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Reluctant Debutante: Response of Bengali Women to Modernisation, 1849-1905 G. Murshid Rajshahi : Sahitya Samsad, Rajshahi University 1983 ______________________________________________________________Preface This book is a modest study of how a section of English educated Bengali men exposed their women to the process of modernization during the late nineteenth century and how women responded to these male efforts. It also gives an evaluation of how far some Bengali women were modernized as a result of the male initiated reform movement. While a number of books on how social reformers such as Rammohan Roy, Iswar Chandra Bidyasagar, Akshay Kumar Datta, Keshab Chandra Sen and Dwarkanth Ganguli contributed to the elevation of the downtrodden Bengali women have been published, no one has tried to give an account of how women themselves responded to modernization. This book seeks particularly to throw some light on this aspect, so long neglected. I am grateful to the University of Melbourne for giving me a post-doctoral research fellowship for two years (1978-1980) as well as for giving a grant for securing research material from overseas. I appreciate the help of Professor Sibnarayan Ray under whose supervision I did my research. He helped me in clarifying my ideas. I am very much indebted to Professor David Kopf, Dr Marian Maddern, Dr Ellen McEwan and Dr Meredith Borthwick for reading the manuscript and for suggesting improvements. I am also grateful to James Wise, Patrick Wolfe, Professor Joan Hussein, Ali Anwar and Pauline Rule for their valuable suggestions. I am extremely grateful to the Ford Foundation, Dacca, for giving me a generous grant, which covered almost the entire cost of publishing the first edition of this book. I am also grateful to Ms A. Germain for the keen interest she showed in the publication of this book. First the work of writing my PhD dissertation and then the work of writing this book kept me considerably away from my wife, Eliza, my daughter, Gargi, and from my son, Panini. Besides, Eliza helped me in various ways. My indebtedness to my family is indeed hard to acknowledge properly. My two younger brothers, Dr M. G. Quibria and Dr M.G. Kabir also helped me in many ways. I am really thankful to them. Finally I would like to thank the Chaturanga Press and its workers for printing the book in less than three months. Because it was rather hurriedly printed, there are quite a few printing mistakes. The index is also inadequate. A note on Bengali male and female names To distinguish between male and female names, I have generally used the full names of women writers, unless they are very frequently referred to. Traditional women would generally use Debi or Dasi at the end of their names. These are not surnames. Debi literally means a goddess and Dasi a slave. Rajshahi University Ghulam Murshid 2 Contents Introduction I "Lead kindly light": The Beginnings of Female Education and Women's Attitudes Towards it II Unlatching the Cage: Male Efforts to Free Bengali Women III In the Wide World: Women's Changing Concept of Freedom IV The Disputed Image: The Figure of Women in Society V In Their Master's Footsteps: The Dependent Nature of Women's Attitudes to Social Reform Conclusion Appendices a. Modernization of Bengali Women and the Toga Family b. Bamabodhini Patrika, 1863-1923 c. Bengali Women's Dress d. A list of Members of the Sakhi Samiti e. A list of Bengali Women Graduates f. A list of Bengali Women Writers Select Bibliography Index 3 INTRODUCTION If any one phase of Bengal's history has attracted the particular attention of modern historians, it is the nineteenth century. The specific area of interest of these historians is the awakening of Bengal, which includes both the process of modernization that set in possibly from the beginning of the century1 and the emergence of nationalism, a later phenomenon.2 Whether or not this awakening can be called a "renaissance" is also a point of great debate. Economic and socio-cultural aspects of nineteenth century Bengal have also been the subject matter of many studies.3 Because of the pluralistic nature of Bengali society, all these studies whether on modernization or on the growth of the middle classes,4 have tended to be partial. In most cases, nineteenth century historiography of Bengal concerns the rise and development of an educated elite popularly known as the bhadralok.5 This segment, for most part, belonged in area to the city of Calcutta; in religion, they were Hindus; and by caste, they were Brahmans, Kayasthas and Baidyas. These three castes constituted only about five percent of the total population of Bengal.6 The number of Brahmans, Kayasthas and Baidyas residing in Calcutta was, of course, smaller and did not even constitute one percent of the populations. Thus despite the fact that it is perhaps the most important part of Bengal's history of that period, the historiography of the bhadralok is only partial. It is more so since historians of 1. For example see Asiatic Society, Renascent Bengal (Calcutta : Asiatic Society, 1972) ; N.S. Bose, The Indian Awakening and Bengal ( 3rd ed. ; Calcutta : Firma K. L. Mukhopadhyay,1969) ; K . K. Datta, Renaissance Nationalism and Social Changes in Modern India (Calcutta Bookland Private Limited.,1965) ; B. Ghosh, Banglar Nabajagriti (Calcutta : International Publishers, 1948) ; A. C. Gupta (ed.), Studies in the Bengal Renaissance (Jadavpur : National Council of Education, 1958 ) D. Kopf, British Orientalism and the Bengal Renaissance (Berkeley : University of California Press, 1969) ; D. Kopf. The Brahma Samaj and the Shaping of Modern Indian Mind (Princeton : Princeton University Press , 1979) ; R. C. Majumdar, A. K. Majumdar & D. K. Ghosh, British Paramountcy and Indian Renaissance (Bombay : Bharatiya Bidya Bhavan, 1965) ; A. Mukherjee, Reform and Regeneration in Bengal (Calcutta : Rabindra Bharati University, 1968) ; A. Poddar, Renaissance in Bengal : Search for Identity ( Simla: Indian Institute of Advance Study , 1977) ; S. Sarkar, Bengal Renaissance and Other Essays (New Delhi : People's Publishing House, 1970). Besides, such biographical works as S. Sastri's Ramtanu Lahiri O Tatkalin Banga Samaj ( Calcutta : S. K. Lahiri & Co., 1904); B. Ghosh's Bidyasagar O Bangla Samaj (1st Orient Longman ed.; Calcutta : Orient Longman, 1973) ; and N. Mukherji's A Bengal Zamindar : Jaykrisna Mukherji of Uttarpara and His Times ( Calcutta : Firma K. L Mukhopadhyay, 1974 ) are also very good documents of the awakening that took place in the nineteenth century. 2. This has been discussed more or less in all the works on the development of Indian politics, especially in the ones that trace the emergence of nationalism in India. The following works deal in the subject in detail : S. N. Banerjea, A Nation in the Making ( London : Oxford University Press, 1925) ; L. A. Gordon, Bengal : The Nationalist Movement ( New York : Columbia University Press, 1974), and B.B. Majumdar , History of Political Thought from Rammohun to Dayanda (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1934). 3. See, for example, A.F. S. Ahmed, Social Ideas and Social Change in Bengal (Leiden : E.J Brill, 1965) ; N.C Chaudhuri, Bangali Jibane Ramani ( 3rd ed.; Calcutta : Mitra O Ghose, 1971) ; B. Ghose , Banglar Samajik Itihaser Dhara (Calcutta : Author, 1968) ; R. C. Majumdar, Glimpses of Bengal in the Nineteenth Century (Calcutta : Firma K. L. Mukhopadhyay, 1960) ; S. Sastri, History of the Brahmo Samaj (2nd ed.; Calcutta : Sadharan Brahmo Samaj,1974) ; and P. Sinha, Nineteenth century Bengal : Aspects of Social History (Calcutta : Firma K. L. Mukhopadhyay,1965). 4. Books on the development of the Bengali middle classes are few in number. Of these, B. B. Misr' as Indian Middle Classes: Their Growth in Modern Times ( London : Oxford University Press, 1961) still appears to be the best . B Ghosh's Banglar Samajik Itihaser Dhara and N. K. Sinha's The Economic History of Bengal ,Vol. 3 (Calcutta : Firma K. L. Mukhopadhyay, 1970) are also useful. 5. For a comprehensive definition of the term bhadralok see J. H Broomfield, Elite Conflict in a Plural Society, (Berkeley : University of California Press, 1968, pp. 5-7. The term has been widely used by A. Seal in his The Emergence of Indian Nationalism (Reprint ; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970) and by D. Kopf in his The Brama Samaj and the Shaping of Modern Indian Mind. In the present work , I used the term to mean educated middle class including Bengali speaking Muslims. 6. Report on the Census of India, 1901, Vol. pt. 1 ( Calcutta : Bengal Secretariat Press, 1902) , p. 459. 4 Bengal have completely ignored one half of the bahadralok - their women. It has been considered important to study the role of women in the changing Bengali society for a better understanding of Bengal's awakening. The recent studies of Bengali women, based mostly on secondary sources and perfunctory in nature, a number of which were done by women, record some important events that took placed among Bengali women during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.7 These studies show how and when female education was introduced and gradually accepted in Bengal, when the female BA or MB came out from the Calcutta University, when women started to publish, when women's seclusion was broken and such other things. To have brought to light these developments, for so long unknown, is certainly a significant step towards the understanding of the history of Bengali women. However, like the male historians, the female historians also treated these developments separately, as though they took place outside the general historical scene and neither influenced the male-defined world nor were influenced by it. Besides some very important questions such as how the roles and status of women changed, how their attitudes towards the institution of marriage were being increasingly based on new values, and how the growth of the individuality and personal autonomy affected the relationship between man and woman in the context of the family remained unasked.

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