Ramabai, the Learned

Some books are bought, but it takes some effort to read. While unpacking a few boxes, I found an unread copy of one of such books I had bought hoping to understand a person better and also understand the sociology of a period better. Pandita Ramabai Through Her Own Words is a compilation and translation of the Pandita’s essays by Meera Kosambi. I liked Kosambi’s style when reading her book Bombay in Transition: The Growth and Social Ecology of a Colonial City, 1880-1980. Meera Kosambi is a director of the Research Center for Women’s Studies at SNDT University for Women and the daughter of the Mathematician Damodar Dharmanand Kosambi – best qualified to compile the essays written by Pandita Ramabai.

As Kosambi points out, Pandita Ramabai was the insider as well as the outsider at the same time. The Pandita was also born and brought up during a period that saw many tumultuous changes for the Marathi intellectual society.

1818 – Peshwa Bajirao II lost the war to the East India Company. A big thorn in the flesh for the British – mainly East India Company – was gone. With that, the Bombay Presidency inherited the core Peshwa Empire and also confederate princely states of Baroda, Gwalior, Indore, Nagpur etc. Though caste politics was not the dirty ball-game as much as it is today, Peshwas being the Chitpawan Brahmins, the caste automatically enjoyed the highest status. The erudite scholars – masters of the Vedas, Puranas, Shastras were involved in debates and making sure that the religion – dharma – was followed and not desecrated in any manner. Since the caste got many non-questioned rights similar to the clergy in France before the revolution, keeping others under the thumb was important. The Brahmin dominated society was more worried about the class strata and mired in rituals and orthodoxy many a times teetering on the edge of superstitions. Needless to say, the shudras – the lowest rung of castes and women got the wrong end of the stick in an otherwise prosperous state. Many Brahmins though lived on dakshina – donations – in return of teaching Vedas or Shastras and bhikshuki – alms given in return of performing rituals. For some, in this highest stratum of the society, penury was not uncommon.

One such penurious but deeply religious Brahmin was Anant Shastri Dongre – who was impressed by hearing and seeing the mellifluous Sanskrit debates in the court of the Peshwa. If the queen – wife of the Peshwa – can be erudite in Sanskrit, why not my wife too, thought Anant Shastri. This brought a strong reprimand for the women were not supposed to be learned! His first wife died without learning Sanskrit and when he remarried and the second wife Laxmibai learnt Sanskrit, it brought the wrath of fellow caste men to Anant Shastri. Of the couple’s six children, three survived with Ramabai being the youngest. The family traversed the length and breadth of the country visiting holy places and making a living by reciting the Puranas. Anant Shastri taught Sanskrit to not only his son Srinivas Shastri but also to the elder Krishnabai and the youngest Ramabai (born 1858). The girls learning Sanskrit brought the wrath of the community once again. Anant Shastri though took another step – not getting Ramabai married as a child – after he saw Krishnabai’s child-marriage fail.

Unlike the women of her time, Ramabai was not locked being a wife and mother, on the contrary, she was trained in public speaking, debating and treated as her brother’s equal. Later this helped Ramabai enter the public, male arena of social reform without any hesitation. Her life though was mired with tragedy – the parents were lost to the famine when Ramabai was only 16. A year later, in 1875, Krishnabai also died of cholera. The brother-sister duo continued their pilgrimage and they chanced upon arriving in Calcutta in 1878. The Brahmo Samaj in Calcutta had already started the social reforms (Bengal was under the British hegemony almost a century before the Maratha Confederacy) and Ramabai was taken in to the movement. Her intellect and Sanskrit skills were honored by bestowing the titles of Pandita (the learned one, feminine form of Pundit) and Sarasvati (the Goddess of Learning) on her. The Pandita delivered public and private lectures on the emancipation of women and soon achieved the fame of being a champion of women’s education. But personal tragedy struck again and again. Srinivas Shastri died of cholera in 1880. Alone and helpless, Ramabai married Srinivas’s friend Bipin Behari Das Medhavi a non-Brahmin Brahmo Lawyer and gave birth to a girl, Manorama. In 1882, cholera struck again, leaving Ramabai a widow and a mother of an infant.

Caste bonds are strong in Indian society even today. At that time, they were stronger. The reformers of Maharashtra laid claim on their ‘native daughter’ and the Pandita came to Pune. Immediately she became a part of the reform movement of the Prarthana Samaj and became one of us in the Chitpavan Brahmin community.

The post-Peshwa but pre-reform society is difficult to understand. The society was rigidly divided on the caste strata. Position of a woman was even difficult. The only status a woman ever had was only if she were married and had sons (daughters did not count). Widows were the lowest rung of the society and were disfigured via tonsured heads and coarse clothes. Their presence was considered inauspicious and sinful. Imagine the outrage it must have caused when the Pandita talked of emancipation of the women!

A part of the social reform had already started with Mahatma Phule taking steps towards education of women and setting an example by educating his own wife Savitribai. Savitribai was now a teacher in a school she ran with the help of her husband. The likes of Justice MG Ranade, Lokahitwadi Deshmukh, Sir RG Bhandarkar, Justice Telang, Lokmanya Tilak, GG Agarkar had started taking steps towards social reforms, equality and education. (Justice Telang presided over the first recorded divorce case filed in the Bombay High Court by a woman. At that time, the law did not allow women to file for divorce. Later the same woman – Rakhmabai – went to England for further education and became the third woman-doctor in India. She spent most of her life in Surat/Baroda taking care of the ill). The social reforms were a men’s world and interfering in the men’s task was not tolerated. Savitribai herself faced a lot of trouble. Justice Ranade’s wife, another Ramabai, had started a society called Seva Sadan that brought helpless women together. But it was still under the guidance of the Justice himself. The Pandita started Arya Mahila Samaj – a society intended to mobilize women through consciousness-raising, but this was treated as a threat by the male dominated reform movement.

The opposition faced by the Pandita renewed her ambition to study medicine and she decided to travel to England. The Sisters of the Community of St. Mary the Virgin at Wantage arranged for her stay. She was to earn her living by teaching Marathi to the Sisters. The Sisters were to be sent to Western India but there was a clear understanding that the Pandita would not convert to Christianity. The Pandita continued her emancipation of women movement by writing on behalf of the Arya Mahila Samaj, raising funds and meeting influential people (One such being Sir Bartle Frere, former Governor of the Bombay Presidency). Despite of the Pandita’s understanding on non-conversion, the Sisters genuinely believed that she was in England as an inquirer to study Christianity. The pressure and coercion started mounting slowly. Out of fear, the Pandita’s companion Anandibai Bhagat tried to strangle her master (it was better to die Hindu, than to live Christian) and later committed suicide herself. Anandibai was baptized on her deathbed and under pressure, the Pandita converted to Christianity to be baptized into the Anglican Church as Mary Rama (along with her daughter Manorama Mary).

This event had a paramount impact on the Brahmin community in Pune and Calcutta and this of course, did not go well with them. The Pandita never explained it and she was never exonerated for her misstep. It was however, inexplicable that a woman of her intellectual capability would be forced to take such a step. The Sisters Community even started planning a missionary career for the Pandita. Later, her medical studies discontinued because of an incurable deafness and she enrolled in the Cheltenham Ladies’ College as teacher-student – learning Natural Sciences, Mathematics and English and giving Sanskrit lessons in return.

The Pandita was invited to be present at the convocation ceremony of Dr. Anandibai Joshee – the first woman doctor of India at the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania. She delivered several lectures on the cause of the Indian women and published essays on the same subject in the United States during her stay there for over two years. She also started writing a book called United Stateschi Lokasthiti ani Pravasvritta (the People of the United States and a Travelogue) contrasting a vibrant, progressive democracy with the colonial Britain. A society called The Ramabai Association of Boston was formed to help the Pandita’s cause in India.

After coming back, the Pandita started the Sharada Sadan (Home for Learning) for widows. Within two years, the Sadan found itself in the middle of a storm caused by the allegations of proselytization. A sensitive issue with the orthodox Indian community, it snowballed quickly leading to much bitterness. Later the Pandita started an overtly Christian institution called the Mukti Sadan (Home of Salvation) and expanded it into the Mukti Mission. The Pandita also started focusing on women from the lower castes and moved away from Pune. She started many schools and taught income generating skills (like nursing, tailoring, waving, operating a printing press etc.) to the women she housed.

At some point, with the revelation in the classic Christian tradition, faith superseded intellectual questioning and her earlier openness to religious issues gradually was usurped by blatant proselytizing. She also believed that the Hindu women would take shelter in her institutions and realize that their oppression can be remedied only by conversion to Christianity. This marginalized the Pandita from the mainstream reform activities.

The British Government recognizing her contribution to the social reforms awarded her Kaiser-i-Hind gold medal in 1919. The final personal tragedy fell upon the Pandita when her forty year old daughter Manorama died in 1921. The Pandita died in 1922. Such is the life history of a brilliant, pro-reform, feminist, scholar who lived during the period when many transitions in the Indian society took place.

The Pandita has written many essays and letters. She writes about Stri Dharma Niti – Morals for Women. She writes about her personal experience during the famine. She writes about the Hindu Dharma, the High-Caste Hindu Women, the Conditions of Women in the USA, about her own work at the Mukti Sadan and Kripa Sadan. Some of her essays have been translated from Marathi into English by Meera Kosambi and some published for the first time. What will these essays hold? Will the feminist Pandita expect the woman to blindly follow instructions from her husband in Stri Dharma Niti? Will the essays on Mukti Sadan and Kripa Sadan take a critical view of the Hindu dharma? I will read and find out, through her own words!

The Pandita’s contribution to the cause of women immense. One cannot debate on the attributes that placed her among the scholars. Standing up to the men in those days required immense courage and the Pandita had it. The outsider element came from the Pandita’s accepting Christianity. But the Marathi society still feels the Pandita as one of us.