SnehalataÌs death: Dowry and womenÌs agency in colonial Bengal

Abstract

The death of Snehalata Mukhopadhyay in January 1914 remains one of the earliest and most widely discussed cases of dowry related suicides in colonial India. While the fact file on this young woman has until recently remained slim, her name appears in most scholarly accounts of dowry related crimes against women. The first aim of this article is to fill in the details of the Snehalata case. It then attempts to understand why her name acquired an iconic status in early twentieth-century Bengali society. While it is impossible to establish beyond doubt why Snehalata killed herself on that fateful January afternoon, her suicide unarguably incited a discourse about womenÌs agency in contemporary society. In mapping that discourse, this article shows how people read the act of SnehalataÌs suicide to talk about womenÌs roles in public life in new and often contradictory ways.