Table Of ContentPANDITA RAMABAI
This book looks at the life of Pandita Ramabai, one of the major social
reformers of nineteenth-century India. Her unique life trajectory spanned
across a pan-Indian, orthodox Hindu mould to being part of Brahmo Samaj
and Prarthana Samaj, and further to Christianity. At the age of 30 she had
travelled widely within India and across the world, from the USA and UK
in the West to Japan in the Far East. She reported these fascinating jour-
neys to international friends and fellow Maharashtrians in both English
and Marathi. Fighting conservatism and marginalization she set up several
projects to empower women, notably, the Sharada Sadan in Mumbai and
the Mukti Mission in Kedgaon near Pune in Maharashtra.
This work locates Pandita Ramabai within her liminal social milieu and
discursive networks during various phases of her life, and traces her diverse
ideological routes along with her critical writings, some of which have been
retrieved and/or presented in English translation here for the first time,
including The High-Caste Hindu Woman and the newly discovered Voyage
to England. Offering a comprehensive insight into aspects of nineteenth-
century Indian society – religion and reform, women’s rights and feminism,
social movements, poverty and colonialism – this book will greatly interest
researchers and students of South Asian history, sociology and gender studies.
Meera Kosambi was a sociologist and retired as Professor and Direc-
tor, Research Centre for Women’s Studies, SNDT University, Mumbai,
Maharashtra, India. She was trained in India, Sweden and the USA, and
specialized in urban studies and women’s studies. She has contributed
research-based writings and delivered lectures in many countries. Her
publications include Gender, Culture and Performance: Marathi Theatre
and Cinema before Independence (2015, Routledge); Crossing Thresholds
(2007); Women Writing Gender (2012); and Mahatma Gandhi and Prema
Kantak (2013).
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PANDITA RAMABAI
Life and landmark writings
Meera Kosambi
First published 2016
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2016 Aban Mukherji
The right of Meera Kosambi to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library
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ISBN: 978-1-138-96245-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-65942-8 (ebk)
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CONTENTS
List of plates vii
Introduction 1
1 Early life 7
2 Entry into Maharashtra 23
Selection 1: Stri Dharma Niti (Morals for
women, 1882, tr.) 38
3 England and conversion to Christianity 80
Selection 2: Englandcha Pravas (Voyage to
England, 1883, abridged translation) 102
4 American sojourn 122
Selection 3: The High-Caste Hindu Woman, 1887 142
5 Return to Maharashtra: Sharada Sadan 176
6 Kedgaon and Mukti Mission 203
Selection 4: Famine experiences, 1897 217
Selection 5: About government provisions during
plague epidemic, 1897 231
v
CONTENTS
Selection 6: To the friends of Mukti school
and mission, 1900 234
7 Kedgaon: Religious preoccupations 249
Selection 7: A testimony of our inexhaustible
treasure, 1907 263
8 Epitaphs and legacies 287
Bibliography 297
Index 305
vi
PLATES
1 The Dongre family: Lakshmibai, Ramabai, Anantshastri, a
son, Srinivas and Krishnabai, c. 1864 8
2 Ramabai as Mrs Medhavi, c. 1882 18
3 Bipin Behari Das Medhavi, c. 1882 19
4 Ramabai with Manorama and Anandibai Bhagat, c. early 1883 24
5 Ramabai with Manorama, early 1886 81
6 Sister Geraldine 85
7 Ramabai in the USA, c. 1886 123
8 Sharada Sadan group, c. 1890. Seated on chairs:
Manorama and Ramabai, Godubai (later Anandibai Karve)
and Miss Hamlin 177
9 Mukti Church 204
10 Meals at Mukti, c. 1900 204
11 Famine survivor, c. 1900 218
12 Ramabai and Manorama with co-workers 250
13 Women typesetting Mukti publications 253
14 Ramabai working on her Bible translation 256
15 Ramabai’s grave at Kedgaon 288
All photographs were reproduced with the permission of Pandita Ramabai
Mukti Mission, Kedgaon, Pune, Maharashtra, India.
vii
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INTRODUCTION
‘The silence of a thousand years is broken,’ exulted Dr Rachel Bodley in
her Introduction to Pandita Ramabai’s The High-Caste Hindu Woman,
a cogent account of the constricted and oppressed lives of upper-caste
Indian women, which was appended with a proposal for their emancipa-
tion. The book, which I consider ‘an unofficial Indian feminist mani-
festo’, was published in the United States in 1887 and sold 9,000 copies
internationally within a year.1 Its author was instantly iconized in West-
ern countries from the USA to Australia as well as in countries of Asia,
to linger on in their collective memories, even as Ramabai herself came
to be relegated to silence in the social histories and reform discourses of
western India where she had made her home. This conundrum is pivotal
to an understanding of her life (1858–1922) and contribution. I argue
also that her elision was rooted mainly in her feminism (and not in
her conversion to Christianity followed by proselytization, as is usually
believed) – a fact that needs to be adequately addressed in any attempt
to assess her. Thus the present volume seeks to locate her biographical
narrative within her various and overlapping social and ideological con-
texts, amplifying her own voice whenever possible and offering some of
her essential writings.
What lent Ramabai’s contribution special valence was that it was she – a
solitary and largely unsupported Indian woman – and not any of the far
more vocal Indian men or Western women – who ‘named’ most eloquently
and systematically the problems of the ‘oppressed Indian woman’, so highly
troped in the West. Such was the power of her voice that it reverberated
across the globe a century ago, only to be suppressed equally long within
India. This attempt to trace her entire register is a project of retrieval – of
her significant texts, her multiple ideological evolutions and of the intri-
cacies of her feminism within the intersecting and sometimes-conflicting
structures of patriarchy, religion, nationalism and internationalism. But its
nuances can be appreciated only by reaching into the past to reclaim and
evaluate also her activism that accompanied it.
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