Women, Nation and Home - Current Issue · Women, Nation and Home: Swarnalata as a Postcolonial Text...

Women, Nation and Home: Swarnalata as a Postcolonial Text

Rashmi Buragohain Assistant Professor

Moran College Sibsagar

Assam History is replete with the nuances of life. It is therefore necessary to go back to the pages

of history in order to understand the present. Women need to understand their own history so that they can review their own position in the society today and elevate themselves for the future. As Gerda Lerner in her The Creation of Patriarchy said, “The unawareness of their own history of struggle and achievement has been one of the major means of keeping women subordinate” (Mahanta 1). In India, women were deprived of their due space in the pages of history till the late twentieth century. Same was the case with the Assamese women. The efforts of Assamese women themselves in recovering what Aparna Mahanta calls the “foremothers” from the ‘missing’ pages of Assam history have been tremendous. An effort to record the achievement of a young woman whose contribution to the realization of the self can never be ignored is evidenced in Tilottama Misra’s Swarnalata. But the question remains as to how and where to situate the ‘modern’ woman in colonial Assam as she does not ‘speak’ here. Misra explores “the question of how female identity has been constructed and how this relates to society as a whole” (Misra 1). But we need to re-read the same and question the very construct of the ‘women’s question’. Stating the problem of writing the history of colonial women Gayatri Spivak has written in her article “Can the Subaltern Speak?” that ‘the ideological construction of gender keeps the male dominant’. Valorizing ‘the concrete experience of the oppressed’ history books ‘often constitute an autonomous subject without due recognition of the dual oppression of colonialism and patriarchy, and the further oppression of Western scholarship’ (Forbes 3).

The Women’s Question in Assam can be traced back to the day when the American Baptist missionaries arrived in Assam in 1836 and introduced education for girls. Aparna Mahanta cites a missionary wife’s writing in 1851 who recorded that the main barrier to women’s education as “the women’s own belief, impressed on them from birth, in the ignorance and inability to learn; and the ridicule they faced if they ever tried to do so” (8). The involvement of missionary ladies in women’s education paved the way for the government too to take intesrest in the same and establish the first girls’ ME school in Shillong in 1884. But there were the opponents who vehemently wrote against women’s education. The writer Lamboodar Bora who wrote under the pseudonym Sadanand Baboo, defined women’s independence as “a woman abandoning her husband and children, refusing a husband, going alone to the public gardens, meeting educated male friends, running a household without males, chasing away the in-laws from the house or refusing them food, making husbands to cook and do other household chores, release of women from all bindings or allowing them to ride on their males after ascending them by putting their feet on their backs” (Mahanta 24). The import of new ideas from the west saw the birth of an ideology that accepted, as Partha Chatterjee has noted in “The Nationalist Resolution of Women’s Question”, the pursuance of science, technology, rational economics, and western political forms while regarding the home as the source of “true identity” that needed protection and strengthening, not transformation (Forbes 15).

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So, the objective of this paper is to explore the condition of women in colonial Assam caught in the dichotomy of home/world as depicted in the pages of Swarnalata. Swarnalata is the signature image of the colonial woman encountering modernity through the intertwined meshes of nation and home. This can be explained through the argument put forward by Partha Chatterjee in his “The Nation and Its Women”. In this essay he has argued that the “Women’s Question” in colonial times was situated “in an inner domain of sovereignty, far removed from the arena of political contest with the colonial state. This inner domain of national culture was constituted in the light of the discovery of ‘tradition’ ” (Chatterjee 117). The women’s question was taken up as a problem of Indian tradition. According to the Indian nationalists it was “necessary to cultivate the material techniques of modern Western civilization while retaining and strengthening the distinctive spiritual essence of the national culture” (Chatterjee 120). Application of the inner/outer distinction separates the social space into the home and the world. The male represented the world where practical considerations reign supreme and the woman represented the home which must remain unaffected by the profane activities of the material world.

The question was pushed further by the British in India by promoting the idea that husbands and wives should be friends or companions in marriage. It reflected the well known Victorian patriarchal ideals of what Geraldine Forbes has termed as ‘companionate marriage’ which the British introduced in India in the nineteenth century and which most of the reformers embraced with great zeal. It is to be noted here that harbinger of Assamese modernity Anandaram Dhekial Phukan, had a ‘companionate marriage’ with Mahindri Devi as can be derived from his biography authored by Gunabhiram Barua (Mahanta 11). In Swarnalata the author has explored the marriage of Gunabhiram with a widow Bishnupriya Devi, but we never see her sharing the intellectual pursuits of her husband. Most of the time she is busy attending household chores, and now and then instructing Swarnalata not to do anything that would disturb her father’s studies. The nineteenth century Assamese society was not yet ready to accept women’s education wholeheartedly. “While very often colonial education for women in India, and particularly, colonial reforms, are seen as a simple function of mimicry, of what has been called ‘aspiration towards Victorian gentility’, they also point to the double servitude that the reformed educated woman came under in terms of her husband’s acquired needs for a more sympathetic wife and companion, and western Victorian standards of patriarchy” (Moral 16). According to Aparna Mahanta, for most of the people in the nineteenth century the main objective of women’s education was to groom them to be good housewives – the ‘companionate wife’. The foreign-returned Indian ICS, doctors or engineers following the western lifestyle were unable to rub shoulders with the British with uneducated wives. Therefore the need of schools like Bethune arose so that girls conversant in English and ‘comfortable’ with forks and spoons are produced. Before Swarnalata could finish such an education she was married off at the age of fourteen to a foreign-returned doctor. In “Social Criticism in Nineteenth Century Assamese Writing: the Orunodoi” Tilottama Misra has referred to Gunabhiram Barua as an advocate of “women’s emancipation” who held the view that “only when women are educated and emancipated can they be the true companions for men” (1559).

We are introduced to Swarnalata in the aristocratic ambience of Bilwakutir where we find her being delicately brought up. She was never deprived of the liberal life that her father Gunabhiram Baruah had wished. Her well-stitched elegant dresses enhanced her natural beauty; she was the epitome of aristocratic lifestyle. In spite of all such liberty she was deprived of the freedom to study in a school and move like Tora who attends the Mission School. This is evident





of Misra’s careful delineation of the Assamese woman’s predicament. While at home, Swarnalata had to follow some strict rules like walking soundlessly. She was taught as a child that to make sound while walking is a bad habit as it hampers her father’s studies. Is it not so that Swarnalata had to follow the dictates of her father and stay under his shadow? She was made to believe that it was a ‘sin’ to disturb the reading atmosphere of Bilwakutir. Misra makes it evident her awareness of the seriousness of the Assamese woman’s dilemma and the generation old struggles behind it. But the question still remains as to why she had to remain silent.

Swarnalata belongs to the transition period of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century when the “complacence and obscurantism of ages summed up as tradition was beginning to be questioned by new ideas based on religion and tolerance” (Misra v). She was the daughter of the nineteenth century social reformer Gunabhiram Barua. She spent a part of her childhood in the comfortable atmosphere of Bilwakutir at Nagaon. At the age of nine she was sent to Kolkata for her studies at Bethune School. There she came in touch with various intellectuals and reformist leaders who influenced her a lot. Caught in the struggle between modern ideas and deep-rooted customs and traditions she had to eventually submit to her personal engagements. But the twenty-eight years of her life which is known and depicted in this novel is enough to realize the contribution she has made for the self-discovery of the Assamese women. Her observations and thoughts as captured by the author are a clear indication of the ‘new woman’ emerging within her. The problems and concerns of the middle class Indian woman in the dawn of Indian renaissance are reflected through the character of Swarnalata. Rooted in the culture in which she lives, Tilottama Misra remain sensitive to the common everyday events and experiences in a woman’s life in the nineteenth century Assam, and thus provide an artistic expression to something that is simple and mundane. She has beautifully depicted the predicament of the nineteenth century Indian woman placed between contradictory identities: tradition and modernity, family and society, culture and nature.

The native environment has made the novel more humanistic and optimistic in its outlook. The author Tilottama Misra had said in an interview that for her “Swarnalata is not only the loving daughter of Gunabhiram or a woman finding her place in the footnotes of history. She is the epitome of the struggle that the Assamese women have been going through to live with self-respect” (Trans.). Swarnalata’s achievement is something that a woman could never think of in the late nineteenth century. She had the advantage of a supportive father in his own terms who took pride in her every achievement. A private tutor Panchanan Sharma was appointed for Swarnalata instead of sending her to the missionary school nearby. The tutor had a traditional set of mind who opposed the idea of sending the girls to school. He was of the opinion that “a girl who would very soon be given away in marriage and sent off to another home needed to be taught domestic skills like cooking and weaving instead of wasting time in teaching her Mathematics and Grammar” (Misra 14). Through him Misra meticulously airs the temperament of the time when educated women were seen as losing their moral virtues by breaking the rules that defined the distinct social roles of men and women. It never occurred to the upper caste Assamese that girls of respected families will ever walk with dignity like the mission school-educated Tora. They vehemently opposed freedom for women raised by a few Assamese like Gunabhiram. They held the belief that people of the lower castes are born for hard labour and are therefore free to move under harsh circumstances. The reformist mission, therefore, had its own limitations. The ordinary people who comprised the larger chunk of the society remained “untouched by the norms of civilized sanitizing principles leaving them often freer from the





moral hierarchies of the elite” (Moral 19). Therefore, we find Tora being ‘taken in’ by the missionaries while the reformers like Gunabhiram could do nothing, but silently admire.

In spite of the concern for Swarnalata’s education, her parents were always on the look-out for a suitable groom for her. At that time the society was yet to accept widow remarriage and Gunabhiram Barua had married a widow. He wanted Swarnalata to grow up as an educated ‘ideal’ girl so that an upper caste educated boy having liberal views comes forward to marry Swarnalata. Thus, in spite of the hullabaloo on women’s education, the reformers themselves had to succumb to the clutches of patriarchal society time to time. At the same time Misra provides us a touching picture of child-widow through the poignant life of Lakhipriya, a friend of Swarnalata. A widow at that time had abstemious habits. She had to devote her life to her husband’s memory, her impurity could never be removed and she was to live out her life as the most inauspicious of all creatures. Faithful performance of her duties enabled a woman to maintain an ordered universe. Widow celibacy was lauded by the elite as a hallmark of respectability. Lakhipriya’s mother being tied to the prevailing patriarchal system never wanted her daughter to study and go to school. As Geraldine Forbes noted “women interacted with women and it was women who enforced the prohibition against female education” (33). Therefore, even Lakhipriya was like many of those who wanted to learn, but had to depend upon her father to pursue her wish. Lakhipriya’s “struggle to educate herself, the rather unexpected support that she receives from a conservative and tradition-bound father, the humiliations that she faces and her eventual triumph in securing a job as a teacher and marrying the man of her choice makes for absorbing reading and effectively throws light on one of the major social issues of the nineteenth century” (Misra v).

The atmosphere during that period was not yet conducive for women’s education that would provide the girls freedom and independence. Bethune was the centre of education for the daughters of the prominent families in India during that time. Gunabhiram sent his daughter Swarnalata to Bethune just because he had to do that being a part of the prominent families and not because of any kind of social reform. The celebrated denizens were unable to come to a mandate to let women establish their individuality and we find Swarnalata as an ornamental flower in the guest room. It is disheartening to see that the same upper middle class which was buoyant about women’s education was unable to play an influential role to attain the same. In spite of the importance of a modern school education for the ‘new’ woman, “the central place of the educated woman was still at home, and threatening because it might devalue and displace that central site where the social position of women was located.” The shift from the private to the public was neither abrupt nor permanent, and many women like Swarnalata, who briefly attended a school returned to the household where they continued to live in the more traditional fashion. In such a situation, the character of Tora who is shown in the novel as independent and self-reliant is something very unusual. Her Christian faith makes it possible for her to “chart her own course in life, untrammeled by customs and tradition which tend to suffocate her many Hindu friends”. But at the same time, through Tora and her husband Henry, Misra has deftly taken up the doubts surrounding the stated intentions of the Christian missionaries.

Tilottama Misra has explicitly depicted how “an ideal modern girl” was expected to be in colonial Assam through Swarnalata. She was expected to possess the typically bourgeois virtues of orderliness, thrift, cleanliness, and a personal sense of responsibility, the practical skills of literacy, accounting and hygiene, and the ability to run the household according to the new physical and economic conditions set by the outside world. Gunabhiram was thus happy and proud to see his daughter taking her food with forks and spoons along with the English ladies.





But as Partha Chatterjee has noted in his “The Nation and Its Women”: “There would have to be a marked difference in the degree and manner of Westernization of women, as distinct from men, in the modern world of the nation” (126). Notwithstanding the changes for women in the external world Swarnalata too was not expected to lose her feminine virtues, and the ‘spiritual’ signs of a woman’s femininity were clearly marked in her dress, her eating habits, her social demeanour, and her religiosity. But Gunabhiram’s selfishness suppressed his voice of protest when a coolie was mercilessly beaten by his master or when a white man shamelessly expressed his disrespect for the Indians. Swarnalata, witnessing all this, remains silent conforming to the established womanly virtues of submission and devotion.

Gunabhiram was moved by the ambitious Tora and gave an overview of the nineteenth century social conditions when he said, “If our girls had a definite goal like you in their lives then our Assamese society would have marched ahead. But we are at fault. We want our girls to be skilled in household work only. We never let other thoughts to enter their minds” (Misra) Therefore he was worried about his daughter’s education as she grew up in the cozy surroundings of Bilwakutir. He was not only unhappy with the education imparted by the missionaries, but was also dissatisfied with the impractical teachings of the Brahmo Samaj. But the irony lies in the fact that though we find Gunabhiram to be so modern in his outlook, especially regarding education for the girls, he is not able to shrug off the ‘elite’ within him. Like many of the “new woman” Swarnalata too was educated at home and then sent to a girls’ school. Nurturing good relations with the colonial British rulers, the representative of the Indian middle class Gunabhiram never raised his voice against the atrocities meted out to the tea garden labourers by the British. He never wanted to offend the British in spite of his awareness on these issues. There were a number of people in Kolkata who raised their voices against the atrocities of the British on the tea garden labourers. But in the nineteenth century Assam, Gunabhiram was all alone and therefore his limitations can be understood. The silent concern for his daughter Swarnalata regarding her education is enough to indicate the changes that were inevitable at a time that was poised on the cusp of tradition and modernity.

The renaissance reformers were highly selective in their acceptance of liberal ideas from Europe. In ‘The Nationalist Resolution of the Women’s Question’ Partha Chatterjee has referred to the suggestion made by Sumit Sarkar that the concern with the social condition of women was far less an indicator of ideological preference for liberalism and more an expression of certain “acute problems of interpersonal adjustments within the family” on the part of the early generation of western educated males. Faced with “social ostracism and isolation,” their attempts at “a limited and controlled emancipation of wives” were “a personal necessity for survival in a hostile social world”. They wanted women to be educated so that Indian society could no longer be characterized as decadent and backward. On a personal level, they yearned for companionship and the support an educated woman could give them as they advanced professionally. Literally, the condition of women remained the same; they now have an additional task of assisting the husband’s intellectual pursuits while keeping intact the sanctity of home.

The colonial period saw social reform as an important issue that brought within its purview discussions of sati, child marriage, widowhood, polygyny, and prohibitions on education. These issues, dominating the narrative, leaves out any information about women’s work and occupations, values and emotional lives, and health and physical well-being. It is very true, as Lata Mani has pointed out in her essay “Contentious Traditions: The Debate on Sati In Colonial India”, the debates over social issues construed women as victims or heroines, denying them complex personalities and agency. In the words of Lata Mani – “Tradition was thus not the





ground on which the status of woman was being contested. Rather the reverse was true: women in fact became the site on which tradition was debated and reformulated” (Sangari andVaid 118). In “Nations in an Imperial Crucible” Mrinalini Sinha has very aptly put it – “The identification of women mainly with the private and familial sphere has been the basis for the exclusion of women as citizens or from full membership of the community” (Levine 197).

Swarnalata is indeed a significant study on the life and times of the “mid-nineteenth century Assam when the forces of tradition were being challenged by the new concepts of modernity” (Misra 3). Geraldine Forbes noted that the social reformers “viewed women as their subjects – to be changed as a consequence of persuasive arguments, social action, education, and legislation” (27). She has further cited the historian Sumit Sarkar’s argument that these reformers were concerned primarily with modifying relationships within their own families and sought only “limited and controlled emancipation” of their womenfolk (27). It was always looked into that the sanctity of the home is zealously maintained. This ‘new woman’ constructed by the nationalist liberals belongs to the elite leaving out the women of the larger section of the society. So, we find her detached from the outer world which became the domain of the common masses. Based on the intertwined story of three women from different social backgrounds, Misra has meticulously dealt with each caught in the ‘whirlpool of change, each trying to chart her own course in life, heroically, silently’ (Misra v). Swarnalata stands out as the elite ‘new woman’ who follows the dictates of patriarchy and doesn’t speak; Tora and Lakhipriya represents the common women who show the signs of ‘nascent feminist resistance’ with their ‘departure from the normal tasks of women’ (Forbes 27). Here we find the Assamese ‘new woman’ differing from the Bengali bhadramahila because she is more or less unable to control her course of life unlike the latter. Swarnalata, the ‘new woman’, is unable to speak her mind even if she has questions coming up in her mind; towards the end of the novel we find her fading away with the responsibilities of her family. But on the other hand, we find, the Bengali ‘new woman’ like Saraladevi Chaudhurani taking the first step towards controlling her own life (Forbes 29). Thus the novel is a depiction of the indispensible relation between an individual and the society. The delineation of Swarnalata as the representative nineteenth century woman showcases the then status of women and to look into the concealed pages of history. Tilottama Misra has indeed made us realize through her novel that women need to study their own history in order to unveil themselves and recognize one’s own worth. In the words of Gerda Lerner – “Women have a history. Women are in history” (Forbes 2). Hence the attempt in this paper to read the ‘silent’ pages of history and discover the hidden voices so as to understand the ignorance of women of their own subjugation down the ages.

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