Women,biographies,and philanthropic inspiration in nineteenth-century Bengali periodicals

Abstract

This article reviews conceptions of philanthropy and charity in nineteenth-century colonial Bengali society and examines how Bengali Hindu women appropriated these concepts via Western role models. Bengali Hindu women’s perceptions of the presence or lack of humanitarian ideals in their society, and their search for alternative models and ideals in Western women, are also explored. The focus of this paper is not the tangible results of Bengali women’s charitable work; instead, the primary focus is on how prototypical biographies of Western women — tracts, stories, life narratives, and advice columns — were reconstructed and rewritten in notable Bengali periodicals of the time, to encourage and inspire Bengali women to participate in charitable acts.

I

The textual production of the charity discourse in nineteenth-century Bengal familiarized Bengali women with the supposed “extraordinary feats” of European women, ¹ thereby providing a reference for self-comparison and supporting existing arguments for (alleged) Bengali inferiority that attempted to justify British rule. ² An examination of how the concepts of charity and philanthropy are represented in nineteenth-century periodicals reveals certain key features, including the selective appropriation and development by the columnists of colonial civilizing ideas and philosophies from the likes of James Mill. ³ This was done with the intent of formulating individual ideas tailor-made for the needs of Bengali society. While foreign mission activities were largely referred to as inspirational, many prominent Bengali periodicals focused on how housewives could continue with their household duties while being devoted to the greater cause of humanity through charitable acts. ⁴ This clarion call for involvement with the larger society was sounded by introducing women to prominent Western female characters via the publication of their biographies in popular Bengali periodicals of the time. My article focuses on how charity and philanthropy, seen as noble and crucial endeavours, were introduced and explored in model biographical narratives of Western women, tracts, and advice columns, ostensibly for the benefit of Bengali society. I will also evaluate how prominent European female role models served as ideals to inspire their Bengali counterparts. It does not fall within this article’s scope to ascertain the actual attempted philanthropic activities of Bengali women in the chosen time period, and nor will I assess the literature’s impact.

The periodicals discussed here almost deify a select group of Western women who had given up their domestic lives in favour of a greater involvement in the cause of the poor and the deprived. ⁵ The references to these women’s participation regardless of their economic background stress material wealth’s irrelevance where matters of charity are concerned. The underlying message is clearly that empathy for the poor is independent of the availability, or accumulation of individual resources.

The model biographies explored in this article owe their origin to multiple sources. Bengali missionary novels and biographies of prominent Indian men published in periodicals written and run by men were important predecessors that eventually inspired these biographies of women. However, imitation and inspiration were not the only factors. The social situation in Bengal was conducive to the emergence of women as biographical subjects. The nineteenth century was a time when not only gender debates but also specific discussions around what Bengali women wanted occupied a central position in society. ⁶ Both literature and language became a space and tool for activism and sociopolitical thinking. The British Empire’s rhetorical strategies within the colony attempted a “larger synthesis […] by means of a shared communicative medium” to foster the “right understanding between the ruler and the ruled that sovereignty requires” (Schwarz, 1997: 514). Thus articulation and linguistic intercourse between the colony and the metropole became a matter of prime importance. ⁷ During this time, Bengali women attempted to communicate certain life ideals among themselves via an increasing number of published columns concerned with the lives of European women. Their straightforward yet flowery rhetoric was meant to instil a sense of duty and self-awareness in Bengali women. Writing these biographies in the vernacular served another purpose: apart from their aim to galvanize literate Bengali women to contribute to social transformation, these biographies constructed an image of the other that defined Bengali women in relation to their European counterparts. While the model European woman was maintained as an ideal yet to be achieved, she was there to be imitated.

II

The nineteenth century was a period fraught with upheaval and challenges both within society and the household. During this phase of transformation of Bengali society under the colonial regime, distinctions made between ghar and bahir (home and the world) became obscured and subsequently redefined. This evolution is best captured by Tanika Sarkar’s Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation (2001), in which the author provides a comprehensive overview of how the public sphere was intrinsically linked to domestic and private issues, often including women and their bodies, conjugality, female sexuality, and women’s education. What used to be intimate household issues began to inform lively public discussions and meaningful legislation by Bengali nationalists, reformers, and colonial authorities. In fact, women were at the centre of a series of social reforms: sati or widow immolation was banned in 1829. Twenty-seven years later, in 1856, widow remarriage was legalized. ⁸ In 1892, the Age of Consent Bill, which increased the age of consummation of marriage from eight to 12 years, was passed. In 1870, female infanticide became prohibited by law. ⁹ While the British government was more preoccupied with ending the physical onslaught of what it regarded as “barbaric” native cultural practices on the colonized woman’s body, Bengali bhadralok society sought recipes for what Partha Chatterjee terms the “new woman”, ¹⁰ after being sufficiently convinced that the order of the day required them to do so. ¹¹ In essence, the “new woman” was the ideal Bengali female subject, free from the “lazy”, “novel reading”, “needle working”, and “card playing” vices of the English woman as well as from the common Bengali stereotypes of “loud”, “boisterous”, “uneducated”, “belligerent”, and “sexually promiscuous” women. ¹² However, the idea of women’s emancipation, though primarily based on and derived from the model of female education designed by English missionaries, educationists, and administrators, ¹³ was tailored to the requirements of the traditional Hindu Bengal society. The nationalistic enterprise of glorifying the nurturing, religious, spiritual, and compassionate qualities of women that cast them in the role of either the goddess of the household or the mother, ¹⁴ lent them a new, desexualized quality, thereby facilitating the movement and involvement of women outside the confines of their household. ¹⁵ The emergence of women in the public sphere, with their armour of self-sacrifice and social service, sustained their philanthropic activities. Traditionally, female charitable activities were mainly confined to volunteering for welfare organizations and rehabilitation homes set up for destitute women and children. What started off as a “largely welfare-oriented and non-political” activity aimed to benefit their own kind took on the added appendage of social reform at the turn of the twentieth century, due to the intermingling of the woman question and nationalism. ¹⁶

III

In her article “Disciplining the Printed Text”, Tapti Roy observes: “[I]n the second half of the nineteenth century, the publishing industry, comprising the writing, printing, and the distribution of books and periodicals, was perhaps the largest indigenous enterprise in Calcutta” (1995: 30). This enterprise not only made global information accessible to Bengali society but also boosted reading and learning. ¹⁷ Carey Anthony Watt (2005) talks about the late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century increase of information about international developments:

From the 1890s onward dramatic increases in telegraphic and postal facilities served to accelerate the flow of information into the subcontinent. […] [T]he number of periodicals — indicative of the proliferation of India’s associational life (associations tended to start their own periodicals) — grew seven-fold between 1890 and 1912 […]. (Watt, 2005: 32−33)

This voluminous production of printed literature was used by different social groups to disseminate their ideas to wider society. ¹⁸ Domesticity became the hot topic of the day with more than 40 domestic manuals and 37 women’s magazines and periodicals catering to different aspects of running a household. ¹⁹ Bengali women propagated distinct value systems and ideals through their fair share of the print medium. In certain aspects women’s publications were different from those of elite or middle-class males, even though the women themselves often belonged to the elite or middle class. “Historians have tended to draw on the refined literature of the educated middle classes to inform their understandings, and have ignored the cultural self-expression in print of lesser social groups […] [B]ut print did not mirror the aspirations of the dominant classes only” observes Anindita Ghosh (1998: 173) in her article on print cultures in Bengal. Ghosh further states that this “cheap print culture” was “used in important ways by lesser social groups to challenge the standard literary norms during the period” (1998: 174). It cannot be denied that the periodicals written by women for women — admittedly sometimes with the help of men — enabled them to claim a space of their own in a crowded journalistic literary scene. ²⁰ A close reading of the periodicals reveals the formation of imagined communities ²¹ between their female readership, where different women writing in or reading those periodicals might not have known each other, but were tied together with particular feelings of community and even kinship. In her article on popular magazines and their take on education, Himani Bannerji writes of a similar communal network:

In the pages of these magazines the women writers and their women readers build up an extensive network and a general fund of communicative competence. They work up “women’s issues”, “women’s approaches”, and invite pieces on new themes or hold essay competitions among the readers (1991: 50).

The paratexts of these periodicals; for example, calling for an overdue subscription, reporting missing copies, ²² and acknowledgement columns for contributions of its readers and other such information, gives an impression of reaching out through familiarity and community, of a “horizontal comradeship” (Anderson, 2006: 7). Meredith Borthwick confirms this kinship:

Circulation figures indicate that they were widely read, and women’s keenness to participate in the periodicals as subscribers or contributors demonstrates that they also provided an important means of communication among women, and performed a mediating function with the outside world. (1984: xii)

In addition, the use of Bengali as the preferred language for periodicals made information about European women accessible to a greater part of the population. The call for Bengali women to jāgaraṇ, or awaken, and follow in the footsteps of their European counterparts is exemplified in several passages:

A sense of self-respect, courage, and restrained dignity, needed to mingle with the common people, are not constituents of our character. Hence we should build our character first for such interactions. To serve all beings we should first inculcate candid, loving zeal, patience in crisis, readiness and determination in work, and then approach the mission. ²³ (Antaḥpur, 1902: 27−28)

This need for awakening the national consciousness via character building formed an integral part of such discourse. ²⁴ My article seeks to examine prominent mid nineteenth- to early twentieth-century Bengali periodicals such as Antaḥpur patrikā (c. 1901−1903), Bāmābodhinī patrikā (1863−1922), and Dāsī patrikā (1892−1897). This selection provides a characteristic example of the rich philanthropic texts common to this era, with frequent depictions of the lives of European women as philanthropic role models. ²⁵

Periodicals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have attracted attention primarily due to their treatises on female education, which topic was a source of heated debate in the colonial period. Education for women gathered momentum due to the changing role of the women at that time. Writing about the issue of female education as it was dealt with in Bāmābodhinī patrikā, Krishna Sen remarks: “Bāmābodhinī […] opted for a formal Westernized academic culture designed to create a lady fit for companionate marriage, the only indigenous element in this new curriculum being the attributes required to run a conventional household” (2004: 187). The Bengali women’s periodical scene was not much different from that of Hindi periodicals produced around the same time. In her book on the Hindi public sphere, Francesca Orsini writes that Hindi periodicals were an “important means of instilling in women public concerns and the sense of common cultural and political spheres” and that, in these periodicals, the “religious and moral notions and values of strī-dharma” ²⁶ were combined with “Victorian values and ideas about domesticity and womanhood that were considered necessary for the reformed household” (Orsini, 2002: 261). I want to emphasize that the serialized biographies of Western women in Bengali periodicals formed part of a broader corpus of advice literature meant for home consumption by middle-class Bengali women with a reading knowledge of the language.

IV

The Bengali word sebā primarily means to serve, whereas dān refers to a gift or donation. The idea of philanthropy in Bengal largely consists of these concepts of sebā and dān, which have existed both in religious and secular forms. ²⁷ Carey Anthony Watt (2005) points out certain problems inherent to the idea of indigenous charity, calling the Hindu religious concepts of dān, sebā, and dharma “traditional”. ²⁸ First, charity is not an organized effort and is mainly individual and unsystematic. Second, the ideas of dān and sebā are also associated with the idea of puṇya, which could earn one sublime bliss or moks̩a. Thus, charity is driven by self-fulfilment, which is contrary to

[t]he idea of dān in Hinduism [which] is supposed to represent a “pure gift” by which the giver does not expect any reciprocal benefit in his or her lifetime. However, the practice of giving in the early twentieth century indicates that even the expectation of reward or salvation in a future life was a significant and widespread incentive for giving. (Watt, 2005: 69)

Nonetheless, sebā and dān are also intrinsically related to austerity and self-negation in Hindusim, ²⁹ which transports one to the more difficult and serious realm of asceticism and renunciation of worldly pleasures, including the household itself. This kind of philanthropy was considered a masculine forte.

Douglas E. Haynes, whose argument on the development and nature of Indian charity and philanthropy in the colonial period is informed by the gifting practices of businessmen and merchants, argues:

Philanthropic activity clearly did not have any strong roots in precolonial mercantile traditions. True, the historical record before 1800 is filled with evidence of seths (great merchants) who engaged in acts of great munificence, such as the building of wells, temples, and resthouses, and the sponsoring of festivals and of Sanskrit learning. Yet these donors most commonly viewed their gifts as acts of propitiation or service to their deities and as deeds by which they could hope to acquire merit. (1987: 340)

Although historical records pre-1800 talk about seths, or notable merchants, contributing to building wells, temples, rest-houses, and the sponsoring of Sanskrit learning or festivities, these actions were mainly done with the hope of pleasing deities, and hence were not selfless acts of service. The scenario changed in the early nineteenth century, when a substantial number of merchants and businessmen initiated the construction of a number of schools, colleges, hospitals, and other public buildings, a development that Haynes observes as resembling the British trading community. British civil servants of the period saw this as “clear evidence of the diffusion of an entirely novel ethic from Victorian England among the commercial communities of India” (Haynes, 1987: 340). In short, the colonial administrators hoped for the transformation of a backward society through such “agents of progress” (Haynes, 1987: 340).

Haynes’ claim focuses on the transformed nature of mercantile philanthropy in the nineteenth century, which constituted an effort on the part of the business class to “build […] stable social relationships with members of their community and with their rulers” (Haynes, 1987: 340). This sort of gifting, motivated by both a political and economic need to please overlords, enabled merchants to retain power within society. ³⁰ Hence, this giving was a conscious effort towards moving away from the religious overtones that usually attached to charitable acts. In addition, gaining respectability was the prime motivation for mercantile philanthropy, since religious sebā or philanthropy involved with worship, pilgrimage, and festivals, was also carried out with that motive. ³¹ Malavika Kasturi explores another aspect of dān “as a significant political and cultural field, replete with opportunities in troubled time” (2010: 111). She claims that the boom in societal service during the colonial period was the major preoccupation of the merchant classes, zamindars, political pensioners, and other such resourceful groups who were “eager to express their desire for a higher status in keeping with their expanding wealth” (Kasturi, 2010: 111). These acts of charity within the masculine realm were often found to be disorganized, indiscriminate, wasteful, and largely based on ostentation and self-centredness.

This indigenous model of philanthropy operating in the masculine realm was abandoned by Bengali women, who tried to take up philanthropic activities for the benefit of society. However, even though they abandoned the model, the basic objective of charity, namely to serve the deprived and to come across as actively participating members of the society, remained intact. What was also challenged was the association of charitable acts with prominent and often male personalities. In their periodicals, Bengali women not only made the hitherto lofty act of sebā accessible to all those who were willing to engage in it, but also transformed and remodelled this preexisting idea of charity according to their newfound “Western consciousness” coupled with the indigenous needs of nineteenth-century Calcutta. Bengali periodicals established charity as an initiative that could bring women into the public sphere, and in so doing enabled them to play a proactive role in society that was not available to them before. What was so far confined to pati-sebā, or serving the family and the husband, was now being transformed to samāj-sebā, or serving society. Moreover, these periodicals “instill[ed] in women public concerns and the sense of [a] common cultural and political sphere” (Orsini, 2002: 260). The new awakening was heralded by juxtaposing Hindu conceptions of women’s duties with Victorian values and ideas about domesticity. ³² Orsini further remarks:

A powerful notion supporting women’s access to the public sphere was that of sevā-dharma. Sevā, service, bestowed moral capital on, and helped legitimize, women’s activities outside the home and redefine their role within the household. The notion of sevā-dharma was consistently invoked while redefining women’s roles, from housewife to svayam̩sevikā (volunteer) and to teacher […] [T]his primacy of sevā in turn established women as central and active subjects. (Orsini, 2002: 270)

As discussed earlier, the desexualized mother/goddess iconography facilitated women’s entry into the public sphere. Similarly, involvement in sebā further enhanced the pure, noble, and spiritual aspects of the female image, bringing about a change even to the “ordinary” Bengali woman’s peripheral existence and helping her to enter the public sphere without fear of censure: “It was thus the idiom of service that allowed women to step out of traditional roles and places without losing respectability” (Orsini, 2002: 271).

V

This section explores how three major Bengali periodicals, Antaḥpur patrikā (Calcutta, c. 1901−1903), Bāmābodhinī patrikā (Calcutta, 1863−1922), and Dāsī patrikā (Calcutta, 1892−1897), examined the concept of sebā through examples drawn from prominent Western “role models” such as Queen Victoria and Florence Nightingale. Antaḥpur patrikā was the first Bengali journal to be managed, edited, and written only by women. The publication of this periodical began in January 1898, with Banalata Debi ³³ as its first editor. Hemantakumari Caudhuri ³⁴ and Kumudini Mitra ³⁵ later took responsibility for the publication from 1900 onwards. The journal was printed by Kartikchandra Dutta at 211 Cornwallis Street. ³⁶ Bāmābodhinī patrikā, or the Journal for the Enlightenment of Women had a publication span from 1863−1922 and was the longest running journal. The tagline of the journal, Kanyāke pālan karibek o jatner sahit śīkṣā dibek, can be translated as “raise your girls well and educate them with care”. The journal was managed by the speakers of the Brahmo institution, Brāhmabandhu Sabhā, which later became the Bāmābodhinī Sabhā, founded by Keshub Chunder Sen in 1863. Bāmābodhinī patrikā was a monthly publication “with a print run of a hundred copies a month priced at one ānā each. ³⁷ For decades, until competitors appeared at the turn of the century, every issue sold out” (Sen, 2004: 177). Dāsī māsik patrikā o samālocanā “began as an in-house publication of dāsāśram, a residential workhouse for poor and hapless women”. ³⁸ It was published by Ramananda Chattopadhyay with the aim of promoting social work and helping in a campaign to raise funds for the residential house. It was printed and published by K. C. Dutta, Brahmo Mission Press, 211, Cornwallis Street, Calcutta. Along with the publication of issues related to family, women, and children, stories with morals and messages, biographies, and regular updates on activities and annual reports of the rehabilitation centre were also published. The following statement, published in Antaḥpur (Sebābrata, 1902: 73), was the overarching theme of the columns of European women’s life narratives in Bengali periodicals:

One can serve others in two ways. Service that is only driven by a sense of duty has limited value; but one carried out with selfless devotion, like a mountain brook flowing in solitude and spontaneity from the soul and touching upon the society like a soothing, sweet panacea is a genuine service to humanity. ³⁹

Almost all the characters whose lives were illustrated in the periodicals were shown as serving humanity without a thought of return. The only profits one was encouraged to expect were peace and bliss. Sebā was said to bring life to a dying body and revive a decaying soul. Some of the depicted characters also continued their familial duties while carrying out their philanthropic missions, which was much encouraged in the periodicals: “of prime importance is the gṛhasthāśram ⁴⁰ sebā. Scripture-writers have indicated the household as the prime aśram […] and women are the presiding goddesses of this aśram” ⁴¹ (Antaḥpur, 1902: 78). Though the gṛhāśram was emphasized, the journal columnists strove to strike a balance between gr̩hāsram sebā and sāmājik sebā, between the household and the outer society.

Elizabeth Fry (1780−1845), a leading Quaker reformer, was a popular character among Bengali columnists at the time. She featured multiple times in two different periodicals. Portrayed as a Benthamite, ⁴² Fry was an English prison reformer and philanthropist. Fry was portrayed as kind and faithful to God, finding deep satisfaction in fulfilling her worldly duties of bringing up a family of 11 children along with caring for the poor and the underprivileged. An anonymous Bāmābodhinī patrikā columnist who wrote a short biography on Fry urged female readers to follow in Fry’s footsteps by not ignoring the needs of a neighbour in distress by grumbling, “How can I leave my little child and go help?” ⁴³ Fry, after all, was able to help the afflicted despite having almost a dozen children. Her most well-known effort was towards prison reform, which granted her the name “angel of prisons”. Female prisoners were in a sorry state of moral degradation at the time and Fry started counselling them with her entertaining stories about ethics and morality. The Bengali journal column on Fry describes her as being capable of changing the prison conditions of women for the better. However, Robert Alan Cooper (1981) reiterates the fact that, besides having a solely religious motive for undertaking prison reformation, Fry was

[m]uch adulated by her contemporaries and clearly enjoyed her reputation as an angel of mercy; she cultivated friendships with the great and powerful and died in 1845 with the reputation of a heroine. Yet Elizabeth Fry’s importance as a prison reformer can easily be exaggerated. Her ideas were almost entirely derivative. She was certainly responsible for recruiting fellow Quakers to the banner of prison reform, but her recruits soon rejected the ideas of their mentor. As early as 1825 Mrs. Fry’s ideas were outside the mainstream of prison reform sentiment. (Cooper, 1981: 681−82)

Fry’s biography exemplifies the reductionist nature of the narratives, whereby particular characters were largely portrayed in a one-dimensional way, and the authors erased any criticism or controversy related to their lives and professions.

Some of the personalities described in the periodicals led lives of deviance at a young age only to develop strong attachment to and faith in God in their later lives. The tale of Sarah Martin, contributed to Antah̩pur patrikā by Nalinibala Ray and published in the Bengali year of 1308 (1901−1902) traces just such a trajectory. The introduction to the article hailed Sarah Martin as a nārī-ratna, or “female jewel”. Her biographer narrates how Martin, the uneducated orphan of a poor village leather smith with a dislike of the Bible, had a sudden realization at the age of 19 and became one of the most passionate prison reformers. For 25 years, she toiled for convicts with perseverance and a selfless desire to serve others until she died at the age of 53. Her narrative stressed the fact that one does not need material resources to help the poor and dramatized the human potential for transformation. Along with this message came an implicit challenge for the allegedly self-immersed and lazy Bengali female readership to engage in greater acts of the service of humanity. The motive behind talking about philanthropic activities like working among prison inmates (an inaccessible pursuit for Bengali housewives in the nineteenth century) could well have been intended to inspire higher achievement among the perceived “weak” Bengali women, who were seen as lagging behind. ⁴⁴

A faction of sebā narratives focused on the role of foreign royalty and royal households in global charity. An article titled “Bilāte”, published in the September edition of Antah̩pur patrikā in 1309 (1902), described in detail how large amounts of food were distributed among the poor during the coronation of Queen Victoria’s first son, King Edward. The feast, mainly meant for the poor, destitute, and physically impaired, consisted of 4,125 maṇ ⁴⁵ beef, 3,125 man̩ potatoes, 3,500 maṇ sweetmeats, 3,125 maṇ bread, 782 maṇ cheese, 36,000 gallons of alcohol, 50,000 bottles of beer, and 75,000 pints of lime juice. Additional monetary gifts amounted to an estimated 17 lakhs 25 thousand rupees. ⁴⁶ Bengali periodicals generally maintained a strong focus on charitable acts of the British administration. An edition of the Bāmābodhinī patrikā alludes to the Countess Dufferin Fund, which was established to promote and increase the availability of healthcare for women in India. Perturbed by the poor state of healthcare, Queen Victoria set up the fund, which aspired not only to provide healthcare for women and children, but also to train women as doctors, nurses, and midwives and establish hospitals and pharmacies, with Countess Dufferin’s help. In order for the fund to run smoothly, a committee with a membership status dependent on the amount of monetary contribution was established. ⁴⁷ Besides taking care of the ailing and the sick, members’ contributions and subscriptions were used to generate and provide scholarships to help and encourage Indian women to pursue medical and nursing professions, as well as to bring well-trained European and American female doctors to work in India.

A column on Florence Nightingale hinted at a transformation in the Bengali women’s concept of sebā. Serving wounded soldiers in battle was presented as one of the highest forms of humanitarian activity. Presenting this story to the women of Bengal, whose lives were permeated by strict codes of modesty, was not without motive. The columnist narrated an alternative and bold service in caring for the ultra-masculine soldiers, thereby underlining the boundless as well as liberating nature of service. Nightingale’s life story does not differ much from those of the other role models featured in the periodicals. The article talks of Nightingale’s relentless work to revive and relieve the soldiers. She sometimes spent sleepless nights with a lamp inspecting the condition of the wounded, which earned her the name “the lady with the lamp”.

Biographies of Western women were also meant to inspire Bengali women to greater acts of courage. Kate Marsden’s story bespeaks one such life, deliberately chosen and full of hardship. Kate Marsden, a British missionary and nurse born in 1859, did a commendable service to leper communities in Siberia. Dāsī patrikā’s serialized biography mainly focused on her trials and hardships while working for the reformation of the socially ostracized lepers. A fitting description of the extreme and unfriendly nature of Russia accompanied the story, emphasizing the determination and courage it took to work in those regions, and all without the expectation of fame and material benefits. In comparison with Siberian nature, Bengal appeared more habitable and friendly, thereby instilling strong confidence among Bengali women.

The authenticity and accuracy of the narratives and their source(s) is questionable. The columnists do not describe their sources and, in many instances, the authors remain anonymous. However, for two of the selected characters, it is not clear if the lack of information was genuine or a form of censorship. Kate Marsden, whose biography in Dāsī patrikā included vivid descriptions of struggles in Russia, was one of the most controversial female travellers of her time. ⁴⁸ She has been described as a “commercial traveler with a keen eye to business” (Anderson, 2006: 171). Her book describing her adventures in Russia, On Sledge and Horseback (1892), was also condemned by her critics as exaggerated and self-serving. ⁴⁹ She allegedly created a “disproportionate fuss” over 66 lepers, which was deemed to be “thoroughly insulting for Russia” (Anderson, 2006: 171). However, the strongest of all accusations was Marsden’s alleged lesbian sexuality, which prompted the notion that her charitable work was a form of penance for her “deviation” (Anderson, 2006: 167). It is impossible to know whether the Bengali columnist who wrote the biography of Marsden was aware of these controversies or deliberately omitted them, thus making it an uncertain case of censorship, insufficient information, or selective omission. Since the main aim of these tracts was to motivate and inspire, it can also be maintained that those “deviant” elements were eliminated from her characterization. Doubts about contemporary readers’ reception of certain ideas might also play a major part in such censorship. In addition, as these individual life narratives were written in the form of descriptive stories, historical accuracy was not of prime importance.

The proportion of anonymous biographies published in Bāmābodhinī patrikā suggests that some of these could have been written by men. Clare Midgley (2013) observes that Brahmo men also wrote these biographies, and did so with the aim of inspiring — or chastising — Bengali women:

This sense of liberal religion as providing an avenue to wider roles for women was reinforced in other articles praising western women’s international travel and active participation in organisations and debates. American and European women’s intercontinental travel, “especially for missionary work”, was presented as evidence of “how women were progressing in every aspect of society in America and Europe”. […] In selecting prominent western Unitarian women activists as role models for their wives and daughters, the Brahmo men involved in Bamabodhini thus encouraged Bengali women to envision wider social roles beyond becoming better educated wives and mothers who could exert good influence within reformed religious households. (Midgley, 2013: 450)

The main points of emphasis in the periodicals were the decadent condition and moral degeneration of Bengali society, which was largely attributed to its women, as well as the physical suffering and poor living conditions of the people at large. Contrasted against European caregivers, the periodicals lamented the morally deficient upbringing of girls in Bengal, whose lives were rendered empty and incomplete by their parents’ relentless wailing about material possessions. ⁵⁰ They were never taught the value of noble deeds or to find satisfaction in their household. Such self-chastisement accompanied the sanctified European women’s stories of love for humanity and charity.

The concept of sebā-brata, or the vow to serve, as the Bengali periodicals termed philanthropy, was deemed a noble duty to the country, and such volunteers were seen as ultimately answerable to God. “Furthermore, one must remember that the omnipotent, ubiquitous almighty — under whose aegis and ardor one has established this noble mission — is ever vigilant about any endogenous or exogenous errors, laxity or negligence”. ⁵¹ Thus, philanthropy was not only a secular act but carried with it a strong religious connotation, as an act through which the creator and its creation could connect. The Hindu idea of philanthropy and its association with bhagabān [a deity] was akin to the Christian notions of humanitarian service, piety, and goodwill. What Carey Anthony Watt portrayed as “[a] rising public interest in philanthropic relief and a crucial shift in notions of Christian service from vertical service to God towards horizontal service to man” (Watt, 2005: 32) became apparent in Bengali society. This association, among other things, also formed a picture of a hierarchical philanthropy structure — women as agents of social transformation, serving their country or state through charity and philanthropy, ultimately served God. However, an idea of “divine surveillance” was conspicuously present as readers were also reminded that if anyone ignored the sick and the ailing but indulged in the worship of God, her prayers would never reach the feet of the almighty. ⁵²

Calls for volunteers to serve the nation also included such marginalized groups as widows and childless women. They were encouraged to seek fulfilment by serving the nation. ⁵³ If they had been deprived in their individual lives, it was not without a cause — God considered them fit to rise above the family and engage in the greater service of humanity. ⁵⁴ As Orsini remarks, “[T]hus the entry of women into the public sphere was considered both desirable and necessary for the fate of the nationalist movement” (2002: 270). However, the philanthropic efforts initiated and encouraged by the Bengali periodicals were largely unorganized and constituted of individual contributions toward caring for the poor and destitute.

VI

The inspirational biographies discussed here were unique. They stood out from the other articles in the periodicals that published them, which ranged from book reviews to descriptions of Bengali festivities, recipes, scientific articles, commentaries on household ethics, and other pertinent contemporary issues. Even though columns portraying the greatness and virtues of indigenous historical and contemporary characters already existed, ⁵⁵ none were as regularly serialized as the European biographies. Some of the columns carried sketches and illustrations of the women, primarily to give an idea of their appearance and to feed Bengali curiosity about Western physical traits. However, as is apparent from the examples, the narratives were usually flat, without any major deviation or narrative twist in them. The stories also included frequent authorial interference, with commentaries on the divinity of the characters or invocations for God to save Bengali society from its degeneration. The inculcation of divinity in Western protagonists and other such literary manoeuvres reinstate the autonomy and licence these authors exercised. Thus, the recreation of these biographies handed a discursive power to the writers.

With their sketchy portrayal of a divine protagonist, replete with early manifestations of kindness and virtue, and an irrepressible inclination to serve the poor, the prototypical biographies featured positive stereotyping. Any other personal dimension was completely missing; hence this left the characters with almost no depth or diversity. Sādhukārya [good service], daẏā [pity], sebā [service], bhagabān [god], āntarik [hearty], sebābrata [vow to serve], kalyān [prosperity/blessing], and kleś nibāraṇ [preclusion of sorrow], high-frequency words in the narratives, established a biased and somewhat unidimensional tone. In addition, continual reference to the divinity of the characters robbed them of their human entities.

It is important to note that the narratives were characterized by a highly superficial portrayal of the protagonists. All characters were plotted as individuals who must single-handedly contend with the stricken society in order to serve it. In many cases, they continued their charity work without the help of their families and despite opposition. These narratives, which emphasized the courage and strength of their lone female protagonists, could also herald a newfound spirit in Bengali women, namely the confidence to manage their own lives and affairs. It was thereby expected that individual empowerment would lead to collective emancipation, which would further advance social advocacy and progress. This was indeed evident from women’s participation in running female organizations and societies in the last decade of nineteenth century, as pointed out by Borthwick: ⁵⁶

By the 1890s, all societies were run by women rather than men. Women had gained enough confidence, and experience in procedural technique, to take over. Apart from women’s initiative, the growing lack of interest on the part of men hastened the transition. As men were increasingly drawn into nationalist political associations and activities, their interest in social reform and the “condition of women” issue waned. The ideological force of the Hindu revival tended to deemphasize the advancement of women, identifying it with Westernization. No male organizations were still concerned with this issue by the end of the century. (1984: 290)

This deemphasizing of women’s development on the part of men went hand in hand with attempts to bring it into focus by women themselves. ⁵⁷ As such, social responsibility was further accelerated by the consciousness of social control and liberation. The characters in the periodicals signified that just such an ideal liberated life should be aspired to. Nevertheless, in order to strive towards this “higher” and “more meaningful” life, one should practise self-sacrifice. Hence self-sacrifice formed another major preoccupation of the periodicals, as was made manifest through the philanthropic role models. Orsini succinctly puts it as follows:

Strī-upyogi literature ⁵⁸ envisaged women as entirely self-sacrificing, and focused exclusively on their duties and never on their needs. True, even in this way a feminine subjectivity was tenuously acknowledged: at first crudely, through dialogues and rigid juxtapositions of the “good” and the “bad” daughter-in-law, or sister, this persuasive literature addressed the young female reader and asked her to choose which model to follow, but only so that her character could be trained. (Orsini, 2002: 274)

This issue becomes complicated when one takes into account the fact that many of these anonymous biographies were written by men, who advocated for Bengali women’s self-sacrifice through selective examples of Western women’s lives. The changing gender and familial relations of the nineteenth century were the subject of multiple genres including novels and advice manuals, which were mostly written by men for women. Judith Walsh (2004), in her informative book on domestic manuals published between 1860 and 1900, talks about the characteristics of such works, namely to advise women on a range of topics from hygiene to interpersonal relations, decorum and behaviour, and child care. One interesting result from the production of such literature was a shift in authority from the elderly women of the household to the colonial, “modern”, English-educated husband. ⁵⁹ Serialized biographies of Western women, penned by men, can be seen as taking this one step further: they encouraged women to balance their roles in ghar and bahir, to keep their domestic sanctum intact and extend their services to the society. That English-educated Bengali men would set Western women as examples is expected, and given the selective and reductive nature of the biographies it fits perfectly with the careful and conservative modernization of the day.

Lastly, the most palpable theme of the narratives lay in the legitimization of the colonial sense of beneficence, superiority, and justice. The portrayal of single, idealized, Western, female figures cast in the role of the saviour can be seen as the colonized subject’s projection of the “mother” or the “queen” figure. Mithi Mukherjee provides a fitting explanation of the trend of seeing the colonizers as the benevolent providers of justice:

What needs to be noted about the precise mode in which the categories of justice, equity, and liberty were deployed in post-1857 India is that they were anchored in the figure of the Queen. The relationship of the British monarchy with its Indian subjects was mediated by these principles. It was as subjects to the principles of “liberty, equity, and justice” that Indians became subjects to the British monarchy. The reverse, however, was as true; it was as subjects of the British imperial monarchy that Indians became subject to the principles of liberty, equity, and justice; this historical relationship came to be mediated through the figure of the Queen. (2010: xxiii)

The columns in these periodicals can be considered products of the overall atmosphere of idolization that was prevalent in the colony. Serialized articles titled, “Mahārāṇī bhiḳtoriẏār daẏā”, or “The Kindness of Queen Victoria”, featuring in contemporary editions of Bāmābodhinī patrikā, substantiate this claim.

The biographies did little by way of contributing to Bengali women’s emancipation and autonomy. However, this is one among myriad instances of how colonized women perceived and projected European women as the other from across the divide, through distinct discursive politics. This other might not have been easy to relate to, but was definitely inspiring. In the process of such projections, Bengali women subverted the Eurocentric, viewer/viewed dichotomy, where the metropole became an object of scrutiny. Furthermore, the appropriation and discussion of the biographies did exemplify how social reform was viewed through the spectrum of other societies, and in the process of how the authors renegotiated and consolidated their subject positions. In the process of transforming their lives through charity, albeit on a theoretical level, Bengali women sought to reinvent their conception of Western charity as well. What was mainly a middle- to lower-class preoccupation in the West became a motivation for the upper-, middle-, and elite-class women in Bengal. Further, the involvement of isolated groups such as widows and childless women in charitable activities also redefined a female communal solidarity. It is beyond doubt that when Bengali women were widening their horizons, the biographies of the Western role models contributed to their awakening, enabling them to reach out to the global community while still being bound by the traditional confines of the household.