15SOCIAL TRENDS
Journal of the Department of Sociology of North Bengal University

Vol. 5, 31 March 2018; ISSN: 2348-6538

UGC Approved

Inscribing the Self by the Cultural Others:

Kailashbashi Debi and Saradasundari Debi

Maroona Murmu

Abstract: Western literary autobiography is conventionally conceived of as a unique

form of self-presentation by a ‘singular entity’ proclaiming his superiority over

and distinction from a myriad of relative nonentities. This paper shall try to socially

locate the autobiographical endeavour and the essence of the lives of two Hindu

bhadramahilas through their diary and autobiography. An attempt would be made

to find out the significance of the distinguished ‘I’ when a woman constructs her

autonomous entity and the agency of othersaround her. It will be explored whether

self-construction of women whose families were active in the socio-political transition

in nineteenth-century Bengal bore marks of an ‘idiosyncratic,’ ‘individuated,’

‘inviolable,’ ‘singular’ self-considered essential for life-writing.

Keywords: Personal Narratives, Agential Voices, Female Experiences,

Emotions, Fragmented Subjectivities, Dismembered Recollections.

Introduction

Literary autobiography being predominantly a male legacy from the West,
it was conceived to be a unique form of self-presentation by a ‘singular
entity’ with a coherent worldview proclaiming his superiority over, and
distinction from a myriad of relative non-entities (Weintraub 1978; Ellis
2000). Unlike in the West, the first biography written in Bengali happens to
be Naricharit (Lives of Women) by a Christian woman Saudamini Martha
Sinha (1865), a high caste Hindu housewife from a conservative rural
household. Similarly, Rassundari Debi’s Amar Jiban (My Life) (1868) holds
the distinction of being the first autobiography written in Bengali. These
were penned about three decades before ‘renaissance men’ from Bengal
started writing about their lives, the first being Debendranath Tagore’s
Swarachita Jiban-Charit (A Self-Written Account of Life) (1898).



16

This paper attempts to socially locate the autobiographical endeavour and
the essence of the lives of two Hindu bhadramahilas - Kailashbashini
Debi and Saradasundari Debi - through their diary and autobiography. The
diary explored here is that of Kailashbashini Debi (Kailashbashini Debi
1982) dealing with the period 1846–73. This, arguably, is the only one
maintained by a woman of nineteenth-century Bengal. It was first serialised
in the Bengali monthly, Basumati in 1953, with the title ‘Janaika Grihabodhur
Diary’(Diary of a Certain Housewife). The autobiography titled
Keshabjanani Debi Saradasundarir Atmakatha (Life-Story of
Saradasundari: The Mother of Keshab) was dictated by Saradasundari
Debito her grandson-in-law Jogendralal Khastagir in 1892 when she claims
she was 73 years old and completes it in 1900. It was later republished as
‘Atmakatha’ (Saradasundari Debi 1982). I have looked into the reprinted
versions of the texts in the second volume of Atmakatha (Jana et al. 1982).

Kailasbashini Debi was married to Kishorichand Mitra (1822–73) who was
an enlightened social reformer associated with the British India Association,
and the iconoclastic Young Bengal group. Back in 1843, Kishorichand
established the Hindu Theo-philanthropic Society in Calcutta. A litterateur,
while he contributed in the daily newspaper, Bengal Hurkaru, and the
journal, Bengal Spectator, Kishorichand was also the editor of The Indian
Field. He was with the judicial service, too, rising to the rank of Junior
Magistrate of Calcutta. Kishorichand’s brother, Pearychand Mitra, had joined
the ‘Public Library’ as deputy librarian in 1835 and retired as the curator.
In 1854, he and Radhanath Sikdar started a monthly magazine, Masik
Patrika, written in simple spoken Bengali prose published ‘especially for
women’. Pearychand’s Alaler Gharer Dulal (The Spoilt Child of
Worthless Parents 1858) which holds the contested claim of being the
first Bengali novel was serialized in Masik Patrika. He wrote a number
of books on the condition of women, the rigidities of caste system and
intemperance. Pearychand writes in the introduction to his book Adhyatmika
(1879) that his grandmother, mother and aunts read Bengali books. They
were capable of writing in Bengali and keeping accounts. Thus,
Kailashbashini hails from a progressive family in nineteenth-century Bengal
which promoted women’s education.

Jogendralal Khastagir perceives the life-story of Saradasundari as that of
an Acharya-Mata (Mother of a Brahmo Minister) depriving her of
autonomous agential role. His interpretation is in keeping with the expectation
of the nationalists who eulogised the pedagogical role of the enlightened
mother. As the name of the book suggests, he aims to present a public

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image of the Brahmo social-religious reformer Keshab Chandra Sen (1838-
1884) through the private words of his mother. Jogendralal, in the long
preface called ‘Nibedan’ to the book published from Dacca on 31 December,
1913, informs us that Girish Chandra Sen (1835-1910), the editor of Mahila,
urged him and his wife Sarala Debi to write a book about the penury,
religiosity and benevolence and the dexterous household management of
Saradasundari Debi for the ‘wellbeing of the Bengali women’
(Saradasundari Debi 1982: 4). Hence, they got the dictated autobiography
published in the Bengali journal Mahila. To Jogendralal, this book was ‘as
sacred as a religious text’ written ‘for the future followers of Naba Bidhan
(New Dispensation) thousand years hence.’ Jogendralal feels: ‘If
Saradasundari as the mother of Keshab Chandra had not guided her son’s
religion in the fully nationalist sense, this eternally new religion would have
been presented in a westernised garb’ (Saradasundari Debi 1982: 4).
Interestingly, being the mother of Keshab or influencing his public life is
not the narrative purpose of Saradasundari herself, nor is he the pivot of
her narrative.

In my endeavour to distinguish male-authored personal narratives from
those penned by female authors, I would attempt to find out the significance
of the distinguished ‘I’ when a woman constructs her entity and delineates
the agency of othersaround her through personal narratives. Is she guided
by egotism — entailing simultaneous flaunting and normalization of one’s
idiosyncratic singularisation — which is essential in the autobiographical
act? Does her portrayal of life bear mark of an ‘individuated’, ‘singular’
self with unique personality traits, values, attitudes that are considered to
be markers of self-construction? Does she possess a sense of inviolable,
coherent ‘I’ that impels her to consciously write about her life? Is it that
the self gets effaced within the histories she observes and records?

The diary and the autobiography chosen here betray selective re-presentation
of life with an authorial bias. Rather than being a developmental narrative
with a purpose and goal, the anecdotal depiction of people, events and
activities here lead to lack of self-analytic evocation of life as a totality.
The texts unfold identities with characteristic fissures, incompleteness and
diffidence that challenge the consistency of the narrative. However, the
patterning and imagining of a fragmented identity is mediated by
contemporary cultural configurations that determine what and in which
manner the ‘cultural others’ can recreate their selves. The female narrators
might have deliberately destabilised the unity of the universal ‘I’ and the
authoritativeness of the rigidly controlled, self-aware subjectivity claimed

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18

by the male authors. Literary theorists (e.g., Jelinek1986: 41-53; Benstock
1988; Leigh Gilmore 1994) speak about politics of identity and agency where
the female self chooses to have a less autonomous personhood, without a
distinctive subjectivity. In fact, this decentred and relational identity lends
idiosyncratic vitality to authorial and autobiographical space.

The narratives relate the mechanics by which nineteenth-century society
was changing, and its effect on the age, as well as on individuals who fill
the pages of these female tales.Both the texts explicate the instrumentality
of historical circumstances, social institutions, material forces, cultural
discourses and ideological practices in life-writing. These informed minds
betray remarkable awareness of the uncertainties and constraints of their
times. Both the narrators connect their individual life experiences with socio-
historical institutions and portray a linkage between their lives and workings
of society. Paradoxes, arising out of relationship to their family members,
conflicts on varied issues of nineteenth-century social reform movement
and dilemmas arising out of them, reflect in microcosm the social drama
which was being enacted in the larger cultural macrocosm. This interaction
between personal dilemmas and broader public issues endow unique
personalities to the authors which perhaps impelled them to inscribe non-
conformist subjectivity.

The patterns of remembrance produce dismembered texts and give rise to
complex temporality. Kailashbashini mostly measures her time in terms of
days, months, years according to the Bengali lunar calendar. Saradasundari,
on the other hand, bears distinct spatial and temporal consciousness. She
measures time in terms of broad landmarks in life such as births, marriages
and deaths. Saradasundari’s recollection of such events is interspersed
with conflicting dates. She also admits that she has cannot remember the
sequence of her pilgrimages spread over forty-five years due to her old
age. The narrative turns out to be a subversive space where the chronological,
progressive, sequential patterning of narrative rationality is defied. This
disruption of linearity is in keeping with the fragmented and interrupted life
that women are forced to live. In reality, contemporaneous socio-cultural
codes legitimise and naturalise shifting, contradictory, fractured and co-
existing identities and subjectivities for a domestic woman.

Janaika Grihabodhur Diary (The Diary of a Certain Housewife)

The unpolished prose and the colloquialism of the dialect in Kalishbashini’s
diary hardly manifest her intellect. This artless prose-writing gives the feel

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19

of an authentic literary self and inconsistent feminine subjectivity.
Thenumerous erratic spellings, naiveté of language and grammatical
mistakes are compensated by richness of her thought. Lacking arrangement,
structure, plan and theme, with profusion of random notes on details of
daily life, this text provides an opportunity for a departure from a coherent
recreation of life. Carrying instantaneous impression of Kailashbashini’s
moods, dilemmas, reactions, attitudes, intimate thoughts, tastes, aptitudes
and sensitivity, the diary displays spontaneous urge for self-expression.
Moving through a series of moments in time, while the diary helps gauging
fluctuations, aberrations and imperfections in Kailashbashini, it is
counterpoised by gaps, silences and absences.

Generally, the circularity of time in women’s life, with continually repetitive
diurnal activities, does not leave much space for variation. Since her husband,
Kishorichand Mitra, took her along with him to the places where he was
posted, Kailashbashini’s life was blessed with novel experiences. His desire
to share his public life with his wife endowed her with a somewhat
independent personality. This perhaps propelled her to recreate her own
life on the pages of the diary. Kailashbashini’s chosen scheme of self-
projection is much like a travelogue, scripting her own journey of self-
discovery through places she had visited after the death of her son in 1846.
She provides precise description of the sub-division and the district of Bengal
that she travelled through and resided in. Interestingly, she refers to places
in names that were used by the local populace, disregarding the names
used by the British for their new administrative divisions. She refers to
Rajshahi as Rampur and Barrackpore as Chanok. The narrative bears out
her sense of history as she refers to Natore as the capital of the illustrious
Rani Bhabani which, in Kailashbashini’s time, was under her successors.
Mentioning the battlefield of Plassey, where ‘the British and the Nawab
fought for the first time’, she writes about the ‘inexplicable feeling of joy
and numerous other emotions that were evoked (Kailashbashini Debi 1982:
3). Speaking about Jahanabad in Midnapur, she mentions that during the
Sepoy Mutiny, the soldiers of the Badshah of Delhi, Bahadur Shah Zafar-
II, stayed there. She adds that prior to this, even the Mughals and the
Pathans fought at this place (Kailashbashini Debi 1982: 16).One finds
reference to people of historical importance made rather unceremoniously.
Describing her stay in Rajshahi she writes: ‘Nothing worthwhile happened
there. Only Dwarkanath Tagore passed away in England
(1846)’(Kailashbashini Debi 1982: 4).While commenting on her visit to
Kashiand Prayag on the auspicious occasion of Kumbh Mela, she mentions
the visit of the Duke of Edinburgh to these places accompanied by various

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20

Rajas (Kailashbashini Debi 1982: 33).At the same time, when detailed
description of each incident is accompanied by the names of the persons
involved, she curiously leaves unmentioned the works that find pride of
place in the social history of nineteenth-century Bengal. There is silence
on public works Kishorichand had undertaken in Natore - building of schools
for boys and girls, making of a hospital, digging of ponds, construction of
road between Rampur and Dighapotia via Natore (Ghosh 1926: 77–85).

The traditional Brahmanical construct directed that a woman who received
education was inevitably widowed. To subvert social strictures and repel
her chances of being widowed, she procured knowledge in English from
her husband at night.While education under her husband’s supervision helped
creating a bond between them, it bestowed power and authority to him
(Kailashbashini Debi 1982: 20). A European lady teacher, Miss Tugod, too,
was hired on a monthly salary of ¹ 25. Kailashbashini’s extensive reading is
reflected in her literary references. In nineteenth-century public debates,
there was much anxiety over women reading ‘trashy, romantic novels’.
Female readers were repeatedly cautioned against romantic love and illicit
passion represented in translated versions of English novels (Walsh 2004;
Ghosh 2006). Kailashbashini, however, was acquainted with both English
and Bengali novels. She unhesitatingly mentions that when Kishorichand
went for his official visits, she ‘lived like Robinson Crusoe’ (Kailashbashini
Debi 1982: 15). When she went to Kashi with her sister, she found a friend
in Lakshmimoni, with whom she discussed Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay’s
Mrinalini (Kailashbashini Debi 1982: 34).On another occasion, she writes
about the bounty of crops and indigo production she had read about in the
daily, Sambad Prabhakar (Kailashbashini Debi 1982:19-20).

The form of a diary being private and personal, one finds candid expressions
of mutual compassion and evolving friendship between the couple, evoking
the Western ideal of a companionate marriage. The effortless companionship
was consolidated by Kishorichand’s decision to take her along. Without
interference from the larger family, the pleasure of uninterrupted closeness
and shared experiences permitted overt displays of affection and openness
in communication, highly unusual in nineteenth-century Bengal. When she
expresses her inability to write after childbirth, Kishorichand wrote back
saying that she was ‘cruel’ and ‘heartless’ not to ‘write just one line upon
repeated entreating (Kailashbashini Debi 1982:4-5).Once when she was
critically ill, Kishorichand took great care of her, which gave her ‘pleasure
even in illness’. Readings of normative literature showthat in those times,
such consideration for the health of the wife was uncommon. To elucidate

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how indispensable, she was to Kishorichand, she relates another occasion
when he allowed her to attend his niece’s wedding with much reluctance.
Right after the ceremony, he expressed his ‘pain’ grown out of forced
separation. Not only did he defy injunctions on male propriety that dictated
that the husband was not to express emotional longing for the wife,
Kishorichand even personally provided her food, water, and clothes to wear
as maidservants were yet to arrive (Kailashbashini Debi 1982: 20-2).

The rhetoric of wifeliness came with a justification of wifely restrictions
even with friends. She states that in Rampur Boalia she was happy being
surrounded by female company. Apart from socialising during the festivities,
they used to sail together and play cards (Kailashbashini Debi 1982: 11). In
Natore, she was allowed to interact with a few families, even with Muslims.
However, this was confined to taking bath in the river with friends at dawn;
occasional visits to each other’s place during daytime on palanquin and;
walks to houses adjacent to each other at night. When she visited Kashi
with her mother-in-law and few other women, she was excited about the
freedom of interaction, not only with unacquainted women, but also with
her mother-in-law, whom she came to know from close quarters for the
first time. On another occasion, she mentions how glad she was to befriend
the vivacious wife of the Deputy Magistrate at Garbeta, Mr. Jogeshchandra
Ghosh. During Kishorichand’s posting at Jahanabad (Midnapore) in 1852,
Kailasbashini complains of her loneliness: ‘In Jahanabad I saw no other
face. That was a painful experience… I would teach my daughter and
write this diary’(Kailashbashini Debi 1982: 15).One finds evasive
acknowledgement of the limitedness of female solidarity and sisterhood
and vocal commitment to happiness despite lonesomeness:

Men had a larger socialising group than we had. Nevertheless,
we were happy…as women our demands are few, our minds
slight, hence we were satisfied with little. That independence
was enough for us...When Babu went out for his rounds or to
the district areas, then all of us used to wander in the
garden…They did not come before my husband nor did I
appear before theirs (Kailashbashini Debi 1982: 11-2).

Her attitude towards Kishorichand was more of admiration for a loving
husband than that of obedience to patriarchal authority. She was aware
that her life had an independent quest. Once, Kailashbashini and her daughter
were caught in a storm on Padma. She was exuberant receiving a note
written by a panic-stricken Kishorichand expressing his relief on their return.
He states that, had anything happened to them, he would have jumped

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22

down from the boat of the sahib into the Padma. Her forthright comment
suggests that she did not submerge her ego as the subordinate partner:
‘That does not surprise me. On the contrary, had he not done so, I would
have been surprised. Not all the prayers in the world can give anyone a
wife like me’ (Kailashbashini Debi 1982:7-8). Kishorichand had to postpone
Kumudini’s marriage, as Kailashbashini was fatally ill. If the delay became
an impediment in finding a suitable groom, he decided to take Kumudini to
Britain and get her married at a mature age. Kailashbashini snaps back
saying that it would be fine if he married Kumudini to a sahib and he
himself married a memsahib. In a dramatic passage, Kishorichand declares
his love for her and asks her to acknowledge that he never neglected her.
Kailashbashini responds to this with sharp wit saying that it has been so
because she has never done anything to deserve chastisement. From her
childhood she followed his instructions (Kailashbashini Debi 1982: 29).

Bearing the hallmark of a developed self, she was conscious about her
own worth. However, the confidence she exuded was a derivative one, for
it rose from the fact that she was in many ways Kishorichand’s creation.
Having admitted that women are cast according to the persona of their
husband, she opines that her superstitious friend, Lakshmimoni, would have
been a remarkable person, had she been married to an honest, educated
man. She likens a woman to a ‘seed’ that accidentally falls on the ground
and grows ‘into a tree’ to bear ‘fruits’. Attributing her sagacity to her
association with her enlightened husband, she compares herself to a well-
nurtured tree: ‘Whatever I am today is due to the fact that the ground has
been cultivated and watered very carefully… My mind might have been
fertile, but even the most ignorant person would have become enlightened
if so much care was taken of’ (Kailashbashini Debi 1982: 35).

While she was not an unthinking and docile individual, her effort to uphold
the ideal of a sugrihini (good wife) made her negotiate between
acquiescence and defiance. On one occasion, Kailashbashini managed to
cajole her mother-in-law to take her along to the temple of the king of
Chandrakona (Midnapur) in the palanquin meant for the attendants. This
being in defiance of Kishorichand’s order, she writes in great detail of the
fear that gripped her (Kailashbashini Debi  1982: 17).She was aware that
the idiom of wifely devotion gave her certain license to transgress wifely
conformism, but her liberties were not boundless. This illustrates that even
companionate marriages were not entirely egalitarian and husbands
exercised disciplinary power. She, in fact, was elated to be the wife of a
‘rich and powerful’ man (Kailashbashini Debi,1982: 11). The euphoria of a

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blissful marriage emanated partly from pride in the social position that her
husband’s authority bestowed upon her. Talking about herself and her women
companions, she observed:

The world looked up to them with honour but our husbands
would live and die atour directive. What can ail women who
have such husbands at their feet?Moreover, we stay with our
husbands at their place of work (Kailashbashini Debi1982:
16).

Interestingly, the empathetic conjugal bond and emotional closeness faced
adversity in the new familial set-up in Kolkata. Kishorichand was promoted
in June 1854 as the ‘first Bengali Junior Magistrate of Calcutta’, ‘drawing
a salary of ¹  800’ (Kailashbashini Debi1982: 22-3). He founded the
Samajonnati Vidhayini Suhrid Samiti (The Society of Friends for the
Promotion of Social Improvement) at Kashipur on December 1854. The
social reform movement made Kishorichand adopt a way of life that
ultimately brought about an estrangement in the mental worlds of the couple.
Kailashbashini was placed in complex and contradictory situations. While
Kishorichand adopted ways of his more radical peers of the Young Bengal,
Kailashbashini bore disgust for it: ‘I would not name them—these uncivilised
‘gentlemen’—members of the British India Association who instigate him
to drink’ (Kailashbashini Debi 1982: 24). One notices how deeply agonised
she was by the disrespect shown towards her feelings and slighting of her
concern by the newly Westernized Kishorichand.

Kailashbashini confesses that she follows Hindu rituals without being
‘convinced of its basic validity’. She writes: ‘I do not believe in Hindu
rituals, but I have all through observed them... I fear being excommunicated...
Death is preferable to that’ (Kailashbashini Debi 1982: 24-5). Living in a
social world that defined the woman’s identity in relational terms with family,
clan, caste, and community; excommunication would have destabilized her
very being. When asked by Kishorichand, she adds that she does not have
faith in Kishorichand’s lifestyle, either (Kailashbashini Debi 1982: 24-5).
While he could risk alienating the more orthodox relatives by pursuing liberal
beliefs and flouting conservative norms, the culturally defined notion of
woman as the custodian of culture and familial bonds saw Kailashbashini
caught between the abiding forces of ‘tradition’ and inescapable forces of
‘modernity’.

The education that she received from her husband had imposed on her a
critical rationality, but her socialization taught her to be conventional. The

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24

contradiction within Kailashbashini is laid bare on more instances than one.
Quite contrary to the reformist sympathy for the plight of the Hindu widow,
Kailashbashini applies her enlightened powers of logic to rationalise the
rigid Brahmanical ascetic injunctions about widowhood, which were
disciplinary, punitive, and depriving. In a lengthy disquisition, she even defends
idol worship, but finally insists that ethical action is more important than the
worship of god. She reproaches the duplicity of professed believers who
lived a morally depraved life and instigated many to abandon Hinduism. To
her, religion was a matter of personal belief and not an affair of public
display.

Kailashbashini exposes the hypocrisy of the practitioners of religion who
made atypical exceptions for people in power. On February 1857,
Kishorichand married-off 11-year-old Kumudini to an educated, lower caste
Mullick boy, unafraid that this act would ruin the ancestral line
(Kailashbashini Debi 1982: 28). During the festivities that followed the
British and the Indians dined together, breaking rigid commensality practices.
Ramgopal Ghosh commended Kishorichand’s fortitude. Since all those who
had gone to Ghosh’s daughter’s wedding were later excommunicated,
Kailashbashini observes that it was Kishorichand’s influential position that
refrained people from creating a furore on the issue (Kailashbashini Debi
1982: 30).We do not find Kailashbashini’s reaction to this inter-caste
marriage, but with a degree of conceit and sarcasm she wrote: ‘The Bengalis
can do nothing to the powerful. He had the law in his hands and so everybody
feared him’ (Kailashbashini Debi 1982:30).

With the ‘Sepoy Mutiny of 1857’, she felt that her days of happiness deserted
her. Kishorichand lost his job on 28 October 1858. Kailashbashini claims
that her husband had been delivered an inordinate punishment for an
‘innocuous mistake’ (Kailashbashini Debi 1982: 31) but refrains from
providing details. Manmatha Ghosh (1926: 118-40) writes that as a just,
independent-minded and daring Junior Magistrate, Kishorichand, had passed
judgements against the police at times. The Police Commissioner Mr.
Wauchope conspired and reported against. A commission consisting of two
Europeans and an Indian was set up to look into the case and it found
Kishorichand guilty. The Hindoo Patriot, on 11 November, 1858 pointed
out that it was a ‘notorious fact’ how the ‘ministerial classes of native
officials are dismissed, fined and suspended from office at the whim and
pleasure of their immediate superior’(Cited in Ghosh 1980:  91-5).

There is silence over the everyday life of Kailashbashini for almost a decade
and a half. We are told that Kishorichand remained severely ill for six

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months and passed away on 6 August 1873 (Calcutta Review, Vol. 57,
1873: 273).The narrative being founded on the happiness of conjugal
relationship, it was logical that the diary would not continue beyond the life
of her husband. In a poignant and powerful passage, Kailashbashini carves
out an anguished end to her own story:

Oh readers, here my book ends! My life is over. Today, on 24
Shravan (August), thirteenth day of the moon, on the night of
Jhulan Jatra at 11 o’clock, I immerse all my material
happiness of the world. I die even when I am alive...I have
returned as a widow from Shyambazar. The sound of widow
shatters my heart like a thunderbolt. Oh Father of this world,
why did you give me this name and how long will I have to
bear this name in this country? I cannot withstand this pain.
May this name of mine be soon reduced to dust (Kailashbashini
Debi 1982: 37).

Beginning her record with the death of her son in 1846, Kailashbashini
abruptly ends her narrative with the death of her husband and beginning of
her widowhood at the age of forty-four. It is as if the solace provided by
the companionate marriage made her live anew after the trauma of the
death of the son. She died with the withdrawal of the comfort. Having led
a loving marital life under the shadow of her husband, she turned reticent
about the helpless life that dawns upon a Hindu widow. It is an irony of fate
that Kailashbashini, who upheld ascetic widowhood, was prematurely pushed
into a similar life of helpless loneliness. She might have espoused widowhood
as an embodiment of traditional virtues, continuous self-denial and morally
glorified valorisation of pain, but she could not bear its strain. She let go the
reins of her life and her family since it was intertwined with that of her
husband’s.

Thus ends the tale of Kailashbashi about an extraordinary selfhood, which
precariously balanced discrete parts of her being: one imbibed through
rational education bestowed by her husband, and another, acquired through
socio-cultural prescription. Yet another offered by her defiant selfhood that
was apprehensive about the ethics of perverse Westernization.

Atmakatha (Story of My Life)

Unlike Kailashbashini’s diary, Saradasundari Debi’s autobiography is
eloquently written in Bengali with the rhetorical force of the Sanskrit diction

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26

and tatsama words. The tone of the narration is informal, confessional,
and documentary. This brings us to the heart of the compound negotiations
that an orally narrated autobiography brings with it. Incorporation of a male
voice in the narration leading to male mediation in the constitution of the
female-self destabilises the narrative purpose of Saradasundari Debi. It
results in internalisation of the lexical and syntactical categorisations used
in dominant male language despite Jogendralal’s claim that: ‘If at any place
the use of a particular sentence brought about a disparity between her
thought and the written expression, she did not sit still until it was corrected’
(Saradasundari Debi 1982: 5-6).

Quite contrary to the assertion of Jogendralal that Saradasundari ‘did not
allow even a speck of falsehood to creep in to the autobiography’
(Saradasundari Debi 1982: 6) one is struck by faultyrecollection, conflicting
accounts, evasive silences, contradictions and discrepancies. One has to
remember that omissions and manipulations are dependent on a specific
culture’s construction of what consists of truth and the rhetoric of truth
telling (Ashley et al., 1994: 9, 57).Though autobiographies are perceived to
be true accounts of the lived life, Jogendralal accepts that Saradasundari
refrained from narrating events that were painful and would have hurt
others, spoke only in the presence of her daughters and other relatives and
made him promise that the biography would not be published during her
lifetime and until long after her death (Saradasundari Debi 1982: 6).

We are here exposed to the complexity of autobiographical writing when
the author is a woman, the ‘cultural other.’ Truth and authenticity being
cultural constructions, there remains social pressure on a woman to conform
to essentialised feminine propriety of suffering in silence out of thoughtfulness
for others. Saradasundari’s selectively remembered autobiography reveals
the dialectic pull between a desire to defend the private secrets as well as
to confess in public the inner truth. The fear of contempt from posterity
and dispersed networks of power relations disallow her tale to tell all.
Jogendralal adds that in congruence with the request of the elders, various
parts of the autobiography have not even been published (Saradasundari
Debi 1982: 6).Thus, the female autobiography is more prone to ambivalences,
marginalia and silences than a male one(Whitlock 2000: 21-2; Ashley et al.
1994: 55-8, 68-9; Sturrock 1993: 136; Marcus 1998: 18; Ellis 2000: 106,
110).

Saradasundari did not possess a conscious organising perspective to lend
continuity to discrete elements in her life. Since the act of recovering the
past andre-presenting the tale of her life at the specific moment of

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narrativisation did not come from within and had started at a time when
memory did not remain her valuable companion, the narrative demonstrates
doubtful fidelity to facts. As moments slide out of Saradasundari’s
consciousness, one finds misrememberings woven into the inconsistent
narrative. The re-ordered life-story of Saradasundari does help making
sense of her random experiences, events and emotions but does not provide
a sense of unity and wholeness to the autobiographical self and the text.

The repetitive and fragmentary pattern of narration is worth mentioning.
Beginning the narration at the age of 73 and engagement with the process
of recollection for mere10 days, results in expansion of episodes thought
importance and compression of events considered incidental. In the nine
sessions narrated between 22 June, 1892 and 17 November, 1892 she deals
with her natal and marital life, injustices meted out to her by her brother-in-
laws after her widowhood; her pilgrimages; the marriages of her three
daughters; the loss of dear ones – husband, mother-in-law, sister-in-law
and eldest daughter. Surprisingly, she resumes her narration after 7 years
and 9 months on August 1900 after braving a series of bereavements. On
a single day she covers a huge vista—deaths in the family; her relation
with her sons, daughters, daughters-in-law, grand daughters-in-law; her
hallucinations after Keshab’s death and the role of God in her life. She
emphasises upon the division of affinal property and the Cooch Behar
marriage of her granddaughter, Maharani Suniti Debi. Meetings with
Ramkrishna Paramhansadeb and Lady Dufferin find special mention.

Almost as a convention, the patriarchal framework of autobiographies
postulates a beginning with familial and communal stories of the self.
However, Saradasundari devotes just about a dozen sentences about her
provenance. Her tale begins with her birth in 1819 at her maternal uncle’s
place. We are told that she was born in Garifa in the Hooghly district to a
doctor named Gourhari Das who was deeply religious. The relegation of
the natal family and lineage to obscurity goes hand in hand with the social
injunction that the woman’s real affiliation is not with her natal family but
with the matrimonial one. Bereft of parental or matrimonial right to land
inheritance, the privileges, authority and power that class and caste confer
upon a man, Saradasundari might have thought it proper not to claim an
identity that lineage, caste and class bestow. This sparse account of her
childhood days could also be due to the fact that lives of women perforce
are devoid of boundaries and settled identities. The knowledge of her
forbears, earliest influences and memories of childhood which tend to shape
the adult life of a man, does not influence the feminine self in the same

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28

fashion because early marriage and the ensuing burden of domesticity placed
too soon on young shoulders, make the span of childhood shorter.

Her recollection truly begins with her marriage, tyrannical regime of hard-
labour in the conjugal home and her anxiety as a child bride. The rationale
for beginning at a juncture of life which endows one with a sense of alienation
and terrifying prospect of forced translocation in a new place and family
might have been adopted by her to explicate the profound uncertainty of
both marriage and memory. She disapproves child marriage that compounds
the ordeal of the child bride:

I was very frightened before going to my in-laws’ home. I
used to think that I would be put into jail or even hung. Thinking
of all this, I cried for a month before the wedding. Finally,
when my father forcefully took me to my in-laws’ place, I felt
as though I had been thrown into an ocean. For long I believed
that the dictates of Hindu religion was the best. But now I
think it is better to get girls married after they have matured
to some extent. Then they do not have to put up with so many
disadvantages (Saradasundari Debi 1982: 7).

The new family dynamics was laden with power struggle with the
authoritarian mother-in-law at the helm. Exercising considerable disciplining
power, the mother-in-law took an instant disliking to Saradasundari assuming
her to be older than ten years of age. Saradasundari recounts how after
the day-long drudgery she was admonished for her desire to play. Rather
than punishing Saradasundari on her own, either as a willing or an unwitting
comprador of patriarchy,the mother-in-law reported all her mistakes to the
father-in-law Ramkamal Sen (1783-1844) who chastised her.

There remains gap between Saradasundari’s conjugal experiences and her
ability to voice it. She says less about her husband Pearymohan Sen (1814-
48) compared to the detailed discussion on her father-in-law Ramkamal
Sen who was a diwan (finance secretary) under Dr. Wilson at the Calcutta
Mint (1828) and the Bank of Bengal (1809). We are told that Pearymohan
worked at the Agency House of Baig. Social inhibition, shame and feminine
timidity made her shy away from asking for money from Pearymohan
even when he brought boxes full of it: ‘I never asked for money for fear
that he might think that I come from a family of paupers who had never
seen money and hence I was asking out of greed’ (Saradasundari Debi
1982: 10).  Soon the agency house incurred huge financial loss. The debt

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was repaid after he started working in the Calcutta Mint two/three years
after Ram Kamal’s death.

Perhaps out of enforced modesty and obligatory silence about conjugal
relationship in a joint family, it was only after poignant description of
Pearymohan’s last hour that Saradasundari dedicates a small section on
his commendable attributes. She notes that he was a ‘good looking,’
‘exceptionally charitable,’ highly religious Vaishnav. He could draw
beautifully, was a bird-lover and was interested in wrestling. As regards his
educational achievement she says that he got a gold medal in the
examination of the Hindu College. Not only was he good in English, Bengali,
Sanskrit and Persian, he could also skilfully play a number of musical
instruments like Harmonium, Esraj, Pakhwaj and Sitar (Saradasundari Debi
1982: 13-4). Devoid of opportunity to acquire education in her youth she
proudly declares her husband to be her guide (Saradasundari Debi 1982: 7)
Such an education imparted at night gave it a degree of legitimacy and
helped building a new form of conjugal intimacy. She writes that he had
beautiful handwriting and asked her to follow his style of writing. However,
talking of inability to write, she notes: ‘Through disuse I have forgotten to
write, but I can still read’ (Saradasundari Debi 1982: 11)

The absence of the husband as protector made Saradasundari’s position in
the joint family vulnerable. After two weeks of his death, she began to live
in mortal fear of being thrown out along with her children since the
Dayabhaga School of property rights in Bengal did not give a widow absolute
right over the land of her husband. All she was entitled to was its
maintenance. She showed a marked ambiguity towards material
possessions. When the eldest son Nabin Chandra implored her to stay
back till the distribution of movable assets, she sternly replied: ‘Be it your
disaster, be it your property, I shall not stay’ (Saradasundari Debi 1982:
14). Hardened by family feuds over property she later voiced her inner
dissatisfactions and challenged the subservient acceptance of normative
codes of a virtuous self-effacing widow whose fulfilment admittedly lay in
martyrdom in conjugal family. A series of deprivations led her to defend
her rights while her brother-in-law tried to cheat her of her share. Her
ability to competently guide her sons in property matters shows her thorough
understanding of the legal and administrative structures regarding property
deals (Saradasundari Debi 1982: 26-7).

The successive deaths of her husband, eldest daughter Brajeshwari and
her mother-in-law made her seek solace in pilgrimages to Ganga Sagar,
Puri, Kashi, Prayag, Vrindaban, Mathura, Vindhyachal stretching over a

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30

span of 45 years. Interestingly, five sessions on pilgrimages covering a
quarter of the narrative deal more with the thrill of her adventurous exploits
and less with her religious venture in these sites. Daily humiliations in a
painfully constricted familial milieu deprived her of a self-respecting
existence and made her seek succour in the expanse of the sylvan beauty
of the variegated natural world. For a woman who lived within the confines
of antahpur for about three decades of her life, Saradasundari displayed
unusual self-confidence, adaptability, persistence when she found her life’s
meaning in the expanse of the outside world. Pilgrimage, apart from being
an approved antidote to rousing of physical desire also gave women
confidence to assert control over their lives and exercise a spirit of
independence. Saradasundari with other women of the group took decisions
as to the places to be visited, the duration of the period of stay at each
place—agential roles which were denied to widows under domestic captivity.
One can fathom the transformation of Saradasundari from a humble, selfless
pilgrim to an insightful traveller.

That the introspective self-fashioning of identity through autobiography
involves a journey of self-realisation is borne out by the narrative. The
recast and recomposed past, in this narrative, charts out the continual
process of Saradasundari’s becoming: the changing states of mind, her
stepping out of the rut of Hindu orthodoxy and carving of a distinctive
individual faith. Her metaphysical proclivity and philosophical introspection
are dovetailed to open-minded rationality. Her detachment and scepticism
made her criticise her past religious fervour. She considers her action in
Puri of lying on the road holding the rope of the chariot during the rath
yatra with the belief of acquiring punya as ‘childlike.’ She even feels that
Lord Gobinda/Krishna stopped her from entering the temple of Gobindaji
in Jaipur. Her mature and inquisitive mind made her lose her previous zeal
to see the Absolute Brahman in idolatrous form. When asked as to why
she went for pilgrimages despite being the mother of Keshab Chandra, she
retorts, ‘Pilgrimages are ancient in origin – they are the God’s realm, what
is the harm in seeing them?’ (Saradasundari Debi 1982: 25).  She likens her
love for pilgrimages to her love for her children and relatives devoid of
expectation. As if to vindicate her stand on idolatry she elucidates that
salvation could be achieved either by idolatrous devotion to Krishna/Gobinda/
Hari or by merger with the Universal Absolute Brahman or through the
intimate attainment of His lotus feet as a mark of subordination
(Saradasundari Debi 1982: 17).

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A noteworthy feature of the narrative is Saradasundari’s ambiguity towards
notions of ritual purity, pollution and commensality norms which were crucial
for upholding caste hierarchy for upper class/caste Hindus in nineteenth-
century Bengal. The closeness that she developed with maids and guards
made her eat with. Once the daughter of her Kaibarta (intermediate lowly
caste)maid came running to her while she was eating and joined her.
Saradasundari added: ‘I did not have any hesitation in my mind, though
some people chided me.’ The Vaishnava guru of the Sen household who
was accompanying these women refused to eat with them for subverting
caste-based customs. Later at the prospect of being left behind he quickly
ate the leftovers and forgot about his protests. While the likelihood of censure
for violating caste norms did not deter Sardasundari she was caught within
her inherited social location when it came to marriage negotiation. She
writes of her disapproval when her grandsons married out of caste
(Saradasundari Debi 1982:38).

In the tenth session, Saradasundari talks about her children - Nabin Chandra,
Keshab Chandra, Krishna Behari, Brajeshwari, Phuleshwari, Chuni and
Panna - and grandchildren. Her anecdotes of Keshab Chandra begin with
the absence of a proper lying-in-room during his birth. She recollects that
the room was so unhygienic that Keshab suffered from stomach swelling
right after birth. He suffered from epilepsy from the age of nine to eleven.
All she could recall about Keshab Chandra’s academic and professional
life is that he studied in Hindu College, worked in the Bank of Bengal and
in the Calcutta Mint. A reconciliatory refrain reverberates as Saradasundari
tries to prove that Keshab was not far from Vaishnavite Hinduism, thereby
re-appropriating him for the Hindu fold. Conspicuous is her revelation that
the Vaishnava guru approved of Keshab’s conversion to Brahmo faith;
that all through his life Keshab chanted the name of Hari and counted the
beads of rosary (Saradasundari Debi 1982: 30-3). On 13 April, 1862, Keshab
Chandra transgressed the norms of spatial segregation of women by taking
his wife to the Tagore household at Jorasanko for Maghotsab. However,
Saradasundari unceremoniously refers to this event of historic importance
(Saradasundari Debi 1982: 27). Perhaps due to her own ambivalence
towards Keshab’s iconoclastic acts, Saradasundari refrains from
commenting on Keshab’s public life with the statement: ‘about his youth
and mature age much has been said already that need not be repeated’
(Saradasundari Debi 1982: 30). Either out of a conscious subversive strategy
for manipulation of facts or as an evasive mechanism against disagreeable
memories, or out of consideration for popular acceptance, or to project a
certain public image of Keshab Chandra for posterity, she refused to write

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32

in details about the controversial marriage of Suniti Debi to the Maharaja
of Cooch Behar that brought about a schism between Sadharan Brahmo
Samaj and Naba Bidhan Brahmo Samaj (Borthwick 1977; Kopf 1979).
She retorts: ‘Many have written on it. There is no need to repeat it again’
(Saradasundari Debi 1982: 36-7).

Along with her religious belief, marriage negotiations dealt on the seventh
and eight sessions hold an important place in the account. She resents
authoritarianism of elderly members of the joint family who habitually
asserted their will in marriage negotiations. Saradasundari says that her
eldest-daughter Brajeshwari’s engagement and ostentatious marriage are
the only happy days in her entire life. Since her brother-in-law and mother-
in-law were instrumental in deciding weddings in the family thereafter, she
begrudges the loss of her agential role. Her wish was also respected during
the marriage of her youngest daughter Chuni. On a note of pride, she
comments: “Since resources lay in the hands of my elder brother-in-law,
the expenditure was handled by him but I chose the partner”(italics mine)
(Saradasundari Debi 1982: 20). Saradasundari’s choice for Keshab’s bride
was thwarted twice by her brother-in-law. Finally, Keshab was married at
the age of eighteen to eight-year-old Jaganmohini of Bali in 1856 who
according to Saradasundari was ‘not beautiful,’ ‘small’, ‘thin’, and
‘insignificant’ (Saradasundari Debi 1982: 20-1). Almost justifying male
proclivity for polygamy in nineteenth-century Bengal, she was unhesitant
in declaring that it would not have been unnatural if Keshab took another
wife. She deliberately trivialises her discussion on other daughters-in-law:
‘The daughters-in-law came from different families. Married to my sons,
their influence transformed them into better women’ (Saradasundari Debi
1982: 38). Saradasundari might be avenging the subjection in her youth as
a daughter-in-law when she herself ascended in the age and power
hierarchy.

The octogenarian Saradasundari concludes the narrative describing her
present state in relation to joys and sorrows in her affinal and natal family.
It bears traces of philosophical introspection, stoic detachment and restraint.
A life lived mostly for others, is ungrudgingly surrendered to the inscrutable
mercy of the Ultimate Absolute Other and uncertainties and ambiguities of
fate. Describing her relationship with God who as a benevolent creator
makes and as a devious destroyer unmakes life, she writes:

At regular intervals I receive news of happiness and grief
from my family. My God does not let me dwell in absolute
bliss or complete misery. He is testing me through joys and

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sorrows to help me rise above these… the tidings of joy do
not elevate me nor do news of sorrow upset me. I look at it all
as a divine play and sitting in the midst of this populous family
I shed tears with one of my eyes and laugh with another
(Saradasundari Debi 1982: 40).

Saradasundari thus conceives her own life and the sansar as a ‘divine
play’ or leela of God bestowing it with fulfilment and frustration, pleasure
and pain rendering her character with fullness.

Conclusion

The imagining of self by Kailashbashini is entirely relational in nature. In all
probability, she maintained her diary because her husband maintained one.
Though a woman of determination equipped to steer her fate, Kailashbashini
lacks control over life and destiny and succumbs to either male prescriptions,
or inscrutable destiny. Her husband was the fulcrum of her existence and
she wrote about twenty-seven years of her conjugal life. A fulfilling marriage
being her reason for self-creation and her self-invention being in relation to
her husband, she shied away from writing about the self, devoid of the
masculine presence. However, the fact that Kailashbashini wrote as freely
on her friendship with her husband, as of her agony over his lack of self-
restraint in the last few years, is an indication of a degree of candour quite
radical for a Hindu woman of those times.

Selfhood and identity constructed by Saradasundari is determined by her
understanding of her positioning in the gender hierarchy. In a single life-
span Saradasundari had to carry out intricate negotiations and manoeuvres
to meet varied requirements and purposes in marital/maternal roles.
Saradasundari lived all facets of culturally inscribed identities in a joint
family ridden with rivalry - subjugated childbride, a compliant daughter-in-
law, a devoted wife, an oppressed widow, an understanding mother. She
realised the futility of such subject positions. She suffered the agonies of
such existences, navigated the turbulence of domesticity, motherhood and
widowhood and broke the feminine propriety of silence. Empowering herself
with speech, she as an autonomous subject publicly articulated her private
emotions, feelings and frustrations questioning the very identities that instead
of guaranteeing a secured social existence as they ought to have, oppressed
her all the more.

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34

While Saradasundari surpassed the ideological constriction of Hindu
wifehood and sculpted a defiant, dissident identity only after the death of
her husband, Kailashbashini desiring a social identity as a sentimental,
devoted wife, her life was emptied of its fortune after Kishorichand’s death.
The premature end of the relationship that was perceived to lend fullness
to her being, made Saradasundari question the stability of social conventions.
Widowhood made Saradasundari break the shackles of wifely confinement
and choose an independent life. For Kailashbashini, widowhood ended the
meaning of life. Kailashbashini had invented herself through marital love
and the ensuing freedom, position, and authority that empowered her to
speak. The end of this life led to a complete disruption that made her abandon
the project to write her life story.

In both the texts under review, one witnesses the inner tussles within
Hinduism as well as between the former and Brahmoism. Kailasbashini’s
and Saradasundari’s reflections on religion and faith make them atypical
women of the times, endowed with inquisitive minds of their own. Their
exposure to the world beyond antahpur made them unafraid in disclosing
their inner inconsistencies, doubts, distresses. Embedded in the history of
nineteenth century Bengal, ‘her story’(Mukherjee 1993: 71-85) is candid
enough to critically appraise the times, assess the efficacy of social changes
that rocked the lives of myriads of people, critique social relations and
appeal for socio-cultural changes.

References

Bengali

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Debi, Saradasundari,1982. ‘Atma Katha’,in N.C. Jana et al. (eds)
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Ghosh, Manmatha,1926. Karmabeer Kishorichand Mitra. Calcutta: Adi
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