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| Book cover Rewriting History |
Over
two months have passed since I have held two books in my hand. One, more
recently, Against the madness of Manu, Dr
B R Ambedkar’s writings on Brahminical Patriarchy, selected and introduced by
well known scholar, Dr Sharmila Rege. The other, Dr Uma Chakravarti’s Rewriting history – The life and times of
Pandita Ramabai. I have not read two books that make me revert back and
forth to each other, so often. Both books are extremely engaging and very
scholarly. But, today, I will write of Pandita Ramabai, because, she was
blessed with parents who broke the cast, and caste rules, and brought up a
daughter who cannot be forgotten to the history of women, who were scholarly
and independent, who were able to be free flowing and to invent a word
–“un-castable”.
Ramabai’s
father, Anant Shastri Dongre, was born a Brahmana and lettered in Sanskrit
which was a language that could not be taught to anyone outside the Brahmana
caste, nor could it be taught to women. However, Dongre broke the first law by
trying to teach his wife, Sanskrit but her family came hammer and tong on him
forcing him to abort the effort. Many years later, now a widower, Dongre,
married the 9 year old Lakshmibai, (Dongre himself was at that time, 44 years
old), and found a keen learner of Sanskrit in her. Under much pressure for his
non-conformist behaviour, Dongre preferred to move into the forest and start an
ashram, which was managed by the couple. It is here that Pandita Ramabai was
born, and her first letters were studied in Sanskrit and of course the sacred
books of the Hindus. Having gone out of pocket, the family now began their
pilgrimage around places, a pauranikars,
that is public narrators of the Puranas. This lifestyle also was accompanied by
a life of sannyasa, which means, the family lived on alms provided by the
people to whom they taught the Puranas. A life of a wandering minstrel brought
Ramabai close to knowledge and renunciation, both, at one and the same time. After
many years of travel and starvation, Anant Shastri Dongre, performed jala samadhi, a practice by which he
drowned himself to be shortly followed by his grief-stricken wife, Lakshmibai.
The children, Srinivas and Ramabai, survived, even as the eldest sister passed
away and in 1878, arrived in Calcutta.
For the intellectual imaginative cream in Calcutta, Ramabai, unmarried and knowledgeable became the symbol of the return of Maitreye and Gargi, who followed their husband Yagnavalkya, to the forest to seek Knowledge, leaving all possessions behind. On the behest of Keshav Chandra Sen, who founded the Brahmo Samaj in Bengal, Ramabai, began to study the Vedas, which were gifted to her by Sen. The Vedas, Upanishads and the Vedanta, and the Brahma Sutras were texts which were not allowed to be read by women, even if they were Brahmanas, which she was.
For the intellectual imaginative cream in Calcutta, Ramabai, unmarried and knowledgeable became the symbol of the return of Maitreye and Gargi, who followed their husband Yagnavalkya, to the forest to seek Knowledge, leaving all possessions behind. On the behest of Keshav Chandra Sen, who founded the Brahmo Samaj in Bengal, Ramabai, began to study the Vedas, which were gifted to her by Sen. The Vedas, Upanishads and the Vedanta, and the Brahma Sutras were texts which were not allowed to be read by women, even if they were Brahmanas, which she was.
“IX.18.
Women have no right to study the Vedas. That is why their Sabskars (rites) are
performed without Veda Mantras. Women have no knowledge of religion because
they have no right to know the Vedas. The uttering of the Veda mantras is
useful for removing sin. As women cannot utter the Veda mantras they are as
untruth is”. (Quotation from Manu, Against
the madness of Manu, selected and introduced by Sharmila Rege, p.121)
Indeed,
the reading of these texts caused much dissatisfaction in Ramabai, because it
became clear that the status of women and low caste men, were seen very poorly.
Her engagement with Bengal’s intellectuals about uplifting women became a
focus. The Hindu religious texts were an eye-opener for her. She saw the
dominance of Brahmana patriarchy through them. It is at this juncture that she
met with another tragedy in her life, that being the death of her only surviving
sibling, Srinivas, to an illness. Alone, in the world, she accepted the
marriage proposal from her brother’s friend, from Sylhet, now in Bangladesh.
Bipin Bihari Medhavi, was a sudra, and her marriage with him in the Civil
Court, proved another slap on the face of Brahamanical tradition, of endogamy and
marriage by performing religious rites. In her own words, “Having lost faith in
the religion of my ancestors, I married a Bengali man of shudra caste” (Rewriting History, The life and times of
Pandita Ramabai, by Uma Chakravarti, p. 310) The marriage lasted for only 3
– 4 years and Ramabai was left a widow, with a daughter to fend for. She
returned to her place of origin, this time with child, in 1882, when the
reformists in Poona, Maharashtra called her back. But in orthodox Poona, as a
widow, engaged with talking of uplifting women in Public discourses, the scorn
of the Brahmana community in Poona was not far. Indeed, even the wives of
reformers like Justice Ranade wrote with unabashed venom, fearing that, she
might now convert to Christianity, far worse than marrying even a sudra.
“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
build a home for herself after all? No fear. She brought utter ruin on everyone
connected with her and is now out to pollute the whole world. (Rewriting History, The life and times of
Pandita Ramabai, by Uma Chakravarti, p. 313)
It
is at this moment, having seen through the Hindu texts and also being
completely alone in the world along with her daughter, that Ramabai, began to
feel the dire need for a personal God. In Father Goteh, a Chitpavan Brahmana
convert himself, Ramabai found an answer, in Christ. Egged on by the
involvement of Miss Hurford, a missionary, who introduced her to the Bible in
Marathi, she found her peace with Christ, when she converted to Christianity on
her visit to England, in 1883, despite the fact that her companion to England,
Anandibai, having nearly throttled her, before she herself committed suicide in
St Mary’s Home in Wantage, for fear that, the outlandish Ramabai, would yet
again do the forbidden, that is to convert to Christianity.
An
outcry followed in India, as soon as news came in of the conversion. They
damned her as ‘fickle’, ‘peculiarly female’, meaning she was sentimental and
not rational, as her scholarly mind should have made her.
Leave
that as it may, she was about to encounter patriarchy in the Church as well. In
September, 1884, Ramabai joined the Women’s College, Cheltenham, as a student
and teacher of Marathi language. She was to teach the language to young English
boys and women but the Bishop of Lahour and Bombay struck it down causing
Ramabai to react sharply. She was not going to accept these racist rules, which
forbade her, an Indian woman to teach English boys.
“I
have a conscience and a mind of my own. 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 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...” (Rewriting History, The life and times of Pandita Ramabai, by Uma
Chakravarti, p. 322)
In
1886, Ramabai went to America and stayed there for two years, leaving her
daughter Manorama with the sisters at Wantage. In these two years she travelled
almost 50,000 kilometres across America, addressing hundreds of meetings,
lecturing, writing, speaking, entertaining, thinking and raising funds for an upper
caste widow’s home in India, because the plight of the higher caste widow in
India was pitiable.
If
as Dr B R Ambedkar, in his paper read out first before the anthropology seminar
of Dr A A Goldenweiser at Columbia University, New York, on 9 May 1916,
concluded in ‘[14] Thus the superposition of endogamy of exogamy means caste.’(Against the madness of Manu, selected and
introduced by Sharmila Rege, p.86), [16] The problem of caste, then,
ultimately resolves itself into one of repairing the disparity between the
marriageable units of the two sexes within it...The husband may die before the
wife and create a surplus woman, who must be disposed of, else through
intermarriage she will violate the endogamy of the group...Thus, both the
surplus woman and the surplus man constitute a menace to the caste if not taken
care of;...’ [18] First: burn her on the funeral pyre of her deceased husband...[19]
The second remedy is to enforce widowhood on her for the rest of her life.’(Ibid, pp 87 - 88)
This
enforced widowhood, was pitiable, both in terms of the fact that the period of
this widowhood could be long due to child marriage and the restrictions imposed
on the widow, were inhuman. Thus, in March 1889 Pandita Ramabai, inaugurated
the first Home for widows of upper caste women, called Sarada Sadan in Bombay,
where widows could come to stay instead of remaining back in their families.
This Home would be a place where women would be encouraged to have a new
understanding of themselves, bringing the joy of new life, unlike the joyless
life, widows were expected to lead, by Hindu society dictates.
In
the same year she returned to India from America, then she moved to Poona, in
1890, where her work was looked at with much suspicion especially because by
now she was seen as a convert, who in D K Karve’s words, “From the orthodox
point of view, even the remarriage of widows was not so objectionable as their
conversion to Christianity”. In her later years at Mukti Sadan, Kedgaon, the
inmates were visited by a Pentecostal preacher and for a period began to ‘speak
in tongues’ as if experiencing an ‘awakening’. This however was short lived and
the girls trained in many crafts and lettered too, went back to singing Marathi
kirtanas composed by the Christian
poet Waman Narayan Tilak and printing the Bible in Marathi.
Ramabai
died in 1922, suffering yet one more loss in her life, that of the death of her
only daughter, Manorama. By now she was entirely deaf. But had changed the
plight of widows in India and fought for equal rights for them. Indeed, the
best obituary was from D.K. Karve, who had married one of the first widow
inmates of Sarada Sadan.
For
history to obliterate her name or to put her in the backburner would be equally
participated by Hindus and Christians alike, for Pandita Ramabai, followed her
heart and proceeded to a life free of both patriarchies, whether born and bred
in the Hindu texts or in the Christian Church. In a way, she Indianised
Christianity for the benefit of Indian women and widows in particular, in
another way, she westernised the Hindu scriptures and societal dictates for the
same group of women. And in that she stood on her own stead.
It
would be impossible for women to do the same however, and notwithstanding what
patriarchies in any domain do to erase or forget by omission, Pandita Ramabai,
as women, we will not commit a heinous crime, like sati, or a forced widowhood,
from the clutches of which she worked tireless towards and succeeded to make
the difference.
(c) Julia Dutta June 16, 2013
To buy:
Rewriting History – The life and times
of Pandita Ramabai by Uma Chakravarti
http://www.dialabook.in/books/rewriting-history:-the-life-and-times-of-pandita-ramabai_1_18944.html
http://www.dialabook.in/books/rewriting-history:-the-life-and-times-of-pandita-ramabai_1_18944.html
Against The madness of Manu by Sharmila Rege
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