby. The infant was then looked after by a missionary couple, taken to England, trained there and, many years later, returned to do mission work in India.

Ramabai's fight to keep her child despite the difficulties she faced is a contrast to Goreh, who, as a man, may have considered himself unable to bring up his child himself (for Lakshmi and Nilkantha's child see C.E. Gardner, Life of Father Goreh, pp. 87-88).

Letters and Correspondence, pp. 165-66.

Ibid., pp. 407-8; Helen Dyer, Pandita Ramabai: The Story of Her 87.

88.

Life, London, Morgan and Scott, 1900, p. 23. Among those who gathered around Ramabai in Boston were the prominent social reformer Francis Willard and the Unitarian minister Edward Everett

Hale (Edith L.

Blumhofer, 'Pandita Ramabai and Indian Christianity:

A North American Perspective', unpublished typescript).

Pandita Ramabai, The High Caste Hindu Woman, p. 11.

Sister Geraldine, Letters and Correspondence, pp. 181, 219-20. Dall describes one such meeting at which six hundred people were in the audience and listened to Ramabai with rapt attention. Dall also records that Ramabai had a certain piquancy and originality, not found elsewhere (Dall, The Life of Dr Anandabai Joshee, p. 135).

89.

90.

The High Caste Hindu Woman, pp. xxi-xxiv; Letters and Correspondence, pp. 212-14. of:

93:

Letters and Correspondence, p. 184.

Indu Prakash, 11 March 1889 and 18 March 1889; Bombay Educational Record, cited in Padmini Sengupta, Pandita Ramabai, p.

184.

Report of the Fifth National Congress, p. 155, cited in Padmini Sengupta, Pandita Ramabai, p. 193.

94.

Times of India, 30 December 1889.

Cited in Padmini Sengupta, Pandita Ramabai, pp. 206-7.

OD:

96. o7:

98. ao Ibid.

Indu Prakash, 6 May 1889.

Letters and Correspondence, pp. 238, 247, 314, 342.

REWRITING HISTORY

D.K. Karve and N.M. Patwardhan, Dhondo Keshav Karve: Atma 100.

Vritta Va Charitra, Pune, Hingne Stri Shiksha Sansthan, 1956, p.

119.

Letters and Correspondence, p. 392.

D.K. Karve, Atma Vritta Va Charitra, p. 117.

101; 102.

Letters and Correspondence, pp. 269, 271-73.

103.

Tbid., pp. 268-69.

104.

Ibid., pp. 264-65.

105.

106.

Tbid., p. 269.

NiC. Kelkar, Lokamanya Tilak Yanche Charitra, English translation, p. 221.

Letters and Correspondence, pp. 275-77. The sister-in-law referred to here was probably Durga 'vahini', described as an old orthodox type in Pandita Ramabai's letter. The action of the orthodox widows in bringing the destitute and oppressed widow to Sharada. Sadan suggests that the 'traditional' system had no institutional. or alternative structures where a widow could safely find shelter.

D.K.

Karve, Looking Back, Poona, Hindu Widows' Home Association, 1939, pp. 60-61.

107.

108.

109.

D.D. Karve, New Brahmans, pp. 75-76. Vithal Ramji Shinde reported that he had wanted his sister to join the institution but Karve declined to take her on the ground that the time was not yet ripe for admitting non-Brahmana widows due to the need to maintain pollution taboos (Sister Geraldine.

Letters and Correspondence, p. xxvi).

N.C. Kelkar, Lokamanya Tilak, p. 223.

110.

1S Ws, Sister Geraldine, Letters and Correspondence, pp. 249.

In this context we may recall Vidyasagar's disillusionment with Hindu society. Towards the end of his life, in a high state of despondency, he told a visitor from Maharashtra that Hindus as Hindus would never accept social reform (C.Y. Chintamani, Indian

Social Reform, p. 189).

D.D. Karve, New Brahmans, pp. 72-74, 70.

Nicol Macnicol, Pandita Ramabai, p. 130.

£13.

114. bles).

Sister Geraldine, Letters and Correspondence, pp. 196-97. The Pandita told Catherine Dall that she did not belong to the Church of England, nor to any other church. She had made that a precondition when she was baptised. She believed in the Bible and she insisted on believing in it in her own way (Dall, The Life, p.

116.

133). In this context Blumhofer's suggestion that Ramabai was closer to popular 'movements' that swept Christian societies rather than restricting herself to any particular Church is useful in

Structure and Agency: A Life and a Time 349 understanding Ramabai's location within Christianity (Blumhofer,

'Pandita Ramabai', unpublished manuscript).

Ibid., pp. 264, 310.

Marie Louise Burke, Swami Vivekananda in America: New LI7.

118.

Discoveries, Calcutta, Advaita Ashrama, 1966, pp. 557-59.

Ibid., pp. 541-44.

Ibid., p. 544.

Ibid. a1.

120.

121.

122.

Ibid. Vivekananda cultivated his image for the 'ecstatic' effect he had upon his audience and considered it worth his while to invest some of the funds he collected for a scarlet dress and turban (Burke,

Swami Vivekananda, pp. 39, 398, 412). In this he may be contrasted with Ramabai who made a dramatic impact through the starkness of her everyday apparel — the white sari of the widow. Nevertheless she looked 'strikingly beautiful' (Dall, The Life, p. i130).

Ibid., pp. 554-57.

Ibid., pp. 556, 562.

Tbid., pp. 552, 558, 560.

Ibid., pp. 561-62.

Ibid., p. 567.

Tbid., p. 569.

Ibid., p. 587.

Ibid., pp. 588-89.

IZs, 124.

126.

127.

128.

129.

130.

131.

£32:

133% 134.

Ibid., p. 589.

Letters and Correspondence, pp. 313-14.

Marie Louise Burke, Swami Vivekananda, p. 593.

Pandita Ramabai rarely, if ever, directly referred to women's sexuality. It appears in her writing as a latent issue, almost invariably in the context of the special vulnerability of young girls to sexual exploitation by predatory men who were always on the look—out for opportunities to seduce women. In this kind of somewhat flattened handling of the issue of female sexuality she was not unique, as it is characteristic of all the writing of women of a certain class and socialisation. Pandita Ramabai's attitude to women's sexuality reflects a mixture of reticence and the need to have to talk about an uncomfortable subject. Although it is not prudish it does seem to have a certain ascetic reserve generally, unless it relates to the dangers women face from men.

Letters and Correspondence, p. 345.

Ibid., p. 372.

Ibid., pp. 374, 384.

Ibid., pp. 176-78.

155:

136.

138.

139.

Ibid., p. xxviii.

REWRITING HISTORY

140.

141.

142.

Tbid., pp. xxvili-xxix.

Ibid., p. 348.

Brahmana officials of the Government raided Ramabai's institution under the pretext of searching out plague cases

(Letters and Correspondence, p. 379).

Sister Geraldine considered the statement made by Ramabai not only 'ill judged and foolish', putting her at a disadvantage with the government, whom one ought to always be loyal to, but actually seditious. Ramabai's statement had thus brought her into 'severe disfavour and suspicion with the ruling power'. Interestingly, according to Sister Geraldine, this put her at a disadvantage even with her Brahmana fellow-countrymen who were angry with her for 143. embracing Christianity. They got their opportunity to harass her as they were in the employ of the government as Sanitary and School

Inspectors and meted out harsh measures against her (Letters and Correspondence, pp. 300, 348).

S. Natarajan, G.K. Gokhale: The Man and His Message, p. 2, cited in Padmini Sengupta, Pandita Ramabai, p. 256.

Ramabai's position during the years immediately after her conversion was close to that of what today we may call a secular humanist. (The Missionary Review of the World, cited in Edith

Blumhofer, 'Pandita Ramabai'). She also tried to argue for an incorporation of 'Indian' features into the practice of Christianity.

For example, when the question of the use of a cross was being discussed she resisted it as unnecessary. She aiso argued that if it was to be adopted at all it should not have a Latin inscription but a Sanskrit one, which was the most beautiful and oldest language of 'my dear native land' as she put it (Letters and Correspondence, p.

28).

Ramabai wrote that the dry discussions about sects and differences did not interest her. She had the 'peace that passeth all understanding'

(Sister Geraldine, Letters and Correspondence, p. ob Eye 144.

145.

146.

147.

Sister Geraldine, Letters and Correspondence, pp. 389-92; Padmini Sengupta, Pandita Ramabai, p. 277.

Padmini Sengupta, Pandita Ramabai, p. 277.

148.

Kesari, 11 April 1922.

149.

150.

S.M. Adhav, Pandita Ramabai Centenary Souvenir, p. 19, cited in Padmini Sengupta, Pandita Ramabai, p. 328.

Vou Satsar, September 1885, reprinted in Y.D. Phadke, Collected Works of Jotiba Phule, Bombay, 1991, pp. 345-62; Rosalind O'Hanlon,

Caste, Conflict, and Ideology, pp. 202-203.

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Index adultery, and enslavement, 22; Bahujan Samaj, 67 Bajirao I, 29, 30, 38n, 44, 104 and fire ordeal, 29; and lower caste women, 29, 41n; batik, 21, 22 Besant, Annie, xv(n), xvi(n); as women's worst offence, 28-29; cases of, 20-21, 45; early colonial attitudes, 45-46; women, enhanced punishment for, 20-22 Age of Consent (debate/bill), conservative views of, xvi(n); "The Education of Hindu Girls", xvi(n); Hindu revivalist agenda of, xii, xiii; India's past, xvi(n); Pandita Ramabai, as opposed to, xiii, 84, 105, 123, 144, 165, 175-8751 98n52327, 341 Ambedkar, 11, 71, 340 Anandibai, 29, 41n, 202 Anandibai, Bhagat, 316, 345n Anandibai Joshi (Anandi Gopal), xvi; reformers, attitude towards, xii; widow remarriage, opposition to, xii; women, status of, xvi(n) Bhaktt,9 11554, 53; 65,, 103, 314; Chokhamela, 9, 10, 16; critique of, 11-13, 65; 208, 209, 240n, 279, 325, 331, 332; child marriage, defence, 213; childhood pressures, 211; education, 212; Hindu womanhood, icon of, 213, 215; in America, 212—13; marital violence, 211-14, 241n, 242n Anandibai Karve, 116n, 272, historical evaluation of, 11; Pandharpur, 9, 12, 15-16; protest as well as succour, 10; sect, Mahanubhav, 9, 34n; sect, Varkari, 9, 11, 32n; Varkari sants, social base, 9; Vithoba, 9, 10, 15-16, 35n; women sants, 11, 35n Bhakti sants, Bahinabai, 11; 277; and Pandita Ramabai, 267; as Baya, 116n; as Godubai, 328; labour, conflicting claims over, 266-68, 293n, 294n; remarriage of, 116n, 277-78 anonymous widow, struggle of, Eknath, 10, 43; Janabai, 11; Janadev, 9, 11; Muktabai, 11; Namdev, 9; Ramdas, 12, 103-04; Tukaram, 9, 11, 261 Bhandarkar, 91, 94, 102, 104, 158 77 2052555°912,7330 Brahmanas, 303, 305-06, 342n; 275-77 Arya Mahila Sabha, 158, 253, and dakshina, 6, 31, 44-45, D5

7/5 SS EMS

362 REWRITING HISTORY

practices of, 236, 277; continuity in practices of, 224; discussions of, 246-47, 257; model of womanhood in, 39n; priests as upholders of codes of, 273; Ramabai's critique of, xi, 2; reproductive potential of women, 25; sexuality, female, fear and exaggeration of, 201-02, importance of controlling, 20-22, 29, 31, 39n; widowhood codes, importance of, 23-28; widow immolation, importance of, 30; widow's place in and Phule, 76; women, Brahman, suicide by, 42n; women, codes for, 17, 31; women, monitoring of, 17-18 Brahmos, 311, 314 58, 107n; and English education, 57-58, 60-63, 71-73, 79, 99-100, 110n; and anti-reformist, 102—05; castes, lower, opposition to education of, 72-73, other, disputes with, 7, 48-53, 53-55, 108n; Chitpavans, 3, 4-5, 6-2; 26, 32n, 33n, 50, 62-63, 104; colonial state, conciliation policy of, 43-45, 48, 58-60, crisis under, 51, 92, 96-99, economic power under, 62—64; Deshastha, 3, 4; Hindu Dharma Vyavasthapak Mandal, 90; intellectual elite, leadership struggles, 78-79, 99-106; Peshwai, patronage under, 6, 13, 36n, 37n, strict norms under, 15; Poona Sarvajanik Sabha, 94-96, 101; reformist and orthodox, unity between, 101-02; Vedashastrottejaka Sabha, 94 Brahmanism, 31, 57, 65, 68, caste/caste system, and class, 57-58, 61-62, 64; as system of production, 26-27; Bhakti sants, reflection in lives and works of, 9-12; contestations, 48-58, 64, 72, 92, 129, 162; lower castes, education, opposition by Brahmans, 72-73, practices, homogenised under 'Hindu 77, 167-68, 178, 188, 303, 305, 308-10, 320, 329; and Bhakti sants, 9-12; anti Brahmanism movements, context of, 92; critique from within, 78-81; history of, 8, Phule's interpretation, 69-71; Peshwai, protected and promoted by, 6, 13, 15, 36n, 37n Brahmanical patriarchy, 31, 167-68, 188, 279, 280-82, 329, 330; aggressive support to practices of, 178; colonial legal structures, upheld by, law', 129, 133, 137, reservation and colonial state, 98, 101, suppression under Peshwai, 15-16; panchayats, 49, 134-35, 160-61, 163, 174, 186, 191n, 192n; Peshwai, reinforced by, 13-17; Phule's understanding of, 66-70; reformist ideology, limitations of, 101-05; 133; conceptualisation of widowhood, 268; consent to sanskritisation, 56—57, 65,

Index

67, 92; structure, Maharashtra, 7, 8, 14, 36n, 51, 64; upward mobility, aspirations, 39n, 40n, 52, 56—57, 129, 130, 152-53, 155, supression of, 15, 27, 30; women, determinant of codes for, 17, 20-22, 23-25, 31, 52-53 Chiplunkar, Vishnu Shastri, 4, 43-48, 58-60, 106n, 107n, 132; coercive power in favour of Brahmanas, withdrawing of, 51-52, 92; gender codes, upholding of, 45-48; law, customary, tensions with, 134-38, statutory, formation of, 123-34; women's education, 203, sexuality, complicity in control over, 187—88 companionate marriage, 90, 100, 102, 104, 112n Chiplunkar, Krishna Shastri, 79 Christianity, conflation with 206-09, 213-15, 220, 223, 236, 246, 281, 316 conjugaljty, 123, 128, 134, 138, colonialism, xiii, xiv; missionaries, 44, 45, 59, 80, 314, 321, 323, 339-40, 347n 139; 141=51) 170" 204% 207; 216, 232; colonial state, notions of, 135-38; disciplining the wife, 255; Hindu law on, 147-48; marital rape, 176, 177, 181, class formation/middle class,

I289038 5 57417031753

and changing self image, 158; and unified gender codes, 163; and widow remarriage, 87; English education, 61—62; new social 182, 184; punishment for refusal of, 166-75, 195n; restitution of, 138-51; wifehood among Hindus, forces, 57-58; recasting women, 200, 211-12, 233, 280; relationship to caste, 110n; restructuring the family, 203 125-26, 169, 188, among Shudras, 126—27 colonial state, and Age of Dalit intelligentsia, 11-13 Consent, 175, 185-86; and 'Brahmanophobia', 95-96, dasi, 11 Deshmukhs, 3 Deshmukh, Gopal Hari, 79, 87, 118n; and caste contestations, 48-57, 58; and definition of Shudras, 93, 100 Durga, sister of Ranade, as 127; and domestic sphere, 200-01; and English education, 57-62, 109n; and Pandita Ramabai, 338—40; and the Rakhmabai case, widow, material position in natal family, 227-29, 232, 235, survival strategy and manipulation, 227-32, 235-36; biography, 226-27; traditional codes, upholder 170-75; and widowhood, 85; attitude towards non-Brahmanas, change in, 98; Brahmanas, conciliation of, of, 230-31; views on men,'

230-31

REWRITING HISTORY

history, interpretations of, Elphinstone, 43, 58, 59, 60, Brahmans, reformers and orthodox, 102—04; Phule's, 69-71; women, origins of low status, 102, 274 106n. 107n, 108n Engels, Dagmar, 182 excommunication/ghatasphot, 19, 2379892984, 76091, 'home'/domestic ideology, 93, 116n, 160, 284, 304, 310 204-06, 214, 216, 219, 225-26, 234; male constructs of, 210, 233, 236; new versions, success of, 222-23, 277, 280-81 family/household, 200, 201, 203, 208, 213, 224-26, 229, PIS be PISS WROD Oke: feminist historians, xvii(n) fitna, 202, 210 household/family, 255, 262, 286 Fukuzawa, 13, 14, 15, 18, 22 Jambhekar, Bal Shastri, 79 Garbhadhanam, 19, 178, 179, Kadam, 20, 27 Ishilee Iksts:

Kanitkar, Kashibai, 208, 209, gender, 29, 78, 92, 94, 166, 238, 22) =) See AVA eo LT 252, 301, 302, 336; Age of Consent debate, 175—87; and Karve, 266, 277-79, 328, 331,

colonial law enforcement, Karve, Irawati, 12 123-34, 135-37; and early Kosambi, D. D., 8, 9, 10, 36n colonial attitudes, 45-48; and emergent classes, 158; and Kunbis, 7; caste aspirations, 55, nationalism, 169, 178, 185, 67, 72; pat marriages, 26; Tukaram, 9 188n, 213, 240n, 241n, 246, 333-34; and new social forces, 43, 45-48; and Peshwai, 17-31; as index of caste kunbina, 21, 22 law, contradictions in customary status, 17, 52-53, 55—56; bias in history writing, xv(n); codes and statutory, 134-38; customary, 123, 125, 126; Hindu law, 188n, 195n, application of, 123-27, of, 18, 39n, 40n; double standards of morality, 235, 250-51, 258, 284, 286, 295n; relationship with class and 170-71, cross-caste homogenisation under, 129, state, xv, 2, with caste and labour, 22, 287; writing gender history, xiv; widow remarriage debate, 81-94 133; 13739162=63; interpretations of, 129-35, 141, on conjugal rights, 147-50, Rakhmabai's case, Gokhale, 5, 101, 224, 339 141-51, 159-60, 162, 164; statutory, 123-24, 128, 147; widow remarriage, meshing Goreh, Father, Nilkanth, 315, 316, 318, 347n Guha, Ranajit, 187 'Hindw' and statutory, 123-34

Index

Madhavarao I, 6, 28, 30

Wee 25425, 7: sacramental, 125, 133, 167, Malabari, Behram, 88, 160, 164, 173, 176, 183, 186, 196n, 253-56, 291n; child marriage, initiative against, 169; Satyashodhak, 77-78; suffering within, Anandibai Joshi, 211-14, 241n, 242n 17421767 1837253; 256; 291n; Hindu caste law, limitations, understanding of, nationalism, appropriating the past, 103; gender dimensions 173-74; on women's consent to marriage, 164 Mandlik, 89, 99-100, 102, of, 168, 169, 178, 185, 188, 213, 240n, 241n, 246, 333-34; narrow basis of, xi, 341-42 1105;916311165; 2535256 Mangs, 7, 67, 72, 73, 74-76 Mahars, 7, 43, 67, 72-73; O'Hanlon, Rosalind, 70 Chokhamela, 9; Peshwai, restrictions under, 13; traditional duties of, 10 Manu, xvi, 26, 124, 131, 169, Pandharpur, Brahman control over ritual, 12; caste distinctions during pilgrimage, 12; in Varkari tradition, 9; Peshwai control, 173, 216, 250, 256, 284 Marathas, 3, 4;°7, 67, 90, 97, 15-16 98, 108n, 109n, 111n; Brahmans, disputes with, 53-55; Peshwai, marginalisation under, 7; Pandita Ramabai, 212, 215, 220, 223, 229, 240n, 253, 254, 267, 277, 279, 281-86, 298n, 301, 343n, 345n, 349n; Age of Consent debate, intervention in, 327; Anandi Bhagat, 316-18; and Christianity, xi, xii, 314-19, 331-32, 348n, 350n; and Max Muller, 317-18; and Phule, 320; and reformers, 307-08 e ole ol 4319; 328-29, 330, 333; and Tila 3 1999295557, -599; ancient Hindu womanhood, epitome of, 307—08; Arya Mahila Sabha, 312-13; Brahmanical Hinduism, alienation from, 310; brother, Srinivas, 307, 310; child marriage, escape from, 306; Church, conflict with, Shivaji, 3, 7, 32n, 70-71, 103-04, 119; Watandars, 5 marriage, child wife, death of Phulmoni, 177-78, 197n, 'ripening', 248, 287; companionate, 206-09,

DIG= 159220" 223 36246,

281, 316, and one sidedness of, 214; consent in, Rakhmabai's case, 141, 145-46, 148-49, 164-65, 170, 184; endogamy, 20, 55; forms of, 26; marital rape, 176, 177, 181, 182, 184; Peshwai, alliances during, 5, 18, 38n, regulation of codes, 14, 18-20; pratiloma, 21, 310; pre-pubertal/child, 18, 19, 165, 174, 175, 209,

REWRITING HISTORY

women, belief in entitlement 321-25, 339-41, 346n, 347n; colonial state, confrontation with, 338-39, 341, 350n; conversion, hysterical reaction to, 319-20; daughter, Manorama, 316, 324, 332, 340; Dharmashastras, analyses of, 309. 317; early to choice, 329-30, 332-33 patriarchy/patriarchies, codes of, 219; consent for new forms of, 247, 249; critiques of, 250, 252, 282, 285-88; ideologies, clash of, 187; interlocking of, 174-75, 341; reassembling of, 203; resistance to new forms of, life, 305-07; efforts for Widows Home, 325-26; 230, 233, 236-38; transformation of, 208, 210, father, Ananta Shastri Dongre, 303, 306; history writing, 'suppression' in xi, 212, 223-25 Peshwai, 2, 43, 45, 46, 48, 62, 104, 185-87, 262, 303; and gender codes, 17-18, 19, 31; and widowhood, 23-28; as Brahmanya raj, 3, 5, 27, 29, 31, 36n, 64, 74-75; as Dharmarajya, 14; as financial, military, administrative nexus, 5; Brahmans, patronage to, 6, xiii, xv(n); Hunter Commission, 312; husband, Bipin Behari Medhavi, 310; male aggression, object of, 312-13, 329, 331; marriage, pratiloma, 310; mother, Lakshmibai, 304-05, 307; Mukti Sadan, 328, 337, 340; on sati, 285; on widowhood, 281-85, 336; Parvati Athavale, 205-06, 211, 13, 15, 36n, 37n; caste hierarchies, reinforced, 13-14; Chitpavan dominance in, 4, 5; non-Chitpavans, marginalisation of, 6, 7; women, adultery by, 20-22, enslavement of, 22 Phule, 64, 80, 98, 100-05, 239n, 246, 275, 277-82, 296n, 297n; religiosity of, 314, 332, 348n; Sanskrit, learning, 305; Sharada Sadan, 267, 326-29, 332-33, 340; Sister Geraldine, 316-17, 323, 339, 345n, 350n; stigmatised as betrayer, 341-42; "Stridharma Niti", 315; surveillance, as widow, 311; The High Caste Hindu Woman, 281, 315-16, 325; Vivekananda, as opposed to, Liin isn 22250n@o3.

320, 342; and widows, 76-77; Brahman reformers, distance from, 102; caste system, critique of, 65-66, material basis of, 68, origins of, 69-70; democratic ideals, influence of, 66, 112n; education, lower caste women, 73, 112n, 113n; gender, reconceptualisation 320, 325, 333, 335-36, 349n; widowhood of, 311-12; widow remarriage, attitude to, 283-84; women and widowhood, reconceptualisation, 328;

Index 367 of, 77-78; harassment faced by, 111n, 113n; Hinduism 151-53; letters, on child marriage and widowhood, 254-60; mother, Jayantibai, 155-56; stepfather, Dr.

Sakharam Arjun, 139-41, as expression of Brahmanical worldview, 68-69; history, radical interpretation of, 69-71; Hunter Commission, 72; on patriotism, 342; Ramabai, defence of, 77; sanskritisation, critique of, 67; Satyashodhak Samaj, 77-78, 96; Tarabai, defence of, 77; works of, Gulamgiri, 68, 112n, Sarvajanik Satyadharma, 77, Shetkaryaca Asud, 77, Traitya Ratna, 68 Padwal, Tukaram Tatya, 66-67 Phulmoni, 177-78, 197n Poona Widows and Orphans 143, 156-57, 195n; the Rakhmabai case (Dadaji vs Rakhmabai), 138-41, 151, 193n, arguments in, 141-51, conjugal rights, 141-44, 147-51, 158, consent, the question of, 141, 145-46, 149, 164-65, 170, 184, consummation, the question of, 141-42, 148-49, 158, 167, Hindu law, 159-60, judgement, 151, 170-71, property, at the crux of, Home, 260, 262-63, 273, 2789 2675 29 Ly 299n Prabhus, 7, 15-17, 50, 60-61,

16162) A738

Ranade, 95, 99, 102-04, 158, 186, 216-35, 244n, 245n, 255, 505, 312,°326, 330; and Pandita Ramabai, 312, 326, 330; as judge, 129-32, 188; Brahman conservatives, ideological unity with, Bie ogee ye OD Radhabai, 29, 41 Ramabai, 30 Ramabai Ranade, 204, 209, 101-04, 244, 245n; 238, 216-37, 243n, 244n, 246, 331-32; Amchya Ayushatil Kahi Athavani, limitations as reformer, 93, 186, 188n, 216; patriarchy, reform of, 216-35 reformers/sudharaks, xi, 78-81, 224; Arya Mahila Sabha, 223; education, 209-17, of women, views on, 223; marriage, 216-17; pleasing the husband, 219, 222-23, 236-37; politics of household, 225-35; Seva Sadan, 223; widowhood views on, 234, 245n Rakhmabai, 214—15, 254-60, OF CG. 1 b2, 294; 279; 281, 337, 341; agenda, surpassed by women writers, 247, 252, 260, 285-88, 297n; and Pandita Ramabai, 307-08, 311-12, 314, 319, 328-29, 330, 333; and anti-reformism, 100, 102-05, 256-57; early agendas, 78-81; English education of, 305; failure of, 92-93, 101-05, 166, 186, 285-86, 338; as object of derision, 159, 167, 168-69; biography of, 151-58; caste-class location of,

REWRITING HISTORY

effectuated by, 21; of female sexuality, 17-18; pre-pubertal marriages, ensured by, 19, 211; of widows, 23, 25, 208, 211, 228, 248, 262, 264, 268, 275-77; of wives, 208, 229"

188; ideological unity with orthodoxy, 101-02; limited reform of Brahmanical patriarchal structures, xiil, 89, 272-73, 283; on consent, 186, 198n; on widow remarriage, 81-84, 86-93, 99, 249; Prarthana Sutars, 61, 151-54, 157-58, 164 Sabhas 94) 1025.312. 314; 318, 332; Vidhva Vivahottejaka Mandal, 89-90 Rammohan Roy, 82 Telang, 145-48, 150, 160, 163-64, 174, 178, 186, 191n, 192n, 197n, 305 Tilak, Bal Gangadhar, 97-106, sanskritisation, 56-57, 65, 67,

1199166, 168 M71 78=79,

185, 197n, 240n, 241n, 305, 92272980 Said, Edward, xiv, xvii(n) 5195) 329% 350s o7e Doe 341; and Pandita Ramabai, 319; 329; 334, 399;/and untouchability, 105; anti reformism of, 100, 178-79, Sati, 18; 45, 83) 2262, 274, 281, 285; abolition of, 82, 123; and colonial state, 47-48, 107n; self-immolation, 30, 52; voluntary, decoding of,

Satyashodhak Samaj, 96 197n, 240n, 241n; class position, reflection in politics of, 97-98, 101; nationalism of, 185, 319, 337, 341; on Rakhmabai's Savitribai, 76, 113n, 11n Sen, 308, 311 sexuality, female, as evil, 202; case, 166—68, 171; on women's education, 240n; control over, 20—22, 29, 31, Phulmoni, child wife, on death of, 197n; Shivaji 39, 187-88; fear of, 201-02; fitna, 202, 210; focus of debate, 82-84, 86, 115n; suppression of, widows', 82-83, 268-69, 286-87, 328; surveillance of, 17-18 Shinde, Tarabai, 77, 250-54, festival, use of, 103-04, 119n Tilak, Waman Narayan, 316,

tonsure, of widows, 23-25, 30, 285-87, 298n 76, 83, 88, 327; barber's Shudras, 15, 51, 67, 70, 105, strike, 115n; Brahmanical order, importance for, 25; ceremony, 24; expenditure, 25; resistance and excommunication, 23; symbolic meaning of, 83, 270-71; trauma of, 270-72, 275-76 M2 W6=27 won Sonars, Konkan, Devarajna, 48-53, 108n stridharma/pativrata dharma, 22, 29530, 201202502045 210:

INS SV) surveillance, enslavement, _

Index 369 'untouchable', 7, 8, 9, 16 23-24, 86-87, 115n, 116n, 248, 275-77; social control over, 330; sexuality, suppression of, 82-83, 268-69, 286-87, 328; surveillance of, 23, 25, 208, 211, 228, 248, 262, 264, 268, 275-77; upper caste, 247, 257, 262-63, 273, 282, 288n, 299n, 301, 330 widow remarriage, and caste Vidyasagar, Ishwarchandra, 81-82, 86, 93, 115n, 116n Vijayalakshmi, 187-88, 250 Vivekananda, Swami, 320, 325, 336, 349n; on Indian womanhood, 333; on women's property rights, 334; on widows, 333, 335; on widow remarriage, 334 hierarchy, 17, 52; and forfeiture of property, widow/widowhood, adult, 124-25, 127-30, 155; and Shudras, 126; as solution, Pandita Ramabai's critique, 283-84; Brahman reformers, 278-79; and Pandita Ramabai, 281—85, 336; as opposed to wife, 25, 31, 231; ascetic, strict code for Brahmans, 23, 30, 92, forbidden to lower castes, 15, 27, 52; child, 82, 84, 87, 89, position of, 81-84, 87, 88, 90-91; debate on, 82-84, 86-89, 91-92, 94, 99, 114n, 117n, focus on female 1015, 132,,246-48., 252, 259, sexuality, 82-84, 86, 115; karewa (levirate), 128; niyoga 264, 283, 287, 288n, 292n, 315, 326; demography, labour, caste, relationship with, 25-27; entitlement, 262-63, 268-69; experiences (levirate), 284; pat form of, 23, 26-28, 40, 52; 130, 153; programmes, failure of, 92-93; statutory law, contradictions of, 123—24; Vidhva Vivahottejaka Mandal, 89-90; Widow Remarriage Act (Act XV of of, 226-28, 232, 234-306, 246-47, 249, 251, 257-58,

DGG)" 264, 268,27 —/0;

288n, 292, 294n, 295n; ghatasphot, 28, 41n, 76; 1856), 81, 123-34, 176, contradictions in interpretations of, 132-33, judicial controversy, evaluation of, 132-34, lower inheritance by, 155; labour, extraction of, 248, 258, 262, 264, 268, 275, 287; Peshwat orders on, 24; Phule's intervention, 76; predatory castes, applicability to, interpretations, 126-34, wifehood, definition of, 126 women, absent voice of, 117n, males, 251, 268, 270, 274; problem, nationalist resolution ot, 250, 279, 280, 288n; property rights ray WAIL, IPAS!

246, 253-54, 256; adultery, enhanced punishment for, 20-21; agency of, 202, 204, 1350-31, 155,176,262; reformist discourse on, 247; resistance to enforcement,

Lv Wwe VY ebtatw wesw = eww Chakravarti, Uma.

Rewriting history

370 REWRI

2HOP 2175 250, 259; 259;

209-11, 212-15, 217, 222, 285-86, 296n, 297n, 301, 229, 236-37, 238, 246-47; 327, 329; and caste sexuality, as offence, 22, 39n, hierarchies, 17, 52, 55-56; 83, fear of, 201-02, and Phule, 73-78; as reformers' perception of, nurturers, 204-05, 236-37; 82-85, 86, 115n; statutory body as focus of debates, law and lower caste, 133, 180, 250, as nation's body, 136-37; stridharma/pativrata 180; colonial law, subjects dharma, 22, 29, 30, 201-02, of, 187; consent, production 204, 210, 215; 251-52; of, 199n, 236-37, 259, 285; strisvabhava, 201, 248 domestic sphere, reform of, women writers, on anguish of 201, 203; "educating", 203, low castes, Muktabai, 74-75, 206-10, 214, 217, 219, 76; on child marriage, 222-23; education of, Rakhmabai, 254-56; on xvi(n)-xvi(n), 138, 246, 250, experiences of widowhood:

254, 280, 319; enslavement Ambubai Bapat, 268-69, under Peshwai of, 21, 22; 294n, Ambubai Gumaste, "immorality", burden of, 45, 272, 299n, Anandibai Karve, 85, 135-37; labour and 266-68, Bhimabai Kale, sexuality, control over, 292n, Parvati Athavale, 17-31, 128, 183, 185; legal 278-80, Pandita Ramabai, systems, multiple subjection 282-85, Radhabai Inamdar, to, 133-38; literacy of, 207, 261; 264, 275-75; 208, 246, taboo on, 218; Rakhmabai, 258-60, married, property of, 162; Sakhubai Apte, 264, Sushila marriage as exchange of, 18, Devi, 248-50, Tarabai 38, 165-66, prepubertal, Shinde, 250-52, Varubai 18-19, 165, 175, 209; Ranade, 268; on resistance, patriarchy, complicity in, Lakshmibai Sardesai, 237-38 29-30, 259, 277, 286; reconceptualisation, 19th Young Poona, 79 century, 203; sants, 11, 35; "schooling", 201-06, Zelliot, 12

This book outlines the reconstitution of patriarchies in ning teenth century Maharashtra through an exploration of ' life, work and times of Pandita Ramabai, one of India's ea est feminists. It examines the manner in which the color state's new institutional structures, caste contestations, cl formation and nationalism transformed and reorganised g) der relations. It also explores the nature of the new agen being set for women, how these were received by them < in what ways and to what extent their consent to these constructed patriarchies was produced. The author shows t while many women were ready to act as willing reproduc of caste, class and gender norms, there were others who withheld consent to the dominant model of patriarchy emerging in the nineteenth century. She argues that certain processes innineteenth century Maharashtra created the conditions for a fairly sharp critique of patriarchy to emerge, a unique feature for its time.

CONCORDIA

UNIVERSITY

LIBRARY Uma Chakravarti is a historian who lectures at Miranda House College for Women, Delhi University. She has worked and written on issues of caste, labour and gender and is active in the democratic rights and women's movements. Among her published works are: The Delhi Riots: Three Days in the Life of a Nation (co-authored with Nandita Haksar) and Social Dimensions of Early Buddhism.

'| The book] provides a rigorously researched location to Ramabai, linking her with social and historical processes that shaped the nation."

-INDIAN EXPRESS

Jaket painting: Adapted from Image/ Counter Image by Prem Chowdhry Rs 250

ISBN 86706 30 5

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