In a class I’m teaching this fall, we’re looking at Pandita Ramabai’s book on America, which has been recently translated by Meera Kosambi as Pandita Ramabai’s American Encounter (2003). The original book was written in Marathi in 1889, and published as United Stateschi Lokasthiti ani Pravasavritta, which translates to The Peoples of the United States. It’s an intriguing book — part of the small group of “Easterner goes West” books published in the 19th century, coexisting uneasily alongside dozens of conventional, Orientalist travel narratives that describe the mystic, masalafied “East.” What Ramabai has to say about America is interesting partly for the oblique criticisms of colonialism and racism one finds at various points, and partly because of her staunch, unapologetic feminism.
Meera Kosambi has a thorough introduction to the book and to Pandita Ramabai, which is the source of most of the information in the post below. First off, the basic biography: Pandita Ramabai was born to a Brahmin family in Maharashtra in 1859. In a personal memoir she writes that her father (known as Dongre) went out on a limb and taught her Sanskrit, and also taught her to read and recite from the Puranas — considered completely off-limits to women at the time. But both of her parents died in in 1874 [approximately] because of famine, and Ramabai and her brother wandered around India until they ended up in Calcutta in 1878. They impressed the local Sanskrit experts (Calcutta, being more progressive, didn’t shun a female Sanskrit scholar), who granted Ramabai the name “Pandita,” in honor of her learning. Unfortunately, her brother died soon afterwards, and Ramabai married one of his friends, a lawyer from the Shudra caste named Bipin Behari (also known as Das Medhavi). The couple was ostracized for the cross-caste marriage, and tragically, Medhavi died just a couple of years later (in 1880), leaving Ramabai to raise their daughter Manorama, completely on her own. It isn’t surprising that she fell in with Christian missionaries, who helped Ramabai go to England in 1883 to study medicine. Unfortunately, she was refused admission after actually reaching England on account of defective hearing. It was at this point that she converted to Christianity (Anglicanism), which was highly controversial in the Indian press at that time, and made her somewhat of a, well, “pariah” figure in most accounts of early Indian writers and intellectuals. Her conversion still may be controversial for some readers, though I think it’s important to remember that Ramabai, as a Brahmin woman, had been battling religious orthodoxy her whole life: first, as a woman who knew Sanskrit and could read and critique the classical texts, then as a person who married across caste only to be completely ostracized — and finally as a young widow who was also orphaned and without siblings in 1880.
According to Kosambi, it isn’t clear that Ramabai was comfortable within the Anglican fold (Ramabai would dabble with other denominations), nor is it clear that she enjoyed being in England, where she lived between 1883 and 1886. In fact, she didn’t write very much about her specific experiences there, so it’s hard to say. Still, Ramabai did write a book during that trip (her second!), The High-Caste Hindu Woman, a scathing attack on gender norms in upper-caste families — including the denial of education, child marriage, polygamy, and widowhood. The book was published in Marathi in India, and didn’t make much of an impression, though it was widely read in a version translated by Ramabai herself by feminists in England and the U.S.
In 1886, Pandita Ramabai went to the U.S., to give a lecture at a Women’s Medical College in Philadelphia. Here she had a personal connection to another Marathi woman, Anandibai Joshee, who holds the distinction being the first Indian woman to earn a medical degree in the U.S. — only a few years after medical schools began to open their doors to women. (This was also well before women got the right to vote.) Ramabai planned to go for a month, but ended up staying for three years.
In the U.S., it appears, Pandita Ramabai thrived. She did numerous lectures at various cities around the northeast and midwest, as well as further out west (she made it as far as Denver, and was impressed by the Rocky Mountains). Her larger mission at this time was to raise money for a school she wanted to start back in India — and here she was remarkably successful. It’s no surprise to find, then, that Ramabai writes effusively about the country in her book, though she does criticize the country’s problems with race, its persecution of the Native Americans, and of course, the resistance to women’s emancipation.
On to the book itself. Ramabai starts with a reference to the history of early exploration, and a dig at religious superstition:
Centuries ago, when people lacked adequate knowledge of the earth, they indulged in all sorts of speculations in this regard. The ancestors of the Hindu and other communities believed the earth to be flat; as a result, they imagined the universe to be multi-storied, like the large multi-storied city houses, with the earth occupying the middle story. According to the Hindu Puranas, the universe is a fourteen-storied mansion, of which six stories or “worlds” are situated above the earth, and seven below; the lowest of these stories has been named the Nethermost Woeld. Now that all these ideas have been disproved by new discoveries, everyone has understood that the universe is not like a fourteen-storied mansion, and that the earth is not flat. (62)
So much for the scientific value of the Puranas!
Ramabai also doesn’t fail to remind her readers that Columbus, in his exploration, was in fact looking for India, and she is unrelenting of her criticism of the exploitative nature of the Spanish and Portuguese doings in the new world in the early years. She accuses Columbus of practicing “deceit,” and denigrates his eagerness to enslave the natives, take them back to Europe, and forcibly convert them to Christianity (Catholicism): “How sad that a great man’s conduct should be tarnished by such an extraordinarily demonic deed!”
Some of her remarks about this chapter of American history strike me as coded or indirect criticisms of British colonialism:
If these same Europeans had discarded their firearms and weapons, such as bows and arrows, quartz knives, and bone-tipped lances, they would have proven themselves to be truly brave. But sad to say, those who called themselves pious and went forth to enlighten the ignorant, to rescue people from hell and lead them to heaven, ended up by utterly annihilating the poor innocent Indians through deceit, trickery, cruelty, and false speech. (71)
Clearly the British colonization of India and the American conquest of the Native Americans are two quite separate things, but there might well be some parallels in the references to “deceit, trickery, cruelty, and false speech” — though that is only an inference. (Pandita Ramabai is rarely directly critical of the British in her writings.)
Occasionally, Pandita Ramabai also makes some circumspect comments on the problem of writing a travel narrative, and seems to be alluding to the extremely problematic narratives Europeans themselves had produced when traveling to India. She knows better than to simply reverse the dynamic, claim to be the monarch of all she surveys:
It is impossible for a person to see all the sides of an object while sketching it; the same applies to the description of the social conditions in a country. A single person is not able to see all aspects of a society; therefore one person’s opinion of it cannot be assumed to be infallible.
Some English and American people have traveled in India and written descriptions of our customs and manners and social conditions. A perusal of these clearly shows that a foreigner sees the people of the country he visits in a very different light from how the inhabitants see themselves. Therefore, I have refrained from presenting any firm and final conclusion that such-and-such is the nature of American society and that it has only these many types. Instead, I intend to describe how they appeared to me. This is the objective of this chapter and of the book as a whole.
Fascinating and precocious; it took the discipline of Anthropology another 80 years to reach this level of epistemological humility.
And finally, I should mention that most of the second half of Pandita Ramabai’s book on America is dedicated to the specific question of the status of women in the United States. On the one hand, she is impressed by the remarkable progress that was being made with regards to women’s education; this was the era during which the great women’s colleges were opening, and it was also the era of the first women graduates from law and medical schools. But Ramabai is also surprised by the amount of resistance these progressive measures encounter, and feels pressed to actively rebut the charge that having women in positions of responsibility, or actively participating in the work-place, would somehow be detrimental to morals. In that the book is aimed at Indian readers, it’s hard not to think that she’s thinking of the Indian objections to these reforms as well.
Her most striking comment along these lines still in some sense rings true today:
How true is the claim of many Western scholars that a civilization should be judged by the conditions of its women! Women are inherently physically weaker than men, and possess innate powers of endurance; men therefore find it very easy to wrest their natural rights and reduce them to a state that suits the men. But, from a moral point of view, physical might is not real strength, nor is it a sign of nobility of character to deprive the weak of their rights. . . . [A]s men gain wisdom and progress further, they begin to disregard women’s lack of strength to honor their good qualities, and elevate them to a high state. Their low opinion of women and of other such matters undergoes a change and gives way to respect. Thus, one can accurately assess a country’s progress from the condition of its women. (169)
This statement is perhaps not without a couple of problematic elements, but as a progressive take on the relationship between feminism and history it is still very much something to contend with.
Abby – take a pill and relax buddy. If you teach a course on Savitribai Phule in the near future, I’m sure we’d be happy to learn about it since she was indeed a great woman. In the meantime, let Amardeep teach what he deems relevant to the needs of his curriculum. You may not find it interesting or worthwhile, but some of us do.
blue mountain: You may have gotten closest to the truth. Judging from a report in the NYT during that period, it is quite apparent that she wanted funds for her school in Pune and got it from Christian missionaries. Part of her tirade against Hindus must’ve been aimed with that interest. Of course, there is no dispute that widows were ill treated in India during that time. I have seen plenty of old brahmin widows even in the 1970s who were bald, wore “widows clothes” and were not welcome during auspicious occassions. At the same time, I’ve seen plenty of progressive women (of that era) as well. There were lawyers, doctors, school principals and social workers amongst women even in the early part of the 20th century.
Ah, ok, I’m allowed back.
Regarding:
” I have seen plenty of old brahmin widows even in the 1970s who were bald, wore “widows clothes” and were not welcome during auspicious occassions. At the same time, I’ve seen plenty of progressive women (of that era) as well. “
This is not only limited to many bengali widows of today, but also to women who take up the path of renunciation in the Bengali Vaishnava faith, including non-Indian women in organizations like ISKCON or the Gaudiya Math. If you visit Mayapur, West Bengal or Vrindavan, Uttar Pradesh, you will see quite a few relatively young foriegn women who don this garb as a sign that they are totally dependent on their ishta-deva, Krishna, and have no plans to marry.
Many of the poor looking bengali widows in Vrindavan may not be widows but older Indian women who have done the same thing, some of them since their youthful days, having never been married.
Yes, there are also alot of old widows in Vrindavan or Mayapur who are so poor they are barely surviving and their families are not caring for them. Generally they come from extremely poor Bengali families. I have yet to meet a financially middle class and up Bengali family that has caste their widows to the wind. That’s not to say it does not happen. But the majority of poor widows cast to the wind are coming from very poor families anyway, where they would be living with them in similar ways to the way they are living now – without them.
There are some organizations that seek to give shelter to these widows, but put some conditions on them. Human beings, freedom lovers that we are, many of those widows choose to live independently from those organizations rather than conform to their rules.
This is in regards to my experience in Vrindavan, a little in Mayapur. I don’t know about Haridwar, never been there.
in response to pardesi begum’s comment (#1) perhaps you are thinking of Uma Chakravarti’s book, Rewriting History, which has been reviewed on SAWNET. many of your comments seem to refer to this book as well as the critiqe of the book. personally i think ramabai was a facinating woman and unfortunately so little information remains for us and of it, so much is incomplete. here is the link http://www.sawnet.org/books/reviews.php?Rewriting+History
Hmm… Interesting. I admire women like these who went through so much. Will try to read this book.
“Pardesi Begum, she was recognized as Pandita in Calcutta where Brahmo-ism and reformism were in full force. It’s unlikely her education would have been accepted back in Maharashtra at the time. As for ostracization (I didn’t say “ex-communicate”), that is hardly surprising — it still happens all the time.” do you have hard evidence that ramambai’s sanskrit knowledge would not have been accepted anywhere other than inbengal at the time? are is this your surmise? the hindu tradition has many women panditas from a long time before ramabai. i don’t know if they were all brahmins. avvaiyar for instance was not brahmin. Uma Chakravarti’s book does say they were ex-communicated. perhaps they were indeed ostacized. i amnot sure how much this would have bothered ramabai as she grew up in a non-traditional way herself, her father living in the margins of the brahminical society. so one has to wonder who is describing her life as ostercized. does your reference say anything about this? And how ostracized a life could it have been if she was later invited to Maharashtra and asked to establish a Home for the widows and was embraced by the Maharashtrians, all Brahmin men, progressive no doubt, of the time?
PArdesi Pandita: I was not referring to Bengal, but to Maharashtra and Karnataka. As I’ve mentioned in this thread before, Rao Saheb is a terrific film on that topic.
Surprising we shd be talking about Vivekananda. Isn’t he a Prophet Looking Backwards. Leave alone the Brahmo Samaj, wonder why Ramabai had nothing to do with even the Prarthana Samaj in Maharashtra which was founded on the basis of (1) open denunciation of caste system, (2) the introduction of widow remarriage, (3) the encouragement of female education, and (4) the abolition of child marriage. After repeated deliberations, the members came to the conclusion of making religious reforms the basis of social reforms. The first prayer meeting was held on 31st March 1867, paving the way for the formation of the Prarthana Samaj.
Shiva, Actually, Meera Kosambi (the translator/editor) does mention the Prarthana Samaj, and suggests that Ramabai’s father was involved with them. A reform movement existed, but that doesn’t mean it was popular nor does it necessarily mean it was widely accepted in Maharashtra.
I’m going from her own account, quoted in my earlier response to Pardesi Begum/Pandita/whomever: she says she and her brother were not welcome, and I believe her. If you don’t accept that a woman who could read Sanskrit might have posed a problem for Maharashtrian village Brahmins in the 1870s, that’s fine; I have no other documentation at present.
An earlier commentor questioned how she could be so successful in her Mission in Poona after returning if her status was so transgressive: don’t forget that when she came back from the U.S. she had thousands of dollars in charity donations to work with in the interest of starting her school. She was probably looked at quite differently then than she was when she and her brother were penniless orphans during a period of recovery from famine!
Several commentors have criticized my light-hearted comment in response to her dismissal of the scientific value of ancient texts like the Puranas. First, it should be said Ramabai is just as assertive in response to medieval Christianity (at one point she says baldly that in medieval England, cannibalism was widely practiced), and even contemporary Christians who exhibit “primitive” superstitions. In fact, she is aggressively dismissive of all religious beliefs she finds to be ‘superstitious’; she’s a thoroughgoing modernist and progressive, and not just on the question of women’s rights. I did not mean to offend with that comment; I wasn’t dismissing the Puranas as a spiritual source text for the Hindu tradition. Rather the focus (in Ramabai’s paragraph, and my echo of her in the post) was on the value of such texts to modern sciences such as astronomy.
Its interesting to see a discussion on Pandita Ramabai being revived. Ramabai’s father himself married a child, I think he was in his 40s and her mother barely in her teens. I can’t quite remember the book I read about this (was it Meera Kosambi’s?) but Ramabai later recorded her negative impressions of this arrangement (though she adored her father) – I think her mother was basically just given away by her father to Anant Shastri as he admired his learning. Even though Ramabai’s conversion was controversial, it was in keeping with the ferment of her time.
Great to see posts on 22 June and RaoSaheb. Whatever happened to that phase of Indian cinema (70s/80s). Even the arthouse flicks these days have been Bollywoodised.
A reform movement existed, but that doesn’t mean it was popular nor does it necessarily mean it was widely accepted in Maharashtra.
Of course she knew about it. Mahadev Govind Ranade, an Indian nationalist and early Pratharna Samaj luminary, even supported Ramabai’s efforts to remarry upper caste Hindu widows for a while. It was BG Tilak, another Indian nationalist, who convinced him to stop. Tilak exposed the Sharada Sadan for what it was: a proselytizing body. That incident is famous and controversial. Tilak quipped that he would remarry thousands of widows upon the day India gained freedom, which signified that he had other priorities.
she’s a thoroughgoing modernist and progressive, and not just on the question of women’s rights.
But she argued from a Eurocentric and Christian vantage point, viz., on the basis of the supremacy of Christianity over polytheistic and hierarchical Hinduism. This is why she never made it to the gallery of modern Indian heroes, and likely never will.
Vivekananda(a Sudra) Profet Looking Backwards !!
Have you ever read any of his works ??
This is what he told to upper castes.
“Get blasted, disappear! Let the new India emerge.Let New India arise- let her arise- out of the peasants’ cottage, grasping the plough; out of the huts of fisherman, the cobbler, and the sweeper. Let her spring from the grocer’s shop, from the oven of the fritter-seller. Let her emanate from factory, from marts and markets. Let her emerge from groves and forests, from hills and mountains.”
badmash: Thanks bud! Re: asceticism. I would say they ideal applied to the sanyasi, so if the pentecostals appropriated it, they were appropriating the sanyasi code, which would be rather fascinating. The rest of us browns, of whatever community, are rather fond of jewelry as you probably know 🙂
blue mountain: I think he’s referring to Meera Nanda’s book, Prophets facing Backwards, which is a Richard Dawkin’s like deconstruction of Hinduism. She sees Vivekananda as a prime creator of India nationalism. Since we are on reformers, here is another quote from the eloquent Swami:
Where are the four castes today in this country? Answer me, [brahmins of Bengal]. I do not see the four castes. Just as our Bengali proverb has it: ” A headache without a head”, so you want to make this varnashrama [caste system] here. There are not [the traditional] four castes here. I see only the brahmin and the shudra. If there are kshatriyas and vaishyas, where are they and why do you brahmins not order them to take the yajnopavita [investiture with the sacred thread] and study the Vedas, as every Hindu ought to do? And if the vaishyas and kshatriyas do not exist, but only the brahmins and shudras, the Shastras say that the brahmin must not live where there are only shudras; so, depart, bag and baggage! Do you know what the Shastras say about people who have been eating mlechchha [non-Hindu] food and living under the government of the mlechchhas, as you have been doing for the past thousand years? Do you know the penance for that? The penance would be burning yourself with your own hands. Do you want to pass as teachers and walk like hypocrites? If you believe in your Shastras, burn yourself first like the one great brahmin who went with Alexander the Great and burnt himself because he thought he had eaten the food of a mlechchha. Do like that, and you will see that the whole nation will be at your feet. You do not believe your own Shastras and yet want to make others believe in them. If you think you are not able to do that in this age, admit your weakness and excuse the weakness of others; take the other castes up, give them a helping hand, let them study the Vedas and become just as good Aryans as any other Aryans in the world, and be you likewise Aryans. – Vivekananda
Blue mountain, I think Shiva is referring to Meera Nanda’s book Prophets Looking Backwards, where she tears apart people who attempt to find correlations to modern scientific ideas like Quantum physics in the Vedas. I seem to recall her not being sympathetic to Vivekananda either.
Ramabai’s father’s first wife died young, and while he endeavoured to educated her during their marriage, the girl showed no interest and was soon over-whelmed with housework. She died at a young age and he married a second child-bride, with the express purpose of educating her and she prooved to be an eager student. That was Ramabai’s mother.
Since child marriage was the norm in those days, better those children marry men who had their education in mind rather than men who did not.
I don’t think the point is to provide a justification for her father’s marriage – even if he was a man of his time (which in some ways he was not) one may well argue as to why one should marry a 10 year old to educate her. The point is that Ramabai herself expressed her disquiet over the arrangement. Simply put, it was hardly a golden age for Hindu women – early marriage, the lack of education, joint families, being unpaid domestic labour and the terrifying fear of widowhood. The list goes on. Its no wonder that someone articulating this like Ramabai was something akin to a heroine for many of us.
The thing that kills me is that in today’s age you get non-Indian westerners who align themselves with some “hindu” religions and then espouse things like caste system, dowry, sati, no widow remarriage and child marriage (after first menstruation).
Some leaders in ISKCON (international society for krishna consciousness) promote these things.
I think it’s a joke coz they have no idea what it’s like to grow up in a society where these things are still going on.
They go to India for a few weeks every year and see everything from the outside looking in and comment how “great” or “natural” it is. They don’t know or experience the underlying problems.
Pandita Ramabhai had a tempestuous life of ups and downs, and she is entitled to her beliefs…From what one reads of her, except her conversion, she does seem a commonsensical woman… Hinduism should not be judged from the state of shock and decay that it was in the nineteenth century. It does have great dimensions. But any religion, however great, is after all to be judged by those who practice it. Great spiritual ideas, on which religions are founded, require one to be compassionate to others. When the well-springs of compassion dry, any religion, any social movement, becomes a travesty of truth.