Kamaladevi An Epochal Life L.C. Jain listened. Her scholarship and and dimensions of her grandmother capacity to be still rocked were to become not only the title of IN October 1988 Kamaladevi Kamaladevi’s soul. But grandmother Kamaladevi’s memoirs (Navrang Chattopadhyaya passed away at the was not all scholar. She was an 1986), but also the theme of her life. age of 85 years. The heroine in a play adventurer too. Much before the She was utterly political in the first - a caption to one of Kamaladevi’s advent of the railways, she and her four decades - the freedom struggle photographs in her biography by the husband had travelled all over India. and the struggle of women to be free, sensitive writer Jamila Brijbhushan She was ever ready for a journey, the and later, till the end came, she was (Abhinav Publications, 1976), more arduous the better. This “inner absorbed in politics of a different kind, captures the quintessence of those recess and outer spaces”, the depth namely, awakening independent 80 plus years. Family photograph: Kamaladevi is on the right, standing between her The basics first. Kamaladevi was father and mother born on April 3, 1903, educated at St Anne’s Convent, Mangalore, and acquired a diploma in sociology from Bedford College, London University. She was the fourth and the last child born to Girijabai and Ananathiah Dhareshwar, Saraswat Brahmans, in the picturesque city of Mangalore on India’s west coast. Two women caught Kamaladevi’s fancy in her infancy: her mother Girijabai whose disciplinary stick (including jurisdiction over what to wear, gargling with salt water when you came home, washing of feet before bedtime, the children you played with) sowed the seeds of rebellion in her; and her mother’s mother who gripped Kamaladevi’s imagination and became her longing, her quest. The grandmother had a vast inner world. She had a library and was always absorbed in books and discourses with saintly men and scholars. She read aloud from the books while the family sat and 10 MANUSHI India’s men and women to their Though thwarted in her first of life I did, had I not been born in the glorious future potential through attempt at live theatre, Kamaladevi was family and the social setting in which constructive and creative pursuits, to spend a lifetime in the theatre I was. But the spanning of it had to be rural development, arts, theatre, music, movement and with a vengeance. She my own.” crafts, environment, civil liberties. became a solid force behind the Indian Kamaladevi’s exposure to the She was one of the most National Theatre, the Bharatiya Natya political world started quietly at home. determined individuals - when it came Sangh, chairperson of the Sangeet While in childhood she learnt to her pre or post independence Natak Akademi and president of the defiance at her mother’s cost, as she pursuits, be it the defiance of the Theatre Crafts Museum. grew up it was her mother who opened British or of Gandhiji or Sardar Patel On another plane, too, events for her the wide world of politics or government - be it the Nehru era or moved swiftly, at times cruelly, to which dominated her life till the Emergency which took India’s prepare her to convert her personal independence came. Her mother’s hard won democracy almost to its agonies into social causes. Her father, reading habits were different from funeral pyre. who was a quiet pillar of those of her grandmother. Girijabai Her medium: she spoke, she wrote, understanding and strength, died was interested in political and social organised volunteers for satyagraha, when Kamaladevi was in her early issues. She subscribed to two of the women for self-liberation, workers in teens. Her mother panicked and for staunch nationalist papers of the time, agriculture and industry into the sake of security quickly got her Kesari and Kal, which brought cooperatives, artists in theatre groups. Kamladevei in a play She was drawn to the company of the finest of socialists: Acharya Narendradev, Yusuf Meherally, J.P. Narayan, Achyut Patwardhan. She also acted in a formal sense, on the stage, defying what was a suffocating taboo at the time. Consequently, what were until then mere yearnings for rebellion became manifest. At a farewell function in her school, Kamaladevi was chosen to play Mirabai in a verse drama. The good people of Mangalore could not countenance it. As Jamila recalls, they regarded it as a heinous crime for a woman to act with men on the stage. The cry went up: “The play must be stopped.” The protest against the play spread far beyond Mangalore. Even Mrs Annie Besant, a towering married. But very soon after the Lokmanya Tilak’s messages and personality of the times, was led to wedding the bridegroom died and stories of his trials and tribulations. It advise that the play be given up. But “Kamaladevi became a widow without saddened Kamaladevi when on Kamaladevi was adamant. However, ever having been a wife”, says Jamila August 1, 1920, Tilak died, soon after the scheduled play could not be with deep anguish. his release from a long prison stint. enacted -not because the organisers Her lifelong crusade against child In the same year, during a short chickened out, but because it was marriage drew sustenance from the visit to Madras, Kamaladevi met overtaken by an unwritten script: the ashes of her own experience, though Sarojini Naidu’s brother, the Bengali hero was kidnapped, and Kamaladevi, she never referred to her trauma. writer and poet, Harindranath the heroine, was locked up in a room Reflects Kamaladevi in her memoirs Chattopadhyaya. Harin fell in love by her mother when the rumour that “though the circumstances of with her at first sight and his ardour spread that the life of her daughter one’s birth may be accidental, they saw them soon in wedlock. Girijabai would be in danger if she appeared can be made purposeful. I may never made one condition - that on the stage. have been able to carve out the kind Kamaladevi’s education must NUMBER 53, 1989 11 continue even after marriage. But it country. When the provincial made an impression on Kamaladevi did not materialise. Harin left for legislatures began to introduce bills were the lectures on psychology: England three months after the to grant franchise to women she was “They stand out in my mind as marriage and Kamaladevi returned to terribly thrilled and Kamaladevi purposefully directed to stimulate the her mother’s home in Mangalore. remembers her coming to her house imagination. Luckily, sociology had But in Mangalore something with a newspaper early one morning not then become a bookish discipline significant, albeit unexpected, was in and reading out the entire debate in and it proved immensely practical and store for her, which was to influence excited tones. ‘This is a great event useful to turn me into an efficient her life profoundly. She met Margaret my dear’, she exclaimed as she caught social worker.” The practicals brought Cousins, a British woman, who had Kamaladevi in a warm embrace, ‘and I her a lot of exposure to the outdoors - organised the Irish Women’s want to share it with you.’ slums, workers’ clubs or institutes, Franchise League, and was involved “In fact, she shared with her corrective institutions and special in England in the suffragette friend every scrap of news about institutions for the handicapped. movement which also led her to the women’s movements and one day she On the return trip to India, a royal prison. Later, she decided to showed her a picture of mammoth stopover in Berlin brought her close come to India to join Annie Besant women’s processions led by to Harin’s brother, the legendary who had founded what is now called Kamaladevi Deshpande, the daughter Virendra Chattopadhyaya. Viren, who the Benaras Hindu University and of the well known national leader N.C. had gone to study at Oxford, had was spearheading the National Kelkar. The Poona Municipality had joined a group of Indian Education Movement. Mrs Cousins revolutionaries. He was exiled from was assigned to head the National India. But the British did not stop Girls High School. Says Jamila: “Mrs. there. They hounded him from Cousins was a seasoned worker and country to country, labelling him “a for Kamaladevi she blazoned the trail dangerous terrorist.” It was just the of women’s emancipation and spark Kamaladevi needed - “my service.” This association with political horizon widened.” Indeed, Margaret Cousins also brought each contact widened her horizon - Kamaladevi a step closer to Mrs as her life story shows, essentially Besant, who was a tall figure also in because she was awake, seeking, and politics at that time, having started the engaged in a relentless quest. She was Home Rule League in 1916 and having also lucky with her contacts-each one been the first founder president of the more powerful than the other. Women’s Indian Association. Consider her good fortune in It was Girijabai who had taken meeting during her stopover in Paris, Kamaladevi when she was still a child another legendary Indian - Madame to meet Mrs Besant. Later, Kamaladevi Bhikaji Cama - a Parsi from Bombay. was to hear Mrs. Besant speak after She too had been exiled by the British. her election as president of the Indian She was the first to assert that 1857 Madame Cama with the flag she National Congress. Her stirring was not a mutiny but India’s war of designed oration made a lasting impression on independence, and she organised a Kamaladevi.