ABSTRACT KAMALADEVI CHATTOPADHYAYA, ANTI-IMPERIALIST AND WOMEN'S RIGHTS ACTIVIST, 1939-41 by Julie Laut Barbieri This paper utilizes biographies, correspondence, and newspapers to document and analyze the Indian socialist and women’s rights activist Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya’s (1903-1986) June 1939-November 1941 world tour. Kamaladevi’s radical stance on the nationalist cause, birth control, and women’s rights led Gandhi to block her ascension within the Indian National Congress leadership, partially contributing to her decision to leave in 1939. In Europe to attend several international women’s conferences, Kamaladevi then spent eighteen months in the U.S. visiting luminaries such as Eleanor Roosevelt and Margaret Sanger, lecturing on politics in India, and observing numerous social reform programs. This paper argues that Kamaladevi’s experience within Congress throughout the 1930s demonstrates the importance of gender in Indian nationalist politics; that her critique of Western “international” women’s organizations must be acknowledged as a precursor to the politics of modern third world feminism; and finally, Kamaladevi is one of the twentieth century’s truly global historical agents. KAMALADEVI CHATTOPADHYAYA, ANTI-IMPERIALIST AND WOMEN'S RIGHTS ACTIVIST, 1939-41 A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Miami University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Department of History By Julie Laut Barbieri Miami University Oxford, Ohio 2008 Advisor____________________________ (Judith P. Zinsser) Reader_____________________________ (Mary E. Frederickson) Reader_____________________________ (David M. Fahey) © Julie Laut Barbieri 2008 For Julian and Celia who inspire me to live a purposeful life. Acknowledgements March 2003 was an eventful month. While my husband was in Seattle at a monthly graduate school session, I discovered I was pregnant with my second child. One week later I received an acceptance letter from Portland State University’s graduate history program. There were to be no illusions about returning to school. Like many women faced with this same challenge, my path to this point has been neither smooth nor straight. In fact, ‘meandering’ might best describe the last five years. But with sustaining support and encouragement from my mentors, friends, and especially my family, I am right where I wanted to be. At PSU, David Johnson encouraged me to pursue an advanced degree. Brittany Ferry offered friendship and editing expertise, but I especially benefited from her assurance that skimming is not a form of cheating. In my detour to Ohio, I have encountered an amazing community of feminist historians. Judith P. Zinsser has been my champion since the day we met, I am grateful for her wisdom and guidance. Because of her mentorship I am a better writer and a better historian. Her work is an inspiration. Barbara Ramusack generously opened her home and shared her expertise. Intrigued by Kamaladevi’s radical stance on birth control, Barbara interviewed her in the 1970s and stockpiled Kamaladevi research, which she allowed me to utilize for this thesis. With this invaluable material collected from Delhi, London, and elsewhere, I drove home as though I had a newborn baby in the back seat! Antoinette Burton offered key insight and shifted the framework of my thesis with just one conversation. My instructors at Miami have led me through a comprehensive introduction to gender and comparative women’s history: Carla Pestana, Rene Baernstein, Yihong Pan, Wietse DeBoer, Kimberly Hamlin, and Liz Wilson. Thanks also to my readers, Mary Frederickson and David Fahey. My daughter was still in utero when I started my graduate career, my son just three and a half. Now four and seven, their beauty and brilliance makes this all worthwhile. I hope my work will one day inspire them to live purposefully just as their lives have inspired me. When I had to be away, Meliah, Jen, Apple, and Juju changed diapers, made dinner, monitored homework, and most importantly laughed with and loved my children. By some miracle, my parents still love me unconditionally despite the fact that I left Oregon. This space is much too limited to list all they have done for me, so I hope this sentence will suffice. Friends also offered strength and love from start to finish: Ellen U., Wendy, Kapree, Marjie, Ellen S., and Vanessa. Thanks also to Dave for his support. I look forward to the next leg of this journey, wherever it may lead. But it never becomes intolerable to me until it hurts me as it passes through my own body, and drags me into this spot of insoluble contradictions, impossible to overcome, this place I have never been able to get out of since: the friend is also the enemy. All women have lived that, are living it, as I continue to live it. ‘We’ struggle together, yes, but who is this ‘we?’… I, revolt, rages, where am I to stand? What is my place if I am a woman? Hélène Cixous and Catherine Clément, The Newly Born Woman (1986) On the one hand, women ally with men in national liberation, union, or peace movements, but within these movements they engage in feminist struggles where their male allies are at the same time their enemies. On the other hand, women of different races and nationalities ally with each other in feminist movements, but at the same time engage in struggles for racial justice or national liberation where white feminists from imperialist countries can be the enemy…as ally or adversary, any individual or group is internally different. Leslie Wahl Rabine, “A Feminist Politics of Non-Identity” (1988) 1 By all accounts Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya (1903-1986)1 did not plan to circle the globe when she left India with her sixteen-year old son, Ramakrishna (1923-), in June 1939. Aware of the growing conflict in Europe, she nevertheless accepted invitations to two international women’s conferences and toured several countries throughout the summer, returning to England from Finland just before the war broke out on the continent. With help from several friends in London including Krishna Menon, president of the India League, and Agatha Harrison, Gandhi’s London secretary, she and Rama obtained two-month travel visas through the U.S. in order to return to India safely. Her stay there, however, lengthened considerably. In all she toured North America for eighteen months and spent time in Japan and Southeast Asia before returning to India in November 1941. As the world edged toward conflict, this seasoned Indian independence activist, lecturer and writer, a thirty-six-year-old single mother, visited over one dozen countries on three continents, staying just ahead of the expanding world war. Kamaladevi’s contemporaries and modern Indian biographers—who generally write with a tone of reverence—utilize Kamaladevi’s 1939-41 journey as the exemplar of her ‘woman rebel’ persona. Hilda Wierum Boulter, Kamaladevi’s secretary during her time in North America, foreshadowed more recent biographies when she wrote in a 1942 article in Asia magazine, “There are so many stories told of Kamaladevi that she has become almost legendary.” Sakuntala Narasimhan author of Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay: The Romantic Rebel (1999), invoked her subject’s anti-imperialist stance, describing how Kamaladevi “gave even the mighty British empire anxious moments as she dodged and defied them, refusing to be thwarted as she went merrily globe-trotting as an invited and honoured guest of kings, presidents and world leaders.” Kamaladevi’s most thorough biographer to date, Reena Nanda, in her assessment of the same trip, utilized heroic imagery to describe Kamaladevi’s ability to succeed despite formidable opposition: These daredevil exploits through dangerous, war-torn territory, without visas, and fighting her way through obstreperous ships’ captains and consulate officials, with the police always on her trail, reveal her fascination for overcoming obstacles and opposition, seeking challenges and meeting them headlong, something that would have tested the endurance of most people. Invariably, with dogged persistence and pitting her wits against those of her opponents, she won.2 For those interested in telling the story of a unique and celebrated Indian woman, it is not surprising that Kamaladevi’s travels between 1939 and 1941 have been used primarily as further evidence of her “remarkable” life. In her first thirty-six years, Kamaladevi transcended her caste, her nation, and her sex through both personal and political actions. Born in 1903 into Mangalore’s less orthodox Konkan Saraswat 1 It is common practice in South India to refer to both men and women by their first names. This caused confusion during Kamaladevi’s travels in the United States and reporters at times mistakenly referred to her as Chattopadhyaya Kamaladevi or Mrs. Kamaladevi. Her last name (from her second husband) is spelled several different ways even in modern Indian sources (i.e. Chattopadhyay and Chattopadhyayya). 2 Hilda Wierum Boulter, “Kamaladevi—Gentle Warrior,” Asia 42:3 (1942): 180; Sakuntala Narasimhan, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya: The Romantic Rebel (New Delhi: Sterling Publishers Private, Ltd., 1999), 2; Reena Nanda, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya: A Biography (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002), 92. 2 Brahmin community, she was married at age eleven out of financial necessity and widowed just one year later. With support from her liberal mother and in-laws, she escaped the traditional life of a Brahmin widow, but shocked society by remarrying out of caste in an unusual civil ceremony at age sixteen.3 In her early twenties, she was the first woman to contest a representative seat from Madras Presidency. She was a founding member of the All-India Women’s Conference (AIWC) in 1927. One year later she became a member of the All India Congress Committee (AICC) and secretary of the Indian Social Conference. In 1929, Kamaladevi presided over the Bombay Youth League, a key point in her turn to national politics.